Paula Goodlett - Grantville Gazette 46

Grantville, May 1636

Daniel Block stretched his aching back, then tilted his canvas to capture more of the fading light of the evening. The reddish hue changed the colors on his palette, giving Fraulein Barnes's pale arms and shoulders an orange tint that he found most intriguing. Painting outdoors had much to offer, though he worried the colors of his final work would be off. But then, the painting would seem odd to down-timers anyway. Even many of these up-time folk seemed tied to tradition when it came to art. Perhaps , he thought, my coming to Grantville will help change -

"Block!"

Daniel jumped, turning to see Warner Barnes waving as he entered the yard from the back door. " Ach, scheisse ," Daniel hissed. He spun, wide-eyed, looking for the canvas drape he used to cover paintings between sessions, only to remember laughing earlier as his five-year-old, Benjamin, had wrapped the cloth around his shoulders like a cape and swooped through the yard, shouting, "I'm Superman, Superman! Fly like the birds!" while his young friend Stefan Weiss cheered him on. It had been so utterly charming, but now- " Scheisse ."

The painting wasn't ready.

Barnes stumbled to a halt a few feet away from the painting, his mouth gaping and his face going a sickly-white. "That-that-that," he said, raising his hand to point, "That is not -you didn't. Dear God in heaven, man, I trusted you. A master painter, Clyde said, and you-you- bastard!" Warner kicked at Daniel's easel, knocking the painting face-first onto the ground, stomping on the back of the canvas, howling in rage. "You have violated her-violated my daughter !"

Daniel gaped in horror, frozen, thinking only of the still-wet paint smearing in the dirt-all his work, all his hopes and dreams. .

"Please, Herr Barnes," Daniel said, holding up his hands, "let me explain. I wanted to portray your daughter similar to the way Picasso would have in his later work, you see, showing multiple viewpoints of her at once. But, you know, I'm no Picasso." He shrugged. "At least not yet. I realized that trying to create a painting that bold too soon would be a disservice to you and your daughter. So, I thought I'd throw in a little of the current tradition, coupled with a touch of Surrealism, and-"

"I don't give a damn what you thought you'd do," Barnes said, a thick vein pulsing across his darkening forehead. "I paid you good money to paint a proper portrait of my little girl. I'll be damned if I'm going to let this trash see the light of day-and I will see to it that you never paint another of this town's decent young ladies. You filthy, disgusting, sorry son of a-" Barnes stepped forward, arm raised and fist clenched, ready to take a turn at pummeling the artist himself.

Daniel-finally recognizing the danger-armed himself with a nearby folding chair.

Barnes knocked the chair away, grabbed Daniel's sweater, and drew his fist back to deliver a crushing blow.

Stefan's mother, Nina Weiss-housekeeper and companion of Daniel's host, Ella Lou Rice-came barreling through the rear door, shouting, " Nein, nein , you must not, Herr Barnes! There will be no fighting here! Frau Rice is sleeping and is not well today. You must stop, I beg you!"

Both men halted in place as Nina bustled up to them.

She took hold of Barnes' raised arm and pulled it down, patting it soothingly. "You do not wish to cause trouble for Frau Rice, surely. Do you want to wake her when she is not well? Herr Rice would be most upset." She turned him, pulled him gently by the arm, and he went with her, a bewildered look on his face.

"But I-but he-that painting!"

" Ja, ja , Herr Barnes. You do not like it," she said, nodding her head sympathetically. "I said as much to Herr Block myself yesterday, but he is most taken with these new up-time art forms. Very modern, very advanced. We do not understand them, I think, you and I." She patted his arm.

"We're not finished here, Block," Barnes said as Nina led him into the house and out of sight. "Not finished at all!"

Stunned, Daniel turned to survey the wreckage of his work. He did not fully understand these "modern" art styles himself, he acknowledged, as he turned the painting onto its back. He grimaced at the smears of green paint that ran across Mikayla Barnes's distorted profile, marred her bare, round breasts and belly, and dotted the pale background. Her cobalt hair, which had flown upward, transforming into undulating birds, was dotted with dirt and gravel. Worst of all was a nearly foot-long rip separating her bare legs from the purple boulder upon which she was draped.

He had envisioned a sort of Picasso-esque Andromeda, with the saturated, golden palette of Gaugin's Tahiti paintings. Fraulein Barnes lay sprawled on the rocks, chained, waiting to be freed from her bonds by a transformed, heroic sea monster. It had been unlike anything he could have imagined before his studies at the Grantville library. It was to be the first step in a grand project to make a mark-a lasting one, this time-on the art world. But it was gone now. Destroyed.

Worst of all, Barnes could very well be right. Maybe it was a desecration-of both his own talents and Fraulein Barnes. Maybe he was a fool to experiment with art movements that had been-would be-hundreds of years in the making. Even Daniel's wife Sofia had urged him to start more slowly: experiment with light, she said, or study the anatomy books. Learn to paint those magnificent horses that George Stubbs would bring to life in 130 years-or even explore the blends of Realism and Impressionism of Manet and Renoir. But Daniel had rejected that out of hand as too easy-too likely to leave him, as now, out of the history books altogether. No, he must do something bold, something dramatic, something. .

But now? He did not know what do to.

He sank into the folding chair that stood nearby, dropped his head into his hands, and wallowed in deepest misery for several minutes.

Nina soon bustled out of the house again, tsk ing and scolding. "Up, up!" she said. "It will be dark in a few hours, and you must put your things away."

Obediently, woodenly, Daniel stood and worked with Nina to gather his jars of paint and his brushes. They must all be cleaned, the jars properly sealed, his sketches put away, and so on. His materials were expensive and difficult to find at times. He must not waste them.

After a moment, Nina said coolly, nodding at the enraged Barnes as he disappeared down the street, "That one will cause trouble."

Daniel grunted. He had no doubt of that.

"I called Herr Rice. He will come."

Daniel stopped, startled. "But surely he won't want to get involved in all this. ."

"Come, come," Nina said, ignoring his question. "Clean your brushes. Do you wish to save the canvas?"

Daniel shrugged, and Nina picked it up and carried it to the shed where gardening equipment was kept. He let her go. He could move it from there later or burn it. Or maybe study it some more to see where he went wrong. If he had gone wrong.

He shook his head angrily. Damn these new styles of art, and damn the art books that bore no trace of his existence. Elaine O'Meara, an up-time art teacher and historian who had helped him scour the town's library and even her own book collection for a single mention of his work, had tried to tell him gently that the books brought through the Ring of Fire were far from thorough or complete, that other libraries up-time would have far more detailed histories-that he would, surely, be discussed in depth in some of those books. There might, perhaps, even be whole volumes dedicated to his work and his influence.