THE BASHFUL COURTESAN
EPILOGUE
Paris 1956
I saw George the other afternoon. I recognized him right away of course, even though it’s been over a dozen years. The light and shadows falling across the street scrubbed up against buildings and left him illuminated, as though he was standing in a spotlight up on the stage. There was no mistaking that shock of red hair, though—even if it was shorter, and somewhat thinner—there was no mistaking anything about him. I wanted to call out to him. I wanted to let him know that we’d survived, in spite of everything that happened. And then I thought maybe he doesn’t want me to know he’s still alive? He’s had to give up the only thing that ever mattered to him, and maybe seeing me would just remind him of everything he’s lost? He’s known where to find me; after all, I’m quite the celebrity these days.
*
“I think I should send him the painting,” I said, looking up from the sketch pad I was drawing in.
“Why?” she asked, and with her next breath, added, “You don’t even know if it was him.”
She was standing at the stove, stirring a slow simmering stew, but she knew which painting I meant; she doesn’t even have to ask. I smiled to myself, knowing how after all these years the painting is as important to her, as it is to me. Forty-two years gone, and as much as she says she hates it, and everything it reminds her of, she’s never allowed me to sell it, or exhibit it. It’s as if the painting belongs to us, in our world, and ours alone. She still poses for me; in fact, the last time she posed naked for me was just a few years ago. But with all the different portraits I’ve painted of her over the years, it’s still the only painting that means as much to either one of us. She’ll always be just as beautiful to me now as she was in the painting. More than someone to be objectified, she’s someone for me to worship. There are no lines or wrinkles on her face— aside from the scars around her eyes worn smooth with time, and the discolouration of her skin that’s all but gone unnoticed as we’ve grown older together. Her once long hair with its flowing tresses is cut short now, the light auburn colour, tempered with grey.
“Oh, it was him,” I said. “But I don’t think he wanted to see me.”
“Why do you think that?”
She raised the spoon to her lips and tasted the broth. She reached out to the small shelf in front of her, feeling around for the salt; finding it, she poured a small amount into the palm of her hand and added it sparingly. I watch her patting her way across the counter, reaching for the breadknife and cutting what’s left of a loaf of bread.
“I suppose some things are better left unsaid,” I smiled.
I believe that, too. Eisner, George, Novak, everything that happened before and after the Allies arrived; everything that happened after we left Vienna to come here—all of it. We simply gloss over the past whenever someone asks us how we managed to survive those years. Were we collaborators during the war? Survivalists is a more apt description of the war and the in between years—the lean years I like to call them. Better left unsaid, I say.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” she says, “leaving something unsaid doesn’t seem right—especially if it’s someone like George.” She moved confidently—as she always does—standing in front of the dinner table while holding two spoons in her hands and staring into the emptiness as if someone lost. I sometimes wonder what she’s thinking about, or what she sees in her mind’s eye—but even if I think it might be the painting, or George, I don’t ask; I don’t want to get into anything like that right now.
Besides, I’d all but made up my mind.
“Let me help you,” I say, picking up the pot of stew along with two bowls and the cutting board with the loaf of leftover bread. I turn on the light for myself and help her with her chair at the table.
“Did you open the light?” she asks, and I smile at the simplicity of her words.
“I’ll help you clean up later,” I said, placing the bowl in front of her and helping her find it with her hands.
“There’s no need. I’ll be fine. I’m sure you have lots of work to do. Maybe I’ll come down later and watch?” she smiled. It brings a smile to my lips, the thought of having her there watching me, even though it wasn’t as much a question as it was a suggestion. She’d been doing that of late, spending her nights with me while I paint.
“You know you’re always more than welcome,” I said, climbing up onto my chair.
“Yes.” She leaves the word hanging, as if she were distracted and just said it for the sake of saying it.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She turned to look at me, following the sound of my voice and forcing a smile. “Nothing. I’m fine. Some things are better left unsaid, remember?”
I let out a sigh and started to eat my stew, not knowing what I should say, or do. Do I even want to know what’s wrong with her? It isn’t as if there’s been anything wrong over the course of the last week. I think maybe she’s thinking about everything that’s happened—me seeing George, the painting, her memories—and she’s trying to come to terms with the past as she remembers it. I suppose telling her I saw George didn’t help the situation; it may not have compounded it, but there was no need to remind her of it, was there? But again, that’s hindsight, isn’t it?
After I finished my stew, I went downstairs to my studio where I sat in the dark for a while. I do that sometimes, although I don’t tell her; it’s never dark enough to know what she goes through every day, but it’s enough to remind me that the darkness is always there for her. After a while, I turned the lights on and carefully rolled out my old canvas sheets, sorting through them in the soft light. I move everything aside to make room, finally looking down at the painting.
It’s as big as an Oriental carpet.
I’ve worked on it for years now—making small changes here and there that I’ve never told her about. I’ve made the background lighter. I painted Novak out the week after he blinded her, replacing him with Simon the Tailor from downstairs. I can’t really say if it was an homage to the forgotten Jew, or that it was an ominous foretelling of what the world had in store for Simon and his kind, because at the time he was just another face. The painting still has the small hole Novak punched into it with his small knife though, and I folded the canvas back against itself, pressing down on it. For some reason I can’t explain, I’ve never tried fixing the hole.
Constanza comes downstairs sometime later—I can hear her soft shoes scraping against the steps—and asks me what I’m doing. I tell her I’m still looking at my anonymous masterpiece.
“And which one is that?” She squats on the floor next to me, tilting her head to the side as she smiles.
“Why you, my darling. The Bashful Courtesan,” I say, reaching out for her hand.
“Do I still look as beautiful as I did back then?” she asked, and leaning forward, touched the painting with a light hand until she found the hole. She gently moved her fingers over the soft features of her torso.
To her, the hole is a reference point. With the practiced ease of endless years, she placed two hands widths on the canvas, and then moved one to the left, and there she is, her gossamer gown slipping off her shoulder and leaving her left breast exposed; both George and Simon the Tailor stand in front of her as Egyptian soldiers, informing her the Roman fleet is about to enter the harbour. The woman seated beside her is George’s princess—Novak’s sister-in-law—the only woman I felt at the time who could rival Stanza’s Cleopatra.
“Even more beautiful, my love,” I say, and picking up her hand, kiss it softly.
“Am I still your love?” she asked, looking at me, “or is that something better left unsaid as well?”
“I’ll never leave that unsaid.”
She smiled, and I watched as the light behind her face held it in a perfect silhouette for just that moment. Her soft features appeared trapped in the light—somehow lost in the shadows—as though she’d become a master print in time. There are no scars visible, and no facial discolouration, as at that moment, and at that time—just as at that brief fraction of time when the morning sun kisses the distant mountains—she’s the perfect portrait of the woman she would have become, and I think to myself, she looks angelic. For in that moment that I see the young woman she was peering around the corner of my door in Vienna, all those years ago.
