Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“Maybe you should look at this first,” he said. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out something wrapped in brown paper. “I was trying to think of how to bring this up, but I guess I might as well be as up front about it as you are.”

Izzy took the parcel. The blood drained from her features as she found herself looking at a corner of mounting frame with some canvas attached to it. The ends of the frame were charred, as was the edge of the canvas, but there was enough of the image left for her to recognize that it was all that was left of her painting Smither’s Oak. The rest was gone. Burned. Just as her paintings were in her dreams.

“Where ... where did you get this?” she asked.

“In the trash behind your studio.”

Not her studio, Izzy thought. Rushkin’s studio. Where Smither’s Oak was supposed to be in storage with the rest of her paintings that weren’t stacked up around her easel in the upstairs studio proper.

Her chest felt tight, but she didn’t feel the helplessness that always accompanied her dreams. Anger rose up inside her instead, unfamiliar, dark and over-powering.

“What do you want to do about it?” John asked.

“What do you think?” she said. “I’m going to confront him with it. Right now.”

John fell in step beside her as she marched off, but she stopped and shook her head.

“I appreciate your wanting to help,” she said, “but I have to deal with this by myself “

“What if he gives you a hard time?”

“The only person that’s going to get a hard time is him,” Izzy said, her voice grim.

She looked down at all that was left of her painting. The sorrow at its loss would come, she knew, but all she felt now was the pure hot burn of her anger. Just let Rushkin try and raise a hand against her, she thought. Her gaze lifted to meet John’s.

“I just have to do this myself,” she repeated. “If you come it’s going to make everything more complicated.”

“I understand,” John told her.

He walked her as far as the bus stop, but when the bus came, he stayed behind. It wasn’t until she was almost at her stop that Izzy realized that once again she hadn’t gotten an answer to a question she’d asked John.

XVII

When Rushkin opened the downstairs door to the coach house, Izzy thrust what was left of her painting at him, poking him in the chest with one end. He backed up a step in surprise and she followed him inside, jabbing him again.

“It had spirit, did it?” she said. Her voice was so cold, she couldn’t recognize it as her own. “It couldn’t go to the gallery because you don’t sell paintings with spirit—right?”

“Isabelle, what are—”

“But burning them is fine.”

“I don’t—”

“How dare you do this to my work?”

Images from her dreams flashed before her eyes. They’d been horrible enough on their own, but to know that they’d been prescient warnings made them all that much worse. How many of her paintings had he destroyed?”

“Isabelle—”

“Who died and made you God? That’s what I want to know. You’ve treated me like shit most of the time I’ve come here, but I put up with it because I could still respect you as an artist. I thought you really believed in the worth of my work. God knows I’m nowhere near your level, and maybe I never will be, but I was trying. I was doing the best I could. And then you do this to me.”

She thrust the charred remains of Smither’s Oak up in the air between them, almost poking him in the eye. He backed up another step, but this time she didn’t follow. She stared at what she held and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. Her anger was still there, deep and strange to her and so very painful, but the sorrow she thought she’d be able to put aside until she’d dealt with Rushkin rose up to overpower her.

Rushkin moved forward, a hand raised to touch her shoulder, but she backed away from him.

“You ... you betrayed me,” she mumbled through her tears.

“Isabelle,” Rushkin said. “That is not your painting.”

She looked blankly at him, everything blurred through a veil of tears. Her gaze dropped to the charred canvas in her hand. Though she couldn’t see it clearly now, she’d studied it on the bus ride over.

She knew the brushstrokes, the subject matter, the palette.

“I ... I know my own work,” she said.

But Rushkin shook his head. “I did that painting.”

“You ...”

“I’m intrigued by your choices of subject, your use of light,” he said. “I wanted to get inside your work.”

“You’re copying my paintings?” Izzy rubbed her sleeve against her eyes, trying to clear her vision so that she could get a better look at him. He had to be making fun of her. But all he did was nod. “Isn’t it supposed to go the other way?” she asked.

“The artist who stops learning,” Rushkin said, “is either dead or not an artist.”

“Sure, but I’m the student here.”

“Do you think the teacher can’t learn anything from his student?”

“I don’t know. I never thought of it before.”

“Come with me,” he said.

He led the way back to the spare bedroom that he used as a storage space, and there they were, Smither’s Oak, all her paintings, intact, unharmed, just as she’d left them.

“You see?” Rushkin said. “I would never dream of harming your work. I know how important it is to you.”

“But ..... Izzy lifted the charred bit of canvas and wood she was holding. “Why did you burn this?”

“Because it’s your work. I did it as a study, for myself, nothing more. I didn’t want to keep such pieces around because ... well, what if I were to die and they were found in my estate? Do you think anyone would believe that I had copied them from you?”

Izzy slowly shook her head.

“Exactly. So once I’ve learned what I can from a piece, I destroy it to preserve the integrity of your art. I wouldn’t dream of letting your unique vision appear to be based upon work I’d done—and I was only insuring that no one else would gather the wrong impression.”

“But what could you possibly be learning from me?” Izzy had to know. Rushkin hesitated. “I’ll tell you,” he said after a moment, “but remember, you were the one to bring this up, not I.”

Izzy nodded.

“Let me take that,” Rushkin said.

Izzy gave him the canvas that he’d asked for and watched as he dropped it into the brass wastebasket that stood by the door. He led her back into the kitchen then and poured them each a mug of tea from a pot he’d had steeping when she burst in. Not until they were settled at the table did he go on.

“We talked about spirits before,” he said. “Of how artists can call them up from ... well, no one knows where. But we call them up with certain paintings or songs or any creative endeavor that builds a bridge between our world and that mysterious Garden of the Muses.”

“I remember,” Izzy said. She got an apologetic look on her face. “I’m just not so sure I can believe in it.”

“Fair enough. But it doesn’t matter. Insofar as the current situation lies, all that matters is that I believe it. Are you with me so far?”

“I suppose.”

“I used to be able to bring them across,” Rushkin said. “I made homes for those spirits in my paintings, gave them bodies to wear. My work was a bridge between the worlds. But no longer. I’ve lost the touch, you see. For many years now, when I paint, I make a painting. A wondrous enough enchantment in its own right, to be sure, but when you’ve known more, merely painting can no longer be enough.”