Radiant Days (6 page)

She plucked the broken glass from my fingers and pocketed it, looked up to see Clea beside me, and squealed. “Clea! My God, you’ve left the provinces!”

Clea laughed as they hugged. The guy shook his head, gave me a sympathetic grin, and went to empty a dustpan full of glass.

“Anna, this is Merle Tappitt. Merle, Anna Greenhouse.” Clea took my shoulder and pushed me forward. “Merle’s one of my BFA students. She is
amazingly
talented,” she added. “Right up your alley, I think. Very … unspoiled.”

I stood as Anna Greenhouse gazed at me, her head cocked as though she surveyed a puzzling canvas. She was tiny, smaller even than I was; fine-boned, with pale skin and a small mouth lipsticked in deep mauve, and glittering eyes fringed by spidery lashes. The sort of woman people often describe as birdlike, only she reminded me not of a sparrow or wren but of a shrike, which farmers call the butcher-bird, because it impales lizards and grasshoppers on barbed-wire fences. She wore a very short, black silk sheath, sheer black stockings, and high-heeled alligator shoes of glossy emerald green. Her only jewelry was a pair of emerald earrings, each faceted stone the size and shape of a gecko’s eye.

“She’s so young,” she said, and gave me a tight smile.

I shrugged. I knew what she saw: a slight, boyish girl with cropped black hair and a freckled face—no makeup—my hands jammed into the pockets of an ink-spattered pair of white painter’s pants, wearing a kid’s
Star Wars
T-shirt I’d found on the street and red Keds repaired with electrical tape.

“And when is young a bad thing?” retorted Clea. “Especially with you?”

Anna’s tight smile turned into a humorless laugh. “What kind of work do you do, Merle?”

“I dunno. Paintings and stuff.”

Anna glanced impatiently at the door, gestured at two director’s chairs beside it. “Okay. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

“I don’t have anything—” I began, but Clea cut me off.

“Here.” She pushed me toward the chairs, opened an Etienne Aigner satchel that resembled a doctor’s bag, and pulled out a leather portfolio. She thrust it at Anna, who perched delicately at the edge of the chair, her pointy green shoes tapping at the floor.

“Hmmm.” She unzipped the portfolio and flipped through the pages inside. “Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm.”

I shot Clea a dirty look. “Those are my drawings.”

“Of course they’re your drawings.” She pointed at a close-up of her own sleeping face, lips parted to show a single eyetooth, needle-thin as a cobra’s fang. “That’s me. Good, no?”

“Very good.” Anna’s voice was without expression. “Very—hmmm. Sort of Southern gothic, don’t you think? You’re from the South, right? That accent.”

“I live in D.C.”

“Yes, but your accent—Alabama? Mississippi?”

“She’s from the Shenandoah Valley,” said Clea. “Virginia.”

“Oh. Appalachia.” Anna held a drawing in each hand, as though weighing them. One was a whirlpool of tiny print, words I’d copied painstakingly from an automobile-repair manual; the other was a series of concentric circles done in colored pencil and ballpoint, sketches of microscopic eyes so small you’d need a magnifying glass to see them. “I like these. Kind of a rural tantric,
Antonioni feel. But nice draftsmanship. I’ll take these two.” She hopped to her feet, green shoes clattering.

“They’re not for sale.”

Both Anna and Clea stared at me as though I’d spit on the floor.

“None of them’s for sale.”

Anna regarded me coolly. “I only want these two.”

“They’re mine,” I said as Clea glared.

Anna looked from one of us to the other, and gave me an icy smile. “Of course they are,” she said, handed them to me, and turned to Clea. “Don’t bring any more hicks here, okay? And buy her some clothes. She looks like a refugee.”

She strode across the room to greet someone. I grabbed the leather portfolio from the floor and stormed outside, giving the headless mannequin a shove. It fell with a hollow bang, so that Clea had to step over it to chase after me.

“What the hell was that?” she yelled, grabbing my arm.

“What the hell were
you
doing, trying to sell my stuff?”

“I was doing you a favor! And she’s right”—she snatched the portfolio from my hand and stuffed it into her satchel—“you
are
a hick. Stupid little white trash kid who isn’t even smart enough to know she’s getting a break. People would kill for that, you know? Anna Greenhouse wanting their work—”

“Give it to me.” I tried to grab the portfolio. “It’s mine, give it—”

I knew I sounded ridiculous, screaming in the middle of the
sidewalk like a three-year-old, but I didn’t care. Clea stared at me, flushed. One of her combs had fallen so her hair sprang around her face in snaky coils. She pushed it from her forehead, sighed, and withdrew the portfolio again.

“Here. Put the others in there before they get damaged. She’s right, those are the strongest.”

I shoved the drawings into the leather folder and stuck it into my bag.

“Come on,” said Clea. “We need to get ready for the train.”

We walked for several blocks without speaking. More messages floated across burned-out buildings:

On the next block, I froze, staring at a painted window.

I turned and raced back down the street to where I’d seen a hardware store. Clea gave chase and caught up with me as I hurried back out.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. I pulled an aerosol can
from the side pocket of my painter’s pants and retraced my steps to the corner. “Oh my God. Did you
steal
that paint?”

“I don’t believe in this.” I yanked the top from the spray can.

“What are you talking about? Why did you steal that—I have money! Are you out of your mind?”

“‘Same old, same old.’ That’s bullshit. No ‘SAMO.’ Everything is new.”

I shook the aerosol can, then sprayed a daffodil-yellow arc across SAMO’s tag, and a sun like a rayed eye surmounted by swooping letters as long as my arm.

“You’re never supposed to do that, you know—paint over someone else’s graffiti. ‘Radiant days’?” Clea wrinkled her nose at the smell of paint. “What does that mean?”

“Rural tantric,” I said, and started laughing. “I’ll explain it later.”

I turned and ran toward the subway entrance.

Near the Brussels–Charleroi Canal

OCTOBER 7, 1870

IT WAS LATE
afternoon by the time he left the Green Tavern, still intoxicated by the sunlit joy of an afternoon all to himself, poems in his pocket and the memory of the blond waitress’s sly smile as she waved good-bye. On the outskirts of town he found a path that led across fallow wheat fields. He followed this until it faded into the encroaching beech woods. Beer and a full stomach made him drowsy; after an hour or so he made a bed from the spicy fronds of sweet fern, threw himself across the fragrant greenery, and within minutes was asleep.

When he awoke it was dark. He rubbed his eyes, trying to remember where he was, stumbled to his feet, and carefully picked his way through the trees, until he emerged onto a long sward that gave way to a well-trodden trail—the towpath that ran alongside the Brussels–Charleroi Canal.

Overhead a moon nearly full shone in a sky the deep lacquered blue of an apothecary jar. Owls hooted in the woods. He
heard a nightjar’s twanging cry, the sharp bark of a fox. The air smelled of distant woodsmoke, crushed acorns, and wild grapes. Above the canal, skeins of mist gleamed like milk in the moonlight.

He headed to the canal’s edge and stared into the dark water. His reflection gazed back, face pale as the moon, his eyes ice-bright. He rummaged in his coat pocket and pulled out a small bundle. With great care he removed its flannel wrapping, until at last he revealed the clay pipe Leo had given him in Mazas, along with a small tin of matches and a handful of tobacco leaves he’d pinched from the tobacconist in Charleville.

He lit up, sucking at the pipe as he began to walk along the towpath with a trail of smoke behind him. The canal wound beneath the trees, the stones alongside it slick with moss and fallen leaves. After a few minutes, Arthur knocked the ashes from the pipe, and stuck it back into his coat pocket.

“Got any more smoke?”

He looked up, startled. An old man stood at the edge of the canal. A
clochard
—a tramp. He held a fishing pole above the silvery water.

Arthur nodded. “Sorry—I didn’t see you there. Here.” He dug back into his pocket for the tobacco. “You’re lucky, I just got some on my way out of town.”

The old man handed his fishing pole to Arthur. “Hold this.” He withdrew an ancient, wood-stemmed pipe from a pocket of a coat as ragged as it was voluminous, patched with leather and stained cloth and what looked like fish skin. He took a twist of
tobacco from Arthur’s pouch and poked it into the bowl with a blackened thumb missing most of the nail.

“You need a light?” Arthur fumbled in his own pocket, but the man only grunted. One finger moved swiftly in the moonlight; there was a blue flare, and the tramp inhaled greedily as he passed the pouch back to Arthur and took the fishing pole. Arthur stared at the glowing ember in the pipe’s bowl and frowned.

“How’d you do that?”

“Practice. Where you going?”

“Belgium. Charleroi.”

“Belgium?” The tramp snorted. “Well, better than Paris. Everyone’s leaving Paris because of the war.”

“That’s why I’m going. I’m a writer.”

“That’s good.” The tramp coughed, then spit. “Writers need lots of practice at starving.”

He flicked the tip of the fishing rod, watched the line sail above the canal then land with a soft
plop
near the far shore.

Arthur bent to pick up a chestnut, smooth beneath his calloused thumb, and stuck it in his pocket. “Why are you fishing in the dark?”

“Full moon’s good for carp. Three days before, three days after.” With one hand the tramp dug into the folds of his coat and produced a leather bottle, scabbed and filthy as his hand. He prized the cork from it and took a swig, handed it to Arthur.

“Don’t drop it, boy.”

The fiery liquor burned through him, harsh and resinous and so strong that Arthur choked. Still, when the tramp passed the
bottle a second time, he took a longer pull before returning it.

“Hush!” the tramp exclaimed, though Arthur hadn’t spoken. The fishing pole arced toward the water like a diviner’s wand. The man hopped away from the bank, grasping the pole with both hands, and with one quick motion yanked it upward. A silver-gold comet trailed after it, sending out sparks that spattered Arthur’s face. The tramp dropped the pole and caught the comet before it struck the ground: a flopping carp the size of a small cat.

“Hand me the pail, boy.”

Arthur picked up a battered tin bucket filled with water. The tramp dropped the carp into it. The fish twisted and turned upon itself, flashing goggle eyes and scales large and thick as fingernails before settling into a sullen coil at the pail’s bottom. Arthur stared at it, fascinated.

“Do you eat it?”

The tramp made a noncommittal gesture. “I tend them.”

He picked up the bucket, slung the pole over his shoulder, and began to walk toward the woods. After a few steps he glanced over his shoulder.

“There’s a lockhouse.” He cocked a thumb in the direction Arthur had been headed, spit, and continued on his way.

Arthur nodded thanks and walked on. Repulsive as the carp had been, it made him think of food, and the fact that he’d had nothing to eat since early evening. He wandered from the canal path and kicked through fallen leaves, looking for chanterelle mushrooms, and gathered a few orange trumpets that gave off a musky smell when he picked them. He ate them, searched until
he found a handful of beechnuts, peeled away the spiny shells, and chewed the bitter kernels. He wished he had more of the tramp’s liquor to wash them down.

He yawned, shivering, and wondered where to sleep. He hadn’t seen a farmhouse or barn for hours. The tramp had said something about a lockhouse, but he saw no sign of it, and he was too tired to go on. He found a hollow between some beeches not far from the canal, gathered a heap of dead leaves, and covered these with armfuls of dried ferns. He lay down and breathed in the sweet scents of bracken and beech mast, ink beneath his fingernails, tobacco.

Branches moved against the face of the moon as it slid toward the rim of the world. Something splashed—feeding carp lured by the moonlight, or perhaps a hunting mink. A fox barked, its fitful cry wound about a memory of the tramp’s voice—
I tend them
—and the rustle of the chill night wind in the trees. Arthur dug his hand into a pocket and found the chestnut, closed his fist around it as he fell asleep.