Black Evening

  So much suffering, I thought. So much waste.

  Once more I leafed through a notebook. Various passages caught my eye. Van Dorn's discouragement about his failed career. His reasons for leaving Paris to come to La Verge — the stifling, backbiting artists' community, the snobbish critics and their sneering responses to his early efforts. Need to free myself of convention. Need to void myself of aesthete politics, to shit it out of me. To find what's never been painted. To feel instead of being told what to feel. To see instead of imitating what others have seen.

  I knew from the biographies how impoverished Van Dorn's ambition had made him. In Paris, he'd literally eaten slops thrown into alleys behind restaurants. He'd been able to afford his quest to La Verge only because a successful but very conventional (and now ridiculed) painter friend had loaned him a small sum of money. Eager to conserve his endowment, Van Dorn had walked all the way from Paris to the south of France.

  In those days, you have to remember, this valley was an unfashionable area of hills, rocks, farms, and villages. Limping into La Verge, Van Dorn must have been a pathetic sight. He'd chosen this provincial town precisely because it was unconventional, because it offered mundane scenes so in contrast with the salons of Paris that no other artist would dare to paint them.

  Need to create what's never been imagined, he'd written. For six despairing months, he tried and failed. He finally quit in self-doubt, then suddenly reversed himself and, in a year of unbelievably brilliant productivity, gave the world thirty-eight masterpieces. At the time, of course, he couldn't trade any canvas for a meal. But the world knows better now.

  He must have painted in a frenzy. His suddenly found energy must have been enormous. To me, a would-be artist with technical facility but only conventional eyes, he achieved the ultimate. Despite his suffering, I envied him. When I compared my maudlin, Wyeth-like depictions of Iowa landscapes to Van Dorn's trendsetting genius, I despaired. The task awaiting me back in the States was to imitate beer cans and deodorant packages for magazine ads.

  I continued flipping through the notebook, tracing the course of Van Dorn's despair and epiphany. His victory had a price, to be sure. Insanity. Self-blinding. Suicide. But I had to wonder if perhaps, as he died, he'd have chosen to reverse his life if he'd been able. He must have known how remarkable, how truly astonishing, his work had become.

  Or perhaps he didn't. The last canvas he'd painted before stabbing his eyes had been of himself. A lean-faced, brooding man with short, thinning hair, sunken features, pallid skin, and a scraggly beard. The famous portrait reminded me of how I always thought Christ would have looked just before he was crucified. All that was missing was the crown of thorns. But Van Dorn had a different crown of thorns. Not around but within him. Disguised among his scraggly beard and sunken features, the tiny, gaping mouths and writhing bodies told it all. His suddenly acquired vision had stung him too much.

  As I read the notebook, again distressed by Myers's effort to reproduce Van Dorn's agonized words and handwriting exactly, I reached the section where Van Dorn described his epiphany: La Verge! I walked! I saw! I feel! Canvas! Paint! Creation and damnation!

  After that cryptic passage, the notebook — and Van Dorn's diary — became totally incoherent. Except for the persistent refrain of severe and increasing headaches.

  ***

  I was waiting outside the clinic when Clarisse arrived to start her shift at three o'clock. The sun was brilliant, glinting off her eyes. She wore a burgundy skirt and a turquoise blouse. Mentally I stroked their cottony texture.

  When she saw me, her footsteps faltered. Forcing a smile, she approached.

  "You came to say goodbye?" She sounded hopeful.

  "No. To ask you some questions."

  Her smile disintegrated. "I mustn't be late for work."

  "This'll take just a minute. My French vocabulary needs improvement. I didn't bring a dictionary. The name of this village. La Verge. What does it mean?"

  She hunched her shoulders as if to say the question was unimportant. "It's not very colorful. The literal translation is 'the stick.'"

  "That's all?"

  She reacted to my frown. "There are rough equivalents. 'The branch.' 'The switch.' A willow, for example that a father might use to discipline a child." She looked uncomfortable. "It can also be a slang term for penis."

  "And it doesn't mean anything else?"

  "Indirectly. The synonyms keep getting farther from the literal sense. A wand, perhaps. Or a rod. The kind of forked stick that people who claim they can find water hold ahead of them when they walk across a field. The stick is supposed to bend down if there's water."

  "We call it a divining rod. My father once told me he'd seen a man who could actually make one work. I always suspected the man just tilted the stick with his hands. Do you suppose this village got its name because long ago someone found water here with a divining rod?"

  "Why would anyone have bothered when these hills have so many streams and springs? What makes you interested in the name?"

  "Something I read in Van Dorn's diary. The village's name excited him for some reason."

  "But anything could have excited him. He was insane."

  "Eccentric. But he didn't become insane until after that passage in his diary."

  "You mean, his symptoms didn't show themselves until after that. You're not a psychiatrist."

  I had to agree.

  "Again, I'm afraid I'll seem rude. I really must go to work." Clarisse hesitated. "Last night…"

  "Was exactly what you described in the note. A gesture of sympathy. An attempt to ease my grief. You didn't mean it to be the start of anything."

  "Please do what I asked. Please leave. Don't destroy yourself like the others."

  "Others?"

  "Like your friend."

  "No, you said, 'others.'" My words were rushed. "Clarisse, tell me."

  She glanced up, squinting as if she'd been cornered. "After your friend stabbed out his eyes, I heard talk around the village. Older people. It could be merely gossip that became exaggerated with the passage of time."

  "What did they say?"

  She squinted harder. "Twenty years ago, a man came here to do research on Van Dorn. He stayed three months and had a breakdown."

  "He stabbed out his eyes?"

  "Rumors drifted back that he blinded himself in a mental hospital in England. Ten years before, another man came. He jabbed scissors through an eye, all the way into his brain."

  I stared, unable to control the spasms that racked my shoulder blades. "What the hell is going on?"

  ***

  I asked around the village. No one would talk to me. At the hotel, the manager told me he'd decided to stop renting Van Dorn's room. I had to remove Myers's belongings at once.

  "But I can still stay in my room?"

  "If that's what you wish. I don't recommend it, but even France is still a free country."

  I paid the bill, went upstairs, moved the packed boxes from Van Dorn's room to mine, and turned in surprise as the phone rang.

  The call was from my fiancée.

  When was I coming home?

  I didn't know.

  What about the wedding this weekend?

  The wedding would have to be postponed.

  I winced as she slammed down the phone.

  I sat on the bed and couldn't help recalling the last time I'd sat there, with Clarisse standing over me, just before we'd made love. I was throwing away the life I'd tried to build.

  For a moment I came close to calling my fiancée back, but a different sort of compulsion made me scowl toward the boxes, toward Van Dorn's diary. In the note Clarisse had added to Myers's letter, she'd said that his research had become so obsessive that he'd tried to recreate Van Dorn's daily habits. Again it occurred to me — at the end, had Myers and Van Dorn become indistinguishable? Was the secret to what had happened to Myers hidden in the diary, just as the suffering faces were hidden in Van Dorn's paintings? I grabbed
one of the ledgers. Scanning the pages, I looked for references to Van Dorn's daily routine. And so it began.

  ***

  I've said that except for telephone poles and electrical lines, La Verge seemed caught in the previous century. Not only was the hotel still in existence, but so were Van Dorn's favorite tavern, and the bakery where he had bought his morning croissant. A small restaurant he favored remained in business. On the edge of the village, a trout stream where he sometimes sat with a mid-afternoon glass of wine still bubbled along, although pollution had long since killed the trout. I went to all of them, in the order and at the time Van Dorn recorded in his diary.

  Breakfast at eight, lunch at two, a glass of wine at the trout stream, a stroll to the countryside, then back to the room. After a week, I knew the diary so well, I didn't need to refer to it. Mornings had been Van Dorn's time to paint. The light was best then, he'd written. And evenings were a time for remembering and sketching.

  It finally came to me that I wouldn't be following the schedule exactly if I didn't paint and sketch when Van Dorn had done so. I bought a notepad, canvas, pigments, a palette, whatever I needed, and for the first time since leaving graduate school, I tried to create. I used local scenes that Van Dorn had favored and produced what you'd expect: uninspired versions of Van Dorn's paintings. With no discoveries, no understanding of what had ultimately undermined Myers's sanity, tedium set in. My finances were almost gone. I prepared to give up.

  Except…

  I had the disturbing sense that I'd missed something. A part of Van Dorn's routine that wasn't explicit in the diary. Or something about the locales themselves that I hadn't noticed, although I'd been painting them in Van Dorn's spirit, if not with his talent.

  ***

  Clarisse found me sipping wine on the sunlit bank of the now-troutless stream. I felt her shadow and turned toward her silhouette against the sun.

  I hadn't seen her for two weeks, since our uneasy conversation outside the clinic. Even with the sun in my eyes, she looked more beautiful than I remembered.

  "When was the last time you changed your clothes?" she asked.

  A year ago, I had said the same to Myers.

  "You need a shave. You've been drinking too much. You look awful."

  I sipped my wine and shrugged. "Well, you know what the drunk said about his bloodshot eyes. You think they look bad to you? You should see them from my side."

  "At least you can joke."

  "I'm beginning to think that I'm the joke."

  "You're definitely not a joke." She sat beside me. "You're becoming your friend. Why don't you leave?"

  "I'm tempted."

  "Good." She touched my hand.

  "Clarisse?"

  "Yes?"

  "Answer some questions one more time?"

  She studied me. "Why?"

  "Because if I get the right answers, I might leave."

  She nodded slowly.

  ***

  Back in town, in my room I showed her the stack of prints. I almost told her about the faces they contained, but her brooding features stopped me. She thought I was disturbed enough as it was.

  "When I walk in the afternoons, I go to the settings Van Dorn chose for his paintings." I sorted through the prints. "This orchard. This farm. This pond. This cliff. And so on."

  "Yes, I recognize these places. I've seen them all."

  "I hoped if I saw them, maybe I'd understand what happened to my friend. You told me he went to them as well. Each of them is within a five-kilometer radius of the village. Many are close together. It wasn't difficult to find each site. Except for one."

  She didn't ask which. Instead, she tensely rubbed her arm.

  When I'd taken the boxes from Van Dorn's room, I'd also removed the two paintings Myers had attempted. Now I pulled them from where I'd tucked them under the bed.

  "My friend did these. It's obvious he wasn't an artist. But as crude as they are, you can see they both depict the same area."

  I slid a Van Dorn print from the bottom of the stack.

  "This area," I said. "A grove of cypresses in a hollow, surrounded by rocks. It's the only site I haven't been able to find. I've asked the villagers. They claim they don't know where it is. Do you know, Clarisse? Can you tell me? It must have some significance if my friend was fixated on it enough to try to paint it twice."

  Clarisse scratched a fingernail across her wrist. "I'm sorry."

  "What?"

  "I can't help you."

  "Can't or won't? Do you mean you don't know where to find it, or you know but you won't tell me?"

  "I said I can't help."

  "What's wrong with this village, Clarisse? What's everybody trying to hide?"

  "I've done my best." She shook her head, stood, and walked to the door. She glanced back sadly. "Sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone. Sometimes there are reasons for secrets."

  I watched her go down the hall. "Clarisse…"

  She turned and spoke a single word: "North." She was crying. "God help you," she added. "I'll pray for your soul." Then she disappeared down the stairs.

  For the first time, I felt afraid.

  ***

  Five minutes later, I left the hotel. In my walks to the sites of Van Dorn's paintings, I had always chosen the easiest routes — east, west, and south. Whenever I'd asked about the distant, tree-lined hills to the north, the villagers had told me there was nothing of interest in that direction, nothing at all to do with Van Dorn. What about cypresses in a hollow? I had asked. There weren't any cypresses in those hills, only olive trees, they'd answered. But now I knew.

  La Verge was in the southern end of an oblong valley, squeezed by cliffs to the east and west. I rented a car. Leaving a dust cloud, I pressed my foot on the accelerator and headed north toward the rapidly enlarging hills. The trees I'd seen from the village were indeed olive trees. But the lead-colored rocks among them were the same as in Van Dorn's painting. I sped along the road, veering up through the hills. At the top, I found a narrow space to park and rushed from the car. But which direction to take? On impulse, I chose left and hurried among the rocks and trees.

  My decision seems less arbitrary now. Something about the slopes to the left was more dramatic, more aesthetically compelling. A greater wildness in the landscape. A sense of depth, of substance. Like Van Dorn's work.

  My instincts urged me forward. I'd reached the hills at quarter after five. Time compressed eerily. At once, my watch showed ten past seven. The sun blazed crimson, descending toward the bluffs. I kept searching, letting the grotesque landscape guide me. The ridges and ravines were like a maze, every turn of which either blocked or gave access, controlling my direction. That's the sense I had — I was being controlled. I rounded a crag, scurried down a slope of thorns, ignored the rips in my shirt and the blood streaming from my hands, and stopped on the precipice of a hollow. Cypresses, not olive trees, filled the basin. Boulders jutted among them and formed a grotto.

  The basin was steep. I skirted its brambles, ignoring their scalding sting. Boulders led me down. I stifled my misgivings, frantic to reach the bottom.

  This hollow, this basin of cypresses and boulders, this thorn-rimmed funnel, was the image not only of Van Dorn's painting but of the canvases Myers had attempted. But why had this place so affected them?

  The answer came as quickly as the question. I heard before I saw, although hearing doesn't accurately describe my sensation. The sound was so faint and high-pitched, it was almost beyond the range of detection. At first, I thought I was near a hornet's nest. I sensed a subtle vibration in the otherwise still air of the hollow. I felt an itch behind my eardrums, a tingle on my skin. The sound was actually many sounds, each identical, merging, like the collective buzz of a swarm of insects. But this was high-pitched. Not a buzz but more like a distant chorus of shrieks and wails.

  Frowning, I took another step toward the cypresses. The tingle on my skin intensified. The itch behind my eardrums became so irritating
that I raised my hands to the sides of my head. I came close enough to see within the trees, and what I noticed with terrible clarity made me panic. Gasping, I stumbled back. But not in time. What shot from the trees was too small and fast for me to identify.

  It struck my right eye. The pain was excruciating, as if the white-hot tip of a needle had pierced my retina and lanced my brain. I clamped my right hand across that eye and screamed.

  I continued stumbling backward, agony spurring my panic. But the sharp, hot pain intensified, surging through my skull. My knees bent. My consciousness dimmed. I fell against the slope.

  ***

  It was after midnight when I managed to drive back to the village. Although my eye no longer burned, my panic was more extreme. Still dizzy from having passed out, I tried to keep control when I entered the clinic and asked where Clarisse lived. She had invited me to visit, I claimed. A sleepy attendant frowned but told me. I drove desperately toward her cottage, five blocks away.

  Lights were on. I knocked. She didn't answer. I pounded harder, faster. At last I saw a shadow. When the door swung open, I lurched into the living room. I barely noticed the negligee Clarisse clutched around her, or the open door to her bedroom, where a startled woman sat up in bed, held a sheet to her breasts, and stood quickly to shut the bedroom door.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Clarisse demanded. "I didn't invite you in! I didn't — !"

  I managed the strength to talk: "I don't have time to explain. I'm terrified. I need your help."

  She clutched her negligee tighter.

  "I've been stung. I think I've caught a disease. Help me stop whatever's inside me. Antibiotics. An antidote. Anything you can think of. Maybe it's a virus, maybe a fungus. Maybe it acts like bacteria."

  "What happened?"

  "I told you, no time. I'd have asked for help at the clinic, but they wouldn't have understood. They'd have thought I'd had a breakdown, the same as Myers. You've got to take me there. You've got to make sure I'm injected with as much of any and every drug that might possibly kill this thing."