Charcoal was good. Pablo liked the simplicity of it, the challenge of coaxing subtlety from the purest of elements. You begin with nothing. White paper. Black lump of coal. And like God shaping the Earth from light and void, you create a world.
Sometimes.
He had been working since early afternoon. A woman in the market giving an apple to her half-wit son. Something about the two of them, the set of her shoulders toward the boy, the way the light touched his hair, suggesting that some measure of divinity lay in him and that she was the one saddled with infirmity. But Pablo wasn't getting it. The thing emerging from the rough paper was a cartoon, a grotesque joke.
The shadows in the studio lengthened until the sun fell behind the buildings across the Rue Gabrielle. Pablo took no notice, working until it was almost too dark to see. Finally, when the charcoal smudges began to flow of their own accord into the unmarked whiteness of the paper, he stepped back and stretched his cramped shoulders.
He lit a lamp and the studio filled with warm yellow light. The large room looked like it had been visited by a whirlwind with an artistic fetish. Canvases in various stages of completion were scattered about; rough sketches littered the floor. To the left of the wide, bay windows, to catch the light of afternoon, a raised platform for the models. Heavy-breasted cows, most of them, but what could you do? Pablo loved Paris, but the women were pigs.
On a table near the door, a loaf of bread, three days old and hard as stone, a bottle of rough burgundy, a bowl of apples. And leaning against the south wall of the studio, about twenty finished canvases, Pablo's portfolio. They were set apart from the clutter as if a protective wall had been erected around them. His ticket to greatness. Nineteen years old and already he was breaking new ground, surpassing the work of the established masters. After all, he had been chosen to represent his native Spain at the Paris Exhibition! The canvases he saw in the Montmartre galleries would be better suited to wrap liver. Monet should have been smothered as a child. Smothered in flowers. Who cared a dog's teat about flowers? Even the best of the new ones, Denis, say, or Vuillard, couldn't paint their way out of a burlap sack. Dragonflies! Lilies! Swirling hair! It was crap, all of it.
The Spanish upstart, they were calling him. Dismissing him as if he were an insect. Deft but morbid, one review said. Uneven, said another. He would show those Symbolist faggots what a real artist could do. He turned back to the sketch of the woman and the idiot boy.
But not tonight, he thought. This is shit.
Pablo tore the page from the easel and ripped it in half, then in half again. He let the pieces fall to the floor and walked across the room to the table. He uncorked the burgundy and raised it to his lips, taking a long draught. It was rough but good, leaving a warm glow in his gullet. The French peasants were all right for something. He raised the bottle to his lips again when suddenly, a bright green flash lit the sky outside his window. It was gone in an instant, but it was so intense that the afterimage of the silhouetted buildings across the street stayed pulsing in his vision.
What the hell was that? He ran to the window and looked out. A few souls on the street, looking up. He scanned the horizon. There, beyond the basilica of the Sacre Coeur, a greenish glow pushing into the twilight, just beginning to recede.
Even as his eyes began to adjust, another green flash lit the sky. This time, Pablo could see its trail, like a shooting star but brighter, lancing downward to the west. It was accompanied by a roaring sound, something like thunder but with an edge to it, as if the sky were made of cloth and somebody was ripping it in two. There was a moment of preternatural quiet, the world itself holding its breath, then a flickering orange glow began to lick at the bottom of the sky. The Bois du Boulogne? It was hard to tell. Pablo was still new to Paris and didn't quite have his bearings yet. In fact, he hardly ever left Montmartre.
His countryman Casagemas had said he'd be at Le Ciel on the Boulevard de Clichy, fondling women, no doubt, and getting drunk. Pablo felt a sudden need for his companionship. He grabbed his jacket and cap and began to head out the door.
Then, as if he'd forgotten something but wasn't quite sure what, he stopped, turned, and looked around the room. His eyes lingered on the stack of canvases leaning against the wall. His mind filled with an unfocused dread, almost crushing him under its sudden weight. With an effort of will, he pushed it aside. Everything was all right. Shooting stars. Big deal. God taking potshots at the lame and unrepentant. Pablo knew that God had other plans for him.
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