Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

Izzy studied him for a long moment, looking for some telltale sign that he was putting her on, but his features were absolutely serious.

“You ... you’re talking about more than making paintings,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

Rushkin placed a stubby finger against the center of her brow. “Finally you begin to open your eyes and actually see.”

“But—”

“Enough of this chatting,” Rushkin said. He stood up and smoothed his smock. “There is work to do.

I believe your friend Sprech has requested more paintings from you?”

“Yes, but—”

Rushkin continued to ignore her attempts to have him expand on the new scattering of hints and riddles that he’d left for her to consider. “The gallery has sold how many now?” he asked as he returned to his easel. “Fifteen?”

“Twelve, actually.”

Rushkin nodded his head thoughtfully. “I believe it’s time you had your own show there,” he said. He picked up his brush and regarded his new canvas for a long moment, then turned his gaze toward her, one brow cocked. “Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. But what about these angels? You can’t just leave me hanging now.”

“I can’t?”

He seemed amused more than threatening, but Izzy knew better than to press him on it. Their relationship had progressed to where she had more freedom to question him, but she also knew her limits.

“You should finish the Indian,” Rushkin said as Izzy swung down from the windowseat. “It could well be the centerpiece of your show.”

Izzy gave him a surprised look. “I thought you didn’t like the fact that I put him in jeans and a T-shirt.”

“Nor am I overly fond of the city backdrop you have given him, but I can’t deny that it’s a powerful piece.”

Izzy could feel herself redden, but she was pleased as much as embarrassed at his praise. She was proud of how the painting was turning out.

“But you won’t sell it,” Rushkin added.

“I won’t?” Then she remembered what he’d told her the first time she’d been choosing paintings for Albina’s gallery. “Because it’s got a soul?”

“Partly. But also because having one or two items marked ‘not for sale’ will make your audience that much more eager to buy the ones which are available.”

“Oh.”

It made a certain kind of sense, Izzy supposed, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was more to it than that. Still, she didn’t press Rushkin on this either. He had already returned to his own work and she knew from experience that she’d heard all he had to say on the matter.

Taking down the still life that was on her easel, she replaced it with the unfinished canvas of the young Kickaha man. She’d seen him this past summer in Fitzhenry Park—or at least the idea of him. Following Rushkin’s rule of thumb, she had used the value studies and sketches she’d done that day as a basic blueprint for the piece. The details that made him an individual she’d drawn up from within herself so that the young man looking back at her bore no real resemblance to the original model except for how he was posed. Oddly enough, it made her subject appear more real to her than if she’d simply rendered the young man she’d seen in the park. She couldn’t explain why, any more than she could put into words what Rushkin was teaching her. All she knew was that there really did seem to be a connection between what she brought to life on her canvas and some mysterious place that was either deep inside her, familiar only through dreams and her art, or elsewhere entirely. Like Rushkin, she couldn’t say which, only that the connection existed and that through her art, she was allowed to tap into it.

She worked on the painting for the rest of the morning, then cleaned up and left as soon as she’d gotten Rushkin his lunch. She was taking half-classes at Butler U. this semester and she had to hurry to get to Dapple’s art-history class for two. Much as she appreciated what she was learning at the university, it was at times such as this, when her work in Rushkin’s studio was going particularly well, that she wished she hadn’t gotten the student loan to continue her schooling. Why go into debt this way, when she was already learning everything she felt she’d ever need from Rushkin?

“Look,” Kathy had told her. “You’re two-thirds of the way to getting your B.A. Do you really want to throw away all the work you’ve done over the past two years?”

“No,” she’d replied. “Of course not.”

But her time seemed at such a premium that she couldn’t help wondering some days if she wasn’t throwing away the hours she could be in the studio by taking these courses. What was she going to do with a degree anyway? Hang it on her wall? She’d much rather put a painting there. But she stuck with it all the same, if only to prove—to Kathy, and perhaps to her parents, if not herself—that she wasn’t a quitter.

When Dapple’s lecture was finally over, she was the first out the door, running across the common to where she’d agreed to meet Kathy. The bus they took to the hospital to visit Rochelle was crowded, standing-room only, but Izzy didn’t mind. Nor did she really register Kathy’s muttered complaints. Her head was full of the canvas waiting for her at Rushkin’s studio, planning brush strokes and the details of the painting’s background, until they reached the hospital. But then the harsh reality of what Rochelle had suffered cut through her daydreams.

The pretty girl who had agreed to pose for Izzy a few weeks ago didn’t seem to exist anymore.

Instead a stranger looked up from the bed when they came into Rochelle’s room. Her face was swollen and discolored with ugly bruises. She had a broken arm, cracked ribs, a fractured pelvis. But worst of all was the lost and hurt look in her eyes. Izzy remembered a sweet, trusting gaze and had the sick feeling now that it would never return.

After giving Rochelle the get-well card she’d made the night before, Izzy sat quietly on the end of the bed while Kathy ancliilly talked to Rochelle, trying to cheer her up. Izzy wanted to join in, but all she could do was sit there and look at the pitiable figure their friend cut, lying in that bed, swathed in bandages, her only sustenance coming to her through an IV tube. It made Izzy feel more determined than ever to continue her studies under Rushkin. If what he taught her could help counteract such terrible injustices as Rochelle had been forced to suffer, then Izzy would do everything in her power to learn what he had to show her. She didn’t fully understand Rushkin’s explanation as to how their art could be of any help. She wasn’t sure she even believed in the idea of angelic manifestations. But so far he’d made good on all of what he’d promised to teach her and she was willing to trust him that everything else would become clear in time.

Looking at Rochelle, she desperately wished it were all true. She wished she really could learn to call up angels. Joyful spirits, protective spirits, guardian spirits. She wished she already knew how, so that she could have prevented what had happened to Rochelle last night. Like Kathy’s growing plans for helping underprivileged children, Izzy was determined to do more than simply rail against the injustices of the world. She couldn’t pinpoint the source of the evils that plagued the world any more than Kathy could.

Like Rushkin’s alchemical secret, they could have their original source from outside a person—be it one’s environment or Kathy’s cosmic evils—or they could originate in the darkness that everyone carried inside them, that most people rightfully refused to allow into the light of day. It didn’t matter where they came from. All that mattered to Izzy was that they were real and confronting them was more than simply tilting at windmills.