On a crisp spring morning—the kind of morning where the sun, so nearly forgotten after the eternity of winter, manages to weave its way from out the crowded, tightly hemmed cloud cover and for a moment coat the land in golden warmth to ease the deep grip of cold and thaw the marrow of your bones—La Masurecourte Prison, located in the north of France along the Belgian border, received a new inmate. Santiago Moreno del Roso had been accused and found guilty of premeditated homicide, a charge he did not fight and for which he was incarcerated at La Masurecourte until such time when the proclamatory approval for his execution was communicated (official estimate: two weeks). He was assigned to cell F39 on the second floor of the prison's east wing in the block wryly referred to by the inhabitants as the Rats' Nest, where he was given a coarse, striped uniform with laceless shoes, a moldy bedroll, and a bucket. Before closing the door to Moreno's new home, a guard rattled off the rules for prisoners awaiting execution: separate meal and exercise times from the other inmates, no shop or craft times, no outside visitors, no smoking, and though they had no say in their method of execution, each prisoner would be provided with a last meal of his choice. That first day in his cell, Moreno simply sat and shivered, for the sun did not reach the upper floor of the east wing and the only light through his window came reflected and indirect from off the outer prison walls.
Moreno was born in a village on the northern outskirts of the Tabernas desert in the Spanish southeastern region of Andalusia, where the low buildings recede into the dry, dusty white hills and are swept away by the afternoon light. The youngest of five brothers, he spent his early years in blissful poverty, running wild at play during the daytime and feasting each night on whatever meager food his mother could afford with her seamstress pay. He was a quiet boy who preferred to let others speak as he listened, and even as an infant he had hardly made a sound, but he was not unintelligent. In the children's games he often emerged the winner despite being the smallest and frailest of the bunch, thanks to his cleverness and wile, with which he always managed to stay ahead of his brothers, anticipating their next actions as if seeing lines and openings they did not. His mother, a deeply devout woman, took note of his quiet, clever nature, and rather than dismiss it as an eccentricity or boyish quirk, saw in it the blessings of divinity, a sign that perhaps her son had the potential to serve a greater purpose for the Lord beyond what opportunities could be provided in the little, fading-out town. And so, after no small amount of prayer and talk with the local vicar, Moreno's mother made the decision to send her son into Seville, where he would join the Church and train to become a priest. One week after his eighth birthday, Moreno and his mother walked to the village station, where they embraced before he climbed aboard the idling bus headed for the city; he did not cry or speak, but only watched the hills slip away in the rear window as his mother stood and waved with tears in her eyes.
The first couple of months in Seville were hard on young Moreno. So suddenly cast in new surroundings, he found himself grasping for anything familiar, anything to remind him of where he had left, but he was met only by strange faces amid the suffocating frenzy of the colossal city, which hummed and groaned all hours of the day with overlapping lives of so many in such little space. A cot, a small nightstand, and a washbasin were the only items available to act as his new home in the cavernous halls of the monastery. If this overwhelming feeling of displacement were not enough, Moreno soon learned the plan his mother had described for his life in the Church was not as straightforward as she had made it seem—the preparation to become a priest takes many years and a great deal of study, and it would be a long time before he would even be considered for this training. For the moment he was just an ostiarius, tasked with changing the dormitory linens, cleaning the kitchen, serving meals, and assisting the bishop at Mass alongside the other young initiates. Despite some initial misgivings about this work, Moreno performed it dutifully and without complaint, earning him quick praise from the senior staff of the parish, but while they believed his steadfast laboring to be a sign of devotion, he knew he acted only out of fear, a fear that if he did not demonstrate his usefulness, he would be sent away, loosed and unwanted in a foreign place so far from a home to which he could likely no longer return, if even he knew how. But regardless of their motivation, these early efforts proved to have a profound impact on Moreno's life.
It was decided one day, towards the end of autumn when the winds were lazy and mild, that some of the paintings in the sacristy required cleaning. Word was sent around requesting help on behalf of Deacon Antonio—a greying, quiet clergyman who often kept to himself and had gained a reputation as something of a curmudgeon—and that the task would require a great deal of time, patience, and control. Moreno, as always striving to be needed, volunteered for the job and was accepted at once. That same afternoon he was brought by the deacon to a small room containing nothing except for a large rectangular table in the center, on top of which were an assortment of bottles and brushes arranged around a dark cloth.
"Well, Santiago," the deacon began, "we are to work on the Goya. Have you heard that name before?" The boy shook his head, and the deacon continued. "He was one of the greatest painters, a master, which means the painting is very important, and we must take great care with it. Everything we are to do is in preservation of the way it is at this moment, you understand? Be very delicate with it."
The deacon lifted the cloth from the table, revealing an unframed canvas, and for the first time in his life Moreno was awe-struck. There before him lay a dark and deeply rich image of two women, their untroubled, unburdened faces raised in greeting (no, Moreno realized, not greeting but gratefulness) towards a gentle ray of light from the heavens, while they stood amid the fragmented remains of shattered sculptures and a lion nuzzled at their ankles. The painting seemed almost too large for the confines of the little room, and Moreno felt caught between it and the walls behind him, simultaneously drawn towards its effortless beauty by hungry eyes, starved for so long by the blank desert scenery of his old home, and overcome by the sudden notion that his mere presence in its vicinity would be enough to damage it, to taint it and reduce it from its current state. Locked in this conflict of feelings, he stood motionless for a time until the deacon's voice released him.
"Let's begin, Santiago. I can't allow you to touch the painting yourself, but I will need you to hand the different brushes and bottles to me as I ask for them. The bottles are all labeled with symbols, and remember: be very careful with them. The smallest spill would damage the piece forever. Are you ready?"
They set to work and quickly established a flow of action as Moreno, silent and steady, supplied the deacon with every requested brush or chemical while adroitly removing the used wet utensils without misplacing a single drop, and though at first he was forced to concentrate on his deft maneuvers around the bulk of the table and the deacon, altogether leaving little space to move in the compact room, he soon found himself falling into a repetitive rhythm, allowing his mind to wander to other things, and immediately his attention returned to the painting; it was the faces with their soft and compassionate glow that amazed him so thoroughly. They seemed to reveal something, something felt rather than known, something he suspected had always existed throughout his world and within himself, some significant and eternal truth lain at the core of life, but which a young boy could only guess at. When they had finished for the day, Moreno ran to the study, where he sat down with pencil and paper and attempted to draw and recapture the beauty of those faces. For hours he tried and tried to match what he had seen and which was now seared into his memory, moving his hand about the page with painstaking focus as if to trace the exact lines of the remembered image, but every attempt he made came out crude and uneven, and in a fit of frustration, he broke the pencil in half and threw the papers away. That night he lay restlessly in bed, disappointed equally by his failure and by his anger in failure. He thought again of the painting, studying it with his mind's eye and combing over every detail, every line and shadow and brushstroke, until he felt himself calm, and he vowed to try again the next day.
The following week elapsed for Moreno in much the same fashion, assisting Deacon Antonio through the mornings and afternoons, making his best efforts to recreate some semblance of the painting with his pencil and paper each evening in studious solitude. The hours spent drawing seemed to pass Moreno by like a lightning flash—no sooner would he gather up a few sheets and sit down at the study desk than he would find it was late in the night and hours had gone by without his noticing. That is not to say the time went by leisurely or that this repetition was in any way pleasant. On the contrary, the consideration and intensity he poured into the work proved to be a great mental strain, but it was in this state of concentrated exertion that Moreno found the evenings fly away in an instant. And what did all of this effort achieve? Though he was still displeased by his copies of the Goya, Moreno had to admit there was a marked improvement in his attempts compared to his initial drawings one week ago; the sketches began to bear the steadiness of a more practiced hand, and the two women no longer looked so grotesque, their proportions now in line with what one typically expects of the human body. Yet this was not enough. Moreno could not help but feel the familiar bite of frustration when he looked at these latest tries and examined the remaining distance, so clear and obvious, between his composition and the master's. He took his latest sheets of ruined papers and threw them in the wastebasket.
When he arrived at the room the next morning to continue with the restoration, Moreno found the painting gone along with all of the brushes and bottles. Deacon Antonio was waiting for him, standing hunched over some papers he had spread on the table to examine. As Moreno got closer, he discovered they were his drawings. Though the pages were still creased and dirty, he could see great care had been taken to smooth them flat and place them side-by-side in something of an ordered arrangement.
"I found these in the study this morning," the deacon said, raising his eyes to look at Moreno. "Someone had thrown them away. Do you know who drew them?" Moreno said nothing. The deacon took one of the papers and brought it close to his face, inspecting it thoroughly before placing it back down. "Please don't think I'm upset, Santiago, or that you're in some kind of trouble. These are very good. You drew them, didn't you?"
The boy nodded, his eyes lowered to the ground. The deacon gave a light laugh. "There's no need to feel embarrassed. Tell me: how long had you practiced before you drew this one here?" he asked, tapping his finger on Moreno's last attempt.
"One week," the boy muttered.
The deacon was silent for a minute as he looked at Moreno, then down at the drawing, then back up at the furrowed, uncertain expression on the young face. "I have some training in art, you know. It's why they trust me with the Goya. None of the others know a thing about painting, or paint for that matter, so they're unwilling to do so much as touch it, too afraid of damaging what they don't bother to understand. Likely for the best." The deacon pushed the papers together into a neat pile and handed them to Moreno. "You have some talent, but you lack skill. It may yet be a gift, or it may remain only as a talent. That is for God to decide." The deacon paused, studying the boy. "I can teach you what I know. That is, what I still remember of my lessons," he chuckled. "Would you like that?"
The boy cast his gaze around the room, mouth turning and twisting, before he raised his face and looked the deacon in the eye. "I don't want to do more drawings. I want to paint," he said, now without a shred of uncertainty in his voice. The deacon stared at Moreno; whatever fear or self-doubt had shadowed the edges of the boy's features a moment ago was now gone—like a storm cloud dispelled by the sun—leaving only a look of resolute, youthful determination.
"I'll see what I can do to procure the paint supplies, but it could take some time. For now we'll work on drawing, for you can't be a great painter if you don't first master pencil and paper. But be patient, and practice, and you'll learn to paint."
The first few weeks of instruction proved difficult—the deacon was a strict teacher, whose commitment to technique and dislike of sloppiness often inflamed a devoted passion, animating his voice and gestures, and which lent him the rapturous zeal befitting a member of the clergy. He gave Moreno basic exercises to start, just simple shapes drawn without assistance or support, and had him repeat these until they became automatic and effortless. Only when he felt the boy had complete control and proficiency in a particular exercise would the deacon allow him to move on to the next. To his credit, Moreno never once gave a word of complaint about the slow and clinical nature of the instruction, regardless of its repetitiveness, or about the absence of praise from the deacon; he remained at all times diligent, attentive, and compliant to the words of his teacher, and gave himself over to practice. After some time, when they had at last moved on from abstract shapes and lines and were into the aesthetic study of basic anatomy, the deacon succeeded in convincing the parish leaders to accord him funds for the purchase of painting supplies. That same day the two went outside into the balmy breeze of the Seville afternoon (the deacon often preferred to walk beneath the orange trees filling the cathedral courtyard while they held their discussions), and went over the fine details of paint—how it could be mixed, its composition, its properties, its idiosyncrasies. The evening sun was loping along the western edge of the sky by the time they were finished, and from that point on Moreno's focus was singular. With each spare moment he painted and painted and painted until his hands ached and his skin was splattered with an explosion of multi-colored spots. Everything he saw and had seen found its way to the end of his brush. He painted the church with its humble pews and gilded sanctum, the arches crossed with fine, spiderlike stonework; he painted the parishioners indiscriminately: young, old, ugly, beautiful, rich, poor, dirty, clean; he painted the clergymen despite their weak, half-hearted protestations; he painted the other boys, some with gleeful smiles and some with uncertain, self-conscious frowns; he painted the streets and the buildings and the trees and the skies of Seville, rendering them all in a soft and golden glow; he painted his old house, worn and fading, against the backdrop of dusty white hills; he painted his brothers, whose faces he found increasingly difficult to remember. It was always the faces he sought to capture as best he could, to make them seem true and honest, yet also imbued with that inner warmth of humanity, just as he had seen in the Goya.
This work continued uninterrupted for some time. Weeks passed into months passed into years, and before long Moreno was a young man, tall and lithe and able. Though he had grown, he still held the same rank at the church as he did the day he arrived, having long been surpassed by the initiates of his age, and while he was too old to assist with Mass, his routine of chores had remained unchanged since the time he was a boy. But this did not bother Moreno. He was comfortable at the church and felt there were many things still to learn that could improve his art. The possibility, the simple idea of leaving and moving out into the world, had not once occurred to him until Deacon Antonio came to speak with him one winter evening. Moreno had just left the dormitory after changing the linens and was making his way towards the laundry when the deacon stopped him in the hallway.
"Santiago, I wonder if I might have a word with you." There was an uncomfortable and awkward urgency in the deacon's voice. Cold, setting sunlight tumbled down from the high windows in the hallway and cast a receding row of white streams across the darkness of his eyes. "It's important," he added.
They moved to a small room off of the corridor, away from the light of the windows, and sat opposite each other at a narrow table. The deacon looked at his hands as he began. "I've spoken with His Grace about you, Santiago, and about your place here in Seville. You are no longer the boy who arrived at our door all those years ago, so I feel I should speak to you plainly, as to a man and not a boy. It is clear to me, and His Grace agrees, that it is not your place to join the clergy and become a priest." The deacon waited a moment for a reaction, and when none came, he continued. "Your education in theology has been too sparse—for that we are to blame—but I do not believe it would be right to tie you in a lifelong bond that would keep you from the world outside these walls, a world where you could thrive, of that I have no doubt. The Lord has given you a gift, and it seems only right such a gift should be shared so you may serve Him through it just as we serve Him here. That will be your path now, a path in the laity, and it is now that you must take your first steps on it." The deacon withdrew from his cassock a compact bundle wrapped in paper and twine and placed it on the table. "His Grace has agreed to provide you with a small reserve of funds as you set out. He has also contacted a school in France that has agreed to take you on as a student of art, where you can refine your gift. I know one of the brothers at the local parish there. He will help you with accommodation."
Moreno said nothing in reply, and the room fell silent. For a minute he made no movement at all and simply stared past the deacon, past the walls of the room and the cathedral and out past the twilit city streets and people and things that closed in as he disappeared inside himself. At last, he reached out a hand and took the bundle. The deacon coughed and raised himself from the table, scraping his chair on the floor as he stood.
"I would just like to say," the deacon began, "it has made me so happy to see you learn over these years, Santiago, and I wish you the best. God be with you." With that, Deacon Antonio turned and exited the room. Moreno sat alone at the table. He waited a while until he could no longer hear the receding footsteps in the hallway, before he stood and began to wander slowly along the church passageways, once so tall and large, now becoming narrower and tighter with every step, constricting behind him as if to squeeze him through and out. He felt then, with a striking internal tug, that it was not he who had grown larger over these years, but only the buildings that had grown small; everything else had changed around him as he remained the same. He arrived back at the dormitory as the first notes of evening Mass began to sound from the chapel and the tolling of the bells rang against the blank, dark windows. By morning there was nothing left of him there, only an empty and untouched bed.
The French art school Moreno was to attend was located in the northeastern part of the country, and he hated the region from the start. No sooner had he arrived did it begin to rain, and continued to rain with a dogged, unremitting persistence for an entire week. Even when the rain stopped, the sun never shone; then the grey winter clouds, with their damp and dreary weightiness, would only press down upon his head more and more, smothering him beneath their impenetrable mass. Gone were the tepid Andalusian winds, replaced now by violent gales slashing through his thin southerner's coat and chilling the marrow in his bones. The people, he found, were as cold as the weather, reserving all smiles, laughs, and friendly expressions, and the food, so fatty and colorless, seemed to have been infected by the greyness of the sky and rain-soaked city streets.
Moreno was provided with an address by a priest at one of the local chapels for a building that was to be his new residence, a bland and nondescript apartment block in the city's east end, only a few minutes' walk from the school campus. After meeting the landlady (a sour, elderly ex-Parisienne) and introducing himself with his rudimentary French, he received a key and was shown to his room on the fourth floor, where the interior was as devoid of humanity as the building's exterior. He settled in quickly, having few possessions, and decided to take a walk of the school grounds in order to get away from the closeness of the bare walls and dim light of his new home. Outside he turned up his collar against the rain's rhythm and proceeded north several streets toward the largest of the school halls, a pale white rectangular behemoth with great stone columns standing guard at its front steps. Impressive perhaps to the locals, but not to one who has lived most of his life in a cathedral. Moreno took an immediate dislike to the look of the building; it seemed to him an imitation of some grander, truer beauty, which through this attempted replication had been fouled, and the closer he got, the stronger this feeling became. He climbed the front steps to the large door, placing his hand on it and readying to enter, but found himself suddenly gripped by an inexplicable sensation. It was as if all of the unpleasantness and unfamiliarity of the city had been concentrated for him here, to this one door, and prevented him from opening it out of such intense repulsion. Bile rose in his throat, and he was overcome for an instant by a sharp, resonant pang of loneliness, as he thought of how deracinated he had become. Burning with a childish, helpless frustration and an embarrassment of himself, Moreno turned and walked back to his room.
Ultimately, he never attended a single class at the school and in fact never set foot on the campus again. It seemed quite clear after his visit there that it was not a place for him, and he would have to seek more welcoming surroundings elsewhere, something which he later managed to find by pure accident. After spending a couple of weeks lazing about his room with his mind in a featureless grey haze, a mirror to the scene outside his window, he decided to go for a drink and escape its hold for a while. He walked to a small café down the street and ordered a glass of wine. Most of the tables were unoccupied, and the place was nearly empty, save for a few young men in threadbare shirts seated in a back corner and engaged in a fervent conversation. One of the men was gesticulating wildly, sending his unkempt dark hair bouncing around his head as he pointed at one of the others while another tried to talk over him. Moreno was unable to discern their words, though he could understand spoken French well enough, so he began to move closer to their corner under the pretense of seeking a better view out of the window.
"I've seen more than enough of his output needed to pass judgment on it. Everything he has done is nothing short of a travesty. It's sloppy, uninspired, and completely lacking in vision," said the animated man, who was waving his hand in front of his face as if warding off summer flies.
"But surely you can't deny his influence?" said the man seated across the table, this fellow a skinny blond who looked slightly older than the rest.
The first man exploded: "Influence?! What difference does that make when none of those who cite him as an influence have done anything of worth themselves? Their regressive movement was dead from the instant they conceived of it, and I think it would have been better for all of us if it had never been. Without it, we wouldn't be drowning in this current fad, a tide of outdated realism that has pushed out all other forms and left no room in the public eye."
While they were speaking, Moreno moved closer to their part of the room, drawn in by the intensity of their discussion.
"You exaggerate," said another of the men, one with eyeglasses and a thin, avian nose, and who spoke with a quiet lisp. "The volume of output can't be equated with the aesthetic or critical value, and to assume that the style's prevalence predicates its future or even current significance is reductive and shortsighted. Consider the works of—"
The man cut himself off, having noticed the stranger's slow approach to the table, and he and his companions turned to look at Moreno, who spoke: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. It's only I overheard some of your conversation and couldn't help but listen in. Who were you speaking about?"
"Sternbach, the German painter. He was at the school recently to give a guest lecture. Hard to believe that's what passes for educational instruction now," said the lively man with disheveled hair. "Are you familiar with him?"
"I'm not, no. Are you all students?" Moreno asked.
"Certainly not," replied the blond, and the three men all chuckled. "There's nothing they can teach at that school that can't be learned better yourself. Painting is a matter of practice and reflection, not lectures and theses and rhetoric."
Moreno's eyes lit up. "Do you paint?"
As it turned out, the group were painters by profession and by calling. They explained that they often worked as general laborers painting houses and rooms around the city to earn a small wage, just enough to pay rent and to buy food, drinks, and personal art supplies, with which they could pursue the creation of their own original pieces. "And if the money runs low," said the unkempt man with a grin, "we can always steal paint from the school." Moreno gave a brief explanation of his situation, of his painting and the arrangement by the bishop for him to attend the school, but when he spoke of his arrival in the city and his feelings of discomfort at the lecture hall, he became embarrassed of that unaccountable emotion. He tried to describe the almost magnetic repulsion he had experienced when standing at the front doors of the building, and the more he went on, the more it seemed to him that his feelings had been ridiculous and juvenile. Yet as he finished his faltering description he was met with a series of nods from the other men.
"Our sentiments exactly," said the blond, who now introduced himself as Martin. "Believe us, it's for the best you didn't go in."
Moreno began to meet the other three at the café every afternoon, when they could discuss their artworks and painting in general. After a week or so of these meetings, Paul, the man with eyeglasses, suggested Moreno join them on their next job. Martin gave his immediate support to the idea, while the third man, Jean-Pierre, voiced his reluctance about allowing another along, a concern he punctuated with his typical abundance of gestures. But when Paul explained that a fourth painter would mean faster work and larger jobs, Jean-Pierre acquiesced. And so Moreno was welcomed into the group and fell swiftly into time with the rhythm of its operation. Each morning at dawn the men would meet at their usual table where, over coffee, Martin would provide details of any new commissions they had received, or if they were continuing on the previous day's job, the four would simply sit in silence as they drank and waited for the foggy glaze of sleep to clear from their eyes. Then they would gather up their supplies and walk to where they were needed. Work carried on uninterrupted, save for a short lunch break, until mid-afternoon, at which time they would pack up and head back to the café for dinner. On occasion, when a job had paid particularly well, they would dine at a restaurant and enjoy a full, rich meal. The evenings and Sundays were spent independently, when each man would go away on his own to paint, or to seek out his next subject or source of inspiration. The routine suited Moreno well, and he discovered his creativity flourished during this time. This second start, with its new surroundings and new friends, gave him a feeling of vitality unlike anything he had known before; where before the sharp winds had blown only cold and empty beneath the blank greyness of the clouded sky, they now carried a weightless, invisible energy invigorating his senses, and he approached his art with a fresh intensity and delight. Just as he was during his years in the cathedral, Moreno felt himself drawn towards portraiture. The task of capturing a subject's essence in a single image, of imbuing the depiction with the same human mystery that can present itself through an infinite selection of different subtleties across a person's features, proved to be an ever-compelling challenge, and he found the difficulty of the work was the foundation of his enjoyment of it. Each spare moment was given to his art as every new painting and every new iteration brought him closer to a realized ideal of his ability, and every struggle against his own shortcomings on this path of improvement was repaid tenfold with satisfaction as he evaluated his progress. He practiced with any face he came across—strangers in the street, his friends, his landlady (whose portrait was generously accepted in lieu of one month's rent), shopkeepers, waiters, grocers, police officers, bus drivers, street vendors, mailmen, young couples having picnics in the park, elderly couples watching from the benches—they all had their faces, their bodies, their postures and airs studied and focused beneath the end of Moreno's brush. Before long he had built up a significant collection of these paintings and had begun to find some degree of pride in his skill, feeling he was finally able to produce something worthwhile, something that could perhaps matter on a larger scale beyond his small apartment, which had grown crowded with completed canvases. Money, however, remained a restriction and a recurrent concern, as professional work around the city was growing scarce. As often as not the four men would gather at the café in the morning only for Martin to inform them the job he had been contacted about would not start until next week, or that the only people hiring were looking for a small crew for a quick project, no more than one or two men for an afternoon's work. On days like the latter, the crew members would attempt to arrange a schedule with which they could come to an agreeable alternation of work on these smaller jobs. Failing that, they drew lots to determine who would be employed for the day. It was on one of these days, having drawn a losing lot, when Moreno's life changed yet again.
A light wind trickled along the damp and darkened sidewalk outside the café on a Friday morning in mid-autumn—the time of year when the sun seems to age with the trees, struggling to rise to its usual height in the sky before slipping away for a much needed rest—while Moreno and Jean-Pierre walked together towards a nearby park midpoint between their apartment buildings. They chatted as they went, talking of the missed job and money and bills and landladies, and said nothing of their paintings. There was a malaise surrounding them, and each sensed the other's embarrassment, or perhaps shame, at having life reduced to such painfully mundane, practical concerns. It was only once they had reached the park, still empty so early in the day, and stopped for a moment to watch a family of ducks raise ripples in the pond, that Jean-Pierre cleared his throat and changed the subject.
"Santiago, do you think this is all there is for us now?" he asked, patting his wiry hair with one hand and making a vague, sweeping gesture with the other. He allowed the question to hang in the air for a moment before he went on: "I suppose I always thought things would have changed for the better by this point, that if I put enough love and passion into my work, the world couldn't help but take notice... but nothing has changed. I moved here six years ago from my hometown, a small village, and outside of my first few months in the city, nothing has really changed. In my life, I mean. Would you say you're happy here? You would have a fresher perspective on this place."
Moreno thought for a moment. It had never before occurred to him to question whether he was happy, or attempt to measure the magnitude of any happiness he felt; he had simply been, and made the best of the situation in which he had found himself. But now when he paused and studied his inner vane of feeling, he realized he had grown to like this place and its people. "Yes, I think I'm happy here, though the weather could be better," he replied.
"Maybe my life here has grown stale," Jean-Pierre mused as he stared out at the dance of leaves on the end of a drooping branch caught in the wind. He was silent for a minute, his gaze distant, before he came back to himself and turned to Moreno. "Would you be interested in taking a trip with me today, seeing as we're not occupied?"
"I suppose, if you'd like some company. Where do you want to go?"
"There's a house just west of the city called La Plaza Jaune that belongs to an old countess fond of hosting parties. She's also fond of artists, and from what I hear, she considers herself something of a trendsetter. I have an old friend who often tends the bar at these parties on weekends. If he could get us in, would you go?"
Moreno hesitated, and Jean-Pierre must have sensed his reluctance, for he began to stare with a desperate intensity.
"All right, I'll go," Moreno said. "What should I wear?"
"Well, that's something of a problem. Typically these parties are only for the wealthy members of the so-called 'upper citizenry,' with even the few artists that are invited being from a select, successful bunch, so we'll have to do our best to blend in. Wear your finest suit, and a neckerchief in place of a tie. Preferably something with color, nothing drab or funereal. And if you have any rings, wear them, too."
They parted for the morning with Jean-Pierre in higher spirits, and they agreed to meet later that afternoon once they had bathed and dressed. To Moreno, whose mind was now sinking into a morass of apprehension, the hours passed in a flash as he prepared himself for the night ahead. He had never been to any sort of aristocratic affair, let alone sneaked into one uninvited, and disastrous visions repeated over in his head. By the time he left his apartment, his hands were clammy, and he felt like he was on the verge of sweating through his underclothes. Nevertheless, he pressed ahead. Jean-Pierre must have caught a case of nerves as well, for besides his initial greeting when the two met on a nearby street corner to begin their walk to the estate, he did not say a word on their way over.
The distance turned out to be greater than they anticipated, and it was dark when they reached the house gate. "My friend told me to go to the rear entrance. There will be a door propped open for us there," Jean-Pierre said, his face half-hidden in shadow beneath the dim streetlight. They went around the perimeter of the gate and along the sides of the house, from which came a low din of chatter and music, occasionally punctuated by a burst of raucous laughter. A soft, yellow glow from the many windows above their heads lit the ground ahead of them and guided them along. At the back of the property, the iron gate converged with a stone wall no taller than the two uninvited guests, and with a quick boost and a lift they were over. They took a short moment to dust off their hands and straighten their clothes before approaching the rear door; as promised, a brick had been placed at the edge of the frame, leaving it ajar by no more than a couple of fingers' width and allowing Moreno and Jean-Pierre to join the party. Inside, down a few narrow hallways and up a short flight of stairs, they entered a great ballroom buzzing with people. Immaculately-styled women wandered past with drinks in hand, the overhead light from the crystal chandelier dancing across the surface of their jewelry; or stood and chatted in airy, affected tones with well-dressed men, many of whom were noticeably older than Moreno and Jean-Pierre, and who wore their greying hair slicked back across their scalps. With a growing sense of unease and self-consciousness, the pair slunk their way around the outside of the hall, as if cowering beneath the weight of the high, ornamented ceiling, and moved towards the bar.
"We shouldn't have come," Moreno whispered. "We stand out like we have signs around our necks."
"No one seems to have a problem. We're fine. Try to relax. And if anyone gives you trouble, get loud and indignant. These types of crowds can't stand shouting," Jean-Pierre said in a voice that seemed intended to reassure himself as much as to instruct his fellow interloper. "I'll talk to my friend and we can get some drinks to settle us in."
Once at the bar, Jean-Pierre's friend provided them with complimentary cocktails, and Moreno was able to breathe more easily for a few minutes, feeling like an overboard sailor clinging to a rock against the pull of the current out towards open waters. He leaned on the sturdy counter while Jean-Pierre entered into a personal discussion with his friend, leaving him alone to sip his drink and survey the room. The wealth of the guests was apparent from their attire, but what truly distinguished them from their working-class equivalents, Moreno soon noticed, was the slight fleshiness about their mouths, as though they were always caught in the act of chewing or giving a studied, purposefully childish pout. While he thought over how best to exhibit this expression in his paintings, there came from one corner of the room the same burst of laughter he had heard from outside when passing by the windows. Standing straight for a better view, he saw a group of men and women, most of them younger than the other attendees, seated in a circle of leather chairs and settees, apparently engaged in a humorous conversation judging by their smiles and indiscernible exclamations of amusement.
One of these young women in particular caught Moreno's eye. She was in one of the settees, her legs crossed beneath a smooth black dress and her arm draped along the back of the seat. She appeared entirely intentional in her positioning, as though posed, with a natural and effortless grace, an almost inhuman bearing. Unlike the others, she did not laugh or smile at the jokes and stories being told, and instead maintained her unwavering, sphinxlike countenance. At first Moreno was taken aback by this woman; a nervous confusion began to seep into his stomach, and he wondered why he found it so difficult to look away from her. It was as though the evening had condensed in a single moment, and the entire room now centered around her. For several minutes Moreno sat in thought without touching his drink, postulating how best to approach her, but the presence of so many others in the corner dissuaded him from any attempts. But then, just as he was about to capitulate and return to the consolatory safety of his cocktail (now lukewarm), the woman rose from her seat and began to walk towards an hors d'oeuvres spread in the center of the room with measured, self-assured speed. Moreno, without a second's hesitation or consideration, pushed himself from the bar and set off after her. The woman circled around to the other side of the table so that she faced in Moreno's direction and paced along the table's length, studying the foods with veiled eyes; she moved like a caged animal, a leopard in a menagerie whose lithe and languid footsteps pad a soft tread along the metal floor, a ferocity concealed by control and poise as it watches the enraptured faces of the crowd, waiting only for the right moment to break free. As he drew nearer to the table, Moreno swallowed several times in hopes of soothing his throat, which was suddenly dry and raw. He took a plate and walked along the side opposite the woman as he pretended to assess the table's selection, and added a few grapes to his plate before looking up and feigning surprise at finding someone else there.
"Oh hell-o, good evening," he said with a slight break in his voice. The woman looked up for a brief second before lowering her gaze back to the hors d'oeuvres, having hardly met Moreno's eye. She returned his greeting in a flat tone. Undeterred, he said, "My name is Santiago. I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you before."
A sardonic smile crept across the woman's face as she continued to look over the food. "No, I don't suppose you have," she said, then with an abrupt step, moved around the edge of the table and began to make her way back towards the seats in the corner.
"What's your name?" Moreno asked before the woman could walk more than a few strides away. She turned in place and looked Moreno in the eye.
"Why do you want to know my name? Is it so important to you?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't intend to..." he fumbled for the right word, his French evaporating under the intensity of her stare. "It wasn't that I intended to... forgive me, I saw you sitting over there, and I was struck by your form."
"My form?" she frowned.
"Your posture," Moreno rushed to correct, "the way you sat, I mean. You were like a statue, like someone had posed you. I'm a painter, you must understand."
Her stern expression softened slightly, the know of her eyebrows loosening. "A painter? Then tell me: what is it you paint? Landscapes? Fruits in bowls with flowers?"
"Portraits. Portraits of all sorts of people. Some I know and some I don't." The woman continued to stand in her place, apparently disinterested and unimpressed. Moreno's mind scrambled to think of more to say, something to pique her interest. "I'm from Spain, and that is where I learned to paint. I grew up on the edge of the Andalusian desert, before I moved to a commune where I was taught by one of the greatest and last disciples of Goya. Have you ever been to Andalusia?"
"No," she replied. "Where is it?"
"It's in the south, where the land narrows to stretch out between the ocean and the Mediterranean, and on a clear day you can look across the water to the shores of Morocco. You should visit. The sun always shines there, unlike here." The woman said nothing in response, and for a moment the two stood in silence. By now the woman's frown had disappeared, though her look seemed distant, as if she were deep in thought and had retreated within herself. Moreno, sensing the conversation had come to the end of its course, made to walk back to the bar, but not before making one request: "If you're here in the city, perhaps I could paint you sometime. I think you would be an extraordinary portrait subject."
The woman's focus suddenly returned, and she looked at Moreno in a cool assessment. "Would you pay me?" she said. "People are usually paid to pose as models, aren't they?"
An anxious shot went through Moreno's head—money was already low with work so scarce, and it was impossible to know how long this drought of employment would last. For his brain, the choice was clear and set against, but his heart argued otherwise, and as often happens when these two forces take up opposing sides, the heart won.
"Of course, I can pay you. After all, the painting will require several sessions."
This seemed to please the woman, who now smiled. With a further brief discussion, they were able to settle on terms for the work. "Excellent," the woman said as she turned to leave. "Come see me at my home at the end of Rue de Tromont, where it meets the river. Ring the bell and ask for Nadine."
And with that she walked back to her seat among the crowd in the corner. For a minute Moreno did not move, afraid to break whatever spell of fortune was cast around him, until at last he ventured to take a few tentative steps towards the bar. It was as though his shoes had been replaced by balloons, and every footfall was a deliberate motion and a push against gravity; he sensed he was walking with an awkward, halting gait, though he could not bring himself to walk in his normal way, nor did he care enough to try. It was only as he neared the bar and overheard the tense, elevated voice of Jean-Pierre that Moreno's light-headed ecstasy wore off. His friend was in a heated conversation with a square, burly man dressed in black and with close-set eyes that bore into those of Jean-Pierre, who had been aggravated into a flurry of gesticulations and spittle as he argued. Moreno approached the two and asked what the matter was.
"This brute," Jean-Pierre shouted, "has the gall to suggest we 'have no right to be here.' He calls us 'party-crashers.' As though we weren't invited by the Madame herself! We have every right, don't we Santiago?"
"I know everyone on the guest list for tonight, and I know you two sure as hell aren't on it," the man said.
Moreno noticed the party growing quieter; he glanced around the room and saw more and more people turning their attention to the developing scene. "Maybe we should just go," he whispered.
"Do you hear this, Santiago?" Jean-Pierre laughed as he took a step closer to the large man. "I find it hard to believe that a blockhead like you could remember your own name, let alone those of everyone else here. Maybe you should check your list again. Your memory might be failing you."
The man lunged forward with his hands outstretched just as Moreno grabbed hold of Jean-Pierre's jacket and pulled him backward to safety. Without a word spoken, the two took off in a flash towards the small servant's corridors from which they had entered. They flew across the ballroom, urged on by the raised voices and sounds of shattering glass behind them, and were soon outside in the brisk midnight air, where a silver sliver of moon hung high in the starless sky, watching over them as they scrambled up the stone wall and ran home through the heart of the city, all the way laughing a childish laughter and never once looking back.
Moreno did not call on Nadine the following day, though he was eager to see her again. He waited partly out of the desire to appear nonchalant and blasé (a word he very much enjoyed working into his daily speech, having picked it up from Jean-Pierre), but also out of embarrassment for how he had left the party. No doubt she had seen him flee like a shoplifting schoolboy, and he felt it best to postpone his visit while the memory of the night settled and his shame cooled. But when he woke the next morning on a wet and gloomy Sunday, he found his resistance had grown thin in the loneliness of the night, and so that afternoon, once the morning Mass was over and she was sure to be at home, he donned his coat, gathered his painting supplies, and set off for the riverfront. Rue de Tromont was a small, tree-lined residential street tucked away from the busier roads of the city center; its tall, narrow, stately homes exuded an air of wealth and class and age that contrasted stiffly against the bucolic trickling of the water's flow nearby. Moreno walked down the row of houses and stopped where the lane came to an end at the curve in the river. Here stood the last house, with its rooftop overlooking the gentle green current below. He climbed the front steps and rang the small brass bell hung in a cut out alcove beside the door. Heavy footsteps could be heard inside, and after a moment the door was opened by a squat old woman, whose wrinkled face bore what seemed to be a permanently squinted frown, with the narrow lines that were her eyes almost lost beneath the furrowed brow. She stared at Moreno and did not speak.
"Good afternoon, madame. I'm looking for Nadine," Moreno said. Still saying nothing, the woman turned and walked deeper into the house, leaving the door open. Moreno, taking this as an invitation, entered and followed the woman to a staircase at the back of the main hallway where she stood waiting for him. She pointed towards the ceiling, then raised three fingers before entering one of the side rooms off of the hallway and closing its door behind her. Moreno marched up the three flights to the top floor of the house, where he came face-to-face with a plain wooden door. He gave it a slow, gingerly knock and waited. The hall was musty and dark, and the outer walls creaked lightly in the autumn breeze. After a few minutes had passed, Moreno began to wonder whether he had picked a bad time, but just as he was weighing the decision to stay or go, the door unbolted with a snap and swung open soundlessly. There stood Nadine in an emerald-green dress, her hair bunched and pinned atop her head, her neck adorned with a shimmering gold necklace.
"Sorry for the delay, I had to finish getting ready," she said. "Please come in." Moreno followed her into the apartment, an open, sunny studio with a slanted roof and perfused with the smell of incense. In one corner sat a simple wooden table near a stove and a sink, and in another lay a hastily made bed draped in creased white sheets and covered with an assortment of pillows and articles of clothing. Nadine went over to the window and sat down on the sill. "I was thinking you could paint me here. I often like to spend my time here, reading or watching the river and the town. What do you think?" she asked. Moreno was not able to see any books around, but he was not about to question her on it.
"That will be fine. The lighting is good and sitting will help keep you still," he said before falling silent for a moment as he stared at her. She continued to sit in the window, poised and ready to begin. "Were you waiting for me? How did you know to expect me today?" he asked suddenly.
She shrugged and flashed a bright, playful smile. "I just knew you would come. I suppose I have a sense for these things. Sometimes I know what a person will say before they say it, like I've already heard the conversation and they're just reciting their part."
"That's quite the talent," said Moreno as he put his supplies down on the floor.
"So how do you plan to paint me? Is there a certain way I should pose?"
"The way you are now is good, it's natural." Moreno began to set up his easel and unpack his brushes. "But I never plan a portrait."
"What do you mean? You must have some idea in mind when you start."
He shook his head. "What I paint isn't decided by me. I only try to look and see honestly, closely, and allow the honesty to work its way into the painting."
Moreno began the picture, starting with an outline of Nadine framed within the window, her face turned to a semi-profile as though something had caught her attention, something just beyond the border of the canvas. He asked her questions as he painted—where she was from, how long she had lived in the apartment, how she had found it, what did she think of the landlady, did she have much family, did she see them often, what did she do for a living, did she like it, what would she rather do—in order to get her outside of herself in some small way so he might better understand the person before him, and while he presented these questions under the guise of necessary professional chatter, his real motivation, kept safe beneath his detached demeanor, was of course much more personal. Every word she said he absorbed, involuntarily memorized; he wanted to know everything about her and know it all by heart. It was as though all things in life had led him to this apartment, drawn like a marionette on invisible strings, and he was now impuissant against the immense pull of fate. By the time the sun had begun to set and they agreed to stop for the day, Moreno was deeply and helplessly in love.
The next morning he went down to the café and told the other three he would not be available for any jobs that week. Paul asked if he was sick. Martin asked if he was in some sort of trouble. Only Jean-Pierre could tell from the look in his friend's eyes that some greater change had taken place, and did not say a word. Back at the third floor of the riverfront house, Moreno was once again welcomed by Nadine in the same emerald dress. He had left behind his supplies the previous day, so they were able to quickly pick up where they had left off, only breaking for the occasional cup of tea from the lethargic stovetop kettle. As before, they talked while he painted, but this time the conversation wandered and flowed, free and relaxed, in a way it had not previously. Perhaps they each felt a little more comfortable now that they were well into the process, decidedly between the awkward beginnings and the dwindling, uncertain endings bracketing such an encounter. He talked of his time in Spain, of the cathedral and Deacon Antonio, of his move to France and the friends he had made; she spoke of her childhood, of school and schoolfriends, of her fear of the ocean, her desire to travel despite her fear and to see all sorts of different countries and people. By evening, Moreno felt a general fuzziness in his lips and fingers as though he were drunk, and his head buzzed with the sound of her voice and the ring of her laughter. He wandered home in the honey-hued dusk with a light step and a blissful look on his face.
This routine continued for several more days, and as Moreno's affection for Nadine continued to develop, so too did the painting until, to the surprise of its painter, for whom the time had passed in an instant, it was nearly complete. Only now, as he studied his work, could he understand what had been captured by his brushstrokes. The painting depicted Nadine seated in the open window, her hands on the edge of the sill as a gentle breeze played at her hair and draped it across the shoulder of her dress, which shimmered with dancing sunlight, the same light dancing on the low-peaked waters of the river current visible down below. She was smiling a half-grin, while her eyes seemed to be searching for something located elsewhere, somewhere foreign and far away, far beyond the window and the walls of the room and the river and the streets of the city; her look was distant and detached, with a certain depth of feeling, a melancholy and a fear—perhaps real or perhaps imagined, projected—of not finding what she was searching for. As he put the final touches on the painting, Moreno felt neither relief nor pride nor any great sense of accomplishment, but only experienced a mild yet sturdy satisfaction at creating a piece he believed to capture the honest essence of this woman for whom he had grown to care so deeply. He put down his brush and looked at Nadine.
"I think that's all. It's finished," he said. She hopped up from her seat on the windowsill and hurried around the easel to stand beside him, where she studied the painting for some time without a sound, her gaze sweeping across the surface of the canvas and dipping down into the valleys of the brushstrokes, taking in the entirety of her own image through another's eyes. At last she turned to him with a smile and placed her hand on his shoulder. "It's lovely," she said in a warm voice, "and I'm glad I had this chance to work with you." He smiled back, then began to pack up his supplies with no great hurry. Nadine moved out of his way and walked over near the door, her arms now crossed. "Although," she said, breaking the growing silence, "I will miss our conversations, Santiago. I don't see many people here very often besides my landlady, and you've seen she's not the most personable woman. It's been nice to have someone to talk to during the day." Moreno's mind began to spin as he pressed himself for something to say, something to bridge the formidable gap between what is and what could be. He kept his face turned away from her so she could not see the uncertainty etched in his features as he spoke: "I've enjoyed our talks, too. And there's no reason they can't continue. Maybe we could meet again."
"Yes, maybe." She paused for a moment, then asked, "So do you plan to put the painting up for exhibition? I should think it would do well in a gallery, and it would be so much fun to visit myself."
"I'll have to see. It depends on whether I can generate enough interest in my work as a whole." He turned now, smiling, and faced her. "But should I manage it, you will be the guest of honor at the exhibition opening." She met his eyes and attempted to return his smile before turning away to look out the window. Moreno finished collecting his supplies, picked up the painting, and began towards the door, stopping an arm's length away from her. "Well," he said, "so long for now. I'll be in touch about the painting, and you have my address written down if you ever want to talk." With that, he hiked up his bags and reached for the door.
"Wait," Nadine said suddenly, and for a second Moreno's heart beat faster, until she continued: "I'm sorry, I thought we agreed on some payment for posing. I hate to bring it up like this, but seeing how this was the last session..." Moreno stared at her, lost temporarily in a fog of confusion—her request, like a clap of thunder on a clear summer day, was so contrary to his expectations of events, he was unable to understand fully what she had said—before he remembered their brief discussion of terms at the party and the hasty verbal contract they had made. So it was only a job, after all, only money. As the realization settled in for Moreno, his chest began to burn, as though his heart had been seared with a branding iron. "Of course," he fumbled, "of course, that was the agreement. Only I don't have the money on me right now. Can I get it to you in a day or two?" She seemed discomforted, but nodded anyway, unwilling to make an issue out of it. "Yes, that would be fine. You can leave it with the landlady if I'm not in."
"Don't worry, I promise I won't forget," he said with a tinge of bile in his tone as he gathered his things closer and left the apartment. He walked down the stairs at a calm and measured pace until he heard the door close behind him, at the sound of which he took off in a stumbling descent down the remaining steps and out onto the street, where the babble of the river mixed with the rushing of blood in his ears, drowning out any thoughts or rationalities trying to raise themselves and be heard above the din in his mind, the mental noise of his embarrassment. Fighting back the ache of indignity, he started for home in a self-absorbed stupor. By the time he had reached his apartment and dropped off his supplies (along with the painting, in spite of his urge to throw it in the river on his walk back), it was evening, so Moreno wandered over to the café where he knew he could at least gather with friends and commiserate. But when he arrived, the building was unoccupied; only a single dull bulb glowed behind the unmanned bar, its light spilling out and illuminating the empty tables and chairs before fading into the darkness filling the depths of the space. Moreno went back to his room and spent a sleepless night in bed, listening to the raspy rustle of the wind and the creak of floorboards in other nearby apartments. Early the next morning he went back to the café just as it opened and waited there, without eating or drinking, for the others to arrive. After what seemed like hours, they came in dressed in their splatter-stained coveralls and sat down at the table, each looking at Moreno with a different mixture of surprise, trepidation, and concern.
"So he lives!" Martin smiled. "We were beginning to worry you'd run off, decided to leave altogether without telling us."
"No, I'm still here," Moreno said.
Paul shifted in his seat and leaned forward with his arms crossed as if braced against a strong headwind. "Is your other work over now, Santiago? Did everything go all right?" he asked.
Moreno turned and looked at him with bloodshot, unfocussed eyes. "I was wondering if I could bother each of you to lend me some money. The work is finished, but I've picked up a bit of debt along the way, and my funds are short at the moment. Do you have anything I can borrow?"
The other three pulled back into their chairs and looked at their hands, the table, the far end of the café—anywhere but at Moreno. They did not speak.
"Anything at all?" Moreno asked with a rising agitation in his voice.
It was Jean-Pierre who broke their silence: "I'm sorry, Santiago, but money has been tight for us, too. The availability of work has been unpredictable, and we've only just started on a new job, though we won't be paid until next week."
"Fine. Then let me join you on the job and we can all work it," countered Moreno.
"That won't work, either, I'm afraid," Martin said.
"Well, why not?" Moreno snapped.
"The job isn't enough for four," Jean-Pierre explained. "It's barely enough for two people, to be truthful, and the pay is for a two-man job. We've only agreed to stretch it to three so that we all have at least a little money to get by."
"This is unbelievable!" Moreno shouted, now unmuzzled by his hunger and fatigue and frustration. "And here I thought we were a team. Why couldn't you have at least told me about it? Maybe we could have arranged something with the employer, or something among ourselves."
"You weren't here. What were we supposed to do?" Jean-Pierre said.
For a minute Moreno was silent and immobile, suddenly catatonic as if drained of all of his anger; only his eyes, burning with tears, revealed the depths of feeling beneath his stillness and betrayed his momentary passivity. "So, no money, no work... is there anything at all?" he asked, his voice wavering despite his best efforts to control it. No answer. "I see. I'll just have to figure it out on my own." He pushed himself up from the table and rushed towards the café exit.
"Santiago, wait!" Jean-Pierre called as he followed him outside. He managed to get ahead of Moreno on the sidewalk and forced him to stop. "How much money do you owe?"
Moreno, hands in pockets, looked all about the street but refused to meet Jean-Pierre's eyes. "About two weeks' earnings. Maybe a bit more."
"To who? That woman from the party? That's absurd. What made you promise her that much?"
Moreno shrugged. "I wanted to see her. I still do, to be truthful. What can I do?"
With a troubled look on his face, Jean-Pierre stared hard at Moreno. After a moment his look softened. "Santiago," he began in a gentle voice, "I talked to my friend, the one who was the bartender at that party and who sneaked us in. I got him to ask around for me about that woman, Nadine, and to see if anyone had any information on her. Among other things, he told me that she's engaged to a man living in a town just north of the city. It seems they plan to marry in a couple of months."
Moreno's wandering gaze landed for an instant on Jean-Pierre, who watched in anticipation of a response, before flitting off again. A baneful breeze blew down the street, and Moreno noticed the trees had lost the last of their leaves. When he spoke, his words were quiet and soft, barely rising above the rush of the wind. "And why didn't you tell me sooner? Why now?"
"I only found out the day before last, and you were away for days. I tried to get you at your apartment, but you were never in."
"Why tell me at all? What can you hope to achieve with this? What's the use?"
"Don't you think it's important to know? I was worried you'd be too taken up with this woman, spending so much time with her, and I wanted to be sure there wouldn't be any misguided ideas about her and who she is."
"So you wait until after the damage has been done to act on your worries..." Moreno looked up at the featureless grey sky, the same sky that had hung above him since his first day in the city, entirely unchanged across the boundless width of its clouded sheet, and said, "Perhaps you had better just worry about yourself from now on and spare me your concern," then set off down the sidewalk for the riverfront with a rapid step. When he reached the house at the end of the lane, his lungs aching from the cold air, he pounded on the front door, which was opened by the landlady. She shook her head when he asked if Nadine was in, and again when he wondered if there was any indication of how long she would be gone. Dejected, Moreno began to descend the front steps, before leaping back up just as the landlady was about to shut the door. While she did not know the name of the fiancé, she was able to write down an address in the town north of the city where Nadine had indicated she could be reached in case of an emergency.
Within an hour Moreno stood outside of a small yet elegant apartment building. The exterior was painted a crisp white, along which now ran rivulets of soft rain, and was sectioned into symmetrical blocks of windows, each adorned with a curving wrought-iron-railed balcony. He checked the number above the entranceway against the address the landlady had given him and tried the front door. It was locked and no one was visible in the unlighted lobby. Moreno, undeterred, found a nearby bench with a view of the door and established himself there, sitting and fretting, staring and squirming, as he simmered with a silent, furious determination. He received numerous troubled glances from passersby who wondered at this unkempt, uncombed stranger watching them with haggard eyes as they entered and exited the building. As he waited, Moreno's mind began to wander—he thought of his childhood and the dryness of the desert sun that had burned his skin and warmed his bones; of the church, with prayers he had not heard or spoken in years that now resounded in his head; of his apartment and his paintings, and that painting of her; of the café and the city and all of the places he could have gone, the paths he could have taken that would not have led him here. And though at times, so immersed in his own surroundings, Moreno felt himself begin to relax into the stream of the past and the possible presents, there always came a flash of turbulent realization and recollection of exactly what had brought him to this place, and each time he was swept up by the undercurrent of indignation roiling in his heart. Hours must have passed beneath these thoughts, for soon evening had settled and lights were turning on in windows up and down the length of the street, reflected in the shadowy sidewalk puddles like fireflies against the dark. The town itself seemed to fall silent, save for the murmur of wind blowing through the naked branches of the trees and down the way; Moreno, cold and wet, hugged himself tightly and sat bent forward at the waist, and he wondered whether he ought to find somewhere else to stay the night. But before he could decide, he caught sight of two people, a couple walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk towards him and the building. Their features were obscured, yet Moreno knew at once the smaller of the two was Nadine. He waited as they walked closer—voices raised in laughter could be heard from the pair as they neared the entrance—before he sprung from his vantage spot and ran to meet them, intercepting them at the door. They pulled back in alarm at the frenzied appearance of this dark apparition, who spoke now with a rough, phlegmatic voice: "Good evening, what a pleasant surprise it is to see you here. Who would have thought we would meet outside of the city like this. It's my first time in town, you know, so I'm still taking it in. Are you here often, Nadine?"
The man, tall and thin with a head of curly hair, turned to her. "Do you know him?" Nadine did not respond right away; her expression was that of one who has been told a story at once dramatic and salacious yet painfully banal, a hint of disappointment beneath restrained surprise. When she collected herself, she could only mutter, "He's the one who painted the portrait of me. He must have followed me, or else someone told him the address." The man stepped forward to move himself between Nadine and Moreno.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I just want to talk to her," Moreno said, "to try and sort everything out."
"I don't think that would be a good idea, so why don't you leave us in peace and go about your evening?" the man suggested, his tone growing sharp.
Moreno took a step to the side in an attempt to circumvent the man, but the man moved to block him.
"I just want to talk. I have your money, like I promised. Do you want it?" Moreno said as he reached into his coat pocket for a handful of bills that were not there.
"Fine," the man said, "give us the money and go on your way."
"It's her money, I'd rather give it to her if that's all right," Moreno said, once again trying to sidestep the man, who was now growing visibly upset. The man put his hand on Moreno's chest and gave him a light shove. "Don't touch me!" Moreno snapped, louder than he had intended. "You don't understand, all I want is to have a short conversation with her to sort out the details of the situation."
"Listen, espingouin, I've had enough. I'm not sure what problem you have with her, but we don't want you around here. Understand? She doesn't want to be near you, and I don't want to see you anymore, so leave us alone and go home. Just go back home." The man gave Moreno another shove, more forceful this time, which caused Moreno to stumble backward. He watched as the man took Nadine's hand and led her towards the building entrance. Moreno's stomach shrank as if in a vacuum, pulling at his ribs and lungs and heart, and his face burned a deep red as he was overcome with a feeling neither entirely embarrassment nor shame, nor pain, nor sadness, but some dark and fierce amalgam of all four, and before he could realize what he was doing, Moreno lunged at the man and knocked him to the ground. The man's head bounced off of the stone walkway with a low, hollow thud before laying still. Within seconds, a crimson pool bedecked with the sticky, distorted glimmerings of the streetlamps began to spread from beneath his hair and run in serpentine streams along the grooves of the path. All was quiet, and for a moment the entire world closed in on these three figures, posed and motionless with the precision of a tableau, before there came an ear-splitting scream from Nadine, and all collapsed. She rushed to the man's side and dropped to her knees, searching for any sign of vitality in his now-vacant eyes. Her hand brushed his cheek and stroked his hair, and when she pulled it away, the tips of her fingers were wet with blood.
"Look at what you've done," she cried, turning in Moreno's direction. "Look at what you've done to him."
Moreno took a couple of slow steps backwards, his gaze fixed on the unmoving body before him, and said nothing.
"Help! Help!" Nadine shouted when she noticed him trying to back away. "Somebody call for an ambulance and get the police. There's been a murder!"
Later, during the lengthy tedium and endless hours of his processing in the criminal justice system and subsequent trial, Moreno was provided with ample time to think back and wonder why he did not run from the scene at that moment, why he did not make any attempt whatsoever to escape as the gendarmes arrived to detain him and take him into custody, why he did not exhibit any sense of self-preservation or concern for his vanishing freedom in the face of indefinite, punitive confinement. And the more he thought about it, and the more he studied the makings of his own behavior, the clearer the reason became to him—in that moment he could not bring himself to care enough to run, because he had nowhere to go. The authorities would expect him back in the city, and there was little hope to survive for long elsewhere without funds or shelter, provided he could find his way around the countryside of this unfamiliar region of an unfamiliar nation. To run would have been to postpone his present situation and would have only prolonged his torment. Better to plunge into the depths of fate's icy waters than to submerge one aching limb at a time, he thought. And so, without a hint of struggle, Moreno was arrested and transported to a holding facility, where he spent the winter awaiting judgment. In the end it was ruled his presence outside of the apartment that autumn evening had been intended as an ambush and stood as evidence of premeditation to the lethal attack on Nadine's fiancé. For this, he was sentenced to death.
Despite the dearth of luxury in his new surroundings, Moreno fell quickly and fluently into the rigid flow of operations at La Masurecourte. Perhaps owing to his time in the church, with its strict structure of chores, curfews, and scheduled mealtimes, he found he was able to take some initial degree of comfort in the pattern of regularity through enforced order, and over his first few days felt a peculiar wistfulness at the remembrance of the boyhood routines, even if his current accommodations bore little resemblance to the opulence of those cathedral-dwelled days. Of course, this feeling of warm nostalgia could never last in such a place as jail, for a prisoner cannot be said to have a life, but rather only an existence. After the first week, Moreno began to forget all associations he may have had with his youth as the realities of incarceration (and of impending execution) set in with a heavy certainty. As promised, all contact with the general inmate population was restricted. It was only during the transitional times, when he was escorted from his cell down one hallway after another en route to the mess hall or out into the yard, when he encountered other prisoners. They would pass Moreno in columns of shuffling feet and haggard faces, their hard eyes weighing him up as they loped along the narrow stone corridors to the driving hollers and barks of the guards. Once, when a group was going by, Moreno spotted an unusual-looking man at the rear of the chain, skeletal and walking with a heavy limp, the left sleeve of his striped uniform hanging empty at his side. Just as the man drew level with Moreno, his foot scuffed and he toppled forward onto the floor, where he lay for a moment in a tired heap of bones and cloth before attempting to raise himself back up. His legs, however, either too injured or too weak, left him struggling to return to his feet. Moreno, unsure of whether to intervene, knelt down near the man, who scrabbled about on the ground little more than an arm's length away, and asked him if he needed help. Before a response could come, Moreno received a backhanded blow to the mouth and a push from behind as one of the guards told him to keep moving. Moreno continued down the hallway without looking behind and held back tears, his tongue adjusting a tooth knocked loose. After that he did not look at the other prisoners he passed, and he hardly spoke a word at all until, one day during his second week, he received an unexpected guest.
It was early evening in the time between dinner and lights-out, when Moreno was typically left alone with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him while he waited for night to fall. He sat on his bedroll, his back against the cold, hard, grey wall, watching a cockroach scuttle around upside-down on the ceiling. It moved with small, erratic steps in a patternless trail about the inverted room, seemingly rendered as confused by its incidental confinement as any other inmate. Moreno contemplated for a minute whether it was worth the effort to kill it when another was bound to take its place. He removed one of his shoes with a slow and stealthy motion, took it in his hand, drew back his arm, but just as he was ready to throw, there came a pounding on his cell door. The hatch slid open and a guard's face appeared in the small opening.
"Get yourself in order," the guard said. "The warden wants a word with you." Without delay, the guard shut the hatch and began to unlock the door. Moreno donned his shoe and rushed to his feet in time to meet the guard, who placed him in a pair of handcuffs and told him to sit cross-legged against the back wall. Once Moreno had complied, the guard brought in a wooden chair, which he placed in the open doorway to the cell before calling out into the hall that all was ready. In walked a fleshy man in his later 40s or early 50s, short, with a brown suit and black hair greying along the sides. He gave a light smile as he sat down in the chair.
"Good evening," he began in a friendly tone as he settled himself in his seat and crossed one leg over the other knee. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced. I'm Warden Dupuis." He paused for a response, but none came. "I know all about you, though. I read the police file. It's a shame how things went with that girl and her fiancé, isn't it? I can't say I blame you. I've been unhappy in love, too, so I know something of how you feel, but the law is the law and the past is passed and cannot be changed." The warden uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in his chair, the low light from the window glinting dimly in his eyes. "That's not why I'm here, however," he said in a voice suddenly grown stern. "The file also included a small write-up on you and your background, and it included some photographs of the belongings collected from your apartment. Tell me: did you do all of those paintings yourself?" Moreno gave a slow, wary nod, and the warden continued. "In that case, I would like to speak openly with you, and perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement. You see, my wife has been asking me for some time to hire someone to paint her portrait, a task apparently I have put off longer than she would like. A couple of her friends have had their portraits done, and naturally she feels she needs hers done as well, you understand? So, if I were to provide you with supplies and a space here in the facility to work, could you paint her portrait? I'm a reasonable man, of course. Such a task, for its duration, would come with certain privileges. An administrative delay could easily crop up in our paperwork and extend your sentence, or, say, a report could be sent out that you've taken ill and any official action must be postponed until such time as you are released from the infirmary. What do you think?"
Seeing little room for refusal, Moreno nodded once more and agreed to the proposal. The warden relaxed a little in his chair, and the joviality returned to his voice. "I'm glad. I think it's in both our interests. I was quite impressed with what I saw of your work, you know, and I'm sure you'll impress again with this. You'll start tomorrow after breakfast." Without another word, he stood and exited the cell, leaving the chair in the doorway and Moreno still seated against the damp wall.
The next morning he was escorted straight from the mess hall to an out-of-the-way wing of the prison and taken into what appeared to be an abandoned office or clerical room, now dusty and derelict. At one end of the room stood an easel with a blank canvas placed on it, as well as several brushes, paints, and a bottle of turpentine arranged on the floor. About 20 feet away was an empty stool in front of an extended pale blue cloth backdrop suspended from a length of twine strung between two coatracks. The guard walked Moreno over to the space behind the easel, removed his handcuffs, and told him not to move while they waited for the warden's wife to arrive. As he took in the space, Moreno thought about what he should do, being of two minds about the task before him. On one hand, he was compelled by both basic sense (and a non-insignificant amount of fear) to take advantage of any opportunity afforded him that would allow for an easier time of his incarceration and which had the potential to stave off execution for even a few extra days. Yet on the other hand, he felt uncertain as to whether he could even bring himself to paint again, as though the very act of picking up the brush now carried with it a series of painful memories to serve as reminders of how he had allowed his life to slip away. Moreno was still wrestling with these thoughts when a door on the side wall flew open and a woman rushed into the room. She wore a starched white blouse beneath a high-collared black jacket buttoned to bursting over her significant size, and her straw-colored hair sat pinned in a neatly contained pile atop her head. Once she had reached the stool, she lowered herself down with slow and surprisingly delicate control before turning to look at Moreno, who stood before the easel watching her.
"Hello there!" the woman called out. "You must be the painter for my portrait. How exciting! I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I heard there was a painter here at the prison, such a marvelous coincidence. You do speak French, don't you? Speak up! My husband told me you're a Spaniard. Can you speak any French? Because my Spanish is atrocious, it really wouldn't be worth it for me to even try. Well, do you know French? Am I going too fast?"
Moreno was temporarily stunned into silence. He had spoken so little to anyone since his arrival at La Masurecourte, and this verbal absence had left him unprepared for such rapid questioning. After taking a moment to collect himself, he called back, "Yes, I speak French, madame."
"Oh excellent. And how would you like me to pose? Is there anything I need to do with my hands? Should I look in a certain direction or tilt my head in a particular way? How's this? Or perhaps like this?"
Moreno bent down and began sorting through the provided brushes and selecting appropriate paints. "Please sit however is comfortable for you, madame, and I will take care of the rest." He set to work on the painting, first in rougher, generalized strokes. The tawdry blue backdrop clashed fiercely with the woman's milky pallor, so he was forced to use a darker shade as a substitute for it. Once he had the broader details in place, he turned to the finer aspects—the slope of the nose; the crease of an eyelid beneath a waxy, fretful brow; the red, well-fed cheeks. The woman talked as she sat and waited, telling him of her family and their home, and her neighbors and their homes, and her friends and their homes and their families. Moreno half-listened to these ramblings but did not give any response, unsure of whether she talked to him or merely at him. However, this one-sided conversation allowed him to maintain his focus on the task at hand, which proceeded with a quick and detached indifference Moreno had never before experienced when in the flow of work. By late afternoon, just around the time when he was typically taken from his cell to the mess hall for dinner, the painting was finished. Moreno, surprised to have completed it so soon, stepped back to assess the piece and was struck by an odd rush of fatigue. Gone were the markers of verity and realness he had once sought to uncover with each of his works; there was no honesty in the person depicted here, no glimmer of a truer, hidden life to be found. There was no fault to be found in the technique, which was proficient, clean, and accurate, and yet to Moreno the entire image appeared flat, anaemic.
The warden's wife noticed he had stopped painting and shouted, "Is it finished? May I see it?" as she threw herself from the stool and approached the easel. Whatever disappointment Moreno felt at his work soon dissolved in a wash of apathy as he watched the woman look the painting over with an unconflicted, uncomplicated glee.
"Oh, it's absolutely perfect!" she cried. "This is precisely what I had in mind. My goodness, I look so regal. It's just perfect! And you did it so quickly, too."
"I'm glad you like it, madame."
"I love it. I know just where to hang it in the house. It will look wonderful." She turned to Moreno. "And I'll be sure to recommend you to some other ladies I know in my circle, I can't imagine my husband will object. I'm sure they'll be as thrilled with their portraits as I am. You've done such a wonderful job." Seeing the work was done, the guard approached, and Moreno had only time to give a short bow of his head in thanks to the warden's wife before he was manacled and steered back to his cell.
On the following morning he waked to the clatter of keys at his cell door as he received another visit from the warden. This time he was allowed to sit on his bed rather than against the back wall, and no restraints were used, though he could see the shadow of a guard on the hallway floor just outside the door. The warden entered wearing a pale grey suit and large grin, and sat in the same chair as before. "Good morning, how are you feeling today?" he asked, then continued without waiting for a reply. "My wife showed me the work you did together yesterday. You did a splendid job. As soon as I arrived home last night she had me gather a hammer and a nail so we could reserve a spot to hang it once it has dried. It'll be on the wall of our parlor, placed in plain view from the foyer as well as visible from the dining room. Needless to say, she's quite taken with it." He paused and looked at Moreno for a moment, the smile he wore now shifting into something of a smirk before he spoke again. "I do feel a touch sorry for the way I described our arrangement the other day, and I worry I may have overestimated my powers, though I suppose you share some of the blame. I wrote express to the penal administrative board two days ago, requesting they grant you an extension on your detainment prior to execution on account of the essential labour you were contributing to here (I didn't give them any specifics), and recommending a two-week delay. I received the official response with this morning's mail, and it seems they're unwilling to allocate more than an additional three days' worth on top of your existing holding time, but perhaps this is fitting when you consider how quickly you finished the painting. I certainly didn't expect you to be done so soon, and to be frank, it hindered the case I had planned to make in request for more time from the board."
Here the warden paused and reached into his jacket, withdrawing a slip of paper which he handed to Moreno. "However, it would appear you have found a supporter in my wife. In addition to overseeing my handywork last night, she also took it on herself to telephone several of her friends and tell them all about you. That," the warden said, pointing to the paper in Moreno's hand, "is a list of four women who expressed an interest in having you paint their portraits. I took the liberty of having my secretary draft a schedule for the sessions, each spaced at least a day apart should the work take longer than my wife's, and with no work on Sundays. And there very well may be more to add to the list over the coming days. Consider it something of an apology for the disappointing response from the board. This way I'll be able to write them back with a much stronger case, relating to 'serving the community.' I suppose I can throw in something later about a nascent illness you may be developing, should my next letter fail to fully persuade them. Well, what do you think? Will that suit you? You'll be able to stay here for quite some time if all goes well."
The very next day Moreno was back in the abandoned office, where he began to work through his list of prospective portrait subjects. The women were all very much like the warden's wife, with similar fashions, similar hairstyles, similar eagerness and smiles and banal chatter while taking similar poses and putting on similar airs, and each time they expressed their similar joy and similar overwhelming excitement with similar hyperbolized phrases when the portrait was complete. The sessions were quick and smooth as each painting blurred with the next in Moreno's mind between the days then weeks that passed with workmanlike, routine consistency. Before long, his time so drawn out, he even began to forget his sentence was for death. But despite all of this work, the list of upcoming clients (for that is what the warden had taken to calling them) never grew shorter, with more and more people telephoning each day to express their interest, to the point that a waitlist had to be drafted. In acknowledgment of his growing importance at the prison, Moreno was moved to a new cell closer to the office, where a semi-permanent studio had been established. The new cell was both warmer and more spacious than his previous one, and in the afternoon it received a bright flood of setting sunlight on account of a large (though still barred) western-facing window. Not long after Moreno had settled into his new quarters, the warden paid him another visit. It seemed, the warden told him, the talk around his paintings in the community had become considerable, particularly among some of the wealthier families in the area, and there had been several initial enquiries from collectors looking to purchase originals; apparently the idea of an incarcerated artist scheduled for execution had sensationalized members of the regional art society. If it was acceptable to Moreno, the warden ventured, he could handle the organization of a small trust to facilitate the sale of some of the paintings for only a modest share of the profits. Moreno, who by now felt no attachment to his pictures and took no pride in them, agreed to the warden's suggestion. Besides, he thought, money is no longer a concern. The next day the warden brought him a bundle of papers to sign, after which the deal was done.
Over the subsequent few weeks, Moreno began to receive additional privileges around the prison. He noticed his food was better, richer, fresher, and was served on a proper plate rather than on a tray. The guards addressed him by his first name, and in a relaxed tone of voice he had not heard them use before with other prisoners. He was provided with thicker sheets, a new bedroll, new underclothes, and fresh water to wash his face each morning. After some time with this new treatment, Moreno felt the sharp edge of incarceration dull, as if blunted, and the nervousness which had pervaded his mind began to fade. He even found he was able to experience some small enjoyment in his portrait sessions, and while he was no longer consumed with the same passion for painting that he had previously known, these sessions were no longer a time of unremittent boredom and monotony. On top of all of this, the warden arranged for a journalist to visit the facility and photograph Moreno; the local paper was interested in running a story on the mysterious painter-prisoner. Moreno was provided a freshly laundered uniform, shampoo, and a comb, and was given a close, clean shave in preparation for the photograph, which they took in the office with Moreno at his easel and the warden standing nearby, watching him work. The journalist—a wiry, spectacled man no older than Moreno himself—also asked many questions, listening to the responses with rapt attention and jotting them down in a pocket notebook. When the interview was over and the journalist had left, the warden clapped Moreno on the shoulder and gave him a broad smile before walking him back to his cell. For a time, Moreno's life at La Masurecourte passed calmly and easily, and the light that shone through the bars of the windows was a little bit brighter, and though he was not free, he was as comfortable as anyone could hope to be in such a place.
Of course, such favoritism cannot go unnoticed, and there began something of a sea change in the other inmates. It started as rude but ultimately harmless acts (a sneer while passing in the hallway, an insult muttered under the breath), things which could easily be ignored or brushed off as oddities not uncommon to the criminally inclined, but it was not until a few days after the interview, while getting lunch in the mess hall, that the pervasion of a negative sentiment towards Moreno among the rest of the prisoners truly became apparent. He had approached the kitchen window looking out on the seating area and through which food was typically doled out to the queue of waiting prisoners. As a supposedly execution-marked inmate (it was an unspoken fact throughout the jail that Moreno was given an indefinite stay—numerous other men had entered and met their deaths in the time since he had first set foot in La Masurecourte), his mealtimes were separate from others, so he was able to walk up right to the window. The inmate on kitchen duty was a scraggly, stout man from the general population, who wore the sleeves of his uniform rolled up past his elbows. Moreno greeted him politely and asked what was being served that day. Saying nothing, the other man turned, walked to the stove at the side of the kitchen, and ladled out a bowl of bubbling red soup from a tall metal pot. He returned carrying the soup, tendrils of steam rising from its surface. Moreno reached out for it, but rather than passing the bowl over to him, the man slammed it down on the counter and gave it a violent push. The liquid sloshed over the lip and splashed across the counter, splattering the front of Moreno's uniform and scalding the skin of his hands. He recoiled with a shout, then once he had wiped the soup from his hands, demanded to know what the hell the other man was doing. In response, the man stared with an unblinking, unwavering gaze that never left Moreno and said, "We see how you're served around here, and we don't much like people receiving special treatment. You best look out for yourself. No one else will," before he pursed his lips, spat into what little soup remained in the bowl, and walked towards the back of the kitchen, disappearing into its dark depths.
After that incident, Moreno took greater care around other prisoners and avoided them when he could. The secure isolation of his cell, once limiting and restrictive, became a comfort, and he spent increasingly more time there over the next several weeks, either sleeping, reading, or just watching the weather outside the window. He forfeited his yard time (it was winter in any case, and the season had been especially damp and bitter), so the only occasions on which he was required to leave his cell were painting sessions in the office and meals, as food was prohibited outside of the mess hall. It was on one of these trips back from the mess hall that Moreno suffered his other incident. He had just finished breakfast and was returning to his cell. Typically, he ate a light, quick portion in order to give himself ample time to retrace his path and travel back along the many hallways without the risk of encountering other prisoners on their way to the next scheduled mealtime. On this occasion, however, either through poor timing on his part, an error in scheduling by the guards, or just bad luck, Moreno came across a large group of inmates as he rounded the final corner on his route and started down the last hallway leading to his cell. As the men shuffled by, Moreno pressed his back against the wall of the narrow passageway and attempted to sidle closer to the end of the procession, the bony nodules of his spine scraping along the hard stone. He did not look away from the other men for an instant out of fear they would move on him suddenly, and instead allowed his eyes to sweep back and forth across the scarred, sunken, scowling faces staring back at him with an envious need, a desperate and hungry hatred. Moreno could do nothing but stare back as he inched closer to the safety of confinement. He had nearly passed the group when he noticed two inmates at the end of the line who leaned towards each other in surreptitious whispering while their eyes, like those of the rest, remained fixed on Moreno. The hairs on Moreno's neck stood on end and his heart raced faster, for even though he could not hear their voices he was certain they were speaking about him. As he neared these two men, he locked his focus on them and felt everything else drop away out of existence, as though a tidal wave were looming overhead, ready to crash on the shore with wild, elemental force. The men moved nearer and nearer, the wave gathering its tremendous strength, and they drew level with Moreno in the corridor, their stubbled faces near enough to touch, the stink of their bodies unavoidable, the barren chalk-white jelly of their eyes crisp and clear and close, and his heart was in his throat and his stomach turned inside out and his tongue grew too large to fit amongst his teeth as the two were alongside him, and just as they walked past him and were farther now from his cell than he was, and just as he dared to hope for a moment that the moment was over and he could make it back and he was clear, the two men turned with horrible quickness and lunged at him with a cry, and though he could see them coming, he could not move himself. He felt he was stuck in place and slowed, and he feared he would never leave that hallway. By the time the guards intervened and the two men were dragged off, Moreno lay motionless in a small pool of blood, clutching to his chest the mangled, semi-recognizable forms of what had been his hands.
The prison doctor did his best to help Moreno, but some things were beyond his ability, and others still were beyond the abilities of modern medicine. He set what bones he could and tried to address the tendon damage wherever possible before applying the casts, but in the end he confessed the limbs would never function the same again. After a week in the infirmary, Moreno was returned to his cell, and several more days passed during which he did not eat or speak or move from his bed, but only drank the water provided to him by the guards and stared at the bare walls surrounding him before the warden came to talk. He brought in his usual wooden chair and placed it close to the bed where Moreno could see him without having to lift his head.
"Santiago, I've just heard from the administrative board," the warden started. Gone were the feigned familiarity and air of compassion, replaced now by stern resoluteness and self-fortification. "It seems there's been a review of your case in light of these recent injuries. Those on the board feel you will be unable to take on any more special labor here at La Masurecourte while you are incapacitated for the duration of your recovery. Furthermore, they believe more than ample time has been allotted to you, far beyond the typical stay of execution, and barring any additional attempts to 'conjure excuses for postponement' (their phrasing, not mine), they see no reason to offer delays to the process. They've scheduled you for the guillotine at eight-o-clock tomorrow morning, and someone from the board will be sent over to serve as officiant." The warden stopped and waited, watching for a reaction from Moreno, though he was left disappointed. Moreno neither stirred nor shouted nor even blinked, but continued to stare vacantly at the wall.
"Is that all?" he asked, his voice flat and quiet.
"Yes, that's all that was in the letter," the warden replied as he shifted in his seat. "You know, I'm deeply sorry about the way this has worked out. I would never have expected those others to attack you so senselessly. It's a terrible shame, and I really am sorry, Santiago, but I can't go against the board's decision. My hands are tied on this. It seems we tested their patience for too long, and now there's nothing I can do to placate them. What could I ever hope to do now that an official approval has been processed?" Receiving no response, the warden stood and gathered himself to leave and said, "Before I go, what is your request for tonight's meal? I'll need to inform the cook of your choice."
"I don't want anything to eat," Moreno said.
"Are you sure? You're free to pick whatever you want, so long as it's something we can provide."
"I don't want any food, I'm certain of that. Only bring me my supplies and a lantern. That will be enough."
The warden went away, and a short time later a guard came by with a fresh canvas, easel, brushes, turpentine, paints, palette, lantern, and a matchbook. Once he had deposited these things in the cell and lit the lantern, he pocketed the matchbook, left the room, and locked the door on Moreno's final evening. Moreno stayed in his bed until after dark, at which time he sat up and rose slowly to his feet. In the soft yellow glow of the lantern, he shuffled the easel and canvas closer to the bed so he could sit while he worked, placed the palette atop the bedroll next to his half-empty cup, then bent down and with great difficulty picked up one of the paint tubes between his two encased hands. After removing the cap with his teeth, he squeezed out a delicate drop of paint onto the palette, taking great care not to crush the tube and waste its contents. He placed the tube next to the palette and reached for a brush, but found himself unable to gather it in his clumsy grip; the thin wooden handle required a dexterity he no longer had. Several brushes clattered to the floor before he devised a strategy: he turned his head sideways and clasped the stem of the brush between his teeth like a matador with a lover's rose, then brought his hands to his mouth and carefully positioned it between his palms, which he clamped together to keep it in place. Though the result would have to suffice for the night, it was far from ideal, and a great deal of concentration and tension was required to maintain the hold. Soon Moreno's arms would begin to shake from the effort, and he would feel himself on the verge of tears, fighting to maintain control, but for now he was ready, and after wetting the bristles and dabbing the brush tip in the paint, he began his work.
The warden returned to the cell the next morning just as the first lights were turning on and the prison was beginning to stir with another day's activities. Hearing no movement inside and being unable to make out anything in the darkness through the hatch, he knocked on the cell door and called out to inquire whether Moreno was awake and ready (courtesy was the last gift to the condemned). When no reply came he knocked again more forcefully and shouted so he could be sure he was heard, asking Moreno to be mature about the situation and to make the process easier on everyone. They didn't have time to laze about, he said, the officiant from the board was due to arrive any minute. Still nothing. The warden waved over the nearest guard and demanded the door be unlocked immediately. Once the guard had finished fumbling with his keys beneath the burning stare of his superior, the warden threw open the door to find Santiago del Roso Moreno lying on the cell floor with his head in a clear, colorless puddle, his lips pale and wet, and his skin drained of its hue. The can of turpentine, now empty, lay on its side next to him. His eyes were open, but they did not move nor blink. After a moment, the warden gave a small sigh and entered the cell. He approached the body, studying the scene briefly before stepping across it and moving towards the easel and canvas, which still stood next to the bed. Grabbing the canvas by its edges, he lifted it from its resting place and tilted it towards the light from the hallway.
The painting, done in crude and labored strokes with a proficiency closer to that of a child than a trained man, showed what appeared to be a woman, perhaps a farmer by her dress, standing next to a young boy before a low and simple house. In the background were rows of dusty white hills rolling and flowing into the distance, out beyond the borders of the picture, beneath the light of a cloudless blue afternoon sky. The woman centered the painting and acted as its focus. She was not depicted in any motion or mood, and her expression, even to look at it closely, possessed an unclear, blank inscrutability that could have been strength or coldness, but her eyes, brimming with affection and gentleness, were illuminated with a care and a clarity seemingly entirely at odds with the rough simplicity of the rest of the image, yet which managed to cast a feeling of great warmth over the piece, the warmth of someone else's memories. When the warden had finished examining the painting, he placed it back on the easel and walked over to the door, where he called in the nearby guard.
"Have the body moved to the morgue and get someone to clean the spill. As for the rest of this," the warden said with a broad sweeping gesture, "remove it and have it all burned. There's nothing here worth keeping." With that, he turned and left the cell.
