The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque (17 page)

Neither of us was a particularly early riser, and we main-tained an unspoken pact not to wake the other unless there was a verifiable need.

I closed my eyes, deciding to sleep for a little while longer. No sooner were my lids shut, though, than I remembered the reason for my late hours. I saw in my mind the sketch I had made while sitting before the vase of flowers on the paint table, and immediately rolled out of bed. As I got into my robe and slippers, I clearly remembered the drawing, and my excitement over it was rekindled. The promise of seeing it again sent me rushing through the house to the studio.

I had finally executed an actual picture of Mrs. Charbuque, and if I do say so myself, it was a wonderful job. Granted, it was still merely a sketch, but I had ren-dered enough detail in the face and form of the body so that the sight of it triggered in my mind again that clear vision of her standing naked in the moonlight behind the screen. Yes, even the specific features of the eyes and hair had revealed themselves clearly to me. This then would be my touchstone. One glance at it, and my subject would be standing before my mind's eye, willing to pose for as long as I required. I felt a warm glow emanate from my solar plexus, a certain giddiness invade my bloodstream, and I truly believed that I had captured precisely what she looked like. Mrs.

Charbuque would have her painting, and I would succeed at the impossible.

Staring at the sketch, holding that vision of her in my mind, I also felt a trace of sexual longing for this woman I had created. "Could anything be more narcissistic?" I wondered, but I could not deny my

feelings. To do so, I feared, would transport me back to the other side of the screen. At that moment, I

looked around for the violet card from my patron. It lay on the table between the sketch and the vase of flowers. As I reached for it, I noticed that its envelope lay next to it and that now there was writing upon that as well.

Dear Piambo, I will meet you this evening at the Academy of Design.

Love, Samantha

She had copied Mrs. Charbuque's handwriting and the format of her note precisely. Obviously this was meant as a joke, but there are jokes and there are jokes. The place-ment of the envelope directly next to the card troubled me somewhat. I had been obsessing over the project of late, there was no doubt of that, but it was work and a monu-mental turning point in my career. More than likely it was evident to Samantha that my attention was always keenly focused on it, although in conversation during our private moments I might pretend otherwise. Surely she was not jealous, or was she? Samantha, in full daylight, could at times be more mysterious than Mrs.

Charbuque in hiding. Perhaps she had meant to remind me of this very fact, placing her note next to the other to claim a kind of equal-ity. I shook my head, not willing to be distracted from the task at hand. I instead turned my attention back to the sketch and the unique pleasure of strategizing how I would convert it into a full-fledged portrait.

I spent the remainder of the morning and early after-noon preparing a canvas and jotting down notes concern-ing color, placement of the figure, props if any, and so on, so that upon my return that evening I

could begin. One decision I made that excited me was the determination to show Mrs.

Charbuque as I

had conceived of her—naked, a solitary figure adrift in a sea of deep shadow. She would be the light source of the painting.

I remembered Sabott telling me how the old Dutch masters had manufactured their own pigments because they knew that certain substances, ground to certain tex-tures, would refract the light at specific angles. They were aware that configurations of these angles of refraction would focus light in precise areas of the composition and make it glow, seemingly of its own accord. I wished I had paid more attention to Sabott's lectures on pigment and light. When I was younger, I thought using anything other than ready-made paint was hopelessly primitive, the drudgery of mortar and pestle nothing more than a point-less inhibitor of my artistic muse. That was before I came to realize that a good sable brush was worth ten yards of emotive genius and that painting was a two-headed beast—part craft and part inspiration. What I would have given to have listened more closely, for it was the magical effect of light I now hoped to achieve.

At one o'clock I made my preparations for the journey uptown. Formal attire was necessary, as I would go directly to the opening at the academy from the day's meeting. I was full of energy and goodwill, now that the project was so clearly defined. I put on my coat and hat, picked up my sketchbook, and made for the front door. As I turned the knob I was reminded that someone had entered my house without my knowledge twice in the past two days. Nothing was safe, I realized.

Returning to the studio, I carefully rolled up the sketch. Then I made a tour of the rooms, searching for a place to stow it where an intruder would never think to look. I finally settled on stuffing it into the arm of a din-ner jacket that hung at the back of my bedroom closet. This was not completely satisfactory, but on the other hand no one but Samantha and I knew of the drawing's existence.

It was a beautiful day, warmer than those of late, and I took the opportunity to let my ideas percolate, choosing to walk a bit before boarding an uptown streetcar. There is nothing like that steady rhythmic motion, the fresh air, and open space to fan the creative spark into a genuine blaze. The sidewalks were crowded, and I made a game of trying to walk as many blocks as I could without coming to a full stop, dodging passersby here and there, looking ahead to anticipate tight gaps between

pedestrians, and slipping through at the last second. All the while I was contemplating whether or not to depict Mrs. Charbuque from the waist or from the knees. Considering the ques-tion, I found that either prospect thrilled me.

At the corner of Park Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street, the game was up. A crowd of nearly two dozen people had gathered there, waiting for three automobiles and twice as many carriages to pass before they could cross uptown. I joined the group and patiently waited for the vehicles to move on.

When the street was finally clear and the horde began to cross, my attention was drawn to the left by the blare of an auto horn. A mere second later, from the right, I could swear I heard a female voice whisper, "Piambo, I love you."

I turned my head quickly, but no one was there. Either my ears had played a trick on me, or the speaker had moved on ahead with the surging crowd. I hurried across to catch up. The group seemed to be composed completely of women: hats and hairdos, parasols and handbags. Before I could reach them and see their faces, they had gained the opposite sidewalk and scattered, some entering shops and the rest going east or west or continuing north. The inci-dent unnerved me for two reasons. The first was that

I was very possibly deluding myself, which, given recent events, would not be so unlikely. The second was that the voice I heard, although its message was very much the opposite, carried the same quiet tone and inflection as that of Mrs. Reed's wish for me.

I boarded a streetcar at Twenty-ninth Street and arrived at Mrs. Charbuque's house with a good ten min-utes to spare before the appointment. Watkin answered the door in his usual slightly irritated, perfunctory man-ner, but with what Samantha had told me, I saw him in a completely new light. I now had the courage to stare into those white eyes and found in them an unnatural quality of reflection. Upon close inspection, I could see they were not real. Beyond that, though, they were so pathetically fake that I

nearly laughed out loud at my naïveté. In order to elicit a performance, I asked him if he had seen the lead story in the morning newspapers. "Surely you are jesting, Mr. Piambo," he said, and his gestures quickly corrobo-rated everything Samantha had said about his erratic manner.

Either his movements were those of a normally sighted person, or they involved a melodramatic position-ing of the head, like a bird listening to the call of its mate.

Watkin escorted me to the antechamber and then went to check on the readiness of Mrs.

Charbuque. In those short minutes I conceived of a plan to disturb Mr. Watkin. Opening my sketchbook, I turned it horizontally on my lap. I took out my pencil and wrote in large dark letters

WATKIN IS AN ASS! Admittedly juvenile, but I wanted something that might get a rise out of him.

When he returned, I was waiting for him, standing with the book open in front of me. He stopped short at the entrance to the small room, and I saw a blush suffuse his forehead and cheeks. "This way," he said curtly, but he did not append the phrase "Mr. Piambo" to it as he usually did. I followed him, trying to consider the purpose of Watkin's threadbare disguise. As we passed through the formal dining room, he pointed to his left and said, "We've acquired a new piece." He did not stop to give me time to study it, but I turned my head quickly enough to see, framed and hung upon the wall, the daguerreotype from the warehouse. While ushering me into the room with the screen, his visage sported a wide, ugly grin.

The Red Herring

"Shall I mark your presence here today as an accept-ance of my apology, Piambo?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I'm sorry to have startled you with the monkey arm, but my sense of humor has grown strange from my self-imposed isolation. I expect my words and schemes to be taken in a certain way, but
Page 64

I am often disappointed with the results. After all these years, I remain unable to calculate how the presence of the screen will alter my intentions."

"I understand," I said. As I listened to her words, I con-jured the image of the sketch in my mind.

The more she spoke, the more the minute details began to fill them-selves in—the curve of her ear, the insignificant creases at the corners of her mouth, the length of her neck.

"We used the monkey arm in the act as what my father called a red herring, something to both confuse the audience and delight their sense of wonder. I don't know if you noticed, but the thumb has a spring inserted in it so that it closes tightly against the palm. This feature had been added before we purchased it. What its original use was God only knows, but for our purposes it acted as an eccentric clasp to secure the paper leaves people wrote their questions on. By thrusting out the fake arm to accept the leaves from my father, I could remain completely hidden."

"Reaction to it must have been interesting," I said.

"Very. It led people to believe that I was some kind of monstrous anomaly cursed with the attributes of an ape yet blessed with divine knowledge," she said.

"My mentor, M. Sabott, used to say, 'The public loves a neat package of contradictions,'" I said, entertaining the notion that perhaps the arm had been a red herring for me as well and that she really was some bizarre creature. Having come too far to allow myself to be plunged back into the pit of doubt, I

banished the thought as quickly as it had arisen, and focused again on my memory of the sketch.

"That first time, at Ossiak's dinner party, was exciting for me. I was just eleven years old, and actually quite timid, but the screen gave me an uncharacteristic courage. I still remember the first question asked of me. My father read it aloud to the audience. 'Will it happen?' he said, and I held out the monkey arm. With an elegant flourish, he clamped the green leaf under its thumb.

Upon retrieving it, I read it again to myself and then closed my eyes to concentrate on listening for the voices of the Twins. As I have told you, I was a fervent believer, so there was no apprehension. They came to me immediately, their whis-pers turning to images in my mind.

" 'It is raining,' I said loudly in order to project my voice beyond the barrier. 'The path is muddy.

There is a cat and a crowd. I see an open window through which every-thing passes. It will happen at the end of the day, and there will be peace.’ When I was finished, a few moments of absolute silence reigned in the dining hall, and then the voice of a young man called out, 'Thank you.'

"That evening I responded to the questions jotted on a dozen leaves and subsequently read aloud.

When my father announced that the session was over, there came a thun-derous applause. I left the room in the same manner as I had entered: the lights were briefly extinguished, and I fled through a nearby door, my father preventing anyone from following me. We had arranged to have a carriage waiting for me outside the building, and like some fairytale princess racing against the approach of midnight, I rushed to it and was on my way before I could be spotted.

Back at our apart-ment, I waited alone for him to return, hoping that I had done well. Eventually I fell asleep on our parlor couch, for he did not return until daybreak. As he explained to me, when the festivities were over, Ossiak met with him, and they discussed the results of that year's snowfall.

"He was both troubled and delighted. The act of the Sibyl had been a great success, but his news of financial ruin did not sit well with his employer. Still, Ossiak was not so ignorant as to blame the bearer of bad tidings. He entreated my father to put the question of the fate of his fortune to the Sibyl.

"Our performance was an interesting entertainment, and I doubt that many of those present
Page 65

thought of it as anything more, that is until three days later, when the daily paper brought some shocking news.

The first person whose question I had answered was a young man who, owing to his economic station in life (I believe he was a waiter or laborer at some hotel or tavern), would not nor-mally attend one of

Ossiak's affairs. He was present that night because he had recently come to the aid of one of Ossiak's nieces on the street when she was accosted by a ruffian. To repay this young man's gallantry, Ossiak sent him an invitation to the gala.

"As it turned out, the young man had a vision of his own. Over a period of years, he had saved a sum of five thousand dollars. The Tuesday following Ossiak's affair, he took a day off from work and went to Hanover Racetrack. There, at the betting window, he put all his money to win on a horse by the name of Calico. Calico was a well-respected Thoroughbred, but that day it rained, which turned the track to mud, and Calico lost the race. Later that afternoon, the young man committed suicide by slit-ting his wrists with a straight razor, thereby finding peace from his overweening desire for success. Instead, it was I who found success. All those who had been in attendance the evening of my first performance now believed I was imbued with special powers."