Hylozoic (28 page)

He was thinking of the ill-advised Gaia trip he'd taken when he should have been honeymooning with Thuy. Hell—he'd spent most of his life trying to get high, and yesterday he'd ended up paralyzed in a diaper while his wife had sex with another guy. And last night—this was the rich part—as soon as his paralysis had worn off, he'd gotten drunk with crippled beggars and had eaten a psychedelic that could make your fingers and legs drop off.

This was his actual life, the only life he had. He had a sudden sensation of standing on a ridge looking back at a valley devastated by years of strip-mining. His past.

“Drunkenness,” said Bosch, divining Jayjay's thoughts. “You drink the world and end up with piss. The sin of gluttony.”

“Well—you're a glutton for images,” said Jayjay defensively. He gestured at the extravagant fantasies on the panels against the wall: the fish like ships in the sky, the burning cities, the devils and nudes and chimerical beasts.

“I don't take,” said Bosch. “I make. You might pray for help, Jayjay. God's always watching.”

“God? Where I come from, we have Gaia, a planetary mind. She's real. But—God like in the Bible? That's a barbaric myth.”

“You're lost,” murmured Jeroen, more interested in the images he was painting than in the desultory conversation. “You rail at the fog.” He touched his dry, narrow tongue to his lips as he worked.

“Maybe God isn't what you think, Jeroen. Maybe God is—I don't know—a flicker at the bottom of the endless cracks between particles.”

Bosch paused, brush poised in the air. “I freely agree that God is an unfathomable mystery. But the issue is that you regularly inebriate yourself. Nothing mysterious about that.”

Uncanny how quickly the man cut to the core. Jayjay decided to talk about something else. “Nobody paints hell as well as you, Jeroen. Isn't it ironic how much more interesting hell is than heaven—or than ordinary life?”

“It's hard to imagine heaven,” admitted Bosch. “But I'd say that ordinary life is no different than hell. My paintings show 's-Hertogenbosch and the country lanes. It's a matter of seeing what's really going on.”

Jayjay walked around to Bosch's side and noticed an image of a dissected stingray. It gave him a turn.

“Are you working with the Hrull?” he blurted out. “Demonic aliens from another world?”

“Stupid people always ask if I'm possessed,” said Bosch, mildly amused. “As if no sane and pious person could do something clever.”

“Oh yeah?” challenged Jayjay blindly. This guy was getting on his nerves. “What were you doing at my party a few days ago?”

“We've never met before,” said Bosch, beginning to be annoyed. “And I begin to regret that we met at all. If I look familiar, perhaps it's because you've seen one of my pictures. I paint myself into most of them. As a peddler, or a man standing on two ships, or a saint.”

He pointed with the end of his brush at the kneeling figure in the middle of his panel. Saint Anthony was looking over his shoulder at Jayjay, his eyes calm and filled with self-knowledge.

In that moment Jayjay accepted that he was indeed a drunkard, an addict, a fool. His craving for excess had warped his life. He needed help. But—from God? What was God? Everything. Nothing. The white light. Saint Anthony's eyes.

“Help me,” prayed Jayjay silently. “Please help me.” He had no particular notion of what or whom he was praying to. It was enough to admit that business as usual had stopped working. He was losing his sanity—and his wife. His only hope was to surrender to something bigger than himself.

And now, in the wake of these thoughts, he felt a new sense of resolve. He could change. He really could.

Meanwhile Bosch continued painting. Perhaps the man was a genius, but certainly he was something of a prick. Jayjay didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing his advice had hit home.

“Can I see the harp?” asked Jayjay presently. “Now that the others are gone?”

“No.”

“Um, my wife said you were supposed to decorate the harp
to look like your
Garden of Earthly Delights
. Is that what you did?”

“So you know that picture?” said Bosch. “I suppose you've been in the Brussels palace where it hangs?”

“I've—I've only seen copies of it,” said Jayjay. “In California it's known as your great masterpiece.”

“It was the youthful success that sent me down my path,” said Bosch. “I painted the
Garden
fifteen years ago. I was thirty, near the start of my marriage. I thought I'd entered a paradise of love, but it proved more arid than I'd thought.”

“You and your wife—you have no children?”

“Aleid had painful miscarriages and stillbirths,” said Bosch. “Very sad. That part of our life is over.” He paused, his face momentarily still. “I prefer to speak of my art. Perhaps this new triptych will be as highly regarded as my
Garden of Earthly Delights
. Or perhaps not. The important thing is that I'm still painting, still inventing, still in the game.” Bosch chuckled. “How this new picture seethes. See the flying jug with the scythe? He farts his way through the air.”

“Who's the triptych for?”

“It's a commission from the Brotherhood of Saint Anthony, here in town. In the left panel, the devil lifts Saint Anthony high into the sky, in the right panel he's besieged by lustful women, and in the middle he's surrounded by monsters conducting a black mass. I'm filling it with life: over one hundred and sixty humans, animals, and demons so far—and that's not counting the myriads of soldiers in the little armies. I've found a quick way to paint them.
Zack-zack-pip
.”

“The Antonite brothers nurse the victims of Saint Anthony's fire,” said Jayjay, homing in on a theory he'd formulated. “Do you know that condition is caused by a fungus in brown bread? I had an experience of it last night. I spent part of the night hallucinating in the Antonites' courtyard.”

“And addling yourself with wine, I'm sure,” said Bosch. “You should know that Saint Anthony's fire is caused by sin. The devil attacks a sinner like a wolf bringing down a lost wayfarer. Brown bread is no poison, it's the Lord's gift to the lower classes. The bread's essence is pure in and of itself.”

“My point is that I want to know if you've been inspired by visions from the fungus in brown bread.”

“Were your crippled drinking companions painting triptychs?” said Bosch, glaring at him. “And, pray tell, while you were with them, did you drink your own piss?”

This was leading nowhere. Jayjay let his mind stray back to the sense of calm he'd felt right after he prayed. There was no upside to arguing with the irascible, opinionated Bosch.

Studying the picture in progress, Jayjay let himself admire the old artist's facility at turning realistically rendered objects into bizarre beasts. Here was a jug that was a horse, a tree that was a man, a ship that was a headless duck. “Everything's alive,” he said, returning to their common ground.

“Yes,” said Jeroen busy with his brush again. “I'd like to hear more about the living objects in your—California?”

“Very soon a similar change will come to 's-Hertogenbosch,” said Jayjay. “Everyone will be able to speak clearly with objects, just like they do back home. In fact, that's why I'm—” he broke off. He'd been about to reveal his plan to play the harp. But it would be better to approach her alone, lest Bosch raise some screwball objection.

After working a bit longer, Jeroen ran out of red paint. He took Jayjay downstairs and demonstrated how to mix ground pigments with oil and beeswax. And then, unexpectedly, he gave Jayjay a painting lesson.

“Here,” said Bosch setting out a rectangle of wood, a brush, a palette, and five pots of paint: white, black, blue, yellow,
red. “Today you learn to paint foliage. I have a particular model in mind. Wait.”

The unshaven artist walked through the kitchen, greeted his wife in passing, proceeded into the back garden, and returned carrying an uprooted thistle plant, complete with purple flowers and downy seeds. He squashed the thistle down on itself, making a mound.

“You'll paint this until you can do it right,” instructed Bosch. “I'll watch for a bit.”

Jayjay experimented with mixing the colors to make shades of green, sketched in the vine, and added the leaves. The result was inchoate and soggy.

“At least you work fast,” said Bosch. “Now let the light come down like snow.”

Jayjay tried brightening the tops of his painted leaves and vines, but the wet oil paints slid and wobbled, further muddling the scene.

“Think ahead so you don't need layers,” said Bosch. “See it before you paint.” He produced a rag and rubbed all the paint off the wood. “Try again.”

This time, Jayjay worked with a broader spectrum of shades. He enjoyed the alchemical way the colors changed as he blended the dabs of paint. His new leaves looked quite tolerable.

“Now for fantasy,” said Jeroen. “See more than what's given. Let the shapes dance.” He swept his sinewy hands through the air, limning sweet curves.

Jayjay tried extending the tendrils of the vine he'd drawn, and this went well enough, but when Bosch asked him to add seedpods and little birds, the thing turned into another brown pudding.

“I'll leave you to paint a third version alone,” said Bosch, rubbing off the panel once more. He tossed the thistle plant
into a corner. “Just dream this one. Let it be an Edenic thistle. I'll be in the attic, putting the finishing touches on my harp. I've painted two lovers on it, and until today I didn't know their faces.” Aha.

Jayjay's third thistle turned out well. He liked painting. Somehow the work connected into him all the way down. When he pretended to be a scientist, he was always striving, always playing catch-up ball, trying to be a big brain. But painting was like physical play.

The clatter of cooking came from the kitchen, and good smells. Dill, onions, fennel. It was dusk. Outdoors the market could still be heard, but with more yelps, more music, and fewer sounds of animals. Party time.

Jayjay began thinking about Thuy, wanting to tell her of his new resolve. Was she really pregnant? Hopefully she'd be back soon. The Muddy Eel sounded sleazy.

 

 

Just as Jayjay was about to take his practice panel upstairs to show to Jeroen, a heavy knock sounded on the front door.

“Good evening, Mijnheer Vladeracken,” said Kathelijn, admitting a sumptuously dressed fellow with a flushed, piggy face beneath a floppy velvet hat of a striking yellow hue.

“I've been chatting with Wim the vintner in the market,” rumbled Vladeracken. “Strange rumors today. Someone saw a flying monster in the sky, a beast like a giant devilfish. There's talk that these might be the End Times. I've brought wine.” He handed Kathelijn a half-empty jug, then glared down at Jayjay. “What's this smeary devil doing in here? I saw him preening on your front steps this afternoon with a smirking strumpet his size. They might well be Satan's emissaries.”

“My new assistant,” said Bosch, coming down the stairs.
“Cunning little imp, eh? His name is Jayjay. Jayjay, this is my neighbor Jan Vladeracken. Let's settle down in the kitchen.”

Bosch, Vladeracken, Jayjay, and Aleid sat at the kitchen table while Kathelijn tended a kettle on the fire. She was stewing the fish and eel with spiced milk and turnips.

Vladeracken filled a pottery mug with his wine, and removed his gaudy beret. Bosch and Aleid took some wine as well, but Jayjay declined.

“I'm concerned about your altar painting,
John the Baptist
,” said Vladeracken in a tendentious voice.

Bosch rolled his eyes and didn't answer. Aleid took up the slack.

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“As you very well remember, I commissioned this work from your husband when I was the dean of the Swan Brotherhood of Our Dear Lady.”

“Really, Jan,” said Aleid wearily. “Certainly we're proud that Jeroen's a member of the Swan Brotherhood, but this endless bickering is so—”

“This is more than bickering,” said Vladeracken angrily. “It's an attack on my mortal soul.”

Aleid said nothing, only shook her head. And for his part, Bosch jokingly peered at Vladeracken and made painting motions with his hand, as if he were depicting his neighbor upon an invisible panel in the air.

“Tell me the story,” said Jayjay.

“No one cares but the ill-begotten dwarf,” said Vladeracken. “Here's the tale, little man. I issued Jeroen the commission to paint John the Baptist for our brotherhood's altarpiece in the cathedral. Therefore it was my right to have myself depicted in the panel as the donor. Settled and done. My image lives in the Lord's house. God notices these things. It will be an incalculable benefit for me when I'm judged. Do you follow me, runt?”