Love And Ashes
Paulson coughed and picked up the box full of treasures he’d promised to burn. He couldn’t help but smile. In his thirty year career as an English teacher, no one had ever thought to question the fact that he didn’t ever stay at a job for more than a year, or why he always chose girls-only schools. He’d been at Shilton Ladies for six months, and he already loved how safe he felt there. As with most private institutions, the richer the parents, the less interested they were in monitoring their daughter’s social lives; especially if they assumed their daughter’s weren’t their teacher’s type. After all, any single, good-looking man who loved poetry and didn’t get around in knee socks and shorts just HAD to be gay. It was no wonder he never got offers from any of the Catholic boy’s schools.
The painting he used to disguise the shelf in which he kept his treasure box was his second most prized possession. It had been in his family since 1949, and was a gift from the artist herself, a dying spinster whose house his mother used to clean. Paulson only met the woman twice, when he came to pick up his mother, but Clarissa was apparently so charmed by him that she had insisted the painting be his. His mother protested at the extravagence of the gift, so much so that Paulson only found out about it after cancer claimed her, but the note tucked in behind the frame made Clarissa’s wishes abundantly clear.
I cannot think of anyone alive who is more deserving of her.
“She” was called Love And Ashes, and the thing that enthralled Paulson so about her was the dark, empty maw where her face should have been. It communicated a truth that was common among most females, particularly the former owners of the contents of Paulson’s treasure box and Cindy, the young lady whose company he was eagerly anticipating today: they were all hungry. Fortunately, he knew how to feed them. His relationship with young Cindy was only in the preliminary stages right now, but he knew from the catch in her voice when she read aloud from Romeo And Juliet in class that she was one of those girls, one of those sweet, naive girls, who firmly believed that romance and tragedy went hand in hand. He couldn’t wait to introduce her to the painting and share the entire heartbreaking, completely fictitious origin story. Paulson looked out his bedroom window. There was no sign of Cindy yet, but if the past six months and, indeed, his life so far had proven anything, it was that Paulson had infinite patience.
There was that cough again.Worse this time.
He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He sipped slowly, fighting the urge to spit it out despite the bitter, acrid taste which had not been there yesterday. The boffins who introduced fluoride into Melbourne’s tap water the year before in an effort to improve dental health assured the public that it would not make the water any less palatable but to Paulson at that moment, it tasted like rancid wine. He drank, then refilled the glass and drained it again. It tasted no better than it had the first time, but he forced it down his throat regardless, then poured another and choked that down, too. The fourth, fifth, and sixth glasses went down even less smoothly and most of the eighth invaded his trachea. Paulson doubled over, head hung to the side, saliva spurting out of his nose and mouth like a hose with a kink in it.
Cindy opened her teacher’s front door after her knocking went unanswered and stepped into the hallway.
‘Mr. Paulson? Are you home?’
Cindy wasn’t sure she should be doing this. Mr. Paulson did tell her the door would be unlocked, but he hadn’t SPECIFICALLY told her to walk on in. Then again, he hadn’t told her NOT to. She checked her hair in the mirror on his hall table.
‘Mr. Paulson? Hello.’
She followed the sound of running water to the end of the hallway and stepped into the kitchen.
Martin Paulson was only too happy to donate the painting. The first thing he did after his poor, dear wife’s funeral was to get the accursed-looking thing out from under his house, a location that didn’t feel far enough away for Martin’s liking, and lump it on his son, Christopher. His opinion of it was not at all improved when he took it off the bedroom wall in Christopher’s house and discovered what it had been hiding. The fact that a fifteen-year-old student had been the one to discover the idiot’s bloated, indigo corpse had already given Martin pause, but the contents of the humble little cardboard box that was stored in the specially made recessed shelf confirmed his suspicion with vivid detail. He strolled into the second-hand store with the painting under his coat and pretended to browse until the woman behind the counter served a customer, then he walked to the back of the store where a cheaply-framed picture of Marguerite Daisies had pride of place and, after looking back over his shoulder to satisfy himself that the two women were still talking, he swapped the mundane for the insane and joined the queue to pay for his purchase.
When she finally did get around to serving him, the shopkeeper congratulated Martin on his excellent taste in home decor. Martin nodded his humble appreciation, paid, and walked out the door like his arse was on fire.
Calvin walked into the second-hand store ten minutes before closing, willfully ignoring the scathing judgement on the face of the woman behind the counter. He had to find something to please his boss and, more importantly, his boss’s bosses. Calvin had known about the charity auction the company was hosting for six months but only now had he begun to realise that finding something that fit the brief would not be the piece of piss he’d assumed it would be. He and Gabby had been friends since high school and so, when the business he’d spent ten years building up imploded, she didn’t hesitate to recommend him to her human resources department, despite Calvin’s complete lack of experience or even interest in insurance. Now that he was being considered for promotion, alongside people with at least eight years seniority on him, he had to bear the double burden of proving himself and saving Gabby’s reputation.
The theme of the fundraiser was Cheap Culture and every person in attendance, (at least every person who worked in the first five floors of the building), had to bring something that they bought for eighty dollars or less to be auctioned off for the company’s latest pet cause; this year it was hot and thirsty people, or cold and hungry people, something to that effect. Calvin had trawled antique stores to no avail, so it was either find something cool at this god-sponsored tea towel emporium or smoke himself hoarse and feign the flu.
He looked at the clock on the wall and saw that he now had six minutes, and the scariest thing in the whole place was still the hell hound behind the counter. Then he looked among the cheap biblical reprints and pictures of kittens and flowers and found HER. The scrawl in the bottom right corner said the artist's name was Clarissa, and Clarissa must've been something, alright. The painted lady wore a nineteen-forties style cream dress with pearl buttons adorning the shoulders, accessorised with pink and peach floral buns either side of her head made up of peonies, roses, poppies, and hydrangeas. Calvin was sure that she would be looking down upon him from her faux gold frame with a mixture of regalness and coy detachment, if she actually had a face. He took her to the counter and threw money at the shop keep.
‘That thing’s been here for twenty years,’ she said. ‘It’s like a boomerang.’
Calvin set the painting down on the floor against his wardrobe and, for the first time in months, allowed himself to relax. Unless one of the other suck-arses had the mummified corpse of King Tut stashed away in their garage, nothing was going to beat his girl. Calvin had to admit that, although he did not consider himself an arbiter of taste, there was something about the Clarissa he liked. Where others no doubt looked upon her as a quirky relic that turned out not to go well with their couch, Calvin saw raw honesty, which was a quality he found incredibly attractive considering it was at such a premium these days. He wondered whether the second-last store he’d visited still had the orange and black, hand blown glass vase he’d rejected on his lunch break, and put her up on the wall to see how he felt about it by tomorrow.
Calvin’s wife, Athena, was acting for all the world like she was fucking a strapping, twenty-five-year-old stud. She was so into it, in fact, that he was afraid one of his neighbours would report him. He held his hand against her mouth.
‘Keep it down, Babe.’
Athena slapped his hand away and ignored him, rocking back and forth and screaming louder and louder, as though Calvin was following up some stellar ice pick foreplay by torching her from the inside. He tried to muffle her with his hand again just as she threw her head back and belted out what sounded like the aria from Hell, half expecting her to bite him this time, (he might’ve appreciated it a little), but she didn’t. If Calvin didn’t know better, he’d swear he couldn’t feel a mouth at all.
Or his hand.
‘OOOOOOOOHHH!’
Athena propelled herself forward, growling like a bear.
A bear with no face.
‘I. AM. NOT. YOURS!’
Calvin recoiled, his screams and Clarissa’s growls joining in a dissonant harmony until he woke up tangled in his sheets and turned to his wife’s side of the bed to satisfy himself that he really had been having a nightmare.
‘Fuck,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t have a wife.’
He looked over at the painting, which hadn’t moved a milimetre from where he’d left it, and hoped it would be one of the brass knuckles on the top floor that won her.
Calvin watched the semi-swells half-heartedly battle it out for for ownership of the Clarissa, flailing their paddles about like the worst players on a remedial tennis team, and wondered at the sheer pointlessness of it all. The war refugees to whom the bash was dedicated, (who ironically would NEVER qualify for life insurance due to their citizenship status), would eventually get their money, but half of it would be eaten away in admin costs, including the six course menu their benefactors were currently enjoying, and the gold-rimmed plates on which the food was served. It seemed to Calvin that the true purpose of the evening was to award all the participants a tax break that they needed like a third nipple, and to provide a hunting ground for the CEO to bag his latest affair partner.
Speaking of Satan, thought Calvin.
The bidding had reached a crescendo when Murray Berger finally raised his paddle and silenced the room. Healthy competition was fine, but you NEVER outbid The Man.
‘Two-thousand, four-hundred and ninety-eight dollars,’ he boomed.
Gabby had told Calvin before the auction that Berger was famous for his refusal to use round numbers at these things and with this lumpy little dodecahedron of a figure, the boss-of-bosses had tripled the previous bid. Calvin didn’t know if, for some ungodly reason, the man was genuinely interested in the painting, nor did he care. The Clarissa’s new sugar daddy was welcome to her. Calvin went home to dream of Halle Berry.
Berger poured himself a cognac and supervised the delivery man hanging his acquisition. No one at work had any idea how long he’d been searching for this girl. Love And Ashes was thought to have been the final self-portrait completed by the artist before she died in nineteen-fifty, and its existence was nothing more than a rumour, until now. Illness, both physical and mental, were at the core of some of the greatest art of all time, and this crazy bitch was going to contribute very nicely to Berger’s retirement.
The delivery man stepped back and regarded the painting with a grimace. Berger grinned.
‘It’s the same with all women, Mate; the loonies give you more bang.’
‘Are you sure you want her here, in your bedroom?’
‘Yeah. Right where I can see her.’
Berger was on the phone to his insurance agent as soon as the delivery man’s car was out of sight.
‘I don’t give a fat frog’s arse what time it is, Dale. I want the best coverage I can buy, and if I don’t ask you now, you’ll forget tomorrow! Right-O. Give my love to the Mrs.’
He hung up.
‘Again.’
He plopped down on his Chesterfield sofa, swirled his cognac, and sized up the Clarissa from top to bottom.
‘You’re gonna make me very happy, Sweetheart.’
Berger woke up at a quarter-past seven and knocked the empty cognac bottle off the coffee table in his haste to get to the toilet. His prostate, which usually operated on union hours and as such called strikes often and at random, had inexplicably decided to put in a good performance. The pleasure of having his best bladder voiding in years was such that Berger dismissed his stiff, painful joints and worsening headache as a well-earned hangover until he ran the tap to wash his hands and happened to glance up at the three-sided bathroom mirror.
He was a Pollock canvas.
Hundreds of open ulcers congregated on his skin, grinning at him from their oozing, saw-toothed centres. He grabbed a spot on his left arm that seemed to have been spared and pinched, hard.
It hurt.
A lot.
Five minutes later, he was still standing before the mirror, waiting for the dream to reach its natural conclusion, and for the shooting pain in his arm to stop.
Shit. I didn’t pinch it that bloody hard.
He looked down at the arm.
Who pinched me?
Then it occurred to him there was a far more pressing concern.
Where am I?
The first thing he noticed upon leaving the building was how bright it was outside. The light assaulted his eyes and his head with devastating flash-bangs that made it almost impossible to navigate the strange terrain. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there, but he did know that his father was going to belt his arse raw if he was late home again. The old bastard was always threatening to kick him out when he turned fifteen, but Berger knew he wouldn’t hesitate to send him packing three years early with even the slightest provocation. A woman who was the image of his sister, Dotty, walked by, and he lunged.
‘TAKE ME HOME!’
Dotty screamed and shoved him away.
‘Rude bitch,’ Berger snarled, ‘you’re just jealous ‘cause Mum loves me more than YOU!’
He reached out and yanked her hair, coming away with a good fistful of it. That’d teach her. Sibling rivalry aside, though, there was still a far more crucial issue at hand.
‘Where’s my mummy?’
It hadn’t taken little Murray very long to figure out that he did not like this school business, and didn’t want any part of it. He’d intended to go down to the creek and look for tadpoles, but he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Also, he was really hot and his head hurt.
‘I’m sorry I ran away, Mummy.’
He stopped and grasped at his chest. He wished he hadn’t listened to his rotten brother and puffed on one of his dad’s cigars.
‘Where’s my mummy?’
The good people of this part of Brighton were not at all used to seeing ulcer-ridden vagrants staggering the streets, clawing at innocent citizens, and were outraged that a man his age could let his addictions get this far.
‘Mummy!’
Barry, the manager of the corner store where Berger bought his cigarettes saw the scene unfolding from half a block away and dropped his half-smoked Marlborough on the concrete.
‘No way.’
He ran back into the store and summoned his daughter.
‘Lucy! Run round the corner to the coppers and tell them to get here quick! Tell them who it is; that’ll make ‘em move!’
The two officers who appeared a few minutes later weren’t certain how to approach him. Sure, he was either drunk or insane, but he was still one of the richest men in Melbourne. Tackling him to the ground was out of the question, however tempting a prospect it might be.
‘MUMMY! I WANT MY MUMMY!’
The old prick was slowing down now. The senior constable had an idea. He nudged his partner.
‘Follow my lead and don’t ask questions.’
‘Murray? HEY, MURRAY!’
Berger turned and walked toward them. The senior constable smiled.
‘G’day, Mate! Your Mum’s been lookin’ everywhere for you.’
Berger’s eyes narrowed.
‘Are you playing a trick on me?’
The junior constable swallowed a hard lump of bile.
‘What are those sores all over him?’ He whispered. ‘What if he’s contagious?’
The senior constable spoke through clenched teeth.
‘Tell the shop manager to call for an ambulance, and get some rubber gloves!’
‘Are you taking me to Mummy in your police car?’
Berger scratched wildly at his molting head, then used one of his furry, peeling fingers to pick his nose. The senior constable did his best not to shudder.
‘Even better. We’re gonna let you ride in an ambulance!’
Berger’s face lit up.
‘With the lights flashing and the sirens on?’
‘You bet!’
‘TOPS!’
Berger beamed from ear to ear with the few teeth that were left in his head, and the policemen were feeling reasonably confident that they’d have him tranked and on his way to the Happy House for observation before the media got wind of things.
‘Hello,’ said one of the paramedics, walking toward them, ‘what’s happening, Fellas?’
‘We were just telling young Murray here that you’re gonna give him a lift. He’s real excited about the siren, aren’t you Mate?’ The senior constable nodded.
Berger froze.
‘And the lights,’ he frowned.
‘Shit,’ said the junior constable, ‘he’s getting younger by the minute. What if he chucks a tantrum?’
Berger eyed him.
‘Shut up,’ hissed the senior.
Berger noticed the rubber gloves and ran.
‘Don’t take me back to the no-face lady! I hate the no-face lady! I HATE THE NO-FACE LADY!’
He made it roughly two metres before his legs gave out. The policemen and the ambulance driver towered over him like demons waiting to escort him to Hell.
‘BLOODY IDIOTS!’ he boomed, himself again now. ‘Can’t you see my legs aren’t working?’
They appeared to have heard him, but he couldn’t hear them. Were they actually ignoring him?
‘I’ve got mates in the service! They’ll be hearing about this! Where the bloody hell did you go?’
They’d disappeared. Up and left him. That, or he couldn’t see them.
Matter of fact, he couldn’t see ANYTHING.
A pain shot up his left arm again, far surpassing the last. Did he really pinch himself that hard?
And why did his mouth taste like he’d gone down on a metallic whore?
And why was there wet cement in his lungs?
And why was his skin on fire?
And where was his mummy?
The big bosses finally opened the conference room door at ten-forty-three. Gabby took Calvin by the arm and practically dragged him to the break room.
‘Berger’s dead.’
‘What the fuck? How?’
Calvin was both anticipating and dreading the answer to this question.
‘They’re still trying to work it out. Heart attack or stroke or something. He was walking the streets in his jocks, screaming for his mummy! They’re saying he was stoned or pissed or both, but he was covered in sores, and he looked fine yesterday.’
Calvin shrugged.
‘As fine as he gets, anyway.’
Gabby smirked. ‘Yeah, well, it’s all over the news. The big knobs are in damage control mode. They think he might’ve been sick for a while, and the painting just pushed him over the edge.’
‘P…pardon?’
‘One of the cops said he tried to run off ‘cause he thought they were taking him back to the no-face lady. How hilarious is that? The old trouser snake dodges tax fraud, insider trading, and THOSE allegations, then this happens! The Teflon king, taken out by a PAINTING! Couldn’t you scream?’
Yes. Yes he could.
Owing to his status as a collector, and to the fact that none of his childless ex-wives would want a bar of anything he had to offer them in death that he didn’t already pay out when they left him, Berger’s estate sale attracted substantial interest. So much so that speakers, monitors, and extra seating were set up in the front courtyard of the auction house to accommodate. In under two hours, ninety-four antiques and sixty paintings were scooped up at record prices. The rarest painting on the catalogue, Love And Ashes, whose provenance and real name was only discovered thanks to a dedicated outside researcher, was not among them. When Calvin approached the auctioneer and enquired as to the Clarissa’s whereabouts, the auctioneer shook his head.
‘Gone to God. It was going to be the final lot, too.’
‘What happened?’
The auctioneer threw up his hands.
‘Wish I could tell you. I went into the back room an hour before showtime to inspect all the lots, make sure they’re all dusted and whatnot and there’s the Clarissa, undressing.’
‘Undressing. You mean…’
‘I mean stripping. Peeling off a layer at a time, starting with the gloves.’
‘How?’
‘Got me.’ He leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Thing is, we don’t keep solvents or caustic materials in that room, or anywhere in this building. We had our studio workers inventory our entire supply, and every single drop was accounted for.’
‘How?’
‘What you should be asking is Why.’
Clarissa stepped back from the canvas and tried to think of an accurate term for what she was seeing.
Start-Stop.
The hard letters were shaky bugs, trying to crawl away, and the soft letters were prostrate, rigid. Decades from now, someone would read this and bear retroactive witness to her pain.
And to THEIRS.
Clarissa stiffened and forced herself into a chair to wait for the stabbing, needle-sharp pains to stop again. Painting, walking, and standing were difficult tasks that she knew would become impossible soon enough, which was why it was so important that she finish this piece, even if she had to set up an easel by her bed. She thought of the women in England who almost a decade before had gathered in a forest and formed what they called the Cone of Power, using witchcraft to try to invade Hitler’s mind and curtail any designs he might’ve had on ravaging their motherland. Some argued that it was the Nazi’s own ineptness and poor planning that fumbled the job, but the witches knew better.
Clarissa agreed and although forests were in short supply in the inner-city suburbs of Melbourne, she knew that it was the intent of the spell rather than the location that really mattered, even though she had only been practicing since the symptoms started. She spent many an early morning, including her last, standing on her succulent and bonsai adorned terrace, willing every single karmic arrow in her quiver to aim true, feeling all the more justified knowing that had she shared any of this with anyone other than her cleaning woman, she would be living out the rest of her days in a sanitarium getting “Treatment” for syphilis-induced delirium, one of the few indignities the disease hadn’t inflicted upon her.
Maggie Paulson had seen Clarissa through two violent marriages, three abortions, several torrid affairs, and social and familial ostracism, but unwavering loyalty could not put a stopper on death, regardless of how much Maggie wished it could. She swept Clarissa’s bedroom floor, delicately maneuvering around the legs of the easel that stood next to the bed. Much as the sight of the painting troubled Maggie, it was Clarissa’s final contribution, her legacy, and was therefore a gift to the world, even if they didn’t necessarily deserve it.
‘Come sit, Maggie dear.’
Maggie rested her broom against a chest of drawers and sat on the side of the bed.
Clarissa smiled at her.
‘I can’t honestly say you’re the only person who’s ever understood me, but you are the one person who hasn’t taken advantage of what you’ve learned. You’re true blue, Maggie. One of a kind.’
‘Thank you, Mrs. Nilsen.’
Clarissa chuckled, coughed.
‘I will never for the life of me be able to fathom why you refuse to address me by my first name.’
‘You’re my employer. It just doesn’t seem…respectful.’
‘How about we pretend that I’m not? Let’s pretend we’re just two best friends who help each other. You keep my house in order and listen to all my troubles, and I furnish you with gossip, gifts, and the odd piece of sage advice. Could we do that? Just pretend from now on?’
Maggie thought about it.
‘Alright, Clarissa.’
Clarissa clapped her hands, then grimaced.
‘Damn pains. They’re almost intolerable now.’
She nodded at the painting.
‘She’s done. Time to give her a new home.’
‘Give? You’re not selling it?’
‘Her, and no; I won’t be needing money where I’m going. She’s entirely too special to be exchanged for something as common as money, anyhow. I want her to go where she’s most needed and deserved.’
Clarissa sipped her lukewarm tea and let the idea marinate in Maggie’s head a while before she broached the subject again, in a manner that made it seem like she was changing it altogether.
‘How’s your boy these days? Job going well?’
Maggie’s expression took on the mixture of pride and crestfallen despair it wore whenever someone mentioned Christopher.
‘Oh, very well, very well. He’s still teaching form three English. His students just love him. He’s so devoted and passionate.’
I’ll just bet he is. Thought Clarissa. She’d met Christopher on a couple of occasions and had to admit to herself that she initially found him to be quite a winning creature. The velvet black hair, the piercing green eyes, the perfect smile; his physical attributes alone were enough to reel in any swoony, unsuspecting girl, but when you added his understanding of poetry and gothic literature, and his willingness to blur professional and personal boundaries by giving his prettier students rides home and extra-curricular ‘Excursions,’ the poor things might as well just have donned handcuffs and delivered themselves to him, gift wrapped. Clarissa would sooner drink poison than break Maggie’s heart by voicing any of this, but she knew Christopher’s kind.
She’d married it.
Clarissa’s art teacher didn’t quite have Christopher’s physical advantages, but he did know how to summon a vulnerable child with a smile, and how to encourage the interests that her parents and other teachers said were useless. He also knew that there were things one’s parents didn’t discuss with their kids, a fact as true today as it was then.
‘I would like to give the painting to Christopher.’
Maggie somehow managed to look both thrilled and appalled.
‘Oh! Oh, I couldn’t…let you…I mean, you’ve already been so wonderful.’
‘I know you think the world of that boy, and I know you worry about him, too.’
Maggie thought about the number of loans her husband didn’t know about.
‘Yes.’
Clarissa took Maggie’s hand.
‘I guarantee this painting will set him up.’
Along with any other bottom-feeding, disease-spreading rogue it comes into contact with.
‘How many other Clarissa paintings are there?’
‘Forty-three,’ said the auctioneer.
Calvin’s left eyebrow twitched.
‘Is there a way to trace their whereabouts?’
‘Yes, but they’ve changed hands several times, and they’re spread all over North America, England, Africa and Asia. Most of the owners I’ve been able to track down so far have been men, interestingly enough.’
Calvin read the inscription again.
HE WHO GIVES ONLY PAIN IS DOOMED TO RECEIVE IT IN ABUNDANCE.
‘Just out of curiousity,’ said Calvin, ‘how many of those men are still alive?’