The Last Secret, page 8
I’m overcome by a wave of melancholy, and suspicion that I’m no more than a prisoner working off her sentence in a beautiful purgatory. The lonely trees whisper a brutal reminder: You are nothing to no one. Tears come to my eyes. When did Gladsheim stop being home? And where do I belong, if not here?
With Tuna at my heels, I open the door at the side of the guesthouse and slowly climb the stairs to my studio, resentment in every step. When I enter the studio, my dog pads faithfully to his bed beside my easel. Pat calls this place the den of iniquity, a reference, I think, to the huge windows and central skylight that, on an actual sunny day, shed rays upon a delightfully ratty pink velvet settee in the center of the room that I often recline upon à la Coco Chanel. Glory quivers and thrums around me in a cacophony: sketches and pages ripped from magazines clutter the walls, paint-flecked sawhorses and easels, ladders, and paint tubes, and empty turpentine jugs left where they’ve been thrown by me, either in artistic abandon or uncontrolled angst.
I fling my raincoat on a sawhorse and wrap myself in a Cowichan sweater, approaching the radio with trepidation. Pat insists the few paintings she’s sold in the past were done while I listened to her lucky radio station of country music favorites, and as such has direfully fixed the tuner dial to the required station with black electrical tape. It’s a warning—don’t you dare change it. I reluctantly switch it on to Ray Price in the midst of crooning “I Won’t Mention It Again.”
“Satan tortures her subjects in hell,” I gripe to Tuna, who’s already curled into a crescent roll in his bed, paws over his ears. I notice that Pat has sharpened my graphite pencils with the zeal of an executioner honing her axe. Two new canvases, stretched and gessoed within an inch of their lives, lean on separate easels. And she’s taken it upon herself to underpaint both in a misguided effort to save me time. It’s merely a wash of burnt sienna and turpentine meant to banish the stark white of a canvas and give me a starting point, yet this is the artist’s job, not her meddling caregiver’s. “Insufferable,” I say to Tuna. He lifts his head and regards me with those woeful brown eyes I love so much. “Tell me I shouldn’t break these bloody things over my knee.” His eyebrows have turned white with age, giving him a perpetually startled look. “Right,” I say with a smile. “She’d eviscerate me.”
Desperate for an idea for this painting—how can it possibly be finished by Christmas?—I sweep my hair over one shoulder and absentmindedly begin to braid, muttering a little prayer to the goddess of art. There’s a heavy, expectant feeling in my chest, like the storm clouds looming over Southey Bay. I dig my sketch pad out from under a pile of old magazines and paw through some of the thumbnail drawings I’ve done during one of Pat’s “inspiration trips” in the double kayak. How can I convey the mystery of a scene and the glorious light that falls upon it, the powerful waiting nature of an extreme and unpredictable landscape on this mere canvas?
“Paint from your dark, unknowable heart,” a teacher at art school had once whispered in my ear. I grit my teeth. On the night of my accident a leviathan rose from the abyss to devour my dark, unknowable heart. It’s his possession alone, I think, throwing down the sketches in frustration. Does every landscape I paint come from my dark, unknowable angst? I go to the window before I succumb to a fresh desire to trash the new work before I’ve even started it. Rain has stopped drumming on the skylight, and I stare out the window at the profoundly still and watchful ocean beyond the house. I think of the seventeenth-century portrait artist Elisabetta Sirani, who somehow managed to paint and succeed despite male persecution and a raging peptic ulcer.
But I’m not Elisabetta Sirani…nowhere close. And besides, she died at age twenty-seven—I’ve missed the moment.
My hand absently slips into my pocket and touches the envelope. I’d forgotten about it. I draw it out, picking at the fancy stamp affixed to the top right corner, and glance at the return address. “Who the hell is Octavius Karbuz?” I ask aloud.
I’m about to withdraw the thick card stock from the envelope when I see the villain herself exit the house and stump along the driveway, flipping a cigarette into her mouth before cramming her bulk into the Jeep. Pat doesn’t turn her head, but I know her eyes have gone to the rearview mirror, expecting a glimpse of me hunched over my easel. I dive behind the curtain, denying her the satisfaction. She backs out and I reemerge, glaring as the Jeep swings down the drive and is swallowed up in the trees.
How I despise her.
“You’ll pay for locking me in,” I whisper. “You will pay.” I slip what looks like an invitation from the envelope, my eyes flitting nervously over the black, stylized writing.
The Great Return
A Pacific Northwest Perspective
paintings by jeanie esterhazy
Saturday, January 21st, 1973
Karbuz Gallery, Brussels
Rumors that Ms. Esterhazy had succumbed to injuries she suffered in 1958 have circulated through the art world for over a decade. But those rumors have thankfully been disproven. Although Ms. Esterhazy’s health is precarious, she has begun painting again. Bravely working through debilitating pain, scarcely able to hold her paintbrushes with hands twisted and contracted with scar tissue, her new work raises the bar on transcendence and places the viewer squarely within her atmospheric world.
The artist will not be in attendance, but please join Jeanie Esterhazy’s dealer, Octavius Karbuz, for a special viewing of her new works.
I stagger toward the settee and sit down hard enough to jangle my teeth. My head spins, and my brain struggles to take in the words I’ve just read. Never mind the news that apparently my life is hanging by a thread, I’m gobsmacked at the rest. Earlier, in the kitchen, Pat reminded me that I’m a mid-level painter, copying the work of others more talented. But this invitation claims that I’m a renowned landscape artist. “Transcendence” and “atmospheric” be damned, I can’t ignore succumbed to injuries.
I hold up my hands for Tuna to examine. “Sure, they’re scarred, but twisted and contracted so she’s scarcely able to hold her paintbrushes?” And renowned? That’s kind of like famous. Why didn’t Pat tell me I have an art dealer named Octavius Karbuz? I quiver with a rage that snakes across my skin like live electrical wires. Not only has she lied, but she’s also purposefully prevented me from learning the truth. I leap up from the settee, startling Tuna. “I’m not some mid-level artist just getting by, but a celebrated one who raises the bar on transcendence!”
I can’t quite believe this. Perhaps my art dealer Octavius Karbuz and the gallery he owns are trying to capitalize on my work? Or some nefarious forger has been copying my paintings, which would sort of be a compliment at this stage of my career, I think with a reluctant smile. No. The invite was addressed to me. And Pat hid the damn thing. What has she been up to? Pat always told me she took my paintings to a climate-controlled storage locker in Vancouver to protect them from moisture, but now I know that she’s shipped every one of them straight to Brussels. “Sacrificial pay cuts, my arse. She’s been pocketing the proceeds.” Tuna has settled back into his bed and thumps his tail in solidarity. I have some money hidden in my sock drawer, don’t I? It’s enough to get on the ferry to Vancouver, but not enough to buy a plane ticket to Toronto, much less Brussels. But why should I be the one to leave? Pat has likely been lying to my face for years. In the past, I was happy for her to take over the shopping and the social necessities of my existence, but now I need to claw it back. My mind is a stutter of confusion and I force myself to slow down and think. I’d ask Kay to send a money order, enough money to buy Pat a special Christmas present for being so fucking nice. Enough money for a plane ticket to my own show, The Great Return. I imagine the surprise and delight on this Octavius Karbuz’s face when his reclusive artist actually turns up and tells him she had no idea he existed. But Kay has been incommunicado for months.
My anger swings back to me. I’ve become so damn complacent, letting Pat take over to the point that she’s kept me from life itself. She doesn’t let me answer the phone, she won’t even allow me a stroll up to Arbutus Road for the mail. Now I know why. I might see correspondence from my art dealer and start asking uncomfortable questions. My mind suddenly shifts to the orange tablet at breakfast. There’s something very odd about that, and her insistence that I take it without question.
“Who am I kidding?” I confess to Tuna, who sits up in his bed, finally showing interest. “Even if I can screw up the courage to attend this show in Brussels, Pat won’t let me go.” After my first gallery appearance six years ago, she claimed I should never be allowed in public again. I misbehaved, according to her. “I thought I knew Pat,” I say to Tuna. “But she’s proving to be more than a simple blunt instrument. What else has she been lying about? Maybe I didn’t do a damn thing wrong at my wedding reception. Maybe I’m not a monster. Maybe the monster is sleeping right down the hall.” I stand in the middle of the studio, whispering now. “My god, she might actually be insane.” Fear grips me by the throat. Is Pat dangerous? I take a deep breath, determined to proceed with caution and watch my back.
I look down at the invitation again. But, if I’m famous, I should be able to paint what I bloody well want. Jaw determinedly clenched, I glance at the blank canvas on my easel, thinking of the one and only abstract I gleefully painted years ago, before giving up when Pat told me it would never sell. I need to see it again, for inspiration.
It’s stored in the studio closet where Pat keeps my art supplies. She’s piled several boxes in the narrow passage, blocking my way, but I squeeze past them and peer into the murk. The abstract should be stacked near the back wall, but it’s gone.
“Miserable bloated swine,” I fume. I was proud of that piece. Did she destroy it or sell it to my art dealer without me knowing? A burning, hateful rage overcomes me. Pat has finally stomped over the line, and it’s time for things to change. It’s either her or me. This is my house, my land, my life.
I find the oil paints on a shelf and fight my way out of the closet. Crossing the studio, I pause to twist the tuner free of its electrical tape on the radio. Dialing in a verboten rock and roll station, I yelp with rebellious glee and crank the volume as the first, epic guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” blast from the speakers. Breath held in glorious anticipation, I squeeze paint onto my palette.
Alizarin crimson, cadmium red. These are the colors I want.
With each slash of oil pigment, I banish Pat by painting her in the style of Edvard Munch—a scream on her face as flames threaten to swallow her, sending her deeper into a hellscape of my own making.
10
SAVKA
Carpathian forest, Reichskommissariat Ukraine
march 1, 1944
four days after Marko’s visit, Taras turned to his mother, one hand on the trunk of a beech tree, the other pulling the knife his father had given him from an inner pocket of his coat. “If a Soviet partisan dares stop us,” he promised, “I’ll protect you.”
“The partisans won’t be coming back after SS soldiers so recently camped in this forest.” Savka forced confidence into her voice. “And I have our papers. We’re an innocent mother and son going to see our relations in the next village.” She drew his head to her shoulder and smiled. “You’re safe.”
A light snow began to fall as she and Taras climbed through the dark forest, and Savka drew the shawl she was wearing over her head. They quickly found a snow-packed trail on the east face of the mountain, with a plan to make the dead drop site by midday, then wait for one of Kuzak’s men to venture out and check for a shtafeta that a passing courier might have left for them. Beech trees, their distinctive gray trunks and leafless, ice-frosted branches reaching skyward, towered over their heads, massive and ancient. As they walked, an unearthly quiet floated over Savka and her son. The trees and snow seemed unspeakably removed, as if she were in a dream. She looked up, willing birdsong, or a grouse to fly out of the junipers, startled at their passing—anything to show life in these lonely woods—but the sky only threatened more snow. Despite a cold wind that flowed down off the upper slopes, blasting through her wool coat, the day was perfect to make an escape. The silently falling snow would cover their tracks.
Only an hour ago, she and Taras had said tortuous farewells to Lilia, Mama, and Sofiy. When Mama held Savka back, a hand on her arm, she wanted to lead her son back into the house and forget Marko’s mad plan. “You can’t go to the bunker,” Mama said. “It’s not safe.”
Savka’s chest ached at her mother’s words and at the sight of her heartsick expression. “Mama, it isn’t safe for Tarasyku in Deremnytsia,” she said, using her son’s name in its most affectionate form. “If we leave, a new life awaits us with Marko after the war.”
Lilia, holding tight to Sofiy’s hand, scowled at her sister. “Where are our papers?” Savka could hear panic in her voice. Lilia was a Nazi officer’s lover in the path of the Red Army. She had every reason to worry.
“Marko will send them within a fortnight,” she promised recklessly. “And we’ll all be reunited after the war.”
The imprint of Mama’s hand on her arm had burned Savka as she and Taras had walked away. A good, brave insurgent would parcel off that memory, focus on the path in front of her. But Savka was not one of those, and it was all she could do to not turn around and run back to her mother and sister.
Now, she struggled to keep up with Taras on the increasingly elevated terrain. They’d not brought much with them, only the layered clothes on their backs and a rucksack filled with a flask of hot tea, dried roots and acorns for Kuzak, her baba’s beaded korali necklace—which she and her mother had worn at their weddings—and the new, forged exit visas and identification papers Marko had given her a few days ago that announced this mother and son were Irina and Oleh Bzovsky.
Taras was in a celebratory mood, glowing with the news that underground insurgents had ambushed one of Stalin’s favorite military commanders yesterday, during a pitched battle deep behind the front lines. “They’ve mortally wounded Vatutin himself, Mama,” he said. “A commander of the Red Army!”
Savka’s mouth went dry with fear, and she stumbled, her hand shooting out to steady herself against a tree. Might NKVD patrols have penetrated the front lines and come into the mountains, seeking revenge against the underground? She glanced at Taras. If they were caught by Soviet partisans or NKVD, they were expected to kill themselves to avoid capture, but her son didn’t know this. Savka tried to cast the thought from her mind. Marko had been certain that she and Taras wouldn’t run into partisans—so certain that he’d not bothered to give her a gun. She was grateful, unable to imagine murdering her own son, then turning it on herself.
Yet the encrypted shtafeta that Marko had given her earlier in the week burned a hole in the lining of her coat. Before she’d sewn it in last night, she unrolled the paper to find columns of numbers, a secret code that she’d never learned to decipher. Now she remembered that Marko said it contained details of the German offensive on the Red Army at the front, and her heart skipped a beat at the thought of carrying it through a war zone.
The beech forest ended, and the trail opened to a large, open glade. In the spring, this meadow would be blanketed with yellow and purple crocuses, and in summer, with edelweiss. But now it lay beneath a frigid mantle of white. Savka paused to gaze out at the view—fog over the valley and the river snaking past their village far below.
Taras crossed the meadow ahead of her, mumbling the anthem of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. To still her mind, Savka tried to focus on the words.
It is sweeter for us to die in battle
Than to live in bondage as mute slaves.
On the other side of the glade, they entered the coniferous forest that grew at higher elevation on the mountain. In the suddenly dim light, the upended and tangled roots of an ancient spruce loomed ahead of them on the trail, torn from the ground by storm or advanced age. When they reached it, Savka brushed snow off the trunk and climbed up, yanking the hem of her trousers—borrowed from Lilia—down over her frigid bare ankles and uncorking the flask of hot tea. She hummed a little tune, determined to not let Taras glimpse even one small fragment of her terror at the thought of them alone in these woods.
Her son patted the trunk. “We may meet the Tsar of the forest, Mama,” he said, referring to the story his Baba had told him the other night.
“Maybe,” she said with a smile, sipping at her tea. “But I will not let him take you, Tarasyku.”
He bounded around the tree as if he were dancing the hopak. Savka watched him with affection, a mother’s love. After his thirteenth birthday a few months ago, he seemed to have sprouted, growing so suddenly tall and lanky; he was like a puppy who had yet to match its paws. She imagined Marko and her swinging along a street in Munich, Taras between them, laughing and telling them about the most recent book he’d read. Soon we’ll be safe, Savka thought with a smile. Soon we’ll all be together.
The back of her neck prickled with foreboding, and she turned her head to look back, the smile dying on her lips. Shapes of brown and black flashed across the snowy meadow they’d just crossed, heading in their direction. Was it possible that Kuzak’s men had come out to meet them? Or was it someone else?
“Get down,” Savka hissed at Taras, not taking chances. They fell to their knees in the snow behind the fallen tree, the only sound their labored breathing.
Taras’s face was pale. “Is it Kuzak?”
Savka raised her head a fraction. Three men had just entered the forest, heads down. Two were clutching their rifles. They disappeared from her view behind dense trees for a moment before emerging in a small clearing one hundred meters away. She felt like a hunted creature, with nowhere to hide. There was no mistaking the distinctive uniforms of the Soviet security police; their bright blue-and-red caps gave them away. This wasn’t a full NKVD unit—only an officer and two border patrol soldiers in khaki wool tunics, black pants, and leather boots—but Savka still felt sick as she watched them turn their gaze in the direction of her and Taras’s hiding place. She looked at her son, preparing herself to tell him that they must show themselves, but it was too late. Before she could stop him, Taras was up and crashing through the underbrush beside the trail. Panic clawed at her throat. If she didn’t run too, Taras would be shot. Prepared to launch herself after him, she was jerked back—her shawl had caught on a tree branch—and she gasped, terrified as she struggled to free herself. Finally breaking away, her shawl yanked from her head and left fluttering on the branch, she followed Taras, tripping on roots hidden beneath the snow.
