The Painting (18 page)

My dear sister, the best thing you’ve ever done is send me this man, says
Pierre, laughing, and his eyes flash harshly with arrogance. Jorgen will get his share. I’m a fair businessman.

Jorgen absently stares at a column of numbers and adds it up in his head. He writes the number faintly at the bottom. Yesterday, Pierre fired one of the clerks who kept some of the books. Caught him stealing a can of food. My family, the clerk wept. Jorgen heard the old man crying. My little daughter is starving. Grim faced, Pierre showed him the door.

Natalia’s flat eyes move to her brother and then to Jorgen.

These are good times, says Pierre. Very good times for a smart, enterprising man. Every situation creates an opportunity. War magnifies everything.

And both of you seem to be taking full advantage, she says.

Jorgen sits up in his chair. The front door downstairs opens. Pierre’s eyes light up. He skips out of the room and charges down the stairs. Jorgen tenses, not wanting to be alone with her, afraid she’ll begin to cry again.

She turns to Jorgen. I’m leaving for the front line.

He drops his pencil onto the desk.

I’m not sure when I’ll leave, but it’ll be soon.

Congratulations, he says, feeling hot jealousy rake through him.

I came by to say thank you for your help. They picked me and a handful of other women.

Do you know where you’re being sent?

No. They didn’t say.

He picks up his pencil again, twirls it nervously, and sets it down. You must be excited. He stands now, feeling a flutter in his chest.

Yes.

He sees again a haggard look to her face. She must have exerted herself at target practice, he thinks. How fortunate she is. She doesn’t know how fortunate she is to be going.

She tells him the officers chose ten women out of one hundred. They said it’s quite an honor, she says flatly.

Of course it is, he says. A tremendous honor. It will help her forget all about Edmond, he thinks. Life takes with one hand and gives with another.
Just as he has found this dreadful job has a lucrative lining. How lucky she gets picked so soon after he died. Who do you report to?

I don’t know. She pauses. It doesn’t matter, really.

He feels his body tighten and he shifts in his chair. Still, it’s an honor.

She steps back, as if preparing to leave.

Let me buy you a celebratory drink or something. He wants to be close to her. No, not to her, but what she’s brought into the room—the war, a different life, an opening to something else.

She looks at him quizzically. He grabs his crutches and they step outside. An old woman is gathering twigs off the ground. Boys run by in a pack, red handkerchiefs tied around their heads. One of them rams into the old woman, knocking her down. The boys don’t stop, but glance over their shoulders and laugh cruelly. The woman swears, picks up a rock, and throws it at them, nearly striking one in the head.

Jorgen looks over at Natalia expecting her to do something. To rush to the woman, make sure she is all right, but she does nothing.

Did they give you a uniform? he asks.

Yes. And a rifle.

That’s good. Very good. Jorgen is quiet for a moment. I needed some fresh air.

There’s nothing fresh about this air.

It’s true—above them, blue-black smoke billows into the sky, the daylight turning to murky brown. They pass by brick buildings, clock and shoe repair shops, bakeries and corner grocery stores, the fronts now wearing big bandages of white canvas with the Red Cross hospital insignia painted in bold brush sweeps.

She says she needs to sit. They rest on a park bench, the back of which is missing; someone must have stolen it for firewood. A hollow-flanked cat slips between their legs. Jorgen reaches down and pets its back. The cat’s hair is sticky and balled up into mats. It leaps up on the bench and rubs its chin against her arm. She pulls her arm away from the cat.

He’d like to explain why he told Pierre anything that will help his business. How he made so much money the other night at Daniel’s and how, with more
goods coming into Pierre’s possession, there will be more sales to the rich. But now she’s hung her head, as if any minute she might cry. What’s wrong with her? he wonders. Why isn’t she excited? She feels all coiled up, aloof in gloom.

You’re very lucky, he says. It’s what I want. To fight again.

She doesn’t answer.

Perhaps she is frightened to go to war, he thinks, for what does she truly know about it? About being a soldier? Of course, she is scared to go.

Did you ever have a cat? he asks, trying to draw her out.

No.

I had a cat when I was a boy. He waits for her to say something, but she stares at the houses across the street. I must go on, he thinks. I found her in the trash can. A black cat, I named her Laila. Whenever she went out at night, she got into fights. In the morning, she’d come back with scratches on her head and legs. When I came close to her, she would spit and fight, wanting to be left alone.

Why didn’t you leave her alone? she asks.

The cat steps gingerly into his lap. I had to battle that cat almost every morning to put ointment on her wounds.

You should have let her be.

She would have died. Jorgen shifts uncomfortably. A group of women wearing big bows around their waists burst from the front door of a mansion, step onto the porch, and walk to the sidewalk. Natalia and Jorgen overhear them say they are going to the belt railway to stand on the top deck, where they can look over the line of fortifications and see the soldiers. Won’t it be fun? says one of the women.

Natalia turns to Jorgen. If you know this special passageway, you could leave, couldn’t you?

I can’t without a good leg, he says.

Why not?

He glares at his empty pant leg and curls his lips into a tight mean smile. He tells her part of this entrance travels through the sewer line. It’s slippery, and if you get caught in there at the wrong time, you need both legs to swim through it.

If you get this new leg, then what?

He doesn’t answer for a long time. This brigade you are joining, what do you know?

She laughs darkly. I don’t know anything. What do
you
know, really? She pauses and stares at nothing. I once thought I wanted to be a missionary, but the Church would not have me.

Why not?

I’m a bastard child. Hasn’t Pierre boasted about this? He loves to remind me of it. I’m not pure, as he puts it. Only a half-relative. But I don’t mean to tell you these silly personal things, she says. And you don’t want to hear them.

He’s about to protest.

The French army needs me to go, so I’ll go, she says. Her voice is empty of emotion, as if reporting an inevitable duty.

He feels her shudder, and slowly, he begins to understand. She doesn’t want to go. All of life seems to have been sucked from her, and it’s as if she’s stepped into something and is being relentlessly hurled along, as if nothing could stop it now. She shouldn’t go. Not like this. It’s too dangerous like this—this state of futility. Jorgen braces himself, half turning to her. You might end up like this, he says, gesturing to his body. It could happen. Anything could happen. Even worse things.

He hears the feebleness in his voice and sees her faint, cynical smile.

You once said you didn’t want anyone’s pity, she says, but that’s exactly what you want.

He’s about to defend himself, but the harsh tone of her voice vanishes as she murmurs softly, Poor poor Jorgen. He sits at the edge of the bench in the growing violet light. She’s bitten off all her fingernails, down to the tender pink skin underneath. He has an overwhelming urge to take her hand and touch that sensitive part and, at the same time, to quickly walk away.

The wind blows away any warmth left in the dying day. Shivering, she pulls her collar tighter. She rises, her face almost gray, a look of dullness coating her eyes. I should leave, she says.

L
ET HER GO
, he thinks, lying on his cot, staring at the ceiling. The quiet night is suddenly split by cannon fire. The metal frame of the bed rattles and for the first time the acrid odor of gunpowder pollutes the air. The Prussians have moved closer to Paris. The pain in his ghost leg flashes again. He snatches the flask in his pocket and pours some brandy into a glass. If he could get drunk, he thinks, he could numb the pain and get some sleep. He drinks a glass and pours another.

He looks down at his stump. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. He thinks again of her tone of voice, flat and crushed. And on the park bench, the way she looked, he remembers the slender line of her pale neck, and her small hands, her fingers, like stems of flowers.

Gunfire rips through the silence again, as portentous and as loud as the first blast, nearly startling the glass of brandy from his hand. He snatches up his crutches, and walks to the window. In the near distance, the red glow of fires. Probably Prussian fires by now, he thinks. Let her go. What does it matter? The Prussians are nearly here anyway, and the war will end soon with stiff Prussian soldiers holding immaculate guns marching in perfect rows down the boulevard.

He could go to her right now and tell her it’s insane. Walk to her flat across town and ask her, How can you possibly be prepared in less than a month? The French are desperate now, throwing bodies at the enemy. And he sees again her new, cynical smile, her hardened look, and he will stand there, feeling like a failure, with nothing to say.

Forget her, he thinks. He clamors under the cot and retrieves the book he stole from Daniel. He stares at the strange letters at the front. Like the ones in the corner of the painting.
Some letters I’ve learned from the Japanese alphabet
, writes the seaman. Elegant black lines, perfectly balanced, like pictures. The word for wound,
kizu
. The Dutchman writes,
A wounded person left exposed to rising sun
. He studies the shape and tilt of the word for wound, then sets the book on the floor, and as he leans over the edge of the cot, he sees the painting, tucked between cardboard. Pulling it out, he lights another candle, letting the warm glow flood the couple who embrace each other, as if they will never separate. He leans closer into the painting, and what he thought previously
were blue flowers clustered around her feet are not that at all. There are lines on her face, translucent blue streaks, and there, down the front of her dress. The woman is crying. She is standing in her tears. Not tears of joy, but impending departure, though he can’t say why. Perhaps by the way she clutches to the man with such urgency, and the wind in the plum tree, he hadn’t seen that before. The leaves are blowing in the opposite direction, away from the man. Her dress, the swing of it around the hem, is flying away from him, as if some natural force is separating the two.

He looks at the man and he’s not quite sure if he’s truly seeing it or if he’s making it up. The same pale blue drips on his face. Why can’t he hold onto her? How could he let her go?

A beetle skitters along the floor by his foot, and he recalls the way Agneta lunged for him. She knew he was leaving, sensed it without him saying a word. White hair like a child’s, before the stain of adulthood, her cheeks the color of ripe peaches. The first time he saw her, long golden braids tumbled down her back. The first time he heard her laugh, a soft melody. She was sixteen. Maybe fifteen. Nights he couldn’t sleep, like this one, he ached to be near her. The way the wind blew on her, he wanted to do that to her skin. The way the sunlight touched her, he wanted to do that to her hair.

He first touched her in a field of corn.

The swish of tall green stalks all around them. A curtain of private green. And again and again at night in the barn.

He left her. No wind blew him away, no strange force. He did it by his own choosing. Left her and the child that she was carrying.

He shoves the painting under his bed. His throat tightens and his hands tremble. He doesn’t want to think about Agneta. Doesn’t want her with him. Doesn’t want her. Doesn’t want anything.

The first rush of indignation rises. I’ll tear that painting up, he thinks. Rip it to shreds. Get rid of the goddamn thing. I should have sold it to Daniel and his despicable friends. Why not? He pulls it out and pinches the corner, preparing to tear.

Damn it. His fingers are stuck at the corner, paralyzed. Damn it all.

He grabs his coat and rushes outside.

S
HE WRAPS UP HER
half-eaten scone, saving the rest for tomorrow. Cannon fire and rifle shots boom in the night, and she registers them, as if listening to birds. Running her hands along her sides, she feels her ribs punching against her skin. She hasn’t eaten more than a bite all day. Her skin smells acrid and slightly rancid. Putting her hand up to her mouth, she smells her breath, stale and foul, like something decaying. In the past, she refrained from eating to attain a certain purity of vision. Now, she has no appetite and can’t come up with any good reason ever to eat again.

She pulls out her mirror from the nightstand and props it on the dresser. Her white face stares back at her. Her skin, so pale, she can see the blue veins pulsing near her temples. Grabbing her long hair into one clump, she takes a pair of scissors and begins to cut. She watches herself do this, mesmerized, as if she is perched off to the side, letting someone else do this to her. The hair falls in swirls on the cold floor. Her hair. She always thought it was her one redeeming feature. Everywhere else her body and shape failed her, falling far short of pretty, and her lack of suitors proved her hunch. But her hair, a deep chestnut color that flared in the sunlight. She takes another clump and watches the strands coil at her shoe. This is the way my mother probably looked, she thinks. Ugly.

She’s halfway done when she hears the front door rattle. She quickly ties a red kerchief around her head and rushes to the door. Perhaps someone with news about the departure time or one of the soldiers telling her where she will be sent. Or maybe a neighbor wanting the last of her belongings. As she reaches the door, her heart skips with her last thought, the one thought she’d never say out loud, the one she secretly wishes for, Jorgen has come. With her hand on the cold doorknob, she pauses, imagining what he might say. You must stay. What possible reason? Give me a reason, she’ll ask. One reason. She turns the doorknob. Please. A reason. And he will stand there, leaning on his crutch, his body hunched over his one good leg.