The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(6)

But let us not get sidetracked by melodrama. Let’s carry on with our story. Andrew had dropped in at the Winslow mansion that August afternoon so that he and his cousin Charles could arrange a Sunday outing with the charming Keller sisters. As usual, they would take them to that little grassy knoll carpeted with flowers near the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, where they invariably mounted their amorous offensives. But Charles was still sleeping, so the butler showed Andrew into the library. He did not mind waiting until his cousin got up; he felt at ease surrounded by all those books filling the large, bright room with their peculiar musty smell. Andrew’s father prided himself on having built up a decent library, yet his cousin’s collection contained more than just obscure volumes on politics and other equally dull subjects.

Here, Andrew could find the classics and adventure stories by authors such as Verne and Salgari, but still more interesting to Andrew was a strange, rather picturesque type of literature many considered frivolous—novels where the authors had let their imaginations run wild, regardless of how implausible or often down-right absurd the outcome. Like all discerning readers, Charles appreciated Homer’s Odyssey and his Iliad, but his real enjoyment came from immersing himself in the crazy world of Batrocomomaquia, the blind poet’s satire on his own work in an epic tale about a battle between mice and frogs. Andrew recalled a few books written in a similar style which his cousin had lent him; one called True Tales by Luciano de Samósata which recounted a series of fabulous voyages in a flying ship that takes the hero up to the sun and even through the belly of a giant whale. Another called The Man in the Moon by Francis Godwin, the first novel ever to describe an interplanetary voyage, that told the story of a Spaniard named Domingo Gonsales who travels to the moon in a machine drawn by a flock of wild geese. These flights of fancy reminded Andrew of pop guns or firecrackers, all sound and fury, and yet he understood, or thought he did, why his cousin was so passionate about them. Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles’s soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into seriousness or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin’s casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbued with that absurd solemnity that the transience of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.

However, that afternoon Andrew did not have time to look at any book. He did not even manage to cross the room to the book-shelves because the loveliest girl he had ever seen stopped him in his tracks. He stood staring at her bemused as time seemed to congeal, to stand still for a moment, until finally he managed to approach the portrait slowly to take a closer look. The woman was wearing a black velvet toque and a flowery scarf knotted at the neck. Andrew had to admit she was by no means beautiful by conventional standards: her nose was disproportionately large for her face, her eyes too close together and her reddish hair looked damaged, and yet at the same time this mysterious woman possessed a charm as unmistakable as it was elusive. He was unsure exactly what it was that captivated him about her. Perhaps the contrast between her frail appearance and the strength radiating from her gaze; a gaze he had never seen before in any of his conquests, a wild, determined gaze that retained a glimmer of youthful innocence, as if every day the woman was forced to confront the ugliness of life. And yet even so, curled up in her bed at night in the dark she still believed it was only a regrettable figment of her imagination, a bad dream that would soon dissolve and give way to a more pleasant reality. It was the gaze of a person who yearns for something and refuses to believe it will never be hers, because hope is the only thing she has left.

“A charming creature, isn’t she?” Charles’s voice came from behind him.

Andrew jumped. He was so absorbed by the portrait he had not heard his cousin come in. He nodded as his cousin walked over to the drinks trolley. He himself could not have found any better way to describe the emotions the portrait stirred in him, that desire to protect her mixed with a feeling of admiration he could only compare—rather reluctantly, owing to the inappropriateness of the metaphor—to that which he felt for cats.

“It was my birthday present to my father,” Charles explained pouring a brandy. “It’s only been hanging there a few days.” “Who is she?” asked Andrew. “I don’t remember seeing her at any of Lady Holland or Lord Broughton’s parties.” “At those parties?” Charles laughed. “I’m beginning to think the artist is gifted. He’s taken you in as well.” “What do you mean?” asked Andrew, accepting the glass of brandy his cousin was holding out to him.

“Surely you don’t think I gave it to my father because of its artistic merit? Does it look like a painting worthy of my consideration, cousin?” Charles grabbed his arm, forcing him to take a few steps closer to the portrait. “Take a good look. Notice the brushwork: utterly devoid of talent. The painter is no more than an amusing disciple of Degas. Where the Parisian is gentle, he is starkly somber.” Andrew did not understand enough about painting to be able to have a discussion with his cousin, and all he really wanted to know was the sitter’s identity, and so he nodded gravely, giving his cousin to understand he agreed with his view that this painter would do better to devote himself to repairing bicycles.

Charles smiled, amused by his cousin’s refusal to take part in a discussion about painting that would have given him a chance to air his knowledge, and finally declared: “I had another reason for giving it to him, dear cousin.” He drained his glass slowly, and gazed at the painting again for a few moments, shaking his head with satisfaction.