The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  “Be silent, will you.”

  Quiet settled over their unmoving figures.

  A pulse beat in Julian’s neck, swelling a thin, taut muscle, the angle of a reed. “How will anyone dare . . .” He choked as the words caught in his throat. “How will anyone dare to love me?”

  Words of comfort were useless. McCleary’s eyes contained all his power of empathy, but it wasn’t enough. He vainly wished for something that could absorb Julian’s pain. Believing his own knowledge was inadequate, he’d searched his collection of Plato’s works and found mention of the êpodê, a charm for the most effective words and course of action. But what êpodê, what “beautiful discourse” was possible between doctor and patient, an unequal relationship, a betrayal?

  Julian abruptly stood up and strode in the direction of the lake, the blue of his suit gradually losing its detail until he was just a moving shape.

  AMONG THE NEWLY arrived patients, a corporal with a forehead injury railed against the enemy’s destruction of an immense and renowned library in Belgium. Three hundred thousand books, one thousand incunabula, and eight hundred illuminated manuscripts securely packed in wooden crates as protection had been ignited. The country’s written history was immolated in nine hours. Sparks and a cyclone of papers were blown from the blazing library, and as the corporal watched, a single glowing page swooped toward him, the letters brightening as the paper became heated, then mutely disintegrating into hot ash even as his eyes grasped the words.

  The burden of the new patients, and the whispered rumors that the war was not going as expected, took its toll on the staff. Brownlow stubbornly ignored protocol, his black hair grew shaggy, too long over his collar, his boots were seldom polished. Taciturn and sarcastic, strangely steady when drunk, Brownlow reacted to the slightest criticism or question without argument, simply shook his head or stalked away, his actions weighted with compressed fury, the anger of a closed fist.

  Once an orderly and a patient found Brownlow slumped blank faced against a wall, and fearing his reaction, the two men hesitated for a moment before hauling the anesthetist, dazed from ether or drink, to his feet. They received no thanks or even an acknowledgment from Brownlow as he staggered away.

  THE NURSE WAS a white figure ahead of McCleary, her flapping skirt reshaped into angular folds as she ran. He hurried after her, automatically steadying his stethoscope inside his jacket.

  “Who is it? Who is it?” he gasped, dry breath painful in his throat.

  The nurse didn’t answer or slow her steps.

  Someone shouted from the trees ahead of them. Suddenly, the fine light of a torch aggressively zigzagged through the darkness, revealing the gray trunk of a tree but leaving its uppermost branches black so it appeared towering, grown to an unfathomable height.

  His breath still labored and unstable, McCleary peered up at a man crouching on a branch of the tree. A patient. He swiftly calculated that should the man jump from this height, his body would fall on soft ground. With luck, only a leg or an arm would be broken.

  An orderly grabbed the torch from the nurse’s hands, and then light twitched over Julian’s ragged figure as if reluctant to pull him from the uneven concealment of the foliage.

  “Stand back. Leave me alone.”

  McCleary’s chest seemed to suffocate his racing heart. “Julian, don’t hurt yourself.”

  “Hurt myself?” Julian’s laugh was incredulous. Gripping a branch, he unsteadily pulled himself upright to lean against the tree.

  Make my words a rod of support, McCleary prayed. Let my speech be a ladder. “Don’t move,” he pleaded.

  Julian’s wild face swayed above them as if at the window of a burning building. He clawed at his bandages, pulling them free, and a white strip of bandage twisted as it floated down, caught in the torchlight.

  McCleary winced, knowing Julian would bleed. A nurse gripped his arm and screamed, “For God’s sake, do something.”

  McCleary shook her off. He was chilled, felt distant from the situation. He experienced this state each time he confronted the few square inches of a man’s torn face in the operating theater. The face itself was small as a bowl, but it contained the world.

  “Julian, please stay where you are. I’m listening.”

  “Listening won’t fix me. Words won’t fix me.”

  The wind simultaneously lifted leaves and the nurses’ capes, as if they were joined by an invisible line.

  McCleary waited in absolute silence, eyes locked on Julian’s unmoving figure. “You must honor your pact with me. Your doctor,” he said gently. “This isn’t an order.” He couldn’t hear Julian weep but saw his shoulders shaking.

  Minutes passed. The nurses clutched each other; tension made them like stone. They couldn’t look away. Spellbound.

  McCleary again found his voice. “Julian, if you jump, you might not die. You will spend the rest of your life in a bed. Dependent on others for your care. Fed with a spoon.”

  Julian seemed to become heavier, lurched forward, then half-climbed, half-slid down the tree, collapsing into McCleary’s uplifted arms. The orderly dropped the torch, and both men instantly vanished into darkness.

  McCleary barely noticed the lack of light; he was faint with relief, the security of Julian’s thin, angular body under his outstretched arm. Healing was his touch on this man’s shoulder. Skin to skin. “We will not speak of this again,” he whispered to his patient.

  Then the torch was found, and the others silently stood back as the two men staggered between them, Julian’s shirt stained with red, bold as a heraldic crest on a warrior’s shield.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AFTER CATHERINE WAS TOLD Julian was to be fitted for a mask, she drove until she no longer recognized the landscape and stopped the motorcar. She walked steadily, her feet moved, but she was torn in pieces deep in the interior of her body. She was held upright by some miraculous pressure, the tension that keeps the edges of a broken surface aligned.

  She stumbled against clods of grass and dirt, then fragments of branches and roots, jagged and peculiarly darkened, burned or wet. At the site where the bomb had hit, blackened earth sloped into a huge crater, a measure of unclean water at the bottom. Her future was reflected there.

  ANNA RESTED AGAINST the balustrade on the second floor, her face unfocused above a tight lace collar. She ignored the rapid footsteps in the room behind her. Let them pass by, she thought.

  But the footsteps ended as fingers gripped Anna’s shoulder.

  “You must help Julian.” Catherine was breathless.

  “But I am helping him. He is my subject.” Anna turned back to study the view.

  “Make a better face for Julian. I will pay for it. You’ll have everything you need.”

  “Should I create a face of gold for him? Blue sapphires for his eyes?”

  Catherine winced. “No. I know his face. I know what he should look like. It’s better if I—”

  Anna interrupted. “I’ve seen other women in your situation. You only know him as he is damaged. A nurse at the front married her patient, a blinded boy of twenty with no arms or legs. She was a spinster and sixty years old. He didn’t object. Figured he was lucky.”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  Anna said nothing. Light from the room suddenly cast its buoyant weight across them, signaling the presence of an intruding nurse. A thin stripe of shadow glided across Catherine’s face and neck, straightforward as a line of paint.

  “Please. Make him a mask of glass. Or no, make it soft and transparent. Celluloid? Julian must be able to smile.”

  “Have you really studied him?” Anna stared at her. “His mask will be modeled on his portrait taken before his injury. I suggest you avoid looking at it. Better to remain ignorant in pursuit of bliss.”

  “You’re spiteful. You’re incapable.”

  “You cannot be Julian’s angel,” Anna hissed.

  THE METAL HUTTING erected at the southeast edge of the grounds was already inadequate
for the number of incoming patients. The nearby Congregational church converted its school and lecture hall into a thirty-four-bed hospital, and the Wesleyan church fit sixteen beds into its schoolrooms. Both facilities were administered by a female commandant, a doctor, and a lady superintendent.

  The local children had organized an egg-gathering society and would knock shyly at the church door with their offerings in baskets, each egg carefully labeled in pencil on its dull white surface For a Soldier.

  There was no telephone service between the estate and the two hospital annexes, so Artis and a few chosen orderlies were the go-betweens, their bicycles and wagons laden with medicines, mail, X-ray charts, telegrams, laundry, and on one occasion, gallons of cream.

  Women filled in as acting postmasters, and twice a day made the rounds, their delivery carts stacked with parcels, cables, registered letters, telegrams. The postmasters were also in charge of exchanging foreign paper money for the newly arrived soldiers, and one woman took particular pleasure in rifling through an enormous sheaf of colored bills as if performing card tricks.

  During an errand to the Wesleyan church, Artis had stowed his bicycle behind a shrub and peered through the grimy window in the abandoned aviary, where Brownlow was quartered. Later, the men in the wards raptly listened as he solemnly described what he’d seen in the room: perforated metal cups, possibly to fasten over the face; leather straps; glass drop bottles; India-rubber tubes; papers; and shapeless black clothing haphazardly strewn over the poor chairs and table.

  Later, Brownlow relentlessly quizzed Artis as if he knew about the boy’s transgression.

  “Tell me what physical sign indicates proper oxygenation under anesthesia.”

  “The color of fingernails and lips.”

  “What is the third plane of anesthesia?”

  “The pupil is dilated, eye is dry and quiet.”

  “How can you aid an unconscious patient who has swallowed his tongue?”

  “Pull his jaw forward to move the tongue away from the pharynx.”

  Artis fidgeted under Brownlow’s critical gaze, expecting a reprimand, but instead he recieved a grudging smile. “Very well.”

  Artis leaned forward to meet the next question.

  “Do you have secrets, young man?”

  Artis blushed, shook his head.

  “I’ll tell you my secret. When a patient emerges from my ether, he sees the world but doesn’t recognize it. In that instant of confusion, a man reveals total innocence. It is the most private moment, and the patient has no idea he’s being watched. But I’m watching.”

  CATHERINE MADE HERSELF small on the grass, pulling her jacket tighter, tucking her skirt around her legs so she would appear less visible from the sky. Her perception mysteriously shifted, and she saw herself as if from a distance, the oval straw hat, the pale triangle of her skirt.

  Artis walked toward her from the direction of the house, swinging the thick envelope he carried with the rhythm of his spoken words, a purposeful and unrecognizable chanting, Orbicularis oris, orbicularis oculi.

  “What brings you here?”

  He stopped suddenly, surprised to see her. “I’m delivering this to the studio. It’s for Julian.” He stood above her, awkwardly twisting the string around the envelope.

  “You shouldn’t disturb Anna. She’s working. I’ll give Julian the package.”

  Artis continued to toy with the envelope.

  Catherine removed her hat and shifted her weight back onto her elbows. “I heard the ambulances arrive late last night. So many of them. I lost count.”

  “The new arrivals didn’t get settled into the ward until after four o’clock in the morning. I helped Dr. McCleary. I didn’t sleep.”

  “It’s wonderful you’re such a tremendous help to the doctor. Please, there’s no need to stand.”

  Embarrassed, he sat down, leaning protectively over his bent legs.

  “Give me the envelope, Artis.”

  The sound of the field—insects, grass, wind—suddenly swelled and buzzed around her, intense as color. Catherine extended her arm on the grass toward Artis till they were as close as lovers. She waited for him to decide, watching as a faint blush of pink conquered his fair cheeks and moved down his neck.

  With an effort, Artis suddenly moved away from her and flung the envelope at her feet.

  She should have scolded him for this impertinence, but because of her greed to examine the envelope, she merely told him to leave at once.

  CATHERINE’S EYES SWEPT her room, observing the placement of objects, shadows, the way they had been altered. The pattern of vines and leaves on the bed curtains appeared too heavy for the worn linen. A footstool had been moved. Perfume in a crystal bottle appeared browner, thicker. A pillow was creased. Was the mirror dimmed, newly flecked with tarnish?

  On the bureau, the portraits of Charles behind the squares and rectangles of framed glass were subtly changed. Perhaps the photographs of his face weren’t permanent but had been transformed over time, so slowly she hadn’t noticed. She peered at a photograph of Charles taken at Bassano’s studio; its dark grain seemed to fade and waver, dissolve into dots fine as sand before her eyes. Something must be done to halt this loss.

  Julian’s name on the envelope was black and official. She studied the characterless script, allowed herself a fractional hesitation, then carefully slit open the envelope, irreversible as a plunge from a great height. She removed a photograph, the paper strangely light in her palm, and stared at a young man in uniform. Julian, before battle had slipped a razor ribbon over his face. His perfect features and carefree smile numbed her vision the way sudden, intense light temporarily shocks the retina into white blindness.

  Charles had posed for a similar portrait. She placed the men’s photographs side by side and couldn’t judge if Charles and Julian truly resembled each other. Her confused eye carried one feature to the other man’s face. She was the go-between, mortar, a collaborator with the two men.

  Catherine wrapped herself in Charles’s camel hair jacket, summoning the intimate sensation of his body. But her senses wouldn’t yield to her wish, and her skin had no memory of the pleasure her husband had once given her. Everything slid away from flesh.

  But there was a painted metal object, an oval that mimicked a face. Julian’s mask. A shallow hollow to pour herself into. Catherine had only to claim it. Her anger at Charles for abandoning her was compressed into a triangle, one point like a dart at her back. Her decision was made.

  She quickly started a fire in the grate with torn strips of stationery and blotting paper. While the fire burned, she calmly cut open the silk lining inside the crown of a large, flat-brimmed felt hat. Without looking at Julian’s image, she inserted his photograph into the lining. She placed the hat in a box and covered it with tissue. Then she pried the photographs of Charles from their frames and, one by one, released them into the grate. The flames contorted his face, licked the transparent chemicals on the photographs into gray before their edges curled black.

  The fire flared up, the heat pressing against her exposed skin. The glass in the empty picture frames on the floor reflected the moving orange and red flames back at the fire.

  This is the funeral ceremony for Charles, she thought. His pyre. Farewell.

  She resealed the one remaining photograph of Charles inside the envelope addressed to Julian.

  At midnight, she placed it in a satchel and left the house for the studio. With every step, the tightness around her heart increased, as if gripped by a coil of thin metal.

  The studio appeared to have condensed around its furnishings, and the air was thick and close. She didn’t dare use a torch, but left the door ajar, admitting faint moonlight. Her breath felt solid in the grip of her chest as she set the envelope containing Charles’s photograph on Anna’s worktable. What was the risk? Everyone who had known Charles—all the servants—had left, gone to war or work elsewhere. Artis was the sole witness who might see Julian’s mask and recogn
ize Charles’s face. She would watch the boy as if he were suspected of a crime. He was a living, breathing threat.

  Her hand struck a jar, its glass shattered on the floor, and the sound rattled deep inside the thousands of shells on the walls, seeking to split their thin curves.

  Catherine found herself standing outside, shivering, unable to recognize the hour, since the sky was fixed in hazy darkness. This calm static was false, as she sensed aircraft, or perhaps a zeppelin, silently growing closer, the vibration of their engines would soon be audible, and then a bomb’s slow honeyed descent in a straight line.

  She became a running, featureless figure on the ground, a target, aware her life could suddenly end without a witness in a black explosion, a spray of earth pulverized over the open field. Her bones, poisonous white lines held at angles by the tension of muscles, waited for a weapon, injury, death, to free them from her body.

  CATHERINE WATCHED as Anna cut the string and unwrapped the envelope containing Charles’s photograph. She propped the photograph on the easel and silently studied it.

  A point of fear enlarged and circled Catherine’s throat, dried her mouth, spiked her flesh like a collar. Surely the artist’s eye would decipher the false photograph, beginning the spiral of discovery of Catherine’s guilt. Minutes passed until she trusted her voice enough to speak. “Can you read a premonition in Julian’s face? What do you see?”

  “He was once a handsome man. And knew he was handsome, I’d say. Here. Look.”

  I shouldn’t touch the photograph. Catherine reluctantly took the photograph and found it unchanged, a paper overlaid with the thin veil of an image. Charles’s black-and-white face. She returned the photograph to Anna, and her hand seemed chilled from the contact.

  Catherine asked if Julian’s mask would appear identical to his photograph.

  “Depends on the eye of the observer. I trust Julian will resemble his photograph. But the mask is only my impression of him.”

  “Impression? But you’re making the mask from his portrait.”