Memory and Dream

Baiting The Hook

I

Newford, September 1973

He was the ugliest man Izzy had ever seen. Not homely. It was more as though he were a troll that had climbed cautiously out from under the shadows of his bridge only to find that the sun was a lie. It couldn’t turn him to stone. It could only reveal him for what he was, and since his ugliness was something he had obviously come to terms with, what did he have left to fear? So he carried himself like a prince, for all his tattered clothes and air of poverty.

But he was a troll all the same. Shorter than Izzy’s own five-three, he seemed to be as wide as he was tall. His back was slightly hunched, his chest like an enormous barrel, arms as thick as Izzy’s thighs, legs like two tree stumps. His ears were no more than clumps of flesh attached to either side of his head; nose broken more than once, too long in length and too wide where the nostrils flared like ferryboat hawseholes; lips too thick, mouth too large, forehead too broad, hairline receding; hair matted and wild as the roots of an upturned oak. It appeared to be so long since he’d washed that the grime worked into the cracks of his skin was the color of soot.

Under the same close scrutiny, his wardrobe didn’t fare any better. The heavy black workboots had holes in the leather and the left one had no laces; his trousers were a muddy brown color and bore so many patches that it was difficult to tell what the original material had been; the white shirt was grey, black around the neck; the long soiled trenchcoat trailed behind him on the ground, its hem filthy with dried mud and grime, its sleeves raggedly torn off to fit his short arms.

Now in her second year of city life, Izzy had become as blase toward some of the more outlandish street characters as were the longtime local residents, but the sight of this troll, shambling along the sunny steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, simply astounded her for its incongruity. He was obviously destitute, yet there he was, feeding the pigeons French fries. At times whole clouds of them would rise up and around him, as though circling a gargoyle in a bell tower. But always they returned to the scraps he tossed them.

Always he maintained control.

The moment was such that Izzy couldn’t pass it by. She sat down on the bench at the nearby bus stop. Surreptitiously, she took a stub of a pencil out of her black shoulder bag, then fished around for something to draw on. The back of the envelope containing an overdue phone bill was the first thing that came to hand. Quickly she began to sketch the scene, starting with bold lines before filling in the details and contrasts with finer lines and shading.

When he stood up and scuffled away—French-fry container empty, his admiring feathered courtiers all fled—she had enough on paper and in her head that she knew she’d be able to finish the piece from memory. Bent over the envelope, pencil scribbling furiously to capture the sweep of steps and shadowed bulk of the cathedral which had been behind him, she was completely unaware of his approach until a large dirty hand fell upon her shoulder.

She cried out, dropping pencil and envelope as she twisted out of his grip. They both reached down for the envelope, but he was quicker.

“Hrmph,” he said, studying the drawing.

Izzy wasn’t sure if the sound he’d made was a comment, or if he was just clearing his throat. What she was really thinking about was how odd it was that he didn’t stink. He didn’t smell at all, except for what seemed like a faint whiff of pepper.

Looking away from the envelope, his gaze traveled up and down the length of her body as though he could see straight through her clothes—black jeans, black T-shirt, black wool sweater were all peeled away under that scrutiny. She hadn’t noticed his eyes before, hidden as they’d been under the shadows of his bushy brows, but they pierced her now, pale, pale blue, two needles pinning a black butterfly to a board.

Izzy shivered. She reached for her envelope, wanting to just have it and flee, but he held it out of her reach, that cool needle gaze finally reaching her face.

“You’ll do,” he said in a voice like gravel rattling around at the bottom of an iron pail. A troll voice.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, you’ll do. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” he agreed. “But you’ll learn.”

Before she could frame a reply to that he dug about in the pocket of his trenchcoat with his free hand and produced a business card, its smooth, white surface as soiled as his shirt. She accepted the card when he handed it to her before she realized what she was doing, and then it was too late. The grubby thing was already touching her thumb and fingers, spreading its germs. She looked down and read:

VINCENT ADJANI RUSHKIN

48-B STANTON STREET

223-2323

“I’ll expect you tomorrow morning,” he said. “At eight A.M. Please be prompt.”

The intensity of his gaze was so mesmerizing that Izzy found herself nodding in agreement before she remembered she had an eight-thirty class tomorrow morning. And besides that, she added, shaking her head to clear it, what made him think that she would ever want to see him again anyway?

“Hey, wait a minute,” she said as he began to turn away.

“Yes?”

He might be a misshapen troll, Izzy thought, with a voice to match, but he certainly had the air of royalty about him. He spoke with the certainty that whatever his demands, they would instantly be met.

And with that blue gaze of his pinning her, Izzy found herself unable to tell him exactly where he could stick his expectations.

“My, uh, drawing” was all she could manage.

“Yes?”

“I’d like it back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But—”

“Call me superstitious,” he said, a smile crinkling his features until they were uglier than ever, “but my primitive side doesn’t hold with allowing anyone to walk off with an image of me, be it a photograph or—” He held up her drawing.

rendering. It feels too much as though they have acquired a piece of my soul.”

“Oh.”

“A disturbing prospect, don’t you think?”

“I suppose ...”

“Fine. So until tomorrow. Eight, sharp. And don’t bother to bring any equipment,” he added. “Before I can teach you a thing I’ll have to empty your head of all the nonsense you’ve already no doubt acquired.”

Izzy watched him stuff her sketch into his pocket and let him walk away with it without further protest. She looked down at what she’d gotten in exchange for the drawing. This time the name registered.

“Rushkin?” she said softly.

She lifted her head quickly, but her troll had vanished into the afternoon crowds and was nowhere to be seen. Slowly she went back over the whole odd encounter, considering his side of the conversation under an entirely new light. She’d just met Vincent Adjani Rushkin—the Vincent Adjani Rushkin. The most respected old-school artist in Newford wanted to give her lessons?

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible could it?

II

... and then he just vanished,” Izzy said in conclusion.

Kathy gave her a lazy smile. “What? Like in a puff of smoke?”

“No. Into the crowd. You know what it’s like around St. Paul’s at lunch-time.”

Izzy had found her roommate in the middle of hennaing her hair when she got back to the room they shared in Karizen Hall. From their window they had a view of the university library and what Kathy called the Wild Acre—a tangle of unkempt vegetation that spread between the two buildings and was overseen by a giant oak tree. The windowsill was wide enough to sit in and Izzy stretched out along its length, watching two red squirrels argue over an apple core while she related the afternoon’s adventure.

Kathy moved from the sink to her bed, where she valiantly tried to maintain some control over the green muck that kept trying to leak out from under the Saran Wrap cap holding the henna mixture in place on top of her head.

Izzy turned from the view to look at her roommate.

“You’re leaking again,” she said. “Just by your left ear.”

“Thanks.”

“So what do you think?”

“What’s to think?” Kathy asked. “You should go. Do you know anybody else who ever got the chance to study under Rushkin?”

“If it even was Rushkin,” Izzy said.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Why would he be interested in me?”

“Because you’re brilliant,” Kathy said. “Any fool can see that. And he’s obviously no fool.”

“Yeah, right.”

Kathy put on what was supposed to be a fierce frown, but whatever she did with her features under that cap of green mud and Saran Wrap could only look silly. “Just go,” she said as Izzy started to giggle.

“But I’ve got a class.”

“So skip it.”

Izzy sighed. It was easy for Kathy to say. Whenever Izzy did anything that wasn’t related to schoolwork, she felt guilty. The only reason she could afford to go to Butler U. was because of her scholarship and the money she’d saved from working at the marina during summer vacations. It wasn’t as though her parents approved, but then they had never approved of anything she did. Sometimes she wondered which was worse: having no family like Kathy, or having one such as her own.

“It’s probably just a joke,” she said finally. At Kathy’s raised eyebrows, she went on. “He just didn’t look right.”

“Oh, I see. Artists are all supposed to be tall and handsome, right?”

“Well, no. But he looked so ... uncouth. Why would Rushkin of all people go around like a dirty beggar looking for a handout?”

“Personally,” Kathy said, “I think you’re all mad. But that’s part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn’t it? There’s not really that much difference between cutting off your own ear or having pretensions of poverty with an aversion to clean clothes and bathwater. Neither makes much sense.”

Izzy shrugged. “I suppose. I never have seen a picture of him. Actually, I’ve never even read anything about him. All the books just talk about his art and show reproductions of the paintings.”

“If it really was Rushkin you met,” Kathy said, “then someone’s working damage control. It’s all public relations. His agent probably doesn’t let anyone know anything about him. Who’d want to buy fine art from some smelly bum?” A sudden thought came to her and she pointed a finger at Izzy. “Hey, you could write an expose.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then at least go and see if it really is him,” Kathy said. “Though maybe you’re right to be cautious,”

she added with a teasing smile in her eyes. “I mean, would it even be worthwhile to study under him if he really was Rushkin?”

“Oh god. I’ve never heard of anybody who has studied with him. It’s not like he lectures or gives workshops or anything. But it’s like you said: the man’s an absolute genius.”

“So you’d learn something?”

“I’m not even good enough to sweep up his studio! But the things I could learn, just by watching him work ...”

“I hate it when you put yourself down,” Kathy said. “Look at this,” she went on, indicating the sketch that Izzy had done of Rushkin as soon as she’d come back to their room. Izzy had been working on it while Kathy finished gooping her hair.

“Whoops,” Kathy said. She tried to dab up the bit of green mud that she’d dropped onto the drawing and only succeeded in smearing it more. “Sony.”

“That’s okay. It’s not like it was really any good or anything.”

“There you go again! I may not be an artist, but I’ve got eyes; I know what’s good and you’re good.”

A blush rose up the back of Izzy’s neck and she smiled self-consciously. “My own private cheering section,” she said. “If only you were an art critic.”

“Who listens to critics?”

“Gallery owners. Museum curators. People looking for an investment.”

“So screw ’em.”

“Now, there we agree,” Izzy said.

“And we’ve got history to back us up,” Kathy added.

“What do you mean?”

“Anybody can reel off a half-dozen famous artists from a hundred years ago, but how many critics can the average person name?”

“I never thought of it like that.”

Kathy smiled. “Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. I may have green mud all over my hair, but I still have wisdom to impart.”

“I do listen,” Izzy said.

“So you’ll go?” Kathy asked.

“To Rushkin’s studio?”

Kathy nodded.

“How could I not go?” Izzy said.

III

At ten to eight the next morning, Izzy stood on the pavement in front of 48 Stanton Street and looked up at the imposing Tudor-style house, reassured by the respectability of the neighborhood. Although she’d been told not to bring any supplies, she’d still thrown a few things into her knapsack before leaving the dorm: sketch pad, pencils, brushes, paints and two nine-by-twelve pieces of hardboard that she’d primed with gesso the night before. Gathering her courage, she went up the walk and onto the porch, where she quickly pressed the bell before she could change her mind and flee. A dark-haired woman in her forties answered the door. She held her bathrobe closed with one hand and regarded Izzy through the foot-wide crack in the door.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m, um, here to see Mr. Rushkin.”

“Oh, you want 48-B.” At Izzy’s blank look the woman added, “That’s the coach house around back. But don’t bother ringing the bell—he never answers it. Just go up the fire escape and hammer on the studio door.”

“Thanks,” Izzy said, but the woman had already closed the door.

Well, at least she now knew that yesterday’s odd encounter had really been with Rushkin. She wasn’t sure if she was happy or not about that. The idea of studying under him was so intimidating. What if, when he saw her at his door today, he told her that he’d changed his mind? What if the first thing she tried to do was so pathetic that he just threw her out of his studio?

If it wasn’t for how much Kathy would rag her, she was almost tempted to just forget about it and go to the class she was skipping. But now that she knew it really was Rushkin, she couldn’t not go. He might throw her out, he might laugh at what she could do, but if he didn’t, if he actually did let her study under him

Shifting her knapsack into a more comfortable position, she stepped off the porch and back onto the pavement. Turning down the lane the woman had indicated, she found the coach house situated behind the house. Set beside the old carriage lane that ran behind Stanton Street, the building had a fieldstone foundation, wooden siding and a red shingled roof that was covered with vines. It made such a pretty picture, with its unruly tangle of a garden out front and the old oak that stood south of the building, that Izzy had to stop herself from pulling out her sketch pad and making a drawing of it on the spot.

Resolutely, she made straight for the fire escape and went up to the landing, where she knocked softly on the door. There was no reply. Izzy looked nervously around, then knocked harder.

Remembering what the woman had told her, she gave the door a couple of good hard bangs with the heel of her fist. She had her arm upraised and was about to give it one last attempt when the door was suddenly flung open and she found herself staring into the glaring features of yesterday’s troll.

“Yes?” he shouted, voice still deep and gravelly. Then his gaze rose to her face. “Oh, it’s you.”

Izzy lowered her hand. “You ... you said I should—”

“Yes, yes. Come in.”

He took her by the arm and as much hauled her as ushered her inside. Sniffing, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his free arm. His shirt was as dirty as it had been yesterday, his trousers as patched and threadbare, and he still looked as though he hadn’t had a bath in weeks, but Izzy found herself viewing it all differently now. He really was Rushkin. He was a genius and geniuses were allowed their eccentricities.

“You’re prompt,” he said, letting her go. “That’s good. A point in your favor. Now take off your clothes.”

“What?”

He glared at her. “I’m sure I told you yesterday how I don’t like to repeat myself.”

“Yes, but ... you said you were going to—”

“Teach you. I know. I’m not senile. I haven’t forgotten. But first I want to paint you. So take your clothes off.”

He turned away, leaving her at the door, and Izzy finally got a good look at where she was. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. The studio was as cluttered and shabby as the artist himself, but that made no difference whatsoever because everywhere she looked were paintings and drawings, a stunning gallery of work, each of which bore Rushkin’s unmistakable touch. Along the walls, canvases leaned against each other, seven to eight paintings deep. Studies and sketches were tacked haphazardly onto the walls or lay scattered in unruly piles on every available surface. She couldn’t believe the way such priceless treasures were being treated and was torn between wanting to pore over each one and to straighten the mess so that the work was stored with the respect it deserved.

Rushkin had crossed the room to stand by one of the studio’s two easels. Northern light spilled through the large window to the left of his work area and from the skylight above him, bathing the room with its remarkable glow. He had a window open to air the room, but the smell of turpentine still permeated every corner. In front of his easel was a battered recamier upholstered in a faded burgundy brocade. The wall behind it was covered with a cascade of deep blue drapery, and to one side stood an Oriental screen.

“Have you ever posed before?” Rushkin asked as he began to squeeze paint onto his palette.

Izzy still stood by the door. The recamier, with the light falling upon it and the drapes behind it, was too much like a stage. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting in coming here this morning, but posing for Rushkin hadn’t even remotely entered into her imagining.

Rushkin looked up at her. “Well?” he demanded.

Izzy’s throat felt as though it was coated with fine particles of sand. She swallowed dryly and slowly closed the door behind her.

“Not really,” she said. “I mean, not, you know, without any clothes on.”

She’d often wanted to augment her meager finances with modeling fees, but somehow she’d never found the courage to do so in front of her own classmates the way some of the other students did. Her friend July didn’t have that problem, but then July was beautiful and didn’t seem to know the meaning of self-consciousness.

“Nudity bothers you?” Rushkin asked, plainly surprised.

“No. Well, not in life-drawing class. It’s just that I’m ...” She took a deep breath. “I feel kind of embarrassed.”

Rushkin’s pale gaze studied her until she began to shift uncomfortably under its intensity.

“You think I’m trying to humiliate you,” he said.

“Oh, no.” Izzy quickly shook her head. “It’s not that at all.”

Rushkin waved a short arm in a grand gesture, encompassing all the various paintings and drawings in the room. “Do the subjects in these paintings appear humiliated?”

“No. Of course not.”

“If we are going to spend any amount of time together,” he said, “if I’m to teach you anything, I have to know who you are.”

Izzy wanted to disagree, to argue that you got to know someone through conversation, but instead found herself nodding in agreement to what he was saying. She hated the way she so often let anyone with what she perceived as authority or a stronger will have their way in an argument. It was a fault she just couldn’t seem to overcome. By the time she did stand up for herself it was usually so long after the fact that the source of her anger had no idea what it was that had set her off.

“And what better way to get to know you,” Rushkin asked, “than to paint you?”

He fixed her with the intensity of his pale blue eyes until she nodded again. “I ... I understand,” Izzy said.

Rushkin spoke no more. He merely regarded her until she filially placed her knapsack on the floor by the door. Blushing furiously, she made her way behind the screen with its colorful designs of Oriental dragons and flowers and began to undress.

IV

Fifteen minutes into the pose Rushkin had finally decided upon, Izzy developed a whole new respect for the models in her life-drawing classes. She lay on the recamier in what she’d been sure would be a relaxed position, but her every muscle seemed to be knotting and cramping. The arm she was leaning on had fallen asleep. She had a distracting itch that traveled from one part of her body to another. No sooner did she manage to ignore it in one place than it moved elsewhere. It was cold, too. And no matter how easily the people in the paintings that regarded her from every part of the room bore their nudity, she couldn’t help but still feel humiliated. Although that was perhaps too strong a word. Humbled was more like it. Which was probably Rushkin’s whole intention, she thought in a moment of cynicism.

Remembering their brief meeting yesterday, and considering how she’d been treated so far today, she realized that Rushkin was one of those people who always had to be in control.

She watched him as he drew. Getting to know her, she thought. Right. He was entirely ignoring her as a person; she’d become no more than a collection of shape and form to him, areas of light and shadow. The only sound in the room was the faint skritch of his vine charcoal on the canvas as he worked on his understudy. At length she couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“How come you live like this?” she asked. “I mean, you’re so famous, I can’t understand why you don’t have, you know, a more posh sort of a studio.”

Rushkin stopped working and glared at her. With him looking the way he did, it was hard to imagine him capable of getting any uglier than he already was, but the glower in his features would have put to shame any one of the gargoyles that peered down from the heights of so many of Newford’s older buildings.

“Can you remember that pose?” he said, his voice cold.

Izzy didn’t think she’d ever forget, but she gave a small nervous nod. “Then take a break.”

Moments ago, Izzy would have given anything to hear those words, but now all she wanted to do was to reel back time until just before she’d opened her mouth. Better yet, she’d like to reel it back to before she’d ever decided to come here. Rushkin looked as though he wanted to hit her and she felt terribly vulnerable. She sat up slowly and wrapped herself in the crocheted shawl she’d brought with her when she’d first come out from behind the screen. Rushkin snagged a stool with the toe of his boot and pushed it over the floor until it stood near the recamier. Then he sat down and leaned forward.

“Is that what art means to you?” he growled. “A ‘posh studio,’ fame and fortune at your beck and call?”

“No. It’s just, you’re so famous and all, I just thought ...”

“We’re going to have a rule when you’re in this studio with me,” he told her. “You don’t ask questions. I don’t ever want to hear the word ‘why’ coming out from between your lips. Is that possible?”

Izzy drew the shawl more tightly around herself and nodded.

“If I feel you should know the reason behind something, if I think it necessary to whatever we happen to be working upon at the time, I will tell you.”

“I ... I understand.”

“Good. Now, since you weren’t aware of the rules we follow in this studio, I will allow you your one question.”

He sat back slightly on the stool, and it was as though a great weight had been lifted from Izzy’s chest. His pale gaze was no less intensely upon her, his glower hadn’t eased in the slightest, but that small bit of space he gave her suddenly allowed her to breathe again.

“You want to know,” he said, “why I live the way I do, why I dress like a beggar and work in a small rented studio, so I will tell you: I abhor success. Success means one is popular and I can think of nothing worse than popular appeal. It means your vision has been bowdlerized, lowered to meet the vague expectations of the lowest common denominator to be found in your audience.

“It’s my belief that elitism is healthy in an artist—no, required. Not because he uses it to put himself above others, but because it means that his work will always remain challenging. To himself. To his audience. To Art itself

“I can’t help the success of my work, but I can ignore it and I do. I also insist on utter privacy. Who I am, what I do, how I live my life, has nothing to do with the one facet of myself of which I allow the world a view: my art. The art speaks for itself; anything else is irrelevant and an intrusion. To allow a view of any other part of myself relegates the art to secondary importance. Then my work only becomes considered in terms of how I live my life, what hangs on my own walls, what I eat for breakfast, how often a day I have to relieve myself

“People want to know those details—I’ll grant you that. They think it gives them greater insight into a piece of art, but when they approach a painting in such a manner, they are belittling both the artist’s work and their own ability to experience it. Each painting I do says everything I want to say on its subject and in terms of that painting, and not all the trivia in the world concerning my private life will give the viewer more insight into it than what hangs there before their eyes. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, even titling a work is an unnecessary concession.

“So,” he concluded. “Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“And do you agree?” he asked. What passed for a smile stole across his grotesque features.

Izzy hesitated for a moment, then had to admit, “Not ... not really.”

“Good. It’s refreshing to see that you have your own ideas, though you will keep them to yourself so long as you are in my studio. Understood?” Izzy nodded.

At that Rushkin stood up and kicked the stool out of the way. It went clattering along the floor until it banged up against a canvas. Izzy shuddered at the thought of the damage it might have done to the piece.

“Now,” Rushkin said, “if you will reassume the pose, perhaps we can salvage what remains of the morning light and actually get some work done today.”

V

Izzy had plans to meet Kathy at Feeney’s Kitchen for tea later that same afternoon. When she finally arrived at the cafe after her session with Rushkin, she found her roommate sharing a table with Jilly Coppercorn and Alan Grant, who were also students at the university.

Jilly always reminded Izzy of one of Cicely Barker’s flower fairies, with her diminutive but perfectly proportioned form, the sapphire flash of her eyes and the wild tangle of her nut-brown hair. They were in most of the same classes at Butler U. Jilly was a few years older than the other students but all she ever said by way of explanation was that she’d been late finishing high school. Like Kathy, she never spoke of the past, but she was willing to hold forth on just about any other topic at great and entertaining length.

Alan, on the other hand, was quiet—a gangly, solemn young man who was an English major like Kathy. Unlike Kathy, though, he had no aspirations of becoming a writer. His dream was to have his own small literary press—“Because someone’s got to publish you people,” he’d told them once—which frustrated Kathy no end, since she thought he was one of the better writers among their fellow students.

For proof positive, she’d point to The Crowsea Review, a little photocopied journal he’d produced over the summer and managed to place in the university bookshop on commission. “His editorial’s the best thing in it,” she’d say to anyone who cared to listen, an opinion bolstered by her own modesty since she herself had a story in the magazine.

Izzy waved acknowledgment to their chorus of hellos and went to the counter to get herself some tea and a muffin before joining them at their table by the window.

“So?” Kathy asked as soon as Izzy drew near. “Was it him?”

Izzy nodded. She set her tea mug and muffin down on the table and took the free seat between Jilly and Alan.

“Was it him who?” July asked, then laughed at the way her question sounded.

“Izzy met Vincent Rushkin on the steps of St. Paul’s yesterday,” Kathy said with the sort of pride in her voice that Izzy had always wanted to hear coming from her parents. “And he invited her to his studio this morning.”

Jilly’s eyes went wide. “You’re kidding.”

“Not to mention,” Kathy went on, “that he wants her to study under him.”

“You’ve got to be putting us on.”

“Nope,” Kathy said. “Choira might be giving her a hard time, but her talent’s not going unappreciated where it counts.”

Izzy was embarrassed to be in the spotlight. She also felt she had to defend Professor Choira, who taught both Jilly and herself life drawing.

“Professor Choira just thinks I’m spending too much time on detail,” she said. “And he’s right. I’m never going to learn how to do a proper gesture drawing until I loosen up.”

“Yeah, Choira’s not so bad,” Jilly added. “At least he knows what he’s talking about.”

Kathy gave a disdainful sniff.

“Enough with Choira already,” Alan said. “Tell us about Rushkin. I don’t know the first thing about him except that his work is brilliant.”

“Palm Street Evening, “Jilly said, the envy plain in her voice as she mentioned one of Rushkin’s more famous pieces. “God, if I could paint like that I’d think I’d died and gone to heaven.” She, too, turned to Izzy. “I want every detail. What’s his studio like? Does he really grind his own pigments? Did you see any of his sketches?”

Izzy felt her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish as she tried to slip a word into the flurry of Jilly’s questions. But she knew exactly how filly was feeling. If their roles had been reversed, she would have been pressing Jilly for as many details, if not more.

“Well, he’s overbearing,” she said. “A bit of a bully, really, but he ...”

Her voice trailed off as her memory called up what Rushkin had said to her about his desire for privacy concerning his private life: The art speaks for itself ... to allow a view of any other part of myself relegates the art to secondary importance. Looking up, she found three gazes expectantly fixed upon her, waiting for her to continue.

“Actually, he’s a pretty private person,” she said, knowing how lame this sounded. “I don’t really feel right, you know, gossiping about him.” Jilly rolled her eyes. “Oh please.”

“I got the feeling that he doesn’t want me to,” Izzy added. “It’s as though, if I do talk about him, or what goes on in his studio, he won’t ask me to come back.”

“You sound like you took a vow of silence,” Kathy said.

“Well, not in so many words. It was more implied .. • .”

“This has all the makings of a fairy tale,” Alan said with a smile. “You know how there’s always one thing you’re not supposed to do, or one place you’re not allowed to go.”

Jilly nodded, getting into the spirit of it. “Like Bluebeard’s secret room.”

“God, nothing like that, I hope,” Izzy said.

But thinking of the story Jilly had been referring to reminded her of how she’d basically spent the morning in a state of barely controlled fear, not just because of who Rushkin was and how much she respected his work, but because he could look so terribly fierce, as though any moment he might come out from behind his easel and hit her. She gave a nervous laugh and then managed to change the subject.

No one seemed to mind. But she had cause to remember that conversation later.

VI

So what made you clam up about your morning with Rushkin?” Kathy asked as the two of them walked back to their dorm together. “I thought that if it really did turn out to be him, you’d be so excited that none of us would have been able to get a word in edgewise.”

“I was embarrassed.”

“About what?”

Izzy shrugged. “Well, for one thing, I didn’t learn anything—no, that’s not right. I did learn a couple of things by watching him work, but he didn’t teach me anything. He just had me posing for him. That’s all I got to do.”

“He’s doing a painting of you?”

Izzy nodded.

“Well, that’s a real compliment, isn’t it? Immortalized by Rushkin and all that.”

“I suppose. But it doesn’t say a damn thing about my art.” Izzy glanced at her friend. “I just felt so awkward. I mean, I knocked on his door and he didn’t even say hello or anything, he just told me to take my clothes off and start posing.”

Kathy’s eyebrows went up.

“Don’t even say it,” Izzy told her. “It was strictly business.” She pulled a face at the thought of Rushkin touching her. “But it felt, I don’t know. De-meaning.”

“Why? You don’t think the models in your life-drawing class are being demeaned because of what they’re doing, do you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“So what was the problem?” Kathy asked.

“I don’t know how to explain it exactly,” Izzy said. “It’s just that I got the feeling that he wasn’t painting me in the nude because he was inspired to paint me so much as that he wanted to humble me.

He was establishing his control.”

“Power-tripping.”

Izzy nodded. “But it wasn’t a man-woman thing. It went deeper than that. He talked a bit about elitism—in terms of art—but I think it’s something that touches all aspects of his life. You know he never even asked me my name?”

“Sounds like a bona fide creep,” Kathy said.

“No,” Izzy said. She took a moment to think about it before she went on.

“It’s more as though so far as he’s concerned, he’s the only thing that’s of any importance; everything else is only considered in how it relates to him.”

“Lovely. You’ve just given me the classic description of a psychopath.”

“Or a child.”

“So do you think he’s dangerous?”

Izzy considered the fear she’d had to deal with the whole time she’d been in his studio. In retrospect, Rushkin’s attitude had presented her with more of an affront to her own sense of self-worth than any real sense of danger.

“No,” she said. “It’s just disappointing.”

Kathy gave her a rueful smile. “Well, I can see why you’d be disappointed, especially considering how much you love his work. That’s the trouble when you meet famous people sometimes—they’re all wrong. They turn out to be everything their work would never let you expect them to be.”

“But maybe we’re at fault as well,” Izzy said. “Because we’re the ones with the expectations.”

Kathy nodded. “Still, you don’t have to like him to learn from him, do you?”

“Well, it would sure make things easier.”

“Nothing worthwhile is easy,” Kathy said; then she grimaced. “Who thinks up those sayings, anyway?”

“Storytellers, like you.”

“You can’t blame me for that one.”

“But it is true,” Izzy said.

Kathy nodded. “So what are you going to do?”

“Well, I think I should be able to juggle my schedule so that all my classes are in the afternoon.”

“By this, do I take it you’re going to keep going to his studio?”

Izzy smiled. “Well, I’ve got to let him finish my portrait, don’t I? And he did say he’d start showing me things after it was done, so I should give it at least that long.”

“Good for you,” Kathy said.

VII

Newford, October 1973

“No, no, no!” Rushkin cried.

Izzy cringed as his gravelly voice boomed in the confines of the studio. “My god, you’re hopeless.”

She’d been coming to the upper floor of the coach house every morning for a month now, and while she herself had seen a marked improvement in the quality of her work, even in such a short space of time, she had yet to win one word of praise from her teacher. So far as Rushkin was concerned, she could do nothing right. She’d gotten worse, rather than better. She wasn’t even fit to clean a real artist’s brushes, or sweep up his studio—both of which were tasks she performed for him every day, as well as making him lunch, fetching his groceries and supplies and running any number of other errands.

“What can you possibly be thinking of?” he demanded. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t think.”

He had yet to ask her her name.

“I think a bug would be more able to follow instructions than you.”

“I ... I was trying to do what you told me ....” Her voice trailed off at the withering look he gave her.

“You were trying, were you? Well, if this is the best you can come up with when you’re trying then perhaps you should be considering some other career. Anything but the arts. Anything that doesn’t require you to have the half a brain you need to follow a simple set of instructions.”

He tore the canvas from her easel and flung it across the room. Izzy watched in dismay as it struck a pile of Rushkin’s own canvases and they all went tumbling to the floor. Ignoring the clatter and possible damage to his paintings, Rushkin picked up the new canvas that Izzy had primed earlier this morning from where it leaned against the legs of her easel and set it up between the trays where the other had been. He grabbed the brush from Izzy’s hand.

“Look,” he commanded, pointing to the mirror that he’d set up in front of her easel the day before.

He pushed her forward so that her own reflection was prominent. “What do you see?”

“Me.”

“No. You see a person, a shape, nothing more. The sooner you stop relating what you see to what you think it should be and simply concentrate on the shapes and values of what you are seeing, the sooner you’ll be able to progress.”

He fell silent then. Studying her reflection for a few moments, he began to build up a figure on the canvas with quick deft strokes. Three, four—no more than a dozen—and Izzy could see herself, already recognizable, her own image looking back at her from the canvas. She looked as though she was standing in a cloud of mist.

“Now what do we have on the canvas?” Rushkin asked.

“Me?”

The brush moved again in his hand, adding darker values to the hair and skin tones, highlighting the idea of a cheekbone, exaggerating the shadow that held an eye.

“And now?”

The familiarity was gone. With two strokes he’d changed the image of herself into that of a stranger.

But oddly enough, the final effect made the image on the canvas seem more like her than it had been only moments before.

“This is what you want to find,” he told her. “Use what you see as a template, an idea, but draw the final image from here—” He tapped his head. ‘—and here—” Now he laid a hand against his belly.

“—or what you do is meaningless. You want to paint so that the subject on your canvas is something the viewer has never seen before, yet remains tantalizingly familiar. If you want to paint exactly what you see, you might as well become a photographer. Paint what you feel.”

“But your work’s realistic. Why should I have to—”

She never saw the blow coming. He struck her with his open hand but it was still enough to send her staggering. Her cheek burned and her head rang. Slowly she lifted a hand to her stinging cheek and stared at him through a blur of tears.

“What did I tell you about questioning me?” he shouted.

Izzy backed away. She was numb with shock, and scared.

Rushkin’s rage held for a moment longer; then the anger that had twisted his features into an even more grotesque appearance than usual fled. A look of contrition came over them and he seemed as shocked as she was at what he had just done.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I ... I had no right to do that.”

Izzy didn’t know how to respond. Her adrenaline level was still high, but her fright had now turned to anger. The last person to hit her had been a boyfriend she’d had during her last year of high school. After she finally managed to break up with him, she’d vowed never to let anyone hit her again.

Rushkin dropped her paintbrush into a jar of turpentine and shuffled over to the recamier. When he sat down, head bowed, gaze on the floor, he looked more than ever like a stone gargoyle, a small figure, lost and tragic, looking down at a world to which it could never belong.

“I’ll understand if you feel you have to go,” he said.

For a long moment, all Izzy could do was stand there and look at him. Her cheek still stung, her pulse still drummed far too fast. Slowly her gaze lifted from the dejected figure he presented to look about the studio. Rushkin’s masterpieces looked back at her from every wall and corner, stunning representations of an artist still at the peak of his career. She heard Kathy’s voice in her head, repeating something she’d said that afternoon Izzy had told her about her odd meeting with Rushkin.

I think you’re all mad. But that’s part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn’t it?

Izzy didn’t know if it was madness, exactly. It was more like living on a tightrope of emotional intensity. Many of the great artists, if they didn’t have volatile temperaments, were at the least eccentric to some degree or another. It came, as Kathy had put it, with the territory. No one forced a person to associate with the more cantankerous representatives. People befriended artists such as Rushkin for any number of reasons, understanding that they would have to make compromises. The gallery owner stood to make money. The student hoped to learn.

So Izzy had taken Rushkin’s verbal abuse, because the trade-off had seemed worth it. He might be overbearing and self-centered, but god, could he paint. And even if she was no closer to winning his approval than she’d ever been to winning the approval of her parents, she was at least learning something here, which was more than had ever happened at home.

She would never forget the day that she was taking a break from weeding the vegetable garden, sitting under one of the old elms by the farmhouse, sketchbook on her knee. Her father had come upon her and flown into one of his typical rages. He hadn’t hit her, but he had torn up the sketchbook, destroying a month’s worth of work. For that, and for all the other ways that he tried to close up her spirit in the same kind of little box that held his own, Izzy would never forgive him.

Her attention turned from the offhand gallery of Rushkin’s work that surrounded her, back to Rushkin himself. Her cheek didn’t sting so much anymore and her shock was mostly gone. The anger was still present, but it had been oddly transferred to her father now. Her father, who, after he’d torn up her sketches that afternoon, told her that “all art is crap and all artists are fags and dykes. Is that what you want to grow up to be, Isabelle? A manhating dyke?”

In that sense, even with the red imprint of Rushkin’s hand on her cheek, she still felt as though they were compatriots in some great and worthy struggle, allies standing together against all those small-minded people such as her father who couldn’t conceive of art as being “real work.” Her father’s anger originated in his disdain for her and what she’d chosen to do with her life; Rushkin’s was simply born out of his frustration that she wasn’t doing it well enough. Not that she shouldn’t be doing it, but that she should be doing it better.

“It ... it’s okay,” she said.

Rushkin lifted his head, a hopeful look in those pale discerning eyes of his. “I mean, it’s not okay that you hit me,” she said. “It’s just ... let’s try to carry on.”

“I’m so very sorry,” he told her. “I don’t know what came over me. I just ... it’s that I feel time is running out and I have so much I want to pass on.”

“What do you mean, ‘time is running out’?” Izzy asked.

“Look at me. I’m old. Worn out. I have no family. No coterie of students to carry on my work.

There’s just you and me and I can’t seem to teach you fast enough. I get frustrated, knowing that I’m trying to force a lifetime of learning into whatever time we might have left.”

“Are you ... are you dying?”

Rushkin shook his head. “No more than we all are. Life is a terminal illness, after all. We have our allotment of years, and no more. I’ve lived long enough that my course is almost run now.”

Izzy gave him a worried look. How old was he, anyway? He didn’t look to be more than in his mid-fifties, but then, when she considered the dates on some of the canvases that hung in the Newford Museum of Fine Arts, she realized he probably had to be in his late seventies. Perhaps even his early eighties.

As though to emphasize that point, Rushkin, moving with obvious difficulty, rose stiffly to his feet.

“Let’s have our lunch early,” he said, leading the way downstairs.

Izzy trailed along behind him, her emotions in a turmoil, worry overriding them all. When they got to his ground-floor apartment, he insisted on making them soup. While they had lunch, he opened up for the first time in all the weeks Izzy had known him, telling her about living in Paris in the early part of the century, being in London during the Blitz, the well-known artists he had known and worked with, how he’d paid the bills while he was still making a name for himself by working on ocean steamers, in dockyards, construction sites and the like. Having no education, he’d only done physical labor, and because of his size, he’d had to work twice as hard as anyone else to prove himself capable of holding his own.

“I don’t know when it was that I learned the secret,” he said.

“What secret is th—?” Izzy began, then caught herself.

Rushkin gave her one of those smiles that were supposed to show his humor, but only distorted his features into more of a grimace.

“We’ll make a new rule,” he said. “Upstairs, when we’re working, no questions. You’ll do as you’re told and we won’t ever hear the word ‘why,’ or I won’t be able to maintain the teacher-student relationship the work requires. We’ll never get anywhere if I have to stop and explain myself every two minutes. But when we leave the studio, we should recognize each other as equals, and equals have no rules between them except for those of common sense and good taste. Agreed?”

Izzy nodded. “My name’s Izzy,” she said.

“Izzy?”

“You’ve never asked me my name.”

“But I thought I knew your name: Isabelle Copley.”

“That is my name. Izzy’s just a nickname that my friend Kathy gave me and it’s kind of stuck.” Izzy paused, then asked, “How did you know my name?”

Rushkin shrugged. “I can’t remember. If you didn’t tell me, someone else must have. But ‘Izzy.’” He shook his head. “I think I will refer to you as Isabelle. It has more ... dignity.”

“Let me guess,” Izzy said, smiling. “Nobody calls you Vince. It’s always Vincent, right?”

Rushkin smiled with her, but his eyes seemed sad to her. “No one calls me anything,” he said, “unless they want something, and then it’s Mr. Rushkin this and Mr. Rushkin that. It makes for dismal conversation.” He paused for a moment, then added, “But I can’t find fault with my fame. When I first began my career I had one dictum that I set myself to be paid for my work, but not to work for pay.

Fame makes it that much easier to follow that maxim.” He gave her a sharp look. “At least it does so long as I recognize when I am beginning to paint the obvious, rather than painting what I must express.

People would rather you did the same thing over and over again and it becomes very easy to fall into their trap—particularly when you’re young and hungry. But the more you do so, the nearer you are drawn to something you should not be a part of that homogeneity that is the death of any form of creative expression.”

When he paused this time, the silence drew out between them. Looking at him, Izzy got the feeling that he was traveling back through his memories. He might even have forgotten she was there and what they were discussing.

“You were saying something about a secret,” she said finally.

Rushkin took a moment to rouse himself; then he nodded. “What do you know about alchemy?”

“It’s something they did in the Middle Ages, I think. Trying to turn lead into gold, wasn’t it?”

“In part. I consider the search for the philosopher’s stone, which would turn all base metals into gold, to be more of a metaphorical quest than a physical one, especially since alchemists also searched for a universal solvent, the elixir of life and the panacea—a universal remedy. There are so many connections between these elements, they are all so entwined with one another, that they would seem to my mind to all be part and parcel of the same secret.”

Izzy gave him an odd look. “Is this the same secret you started out talking to me about?”

“Yes and no.” Rushkin sighed. “The trouble is, we don’t yet share enough of a common language for me to clearly explain what I mean.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Exactly my point.”

“But—”

“What I am trying to teach you in the studio are not just artistic techniques and the ability to see. It’s also another language. And until you gain more expertise in it, whatever I tell you at this time will only confuse you more.” He smiled. “Perhaps now you can understand why I get so frustrated at our slow speed of progress.”

“I’m trying as hard as I can.”

“I know you are,” Rushkin told her. “But it’s a long process all the same. And while you’re still young, I grow older every day. More tea?” he added, lifting the teapot and offering it in her direction.

Izzy blinked at the sudden switch in topics. “Yes, please,” she said when she registered what he’d asked.

“Look at that sky,” Rushkin said, pointing out the window to where an expanse of perfect blue rose up above the city’s skyline. “It reminds me of when I lived in Nepal for a time ....”

By the time Izzy left Rushkin that day, she felt that she’d gained a real insight into him, both as a person and as an artist. She’d managed to get a glimpse of what lay hidden underneath the face of the angry artist he presented to the world and found there a much more human and kinder man. She was in such good spirits as she took the bus back to the university for an afternoon class that she completely forgot about what had happened in the studio earlier that day.

Until the next time he hit her.