by S. T. Joshi
Oskar waved away my inquiry. "You need not bother about me—take care of yourself." He stared into space, frowning, and I sensed that he was deciding whether or not to confide in me, to let me into his world. But then he stood and smiled down on me. "Get some sleep, Hank. You look half-dead."
"Not so fast," I yelled, grabbing his arm. "Damn it, explain what's going on in this godforsaken place. Look, I'm not an idiot. I can see the connections, the paintings in the rooms and the stills in that album. Now, I've just had a really freaky experience with Jesus." Oskar threw me an odd look. "With Philippe," I corrected myself. "I need to understand what I've stumbled on. Explain."
"Explanations are tedious. Understanding comes with the passage of time, but it won't really explicate anything. I'll tell you only this, that we have blurred the barrier betwixt art and nature, reality and dream. The outside world, the wretchedly bogus here and now, has no pertinence for us here. 'That bloody tyrant, Time,' scarcely touches us, and abhorrent modernity is utterly rejected. What was Pound's dull dictum concerning art, 'make it new'? Our aesthetic axiom is far more fascinating: 'Make it you'!" The reprehension that I felt deep within me must have been evident on my face, for Oskar began to laugh and shake his head. "Get some sleep, Hank."
I watched him leave the room. His coaxing seemed to have had an effect, for my eyelids were suddenly heavy. I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. The man was clearly ill. TB was often regarded a quaint disease largely conquered by modern medicine, but I remembered having read of recent epidemics in various regions of the globe. It was an old contagion, for traces of tubercles had been discovered in mummies dating to 2000 b.c. Wanting to observe his photograph one more time, I reached for the album, propped it against my raised knees, and turned to Oskar's image. The original painting had been inspired by Kokoschka's stay at an institute in Switzerland, where the artist had painted the portraits of some tubercular patients. Although my eyes grew heavier and my mind hazy, I tried to study the photograph, to understand its connection to the original painting, to discern the relationship with Oskar's condition. My new friend had just hinted of a link, but what it was and how it existed was a mystery that I could not fathom.
I closed my eyes and began to sink toward slumber. As consciousness slipped from me, I remembered the sickly sweet aroma of Oskar's tainted skin, his delicious smell of moribund mortality. I felt the drool that lightly gathered in my mouth, that began to drip as wakefulness evaporated.
awakened in darkness and stretched on the comfortable sofa, and then I noticed movement in the room. Looking up, I whispered her name. "Pera." She lit a candle that leaned within a sconce, and then picked up the flaming thing and held it before her veiled face.
"You're not sleeping in your bed. You need to do so. That's the way it works."
Rising, I went to her and took the candlestick from her gloved hand. "The way what works?" I listened to her hiss of laughter, a sound that was not sane. Lightly, I touched her hair. "Why do you hide your face?"
She began to rock slightly, and I put a gentle hand to her waist. "It shields me from the world, the bright reality. The envious dark drifts to kiss my drab face, and I'll be wedded to a death's-head, with a bone in my mouth."
"This is crazy talk," I mumbled.
She stopped rocking and leaned her body against mine. I could smell the cool breath that washed my face. "You name me mad? Is this lunacy?" She slid her hand toward the candle's flame and pinched the fire out, then knocked the holder to the floor. Funny, even without light I could see her clearly. The fabric of the veil tickled my face as she lifted it and smoothed it over her dark hair. I gazed at her face, with its skin that radiated like burnished porcelain. The unnatural pallor made me suspect that Pera was an arsenic eater, as society ladies were wont to be in distant eras. I had heard of dwellers in the mountains of southern Austria who consumed arsenic as a tonic, building up a tolerance for ingested amounts that would normally prove fatal. The world was filled with freaks, and I had stumbled into a realm of mutation, physical and mental. What worried me was that I was feeling more and more at home.
I pressed my nostrils against her temple and took in her mortal fragrance, never having smelled someone who aroused such odd longings within me. Her sudden deep laughter chilled me. "Pickman is a potent warlock. You're already altered." Ignoring her senseless prattle, I moved my face to her throat and raised my hands so as to fondle her breasts. Her sheathed hands took hold of my face and raised it to her own. Oh, how ghostly pale she was, so much so that I fancied I could vaguely see beneath her lucent hide to the bone of her delicate cranium. Her hands wound into my hair and tightened. Her mouth exhaled into my eyes, and vision fogged. I let her go and rubbed my face with hands that trembled. When again I looked at her, the veil had been dropped. Her hands took hold of mine. "To bed, to bed. Come, come, come, give me your hands. What's done cannot be undone. To bed."
I raised her hands to my mouth and kissed them. "Not yet. Show me some other rooms."
"Whatever for?" she asked, with an inflection that hinted of regained sanity. "Most of the rooms are vacant."
"Because their dwellers are faded?"
"Ah," she purred. She wouldn't move, and I suddenly began to feel like a cat's-paw. Disconnecting our hands, I walked into the foyer and up the stairs, the silent woman following me like some shadow. Reaching my floor, I went to try one of the many doors, but found it locked. The next door I tried yielded to my violence, and I entered an untenanted chamber. The painting over the bedstead was dimly lit by the rays of moonlight that drifted through the window. I went to it and touched the canvas. The dashingly handsome figure was familiar, and after a moment I remembered the original work that it copied, a Titian showing a young man in black, one hand naked, the other gloved and holding the glove that had been removed.
Pera stood beside me, then she quietly climbed onto the bed and placed her hand to the necklace worn by the painted figure. "They wanted to put him down in the catacombs, but I said nay. He'll not dwell in that darkened crypt, that place of death. Isn't he beautiful? So young." She reached for a varnished box that sat upon a stand. Opening it, she took out a red necklace identical to that worn by the lad in the painting. Kissing it, Pera clutched it to her chest as she lowered into the bed and curled into a fetal position.
Silently, I slipped out of the room and went to my own. I undressed and got into bed, kneeling on the mattress and studying the Pickman. The fellow's green canine eyes absurdly seemed to return my gaze. When at last I reclined, I saw those eyes in my dreams.
When my eyes opened to the glare of daylight streaming through the window, I heard from outside that window the song of laughter. Pushing the covers from me, I sat in bed and saw the plate of covered food on my bedside stand. I removed the cover and found some slices of the odd webbed meat that Pieter had offered me earlier. I wasn't very hungry, but I picked up a slice and began to eat. Standing, I wobbled to the window and looked out toward the oak grove, which was filled with moving figures. Were the freaks having a picnic? I found the idea slightly sinister, and that rather attracted me, for I was feeling bored. I dressed and went to join in the fun.
The light of day stung my eyes, and everything was thus a bit out of focus as I sauntered across the road toward the wooded place. Most of the faces were familiar, but there were three persons to whom I had not yet been introduced. The youngest, dressed in rather dandified Victorian garb, leaned against a tree, and something in her pose and the style in which she wore her flame red hair was familiar. A few yards from her, standing at an easel, a box of brushes and tubes of paint on the ground beside him, was Pieter. I went to study his canvas and saw pinned to its top left corner a small black and white picture.
"Isn't that Swinburne?" I ventured, watching the old guy copying the wee image in watercolor, blending the poet's facial features with those of the ascetic girl beside the tree. It was she who, frowning at me, spoke.
"Who hath known the ways of time
<
br /> Or trodden behind his feet?"
"Whatever, babe," I threw at her, disliking her haughty attitude. "So, you're copying, um, Burne-Jones . . . ?"
"Nope. Rossetti, painter and poet. Interesting, isn't it, how many artists have also been rhymers?" He worked his brush with dexterity and aptitude, and suddenly an idea flashed in my brain.
"Hey, those paintings above the beds . . . "
Mocking meekness, he bowed his head. "Most of them are mine own. The Pickman in your room is an original. I've touched it up a little, to bring out the beast."
"That explains it," I cheerfully replied. "I was wondering why the ones I was familiar with didn't look quite right. You've blended the original sitters with models of your own, as you're doing now. That's kind of cool." I did not mention that I thought it a dubious practice to "touch up" another artist's work.
Leaving him to his labor, I went to join Pera, who sat beside the pool of water, a petite parasol protecting her from sunlight. Absentmindedly, she dipped her hand into the bunch of pretty flowers in her lap. "Playing her part to the full," I thought, although when I saw the expression in her eyes beneath their veil I reconsidered. She gazed at me with eyes that were wide and lunatic, but also so sad that I grew quite melancholy. Tenderly, I took up a bloom and tossed it into the murky water.
Oskar came to join us, sitting next to the pool and staring into its depths with an odd expression shifting the features of his yellow face. When I asked if he was feeling well, he merely smiled and shrugged, then dipped his hand into the pool and raised a handful of cupped water to his crown. I watched the water dribble down his features. Pera reached out to his wet face and began to dry it with her glove. Oskar took her hand and kissed it, then turned to watch an approaching figure.
"The Mistress approaches," Oskar whispered.
I studied the crone as she stalked toward us, then smiled as she held a boxlike contraption and pointed its covered lens to us. Pera turned away, but Oskar stared, transfixed, as the witch removed the brass covering from the lens. I heard the squawking of crows in the trees above us and imagined that the light of day subtly subdued. Quickly, the cover was snapped back into place. The old hag's mirthless laughter unnerved me. I did not like the way she investigated my facial features as she placed her camera or whatever it was on the ground and untied the piece of black fabric that encircled her throat.
"It's time to play, my sprigs," she cackled. Slowly, steadily, everyone except Pera stopped what they were doing and walked to the elderly woman, encircling her. I was the last to stand and join their circle, standing next to Oskar and a woman I had not yet been introduced to. The ancient beldame stepped to Oskar and wrapped her ribbon so that it covered his eyes, tying it behind his head. She led him to the center of our circle, then joined our number.
We did not join hands, but everyone began to hum in a low, nearly inaudible way, and our circle began to rotate slowly. As we moved around him, Oskar reached into the air as if ready to touch our faces. At last he reached out and touched the face of one of the women I did not know. He said her name, and she laughed as she untied the band from around his eyes. Above us, the cry of crows mingled with her laughter.
Oskar skipped to me and clapped. "My turn to choose, and you're it, Hank." I wanted to protest as he pulled me to the center of the circle and began to tie the ribbon 'round my head. "Do be a good sport, old boy," he requested, and so I stopped fidgeting and let him finish. My attention was focused on the smell of his jaundiced flesh and its effect on my appetite. He tied the knot and began to take his hands away, but I clasped mine over them and pressed them to my nose, my mouth. He allowed me to savor his mortality for a few moments, and then he sighed, "Do let go, there's a good lad."
I sensed him walk away from me, and then I heard the sound of humming encircling me. Feeling slightly foolish, I raised my hands and, although I couldn't see anything, shut my eyes. I thought that I could feel a faint and shifting radiance on my hands, as if globes of soft auras pirouetted before me. Pitching forward, I grasped a face. The atmosphere grew still and silent. My fingers investigated the invisible visage; they felt the thick nose and full lips, lips that flexed so that my fingertips played against large square teeth. Thick stubble, almost a beard, covered the chin. Was it Philippe? Had he shortened his beard and I not notice it? I moved my fingers along the face and felt the ragged scar beneath the right eye, and on my other hand I felt the heat that emitted from a mouth that mocked with easy laughter.
Cursing, I ripped the band of cloth from before my eyes, and then cried in fright as a winged shadow fluttered before me, squawking risibility. The crow's beady eyes stared directly into mine as I felt the wind of its flapping wings. And then it vanished to join its comrades in the boughs above us. I stood in the center of the circle, looking at the faces that were all too far away for me to have touched.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The circle broke up and my companions moved away. Eblis, who had not been a part of the circle, jumped out of a tree, landing near Pera. She arose and held onto the handles of his wheelchair as he leaped into it, maneuvering his stunted torso with hands, like some malformed monkey. I stood beneath the trees and listened to the sound of birds moving among the branches. I heard the patter of rain on bark and leaves, drops that slipped between those leaves and fell into the nearby pool. I looked at the others, who had crossed the road and were entering the building as Oskar held its door open for them. He stood there alone for some time, gazing at me, and then he waved and went inside.
A loud clap of thunder shook me from my mental void. I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes. My sharp hearing took in the sounds of storm, of moving shadow. The world was alive with sound such as I had never experienced. Pushing away from the tree I passed the pond and peered into its water, not understanding the spheres beneath its surface, those pale globes that seemed almost to watch me.
I ran through the rain, into the building, and stepped into the drawing room. The tiny lights of the brass chandelier spread dim illumination through the room. Stopping before the painting of the oak grove, I examined it with interest. I saw that the "rainbow" was not actually white but rather a mixture of pale yellows and greens. The same wan green glowed among the numerous brown clouds. My eyesight oddly blurred as I stared at the thing, and that painted mass of nubilation seemed to billow and convulse, its patches of pale green reflecting a kind of alien light.
Turning away, I rubbed my eyes and listened to the frail music that issued from some distant place. I stepped into the hallway and passed Pera's closed door, approached the door that opened onto the catacombs, and crossed its threshold. I needed no light as I held my hand against the rough-hewed wall and climbed down the small stone steps. Curiously, my discomfort for small dark places had deserted me. Glancing to where the whistling music was coming from, I noticed a doorway cut into the basalt, into which a squat round door had been fitted. Beside the wall leaned the dented wheelchair. Cracking open the door, I peered into an incommodious cell.
Eblis sat upon a squalid mat, looking like some troglodytic chimera, a plate of food before him. He watched me enter his domain as he put a slab of webbed meat to his mouth and tore into it with diseased teeth. Oskar stood in one corner, facing the wall as he played some flutelike instrument. Ignoring both of them, I went to examine the dark painting above the goblin's mat. Unlike the others, it did not represent another artist's work. Rather, it was a simple representation of Eblis Mauran in his wheelchair, the knobs that were his hands in his lap.
Oskar killed his music and turned to face me.
"Tell me about Pickman," I ordered.
"Not much to tell. He disappeared in September of 1926, after an unsuccessful career as an artist in Boston."
"Why did he paint his chosen subjects?"
"He was attracted to the macabre. Who can explain why? Tell me why Goya's mood so darkened that he ended his career with the so-called Black Paintings. What moods arrested Poe and Baudelaire so as
to produce their diabolic lore? Hmm?"
"Stop being precious and tell me about Pickman."
"Henry, there's little to tell. Like Goya, his mood darkened near the end of his life, fueled perhaps by his lack of luck in being able to exhibit and sell his paintings. People were turned off by the image of the morbid changeling that kept appearing in his work, that became his whoreson theme. People felt abused when looking at his art."
"I'm sure they did."
"Look, I'm busy. Eblis has a session with the Mistress. Good day." So saying, he exited the room and picked up the old wheelchair, carrying it away.
I frowned at the goblin, then turned my attention once more to his painting. It was a large work in an ancient frame and seemed quite accomplished. And then I noticed the hands that nestled in the painted figure's lap, the nubs of which were both fingerless.
The gnome's plaintive voice spoke. "Master Pieter painted it just after I was woven."
I looked down at him. "I don't understand you."
"The Mistress grants me a new addition tonight." He held up his arms and smiled. "Will you carry me?"
I tilted to him and he scrambled into my embrace. His tiny arms wound around my neck, his large sad face fell onto my breast, and suddenly there were tears in my eyes. I could taste his loneliness. I carried him up the steps and into the hallway, then placed him into his wheelchair, which awaited him. He thanked me in his high and childlike voice, and I followed as he wheeled himself down the hallway and into the parlor. As I watched the tiny creature work his chair, something that Oskar had said about Pickman reverberated in my head. Oskar had described the creature in Pickman's painting as a changeling. Watching Eblis, I was certain that the word exactly described him: a secret child, unwanted in this world.
