The Golden Fleece (11 page)

In theory, Adrian supposed, the faces looking up at him were countable. There must actually have been a specific number, which could be calculated and recorded—but in terms of perception, in psychological terms, there was no way to number them. They were as many as all the human that had ever lived and ever would, as different as all those human faces could be, and as similar. There were children among them, but none of them was truly alive; all of them were dying—not just the ones that bore the visible stigmata of torture and disease, but those that were seemingly healthy. He could actually see evidence of the truth that humans begin to die even before they are born, that they are sculpted by death and that death works within them.

Angelica had apparently come to the conclusion, after due experimentation, that supernatural imagery, stripped of its ancient contexts of belief, had lost its power to horrify. Even if she believed in her own witchcraft, she did not believe in its power to terrify directly. She seemed to have come to the conclusion that she needed to go directly to the source of human angst, and all her subliminal imagery was calculated to appeal to that fundamental existential dread. Perhaps that was the substance of her curse—the curse she had aimed at anyone who might see her work without being able to see it all, and without being able to understand it, out of resentment at her isolation.

There was nothing insane about it—quite the reverse. It was supersane, aimed to corrode, undermine, and perhaps eventually to break down the most cherished illusions of the human mind.

Eventually, Adrian spoke: “Not quite what I expected,” he admitted.

Then she threw another invisible switch, and he realized that she had been playing with him. This time, the light was dazzling, at least momentarily—and when his madly blinking eyes had adjusted to it, he saw the remainder of the work.

The trickery of the inner cube was far more subtle than he had imagined; its transparency was manipulable. Now, thanks to the glass, the hellfire sprang forth to consume the dead, to wrench them from their rest, but not their pain. The red was superimposed on everything—and not just red, but all the subtle wrath of flame. And the black rectangle that had seemed to be a door to oblivion was now filled, with a self-portrait, of the face alone, detached from any body, and magnified to seven or eight time life-size, like a cinematic close-up.

It was a very accurate self-portrait. In fact, Adrian realized with barely a second’s delay that it had actually started out as a photographic reproduction, before Angelica had begun applying her expertise in make-up to its features. Perhaps she had, in purely literal terms, used an air-brush, but she had not been aiming to erase flaws in her skin exposed by the camera. She had been aiming for a different effect, She had been aiming for Morgan le Fay, Medea, or Medusa. Using nuances that the common eye could not see, she had made every effort to give her face the power to command, the power to curse.

Adrian felt his heartbeat accelerate, his thoughts reel. Momentarily, he felt the magic, and knew that there was a sense in which he was not merely as vulnerable to it as any other man, but more so.

Then the scientist kicked in. He could
see.
He
knew
what was there, and what effect it was supposed to have on him. He could see it clinically as well as esthetically. He could analyze as well as appreciate. He wasn’t required to react in purely emotional terms, or even with any emotion at all. He steadied his thoughts, and would have steadied his heartbeat too had he had the time to concentrate on relaxation. In fact, he let his heart race. It wasn’t engaged in any other way.

“Holy shit,” he said, eventually. “That’s really something, Mrs. Jarndyke. You really have come on.”

“Were you right to be frightened of what you might see?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” he answered, truthfully. “I don’t know yet what effects I’m going to carry away. Probably not. Probably, being able to see it
all,
to fathom it all, will be more than adequate protection, for a scientist. Don’t ever let your children in here, though—and make sure that the lock is strong enough to defy their curiosity.

“They’re like Jason,” she said. “Fully insulated. Not as rare as our condition, but not commonplace, so far as I can tell. I do keep the door locked, mind—for now, it’s hidden away. I’ve no intention of putting it on exhibition any time soon. For now, it’s just for my amusement...and yours.” The correction was telling, as was the use of such phrases as “any time soon.”

“It’s unsettling,” Adrian said, “but it’s only metaphorical magic. Even the people who’ll only be affected subliminally will only get a frisson.”

“Don’t be disingenuous, Mr. Stamford,” she said. “You know that’s not the point.”

Adrian knew what she meant. The point was not to scare people who might look at the work of art, or mock them with subtle
memento mori.
She had not painted this with any present or future audience in mind. She had painted it for herself, as an attempt to see herself and understand herself. It was an attempted analysis of her own unhappiness—but on that level, it was just pantomime. It had no real depth or accuracy. She was too sane for that. Perhaps, too, she was too good an artist not to let contrivance overwhelm truth. He couldn’t say any of that to her, however. It wasn’t for him to play the psychoanalyst. At best, he could only sympathize. That was what she wanted. That was what Jason Jarndyke wanted.

“It’s brilliant, Mrs. Jarndyke,” he told her. “It’s unique, and it’s exceedingly well done. It’s beyond apprentice work—it’s a masterpiece. Not your last, I dare say. Just a beginning.”

“You’re a scientist,” she said, seemingly ignoring the flattery. “You’re in the business of cutting through illusions—of making people see the truth, however unpalatable. That’s what I’m trying to do...or, at least, to create the possibility of doing. I’m trying to see, and to reproduce what I see....”

She was fishing for some response to what she’d done to herself, or tried to do to herself, but she didn’t want to be told that she was beautiful, or even that she was a witch. That would just have been flattery.

“I’m sorry that you’re unhappy, Mrs. Jarndyke,” Adrian said, colorlessly, “but I can’t tell you how to be happy. I’m the last person in the world who can do that. But for what it’s worth, when I look at you,
that
’s
not what I see. And the fact that it’s not what your husband sees isn’t because he’s blind to the subtleties of the color that you and I can see—it’s because he’s looking from a different standpoint.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked, bluntly.

“No,” he said, “you’re not. I’m not. We’re not. We just have a sensitivity that’s normally the prerogative of bees and hummingbirds—something that enables us to make clothes worthy of emperors, which mere street-urchins can’t comprehend...but which we might be able to turn to our advantage anyway.”

“I have the option of painting over it,” she said. “I could do something pretty instead. Is that what you think I should do?” Adrian knew that she wanted him to tell her that it was far too brilliant to be destroyed—that it was a precious work of art, and justified itself on those grounds alone.

“Maybe you were wrong about science, just now” he said, reflectively—because, after all, he was entitled to take his time coming to terms with what she’d shown him, and because Rome hadn’t been built in a day. “If it strips away illusions and casts down idols, perhaps that’s a means, not an end. The aim, ultimately is to enhance life, not corrode it. Religious people have never been able to see that, because they have an artificial view of what life is, and ought to be, but it isn’t the case that once you lose faith, you have nothing. The truth is that, once you lose faith, there’s a chance of having anything...and maybe, in the fullness of time, everything. It’s not the case, Mrs. Jarndyke, that everything leads to death and to hell. It doesn’t have to be. To help people to see, it might be better to make them
want
to see. Feeding their fear of seeing, by creating anxiety at the edge of perception—punishing them for not being able to see— might be counter-productive.”

“So you
do
think I ought to paint over it and start again?”

“That’s not for me to say,” he replied, proving his cowardice. “But I really am grateful to you for letting me see this. It’s very impressive—perhaps a work of genius.”

“But it’s not the Golden Fleece?”

“No,” he agreed. “Not to me.”

~ * ~

Adrian had hardly started working at his terminal the next morning when Jason Jarndyke appeared beside his desk.

“You got into the barn last night,” he stated.

“Yes,” Adrian replied, cautiously.

“My spies tell me that Angie seemed disappointed when she came in. Should I conclude that you didn’t like what you saw there?”

“It’s impressive,” Adrian told him. “But no, I didn’t like it. I’m truly sorry—but I could hardly lie about it, could I?”

“You didn’t like any of her stuff, in fact, did you? Including the ones you saw at the house?”

“I liked the one of you.”

“There’s one of me?” Jarndyke visibly brightened.

“Yes—you’ve seen that one, I think. You’re hidden in a yellow splodge, but I could see you.”

The Industrialist shook his head. “I’ve been doing her an injustice all these years,” he said, ruefully, “I really thought there was nothing there. Made me feel quite uncomfortable at times. I’ll try to make it up to her, if I can.”

He could have gone away then, but he didn’t. There was something more.

“I’ve been in the barn, you know,” the industrialist confessed. “I couldn’t resist the temptation. Ange would kill me if she knew, but I had to. I had to try. I saw it all: the faces, the red light, the self-portrait. I didn’t understand it, because I don’t understand that sort of thing, but it seemed very clever. You saw more, though, didn’t you. There are things hidden in it that I can’t see—that I’m not meant to see—aren’t there?”

“Yes, there are,” Adrian confirmed.

“If I knew what they were...would I be worried? Should I be worried?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Jarndyke,” Adrian. “To tell the truth, I was a little worried myself, beforehand...scared even...but that was silly. As you say, it’s very clever. Very clever indeed. You’re wife is a real artist. She still has a lot of future ahead of her.”

“You won’t tell her I’ve seen it, will you?” the industrialist said, anxiously.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Adrian assured him. “All your secrets are safe with me.”

“I took a risk hiring you, you know, Son. Not with respect to the product—it was obvious that you were the man for the job— but with respect to the other thing. I didn’t know whether you were going to see anything at all, and I still don’t know what it is you saw...but I knew that it would make a difference, either way. It was a risk.”

Adrian nodded, to show that he understood.

“I’m happy,” the big man told him, out of the blue. “I’ve always been happy. I’m a happy man. Maybe it’s because I can’t see things that other people can, and maybe I’m just made that way. I’d like Angie to be happy too, if that’s possible. Do you think that’s possible, Adrian?”

“I don’t know,” Adrian told him. “I’m the last person in the world who can offer an opinion on that matter.”

“You think that,” Jason Jarndyke said, “but I wonder if it’s really true. To me, you see, it seems that you just need to get out more, to get a girl-friend, to have some fun. I think you could and should be happy—unless there’s something I’m just not seeing, just not understanding.”

“It’s not in your interests for me to be happy, Mr. Jarndyke,” Adrian reminded him. “It’s in your interests for me to be single-minded, obsessive, utterly committed to the quest for the Golden Fleece. If you want to surround yourself with happy people, you could hire idiots. If you want to make trillions....”

Jarndyke cut him off. “Are you calling me an idiot?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Jarndyke,” Adrian said blushing deeply. “I think you’re a genius, in your way. You have everything— and it wasn’t blind luck. You’ve
earned
everything, including happiness. Not many people can say that.”