Uncanny Magazine Issue 39

by Lynne M. Thomas

  Of course he would think so, for he sees the world through the same male gaze that Édouard once did, antiquated and narrow, dismissive of women. To him, Victorine was a model and a prostitute, elevated only by her inclusion in Manet’s painting. And I was similarly unchanging in his view, an object to be painted.

  “All three paintings have elements of truth and falsehood,” I argue, “for each artist comes to the canvas with our own artistic vision and personal biases. How we wish for the audience to view the subject, the context in which we are working, the details we choose to include. And what is truth, anyway? We cannot capture the entirety of a person’s life on a flat piece of canvas. No matter how skilled the painter there are only hints—suggestions which the viewer of the painting will fill in with whatever it is that they believe…”

  I cannot quite articulate what I want to say, perhaps that there is no underlying truth at all, only a myriad of perceptions, each slightly different from the rest.

  “Yes,” he agrees, “that is exactly what you are missing, the ability to draw upon the perspective of the viewer, to give them an experience that is both familiar and new, to evoke in them a shared experience. That is the thing you must learn—to depict the universal truths.”

  “Your truths are universal but mine are not.” I say, and he nods as though I am agreeing with him. “I’ve lived in two countries that do not consider me one of their own, and the lesson I’ve learned is that I must adapt, that I must learn to act as other people do. I did it as a young girl in the French countryside, and again when I came here. They will not make allowances for me as they have done for you—I am not permitted your eccentricities. I must behave as they expect, always, flawlessly.”

  “You say the right words, but you don’t believe them,” he says. “You are fighting the inevitable, the world is what it is, and you are who you are. It cannot be helped.”

  “But the world can change. It has changed. And so have I. You’re the one fighting the inevitable, not me.”

  “There’s no audience for what you do, this blend of styles and inspirations and…perspectives,” he says, convinced that he can sway me to his way of thinking if only he can find the right words, the proper argument. “It’s too complicated, muddled—like mixing too many colors, overworking the paint.”

  “When other impressionists were influenced by Japanese art there was an audience for that. Monet, even now, is painting a grand mural of his beloved water lilies, in a garden inspired by Japan.”

  “Monet’s paintings are relatable.”

  Relatable. Monet filters the world through a background that these art patrons understand. European. Male. He is relatable in ways that I will never be. My mere existence requires an explanation—how is it a woman like me came to be in France, why am I in Chicago and not San Francisco? If the story of my life focuses on the art it will be rejected as implausible, but if I pause to explain the truths of my existence the story is no longer universal.

  Patrons and donors file past, many of them stopping to stare at Manet’s painting, which is here on loan from the Louvre. It remains provocative even now, though there is less scorn and more admiration in the bits of conversation I catch. They barely glance at Victorine’s self-portrait, or at my own painting.

  None of these mortals has ever met Victorine, so the truth of the depiction matters to them very little. They only experience the art, whatever it might convey, and their attention is drawn to a naked form, a confrontational stare, a famous artist’s name.

  I don’t need to capture the truth of my subject, I need to capture the attention of a broader audience, convey a deeper underlying truth…and I do not know how.

  ULTRAMARINE

  It’s a cold March afternoon in 1927 when a Western Union courier hands me the small yellow envelope of a telegram. It comes from a woman I’ve never met, though Victorine often mentioned her in letters. It bears sad news that I have known for quite some time was coming.

  I had planned to paint the sunset from the shore of Lake Michigan today, so I force myself to go out with my easel, but the colors are wrong. Rosy pastels streak the sky above the water. Some other night I might have found it beautiful, but tonight I cannot think of anything but vermillion, and I let the light fade to the deepest blue without so much as opening a tube of paint.

  The world has been a week without her in it, but her death did not become a truth for me until the telegram arrived. She is the last. Even Monet has ceased his endless paintings of water lilies, having passed in December. I’ve not seen either of them for decades, but tonight I feel the loss as keenly as if I’d sat with them yesterday, all of us gathered at the Café Guerbois, Victorine and I engaging the men in passionate discussions on the purpose of art, the role of the model, and whether critical outrage was an attack on the honor of the painter, this last being a topic that always irritated Manet.

  They were my cohort—Édouard, Émile, Claude, Paul and Camille, and of course Victorine. I met them not knowing that I would outlive them, and without having the distance that knowledge brings. My immortal artist was right—I don’t get quite so close to mortals now, I no longer see myself as one of them. But I’m accustomed to navigating a world I do not feel a part of, a place where I am unlike all the others. This has always been my truth.

  I sit all night beside my canvas, a lonely vigil for the last of my cohort. The sunrise is reflected on the square windows of the city skyline. It’s a fitting tribute. My memories of her life are fragmented as if by steel and concrete, everything but the fiery window-glass moments are lost to the passage of time.

  I cannot paint the sunrise. Vermillion is her color and she is gone.

  If my immortal artist is to be believed, I will grow accustomed to this. The pain that burns sharp within my chest will fade to a dull ache, not just for Victorine but for all mortals. Their passing will be easier when their lifetimes are but the merest fraction of my own. I will never share the length of history with them that I do with my immortal artist, and by comparison the loss of such shallow relationships will seem trivial. Or so he says. He is an ass, of course, and making excuses for his own inability to connect with those around him.

  But the fact that he is an ass doesn’t mean that he is always wrong. Those things he’d said at the Art Institute, what if all of it is true? Maybe my perspective is muddled with too many influences, perhaps I have failed to synthesize such disparate parts into a cohesive whole. Maybe the failing is in my execution.

  I have outlived my friends, my colleagues, and for what? All my paintings combined have not garnered the renown of Olympia or Impression, Sunrise. I am best known as the model from Woman, Reclining (Mari), and maybe my lack of success is not—as I have always told myself—because I am a woman and an outsider, but because I am lacking in talent.

  Even being immortal, which should be simple enough, is a task that I am failing for I cannot bear the thought of stealing time from mortals whose lives are already so fleeting. I take just enough here and there from models—always with their consent—to maintain a human form, but if I cannot create beauty, cannot leave my mark on the world of art, their time is wasted, and nothing is so precious as time.

  I’ve never done a self-portrait, but I am determined to purge these wretched truths. I paint the portrait and quite literally put myself into the work, thinning my fingertips into mist and leaving a sliver of my very being in the darkest shadows of ultramarine. I create the portrait in shades of blue, abstract and dark, shadows overpowering the light. I call the painting Futility, and I do not sign my name because despair is never done, it is unending and can never be complete. Critics will no doubt call it a feeble imitation of Picasso, but I cannot bring myself to care.

  ALIZARIN CRIMSON

  I’m still fighting the ultramarine depths of despair some fifteen years later, when I meet Joshua at the Club DeLisa. We get to talking, a fragmented conversation to fill the space between sets. He’s a singer and he used to play trumpet in a swing ba
nd, up until he got caught in Chicago by wartime travel restrictions. Little Brother Montgomery and The Red Saunders Band are playing tonight, along with a comedian and some dancers.

  “I love the music, but what really brings me here is the energy. It reminds me of the Café Guerbois—in Paris. I used to go there with some artist friends of mine, painters who wanted to push boundaries and create something new.” There’s something about him or the music or the energy of the club tonight that compels me to keep talking. “The way the musicians build on each other, changing the nature of music, it fills me with nostalgia. They have a passion that I’ve been missing for a long time.”

  He gives me a strange look. “You’re one of those immortals, like Pops.”

  “Yes.” I’d heard him play once, back in the 20s before he moved to New York. I hadn’t realized he was immortal, but that did make sense of all the tall tales and inconsistencies when he talked about his childhood. I can’t help but wonder who turned him.

  “You must really be something special then,” Joshua says. “Show me your paintings?”

  “Only if you’ll sing for me.” I’m flirting without meaning to, leaning in close as we try to talk over the noise of the club. He has the same vibrancy the performers here have, and I long to taste him, to connect at a deeper level.

  We stay late, almost until dawn, drinking beer and discussing everything from the gorgeous poems in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s An Autumn Love Cycle to Archibald Motley’s vibrant paintings of nightlife—both in Paris and here in Bronzeville. Our conversation turns to the war, and he talks about the delicate dance of supporting the war efforts while simultaneously pushing for civil rights for Black folks here at home; the Pittsburgh Courier was calling it “the Double V Campaign.” At some point he mentions the Japanese internment camps, and we both go quiet for a moment.

  “Must be hard,” he says, “having family on both sides of the war.”

  “Honestly I’ve always felt more French than anything else. But I’m defined by what other people see, not by who I am. I have so little connection to Japan—to me it is courtesans in a ukiyo-e, brightly colored kimonos in Paris shops, faint memories of warabe uta my mother sang for me a long long time ago. And yet I’m still the enemy.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says, and both of us drink.

  Joshua walks me home, and I invite him to come in. I haven’t had anyone over in ages and there is clutter everywhere. I scoop up fabric scraps from the assorted seamstress jobs I’ve been doing on top of waitressing to make enough money to pay the outlandish rent—so high it’s illegal under rent control but who am I to challenge the landlord? And he knows it, knows just how far he can push and get away with it. Boarding at the Eleanor Club had been cheaper and the shared bathrooms there were cleaner…but I couldn’t bring men home with me. I sigh. There are always tradeoffs. “Sorry about the mess.”

  He laughs. “You don’t have to—”

  “I do.” Not so much for the mess but because I need to shift my focus away from his delicious energy. He is too much temptation, but I can’t bring myself to ask him to leave.

  While I try to tidy up, he studies the art on my wall. The oldest piece is a woodblock print, Night Scene in the Yoshiwara, by Katsushika Ōi, one of the few tangible items I have that belonged to my mother. I wait for him to guess, incorrectly, that it is my work, but he turns his attention to a far more recent piece.

  “Is this?” he asks, leaving the question unfinished.

  “The Tanforan Assembly Center.” I set down a handful of empty paint tubes. “Chiura Obata sent it with his last letter. Sumi on paper. I’m not sure how he managed to get it past the censors, maybe smuggled it out with one of the couriers that brings him art supplies. He’s starting an art school. I don’t know how he can make art in a place like that.”

  “Maybe the art is what saves him, the thing that keeps him from breaking. Besides, if you wait for the world to be perfect, you’ll be waiting forever.”

  He’s right, of course. There is always something—a war or a plague, a widespread catastrophe like the Great Depression or the more personal tragedy of a friend’s passing. Being immortal, it is so easy to put off the work, to drift aimlessly because there is no urgency without the ultimate deadline of death. “The frustrating thing is that Chiura can make art when I cannot. That he’s stronger than me even though I’m the immortal one. I’m angry about the camps but I’m not forced to live in one. I have only the most tenuous ties to Japan. My mother died more than a lifetime ago when I was young.”

  “After Ma died, back in ‘37, I couldn’t…” Joshua waved his hands as he searched for the right words, “I just couldn’t anything. I’d open my mouth to sing and nothing came. There was too much joy in a cheerful song and too much sorrow in a sad one. Ma sang the blues like nobody’s business, taught me everything I know. She was 43 when she died and I was so angry with the world for taking her.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. Well it’s not about strength. Music is the thing that saves me, usually, the thing I escape to. But when Ma died, everything I tried to do reminded me of her, and the pain was still too raw.”

  “So what did you do?”

  He laughs. “Enlisted in the National Guard. Powered through basic combat training. That’s probably not going to work for you, Mariko. But mostly what I needed was time. I found my way back to music again, and you’ll get back to the painting. That’s where your heart is.”

  “How do you know, you haven’t even seen my paintings—”

  Then I notice what he’s looking at.

  Futility.

  I never even tried to sell it, and I haven’t finished a single painting in the decade and a half since I’d poured my depression onto the canvas in blue paint. It’s a painting of my heart, and my heart is broken. The canvas isn’t hung or even framed, it simply leans against the wall in the darkest corner of my apartment.

  “This is amazing,” he says. “Powerful.”

  As he studies the painting—intensely, intently—I can feel the barest shimmer of a connection, a faint suggestion of how it might feel to take a fragment of his life, and like a shark frenzied by a drop of blood in the water I am suddenly overwhelmed with need.

  I draw him close and we kiss, deeply, bodies pressed together. I tremble with desire and with anguish, for I am determined that I will not consume him. “No, this is wrong, I have to stay away from mortals. You burn so bright, so briefly.”

  “Are you protecting us, or are you protecting yourself from the pain of losing something so fleeting? How can you paint if you refuse to live?”

  “I can’t,” I admit.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers, his breath hot as fire against my skin. “I want to know how it feels, how you feel. Live with me. Everything in this one moment.”

  I slide out of my dress. “We can have the one without the other. I’ve heard what people say about immortals, about stealing away people’s lives with sex. That’s not how it works.”

  “Never?” He unbuttons his shirt.

  “Almost never.”

  We have sex in broad strokes of fiery vermillion shading into crimson, building to a deep connection, something beyond the raw intensity of our physical passion. I transform into mist at the moment of his climax and bask in his passion, his energy, his health, his life. When I withdraw, I try not to take anything with me, though I’m not sure I entirely succeed.

  Unlike my immortal artist, I do not disappear into the night. I return to human form and sleep in Joshua’s arms.

  In the morning, I start a new painting. A Black man, talking to a woman who has her back to the viewer, both of them standing under a streetlight in front of the Club DeLisa. The streets are empty save the couple, and I paint the center of the canvas in a realist style reminiscent of Edward Hopper, but as I move out from the light into the shadows, surrealism creeps into the painting–the buildings in the background morph into barbed wire and the full moon hangs crim
son in the sky.

  I title the painting Night Club and sign it Mariko. It is both bleak and beautiful. Chiura would be proud. At Joshua’s encouragement, I sell it to the Art Institute of Chicago, along with Futility.

  Full of life and finally painting again, for three months I am the happiest I can remember being since I became immortal. Then Joshua is called to service with the 370th Infantry Regiment. He goes to a training camp in Arizona. In his last letter before he ships off to Italy, he proposes.

  I accept.

  ZINC WHITE

  When Joshua returns from Italy, he brings me a gift. An enemy parachute, salvaged by a fellow soldier. He’d traded some cigarettes and a pair of wool socks from one of my care packages to get it. There are twenty panels of useable silk in the canopy once I’ve discarded the burnt bits. The material is thin and slippery and difficult to sew, but I manage to make myself a wedding gown. The color is a delicate cream, a beautifully warm tone—zinc white mixed with cadmium yellow and the barest hint of alizarin crimson.

  It is a warm August afternoon, and raining, which they say is good luck for weddings. Ours is a quiet Sunday afternoon affair. A few of our musician and artist friends attend, and three soldiers from his company. No family because all of mine passed away before Joshua was born and none of his relatives that live near Chicago approve of our relationship. He wears his uniform and I wear my gorgeous parachute gown. Looking at us, no one would guess that I’m three times the age of my groom.

  The cake is a cardboard cutout, but Joshua surprises us all by opening it up to reveal a stash of Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bars he’d saved from his rations, enough for each of our guests to have one.

  They are not at all what I expected, difficult to chew and far less sweet than what I remembered of the chocolate I’d tasted before the war. I must have made a face because Joshua laughed. “Why do you think I had so many left?” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And these are the new and improved variety.”