A Dying Art
by
Sue Pacey

 

‘Angel.’ It was a fitting name for one so perfect.

Gaston had known for some time that he must paint her and at last he had the chance to immortalise her: his Angel, his masterpiece.

This was the moment he had been working toward all his life, since the heady days at Art College; through all the knock-backs and the sucesses. There had been triumphs, minor ones of course but nevertheless things he had been proud to put his name to.

Standing back and breathing deeply Gaston assessed the enormity of what he was about to undertake, having meticulously done the preparation like a priest about to perform a solemn ritual. The heavy canvas was in position, eight feet up on the wall of his studio, perfectly lit from the skylight directly above. This was the way he liked to work, high on scaffolding in the air. It added something special to his work, concentrating the mind by introducing some personal risk. After all, what was life unless there was risk involved? He was the artist creating an image, manipulating its form, colour and perspective and with a talent like his, should he not be elevated to a superior place?

Carefully Gaston made final checks on the ropes which held the canvas in place and, satisfied that it was firm, climbed down from the scaffolding. Pouring a glass of wine he sat in the middle of the floor to compose his mind and reflect, allowing a smile to play across his lips as he remembered the first meeting.

Angel, his angel! He had found her at last, perfection on a street corner in the red light district of Saint-Denis, surrounded by much less remarkable whores. Her perfect long legs had caught his eye and the tiny waist could have graced any Paris fashion-house catwalk. She did not belong here amongst the fifty-franc tarts with their short red skirts and low bodices, showing too much of their wares. There was a subtlety in the red pouting mouth which seemed to say “I am here if you wish Monsieur, but beware I may be for the taking, but you must give also.” And he had liked that. He knew he would return and, with each encounter, the obsession to paint her grew. It was his destiny to preserve her image forever; that elfin heart-shaped face, the tiny earlobes atop such an exquisite jaw-line and deep-set violet eyes, which held all the tragedy of a nation.

Throughout the hot Paris summer he had sketched her in pencil, pastel and charcoal, each medium revealing something new on the page. The walls of his studio had become obscured by her image, sometimes naked and provocative though more often elegantly draped, her perfect anatomy reproduced from his artist’s memory.

Now at last he had the opportunity to keep that memory alive forever; a final gift to the world from a dying man. For Gaston did not have long to live. The tumour growing rapidly inside his brain would soon rob him of his precious sight, and so it was now or never. He would not tell her lest he should see pity in her eyes and that he would not be able to bear. Better this way, for she would never know.

Putting down the empty glass and rising, he began to paint.

Gaston worked frantically without ceasing throughout that day and night and the next day, feeling neither hunger, thirst, nor fatigue. Sometimes he threw paint at the canvas, before intimately caressing it with the finest strokes, living, feeling each movement of the brush. Then finally descending he lay outstretched on the floor beneath his work, panting and exhausted, eyes red, paintbrush still held loosely in his limp hand.

Now he could die. He was ready to die.

 

Gaston knew that people would come and find them. It was fitting that it should end like this, the master surrounded by the tools of his trade, amid drapes, canvasses, paintbrushes and palettes. They lay silently now alongside the axe and the razor sharp knife he had used to sever the legs from her torso, before positioning her, up on high. She was his blank canvas, her arms roped, outstretched like the Egyptian goddess Nűt, reaching out to embrace the night sky with the wings of an angel. His angel! Her blood mingled with the paint, had run in rivulets down the wall as her life had ebbed away whilst he stared in adoration.

The stars had come out, the full moon sending a shaft of gold through the skylight falling on his final masterpiece. As he looked at the still-beautiful face, she seemed to say to him, “Be still now and wait my love, for the end is coming and I am yours.”

 

© Sue Pacey 2009

 

 

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