The Painting (32 page)

I’ve got the money right here, he says. Right here. I’ve been saving it, see, and now I’ve got it. He grabs the thick bundle of notes and shoves it in front of her. He’s never had so much money in his life, and he stares at it, amazed at the amount.

She looks at him perplexed. Have you heard anything I’ve said? She’s about to close the door again. Jorgen puts his hand out.

I must have a new leg.

Her voice hardens. I’ve already explained, monsieur. And I think I’ve been very patient, given the circumstances. It’s impossible. Now please.

The world is shutting around him, making it difficult to breathe. His leg begins to throb. All around them, the rumbling of the gunboats echoes across the Sevres and Meudon hills, and the cannons on Mont Valérien thunder. The pain shoots to his hip bones. He mutters swear words in Danish and the woman’s face softens.

You’re not French, are you? she asks. You’re Danish. My sister married a Dane. He’s a good man. Yes, a good soul.

His eyes brighten. He shows her the money again.

She smiles faintly, the edges of her mouth quivering. I do wish Jonathan were here. He could help you. But then again, it takes many weeks to make a proper leg. It must be fitted right. Even then it doesn’t simulate the knee
exactly, so you won’t regain your natural walking stride. Did someone say you’d walk again with a perfect gait? I hope not. It’s a lie, after all.

I’ll walk just fine, he says, half listening, his mind fixated on the image of himself striding down the boulevard, slipping through the gap in the barricades, a rifle slung on his shoulder. The air heavy with gunpowder and bitter cold, and there he goes, leaving behind this dilapidated city, tromping through deep snow dotted with blue shadows.

Her eyes soften and her arms drop to her sides. You look like you’re in pain. I can help you with that.

She cracks open the door, and suddenly, magically, he is inside. The room is hushed and ice cold, with the smell of medicine and something acidic jolting the air. A couple threadbare couches encircle a scratched wooden table. She tells him to have a seat. He obliges her, stares straight ahead at the dirty white wall, but gets up again, paces the room on his crutches. She steps into the side room. He peers in, hoping to see the doctor asleep in a chair or stretched out on a back couch. Only a table and white cabinets. What will he do? he thinks, beginning to feel the dreary shadow of emptiness that has haunted him for weeks.

Do you know of any other doctors who could help me?

I don’t know. Jonathan is superb.

She comes out again and hands him a brown bottle of pills. Tablets of opium, she says, patting down a loose strand of hair. Eases the pain.

He takes the bottle and stares at it. This is not what he came for. He looks at her with bewildered, angry eyes.

Who knows? she says, her voice soft. Perhaps Jonathan will be released this week. He’s innocent, of course. The imbeciles just have to take one look at him to know that.

Yes, says Jorgen. Maybe this week. Maybe tomorrow or the next day, he thinks, or even today.

May I take a look at your leg? she asks.

He rolls up his pants.

The cut, she says, it was done well. The skin has grown back thick. No infections. You’re lucky. Many men have died of gangrene. You’re one of the lucky ones.

Lucky, he thinks, lucky? He laughs out loud. How insane, how utterly insane, he thinks. She looks at him oddly, then shuts the door.

J
ORGEN RUSHES ALONG THE
Rue de la Roquette, passing by a funeral procession of twenty people or so dressed in black, their heads bowed, singing a church hymn as they walk beside a polished coffin. He scurries up the steps to the men’s prison and enters the great stone hallway. For a moment, he is blinded by the muted light. The air is freezing and his vision is slow to adjust. The sorrowful cries of men echo and bounce off the stone walls of the chamber. A cavernous hallway of prison cells stretches as far back as Jorgen can see. Jorgen stands waiting for a guard, pressing his coat sleeve to his nose to stem the stench of urine, sweat, and the pungent odor of fear. Some prisoners are pushing their heads through the black bars, as if their cells are so abominable they prefer their necks in a stranglehold. One man closes his eyes, opens his mouth, a black hole, his teeth half gone, and wails. Jorgen shivers, as if the human misery held in the walls of La Grande Roquette is seeping under his skin. What a horror, he thinks, and he feels every muscle demand to leave this frightening place.

Finally a prison guard with deep-set eyes and a large forehead approaches the receiving desk. The guard holds himself squarely, with a disciplined restraint to each gesture. Jorgen tells the guard whom he wants to see.

Are you a relative?

No, sir.

Impossible.

I’m a patient of the doctor’s, sir.

The guard’s eyes narrow and something behind them hardens.

Jorgen gestures pathetically to his empty pant leg, searching for a morsel of sympathy.

The guard doesn’t say anything. A new round of screaming hurls from the cells. Jorgen cringes, glances down the hallway, and watches as two guards drag a prisoner out of his cell, his legs sagging, the heavy chains around his ankles clanking.

The guard waits for the screaming to subside. Only relatives allowed.

But the doctor is here? asks Jorgen.

The guard raises an eyebrow and fixes his gaze on Jorgen. I didn’t say that.

Jorgen leans hard into his crutches, frantically searching for something to say that will win this man over. When will the doctor be released? My leg, you see. He was going to make me a new leg, and I planned to return to the war. The guard’s face twitches. Now, thinks Jorgen, he has the guard’s good graces.

The guard stiffens again. Let me see your papers.

Jorgen clambers in his pocket. He hands over his passport.

The guard looks at the papers, then at him. You’re not French?

Jorgen explains his situation, his tone exasperated and desperate. The doctor is a good man. He came here from England to help. He’s done nothing wrong.

The guard studies the passport again. To date, twenty-one foreigners have been arrested and are being held here for spying, he says. The city is teeming with spies. I’d say your tone indicates you’re not a very cooperative fellow. You don’t seem to have the proper respect for French security. We could call you in for questioning at any time. In fact, I could call my supervisor right now and say I’ve got a fellow here who is causing trouble.

Jorgen’s breath quickens. He glances toward the cells and, for a flash, sees how easily he could end up in such a terrible place, languishing in filth, listening to that man down the way coughing and hacking up phlegm.

You’d best be on your way. I’ve wasted enough time with you.

The odor of fresh urine wafts through the receiving hallway. He feels as if he might retch. Jorgen heads for the front door. As he turns, he hears a bell ring. The guard removes a key from his pocket, enters the long hallway of cells, and with a heavy black chain, swipes at the heads jammed between the bars.

P
ULLING HIS GRAY WOOL
blanket up to his chin, Jorgen nestles into the deep depression he’s carved into the mattress and listens to the cooing of the pigeons in the backyard. Four weeks now she’s been gone. Four long weeks, and winter is here.

Down the hallway, a new shipment waits for him. He should trudge to the inventory room, but he feels empty and exhausted, and the thought of work tucks him farther into bed. What if the doctor is never released? Nearly nine in the morning, and his room is freezing. His whole body aches. He reaches over, pops open the brown bottle, and swallows another white pill. Three pills should make the pain in his head go away, four could erase the ache in his chest. He pulls his gray knit cap over his ears. Outside, a voice calling, And we must deliver, then the words trail off. A door opens and closes downstairs, but he is cut off from everything, a man floating in the air, untethered, tossed by the whim of a mood. What mood he is riding on, he has no idea. Moaning quietly, he rubs his face with his calloused hands and it feels as if his skin is putty. All around him dreary gray.

He reaches underneath his bed for the painting. His hand scrapes the vacant, dirty floor. How many times has he checked and rechecked? It seems impossible the painting is gone; his mind is a carousel going round and round the question, How could he? In his blurred state, he can’t recall how he sold it. As he leans back, his arm knocks over a glass on the nightstand, glass shatters everywhere.

Footsteps leap up the stairs and down the hallway toward his room. Svensk charges into the room. I heard something crash.

Jorgen rolls away from Svensk and feels something squeeze inside. How could he explain it? He doesn’t even know how to explain it to himself. It sounds so silly. There was a beautiful painting and now it’s gone. Just like everything else. He doesn’t recognize himself, this suffering, this loneliness that sits on top of him.

Pierre says you’re behind on your work.

Jorgen lies there inert, not saying anything. He went by the doctor’s office again two days ago, but the assistant’s mournful gaze through the half-open door told him everything he needed to know.

Svensk walks to the other side of the cot and faces Jorgen. You look horrible, says Svensk. Pierre said the only thing you do is feed those damn pigeons. He said he’s thinking of firing you. He asked me if I wanted your job.

Jorgen looks through Svensk and stares at the wall. Go ahead, he says. Take the godawful job.

You better get dressed.

Jorgen slowly removes the blankets and glances down. He’s in a white bed shirt. Svensk tries not to look at his stump.

I’ll get your trousers, says Svensk.

If I left Paris, would you take care of the pigeons? asks Jorgen.

Svensk stops digging through the chest of drawers. Sure, he says. Where are you thinking of going?

You’d take care of them, wouldn’t you?

There’s no getting out of Paris, says Svensk. He tells him the French are guarding Paris like a precious jewel, and the Prussians have formed siege lines all around the city.

He hands Jorgen his trousers. Jorgen perches on the edge of the bed.

You would, wouldn’t you? Jorgen asks.

What?

Take care of the pigeons.

Jesus, I said I would, didn’t I?

You must promise me. Say that you promise.

God almighty. What’s wrong with you? Where do you think you’re going?

Jorgen doesn’t answer.

Svensk leans against the wall by the window, watching Jorgen pull on the pants with slow, heavy hands.

P
IERRE IS GONE
. A letter sits on the table, like a broken wing.

Dear brother
,

We are finally at Metz. We marched for ten leagues in one direction. Then we turned around and nearly walked back the distance we came. Needless to say, we are exhausted and hungry and demoralized. Tell Jorgen I can understand the desire to break off into a separate unit, and there are such units, renegade groups of soldiers roaming through the woods
.

I’m sorry to keep asking, but any small bit of money would be most appreciated. I will pay you back. Please keep a record of what you send. Please send anything
.

Natalia

Underneath the letter on the table, still tucked in an envelope, a note addressed to Jorgen.

Dear Jorgen
,

There are so many things I should have asked you while I could. Your favorite food. What makes you sing? I never knew it, but I’ve discovered I love to hear a man sing. (There was a young soldier who died yesterday who always sang while we marched.) It seems like years have gone by since I made you sandwiches. Were they terrible? I was never much of a cook
.

What would you do differently? Right now. That’s something I’d ask you. When I ask myself, I know I would have discovered more about you. You were the one person who understood. Edmond was the other. I’m sorry, but I’m feeling sentimental today. Most of the time, I feel nothing
.

All around me, death. It is possible to die. At any moment. It would be so easy. A Prussian steps from behind a tree, his shiny helmet blinding. A cannon shell lands in your trench. I saw a girl killed for standing on her porch at the wrong time. A doctor, too. A nurse. I have seen it happen all around me. I think that’s what makes it so easy to write the truth. Some part of me welcomes it, this greedy thing of death. It must take all of us, but here, it is taking everyone with such rapaciousness. I welcome it, not to meet my savior, the Lord, but to end all this. There is nothing here but misery and more misery
.

You once said your dream was to join up again with the war. And now that I am here, I can only say that your dream is a nightmare. To call that a dream is insane. (You see how honest I am with death gathered at my feet. Five good women have died.) If life has not fallen away from you, if life hasn’t retracted from your being, then don’t come here. Don’t call it a dream
.

Natalia

Clutching the letter with both hands, he reads it again and again. The walls of the room press in. He steps outside into the night, into enveloping blackness, and walks over to the birds. They coo and call out to him, and with soft eyes, he sees them anew.

Listen, he says.

He reads the letter out loud to the pigeons, and they quiet down, held by the deep timbre of his voice. She wants to know these things about me, he says. Things no one has ever asked. What would he do differently? His entire body contracts, as if ready to leap into the air, as if changing, made of some other substance, something elastic and expansive. There is the orangered eye of a pigeon glowing, holding him in this moment.

Her heart is good, he says. Too good.

He looks to the edge of the yard, recalling a warm day when they sat outside on the porch. He hadn’t wanted to go out, but she insisted. She spotted some dahlias and wild red poppies by that back corner, ran down the steps, and gathered a couple to put in her hair. Here, she said, and tried to put one behind his ear, and he had brushed her away. Though he didn’t want a flower in his hair, he was glad to be sitting with her outside. Fresh air and a bit of sunshine, so simple, as he thinks it over now, and why hadn’t he returned the favor?