Лоуренс Блок - Ariel

“I didn’t say that. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said. She didn’t know what was the matter but the picture was having an effect on her. And she wanted it downstairs in her room.

“I’ll help you, Ariel.”

“Not if it’s too heavy.”

“No, we can carry it. If we got it this far we can carry it downstairs.”

“Maybe it’s too heavy. I’ll ask David to do it. Your delicate condition and all.”

“You fucking shit.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

“You’ve been weird all day. Have you got your period or something, Jardell?”

She started to giggle.

“What’s so funny?”

“As a matter of fact I do,” she said, blushing. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Can we please take her downstairs now? Please? ”

Carrying the portrait downstairs to Ariel’s room turned out to be less of an ordeal than either of them had anticipated. Once they had the right sort of grip on it the weight was not difficult to manage. They placed the picture on the floor, leaning it up against Ariel’s dresser for support. She got a towel from the hall cupboard and wiped all of the dust from the picture and its frame.

The woman’s visage, arresting enough in the dimly-lit attic, was positively imperious in a bright room. The woman’s gaze was almost hypnotic.

“She’s beautiful,” Erskine said. His voice was pitched higher than usual, and he sounded as though he was surprised at the beauty of the woman.

“And she belongs in here.”

“Not on the floor, though.”

“On that wall.”

He looked where she pointed. “It would fit there.”

“I’ll get David to hang her for me.”

“You figure they’ll let you keep it?”

“Why not? She belongs in this room.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Look at her,” she said. “Who does she look like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look at her.”

He shrugged, studied the painting once again. Ariel tried to watch his eyes but his glasses concealed their expression. Then Erskine wheeled abruptly and scanned Ariel’s face. He looked at the painting, then back at Ariel again.

“Oh,” he said.

“It’s true, isn’t it? I’m not just imagining it?”

“She looks like you.”

“She really does, doesn’t she?”

“The shape of the head, the way the mouth is formed, the eyes. But you don’t stare that way.”

“Just watch me,” she said.

Her eyes burned into his. Erskine held her stare for a moment, then took a step backward and took his eyes away. “Don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“All right.”

“She really does look like you. It’s incredible.”

“I know.”

David hung the picture for her after dinner. She had been prepared for an argument from one or both of them but none was forthcoming. Roberta had started to ask what she had been doing in the attic in the first place, but Ariel’s vague reply that they had just been looking around evidently satisfied her. David at least showed a certain amount of interest in the picture, while Roberta barely glanced at it, merely wondering aloud why Ariel would want a gloomy thing like that on her wall.

David pointed out a few interesting things about the picture. He showed her how the artist had painted the foliage of the rose in such a way that part of the model’s hands were concealed. “Hands are sometimes hard to paint,” he explained. “A lot of old portraits are the work of amateur artists, gifted people who taught themselves how to paint. They lacked academic training and so they don’t always get proportions correct. They don’t know much about perspective and they don’t understand anatomy. This artist had more of a feel for his subject than most of them. There’s a lot of character in her face.”

She summarized the events in her diary before going to bed, noting David’s comments:

But he didn’t see the resemblance. He looked at how the hands were painted but never noticed who she looks like. But Erskine didn’t notice either until he really took a good look at her.

I saw it right away.

No I didn’t either. What happened was this: I looked at the picture and I recognized her. That’s what it was. I never saw her before but I recognized her and it felt strange. I got dizzy for a minute. Then I was looking at her and I realized why I recognized her, namely that she looked like me.

But I recognized her before I knew that.

She is the beautiful stranger.

I’m not beautiful. But she really is beautiful and she really does look like me.

When I look at her I get the feeling she has things to tell me. If only she could talk. But if she really could talk she’d probably just say how boring it was to spend fifty years in a dusty attic.

I wonder how long she really was up there waiting for me to find her. I wonder who she was or is or whichever it should be.

I keep writing a few words and then looking up at her again.

Tonight would have been a good time to ask David about my mother. He was in a good mood, explaining to me about the painting. Then he went downstairs to his study and I thought about going in and sitting on his lap like I used to do, and lighting his pipe for him. But I just didn’t feel up to it. I wanted to be alone in my room. Alone with her, I mean.

She put her diary aside, played the flute for a few minutes, then had her bath and went to bed. Her room was quite dark, but for a moment she fancied she could see the eyes in the portrait, beaming down at her in the darkness. Before she could entertain this thought for any length of time she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night she got out of bed and went to the bathroom. After she had used the toilet she went downstairs to the kitchen. The stairs were silent beneath her feet. Without turning on a light she went through the kitchen drawers until she found a small box that contained five of its original six candles. The candles were four inches long and made simply of ordinary white wax. She took one of the candles from the box and put the rest back in the drawer.

There was an empty applesauce jar in the garbage. She washed and dried its lid, then lit a match and melted the bottom of the candle enough to affix it to the center of the jar lid.

Back in her room, she positioned her bedside table so that it was centered directly beneath the portrait. She cleared everything from the table and placed the candle in its center. She lit the candle with another match and sat cross-legged on the floor so that her eyes were level with its flame. She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at the portrait.

When the candle had burned to within an inch of the jar lid she blew it out and got back into bed. And fell asleep immediately.

When she awoke in the morning she remembered what she had done but the memory was hazy and she thought it might all have been a dream. But the bedside table was underneath the portrait and there was a jar lid on it with the stub of a white candle on it.

Quickly she got out of bed and placed the candle in her bottom dresser drawer. She returned the table to its usual position beside her bed and restored her lamp and clock to their usual places. She had to hunt for the folder of matches; they turned up underneath her bed, and she put them in the dresser drawer with the candle.

If they knew about this they’d lock me up, she thought. They’d think I was really crazy.

There was a sound that woke her, a sharp dry sound like a tree branch snapping. Then she was awake, and sitting up in bed, and the woman was in the corner of the room near the window. She was perfectly defined now, her pale face gleaming, her eyes fiery. The shawl covered her shoulders and was draped over her décolletage.