I took the cigarette in my mouth again, came up to the girl, turned around the canvas and looked at it myself again. She was absolutely right.
‘I was painting it to make money to pay my bills.’
‘What about the other paintings? You didn’t paint them for the money, right?’
‘Right.’
This time she did not try to find out the details, apparently, she learned her lesson from the previous experience of questioning me.
‘So, how many hours would you need to spend with me to pay all your bills?’
‘It depends on how many hours I’ll be able to stand you.’
The corners of her lips crumpled into a smile again.
She was very pleasant and uninhibited as company, but her numerous questions have from day one either thrown me off balance or revived my ability to smile. I thought she was a cute and goal-oriented schoolgirl, who did not lack care on her parents’ part and was probably spoiled for choice with boys’ hearts. It was not surprising: Valeria was a beautiful, fit girl with already developed breasts and good posture. Her thick golden hair would charmingly change shades as it caught the light.
We went out into the balcony, and she asked for some more wine.
‘Are you sure you’ll be able to hold the brushes steadily after the second glass?’
‘Stop it. Someone is just afraid of getting drunk first,’ she said smiling.
I was not afraid of getting drunk. Yet the wine and cigarettes had already unwound me a little. I had not had alcohol for long. The winter did not predispose to that. For many people, winter with its holiday season is the period when the level of alcohol in their blood rises, but not for me. I practically do not celebrate those holidays that transform the homes of normal people.
‘Let’s begin then.’
I removed my painting from the table and walked out of the studio for a second. When I returned, I saw Valeria sitting at the table and examining the room’s interior.
‘What’s that?’
‘An apple. We’re going to compete in drawing this apple from nature.’
Drawing an apple is an elementary exercise that demonstrates a budding artist’s basic skills.
‘What will we use?’
‘Coloured pencils,’ I took out two sheets of white paper and pencil stubs from a drawer. ‘Here you go. We’ll start on the count of three. We’ll have ten minutes all in all.’
‘I’m ready,’ my pupil assured me.
‘Three!’ I started drawing.
‘Huh? Already?! What about one and two?’ She laughed, but having seen how fast my pencil was running on the paper, she set about drawing too, only adding: ‘Cheat!’
I smiled and continued to concentrate on the lines. Four minutes in and my apple was ready. All that was left was add some volume with colours. I began colouring without rushing and glancing at Valeria’s work from time to time.
She was doing everything right: contours of natural shape, a dimple at the top, and a base at the bottom. Time for shadows. I noticed how Valerie hesitated when deciding where to place the centre of light in the drawing. She was moving her eyes from the apple to the sheet and back to the apple.
‘Why are you peeping, cheat?!’
I smiled again and got back to my drawing. The ten minutes were running out. My apple was ready, and I watched Valerie finish hers.
‘Time’s up!’
She put the red pencil aside and moved her drawing towards me. I examined it silently, looking at her work. It had the correct proportions of the object, the shape was analysed constructively; the lines, strokes and the light and shadow ratios were well combined.
‘Well done…’
‘You, too,’ Valerie said as she passed back my drawing.
I realised that this girl was not a beginner, and decided to give her a more difficult task. I added her glass of wine and a low vase with painting brushes next to the apple. But something was missing. I got up and drew the curtains over the window and balcony door. I took out a thick candle, lit it and placed it behind the glass. The red wine shimmered with ruby hues in the crystal glass and the candlelight cast shadows on the objects.
I looked at Valerie’s face and realised that she would easily take on this challenge. I had to make the task even more demanding.
I lit up a cigarette and placed it glowing into a glass ashtray that was full of cigarette butts.
Valerie took a sheet of paper from the same chest of drawers, gave me a sheet and began to draw with enthusiasm.
The cigarette smoke slowly rose in a narrow wisp, skirting the contours of the glass and flirting with the candle flame. When one cigarette burned out, I replaced it with another…
We were drawing carefully, locked in a dark room in the middle of a sunny spring day. I have to admit, it was the first time in a while that I was enjoying this activity. I even turned on the music, which helped me relax and concentrate on the drawing.
When he turned on the music, everything transfigured suddenly. The darkness, the smell of the cigarette smoke, the play of the shadows in the glass of wine, the music drifting away, the man’s sinewy hands in the shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the scribbled curves and lines, his rare sighs, like measures of beats, his glancing and my shyness cast a spell over me and carried me away to distant shores.
I did not even dare to look at him anymore. Just the still life and my paper. If I said that I was able to focus, I would be lying.
I felt an unusual bewilderment. I found myself in a confined space, alone with a man I barely knew, who was lonely and could sometimes be rude. I thought he would try to make a pass at me. But his aloofness and detachedness for the entire next hour or two really astonished me. I realised that he was present physically, but in fact he was elsewhere, absorbed in the single source of light and the smoke around him.
We finished. The rays of the setting sun seeped into the room. The cigarette burned out. The candle went out.
He took my picture without even looking at it. In a minute, he was already helping with my coat and said that he will see me next week.
I was dumbfounded as I descended the staircase. There was something mysterious about this man… This something left me in a state of confusion and unusual curiosity. “Why is he alone?” this was only the first in a series of questions spinning in my head.
‘How did it go?’ her daddy asked.
‘Well.’
I was still under the spell of this new acquaintance when I got into my father’s black Audi, and we drove home.
A cigarette filled my lungs with smoke. I was holding the picture of this talented girl in my hands. It was perfect. Just as her life would be. Their car disappeared around the corner of the house. I left the unfinished cigarette to languish in the crystal ashtray on the balcony.
Chapter 6
The teal blue sea, bringing forth dozens of waves that rise and fall in furling white crests, with tossing blows battles the grey creation of man. Three hungry gulls scan for prey at the beginning of this pier, not heeding their ilk soaring upwards to the single beam of light. The birds are flying towards the sun amidst the cloud-bound, menacing sky. They do not suspect that a storm would soon break forth and flying would become unbearable.
On the other end of the pier, a couple in love is in hiding, whispering something to each other. A man in a tweed coat, wet from the salty water, is hugging a woman with chestnut hair blowing in the wind. Squeezing her with his embrace as if something is predestined to separate them any moment now. He is embracing her as if for the last time. For the last time, their eyes look at each other while his lips utter words dissolving in eternity three minutes before the storm.
‘How much is this painting?’ asked a middle-aged man in a black tweed overcoat. His left hand was hiding inside the coat pocket while his right hand was holding a black hat that was actually pointing at the painting.
‘Which one?’ I promptly replied.
‘With the couple on the pier,’ he said bending towards it as if trying to identify the protagonists.
“Three Minutes before the Storm…” ’ I said realising which one it was as I tried to calm the storm billowing inside me. I added: ‘It’s not for sale.’
The man scrutinised me with his big black eyes, with his left thumb and forefinger stroking his greying black moustache from top to bottom, and then looked back at the canvas.
‘I’ll give you ten thousand for it.’
‘I think you didn’t get me, it’s not for sale,’ I said as I cleared my throat to disguise my trembling voice.
‘No, I think’ – he looked at me over his shoulder – ‘you didn’t get me. I’m talking about ten thousand dollars.’
I pinched the edges of my lips and I stood up to him, looking right into his face: what type of a man was this who was willing to pay for one of my paintings a sum that an average artist barely made in months? At first he returned my look, and then, as if on command, we both turned to the painting. I do not know what he saw in this combination of paints and torment. I cannot even imagine why or for whom he was willing to splash out such a hefty sum. One thing I knew for sure, I could not just part with it. I silently looked at the painting and all I could see was my beloved and I standing at the edge of the precipice. I was experiencing the same emotions, calling for help to the sole and last ray of light streaming from the sky. I recalled how powerless we are before the elements, nature and the skies. Before those forces that furtively watch us from behind the clouds, casting our lots.
‘The painting is not for sale,’ I said slowly.
‘Then what is it doing here?’ asked the man as if a match sparked and immediately went out, following up with a new sum of twelve thousand now.
‘No,’ I refused again.
‘Fifteen.’
‘Unfortunately, no.’
The man looked at me in incomprehension, then looked around at the other sellers, the other paintings, and back at me. He did not move and was about to say something when I said:
‘Maybe you would be interested in any other of my works?’
‘Are you the author?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I think it would not be difficult for you to paint something similar one more time. I appreciate your other works, but I only wish to acquire this one.’
‘I understand,’ I said like a troublesome kid and looked down, ‘but I won’t be able to.’
‘Able to what?’ he frowned as he tried to make out my quiet, dry voice.
‘I won’t be able to paint another one…’
‘So, you find my offer to be too low,’ – I was mistaken to think that this man would be able to feel the full extent of this painting’s importance to me – he nodded and continued to bargain: ‘Fifteen thousand.’ He stroked his beard with anticipation, putting my principles to the test.
‘Unfortunately…’
‘Damn it! How much do you want for this piece of art?!’ he burst out in irritation.
‘I can’t sell it to you, or anyone else for that matter.’ I was still looking at the ground.
‘You know, artists are very strange people,’ intervened Gennadiy Vasilevich, ‘they paint for others, but when it comes to parting with them, it is as if they were giving away part of themselves. And the fact of the matter is that they are not always ready to give away a part of themselves, however weary they have grown of it.’
The man heard out Gennadiy Vasilevich and tried to overcome his irritation.
‘Well, I have offered a fair price for this work. Fifteen thousand US dollars. I am quite confident that most of you have never even seen such money in your dreams!’
Gennadiy Vasilevich put his arm around the man’s shoulders and moved him away towards his stall: ‘You have to understand, Vladimir is a very special person.’
‘Why should I understand? If he’s here, then he’s surely selling something. And why on earth would he refuse such a generous offer?’
Gennadiy Vasilevich did not attempt to explain to the buyer again why he won’t be able to acquire “Three Minutes before the Storm”.
‘Here, take a look at my works, I believe you will appreciate them and find value in them, too.’
However, the man in the black tweed coat only glanced at Gennadiy Vasilevich’s paintings and barely a few seconds later said: ‘Thank you, but there is nothing in these works that would interest me.’ He looked in my direction again and shouted: ‘You shouldn’t have turned down such an excellent offer.’ He put on his hat and slowly walked away.
‘You’re a weirdo, Vova, a total weirdo.’ Gennadiy Vasilevich patted me on the back shaking his head. ‘Just now you were not only offered a huge sum of money, which you turned down, but also the chance to come one step closer to your freedom. Freedom from your thoughts that ensnare and gnaw on you from the inside. These thoughts are very similar to those that have been pursuing me for many years.’
‘If they are truly similar thoughts, as you say, is it possible that you would have accepted his offer if you were in my shoes?’
‘If I were forty, yes. You are still at an age where you can let the full force of life into your days and change your way of being.’
I lit a cigarette and, without uttering a word, contemplated all of what had been just said.
‘Our thoughts bring our end. And in your case, your seven painted memories are only speeding it,’ he added.
I remained silent, blowing the cigarette smoke.
‘You are bound by your past, Vova. You are destroying yourself. Listen,’ he said as he shook me by the shoulders, ‘get rid of them and your life will be easier. You’re still young. Don’t take that path. I’ve been there. It’s a dead end.’
‘Why?’
‘Because one wonderful spring morning in your old age, you will wake up and realise that you are completely alone. You will understand that when your lifeless body will be lowered into the burial pit, there will be no one there. No one will shed a tear or shudder at your disappearance. Your friends, the ones you could have relied on, would have either passed away or would simply not come to say goodbye. Moreover, your memories of love will die along with you. Do you hear me? All your memories that surge in your heart will go along with you. And what will be left?’ – he went on with his train of thought calmly – ‘I’ll tell you what will be left. Your seven paintings, that’s all. However, if you can’t let them and your memories go, nothing but oblivion awaits them. Paintings don’t live without owners. Hiding away in attics, they’re useless.’
‘So, what should I do?’
‘Sell them or throw them,’ Gennadiy Vasilevich advised with insistence and walked to his stall.
‘This one? Three thousand hryvnia,’ he responded to the enquiry of a passer-by, ‘You’ll take it? Sure, I’ll pack it for you straight away.’
