The Painted Man

The Bistro was quiet by 7 o’clock that evening; a muffling dampness stilled the air, mixed faintly with the sweet smell of caramel treats and bitter coffee beans. A rustle from a reader’s paper, and the light crackle from the warmth of the fireplace were bare distractions for the gentleman seated, biding his time on a comfortable leather chair concealed behind the barista’s counter. Centered on the wall across from him was a rather abstract Persian painting in which he had been silently contemplating for the past hour and a half. He found himself reflecting over the contrast of his present silence in comparison to his rambunctious days of youth as a Classical Art History Major. The man began to recall his many late evenings as a college student; frantic strenuous nights spent analyzing paintings professors placed before him. Artworks similar to the likes of the one seated so coyly opposite him tonight.  

As if she were staring into his thoughts, the painting’s oils glimmered gold within the small coquettish woman’s eyes to say she knew all about those laughable nights. Rage and confusion were his next thoughts, sparked by a sense of finality. For his lack of “interpretive perspective” would soon end a short-lived, failed attempt at an art career. His eyes drifted over her mouth, curled and amused in a teasing smile; long slender fingers clasped against her lips as if to conceal a hidden shadow of laughter. Even a woman in a painting was out of his league.

Indeed, his unambitious middling demeanor in life mirrored the weak interest many assumed when meeting him. However, this was a disposition developed over years of disappointment, but had at one time been very different. There was an engagement once, to a beautiful woman in his small Hindi village before he came to America. Only, marriages will always end badly, his cousins and siblings would tell him sourly – even solemnly. In India, a woman takes half your hair - in America, she’ll take half your money. Had he been happy then? Perhaps it is too frivolous now to recall. The focus of these memories had long since simmered into distant figments of brimming youth and possibility. As such, despite poor desperate attempts to self-prove in family and the diminishing egoistic senses of his identity; in the isolation of his current table and chair it is simply acceptable to admit he lacked both passion and drive to succeed in this study, along with much of the goals he periodically fancied for himself.

It had been years since he had thought of his once beautiful lover in his small Hindi village. Her spirit now so very far away. He had stopped visiting her, grown neglectful of his home's market scents and flavors bursting with life – and, yes, he had forgotten her name. And so, he sat in roomfuls of family rejoicing while his own laughter softened and faded. His brothers’ and sisters’ families grew as did the numerous celebrations that followed. Siblings and children sat around heaping plates of food exclaiming, “but Pita, how did you do it!?... I cannot believe you made that business deal, what luck!”, and “How adventurous you are! How brave! I would never have the guts like you do, dear sister, dear brother!”  The joyous story telling filled with sweet aromas of the evening’s cooking. Yet, curled clouds of smoke and gently tinkling silver dessert spoons against teacups were inevitably dampened by the young confused voices of the children heard whispering, “but Maan, why does Auyush not have a wife… no children? What has Auyush done?”

And as the years passed he grew smaller. He grew quiet instead of loud when voicing the meanings he once wanted to express, and he grew forgetful of the man he once wanted to be. Yet, the painting still held his attention. Perhaps a quieter spectator may think that a man, who stares so intensely is rather bewitched by thought. Hypnotized by the presence of this art in his life, what it makes him consider – or recall, what it makes him remember. 

It was 10 o’clock in the evening when Auyush finally stepped outside into the chilly damp autumn air, lit a fresh cigarette and began his walk into town. He was set in motion with every intention of heading home; however, when he arrived at his local intersection a few short minutes later he found himself continuing blindly onwards, as if being guided by a muscle memory that was operating unaccounted for. Where am I going? He thought mildly. For a moment he mulled over the possibility of grabbing a bottle of wine from the convenience store up ahead, its neon sign flickering away in the distance, beckoning him closer with the promise of cheap thrills. It was in fact a Saturday, why not? - He mused. 

Why not? 

The words felt oddly familiar, perhaps a saying from one of his old college buddies, not that he had seen any of them since those budding, malleable, indisputably more spontaneous years. 

He swung open the co-op’s door and was greeted by the soft chiming of a bell and an old hindi pop track playing faintly in the background. For several minutes he pretended to parol the aisles of the small makeshift supermarket, his gaze gliding aimlessly over the bounties of cereal boxes, nearly spoiled fruit and shiny candy wrappers as he steadily made his way to the concluding liquor section at the back. Prematurely, he picked up the first 22 dollar bottle of sauvignon blanc and began walking over to the cashier, hastily grabbing a couple of chocolate bars on his way. There was nobody at the cashier desk. Auyush rang the bell twice and sighed audibly, he could feel a strange mixture of stirring and foreign emotions brewing inside him; a mingling sensation of exhilaration and agitation, stubbed by a paralyzing uncertainty about what to do next. Tonight felt different, as if deviating from his habitual routine had opened an imaginary portal in time, allowing him the possibility to do anything, become anyone, if only for one night. 

Fingers strumming against his outer thigh, humming along to the vaguely recognizable tune playing overhead; Auyush turned to the right and his eyes drifted out the co-op window, landing promptly on a familiar faded building nestled in a not-exactly desirable part of town several blocks away. His old apartment studio. Auyush could recall the moment he had purchased the studio, a home for his future family; he had thought the area had been greener back then, more promising and less stinky. Sometimes, he rented the space, usually to failed drunks in various disciplines - but mostly automobile mechanics - and other questionable characters looking to crash somewhere cheap for the week. Nobody had stayed there for nearly two years to his knowledge and it had been almost a decade since Auyush himself had stepped foot inside the property, preferring to give his old property manager the autonomy to ensure there were no fresh leaks or treacherous holes appearing in the worn out masticated floorboards - again - no doubt due to termites rigorously seizing an opportunity granted by abandonment, and that other unsavory events had not taken place. 

Auyush did not notice the beautiful middle aged woman emerge from the side door to take her place behind the cashier’s desk, nevermind she had spoken to him. 

“$25.99”, she repeated pleasantly. 

Startled, Auyush began hastily searching through his pockets for a wallet, until he remembered he had put his money in his backpack. He felt silly under her gaze as a grown man carrying a backpack, but the bag had been a reliable companion since his early college days. It was a kind of memento, a souvenir, a token of his past that he now regarded as a lucky and treasured talisman welded to his back like an age-old fifth appendage. 

There was something different about this man, the woman noted. The way he carefully checked his change twice. The way he kept timidly glancing out the window. There was something pitiful, yet strangely interesting about the way he combed his thin black hair into a series of parallel waves in a fashion that reminded her of the tides rising and falling. She felt a muddling sense of familiarity when she noticed an unmistakable kind of gentle softness in his eyes, even as they darted away from hers after a brief moment’s eye-contact when he handed over his change. 

And then he was gone. 

Auyush decided he was going to visit his old studio as soon as he spotted it out the window. Beep. chug chug, followed by a high pitched descending whinny and a screeching grima similar to the likes of nails scratching on a chalkboard. The ancient elevator creakily winded down on its hinges before reluctantly greeting him on the ground floor. If any soothsaying fortune teller had ever bestowed Auyush with the knowledge that he would one day perish in an elevator, he certainly would never have trusted this one with his fate. 

But alas, despite its far from safe and idyllic appearance, this was not the final elevator that would cut Auyush’s journey short. 

He gets out on the fourth floor - luckily - turns right and then right again, and he’s back in front of his large but ostensibly simple former front door. A staggeringly forlorn and ghostly wall of sadness hits him, reminiscent of everything this space once favorably represented, and everything it now so blatantly did not. 

Shakily, he turns the key against a resistant and rust-stained aperture. 

The air is heavy and dank with the fishy smell of moldy carpet and old sweat. 

Another step inside. Hesitantly. 

He glances around at the oil-stained, cracked walls; studded with nail holes and oozing with the aroma of stale grease and something rancid and grotesque, the archaic source likely to be decaying away somewhere in the plumbing, and he wonders what he ever saw in this place. 

Had it looked different back then? 

Or had he idiotically imagined that he and his equally inconceivable imaginary family would bond together and patch it up? 

Another step forward, the floorboards protest under his weight with a dissonant symphony of noisy creaks and squeals. Damn termites. 

Now he notices the dilapidated, rough-hewn floorboards splintering against a rotting, shabby carpet and the tacky ornamental sculpturing - once garnishing - now progressively fracturing off the discolored low-hanging ceilings. It’s becoming alarmingly obvious to Auyush that he doesn’t know why he has come here, his motivational search for answers already unveiled as a consciously disappointing realization, a failed quest. The place is a dump. His life is a dump. Auyush feels like he might do something he hasn’t done in a very long time. Cry. Steadying himself, Auyush sits down on a bleak and sweat-stained armchair nearby and regrets it immediately. He off-shoulders his bag to pull out the comfortless bottle of wine, if there was ever a scene that could turn someone into an alcoholic - this would be his - he joked miserably to no one but himself. The surprisingly heavy bag falls to the ground and spills its contents all over the dirty broken floorboards and Auyush thinks he might cry after all. Bone-weary and weak, he reaches down to collect his belongings, dragging the armchair to the side to gather what has rolled below, and stops short. 

There is something peeking out from underneath the floorboards where the armchair once sat.

A slip of paper? 

An expired eviction notice crammed away, discarded by a former tenant? 

Now dismissive of his things spread over the floor, Auyush grapples with the paper until it pulls away loose, revealing itself as something that Auyush would never in a thousand years have guessed. The paper is none other than a small unframed painting of a girl sitting beneath a faded lemon tree. Fascination growing, he turns over the page and sees a handwritten note scrawled across the back in his native tongue. 

In english, it reads;

Dear Auyush, 

Auyush’s heart stops. 

Do you like my painting? I think you are a better painter. 

Auyush had forgotten that he had at one time called himself a painter. 

I cannot bear being so far from you, 

but I will be strong. 

I understand why you must go to America. 

I wish I could follow you. 

I wish I was as brave as you. 

No - this can’t be… Auyush’s heart is now audibly pounding and threatening to fall out of his stomach.

Falling in love with you was the easiest thing I have ever done, 

missing you is so hard.  

You have no idea how eagerly I am waiting to start a new life with you, 

my dream is to wake up in your arms again, as I once did. 

My soul longs for your touch, 

my heart beats only for you. 

From this day onward, I will only love you more and more. 

Come back when you are ready, 

we will run away and build our home underneath the lemon trees.

why not? 

you know where to find me… 

Forever yours, 

-K 

Auyush doesn’t realize he is crying until the unfamiliar and novel taste of saltiness stings his dry cracked lips. He blinks back an ongoing flood of tears in disbelief, unable to take his eyes off the paper. 

He doesn’t know how much time has passed before he tucks the note into his breast pocket and walks out of the apartment, forgetting to lock the door behind him and to gather his things, abandoned and left deserted all over the floor. 

All he can focus on is one thing. 

Like a long lost echo, he hears her name. 

Night has descended like a grand cloak of darkness, with nothing to light Auyush’s path ahead but a pale crescent moon that shone like an ethereal silvery fang amidst the deep endless sky. 

He knows exactly what he must do.