The Best of Electric Velocipede (10 page)

*

—Admit it, I say. You’re flattered by the thought of being the face of God.

—I am
not
, he says. It’s a blasphemy. Pride and arrogance, that’s what it is, he says, to think that you can give a face to God.

He digs into a pocket for his tobacco and cigarette papers, starts to roll a cigarette. I study the changed position for a second then lay down the coalstick with which I have been sketching on the right-hand easel, shuffle over to my left and pick up the chalk sitting on the left-hand easel’s lower clamp. I have worked this way ever since I struck out on my own, leaving my Maester to his dreamy pastel tones; I use two easels, one with white paper clipped to it to sketch in charcoal-black, the other with the blue-black paper of a draughtsman, on which I sketch in chalk. If God is light, as my Maester insisted, well, the world we live in is filled with the shadows cast by His material creation, by these forms of flesh absorbing so much on the side that faces Him that on the other He is utterly absent. I find that to capture this effectively, to grasp the form of the subject, I have to sketch my studies in dual media, layering charcoal shadows on a ground of light, chalk highlights over midnight blue. In the actual work, of course, these dual perspectives should be fused.

—But what is so blasphemous, I say innocently, about letting our imagination give a human face to that which we don’t understand?

He lights up his cigarette, puffs on it and coughs, then points at me with it as he lectures. If I were one of those artists who must have their subjects sit like silent statues while I sketch, I think Iosef would drive me mad. He cannot sit without talking, cannot talk without gesticulating—though he tried, bless him, stiff as a board the very first time he sat for me, like a youth being interviewed for membership in the highest merchant’s guild, until I told him that he wasn’t a king sitting for his portrait, that I
wanted
to see the varied attitudes and angles of his self, to just
relax
, man. So now he leans forward to make a point, sits back in satisfaction afterwards, crosses his arms or waves them in the air. He jabs the air with his rollup.

—The Absolute doesn’t have a face, he is saying now. God is infinite, transcendent, and you limit him when you try to define
that which cannot be defined
.

I trace the jut of solemnity in his jaw, the old man’s outrage in his bottom lip, almost petted as he blows smoke out and up.

—But I only try to define his face, I say. Where the presters and the rephais and the imams, why, you try to define his
mind
. Wisdom, justice and mercy, no?

I switch back to the easel of white paper, carving a curve of black upon it with the coalstick, the furrow of a knitted brow.

—Is it not pride and arrogance, I say, to think that you can give a
mind
to God?

—You . . . he says, shaking his head. Heresy like that will get you into trouble.

His voice goes quieter, softer.

—You should be careful, Maester.

*

The Protection Of The Innocents

—Iosef, I think you should go inside.

Fader Pitro worries a rosary between his fingers as he gazes out over the Monadery’s low dry stone wall, over the red-tiled roofs of the town, the jumble of houses that slope down the hill and scatter out into the patchwork farms of the surrounding countryside. He stands, unsteady in the middle of the rockery in the western corner of the gardens, screwing his eyes to watch the road from the north, from Nixemburg and Murchen. I know what he is looking at. A cloud of dust. The flash of armor. The flutter of a banner. There are peregrins coming.

I hold the door of the antesanctum open for the carter who brought the news along with my latest supply of paints and primers, feeling helpless as he carries each barrel past me, lays it down carefully in the centre of the concrete floor. Brooder Matheus, my unofficial apprentice these days, helps him, humping the crates of coalsticks and chalk that I will need before I even pick up palette and brush; I have the preliminary design now for the interior, but it will take me months just to transfer the sketches from paper to plaster; the scaffolding has not even been erected yet.

The carter lays another barrel on the ground, a blond rock of a man, unconcerned by our atmosphere of agitation. Brooder Matheus keeps glancing at Iosef and the Fader. Iosef has a look set on his face.

*

—The Fader is right, Iosef, I say. Now’s not the time for stubbornness.

Iosef crouches down to clip a twig off a shrub with his secateurs. Ignoring me completely, he stomps over to a bench sat against the wall, puts the secateurs down and picks up a fork and trowel. He puts them down again and turns to me.

—Am I to spend my life cowering in the shadows? he says angrily. Is that what I am? A half-thing of the darkness? Half the height so half the man?
Hide in the shadows, Iosef
?

He points past me.

—Maybe I can crawl under the altar and hide there, eh?

I think of the stories he has told me of his old town, of hobben boarded up inside their burning homes, the elders of his little community dragged out into the streets to have their beards hacked off with razors as trophies for the mob, gnomes who had harmed no-one moaning out of broken, skinned jaws. Choking in a smoke-filled hiding-hole.

He strides past me, past the carter and into the antesanctum.

—Perhaps you should spend the night here as well, Maester, says Fader Pitro.

—No, I say. I’ll be all right.

*

—And how she
squealed
for her mother!

I gaze at the flame of the candle, the flicker so vibrant, so alive, and without pattern. How can something so chaotic be so beautiful? The candle is low, most of its wax now dribbled and solidified as white trails layering the dark-green glass of the bottle that serves as candlestick. A molten lump like some limestone grotto’s creation, slick and glistening in the dark. A drip of wax splashes on the table and I dip a finger into it before it cools, smooth it over the fingertip with my thumb.

—Some more of this fine cat’s piss here, man.

The peregrin officers fill the tavern though there’s only half a dozen of them; they fill it with their boorish brags, their swaggering contempt that shoves its way through crowds with elbows in the side or hands flat in the face, and with the ugly stares of men hungry for violence. Brooder Matheus and I sit at a corner table, safe with the carter sat across from us, as calm, he is, as if the peregrins were simply nuisance children running wild in the absence of authority. Everyone knows the reputation of the carter’s guild, men who are trained to see a cargo safely through the wildest regions of the hinter, whatever bandits or demons might lie in their path. Everyone knows the legends.

—I hear . . . says one of the peregrins, I hear there’s a filthy hobben in this town.

The carter slugs his beer back and stands up. His voice when he speaks is quiet, loaded.

—Brooder. Maester, he says. Do you have a message for the Fader?

He has no reason to return to the Monadery, of course, but . . .

—If you’re going that way, I say, I think we both might join you, eh Brooder?

Brooder Matheus nods and downs the last of his beer for courage, coughs.

*

—You are mistaken, m’sire, says Fader Pitro.

His voice, outside, is loud and clear but there’s a waver in it, audible fear. The peregrins are gathered outside the very doors of the antesanctum, the officers and their whole band. They announced themselves on the staggering march up from the tavern with a pounding drum of swords on shields, a chorus of ape-calls. There are curses and laughter now.

—Bring him out and we’ll cut him down to size! shouts someone.

More laughter.

Brooder Matheus sits on a crate, looking nervous, and I wonder if there’s anyone out there he would recognise, some second cousin twice removed perhaps. Elven nobility, I think. Iosef stands on the dais itself, a hand touching the altar. They would not kill him in a house of God, would they? I stand at the door, listening.

—There are no hobben here, says Fader Pitro and I hear the sound of someone spitting in reply.

The carter moves me aside with one hand. The other holds his spike, the seven-foot steel-bladed lance that can be used as sword or staff or spear. There is one story that the guild was formed from an order of knights sworn to protect the early peregrins on their way to the Holy Lands, before these sons of the gray erles twisted the pilgrimages into a crusade. Even if there is no truth to it, I have seen for myself the brutal skill with which a carter wields his spike. He takes the brass handle of one of the doors and swings it full open, suddenly, smoothly.

The hellish orange of torchlight pierces the antesanctum, picking out Brooder Matheus as he stands up from the crate, a palette knife in his hand of all things. Iosef at the altar. The peregrins cannot fail to see him there, surely. But they cannot fail to see the carter either, the way his eyes and spike capture the flame of their torches and reflect it back at them, so bright that the antesanctum behind must be darkness in comparison.

He simply stands there, silent, until they leave.

*

The Temptation Of The Faithful

—I have to go, I say. Brooder Matheus will be waiting for me eager as a pup. I lay the first stroke today.

—Brooder Matheus can wait till you’ve had breakfast, says Rosah.

She kicks down the bedsheet and pulls herself up onto her elbow. I admire her as I pull on my linen trousers and shirt, all crisp and freshly laundered, perfumed by the petals left in the bottom of the basket by Maria, Hier Nerjea’s wife, who rules the tavern’s lodging rooms with the same ironclad sense of hospitality as her husband rules the public house below. Rosah is beautiful and she lies there on the bed, my angel whore, knowing it. Her skin is pale as porcelain, paler than it should be with such amber hair and eyes of flashing green; when I undressed her that first night I expected freckles, copper skin, the feel of powder on my fingers as I caressed her face, but there was only the silk of skin, as soft and clean as if it was just out of the bath and towelled dry. It is I who am usually masked in powder, charcoal and chalkdust griming my face and fingers when I come back to the tavern late to take my supper and drink with her, and later as the night goes on, slip my arm around her waist and pull her, laughing with lust the both of us, up to my room. Rosah’s beauty is unsoiled by rouge or eyeshadow, her only concession to vanity the vermilion lipstick with which she paints my chest with a kiss each night over my heart. I feel my cock stirring as I look at her coquettish contrapposto pose, the locket that hangs between her breasts, the trim of her fuzz; I am remembering her salty taste. I leave the shirt untucked as cover, shaking my head.

—You will spoil me for other women, I say.

*

—Then you must marry me, she says. Take me away from all this and make an honest woman of me.

I sit on the bed to kiss her. It is a little joke that has developed between us these last few months but like all such jokes it has just the tiniest sting of truth behind it and we are both sometimes, I think, a little sad, thinking it might be nice and knowing it will never happen.

—Me? I say. I am as much a whore as you. More so, mi caria, since I have slutted myself in more cities than you could probably imagine.

—Ah, but if you took me with you when you go, I could give you some competition, I am sure.

I laugh. I love Rosah, as a friend and as a sensual delight, as a favorite whore and as a trusted confidante; and her fondness for me runs deep enough for her to declare now and then, on some night when perhaps she feels a little lonely,
tonight there is no money and no clock, mister painter, no limits, only you and I, and we will explore each other’s body as if we had never even touched before
. We are both whores, yes, but I think we are both whores by vocation, willing to give more of ourselves in our work than most.

But neither of us will ever lose ourselves in the other, I know. Even in the nights when we make love rather than merely fuck, we are never truly
lovers
.

—I have to go, I say.

—Artists, she says. You’re no whore. You’re more married than the Nerjeas.

—Tonight? I say and kiss her on the forehead.

—Eat something, she calls out the door after me as I go down the stairs. Maria! Make him have some breakfast.

*

—Breakfast? I say.

I throw the apple across the antesanctum to Brooder Matheus, who catches it in one hand. I polish another on my shirt and take a crunching bite.

—Fader Pitro was asking how things were going again, he says. I told him you’re two months behind and that yesterday you completely wiped the first four panels of the south-east wall.

He takes a bite out of the apple, a mischievous gleam in his eye.

—I am a bad influence on you, I say.

—It’s the truth.

I am behind schedule admittedly, but what the brooder didn’t tell the old monk is that the cleaning of the panels is the next stage of the process. I look around at the surfaces of the antesanctum—what you can see behind the scaffolding—ceiling and walls all but covered in the chalk and charcoal sketches copied from the papers that now carpet the concrete floor. The panels above the door and behind the altar are the only that have still to be filled; I have not made my final decision on the latter yet and the former, well, the idea I have in mind I would rather keep from the Fader’s prying eyes right now.

As for the four panels that I ‘wiped’ yesterday, though, the ones around the far-left window—Brooder Matheus may be amused at the thought of the Fader in a flap but yesterday it was himself looking on in horror as I went at them with my rags and fluids. I gave him a few minutes of panic before explaining that charcoal and chalk make a less than effective surface for my technique and, you see, I have the images that belong there imprinted in my mind now so I only have to close my eyes to visualise them. The cleaning was only preparation for the real work to begin.