Art Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris, from Harper’s Weekly, January 11, 1868, 47.25.10
Look closely. There is nothing up my sleeve. Nothing in my back pocket. Nothing. Now, look at me. See my eyes. As I see, you will see. As I go, you will go.
A restless man wanders in a windy wood. He and I are not alike. There is nothing we share. I go with him, but we do not know what comes. We only know light as it collides with us in its path through the wending branches above. His face is a storm. His pulse is a hurricane. I follow him, yet I know not why. I know not why.
Anders, Tepulon V, Era of the Whisper
“Cindy, dear, there is no need to polish it so vigorously.” The voice is that of Matron Benithet, second Lady Sitting of House Artensis. Lady Sitting. Funny title, thinks Cindy Hollins. They never sit. She had started to notice that she was going a little beyond the spirit of the work, before the Matron had said anything. She dabbed the polish into the cloth, rubbed the cloth on the sleek wooden hall table. Dabbed the polish on, rubbed the table. Dab. Rub. How long she had been doing this, she couldn’t really say. Shorter than it felt. Longer than she should have. She didn’t know why she was doing it. For one, it did keep her looking busy, which meant she wouldn’t be pulled into other duties, at least not immediately.
But it was more than that. She wanted to know if the table could get any shinier. What would be the effect of adding more polish? What could the table hold? Would it glisten? Would the accumulated layers of polish start to mask each other and dull, washing into a gray absence of light, absence of color? If it would, well then where would the light be said to go? Inside the polish? Trapped between the polish and the table? She found it so frustrating to not really know the answer. To not really know what had to be one of the most basic things about the work she was supposedly supposed to be dedicating her life in doing.
Worse than that, she was certain that nobody else knew either. If she needed any more evidence for that, it was in the Matron’s comment. In the way she said it. It was fearful. The Matron was afraid, afraid of this stupid, simple thing. She was afraid that Cindy might do something she didn’t expect, hadn’t planned for, couldn’t manage. Well, that would just send the whole agenda toppling, wouldn’t it?
“I didn’t mean to sit there staring with that stupid look on your face. Honestly, you look dumb as a carpet. Have you any brain in there at all?” When the Matron spoke to Cindy, or any of the other girls, like this, there was a part of her, a constructed part that had long since dwarved the others, that sincerely believed she was being kind. She was doing them a kindness by pointing out their flaws, by reminding them of their inadequacies. This is not so strange when you think about it, for the Matron occupied a station in which one’s inadequacies are indeed a comfort. Limits. No painful thoughts of change. No threat of dreams unfulfilled. Role. Station. Duty. To know one is flawed, to know one could never be anything else, to accept one’s betters as just that. These are comforts to the surrendered life.
Cindy would wish she could have these comforts if she had any means of even guessing at their existence. But she couldn’t possibly. The Matron’s mind was as foreign to her as that of an octopus. An octopus with wings.
The Matron’s brow sunk. She clicked her tongue. Then, she said something she thought would cheer the girl up. It didn’t. “Come with, dearie. We must tend to the portraits.”
The portraits. Oh, misery. Misery of miseries. The only thing Cindy hated more than scrubbing toilets, or taking out the bins, or pulling the weeds in the garden, or degreasing pots, or repairing frayed sleeves — the only thing worse than these hard labors were the portraits. The portraits were not to be touched, not even to be seen, really. Only to be thought of. Only to be spoken about rearranging here, polishing up there, put in a museum some day, properly lit in this way, but never touched. Never actually moved. Never actually to have anything actually done about them whatsoever. The portraits. Gag. Gag, gag, gag.
These were no family portraits, no. Although Cindy had long since learned never to voice such bald facts about the portraits. No, these paintings were the works of aged Master Carlson, the boy, the very old boy, of the house. His father, Old Man Carlson, Lord Carlson, now deceased, had never left his son the House proper. He left the house and all its management to the system he had devised for its care, consisting of Sitting Ladies and Standing Lads (not to mention Barn Boys, Garden Girls, and even Dancing Dogs, as the man seemed more concerned with the sound of things than the actual doing of them) and then the Lord went a-leaping to his grave. His words. In his latter years, he would remind his son loudly that “the Leaping” was to come quite soon, and then he would be truly appreciated.
No, these were not family portraits. These were the frenzied ejaculations of a mad man. They were an assault on paint as a substance. They were the desperate efforts of a man whose need to impress his father would never be fulfilled. Nobody understood why he called them portraits, as they were almost never depicting any aspect of the human form in any discernible way. Nobody asked why. No, nobody asked why. Portraits is what he called them, so portraits they were. When he loved them, they were loved. When he hated them, they were shunned.