PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

Author: Jo
Rating: For anyone
Distribution: Angel Elders Mansion: The Angel Texts: Blood Roses Forum: Scribes of Angel: Otherwise, just let me know where.

Summary: That would spoil it. Read it and see. I’ll tell you this much. It’s about Angel.


PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

The young man took the measure of the model, using his charcoal stick, but not slowly and carefully. He did it as he did everything else, with a haste that spoke of the brashness and confidence of youth. Then he started to draw.

The charcoal flew over the paper, tinted brownish-white because he could afford no better, but the black marks were placed with a sureness and deftness that his teacher would approve. Not his father, though. Oh, no. Never his father. For him, the young man could do nothing right; was a wastrel who would one day get his due deserts; a layabout who had never raised a hand in honest employment. The man had tried to inculcate upon his son his own work ethic, but that had only driven the wedge between them deeper. Every day, it seemed, his father told him that he would burn in the fires of hell for his heathen, blasphemous ways, but the young man couldn’t imagine a Devil that would be interested in an insignificant ne’er-do-well such as himself. In fact, he wasn’t sure that the fires of hell wouldn’t be an improvement on the dank, loveless chill of his home.

What his father didn’t know was that he did, sometimes, do an honest day’s work, in places where he wasn’t known, away from his home village. He did just enough to buy paper and charcoal, and the other things that he needed to be able to sit here and learn to draw. Enough for the fees for the teacher, in this town on the edge of prosperity, miles away from his village. He was as sure as he could be that his father would be carried off by an apoplexy if he knew what his son was doing on this Sabbath Day; that the man might almost prefer him to be whoring than drawing. Whoring, at least, was something done by *men*.

He wrenched his thoughts away from the dried-up righteousness of his father, and as he did so he felt the charcoal snap. Too much tension; too firm a grip. Too much of his father. He was chagrined to see that the paper had been indented by the last few strokes, but at least it wasn’t torn.

He looked around to find the broken piece – he couldn’t afford to lose it – and saw one of the other students sneering at him. There were only half a dozen, but they were all rich men’s sons, men who were more sympathetic – or perhaps less concerned – about family traditions, family pride. The new nobility, overrunning the land and taking its wealth for themselves, such little as there was. Their sons’ paper was properly bleached white; they were able to afford whatever paints they needed; and none of them had to scramble around on the floor looking for half a stick of broken charcoal. And none of them had his talent. He knew that.

One day, he would show these boys, and their overweening sisters, their disdainful mothers and rapacious, haughty fathers. One day.

Conscious of the scrutiny of their teacher – a new man, not long in the town - he gestured a bow to the others, as if he were pleased to have provided some entertainment for them, then shook back the ruffles from his hands, already grey from brushing against the charcoal, and returned to his drawing.

The model intrigued him. This week, it was an old man. He sat on a high-backed couch, naked except for a piece of cloth that was draped over his right shoulder and across his lap. It was there to teach them how to draw drapery, rather than for the sake of modesty – when the man had padded across the platform, the cloth simply hanging from one shoulder and hiding nothing, he had been supremely unconcerned, entirely at ease with himself. Oblivious, even, to the interest the art students showed in his many scars.

They were pale and faded with age, criss-crossing the whole of his body, testament to some long ago adversity. Unusually, this new teacher had asked the old man to tell them something of himself. To give them a window that would help them depict who he was, as well as what he was. That had clearly been unexpected, and had taken the old man aback. But, after a few moments of thought, he had spoken of a life spent moving from town to town, working at whatever came to hand, a life spent coping with the harshness of existence in these modern times. He’d been very matter of fact about that, with not a word of self-pity or regret. He hadn’t spoken, though, of the scars, and none of the students seemed to have the boldness to ask.

Skirting around the subject, the young man had asked whether he had known The Troubles. The old man had nodded grimly. Yes, he had lived through those. That put him, by any conservative estimate, at rather more than eighty, although he looked no more than seventy.

He tossed his head back, momentarily irritated by the hair falling over his face. He’d woken late, after a night of pleasurable debauchery, and dressed in haste and mainly by guess. He hadn’t been able to find the leather thong that he used to tie his hair back, and so it now fell long and loose. He took another look at the model, weighing up what he saw, and the charcoal flew over the paper again, limning out the portrait, catching the deepest of the few wrinkles that seamed the man’s pale face, and suggesting the shadows that lay between the silver curls of hair. The man had one arm resting comfortably along the back of the couch as he sat in an attitude of repose, of studied contemplation. He looked like an old lion, grizzled but still strong. He had smiled a lot as he had spoken, though, and that smile had lit up his face.

Muscle still curved around the old man’s limbs, and across his shoulders, showing none of the stringiness that age brings. Despite those scars, the skin was still firm and elastic, only the long-fingered hands showing the first signs of paperiness.

The young man rubbed his temple, inadvertently leaving a smudge of charcoal there, as he worried at the problem of how to depict those scars, with the tools that he had. Perhaps he should ask the teacher’s help with that. After all, that was why he paid the fees…

He wondered again just what the old man had seen and done. He’d never been anywhere, himself, his life so far spent between his village and this town, and the local alehouse. And the whores. He wondered whether he would live as long as the man he was drawing, and doubted it very much.

The scars on the man’s skin felt like the scars on his own soul. The old man may not have made much of an impact on the world around him, but he seemed to have lived with pride, and probably with honour. As the young man’s fingers worked over the charcoal lines, smudging and blurring, he wondered if he’d ever be able to say as much, and he doubted that, too.

*

The teacher walked around the studio, carefully assessing the work of each of his students, offering a word of advice here, a little praise there. They were all from the nouveau riche families, with a very different attitude to life than the old, impoverished nobility. Their sons would make the Grand Tour to marvel at the wonders of the ancients, those that the passage of time and wars had left to the modern world. Until they were old enough to do that, they were encouraged to come to classes such as his, to improve the foundations of their social graces, as well as to show that they had no need to earn a living, that they could dally their time away in acceptable pleasures.

Except one. That one sat a little apart from the others, separated by a few feet of floor space, and a whole world of social expectations. He was from one of the old, displaced families. His kin were merchants now, and because of it, he was as beneath the notice of the others here as he was above them in talent. The boy could only afford one lesson each week, but the teacher wished he would swallow his pride and ask for help in finding an apprenticeship. One of those could be his for the taking.

The teacher returned to his desk behind the students, from where he could watch their progress without breathing over their shoulders. He, too, began to draw. His first sketch was of the small class, as he watched the boys struggle to capture on paper the soul of their subject, wrestling with the lacy frills on their cuffs as they did so. The fashion now was for more flamboyance in men’s dress, brought about by increasing affluence and by weariness of the decades of plain monochrome, undecorated, puritanical dress that the teacher still affected.

Only one was entirely oblivious to the charcoal dust on his ruffles, and the teacher’s attention was once more drawn to that young man. His face was shadowed by his hair, long and dark and left hanging loose instead of tucked into a tidy queue like all the others. When he looked up towards the model, his forehead was furrowed in thought, and his already dark eyes darkened further in anxious concentration. His body was taut with restless energy, his left fist clenched with the need to be still, but his right hand brought the old man to life on his rough, cheap paper.

The teacher held in a sigh. He must find a way to help this boy come to terms with himself, to find his way in life. He knew about the gambling, the drinking and the whoring, knew it because he recognised it, from personal and bitter experience. Years ago, he had been that boy. It had led him to a life of dissipation and destruction, and to profound sorrow. He’d tried many ways of atoning for those years, and this was how he felt comfortable now. He helped bring some beauty to an ugly world, helped people to see that life could hold more than the squalor around them suggested. He showed the world what it could be.

He shifted position on the hard wooden stool, trying to relax his cramped muscles. He’d been out the night before trying to save souls in a more tangible way than a mere artist could, and there was a lot of saving to do in the harsh, cruel and dangerous world endured by the poor and needy. It was never enough, could never be enough, but he did the best that he could.

He watched the boy, and thought that, like himself, he was older than he looked. Not too old to still burn with the fire of youth, and he prayed that fire would never consume the lad, that he could be salvaged before it was too late. Not like himself. In all likelihood, the fires of hell were all that he could look forward to. He turned the page, to start a new drawing, one of the boy, so much like he had been at that age.

By the time he’d finished that, catching the beauty of the young man in every line, the class were almost at the end of this first task. He went to each of them, giving guidance and encouragement, leaving the boy until last. The others had each drawn a stilted but workmanlike representation. In this last drawing, though, the old man looked ready to step off the paper. It was beautiful. He couldn’t resist clasping the lad’s shoulder, then he moved away, with a simple ‘Well done’ as his only praise.

He turned to the model, to find another pose for him. Released from his static position, the old man rolled his shoulders and stretched, easing the discomfort. The teacher was surprised once more at the strength in the man’s limbs. He recalled how he had found him, the night before, gazing wistfully into the window of a pastry cook’s shop, his skin cold and his clothes far too thin for the gathering winter, as if he had come from warmer lands. The teacher had offered to buy him a hot pie, but the old man had declined, politely but firmly. He had not, though, declined the offer of work.

He was a much better subject than the still life that the teacher had planned for today, and so there was one landlady who had benefited by three nearly fresh herring wrapped in newspaper and two interestingly shaped loaves of bread.

A slim pillar ran from floor to ceiling behind the couch, and the teacher dragged the piece of furniture aside to make use of it. He positioned the old man with his right shoulder leaning against the pillar, the length of cloth draped loosely over that shoulder, but otherwise he was still naked. The teacher had been surprised that the man had been so casual about nudity, given the puritanism that he must have known for most of his life. Still, it was good for the students to learn to draw the human form, and he intended to make the most of this model in the months to come. Before it was time for him to end the classes and move on. Perhaps next week, he would start the boys on oil paints. This old man was a perfect subject for a real painting. Perfect.

He fussed around, pushing the right knee a little forward to give a sense of balance. This had the effect of exposing the old man more fully to the gaze of the class, but he made no effort to cover himself with the drapery, and so the teacher left it as pure ornamentation.

Another surprise had been how smooth and firm the man’s flesh had been, despite the spider’s web of scars that covered him. The teacher had had no idea about that – there were none at all on his face and neck – until the man had disrobed for the sitting today. The scars did not change the texture of the skin at all; it was as if they were simply drawn onto it with a silver ink, a portrait of pain long past. He’d followed an uncharacteristic urge to ask the man to talk about himself, hoping that would add depth to the students’ studies of him, but in doing so the man had not mentioned whatever accident had resulted in those fascinating scars.

He stepped back, satisfied. The old man stood as if looking out of a window, wistful, remembering something long past. Or perhaps taking a last look at what the window showed him. The teacher thought he looked like a long-ago Olympian gazing down at the wreckage that mankind had made of Eden.

The students started to draw.

He wandered around the group, helping them with the perspectives and composition, and then sat at his desk for a little while. He, too, drew the old man. He had no difficulty capturing the regretful contemplation that was shown in every line of the old man’s stance, in every nuance of his expression. Either the old man was a gifted actor, or he had undoubtedly known moments like this, just as the teacher had. Those moments were seared into his memory.

He glanced at the young man, shielded from the others by pride and distance, and saw that he, too, had had such moments, despite his youth. The young man, seemingly conscious of the scrutiny, turned his way, and a wry smile appeared on his face. It took one to know one.

The teacher looked back at the old man, at the features that retained their strength and beauty despite his advanced years and apparent poverty, and wondered whether he would ever be granted the grace to age with such dignity; whether he would ever come to the peace that almost tangibly surrounded this man; whether he could ever feel as assured of his place in the afterlife as this man seemed to. Whether he would have enough time to earn redemption. He doubted it, very much. Very much indeed.

*

The old man stood as if gazing into the middle distance, but that was a lie. The truth was, he was gazing into inner space, examining all his many sins. He had recognised in the young man off to the left, slightly apart from the others, an unruly spirit such as his own had been, and wished it were possible for the boy to learn from his example, before it was too late. That was unthinkable, though. The young never learned from the old. The teacher was another. He carried his own albatross of guilt, and the old man had known it from the moment of their first meeting. It had been as if he could smell the blood on the younger man’s hands.

He hadn’t been long in town, but then he never stayed anywhere very long. In this brave new world, with each man looking out for his own survival, keeping a wary eye on everyone else to see what advantage could be gained, there was nowhere for someone like himself to grow old and die. Not that he’d ever expected to. Grow old, that is. It seemed that he’d walked hand-in-hand with death through almost every step of his life, and he’d never expected to grow old. He’d thought that he would be dead and gone to dust, long before this. Still, here he was.

From his position, he could see the boys busy over their task. There were seven of them in total. No girls, of course. Girls were educated at home, but only if their parents were liberal in their thinking. Not many were. It hadn’t always been so. The six boys who formed a coherent group each sat at an easel that had been laboriously carried up to the studio by their menservants as they arrived for the class. They drew with care and, he could see, with a stiffness that spoke of small talent.

Not the seventh. He had no easel, no manservant either. His paper was clipped to a board, which he held on his knee, but he drew with a fluidity that must produce striking results. So did the teacher.

The old man watched those two with interest, the others consigned to the edge of his attention, unimportant players.

The young man was so like himself at that age. There was an intensity to him, a disdain for everything except what interested him, that was painfully familiar. Even the dark hair and dark eyes showed him the mirror of his squandered youth.

The teacher was older, older than he looked, another dark haired, dark-eyed man with a world of regret in those eyes. He, too, was a sinner. After that meeting at the pastry cook’s, the old man had followed him, seen him amongst the poor and known him for someone who has much that he must atone for. He was another one like himself, and he hoped that the teacher would not have as much to repent, or as much time to repent it, as he had had. He wished again that there were something he could do for each of them, but he knew there was not. He hadn’t got enough time for that.

A cold draught drew him from his reverie. The day was warm, by the standards of early winter, but in the shadows the air was cold. A small shiver ran over his skin, and he felt the gooseflesh ripple across him, but then his body adjusted, and he paid it no heed. He’d been colder.

He glanced down at his body, careful not to move his head in so doing. The teacher had shown surprise that he had been willing to pose nude, but he’d always been comfortable with his body. He knew that it might not be possible to find another willing man in this town that had not yet left behind its puritanical leanings. Besides, he’d needed money to pay the rent for the draughty, windowless room under the eaves that was all he could afford.

The draught returned, playing around his ankles and then rising up to places that had no business with draughts. At least the chill should make sure that there was no unseemliness. Like Moses, his moisture had not yet gone from him. The six boys had all tittered a little when they realised that they would see him naked, reddening with embarrassment, and he had no doubt that there would be some ribald jokes among them later. Not the other one, though. He, too, was clearly comfortable with naked flesh, and intent on using the opportunity to draw it.

The scars shone silvery against his paler skin. He wondered what the boys’ drawings would make of those. When he glanced up, the young man had summoned the teacher for guidance. The old man’s ears had not lost their sharpness. Yes, the boy was asking for guidance on how to represent the scars with the tools that he had at his disposal, and he watched with interest as several techniques were discussed. The other boys paused in their work, listening, but shook their heads with the fearsome difficulty. They wouldn’t be trying anything so hard.

At the end of the session, the teacher thanked him gravely, and on behalf of the students, for his patience and good humour, and the old man asked for the favour of seeing the work. With the assent given, he wrapped the drapery toga-style around himself, for their comfort rather than his, and stepped off the platform.

As he’d thought, the six boys had produced work that was of very limited quality. The young man who was his earlier avatar was different, though. The portraits simply lived. The old man smiled to see that he’d found time to draw his companions and the teacher, all of them at work. The pictures were surrounded in the margins by partial studies, where the lad had drawn tiny sketches of a foot, an arm, a turn of the shoulder, where he wanted to be sure that he got it right. The full-length study was a masterpiece. He had used broken pieces of his precious charcoal to give the lightest of shadings, barely discernable on the page, but enough to show the rise and fall of muscle and the criss-crossing network of unshaded lines that represented his web of scars. In form and mood, it was beautiful.

The old man thanked him quietly, and then looked a question at the teacher. It was a few moments before the man realised that his work was next. It was the work of a master at the height of his powers, with few lines on the paper, but each one carrying a weight of expression. The old man smiled. It was much like his own work had been, once upon a time, just as the teacher was much as he had been, all that time ago. He nodded his thanks and then went into the other room to change. The teacher called through to him, asking if he would be free the following week. He made an affirmative reply, but he couldn’t help doubting whether he would be there. He couldn’t help doubting that he would be anywhere at all.

*

Angel stretched the kinks from his muscles. The day had been a long one, but there were things to do before he rested. He reached for his small sketchpad and did some quick, deft sketches of the things that had interested him today, at the studio. His memory was photographic, and he had no difficulty in reproducing the exact details. He studied them closely as he drank the small cup of blood that was all he’d been able to buy. Mostly, he looked at the picture he’d drawn of himself. It was a long time since he’d seen one of those.

He wondered what the next day would bring, or even if it would bring anything at all. He’d been here for two weeks, and he’d fully intended to move on in another two weeks. He knew he couldn’t risk staying longer. But, there was a whisper in his soul that said today had been important for some as yet unfathomed reason.

It had started almost a year ago, a fraction of a percentage of the time he’d already lived. Or lived after his own fashion, he amended silently. He’d survived long past Buffy’s death, and that had grieved him beyond measure, but she’d lived to be an old woman, just as he’d wished. It hadn’t been with him, though. Things had never changed for him, there’d never been a cure for the happiness clause, and the shanshu had been well and truly signed away. She’d never been safe for him, and he had never been safe for her.

She’d never married though, and he had seen her occasionally. It had never been often, but it had been often enough to remind him just why they had to stay apart. Still, he’d known when her time had come, and he’d stayed with her until she was gone.

He’d lived a long time after that. Centuries. He’d seen nations rise and fall. He’d seen the fall of civilisation in general, with men reduced to ragged bands of scavenging thieves. And he’d seen humanity crawl slowly and painfully back to something that resembled the place from which they’d fallen. It was never the same twice, though. All that time, he’d moved around, saving whoever he could.

Then, almost a year ago, he’d felt a slight burn and a silvery scar had appeared on his thigh. He remembered as though it had been yesterday the crossbow bolt that had been the cause of it, just after he’d been turned. Day by day, more scars had appeared, burning their way onto his skin, and tracing the history of his misadventures, until now they formed a web across his entire body, all but his face and neck and hands, each scar in its remembered place. And each day, he got older. He reckoned that he’d been aging by about a year a week, judging by what he could see of himself. That was why he kept moving so frequently – it wouldn’t do for people to see the visible change in him. The years were catching up with him more swiftly now, and he didn’t understand what it all meant. He’d been frightened for a year, and there had been no one to ask in this strait-laced world.

Since he’d come here, though, he’d been dreaming of Buffy. He’d dreamt of her before, of course, but never quite like this. Never so real. In these dreams, she was a mature woman who had somehow kept her youth and innocence, unscarred by all the pain of her life as the Slayer, but she’d never yet spoken to him. She’d simply smiled her greeting as she took him into her arms, leaving him in no doubt at all that he was welcome. That she was waiting for him. He believed it, because he wanted to.

And there was the conundrum. He was still a vampire, with all his vampire’s strength and speed. He still needed blood. He had no reflection. His heart didn’t beat. He was a demon, bound for hell, so how could Buffy be waiting for him? Then, a week ago, in this garret room, he’d been caught by a stray shaft of sunlight from where a slate had slipped on the roof, and it hadn’t hurt. He’d hardly slept since then, quietly revelling in something that had been denied to him for so many centuries, trying not to allow hope of something more to unfurl within him. Yesterday had found him savouring the aromas of pastry and meat and rich brown gravy, and so the teacher had found him.

This morning, he’d found the last of the scars, the ones that he’d only lately taken in his defence of others. He had no idea what might happen now. Shrugging away the worry, he tidied up his few possessions – he owned nothing that couldn’t be carried in a rucksack on his back – and lay on the narrow cot, waiting for sleep. It wasn’t long coming. Neither was she, and this time, she spoke to him.

“Hello, lover.”

He was the one who was now denied the power of speech, until she kissed him. In good fairytale fashion, she freed him from the spell of silence.

“Buffy. Are you really here?”

“As real as anything in your life.”

“Why? I’m not complaining, but why now?”

“It’s time.”

“Time for what? I don’t understand what’s been happening to me.”

She smiled up at him, and ran a finger lovingly over his arm, tracing the scars there.

“You’re working your way back to life.”

He watched the path of her finger, fascinated.

“By the scars?”

“Yes. They’re a reminder to you of everything you’ve done for others, a way of letting you keep count, if you like.”

“Some of them aren’t there…the ones where they can be seen.”

She ran her fingers over his cheek, and he groaned with need. That made her giggle.

“You’re far too pretty to spoil with scars on your face. They’ll be the last ones, when it won’t matter any more.”

“But…” This time, she shushed him with a kiss.

“Would you like to come with me?”

“Anywhere. But…”

He wanted to ask her how she knew all this, to tell her that there was no hope, that the shanshu prophecy was gone and only hell awaited him, but instead, he got dressed and slipped quietly out of the boarding house. Invisible to everyone but him, she nevertheless held his hand, leading him to a small park nearby.

He sat on one of the wooden benches, and she urged him to lie down. When he had, she knelt by his side, running her fingers through his hair. He was determined this time to get the words out.

“Buffy, do you know why this is happening? Why I’m aging? I signed away the shanshu prophecy, you know.”

It didn’t seem necessary to explain the shanshu to her, even though he’d never told her about it in life. This was a dream, after all. Her reply came between kisses.

“A prophecy is a prophecy, not the thing itself. And even if it is the thing itself, there are ways and ways. Do you trust me?”

“Always.”

“Then trust me now.”

She held him close as a series of small, stinging burns announced the arrival of the final scars of remembrance on his face and neck and hands. As she whispered words of love to him, his heart lurched, a single mighty beat that sent blood coursing around his body, as his lungs gasped for air. She held him closer.

“Life and death, love; for you, they’re the same thing now.”

Those were the last words he heard. Anyone walking through the park that night would have seen the body of an old man on a park bench. By morning, not even that much remained. When the nursemaids and governesses brought their charges out into the crisp morning air, all that was left was the bright, silvery silence that follows joyous laughter; silence that invites only love and more laughter, and which seemed to infect the children all that day.

There was nothing else at all except, in one or two portfolios, a portrait of the artist, of the vampire, as an old man.


THE END
December 2005


Author’s Notes

The title of this story was inspired by a James Joyce novel, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. This is a largely autobiographical novel tracing the author’s youth from his birth to his departure from Ireland.

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