Behind the Canvas (5 page)

“Haarlem, in the Netherlands. That's where I lived before it all. My father died when I was young, and I lived alone with my mother in our small home. We never had much. She was a washerwoman. Laundry. But our home did hold one magnificent possession: a painting, created by a friend of my father and given to him long before his death.

“The painting was a large but simple landscape—snowy fields and sleeping trees outside of Haarlem during the winter. My eyes and my fingers memorized that painting. How it used color, the detail of the tiny brushstrokes, the texture that the canvas added to places where the paint was thin. I wondered how something so marvelous could be created by the human hand. I wanted to find out. I wanted to create something myself.

“When I was eleven, my mother encountered my father's friend, the artist, on the streets of Haarlem. They spoke of my father, and then of me. She told him how I adored his painting, and about my ambitions to learn how to paint. Johannes Verspronck
5
—the painter—told her to send me to his workshop the following week. I went, and Master Verspronck put me to work mixing colors and preparing canvases. He must have seen some promise in me, because he took me on as an apprentice, even though I was younger than most. This was before Master Verspronck became famous, but noblemen still hired him to paint their portraits. I helped him during those visits as he captured their images on canvas.”

Pim began pacing slowly back and forth in his painting, as though he were telling the story more to himself than to the others in the room.

“I apprenticed with Master Verspronck for more than a year. At that time he received a request to paint the portrait of a lady. Dame Nee Gezicht, a beautiful and wealthy woman, but also a strange one. She lived in a dark manor on the edge of the city and was rarely seen in the streets. That was how the people of Haarlem preferred it. People whispered about her in the shadows. They said she was a witch with mischievous and dark magic, who spoke only in mumbled poetry. They said she had traded her left eye for power from the devil. And I believed every breath of rumor. But she promised Master Verspronck an impressive commission, and he agreed to the assignment.”

Claudia squirmed at the description of Nee Gezicht and folded her arms tight across her chest.

“Unlike the estates to the north, the landscape at Nee Gezicht's manor was barren, without flowers or trees. But behind her manor stood row after row of tall, bushy tomato vines. She posed for the painting in front of those vines. When I first saw her, I didn't think she looked like a witch. Fine, modern clothes and a young face, with soft skin and rosy cheeks. She wore an embroidered patch over her left eye, but she was beautiful—certainly not the withered black creature I expected.

“Yet her smile was empty. And when she turned to look into my eyes—her watery, piercing eye locking with mine—the toes in my shoes grew cold. I knew I needed to tread very lightly in her presence, if only so she wouldn't look at me.

“We returned several times to create her portrait. She posed with the wooden staff she fancied and a bowl of tomatoes. A bowl of wretched tomatoes.”

Pim stopped there for a moment. He seemed to struggle with some difficult thought. His jaw trembled, and his face flushed. Finally he looked up and cleared his throat. “On our last visit, Master Verspronck was to put the finishing touches on the portrait. I was anxious to be done with that place and that creature. As with the other visits, we arrived early to arrange the scene and prepare the paints.

“I mixed the paints on a stoneware plate, using fine colored powders and drops of linseed oil. Burnt umber and vine black, I remember the colors. I mixed them with two palette knives, the plate in my lap. A little more powder. Then a few more drops of oil. But a cry from Master Verspronck broke my concentration.

“He had already set up the easel and the painting, with a bedsheet over it for protection. But now he was frantically rummaging through the boxes. ‘My badger brush, Pim, tell me you brought my badger brush!'

“‘But, Master, you took it from the box yourself only yesterday.'

“Master Verspronck rubbed his eyes and cursed under his breath. ‘I shall need to fetch it.'

“I offered to go with him, though I wasn't trying to be helpful. Master Verspronck told me to stay and finish the preparations, that he wouldn't be long. He hurried back on the road we had just taken out of the city. I continued the preparations, slowly, to give my master time, but now my hands trembled as the knives rose and fell. I was scared to be alone in that place.”

Pim paused, and Claudia couldn't help but urge him to continue. “And Verspronck? Did he get back before the witch arrived?”

“He hadn't returned by the time I finished mixing the paints. The sun was still mounting the sky, and I kept glancing at the road. But it was quiet, and so was the house. The scene still needed to be set, so I walked to the stairs leading up to the back porch.

“At the top of the stairs I found the chair and small table we had used on previous visits. I hauled the oak chair down the stairs and placed it in front of the tomato vines, directly over the stone we had left there to mark its position. Then I climbed the stairs once more and picked up the small table … and froze.

“I had never stood so close to Nee Gezicht. She was just a few feet from me in the doorway. I remember even now how she looked, tall and imposing, dressed in a regal gown. A string of black pearls adorned her neck, and a blond braid trailed down each side of her head. In one arm she held the large bowl of deep red tomatoes; the other hand held the gnarled staff.”

Granny Custos had listened up to this point with her eyes closed, chewing on the stem of her pipe. But now she opened her eyes and sat forward and inch or two.

“I bowed my head and murmured a greeting,” Pim continued. “She just kept staring at me with her one eye. She finally spoke in her usual odd manner, as though reciting poetry. ‘The morning came; it goes much faster. Tell me, boy, where is thy master?'

“I told her and held completely still until she finally passed me to descend the stairs. Then I rushed over to place the table next to the chair as she prepared herself to sit. I took the bowl of tomatoes from her hands—so careful not to touch her white fingers—and placed it on the table. Nee Gezicht sat and arranged her gown.

“I backed away and looked down the road again, willing Master Verspronck to appear. But there was no sign of him. I could only wait. I knelt by the wooden supply boxes and pretended to busy myself by picking up the plate of mixed paints and flicking away a few dry specks of powder. I was terrified of what might happen if Master Verspronck didn't return soon.

“At that moment, as Nee Gezicht fussed with her dress, her elbow struck the bowl of tomatoes and it crashed to the ground. I leaped up to help but immediately slipped on several tomatoes. As I fell, the plate of paint flew out of my hands.

“I landed facedown in the dirt and heard the wet rustle of taffeta. I couldn't breathe. Finally I looked up and saw the plate lying upside down in the witch's lap. Paint was smeared across her gown.

“She didn't move. It hurt to look into her fiery eye, but I had glanced into it and couldn't break her gaze. I tried to speak, apologize, offer to help, but only a soft whine came from my lips. Nee Gezicht started to mumble, words I couldn't understand and knew I didn't want to. Finally she blinked, and I dropped my eyes to the ground.

“I felt ill. I scrambled to my feet and swooned. But
home
was the only thought on my mind. I needed the safety of home. I bowed slightly to the witch, for witch she was. ‘I am sorry,' I whispered, and then staggered off. I didn't follow the road to the city but cut across fields and through the undergrowth. I stumbled with every other step. My skin burned and felt clammy. I knew a fever had taken me. My vision clouded, as though looking through a dirty telescope. Finally, though I don't know how, I arrived at our home at the edge of the city.

“I staggered through the door. My mother was out delivering laundry in the city. I collapsed on a bed in the corner, underneath Verspronck's painting of the snowy fields. And there, shivering and skin burning, I left this world.”

Claudia gasped. “The witch cursed you?”

Pim nodded. “By the time my mother came home the sun was already dipping below the horizon. The door was open. The blanket on my bed was empty and tangled. My mother entered and frowned. She turned her head back to the door and called for me.

“‘Mother,' I shouted. She whirled and looked frantically around the room. Then her eyes crossed the painting that hung innocently on the wall, and she screamed.

“There I was, with tears on my cheeks, staring at her from inside the painting. I suppose I must have seemed desperately out of place in that calm, snowy canvas.”

The warm glow permeating the dining room moments before seemed to have dimmed. Granny Custos continued to chew on the stem of her pipe, eyes narrowed and glued on Pim.

Claudia took a deep breath. “Whoa. All because of a little paint on her dress.” The story made her heart hurt. So cruel—and so long ago. And a
witch
. If Claudia had heard this story weeks before, she would have rolled her eyes at the fairy tale. But now, looking at her friend trapped within the picture frame, just the thought of someone working magic like this made her hair stand on end.

“Indeed,” Pim said. “It was a steep price to pay.”

“An arduous place to be for so long, the world behind the canvas,” said Granny Custos. “Do your eyes yearn for sleep?”

Pim's eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Always.”

“And your stomach—teased by bread that doesn't fill?”

He placed a hand on his belly. “Yes,” he said softly.

“And your mind,” continued Granny Custos, “pulled like a piece of dough by time that never passes?”

Pim stared at the old lady and nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Claudia said. “Do you mean that you don't sleep in that world? You've been awake for almost four hundred years?”

“Paint and canvas his body became on that day,” answered Granny Custos. “But his soul never forgets the flesh. Sleep will not come to him in such a place. Hunger will not be satiated. Time passes and yet doesn't. Weariness and pain are all that are afforded you. A wonder it is that his mind has not wandered and left him entirely. A wonder indeed.”

Pim's eyes studied the table.

Claudia tried to imagine what it would be like not to sleep for hundreds of years. Or to always be hungry. She looked to Granny Custos. “How do you know so much about that place? Have you been there?”

The old woman smiled a secretive smile and turned back to Pim.

“What is your greatest desire, boy?” Granny Custos asked.

“To leave this painted prison. To escape.”

“And what would you risk for it? Your body? Your existence?” Granny Custos shot a glance toward Claudia. “Your friends?”

“My body was stolen centuries ago,” Pim replied. “My existence is only misery. My friends…” He, too, looked at Claudia. “I have but one. And, no, I wouldn't risk her.”

Claudia's heart skipped a beat and she felt her cheeks turning pink. She didn't like the way they were discussing risking bodies and existence, but Pim had called her his
friend
. One he wouldn't trade for anything. Even freedom.

In the silence that followed, Claudia took a breath and then asked Granny Custos, “Do you know how to set Pim free? Because if you do, and if I can help, I will. I mean, I don't have any special skills or anything, but I'll do whatever I can to get him out of there.”

The chocolate eyes of Granny Custos were suddenly lost in a nest of wrinkles as she grinned and let out a cackle of laughter. At first Claudia thought the old woman was laughing at her pitiful offer to help. But as Granny Custos pushed back her chair and rose carefully to her feet, she patted Claudia on the shoulder and muttered, “Good, good, good.”

Granny Custos padded through the kitchen doorway. Her voice trailed back with the sounds of bottles and dishes and rustling paper. “There are many ways to enter the world behind the canvas. But fewer ways to exit. And when a person enters with a curse…” She made a clicking sound in her cheek.

Finally she reemerged from the kitchen, hefting a serving tray laden with tins, bottles, bowls, and a dozen other items. It looked like she was getting ready to make soup or a salad dressing or—

Claudia felt a tingling in her fingertips, just as when she had turned over the painting that faced her bedroom wall. “You do know, don't you, Granny Custos? You know how to get Pim out of there.”

“
Naturalmente
,” the woman replied. “Of course. Of course.” She turned to Claudia with yet another secretive smile. “Who do you think created the world behind the canvas? Built it up? Raised it from the ground?” She leaned in close, poking Claudia with her pipe stem. “Granny Custos, that's who.”

 

C
HAPTER
6

F
OR A
moment, the room was silent, except for
clicks
and
tinks
as Granny Custos unloaded her tray.

“What do you mean you created the world behind the canvas?” Claudia asked. “That's impossible. Pim's lived there for hundreds of years.”

Granny Custos shot her a warning glance with one squinty eye. “Not old enough for you, am I? I was mixing colors and dabbing palettes when his mother was a
bambina
.” She gestured at Pim, who stared at her with wide eyes. “Speaking of colors…” She looked around at her collection on the table, harrumphed, and then turned the corner of the dining room. She was back in a moment with a long wooden case in her hands and a book half tucked into her shawl. She unfolded a sheet of aged but blank white paper and placed it on the table in front of Claudia with the wooden case.