The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque (12 page)

I remember it. 'Stop breathing,' he called, and I took a deep breath. 'Open your eyes as wide as they will allow,' he said. I did this too.

"In my attempt to ignore the discomfort of not breath-ing, I listened to the wind outside.

Suddenly I

saw some-thing move in the lens above me, an image that eventually settled into a horizontal line, like a pair of giant lips dis-playing a monumental lack of emotion—a magnification of my mother's usual expression. A moment later those lips finally parted, revealing themselves as eyelids, and I beheld an eye of immense proportions. I felt its gaze pen-etrating me, scratching my very soul, and knew that it could see all my secrets. There was no doubting now that I would forever be scrutinized from above by an omnis-cient judge. I desperately wanted to scream with the fear of being so completely exposed but would not allow even a murmur to leave my mouth.

"I tell you, my face was probably blue by the time I noticed the lens above me beginning to ascend.

Take air,’ yelled my father as I heard his feet hitting the rungs of the ladder. I did, and I felt his hand on mine, pulling me up away from the machine. He knelt on the frozen floor and hugged me to him. ‘I saw it,’ he said. 'I saw everything.’ I began to cry, and he patted my back. I tried to clasp my arms around his neck, but he pulled me gently from him and held me by the shoulders so as to look directly at me. 'Within you,’ he said, ‘I saw the universe. A million stars, and at their center a star composed of stars that shone with a clear brilliance—the imprint of the Almighty.'

"Believing himself to be a scientist, of course he had to double-check his findings. So he asked me

to try to concentrate upon the voice of the Twins and remember whatever it was they next showed me.

All I could do was nod. I was stunned by the idea that now not only was God watching me, especially me, but He was also inside me in the form of a swirling universe of stars. I did little more for the rest of the day than sit on the broken-down couch at the back of his study and stare out the window. Later on, when my mother called us to dinner, I felt the locket's heat against my breast, felt its chain tingle around my neck, and heard the faint stirrings of identical voices, one in each ear. Those words became a picture in my mind. I saw, moving through the trees on the shore of the lake, a large dark wolf, saliva dripping from his tongue, his eyes bright yellow.

" 'A wolf!' I yelled aloud, and at that moment realized I was looking out the window through the twilight and had actually seen some darker shadow passing into the forest at the edge of our homestead.

Father spun around in his chair and said, 'Where?' 'The Twins,’ I told him, 'they showed it to me.

It's coming.' Right then my mother came to the door of the study and told us dinner was get-ting cold. As soon as she left to return to the kitchen, my father nodded, letting me know he understood, and then put his finger to his lips.

"After that incident in his study, I saw the wolf repeat-edly in my thoughts and, if truth be told, still see it lurk-ing from time to time at the edges of my consciousness. I was afraid to go out into the forest to play, as was my cus-tom. Sticking close to the house, I had my games, but with one ear I was always listening for its approach. Two days passed and the wolf had not
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materialized, but my father kept his rifle loaded as a precaution against an emergency. I thought the plan was not to mention it to my mother, but I

suppose my father feared for her safety, and at din-ner the second night he told her to be wary of wolves.

'It's the season,’ he said. 'It's the season.' My mother gave a mocking laugh and replied, 'What season?

We haven't seen a wolf up here for four years, but still, from that point on, she exhibited a certain nervous agitation.

"On the third night following the day of my so-called prediction, our small family was in the sitting room, read-ing by the lamplight. I still remember that through the winter of that year I was reading a collection of fairy tales my father had purchased for me in New York City the previous summer. When it was nearly my bedtime, I heard a noise outside the house; something moving through the crusted snow. I

stood up from where I lay on the floor, and as I rose, so did my father from his chair. He went to his study and brought out his rifle. 'Put that away,’ said my mother. 'Someone is going to get hurt.' He ignored her as he slipped his feet into his unlaced boots. She literally leaped out of her chair and placed herself between him and the door. I was as startled by her action and the emotion behind it as I was afraid of what might be outside. He gently moved her aside and pulled back the dead bolt.

"Tense minutes passed while he was outside. I kept expecting to hear a growl or a gunshot, but neither came. When he finally returned to the house, he was very quiet, much as when he was in his study pondering the myster-ies of the snow crystals. 'Did you see the wolf?' I asked when he returned from putting the rifle away and again took his seat. 'Footprints,' he said. 'It's a big one.'

I was then sent to bed.

The next day I searched all around the house for the prints of the predator. It hadn't snowed, and the wind had not been high through the night, so they should still have been there. All I managed to find were boot prints.

"The following day I was sitting in my father's study on the couch, and he turned to me and said,

'Lu, go see if your mother has any twine. I have to tie these old notes up in order to store them.'

I went on my errand, first searching in the kitchen and then the bedroom. She did not seem to be in the house at all. I

put on my boots and coat and went outside to see if she was fetching water or using the out-house. It was a clear day and somewhat warmer than usual, the first sign that year that spring might actually arrive.

I did not find my mother in any of the usual places, so I went to the tin shed that held the optical magnifier. She was not there. Out behind that building, I found the clothesline half hung with the day's laundry, the other half still heaped in the wicker basket. When I drew closer, I saw the trail of my mother's footsteps leading away into the forest. The wolf burst into my thoughts then, and I ran screaming back to the house.

"My father again took his rifle. He told me to stay in the house and bolt the door behind him when

he left. I watched from the window in his office as he trudged across the snow beneath the blue sky toward the tree line. The waiting was interminable, and in that time I wanted to rip the locket off my neck and throw it as far from me as possible. It was the first time I realized that the secret of the Twins was much more a curse than a blessing. If only I had followed my impulse. I don't know how much actual time passed, ten minutes, a half hour, hours. Finally the anxiety became too much for me, and I ran to the door in the sitting room and unbolted it. I stepped outside, and that is when I heard, from a great distance, like the whis-per of the Twins, my mother's scream followed by the report of the rifle. I took two steps in the direction of the woods, and
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the rifle sounded a second time.

"I met my father a few yards from the tree line. He moved slowly as if in the clutches of a great weariness. 'Where is Mother?' I asked. He seemed in a daze, and his complexion was blanched a terrifying white. He shook his head and said, 'The wolf took her and I shot the wolf.' I knew this meant she was dead, and I began to cry. My father cried too as we held each other. I can mark his physical and mental decline from that moment. The fact that it matched the decline and eventual destruction of

Malcolm Ossiak's empire is an interesting side issue. Twin tragedies."

"Your mother's body, was it ever recovered?" I asked, and briefly looked down to see that I had sketched not a woman but a wolf.

"No, Mr. Piambo, nor was the corpse of the wolf. I will tell you, though, that in the spring, when we were pack-ing our things to descend the mountain and return to the city, I discovered in a box kept in the corner of the labora-tory a broad-brimmed hat and a fur coat made from the pelt of an animal."

I was anxious to ask Mrs. Charbuque a rather obvious question, but she interrupted me as I mouthed the first word.

"By the way, Mr. Piambo," she said, "what were you doing out in that terrible rain on Sunday?"

Her query caught me off guard for a moment, and when I recovered I asked, "How do you know I

was out in the rain?"

"Why, I saw you standing on Broadway. My carriage passed, and I only glimpsed you for a moment. It looked as if you were with that other artist, the one who does the seascapes, Ryder."

"You have seen me?" I asked.

"Certainly. Last week you sat at a table at Delmonico's drinking wine with your lady friend, Miss Rying. I was at the table next to yours." She laughed then, briefly, as if as an afterthought.

Her admission stunned me, and while emotions of betrayal and anger collided, I tried to think back to that night. When I looked around within my memory of the restaurant, I saw gowns and suits, cigar smoke, fine china, silver, and crystal, but everyone, even the waiters, was faceless.

Then the door opened, and Watkin entered the room. I quietly gathered my things with trembling hands and left.

A Gift from a Child

On the streetcar heading downtown, I finally took charge of my emotions and wondered if I had a right to feel so thoroughly abused by Mrs. Charbuque. She was playing me like a pennywhistle, and whatever visage I eventually concocted of her would have to manifest in some way a streak of sadism, but did it matter to our proposition whether she was engaged in spying on me? Was the sum of money she offered license enough for her to know every bit of my life? It struck me then that the aspect of the situation that distressed me more than any other was the fact that her presence was loose in the world, as if a bejeweled lamp once belonging to an ancient sultan had been rubbed and a mischievous djinn were now free. As long as I had known where she was, in that quiet room, situated behind that screen, the enigma was con-tained, and as frustrating as it might be, I could approach it on my own terms. She had been of equivalent status with, say, a character in a book, a figure out of mythology, and I was merely to be her illustrator. But now she roamed the world, and this notion ensured a certain physicality while at the same time negating a definitive location. She could have been anyone, the woman sitting next to me, the young girl passing outside on the street. I could not even discount disguise, so for that matter she could have been the streetcar conductor. Having gone to see Samantha on the stage innumerable times, I had

wit-nessed convincing portrayals of women by men and vice versa. With the possibility of her being anyone, she was, potentially, everyone. My scalp prickled as I felt the fine tendrils of
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paranoia growing within and around me. I felt it on the back of my neck, in my stomach, with every beat of my heart, until I

was trapped in a net of gazes, a thick web of stares. I was, undoubtedly, being watched.

I scanned the faces of my fellow passengers, searching for telltale signs in each that he or she might be my patron. Long before my stop, I forsook the streetcar for the side-walk, where I could escape the claustrophobic feeling that made it difficult for me to breathe. In the open air, I was somewhat less a specimen on display, and there was at least the illusion of freedom in personal locomotion. A woman, a complete stranger, leaving a dry-goods store, flashed me a brief smile and nodded. Why? I frowned disapprovingly at her, and she quickly turned away.

Wherever I looked I found a pair of eyes trained upon mine, and the weight of these gazes eventually made me stop in my tracks. The throng moved around me like a stream around a large rock, and I turned in circles trying to see all those who were seeing me. To calm myself, I closed my eyes, and there, behind the screen of my lids, I had a sense that the entirety of the teeming metropolis had me in its sights.

When I eventually felt steady enough to again open my eyes, I found standing before me a young boy of six or seven, wearing a cap and a threadbare coat. His round cheeks were red with the cold, and his smile showed the absence of at least three teeth. At first I thought he was begging, for he held his hand up toward me. Only when I was digging into my pocket for some change did I realize he was handing me a card.

"I been paid," he said, and shoved the square of paper into my hand.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "What is this?" Before I could finish my second question, he was gone, running off into the swirl of passersby I turned to watch him, but in seconds he was lost amid the multitude. It quickly became evident to me that I was now literally making a spectacle of myself, blocking traffic on the side-walk. I moved quickly forward. Only when I reached the solitude and safety of a bench in Madison Square Park did I inspect the gift from the child.

Turning the white rec-tangle over, I

noticed words rendered in ink, a message in desperate script. After I stared at it for a solid minute, the words registered their meaning.

WHY ARE YOU SEEING MY WIFE?

CHARBUQUE

I quickly shot a glance over each shoulder and then scanned the park before me. When I again turned my attention to the message, I tried to see it in a new light, but still the words exuded a sense of menace, a definite threat. Rising, I slipped the card into my coat pocket and headed for the sidewalk. I

hailed the first cab I saw, and went directly to my home. Once inside, I locked the door and checked each of the rooms.

Sitting in the studio, I pondered that day's events. It was becoming increasingly clear that Mrs.

Charbuque was, in her subtle way, trying to undo me. How artfully she had dropped the news of her knowing my every move. "Is she paying for a portrait or for a subject to amuse herself with?" I

wondered.

Out of thin air, her husband had materialized to insin-uate a new thread into the tapestry. I wouldn't have been half surprised to find that she herself had written out the card and had Watkin find an urchin to deliver it. She obvi-ously wanted me to ask her about her husband.