The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  “You little fool!” Furious, Kazanjian roughly shook Artis until his eyes opened and he stared groggily at the angry man standing over him. His dry mouth gaped.

  “I saw things. White wanting to be a color,” the boy croaked.

  The next morning in Kazanjian’s office, red-eyed, stuttering with shame, the boy swore this would never happen again. Artis would keep his distance from Brownlow. He gave Kazanjian his word, and the doctor in turn promised to keep his adventure from Dr. McCleary.

  AT AN EQUAL distance from the grass-choked amphitheater and a circle of viburnums, a pseudo-Gothic pavilion had been built in the eighteenth century according to the fancy of the estate’s owner. The pavilion was one room of considerable size, and the enormous arched windows on all four sides made it strangely private, as anyone approaching was immediately visible. Decay had been a stealthy and steady visitor to the pavilion, cracking glass and stone, hiding the ornament that had tumbled from the edifice in the long grass.

  “What was that?” Inside the pavilion, Brownlow, Hunt, and another orderly fell silent as they sat cross-legged on the blackened floor. A broken window admitted sounds from the field, and after a moment, their voices rose again, filling the glassed-in room.

  “It’s owed to us. To the men. It’s the least that’s owed by them that’s in charge of this bloody war.” Hunt spat on the floor.

  “I don’t agree. It’s not for us to decide Artis’s fate.” The orderly leaned back, withdrawing from their circle.

  “We act to protect the boy from future suffering,” Brownlow insisted angrily. “It’s our only choice.”

  “I’ll have no part of this business. The authorities will have your heads.”

  “Who will do the deed?” Brownlow made a sarcastic invitation.

  The light gathered itself and struck at an angle across the pavilion, bringing clarity to the rusted chandelier, its scrolling armature bent as if by harsh wind on a cliff. No one moved, and they avoided one another’s eyes.

  “Very well. Gentlemen, we will compete for the task. All is fair, as they say. I’ll prepare the choices.”

  Each man drew a broken straw from Brownlow’s clenched fist. Then he opened his hand, displaying the remaining straw, the evidence that he had won. His face fleetingly revealed his dismay, then his expression was masked. “Never fear. I will treat the boy gently. There can be no mistakes. God have mercy.”

  MCCLEARY HAD INTENDED to fit the mask on Julian by himself and was dismayed to find Anna and Kazanjian already making preparations at a worktable.

  Anna looked up briefly. “Good. We can begin now that you’re here.”

  She tied an apron over her smock, and McCleary noticed she’d lost weight. Julian sat with his back to them on the modeling platform, removing the bandages from his face.

  The mask lay facedown on a rough cloth, its curved silver interior exposed. The thing seemed so final, a fortress. Somehow, McCleary had never let himself visualize that the mask would cover Julian’s entire face.

  He peered closely at the mouthpiece, faultlessly joined; the cup and drain fit inside the chin area had the useful precision of a pocket watch. Something stopped him from touching the mask. Respect for Julian? Pity? A misguided sense of privacy? The wish that the mask would vanish?

  “The eyelashes are the finest copper wire.” Anna took the mask and drew her fingernail along the soft lashes. “The eyelid is much thinner than the band of a ring. That will make it easy to wear.” Her expression challenged any criticism.

  Kazanjian had inlaid a glass eye into one socket of the mask, an opaque orb, neat and snug as a seedpod, crested with a permanent eyelid.

  McCleary placed his hand next to the painted face on the table, skin to false skin. “Not a brushstroke visible.” Reluctantly, he lifted the edge of the mask, and his fingers trembled at its unexpected lightness. “Admirable. The mask is lighter than a leaf. A fine piece of work,” he said, hoping he’d mustered passable enthusiasm.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Anna awkwardly announced that the mask was ready. Did Julian wish to see it?

  “Perhaps he’d like to be alone, Anna,” Kazanjian said quietly.

  “No, I’m fine,” Julian said. “But I don’t wish to see the front of the mask. Why should I have a view no one else does of his own face?”

  Julian’s words were so soft that McCleary strained to listen, as if there were an echo. He recognized a distance between them—a group of healers, cogs in a great machine—

  and Julian, the isolated subject of their effort. He looked at Kazanjian, and the strain of anticipation and strange shame in his colleague’s eyes mirrored his own.

  Anna picked up the mask, cradling it as gently as McCleary touched his patients.

  During their interaction, Kazanjian had remained in the background, but as Anna held the mask up at eye level, he put his hand on her arm. McCleary caught the raw glance Kazanjian directed at her and suddenly—with a shock of wonder—perceived that they had fallen in love.

  Anna advanced over to Julian and with profound tenderness placed the mask—face side down—in his hands.

  He held the painted object without looking at it, then angled away from them, claiming his privacy, and slipped the elastic strap over his head to secure it in place.

  Anticipating this moment, McCleary had rehearsed words of encouragement, but he found himself unable to utter a sound, and even his breath was stifled as Julian turned around.

  McCleary’s gaze froze on the mask, a cold metal face with a slit for a mouth that seemed to leak its flesh-colored stiffness down into Julian’s body. It was a closed thing, a prison. His failure. Julian would wear it like a shield on his face.

  “Is it uncomfortable?”

  “No more than a glove.” Julian’s muffled voice sounded false, and it seemed uncanny projected from his immobile face. His head moved this way and that, as if seeking light.

  McCleary tenderly examined Julian’s face, noticing the clumsy distinction between the painted mask and the heightened fragility of his bare neck. He touched the line of the mask where it lay against Julian’s cheek. No sharpness, no pressure. He felt a wetness on his fingertips and realized Julian’s tears had leaked from under the mask.

  Julian pressed his hands against his chest, as if to contain his heart. “The mask is hard against my skin.”

  McCleary said nothing, but—rapid and unbidden as a roiling cloud—pity swept over him.

  HIS CURLY HAIR flattened by perspiration, Hunt pulled out a bottle of spirits he’d already sampled and passed it to the orderly gracelessly recumbent beside him on the straw-strewn stable floor. Brownlow watched them impassively, turning up his shirtsleeves, his only concession to the heat. Although it was past eight o’clock, the room was stifling with the lingering odor of manure and straw mingled with the newer scent of gasoline from the motorcars, the newest occupants of the stable.

  Emboldened by liquor, Hunt loudly addressed Brownlow. “You’re very silent this evening. No secrets to share?”

  “I can’t stop my ears if a man has a loose tongue in his head.”

  “Your vapors make everyone talk. You know everyone’s business.” Hunt continued, gaining confidence. “Someday you’ll blackmail every one of us.”

  “If only you were bloody interesting enough to blackmail, Hunt. Thus far, nothing in your life is worth tuppence.” Unperturbed, Brownlow stretched his long arms. “I’d rather have a man bleat for his mother under anesthesia than weep in pain. It makes a better tale. More profitable.”

  “I’m no bleater,” Hunt protested. “Noise don’t reveal a man’s character anyhow.”

  “Neither does a face,” added the orderly.

  “No mirror could convince us of that, my friend. Survive enemy bullets and death for something far worse.” Brownlow’s claim brought silence.

  “You shouldn’t say those things, sir.” Artis spoke up from the corner.

  “Don’t talk about what you don’t know, you
ng master. You’ll do well to keep yourself respectful.”

  The men’s exchange carried an unspoken intent, and Artis half-sensed this undercurrent.

  “The lad will know everything soon enough. He reports for duty tomorrow.”

  “Heigh-ho, to the trenches we go.”

  “Let’s give him a proper send-off. Here’s the bottle.”

  Pressured by Brownlow to take a turn, Artis gulped from the bottle, quickly becoming a childish, giddy drunk.

  “So where’s our good doctor?” the orderly demanded. “Strange that he’s late.”

  “I don’t imagine this is an occasion he’s anticipated with pleasure.”

  “Dr. McCleary will be here?” Alarmed, Artis propped himself up on a bale of hay.

  “He’s supervising the consumption of drink.” Hunt giggled.

  McCleary’s tall figure interrupted dappled light from the dirt-speckled lanterns, and the men scrambled to their feet as if it were disrespectful not to stand in his presence.

  Artis stumbled drunkenly over a bulky object and aimed a wide kick at a sandbag on the floor. “What’s this?”

  “There you go.” McCleary steadied the unbalanced boy, keeping one hand on his shoulder. “Now then. I’d promised to help with your military obligations. I have made inquiries with several military officials. Nothing has come of it.”

  Sobered, Artis heard this without flinching. “Yes, sir. Doctor.”

  “I can arrange for you to stay and help in the hospital. This will be your service to your country. What say you?”

  Bewildered, Artis stared at McCleary and the men around him, then answered with a clear voice. “I wish to stay. What must I do?”

  “Trust me. Trust that I will help you, but it will be painful. Only briefly.” The doctor straightened his back, his tense shoulders betraying his nervousness.

  The patchy light in one of the lanterns hesitated, and the orderly crouched to relight it.

  “Drink this.” Brownlow put a cup to Artis’s lips, and soon the sleepy-eyed boy sprawled on the sandbag, his fine hair an aureole against the rough fabric.

  Brownlow and Hunt easily hoisted Artis to his feet, then gently bound him upright against a post with a thin rope, leaving his right arm free.

  “What are you doing?” the boy groggily demanded, plucking at the rope.

  McCleary observed these preparations without comment, his mouth fixed into a grim line.

  Hunt heaved a sandbag atop a pile of hay bales. He flattened Artis’s outstretched right hand against it and secured it in place with rope. Increasingly agitated, Brownlow kneeled, unpacked a syringe from a small kit, and solemnly prepared it, a silver line, its sharpness seeming out of place against the coarse straw.

  “Keep him steady.”

  Artis grimaced and tensed as Brownlow daubed his hand with a dark liquid and the syringe found its mark in his open palm.

  Sweat ran down Brownlow’s face. “It’s too dark. Gentlemen, your lanterns, please.”

  The others hurriedly moved the lanterns closer to Artis, and the broad brushstroke of light eliminated the details of their faces, bleaching their figures, and even the bales of hay appeared to be transformed into a solid mass.

  Hunt handed Brownlow something bundled in a cloth, and he carefully unwrapped a small object, a neat angle that fit into his hand. The lantern light striped the thick muzzle of a Browning pistol.

  “Artis, keep your hand open. Understand?” Brownlow lifted the boy’s chin and stared into his eyes. “Courage.” He briefly turned to examine the pistol, took a few steps back, cocked it, and aimed at Artis. His arm wobbled, and he dropped the gun. “My eyes.”

  McCleary held out his hand to take the pistol himself.

  Shamed, Brownlow ignored him and with the same intensity he commanded in surgery, squinted down the barrel at Artis and pulled the trigger. The force of the gunshot jerked his hand back as Artis shrieked.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A T FOUR O’CLOCK, the light through the open door of the studio was faintly bronzy green, a color it seemed the grass outside had relinquished.

  Kazanjian slipped a gold pencil into his pocket and opened a sketchbook to a drawing of his hands holding his spectacles, which Anna had quickly executed during their train journey. She had claimed it was his most accurate likeness.

  He smiled thoughtfully and studied Anna across the table.

  “We have a history of objects between us.” His voice carried a sympathetic humor that masked the possessiveness in his statement.

  “It strikes me that you’re a man who finds objects useful.” Her eyes acknowledged their shared experience. Their intense conversations at the base hospital had lasted until the night moths and biting insects were irritatingly thick around the small lantern and their frantic shadows visible against the tent. Then Kazanjian would escort Anna to quarters carrying the lantern, which he referred to as a proper gentleman’s accessory. Their code. “Your lantern always accompanied us.” At the memory, Anna’s smile did not fade as quickly this time, and she bowed her head to hide her expression.

  She was occupied with the task of making pastel crayons, preferring to fabricate them herself, as commercial pastels faded, their fugitive color derived from coal tar dyes. Her sketches of the injured men must be a permanent record, outlasting memory, flesh, and the enemy.

  Gum arabic, strained oatmeal gruel, and cadmium red pigment had been ground together into a stiff mass until its texture and consistency were identical to those of pastry dough. Drops of honey were added to counteract brittleness, so the pastels would glide, not crumble on contact with paper. As Anna rolled bits of this brilliant mixture into small balls, her fingers and palms became reddened by the cadmium, appearing to have been rubbed raw by the contact. Under the influence of this violent color, she began to tell Kazanjian a story.

  “Some time ago, an older woman commissioned a portrait of her six-year-old grandson from me. I had trouble sketching the boy’s face; his expression was so unhappy. He was uncomfortable even when he wasn’t posing. I observed him carefully, tried to puzzle him out. He haunted me.

  “One afternoon, I put down my brush, went over to the boy, and carried him to the settee. He allowed me to remove his jacket and shirt. I found bruises on his back. He wouldn’t speak about it. I let him sleep in the hammock under the trees for the entire afternoon.

  “I implored my husband to do something to stop the child’s ill treatment, but he dismissed me, suggested the boy had had an accident. Children are clumsy, he said. I can do nothing. I discovered the boy’s family was prominent, and they had helped fund the hospital where my husband practiced.

  “The next time the boy and his grandmother came to my studio, I took her outside and told her someone had deliberately hurt him.”

  Anna looked directly at Kazanjian. “The grandmother said he’d never been like other children. She was actually scornful. She turned her back, and her hands shook so badly she couldn’t open her parasol. The poor child ran after her down the walk. They never came back.

  “Sometime later, the boy was admitted to the hospital with a fractured arm. But not a single bruise. My husband told me this just to confirm the correctness of his judgment.”

  Kazanjian muttered an unintelligible oath.

  “I told my husband never to speak about the boy again. I put his portrait away but couldn’t forget the child. By the time we volunteered to work at the front, my fury at my husband was ice cold.”

  She opened her hand to reveal crimson powder creased in her palm, neater than blood.

  Kazanjian touched her arm, caressed Anna’s stained hand, her red palm, red wrist, revealing his knowledge of her, his hands equally skilled as her hands.

  She couldn’t see, couldn’t calculate, responded without strategy, touching his face, wreathing his head with the odor of turpentine that clung to her skin.

  He kneeled, resting his head against her skirt.

  At that moment, they could have been hu
rtled to the ceiling of a grand palazzo, transformed into painted figures, a mythical god and goddess in the repose of love, the flourish of their silken drapery, their perfect flesh displayed against a brilliant cobalt sky.

  “Forgive me,” Anna said, stepping away from him.

  C ATHERINE CRAVED PRIVACY, a bough, a protective arch over her head. The constant pressure of the injured men’s vigilance, the veiled observations of their caretakers, the unceasing monitoring of recovery, had completely permeated the house. Julian’s aloofness was a relief, and he held it so unconcernedly that he seemed to be merely passing through the hospital, with no need of aid. He had refused the luxury of Catherine’s room and possessions, which intensified her determination to increase her power over him.

  She quickly passed out of view from the windows and made her way to the lower orchard, partially enclosed by an ancient wall. Many decades ago, the peach trees had been wired flat against its orange brown bricks, tamed into horizontal lines, a decorative torture that removed the branches from the third dimension. At certain hours, sunlight revealed the neat wires that bound the living branches, the sudden winking glint of thin metal hammered over bark.

  Charles’s familiar silhouette appeared at the end of the path alongside the wall. He continued toward her, the trees irregularly altering his gray jacket with violet shadow. Frightened, she swore his image must be projected from her deepest memory, yet she couldn’t control him, make him stop. He was a ghost.

  At a sound—the tap tap of his walking stick—this daylight specter vanished, replaced by a man with a white-wrapped face who stood before her and with shy, self-conscious pride, boldly put his hand in the pocket of a fine jacket that once belonged to her husband.

  Catherine embraced Julian with relief, not disappointment.

  They walked together, Julian lifting branches away from the brittle circumference of her straw hat. The afternoon was unusually warm, the sun a pour of dull heat that cushioned her cheeks and throat, blotted moisture around her arms.