Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Page 9

  “I do believe we have the correct gentleman. Were you not, only moments ago, painting this tent on a canvas?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And were you not wishing that you had the talent of your master so that you can, in three days time, successfully paint the daughter of one of the Parisian aristocrats?”

  “How do you know this?”

  “We know about you, Nathaniel J. Cauliflower. We know that you were born on September 9th, 1784 into a farming family’s care. We know that, due to a terrible harvest in 1788, your parents could not provide for an extra mouth. You were left in your master’s care at the age of four and have been under his tutelage since. We were with you at the window of his house, listening to the screams during the storming of Bastille in 1789. We were with you at the beheading of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in 1793. We were with you when Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor in 1804! We also know that, if you don’t put that candle down soon, it may burn your very important, very talented fingers.”

  By now, the candle in Nathaniel’s hand had melted forcing hot wax to burn his left hand’s skin. He grimaced. The time had come to set the candle down. He could not set it upon the fierce slant of the phone’s small desk. Only the lectern’s tabletop was a suitable surface. “Please place the receiver on the phone’s desk, Nathaniel J. Cauliflower. We will wait patiently.”

  Nathaniel looked questioningly at the receiver. In retrospect, Nathaniel should have put the receiver back on the cradle, ending the call. But history had not been written in that way. Nathaniel placed the receiver on the phone’s desk and approached the lectern with the dripping candle. Before he took a step, he heard the child’s voice on the other end as she said “Please, don’t forget the quill!” He reached for the receiver for more instructions. “Please scribe the following: Nathaniel J. Cauliflower, age 23, 1807, cost of admission: three dandelions.”

  Nathaniel turned to the desk where the quill had been set. He hesitated but grasped the quill anyway. When he approached the lectern, he spotted a ring of dried wax where his candle had been situated beforehand. Nathaniel rested the candle in the same location. He dipped the quill into the ink and timidly wrote what the girl had asked of him. It took him considerable time to form the letters. His schooling had not been sufficient, but the quill was patient.

  The candle’s burning light filled the room. He left the candle on the lectern and crossed to the wall phone, picking up the receiver.

  It was not the young child’s voice on the phone. The voice belonged to a melodious middle-aged woman. “We thank you, Nathaniel J. Cauliflower, for your contribution. We have not had customers in many years and we are delighted to share with you what we can about the days, years and lifetimes to come. We are not genies who grant wishes. Instead, we simply stir the dormant sediment within. You wish to have the talent of your painter do you not?”

  “Yes,” Nathaniel said.

  “Whether you are aware or not, you already have the talent of your painter. You just don’t have the confidence within yourself to produce what he can. What we can offer is to speed the process along. When you leave this tent, you will feel a prickling in your fingertips. And when that prickling occurs, you will find that, instead of bending to the brush’s will, the brush will bend to yours. You will paint the most remarkable portraits, far exceeding the talents of your master. In three days, you will have the confidence to paint the portrait of a young woman of a wealthy Parisian family. And her name . . .”

  The voice grew older, filled with moldering age. “Her name will be Evangeline.”

  “Evangeline?”

  “Once you paint her, Nathaniel J. Cauliflower, you will find that there will be no turning back. The love story will erupt like a rampant wildfire in a dry wheat field.” The voice had become raspier as if a strong wind wound itself through a decaying, hollow tree. “With this prickling of your fingers comes a dire price. You must keep these paintings of yours a secret or your master will find them. And if he finds them, you will find that your love story with Evangeline will become not a . . . saccharine tale . . . but a dreadful mania lasting seven lifetimes. You will find yourself chasing her, obsessively clutching to her memory, only to have it slip through your fingers. It will ultimately lead to your murder! And not one murder, oh no! It will be seven! Seven murders keep the continuum circling for decades and decades to come!”

  “I will not listen to you anymore!” Nathaniel shouted.

  “You will listen! We have been waiting for you! You paid your three dandelions. You signed our ledger! It shall be that you will have your talents immediately expedited!”

  Nathaniel, with trembling fingers, slammed the receiver back on the cradle and the voices were silenced. He ran the short distance from the phone to the lectern and tripped. The lectern, and the items it held, collided with the floor. The candle’s flame was snuffed out. He picked himself from the floor and ran to the circus tent’s entrance, reentering the safety of his attic loft. He heard the rolling of his candle as it travelled out through the tent toward his feet. He bent down and picked up his candle, turning back to where he exited.

  The tent was no longer there, nor was the field of dandelions. All that remained was the attic loft that he had lived in since 1784.

  He walked along the creaking floorboards and found the painting that he had chucked to the shadows. He held the painting up with his left hand while clutching the candle in his right. He brought the painting to the starlight and studied it. Three illustrated female children stared knowingly back at him from the wide blackness of the painted tent. Nathaniel was certain he had not painted them.

  He then felt a prickling in his fingers of his right hand. He looked down at the candle, dropping it. With each passing second, the prickling became almost painful! Nathaniel soon discovered that the prickling would only subside if he painted the portraits that the Dandelion Sisters had spoken. It was his secret, his curse, his duality. Nathaniel painted faces of strangers he had never before met all through the night. By the time the painter and Nathaniel sat down for breakfast, Nathaniel was back to his usual unsure self. At the end of the day, as the stars once again appeared in the sky, Nathaniel’s gift returned. As he painted, Nathaniel knew that it had been foolish of him to enter the tent. On the evening of the second day, as Nathaniel finished Fiona’s portrait, and after he hid it away in his rafters, he sat at his window looking out onto the city of Paris. How he dreaded what the third day would bring: when he would finally meet the young woman named Evangeline.

  It was on that night that he spotted a beautiful young woman, who he would later recognize to be the subject whom he was assigned. She wore a billowing petticoat and opera gloves while being escorted by her elderly chaperone, passing by Nathaniel’s open loft window. It was on the night, before he set out to paint her, when Evangeline looked up at Nathaniel and smiled.

  *

  Nathaniel finished his story.

  Annette, who had listened to the tale, was silent for a few moments. She had then said: “It must have been terrifying inside that tent, Mr. Cauliflower.”

  Nathaniel sighed and explained evenly: “The seven past occurrences that I’ve shared with the Dandelion Sisters were nothing in comparison to the tragedies that quickly befell.” He exhaled and stood from the swivel chair. “But, that’s a different story for another time.”

  There came a knock on Annette’s office door. Fiona stood in the frame with her hands casually resting at her sides. “Mr. Cauliflower, Miss Redmond, the others are wondering if you’ll be joining us for the meal in the conference room?”

  Nathaniel and Annette looked at one another. Annette took the single ledger artifact from Nathaniel, placing it in her desk drawer for safe-keeping. Nathaniel didn’t object of her touching the paper. They then walked out of Annette’s office, joining Fiona, leaving behind the memories that had recently been shared.

  After the meal ended and the muses visited their offices for a long rest, Nathan
iel cleared the plate settings. As the brass cart was piled high, he exited the conference room and disappeared into his private office. He found himself in his kitchen emptying the dishes into a sink bubbling with soap and water. There was enough food for a single setting. He considered the remaining portion.

  In a short time afterward, Nathaniel emptied his office desk of the three Lite-Brite boards. He situated a table cloth on the surface, setting out his own last helping of hors d’oeuvres and main dishes. He poured himself some wine. He then opened his desk drawer, taking out a single candle; the very candle he had held in his hands back in 1807. It had been decades since he lit the wick. Considering that he had revealed the secret events leading to him meeting Evangeline, he thought it appropriate.

  He sat in his swivel chair and consulted the food. With the fork, he procured a piece of the lobster. He held the lobster to his lips. After a quiet prayer to Management, Nathaniel took his meal. For the first time since he had been murdered in his seventh life, Nathaniel was able and allowed himself to taste it.

  CHAPTER 7: SCREAMS IN THE SNOW

  The sun had already taken its rightful noon-time stance as the horse-drawn carriage pulled up to the impressive French chateau. The horse hooves, that had once been filled with pride as they traipsed the Parisian countryside, were quieted. The carriage driver descended from his seat and footboard, promptly opening the door. It was then that the carriage’s occupant, twenty-three-year-old Nathaniel, stepped from the transport, setting foot on the folding step, then to the washed stones of the front walk.

  He wore polished shoes a size too big for him, well-fitting, perfectly tailored trousers, a waist length single-breasted coat with long tails, and a high-collared white lace shirt. He carried a strapped leather satchel that held his brushes and paints. The house attendants transported the easel and canvas he had brought with him. Though he appeared professional and collected, Nathaniel shuddered on the inside. The Dandelion Sisters had given him all of the tools that he needed to successfully complete this painting, but he still heeded their warnings while crossing the manor’s threshold.

  The chateau itself had been constructed in the Baroque period. Colonnades lined the exterior of the bold white massing of the façade. The gray roof was capped with constructed domes and dramatically slanted rooftops spotted with chimneys. If it were not for the glass in the numerous windows, which reflected the skies, the manor would have been comparable to a gray monochromatic canvas.

  From the front door through the atrium, venturing through great sitting rooms, Nathaniel noticed rich tapestries, lavishly imagined staircases and paneled rooms with hand-painted murals of faces from Evangeline’s family history. The entire house seemed to sparkle with as much vivacity as a giant’s hoard of multi-colored jewels.

  Nathaniel was led to the solarium: a room with black porcelain floor tiles, a flowing three-tiered stone fountain and a garden of mismatched foliage. The beveled Baroque windows of the conservatory stretched to the soaring glass-domed ceiling.

  The easel and canvas were faced toward the fountain. A sitting chair was positioned by his media. He was left to his own devices and, with trembling fingers, unfastened his satchel, removing his paints. He removed a glass from his master’s studio, dipping it under the fountain’s trickling waters until it three-quarters filled.

  The door to the conservatory opened to reveal his subject and her chaperone.

  He recognized Evangeline immediately as the young woman who had smiled at him from the street. The fabric of her dress was a pale cream. Layers of petticoats flowed eloquently to the ground. Nathaniel stood motionless, staring at the locks of her hair that had been positioned around her fabric-covered neck. Her face appeared soft and innocent with white powder. Constricted by a corset, Evangeline barely took a breath. It was apparent that Nathaniel and Evangeline were unbearably uncomfortable in their clothing. Nathaniel understood the unease of wearing a compressing costume. He felt perspiration under his coated arms, and could no doubt imagine that Evangeline felt similar sufferings.

  “I’ll be quick about this, Mademoiselle.” Nathaniel’s voice was beleaguered by nerves.

  Evangeline said nothing. She raised her chin a centimeter in recognition of his words.

  He instructed Evangeline into the pose that he wished to paint her in and frowned, shifting his eyes from the subject to the canvas. Nathaniel sat in his chair and started to paint. At first, Nathaniel felt as he always had, succumbing to the routine of emulating the painter’s technique. But the more that he concentrated on Evangeline and the way that the sun struck the fabric of her petticoat, or the way that her nostrils carefully flexed as she breathed, the more Nathaniel’s work improved.

  He imagined himself standing from his chair abandoning his paints. In his mind, his young fingers untied the strings of her corset, granting his subject the ability to breathe. In his mind he stood behind her, listening to her intake of breath, his eyes catching a single drop of sweat tracing her earlobe. Nathaniel imagined walking his fingers around her waist, where he would place his hand on her stomach. In mentally feeling her body expand and contract, Nathaniel imagined the sensation of her freedom from constriction.

  His portrait was finished as the mid-morning sun dipped below the evening’s horizon. When he packed up his paints, Evangeline relaxed as best she could in her corset.

  “May I see it, Monsieur?” she asked him. Her voice was like the euphonious chirping of an elated nightingale.

  Nathaniel was suddenly protective of his work. He fretted that, if Evangeline saw his painting, it may trigger the Sisters’ predicted havoc. But the world didn’t crumble around them as Evangeline crossed behind the canvas. Conversely, the world seemed to finally converge for him like a shadow merging into light.

  Evangeline asked “May I visit your studio one afternoon? I would like to see more.”

  “More, Mademoiselle?”

  “Surely you’ve painted others?”

  The stunned look on Nathaniel’s face could not hide the fact that he had, indeed, painted more. Nathaniel closed his satchel. Without suitably answering her request, Nathaniel bid her farewell.

  “Monsieur,” Evangeline called to him as he passed her chaperone. “May I at least have the pleasure of your name?”

  Nathaniel turned and said, after a moment’s hesitation, “Cauliflower.”

  “It was nice spending the day with you, Monsieur Cauliflower. My name is Evangeline.”

  To which Nathaniel bowed his head slightly to her, then to the chaperone, showing himself out. As he climbed into the horse-drawn carriage and as stars sprinkled the horizon, he noticed three random dandelions that had grown beside the stone porch. He wasn’t sure if it was a fluttering of his heart for Evangeline, or if it was a twinge of fear from the significant dandelions but, either way, he hurriedly closed the carriage door. All through the carriage ride home, even into the night hours, his thoughts were consumed of her and of the events of that day.

  *

  Nathaniel startled awake. Somehow, in the short time after he had eaten his meal until now, he had fallen asleep, dreaming of Evangeline. It didn’t surprise him that his dreams had been of his beloved. What surprised him was that he had fallen asleep and dreamed in the first place! Being a respected afterlife representative, Nathaniel slept and dreamed very little. Most of his memories of Evangeline were presented to him in perceptually reconstructed phantasms. When the thought of death approaches, it is often immediately equated with the idea of a final Judgment. In the afterlife, Judgment did not personify itself in the form of a divine being with scales who outweighed transgressions. The real sentencing occurred within the scope of one’s self.

  All muses, in their brief stay in the department, shared the same blank stare as they remembered the details of their lives. They were swept up by memories while in mid-step, or perhaps mid-chew, or perhaps mid-inspiration. At this moment, the department was tranquil as each muse had collapsed on soft couch settees, four poster b
eds with fluffy pillows, cushiony recliners and even tautly fastened windblown hammocks that Management provided. Much work had transpired thus far and the muses deserved their rest.

  As Nathaniel parentally checked on his slumbering muses he wished that their dreams were not filled with the same vivid recollections that his had been.

  He opened the common bathroom door at the end of the hall where a black hoodie hung on the inside hook. He took the hoodie with him as he made his way to Annette’s office doorway. Nathaniel prepared to knock, finding that Annette was fast asleep in her house dress, cradled by a three-cushion leather couch blanketed with a hand-woven quilt. The sunlight from the cathedral windows dimmed slightly by a passing white cloud, which aided in casting the room in a soft, blue light apt for napping. As Nathaniel watched Annette sleep, he deduced that her dreams were pleasant.

  The placid nature of Annette’s face hinted to a memory of which she was fond. Perhaps she was dreaming of her upcoming wedding day. Perhaps she was dreaming of being in a safe place around friends of whom she was particularly enjoyed. Regardless of what she was dreaming, Annette’s face scrunched. Her brow furrowed as she sneered a single word in her sleep: “Cauliflower,” which was followed by her unconsciously adjusting on the couch with her back to him.

  Nathaniel’s liking to her in this state was quickly abated. With the black hoodie in hand, he turned to Annette’s desk. There he found the closed drawer that held the pistol. The dry erase board had been etched with a few more scribbles. He crossed over to the board, inspecting it. The faint stink of recently opened dry-erase markers lingered. Calendar dates of thunderstorms were scattered around the inside perimeter. There was hardly enough space above and below each date to add additional information. The center of the board was kept blank. The algorithm that Annette formed had not yet found its function.

  He looked at her once more, shaking his head. In the short time that he inspected the board, Annette shifted face-forward. Her left arm hung down as her right arm folded beneath her. Nathaniel let out a quick muted sigh, stretching the hoodie around the back of Annette’s swivel chair. He extracted the third violet envelope from his pants pocket, adjusted it vertically just-so against her Lite-Brite and proceeded to leave.