it was something in the eyes. police sketches were notoriously soulless and dull, but not this one. it seemed to have halted and hailed hallward off the street, and back off to look at it again. an uneasy breath released, as he tilted his head, looking quizzically into the eyes of what looked, at best like a caricature of a real person. what could one expect of a thing made whole out of unrelated pieces, after all? but wasn't that what he was doing with his art, these days, also? he shifted his shoulders back and willed to turn his head and leave. that was all he thought of it, then and there.
in the upcoming days, however, the portrait would not leave his mind. he could barely recall the text that annotated it β the face stuck, however. as he pondered it in his mind, even if the distance between the eyes was wrong, the nose a tad too long, the jaw a bit too sharp, the hair more unruly than he recalled β there was something about the gaze that remained true to the essence of henry wotton as he used to know him, back in the day. well, the eyes and the mole. it was for the first time in a century that he caught himself wondering whether or not the other was truly dead. it would not have gotten to him so, had he not encountered dorian just a few months prior β in paris, of all places. and now, henry's visage came to haunt him too, in the city that he's made into his new home. maybe it was nothing. maybe some of dorian's own madness and paranoia had seeped into him. but just maybe β anything was possible.
either way, the images, memories of henry that this appearance in particular had caused to resurface were very real β and the artist knew nothing better than to paint himself out of them. it was following the two nights he barely slept β on the third morning he'd found himself preparing a series of large canvases. he almost cut himself a few times, hands shaky and eyesight not nearly as sharp as the blade of his canvas knife. he was relieved to know that dorian had gone off to the states to sort this thing or another β he would have hated for the boy to see him like this. he would have worried. but the truth was, that lately more than ever, basil felt that he'd created his best works on the verge of exhaustion. there was truth to them, truth that thoughts too clear would have obscured. they seemed to arise from the dreams he denied himself the nights he failed to sleep, fragments not embedded in canvas but in the human psychΓ© itself.
he didn't remember finishing the first six of them. it took two or three days. he'd worked on all of them at once, surrounding himself completely, leaning them on whatever proved a sufficient enough weight, letting the haunting feeling overtake him. it felt more like one dissolved memory layering unto itself rather than a series of consecutive images. what could be seen in them of the man they portrayed, for it truly was just the one man appearing throughout, sunk in the sea of yellow that was light and gentle, like early spring sunlight. the man, who was barely not a boy, looked easy in them. one had a hand extended in such jovial gesture β he could still recall what he was talking about that day β the lecture with the dean, and the way he would laugh when he finished speaking. basil had never spoken to him before but he'd sketched the gesture on the edge of his notebook, thinking it was the most elegant thing he'd seen.
then a sharp profile against the sun, lips partially opened, eyes just about fluttering shut but turning to face the viewer. the yellow now appearing almost like a raincoat of sorts, with its collar raised up high, obscuring much more of him than just the face. then a set of legs spread in the grass, a hand barely sketched upon one of the thighs. his own. lacking colour, lacking paint, scribbled in over the finished thing that seemed more of an abstract composition rather than a genuine human body, had it not been for the two somewhat realistically rendered oxford shoes. and so it went. painting by painting, picking a figure apart that wasn't, and was, there. it didn't help his sleeping much. when he closed his eyes, all he could see was henry, now. when he ventured out of his apartment to eat, feeling quite weak as he did, he thought he saw him turning a corner down the street. he knew him by pace alone. β and when he came home, he painted that. he wandered himself how he'd managed to capture the way a man carries himself unto the stilness of canvas, but he did.
as he went on, the number of paintings now reaching fourteen, the yellow began to slip. sometimes it would be a loud all-encompassing vulgar mustard yellow, other times it would steep towards the poisonous shape with a green tint to it. the man in the paintings aged. the features capture became more stiff, more proud, more distant. the clear lines became blurry, as if the other's identity too became unclear. the very last painting of the series being another on the subject of hands, but rather than a palm extended and opened upwards, as if wielding an invisible world, now it was a closed fist with a finger stuck out, supporting a chin, and those dangerous lips that seemed just about to speak, but not yet.
for a week he has lived among them. for a week he was living off of cooked rice and food he had delivered, following the scare he had down the street on day one or two. with the food, he'd also order paints. he didn't have nearly enough yellow at home. it was at the end of the week that claudia, his curator, called him. well, at the end of the week that she called and he elected to answer. she'd come knocking the day prior, he was sure, but he wanted to see no one until it was done. now, it was as if something had gone out of him. he sat on the floor of his studio, exhausted, but somehow relieved. he felt he'd done justice to the man in the police sketch, whether it was henry or not.
claudia called about a show they had scheduled with a prominent gallery less than a week away. and though the paintings were approved, they needed basil to package them and prepare them for transportation. when he'd picked up, he turned on the video, listening to her as she stormed on about how unreliable he is and how he can't just disappear off the face of the earth when he's scheduled to be showing there of all places. he listened. settled on the ground still, surrounded by shades of yellow. he waited. he knew what was coming. and it did come. out of nowhere, amidst her lamentations β "c'est quoi, Γ§a?" still, he said nothing. merely got up to show her on video. then, after she quieted down, he only said: "i don't want to show the avignon series, anymore, claudia. i want to show these." he waited, and waited, and waited. "d'accord. j'suis en route. ouvre la porte cette fois-ciβ" he could hear her ending the call just as she said an insult or another addressed his way.
and so it happened. the man from the yellow book. last minute change to the posters, to the exhibition plan β it was almost a miracle that they didn't just kick him out for complicating the matters so severely. he supposed the paintings spoke to them, too. something or another about henry's magnetic personality did echo through them in the end. β the resonance was aided of course by the structure of the gallery. a corridor not unlike a chapel leading to an end wall, promising an altar piece. the individual pieces were installed along the walls like a way of sorrows. instead of a painting at the end, basil opted to have a heavy curtain hung there. as the door opened and the people ventured inside, the curtain would move ever so slightly, creating an illusion of something beyond it. something alluring, something hidden. there was nothing there. there was nothing to the allure, but emptiness. at the opening, he had a long speech about the empty adoration of a personality that proved not quite what one had hoped it would be, in the end. but when they asked about the curtain, he would refuse to answer. gave nothing but an unhappy smile and a shrug of his shoulders. thanking claudia and the gallery, he raised a glass in a toast, took a sip of his wine and stepped into the background of the evening. it felt too easy, the black of his suit seemed one with the mob of gallery visitors, the velvet drew on the curtain in the back, and not even his yellow scarf or gloves could garner special attention, as the paintings cried yellow from the walls.
the artist was tired. but he felt that after this evening, all of this could be buried in the past at last. that alone brought him solace.
/ closed starter for @sophisticatess
