The Betrayals(45)

Watching the lamplight glimmer gold on the falling snow. My shadow, flickering in mid-air.

His light’s gone out.

Maybe it wasn’t even his. Could’ve been Jacob, or Felix, or Dupont. Don’t know why I care. It’s Montverre, getting under my skin. This blasted place. There are times when you feel more alone here than if you were the last person left on earth.

Two weeks, two days

Letter from Mim. Wish she’d stop. Wish I could send a telegram home: TOO BUSY TO REPLY STOP SEE YOU AT NEW YEAR … She’s worried about Dad and his heart. A good thing I don’t have time to answer or I’d be saying, ‘Dad’s heart? What heart?’

Business is thriving, though. Apparently the stock market crash, all the people losing their jobs, all the suicides, depression, austerity (etc., etc.) are a Good Thing for the scrap business. Who’d’ve thought?

I’m glad I’m out of all that.

Two weeks

Nearly got thrown out of Historiae. I got into an argument with Jacob which turned into an argument with the Magister. They were basically saying that civilisation was buggered up, that technology and weaponry and industrialisation mean we’re all doomed. Normally I wouldn’t care – or at least I wouldn’t rise to it – but for some reason I got angrier and angrier. How dare they sit there smugly discussing the imminent destruction of society? Looking gently rueful about the economy and the people starving in the streets. And the grand jeu, too – accepting that the Golden Age is over and that there’s nothing we can do. Such apathy. Everything around us can go down the drain, but we’ll stay here in our ivory tower, riding the last melancholic wave of truth and beauty before the end of the world. Looking down on real people. Who do they think they are?

I think I might have said that. That’s why the Magister told me to be quiet or leave the room. It made everyone stare at him, and then at me. No one’s ever been chucked out of a lesson before – not in our class, anyway. I was choking on my words already so I shut my mouth and sat down. But the arrogance of it! And no one else seemed to notice or care. I didn’t dare look at Carfax; somehow, if he hadn’t understood, that would have been worse than anything.

Later

Wrote that at lunchtime, when I was still raging. Now it’s nearly dinner time. Feeling calmer, but a bit … strange. We had Factorum this afternoon. I was still fizzing when I went in, but I got out my sketchbook and pencil and sat down to draw my still life, as per usual. Two bottles and a glass. I could draw them in my sleep. The Magister used to hover over my shoulder and say things like, ‘How about drawing something else, today?’ and ‘Or perhaps a change of medium …?’ but he finally gave up a couple of weeks ago. It’s not quite as good as a nap, but at least it’s undemanding. (Everyone uses Factorum as a way to stop thinking, I’m not the only one.)

So I was sitting there, trying to draw, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why – maybe because I was still seething from the Historiae lesson, or because the others were sneaking looks at me as if I might explode at any moment. I flipped through my sketchbook: dozens of bottles and glasses. All more or less similar. All more or less competent. Not even bad. And I thought: I’ve never even looked at the stupid bottles. I draw them how I think they should look. I draw my mental image of them. Pictures of pictures.

I got to my feet, left my sketchbook where it was and wandered away, winding through the tables and benches. It’s the only thing I like about Factorum, the long classroom with all the cupboards and tools and models, crazy paper-and-wire frames hanging from the ceiling … Everything’s a bit dusty, shadowy, a kind of cave where you can find a corner to be unobserved. There’re bits everywhere, rooms off to the side with printing stones and pottery wheels and carpentry tools, but I’ve never seen anyone use them. At the beginning of last year the Magister tried to encourage us to experiment, but somehow we all knew that the done thing was to sit in a circle around a still life and pretend to take it seriously. Even the people who disappear off to do their own work – Carfax and Paul and Freddie – don’t ever actually make anything, as far as I can see. There’s so much equipment, so many mouldering projects (paintings, papier-maché sculptures, collages, faces in plaster-of-Paris) that it can’t always have been like this. There must have been scholars who entered into the spirit of it. But not us.

I found myself at the far end of the building, in a bitterly cold storeroom. The snow had drifted up against the window so it was hard to see anything clearly, but there were piles of planks and boards against one wall, and a dried-up palette resting on a backless chair. I started opening cupboards at random. I found some old tubes of oil paint. They were stiff but still soft. I got one of the bits of wood and squeezed a blob of red paint on to it. First I was only seeing if the colour had stayed fresh, but then I began to spread it out – with anything I could find, an old bit of rag, the end of a stiffened brush, my hands … And then I added other tints, different shades of orange and crimson and burgundy, seeing if I could make the red redder. I covered the whole panel with it. I must have looked like a kid, kneeling on the floor, smearing the colour right to the edges. Later I found flecks of dried scarlet in my hair.

I lost track of time. It was only when I heard the bell that I came back to reality. I was covered in paint and dust. The panel was a mess of hot colours. Study of an Executioner’s Block. Here and there the grain of the wood still showed through, but in other places the colour was as thick and shiny as blood. I’d left handprints in it, the shapes where it had oozed between my fingers. It was paint and wood, flesh and oil and pigment. It was real. It was the exact opposite of a grand jeu.