The Color of Light (3 page)

She touched his arm. “My poor Raphael. You suffer so beautifully.” Taking his face in her long, pale, manicured hands, she kissed him avariciously on the mouth, undulating her voluptuous body against his chest. It took him a moment to respond, but he did, reluctantly.

“Come.” Anastasia’s warm words poured over him. “Let us go to this opening, and we will drink horrid white wine, and we will make polite, boring conversation, and then we will sneak out and grab something for dinner and forget all about these…
feelings.”

The arch at Washington Square Park loomed suddenly before them, lighted for the evening, abruptly invoking Paris. They were at Eighth Street now. There was still an orange glow behind the buildings on Sixth Avenue, but over his head, and to the east, stretched night. “Let me off here,” he said, and got out.

The window hummed down. ”Leo will be so disappointed,” she said, and slipped her dark glasses back on. The limo pulled away from the curb, leaving him alone under the arch.

Washington Square was almost deserted at night. Lights were coming on in the windows of the brownstones and apartment buildings surrounding the park, making it seem colder and darker by contrast. A couple of brave souls, ex-cons, or refugees of Soviet Russia, afraid of nothing, were still playing chess at the concrete tables in the southwest corner. A boy and a girl, NYU students, made slow circles on the swings in the playground.

“If you perform an altruistic act that benefits you as well,” the girl was saying urgently, “is it still altruism?”

He thrust his hands in his pockets, turned under the coffered arch, followed the walkway to the dry fountain at the heart of the park.

Legend had it that there was an old hanging tree somewhere on the grounds. Bodies of the victims of the Great 1849 cholera epidemic lay buried under its grass. The strumming of a faraway guitar wafted by on a breeze, as did a smoky, herbaceous whiff of marijuana. Shadowy figures moved in the golden windows of the brownstones and apartments and NYU dorm rooms all around him, preparing dinner, dressing to go out, or
to study, or go to work. To fight, or to make love, or perhaps only to buy groceries.

“Sess, sess,” muttered a dealer lingering near the fountain. Autumn’s first fallen leaves swirled around Rafe’s Italian leather loafers as he passed. He slowed to watch a lone artist packing up his gear, folding up the workings of a French easel as complicated as an origami swan.

He’d been this way for more than half a century now. Though technically, at eighty-three he was a year older than Leo, he had stopped aging at thirty, the year he drew his last breath on the cold paving stones of a narrow London alley.

For fifty-three years he’d been apart from the world, a world whose pursuits and desires pushed on all around him. He would never know the breathless excitement of courtship and marriage, the milestones of a career, fatherhood, a child’s tottering first steps, birthday parties with piñatas and clowns, gray hairs, grandchildren, retirement, the headlong rush towards mortality.

For him, there had been other, darker milestones. His own death. The unlucky soul who had served as his first meal. Europe in the 1940s, awash with blood. Sofia.

Sofia Wizotsky, with her black curling hair and her black fiery eyes. Translucent skin the color of skim milk. Red red lips turned up to kiss him, to beat back the darkness in the cattle car. Isaiah’s soft round cheek pressed to his face, so light in his arms.

He stopped, brought his hand to his cheek as if he could still feel it there. A torrent of grief welled up inside him, roiled into his throat, burst out in an anguished cry under the yellow moon.

“Sess?” the dealer repeated dubiously.

With a roar of rage, Rafe bounded over a bench, buried his fangs in his throat. The dealer got off one strangulated bellow before being struck to the ground.

He was a big man, and strong, but still Rafe held him down with ease, ferociously took what he wanted. When he’d finished, he staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth. The magnitude of what he’d done hit him with full force. Washington Square Park, for God’s sake. Why not Times Square? It would be on the cover of the
New York Post
by morning, though the
Times
would probably bury it in the Metro Section.

Behind him, the dealer began shaking uncontrollably, going into shock. If he didn’t receive emergency medical attention, he would die.

Rafe dragged him to a grassy area under a tree, stripped off his overcoat, laid it over the shuddering body. And then he fled into the warm night, cursing himself for letting his passions overtake his reason, stopping only long enough to put in a quick 911 call at a pay phone on Fourth Avenue.

2

N
o, that’s not right,” said Turner from behind.

He put his hand out for the brush. Tessa stepped away from her easel. It was late afternoon in fall, the last class of the day, and the room was already dark. The only light came from the lamp focused on the model.

“You got into the details too quickly. Remember; get the big shapes right first; big lights, big darks.” His hand moved quickly and surely, wiping out the details she had spent all afternoon creating. Using her brush, he glazed over the dark areas, eliding them with the shadow under the model.

The effect was magical. A man’s torso emerged from the shadows on the canvas. The instructor handed back her brush and moved on to the next student. Tessa saw Portia’s body go rigid; she hated when teachers worked on her paintings.

“You’ve got the big lights and darks down,” he was saying to her, “but you’re going to have to put in details some day.” He put his hand out for the brush.

Tessa smiled to herself, wiped her brush clean on a rag. She wasn’t going to be doing anything more on her painting today, she might as well start cleaning up. She was supposed to meet Lucian at his loft at seven. If she hurried, she would still have time to wash the turpentine aroma out of her hair.

This was her favorite time of day. Something about the painting studio at dusk put a damper on conversation, invoked a reverential silence. The dark gathering in the corners made the room feel like a cave, as if they were primitives painting in Lascaux, perhaps an austere order of monks creating art for cathedrals.

From somewhere in the dark, Turner said, “All right, that’s it. Everybody bring your paintings to the front. Would someone hit the lights?”

They blinked like raccoons caught in car headlamps. The model stepped down from the stand, pulled on his robe, went off into a corner to change.

Turner strolled slowly past their canvases, considering each one. He stopped in front of a figure made from dirty oranges, taffy browns, olive greens, subdued purples.

“Wow,” he said. “DJ, right? Look at the way he planted the feet on the floor plane. Feel the weight of that. And look at the way he painted the light, from the top of the head, all the way down to the shadow on the model stand. It’s just right, in color, tone, hue and value. Nice work, DJ, can I borrow it? I want to put it in the display case. Okay, everybody, see you on Friday.”

Now came the clatter of palettes being scraped down, easels being pushed apart to make room to pass, the rattle of brushes being dumped in the sink for washing, the sound of water running through antiquated pipes.

“We should just work on the same canvas,” Portia said in a low voice as she stirred her brushes in turpentine. “I’ll do the big lights and the big darks, and you can come in for the details.”

“He still wouldn’t like it,” said Tessa as she retrieved the damask fabric swathing the stage. “We’re not boys.”

“Hey. He doesn’t like my work either, and I’m a boy,” said David, on the other side of Portia.

“Yes, well, he feels threatened by you.” Portia said kindly. “You’re better at color than he’ll ever be. He finds that intimidating.”

“He never says anything nice about my paintings, either,” offered Ben, behind Tessa. “I think maybe it’s a racial thing.” His umber skin glistened under the fluorescent lights.

“I think maybe it’s a sculptor thing. No one expects you to be able to hold a brush.”

“He likes my paintings,” said Gracie breezily. “Look. I really nailed the color of the penis this time.”

DJ, sitting in front of them doodling a head, giggled. “You said ‘nailed.’” Gracie picked up her art case and her canvas and went to sit next to him.

“Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?” said David. “You should know. You’re her roommate.”

“I am not her roommate,” said Tessa pointedly. “We share a space. And yes, she does. His name is Nick. Nicky. Nicky-boy. Nick-arino. He’s from Queens, he does car detailing, drives a ‘67 Dodge Camaro. He’s currently appearing naked on the wall of my studio, if you want to know more.”

“Hey, did you hear? There was an attack in Washington Square Park last night.” Portia’s eyes went big and round. She’d just moved from Boston to New York.

“Wow,” said Tessa. “That’s, like, a block away from your apartment.”

David’s eyes were on his brushes. “Say, Tessa. What are you doing later?”

Portia brightened. “Yes, we’re going out for Indian food, as long as David walks me home. Why don’t you join us?”

“I can’t, I’m meeting Lucian after this.”

There was a silence as Portia wiped her brushes clean on paper towels, and David busied himself rubbing his palette down with mineral spirits.

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Portia.

“The guy’s a jerk,” said David.

“What do you mean?” Tessa said uneasily.

“Nothing.”
Portia glared at David. “See you tomorrow. But if you change your mind, we’ll be at Madras Palace.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Tessa tried to catch David’s eye, but he was concentrating on getting every last trace of paint off of his palette.

“No. Have fun.” he said shortly. His knife made a horrible screeching sound as it scraped on the glass.

“He’s just jealous,” Portia said soothingly. “Have a great time tonight.”

Tessa took her paint box in one hand, her wet canvas in the other, and headed out into the hall. She stopped to look at the new paintings in the display case, then went on to the office, where she dropped off the space heaters and the drapes. Having discharged her monitorial duties for the evening, she went through the fire door that led to the stairway.

It came to her, as she ran lightly up the steps, that she was completely happy. She realized, also, that she had never felt this way before, had never been completely happy in her entire life.

The exact moment Tessa knew she was an artist was a memory crystallized like one of those prehistoric insects preserved in a drop of amber. She’d been sitting on the kitchen floor of her parents’ house, begging her mother for a pony.

“She wants a pony?” said her grandmother, having a cup of tea at the kitchen table. “I’ll giff her a pony.” After a few fluid strokes with a plain yellow pencil, she’d handed her a stallion with a flowing mane. Which Tessa had, at the age of four, copied perfectly in every detail.

There were lessons, the same lessons given to many little girls whose mothers think they have talent. But Tessa was not like other little girls. From the moment she could draw, she was concerned with unusual details, like getting the light right as it played across the features of a face. Her drawings and paintings had an air of loneliness to them, disquieting in the work of a child. Viewing a velvety black-and-white charcoal rendering of a girl looking out of an empty window, one of her teachers wondered aloud how a seven-year-old girl came to make such mournful drawings, then thought the better of asking a child such questions, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Her grandfather, and by extension, her father’s side of the family, viewed the pursuit of art as the worst kind of foolishness, an assault on morality. There had been a real war when she decided to go to art school. Her family valued marriage and children above all else.
Narishkeit!
her grandfather had thundered.
Nakkeda nekayvas!

Foolishness and naked ladies. Her mother rolled her eyes, made her swear not to tell anybody.

“Loosen up,” was the advice she heard most often from her instructors. “Have fun with it.” But Tessa didn’t want to loosen up. She had a gift; she could draw anything that was put in front of her. What she wanted was technique. She wanted to paint like a Renaissance old master. She wanted to know what color Titian tinted his canvas before he started working on it. She wanted to know what colors Caravaggio mixed to make his lights. She wanted to know exactly which pigments Rubens utilized to
achieve those juicy flesh tones, what brown Rembrandt used in his shadows, what combination of oils and resins went into Vermeer’s painting medium. She wanted someone to show her how to make Raphael’s line and Michelangelo’s muscle masses. She wanted to know what made a good composition, and what made a bad one. She wanted to
know.

After six months in the prestigious graduate program at Parsons School of Design, Tessa knew she didn’t belong. Her fellow students were strewing dirt and found objects in corners of rooms; she wanted to paint the human figure. Seeking to transfer, she made the rounds of local art schools. One after another, their admissions counselors stared at her blankly as she explained what she was hoping to find. They had floors devoted to video and computer departments, but only the most rudimentary instruction in craft. The admissions guy at Yale actually laughed, adding snarkily that if she were looking for a school that was mired in the past, she should look up the American Academy.

So she did.

She’d stood for a moment before the glass-fronted entrance on Lafayette Street, afraid to go in, afraid to be disappointed again. A banner billowing in the cold March wind advertised that she was at the American Academy of Classical Art. A painting was on display in a case in the window that she took to be a Madonna and Child by Raphael. A small plaque nested next to it identified the artist as Josephine Whitby, one of the professors.

That year, the artists’ studios were still in the basement, reachable only by freight elevator. The doors slid open on what looked like an entire floor of drying laundry; curtains zigzagging every which way, rigged precariously on clotheslines. She stood still for a moment, warily contemplating the sight; the other schools she had visited had pristine white walls, natural light from many windows, state of the art ventilation systems, well-lit studios arranged around open central areas with couches and plants. This was more like a shelter built by the homeless under a bridge.