* * *
The newly inaugurated President of the Eden Accord gazed pensively out of the car window.
The end to a long day of pageantries seemed to have only heightened her lethargy, much to the concern of her chief of security who sat across, observing her earnestly and with some distress. Attempts to call her attention had gone unanswered twice since they had left the Capitol Building. He sighed quietly and looked away.
The motorcade rolled up to the main entrance and slowed as the gates opened. Another wave of fireworks lit up the dark sky as the line of vehicles slowed to a stop outside the front doors of the presidential residence. The porters waited at the open doors. The low whirring of the engines wound down to a stop.
There was silence.
“No calls tonight,” said the President in a barely audible voice. “There’s something I have to do. Something important.”
“It’s been a long day. Why don’t you give yourself a rest? Spend some time with your family.”
“I have to finish it tonight.”
There was the thump of closing doors. The chauffeur approached the rear and stopped at the side of the door. The doors opened.
“Good night Lucas.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” said Shields.
She closed her eyes and nodded vaguely before rising out of the car, led by the hand of her chauffeur. Two security men shadowed her ritually to the front entrance and her chief of security maintained his earnest gaze right until the doors closed and the motorcade drove away. The porters held open the doors to the entrance and bid her “good evening” as she crossed the threshold into the foyer. The members of the presidential household were nowhere around. The doors shut. She stopped. Her heart thawed and her worry eased when she caught sight of the dark figure descending the stairs to meet her.
“Welcome back.”
Her beloved stopped at the foot of the stairs, under the dim light.
She went to him and fell into his embrace. His arms swathed round her, satin to her spirit. She closed her eyes. Her breaths shuddered.
“You were great today,” he whispered
“The day’s not over yet.”
He laid his hand upon her head and gently caressed the soft, snow-white hair.
She appeased her soul in his embrace for as long as she could, then raised her head and put her crown to his lips.
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs.”
She looked away and smiled briefly.
“Tonight…” she said. “I have to…”
“I know,” he nodded. “I will leave you alone.”
Their gazes joined in affection and the gleaming sapphires of her eyes sparkled in the dark depths of his. She put her hands on his face and kissed his lips.
“Thanks for being patient with me,’ she said. “I know I’m not an easy wife. I am nothing without you, you know.”
“That makes two of us.”
He laughed softly, kissed her brow one last time and walked away.
She ascended the stairs to the upper hall. Sidling over the carpet without a sound, she approached the open door of her daughter’s bedroom and peered over the sill. Her silhouette came in the path of the light, and the light stretched down the middle of the room up to the desk, just touching the bedside and a few trailing locks of golden blonde hair hanging out of the little knoll in the bedding.
“Sweetie…”
No answer.
A few seconds late the knoll in the bedding shifted, ruffled and sniffled and she withdrew from the threshold and drew the door shut, narrowing the shaft of light from the hall until it disappeared with the click of the shutting door.
Her hand dropped off the door handle and she fixed her anxious sights on the illumined door at the end of the hall. The little thuds of her heels ran with her pulse as she proceeded through the hall. The shoes slipped off her feet outside the door of a large, oval room, decked and walled with mahogany.
All around the oval room were dozens upon dozens of art pieces: different shapes, sizes, media and moulds, from frescoes to sculptures, and all of them her own. The whole city, lit up in celebration, was partitioned from that solemn space by a long glazed wall running along the curve at the back of the room. And right in the middle of the otherwise empty floor was about nine square meters of cloth stained with paint drops and smears.
Suspended over the cloth was the largest canvas in the room, set upon an easel.
She approached the canvas, shedding her coat and other adornments and letting them fall to the floor in her trail. She stepped up to the easel, let down her hair, lightly rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse, let her hands fall gracefully and looked up at the canvas. The canvas bore an image sufficiently complete to be discernible. The image was of a little-known man. The sharp lines of his worn and tormented features were prominent in the brush and knife-strokes of the paint, and his eyes were bottomlessly dark and tears of blood spilled from their corners. And at the man’s breast, clutched in an embrace as though she were bound to his soul: a little girl.
She stopped and took a deep breath before taking the palette in one hand and a palette knife and a fine brush in the other. She took the knife and cut into the globules of paint, mixed in the turpentine and linseed oil in small doses and, with a still and timid hand, began to apply the dark crimson in fine lacerations.
She wielded her brush like an apothecary of the soul, tending to her own wounds. Cathartic twinges shot through with each aching stroke. Her heart numbed as the tip of the brush parched, then she would lower her hand, take another deep, shaking breath, dab the brush onto the palette and again, eliciting from the man’s feature all the anguish of a soul wrung dry, stroke by slow stroke, each streak of crimson more painful than the last, until her mouth began to quiver.
A lone tear broke in the corner of her eye and streamed down as she took the knife again and cut the paint in short slashes under the deep, vexed orbitals of his hung head. Her pain seemed to increase with his beauty, and his beauty increased with her pain. She would shed all the blood of her soul to do him justice.
Hours passed into the night. The tears streamed constantly and fell on the cloth beneath her, but she never wiped them lest she break her focus. She painted through the beautiful commiseration with her subject. The brush trembled painfully as she raised her hand from the palette and brought the tip to the canvas for the final touches.
When the last stroke broke from the canvas, the brush slipped from her fingertips.
There was a knock and the door opened.
“Naomi.”
A low voice from behind startled her. Her beloved was standing in the doorway. She saw his reflection in the glazing.
“Naomi?”
“Yes.” She quietly wiped away her tears and did not turn. “What is it?”
“There is someone here to see you.”
He stepped aside, drawing the door wide open.
Step – tap – step – step – tap.
“Hello, child.”
She lifted her head with a start and turned.
A figure in black stood in the doorway.
They stared silently at one another.
The door slowly shut and her beloved’s footsteps faded down the hall.
The silence went on a solemn minute.
“It has been too long I know,” said the old hermit.
She smiled, and her smile winced to an immediate contortion of sorrow.
The old hermit took a painful step forward, looking as though he were about to stumble. He had walked so far. He stopped and panted and seemed to laugh.
“Yes … too long,” he repeated.
She came forward and put her arms around her third father just as the tears broke, and he laid a frail hand upon her back and held her.
“You have done so well,” he whispered fondly. “I know that he would have been proud of you.”
It took a while for her tears to stop.
When they d
id, he loosed his embrace and regarded her solemnly.
“You’re the keeper of his legacy, now.”
“I know,” she sighed, wiping away her tears.
“His story must live on lest we all forget.” The old hermit’s eyes dilated as they looked fascinatedly past her. He brought the cane forward and walked up to the canvas. “That is him.”
“Yes,” she replied, coming up beside him.
“Thirty years…” The old hermit gaped. “Your memory is superb.”
Silence.
“I wish he could have been here to see it. To see everything: My family. My daughter. The new world.”
“Oh, I think he saw it all long ago,” the old hermit nodded. “He would not have let you go for anything less. I think he had greater faith in you than either of us will ever know.”
“What do you suppose happened to him?”
“Whatever Providence willed,” the hermit replied. “That, alas, we will never know. Every trace of him was erased long ago.”
“Do you think that he remembered in the end?”
“He fulfilled what he had to. He had no need to remember. But…” A reminiscent smile curled up the old hermit’s mouth. “Somehow, I think destiny had done him justice before the end.”
C. 6 Day 347