Castle of Water: A Novel(47)
As for Sophie, she spent most of the afternoon seated on the sand with her knees tucked up under her chin. She watched the spires of cumulus climb to the high blue of the heavens and laces of foam crease the deep blue of the sea. Whatever she was mulling or struggling with was finally resolved with a relieved nod and a slow rising to her feet. She walked down to the water’s edge and removed the wedding ring that still hung around her neck from a thin filament of fishing line. She laid the kindest of kisses upon the gold band, said the dignified and loving farewell that the crash had deprived her of, and threw it as far as she could out into the water, to get it as close as she could to her dear étienne. At last, after more than a year, she could finally breathe.
As for Barry, he took up in that moment of rapture and confusion the very thing that had gotten him there in the first place. He gathered the two brushes and twin canisters of paint, walked rather pensively through the palm forest, and made his way up the steep bank of rocks. The terns honked at him and a tandem of overprotective parents executed a series of intimidating swoops, but Barry hardly noticed, so consumed was he by the memories of the night he and Sophie had shared and the promise that painting was soon to come.
At the mouth of the little cave, he took a seat. Angled sunlight was seeping in from the west, and he required no flashlight to see what he was doing. Carefully, he chose the portion of smooth gray basalt that would serve as his canvas, measuring its proportions with the palms of his hands. He moistened the tips of his brushes between his lips, then took a deep breath and decided it was time to begin. Hands shaking ever so slightly, he let himself go, making a surprising discovery in the process. He found himself consumed with a single, vaporous image: that of the island, the way he had seen it when the storm was battering him out to sea, the way it had looked when he and Sophie went swimming in the starlight. And that was what he painted, in the bone-white shade of clamshells and the pitch-black stain of coal. Around it, full moons, silent stars, and an almost biblically dark sea. It was chiaroscuro in the purest sense of the unpronounceable word, rendered with a level of abstraction that he had not known himself to be capable of. His earlier paintings had always been hampered by a forced realism—perception at its most surface level. On this day, however, his brush was guided solely by a feeling, one that he knew his words could never do justice to. Painting like this was something new, something he’d never done before. And for a few hours, he wasn’t a lowly mortal struggling to survive on a raw patch of sand—he was an artist, positioned like a prophet six stories above it, dabbing his brushes, casting his paints, jousting with angels, and waltzing with the gods.
*
The sunlight had diminished almost entirely when Barry emerged from his cave and went down the mountain, brushes and paints held tightly in hand. He returned through the palm grove and found Sophie seated, smiling at him in the plum-colored dusk. She said bonsoir, and he said it to her back, and he couldn’t help noticing something different in her bearing. She asked him what he’d done with his afternoon. Painting, he told her, making no effort to disguise his joy or his pride. She smiled again and asked what he had painted. The island, he answered, and he sat down beside her.
They dined on a fresh bunch of bananas, as there was no driftwood left for a fire, and decided to turn in early—Barry planned on trying out the boat again in the morning, to see if it might serve its purpose and help him catch fish. He crawled through the hut entrance and onto the soft weave of the palm mat and was pleasantly surprised when Sophie slid in seamlessly beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder, and he caressed her hair. Do you think you’ll ever paint me? she asked after a minute of pleasant silence. I will, he told her, once we get off this island. Really, you will? Oui, he replied. But I’m going to need more than two colors to do you justice.
And a little less lonely, in a night slightly less dark, the two of them both let the patter of raindrops sing them to sleep …
Until Barry realized that he’d forgotten, yet again, to take out his contacts.
PART THREE
32
There is also an exhibit of Ai Weiwei’s latest sculptures, a Cindy Sherman photography retrospective, a corridor full of Jackson Pollocks, and an entire floor devoted to Marcel Duchamp—all of which are very good, none of which receive from Mona the consideration they deserve. She’d like to give those masterpieces her undivided attention, but the hem of her thoughts is still snagged on the hooked nail of his work. Those haunting black-and-white paintings of the island, frightening in both their scale and their beauty, and that strange floating mobile with all the fishhooks … She finally gives it a rest, though, when her distracted meandering causes her to nearly bump into Marcel’s infamous urinal. A security guard scolds her, and Mona tiptoes quietly away.
Before leaving, however, she stops at the gift shop. She wonders if there might be some book or companion piece to the exhibition—something to tell her more than the canvases could on their own. She scans the shelves, but there is nothing. Not that it should surprise her. She knows that he never gives interviews and seldom makes anything resembling a public appearance. There was that short profile she read in The New Yorker, but even that seemed more conjecture than actual fact. Just a slightly more eloquent telling of what everyone already pretended to know.
Oh, well. Resigned to keep pretending, too, Mona exits the Pompidou and only then, with that sudden burst of cool air and light, realizes that she has the beginnings of an unpleasant hangover. She also remembers that she is totally out of Nurofen tablets—and then, on top of that, recalls that the pharmacies in Paris are closed on Sundays. She sighs and walks into a Franprix instead, fishing out just enough euros from her pocket for an ice-cold Orangina—not quite ibuprofen, but it will have to do. The old man behind the counter makes a rather sassy comment in French, to which Mona feels confident enough to reply in kind. The old man smiles, evidently impressed. Not quite the poulette he mistook her for when she came in.