by Shamim Sarif
“So what do you think?” Lauren asks as he unlocks the front door.
He is embarrassed to realize that he hasn’t heard anything she has been saying. With a look of apology he shrugs off his coat, and then takes hers.
“I’ve been miles away. Sorry.”
She follows him into the living room, where he paces about, switching on lamps, lighting the fire and putting on some music. He keeps moving, diligently, but it does not seem to help – wherever he goes he feels that he is being followed by the eyes of Katya’s portrait. Finally he looks at it, a hungry, desolate look, until he becomes aware that Lauren is watching him, and he smiles at the picture, as though taking pleasure in it, as he would with any present.
“I just thought that it might be a good project,” Lauren continues. “Sketching, and then painting the two of you.”
He looks at her, not understanding.
“You and Estelle.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.” She remains standing, even after he sinks into his armchair. “I’ve been thinking about a series. Sort of based around the Seven Ages of Man.”
Her choice of title makes him smile. “I don’t suppose I would be number six, would I?”
“What?”
“Of the seven ages of man.”
“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe not.”
“You know how to hit an old man where it hurts.”
“But Uncle Alex, you have such character in your face, such romance in your eyes…”
“Please. You should be ashamed of yourself, trying to charm a man my age.”
Despite his banter, he is distracted, she can see that, so she decides to leave aside her idea for a while, even though she is keen to discuss it with her uncle. She has deliberately chosen a theme, an underlying idea that she can think about and work on, in order to try and bring some emotional and intellectual depth to the next portraits that she does. She wants to discuss with him what Estelle had said earlier about her work sounding formulaic. She had felt a cool prickling of fear at the realisation, so sudden and yet so clear, that Estelle was right – what she has been doing for the past few years has lost any edge, any philosophy. Her work is now steady and comfortable and plentiful and if she is to be brutally honest with herself, meaningless. She is living the kind of easy, uninspired existence that is precisely what she has always despised in others and dreaded for herself. She has always assumed that being an artist of any kind somehow implied a sense of integrity in your work – the kind of integrity not so easily found in other fields. Like business, for instance. But then she sees the fervour with which her uncle has built his company, from the seeds of his passion. And now it occurs to her to wonder whether Melissa Johnson’s devotion to her work might represent a passion also. Perhaps it is harder for Lauren to recognize because it is rooted in the day to day work of deal-making and consulting, rather than in a desire to make a life’s work out of an art or a single love like Alexander’s love of food and cooking. She glances at her uncle once more, hoping to talk through some of this; she is astute and sensitive enough, however, to tell that he is in one of those rare moods when he has no wish for company. Leaving him with a kiss on the cheek, she tells him she wants to have a bath, and he nods. A sigh escapes him – it has risen from deep within, on the tide of memories and feelings that have been stirred up by Estelle and her questions. He smothers the sigh under a smile, and just before his niece leaves the room, he calls her back.
“And Estelle? Where does she fit into the Ages of Man?”
“I guess she’d be number six. Of the seven. She has a great face – such life and movement in her eyes. What do you think?”
Whether she means to ask his opinion for her being the sixth, or of her eyes, he is unsure, but he nods mildly, and gives away nothing of his pleasure that Lauren’s new idea might throw Estelle and himself together more frequently.
He sits, prodding at the fire, a pointless gesture since the logs are burning well. He is missing Katya. Not in the vague, intermittent way that he has fallen into over the years, but in a deep, urgent, aching way that he fears will give him no respite. He puts down the poker and buries his face in his hands, trying to stop himself turning to look at the portrait that leans against the wall behind him. He does not feel his age, despite the dampness affecting his knee, and the silver of the hairs on his arms. He feels young, very young, and as though he has just lost her. The memory of the intense, pure pain that her death inflicted on him is easily summoned up at this moment. He remembers that at first he had been shocked and disbelieving;desperate for answers. He had focused on trying to get those answers, to find a way to see her, to look at her poor dead body for himself, to see that it was really true that she could have been removed from the world so quickly and brutally. He had not been able to do so, of course, and then he could no longer resist the feeling that he was slipping, that his hands were grasping to a sharp ledge of life, and that below him there was the comfort of an abyss, an infinite drop into oblivion. The taste of that drop, the sensation of falling was so sweet that there were many times he had nearly let go. It was so simple, it was the work of one moment to lift a hand away and plunge downwards. To continue to cling to the brutal roughness of life seemed the harder course but he followed it doggedly; a young, grief-torn attempt to make himself suffer just a little of what she had suffered.
“I’m so sorry, Katyushka,” he whispers to the portrait. He wants to touch her, to hold her close, to bury his face in her soft, black hair, to be able to feel comforted by a pair of arms around him, without having to speak, or ask, or explain.
He also knows that when he left Estelle’s apartment no more than an hour ago, he had wanted to touch her as well. It is a hard truth for him to admit to himself – that he wanted to feel some human warmth; and in particular, her warmth. The touch of her hand on his own. But Estelle is married. To a man he wishes to believe is uncaring and cold, but who may be a very different person when he shuts his books at night. And Katya is dead. Long dead and disappeared, and all that remains of her are a few tiny grains of memory, many of which he suspects are more and more embellished in his own mind as time passes, and those few grains will themselves dance away into thin air, as though blown away by a breeze, as soon as his own life is over, leaving nothing more of her, anywhere, ever. Except for a portrait, an arresting, accurate portrait, which will be of a woman of whom no-one knows anything.
His rational instinct is to try and break out of this mood, and his thoughts move almost automatically to his kitchen and to what he might cook. But he has no appetite after the tea and cake they have just had, and besides, his fingers feel stiff from the cold. He stands and glances through the bookshelves on his left. The familiar titles jump out at him, in a familiar order, and he pulls down an old novel and begins to read for a while. His eyes trace the lines in a purposeful, direct manner, for he is eager to be pulled into some other world, and is prepared to work hard to manage it. But it seems to him that the book is not helping him at all. He tries again, selecting poetry this time, but this does little except indulge his mood. He is almost relieved to look up and find that the fire has burned down. Going upstairs, he takes a hot shower, calls goodnight to Lauren, and goes to bed.
He sleeps until nine the next morning, which is unusually late for him, and which throws off his sense of the day to come. But the early part of the night was seared with dreams of Katya, and one in particular had hung about his memory for several wakeful hours in the night. It had seemed unrelentingly long, and he was relieved when he awoke, but also disturbed. In the dream, he had gotten out of bed and gone to the window, except that it did not look like his bedroom window, but was divided into several smaller, wooden framed panes of glass. He had the sense that he was inside a dacha somewhere outside Moscow – there was a grand entrance hall, and wicker chairs on a wooden verandah, and a feeling of sunlight in the house, that reminded him of a dacha for government officials that he and Katya had
once stayed in during a summer holiday. And in the dream it was summer; he could somehow sense that it was windy but warm outside, but he had gotten out of bed because he had heard a woman’s voice, laughing. Wiping at the dusty glass, he saw Katya outside the window. He felt that she must be a ghost, because she was moving in strange ways. At one moment she seemed to be at a great distance, and he could see her bare feet and the swirling hem of her summer dress. There were moments too, when she seemed to be right next to him, when he could feel her touch on his arm, could breathe the scent of her neck. These moments lifted him into a kind of tormented ecstasy – for somewhere in the back of his mind he understood that she was not real. He was grateful to wake up after falling into a final, fitful sleep in the early hours, and pleased to remember that Estelle and Melissa will be visiting in a couple of hours.
Estelle’s desk, in contrast to her husband’s, sits under a window in their living room, where the sunlight floods it in the late afternoon. She cannot bear the artificial light that he labours under in his study, but he tells her that he prefers it – that way his books and papers are lit the same way at midnight and at midday, and there is nothing to distract him from his thoughts. She sits down, with a trace of self-consciousness, despite the fact that she is alone in the room. For she feels a definite sense of purpose today, something different from the usual vague possibilities that lead her to her desk at other times. She pushes back the leather penholder, the box of white letter paper and envelopes, and the untidy stack of bills that usually claims her attention when she sits here. She wants space today, a feeling of clarity and openness, and when she has cleared a good empty area around her computer, she begins. A new document, a blank page. She begins writing.
The snow has blurred the outline of the woman standing outside; to Alexander, she appears as something ghostly.
Of course, names will have to change, particularly since most of this will be fiction anyway. She types in a little more, then highlights the whole piece and taps the delete button. Her fingers are ill at ease on the keyboard today. Letters are flying up to her touch in the wrong order, and the keys are conspiring against her. She opens a drawer, and pulls out a handwritten paper of her husband’s. The sort of thing she usually types up in minutes, with no problems. She attempts to copy it onto the computer.
Undoubtedly, the extreme deference with which the writer approaches his subject provides a sense of…
She has no trouble typing this. With impatience, and a sudden decisiveness, she thrusts the paper back into the drawer, and pushes the computer screen farther back on the desk. Now she checks her fountain pen, and looks around for a pad of paper. She will write this thing in longhand if she has to. One lies beneath the sheaf of bills, and she reaches for it, noticing as she does so that the electricity payment was due last week. Twenty minutes later, she is still writing cheques when Melissa knocks at the open door.
“Does genius burn?” she asks. It is a quiet reference, to Little Women. It is what Jo March’s family asks her when she is writing. Estelle looks at her over the top of half-moon glasses.
“I’d forgotten about that,” she says. “How long is it since we read that book?”
It is not a question, but a recognition of a time long past, of the shared history of mother and daughter; but Melissa has an answer:
“I was twelve,” she said. “I remember because you read it to me every night the week before I went to summer camp.”
Estelle nods, recognising Melissa’s deeply held emotion simply by the precision and detail of her recollection. “I liked reading to you,” she tells her.
“I liked listening.”
“Come here.”
Melissa goes and stands before her mother’s chair. Estelle’s arms are up, outstretched, and Melissa leans down to accept the embrace with something like relief.
“I miss you,” she says quietly.
Melissa wonders at how such a short, hackneyed phrase can suddenly have such a reassuring effect. Perhaps it is the feel of her mother’s arms around her, after too long an absence.
“Thanks,” she says. “Listen. We have to go in a little while.”
Estelle puts away the untouched pad of paper. “I’ll go get ready.”
“Good,” Melissa replies. “I don’t want to be late.”
On her way to answer the doorbell, Lauren glances at the paintings that hang on the walls of the entrance hall. They are the two abstracts that Estelle had mentioned, old pieces that she worked on perhaps six or seven years ago, and that catch her attention for a second, because they are good. She has an immediate, vague recollection, little more than the kind of transportation of mind that a certain scent or taste can effect; she has, suddenly, a hint of the ideas she was working out when she painted them. That hyper-awareness, that sensation that a moment of grace was close to being grasped. The doorbell rings again, a long, insistent ring this time and she hurries forward and throws it open. Estelle and Melissa stand on the doorstep.
“You know, patience is a great virtue,” she says to Melissa.
“So they say, if you’re sure that what you’re waiting for is going to show up.”
“I was on my way to the door.” She stands aside to let them in.
“But I didn’t know that for sure. It’s a big house. You might not have heard the bell. We could have been waiting here forever.”
Lauren rubs her forehead.
“Am I giving you a headache?” Melissa smiles.
“Yes. And don’t try and alleviate your guilt with a lousy aspirin either. I’ll expect a shoulder massage.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Estelle takes in this exchange with some surprise. Melissa’s reply, the directness of it has seemed to cause Lauren to flush. She walks briskly ahead of them, showing them into the living room, and immediately, Estelle sees the portrait of Katya. She stands close before it.
“She is quite stunning. The painting is stunning. It must have been hard for Alexander.”
“I can’t decide whether it was the best present I’ve ever given him, or the worst.”
“Has it brought it all back?”
“I think so. Though he’s trying to put a brave face on it.”
Estelle turns back to the portrait. She is finding herself increasingly intrigued by this woman and her story – whatever it might be. She seems enclosed in mystery, and that mystery reeks of danger, of undiscovered secrets and hidden passions, Katya’s portrait looks back at her, with unknowable dark eyes and Estelle feels momentarily effaced, lost under the gaze of this young, immortalised woman.
Alexander pushes the door open with his foot because he is carrying in a large platter covered with canapés. He wishes them all good morning, and holds the door for a middle-aged woman in a white apron, whom he introduces as his housekeeper. She carries a bottle of champagne and a tray of gleaming glasses. It occurs to Estelle that if she spends more than a little time with this man, she will end up as big as a house.
“Your husband wasn’t able to come?” Alexander asks.
“He’s with another woman right now,” Estelle says. “I asked him to join us, but he won’t leave her.”
There is a stifled sound of exasperation from Melissa.
“Dad’s an English professor. The ‘other woman’ is George Eliot.”
“For now,” adds Estelle. “But next week, it’ll be someone else.”
Alexander smiles, but Estelle feels her daughter watching her keenly, almost clinically. This kind of ultimately inconsequential talk is so alien to Melissa that Estelle does her best to repress it when they are together, but occasionally it will declare itself. While Alexander pours drinks, Lauren is drawn back to talking about the portrait.
“I just wanted to try and capture a woman that you could believe one would feel deeply about,” she explains.
“You’ve done a great job,” Estelle replies. “It makes you want to know more about the person portrayed, and yet….and yet, you feel you already
know her, or at least part of her character, just from the expression, and the eyes. Actually, you resemble her quite a bit, don’t you think?”
“Maybe just the colouring. Eyes and hair.”
“I think there’s something more,” suggests Melissa.
They all consider the painting once again.
“I love the way she’s standing, with her arms folded,” says Estelle. “There’s something relaxed and almost haughty about her, but also, the hands grip the elbows just a little too tightly, and doesn’t that suggest a little defensiveness?” Estelle steps back from her analysis and imagining, and looks uncertainly at Lauren. “Or am I way off base?”
But Lauren is elated.
“That’s exactly it,” she says. “Those are the kinds of complexities that made my aunt such an irresistible subject for me. It’s hard to put a portrait into words, but that’s a great description.”
“Estelle writes,” Alexander says, partly to interrupt Lauren.
“It shows,” says Lauren. “What do you write?”
Estelle ponders, as if trying to choose between her many styles and forms is a great burden.
“Nothing, really. Sum total of my output to date? Five short stories, and half a novel which is so bad it makes me cringe, but which cost such an effort that I can’t actually bear to throw it away.”
“One of my art teachers told me once that those old canvases which have taken the longest time but are going nowhere – they’re the ones to paint over first.”
