Hi, all.
I haven't posted on here in a long time; my sister's been using this account for a while. I really would appreciate it if someone could read this short story and provide feedback. Do you think it needs more imagery/description of the house? Thanks in advance!
She hovers in my presence, unseen and unthought of. It is not until she runs her hands down my arms that I look up from my work. Satisfied, she perches herself on a stool and begs me to proceed.
“Will you sit for me?” I ask.
“Sit for you?” she says, startled, “Why are you so quick to forsake the commissioned painting?”
I lean my head against the back of my chair. Gazing at the ceiling, I say, “For the entirety of my career, I have recreated history and myth. Rather than painting for the sake of painting, I have only painted for a purpose. I want to paint for pleasure.”
Hélène stares at my painting as I stare at her.
“Besides,” I add, “is it absurd for a man to want a portrait of his beautiful wife of two fortnights?”
“No, it is not so absurd.”
“Then you agree to it?”
“I said no such thing!” she cries, “Many things are not absurd, yet I do not espouse them.”
I take up my palette and say, “Then you will not espouse your husband’s dearest wish?”
“How strange you are!—always putting words into my mouth,” she laughs, eyes flashing.
Thinking it best, I keep quiet. Indicative of muddled thought, a faraway gaze and furrowed brow upset my wife’s pretty countenance. She is sixteen, rosy and plumpish, and the paragon of youth. Yet she is wanting in sureness of self, something I thought came natural to the young. Ah, but the storm passes, and she honors me with a modest smile.
“Yes, I will sit for you,” she says, rising, “But let it be tomorrow, for all this idleness has greatly wearied me.”
The next morning brings the promise of a glorious day and a glorious painting. Toward the completion of a work, I always find that it mirrors my surroundings not so much as my surroundings mirror it. Today, art is the spider-plant on my mantel, the taste of my coffee, and the dust floating in the air.
I prepare myself, replacing the canvas and adjusting my easel. My paintbrushes, stiff with paint, sit patiently in a flower vase. Though they are old, they will have to suffice. Art waits for no one; a moment captured in its heat is far greater than one based on its cold echo of the past. Proof of this is in the entrance of my wife, whose every move and mannerism deserves depiction on my canvas.
“How would you like me to pose?” she asks, a doll at my command.
I give her a mink’s fur, heavy and silky in my hands. She observes it and nods. She knows we share a thought: She has never worn fur.
“The models often favor to wear the fur,” I say gently.
“Yes and how would you like me to pose?” she asks again.
“I believe it would be best if you stood in front of that wall,” I say, and she acquiesces, “Yes, it is good. I do not want anything to distract attention from you.”
She frowns, “Attention? Had I misunderstood that this painting was to be solely for you?”
“Indeed, it is—”
“Then you should have no troubles in focusing your attention on your wife.”
Defeated, I only smile and show her how to position herself. She yields to my touch, moving limb or lip as I think best. Yet color rises to her cheeks and neck, and I assure her that modeling is not half as painful as endeavoring to mollify the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces.
I study my palette while she undresses. One never knows what colors are best until they reach the canvas. However, a few reds and browns appear particularly striking.
I hear Hélène say, “Do not paint me today. I am not ready.”
“Why? What troubles you?”
“I feel ill,” she says and puts her hand to her brow to support this claim.
“You are perfectly well,” I argue, “'Tis only nerves.”
“No, I feel feverish,” she says, “I want to lie down.”
I step from behind the canvas. Hélène’s face is flushed, and she shakes. Draped over her left shoulder, the fur begins to slip.
“If you be ill, what can I do?”
She reclines on the velvet sofa. Her long brown locks smother her face from sight. Once I conclude she is truly ill, she denies it and begs me to leave.
“'Tis maddening. You must not tease me so. I, in my fever to paint, and you, feigning fever—what a pair we form! I have three days until I present The Judgment of Paris. I wish to devote a portion of those days to painting pleasure and my inspiration, my wife.”
Slowly, if not languidly, Hélène rises from the sofa. She poses as I instructed her. I paint as I hoped I would.
I paint her voluptous figure as it appears. I do not amend her flaws or contrive perfections as I do for the models. Rather, I embrace the natural art which is Hélène and highlight both blemish and beauty as only a husband can appreciate.
“Are you faring well?” she asks me, her words dizzy and faraway.
A time later, I reply, “Yes, but could you pray turn your chin to the left?”
The second morning, white and windy, brings the children home. Having spent a weekend at Mother’s house, they are loud and boisterous. Hélène attends to them despite my entreaties that she let the maid entertain them. Thus, at night I am sitting with my painting, watching the stars when my wife steals into the drawing room.
“May I look at it?” she murmurs so as not to disturb the art she feels all around her.
“If I am to paint for pleasure and purely for pleasure, I cannot accept criticism,” I say.
“Then I will offer only praise,” says she.
“You cannot expect me to paint with a clouded vanity—”
She pouts, “You cannot expect me to model without knowing—”
“I do,” I insist, matching her stubborn gaze, “I would like it very much.”
Silent, she retreats to a window and studies the stars. To paint her now, though the lighting and costume differ, is a great temptation. With only a night and a day remaining to complete The Judgment of Paris, beginning a new painting would be senseless.
Seized by desire and deprived of sense, I set my infant painting facedown on the sofa and replace it with a new canvas. Hélène takes no notice, and it delights me. I follow the sweep of her dress, the length of her neck, and the curve of her cheek. My work is messy and hurried, but pleasurable and dramatic. I sketch the finer details of her face. Her upturned nose—how it plagues me! The slope of the nose is incorrect, if not ridiculous.
“What are you painting?” she asks upon turning around. I lament being unable to capture the fire that is her eyes (for that troublesome sloping nose!) and answer her thus:
“I am painting my model.”
I misestimate the width of her nose; it looks grotesquely thin.
“Do you no longer like the first?” she asks with a hint of worry in her voice.
“Does it not grace the best seat in the room?” I return, motioning to the sofa.
With a great concentration, I smooth the last deviation of the nose.
“Why, then, do you paint me again?”
“If you were presented with an infinity of desserts, each promising more delight than the last, would you fill on three or four or sample a bite of each one?”
The final morning a plate of eggs and biscuits awaits me in the dining room. From the crumbs and a smear of jam on the table, I gather Hélène has already breakfasted. Thus, I eat in a palpitating reflection of the painting to come.
Content with the hush sounds of the children play-acting in the nursery, I reach the drawing room in eagerness. I enter it in bitterness. Hélène, wrapped and ready in the fur, is peering at last night’s work. I step forward, and she whirls around, sending my pallette to the floor. Silence ensues.
“Forgive me,” she says at last.
“I read it in your eyes—everything you feel about my painting,” I accuse her.
“I do regret my actions, yet I do not know that you read me well,” she says, looking at me though I cannot look at her.
I ask, “What moved you to gaze upon it?”
“'Tis but a womanly curiosity that overcame me.”
Avoiding her eyes, my eyes sweep up and down her figure. I acknowledge the details I have not depicted, the lines and colors unrepresented. She blushes a blush that tells more than she has told.
I cannot paint her. Fully understanding for the first time how uncomfortable she feels, I dismiss her. With deep regret and an artist’s disappointment, I say that I must complete the commisioned piece.
She obliges me. I begin my difficult work. Later when she returns to offer tea, she hovers behind me, unseen and unthought of.
The Judgment of Paris meets much praise and approbation at the revealing ceremeony. I murmur my appreciation, though I feel none at all. It is one of my finest paintings, and yet I loathe it.
I begin to feel ill. Thinking distance can diminish pain, I blindly move away from my painting. Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, my commisioner, nearly loses her balance from this action. But she recovers and bestows me with a graceful smile. As she strides away, I marvel at the social radiance and confidence she has derived from my work. This impels me to withdraw the object from my pocket that I was repelled to bring. The knife glimmers tantalizingly near the canvas. I am a slit and a rip away from destroying my painting and my name…
But another artist’s painting is revealed, catalyzing sounds of awe and thoughts of admiration. I determine to tell Hélène I should like to leave, but I cannot find her. I cannot imagine where she, quiet and contemplative the entire evening, could have gone to.
When I discern her among the crowd, she is neither quiet nor contemplative. She is radiant. My two unfinished paintings are on either side of her. It is in this moment of sounds of awe and thoughts of admiration that I realize I am defeated. The sureness of self in Hélène’s every move and mannerism (which now more than ever deserve depiction on my canvas) prove that painting is never soley for pleasure: art always has a purpose.
