Picking up the scalpel again, Marc excised more venom. His hands were covered with small cuts, but most of them had scabbed over. Neatly latticing the words of a particularly dull review, he was careful to leave the edges of the picture unscathed. Now that the mirror had broken, perhaps he would keep it.
Marc brushed hair from his eyes and tried to focus on the next review. He had burnt most of the books in the apartment and most of the pages of the rest of the books. The pale flames on the balcony had been a cheerful sight and the charcoaled scraps had floated like living birds on the turgid breeze.
He remembered the author of this review. Jan. He dimly recalled being rude to her. She had reminded him of Patti, which might be why she in turn had looked at the pictures instead of talking to him. Mirrors again. That or their final exchange. She had left quite suddenly.
"Portrait of a Lady, on First Meeting" is an ostentatious title for what is obviously a posed composition. The model is caught turning towards the camera. The picture is poorly executed; the 'grapher has used an outmoded flash gun to illuminate his model, and the reflected glare has obscured half her face. As an example of the subject-as-victim trend of the latter decades of the century, this composition has some small merit, although the subject's defensive stance and expression of fright are more likely to provoke distaste now.
Marc laughed softly to himself, remembering the flash gun. Jan should have talked to him more. He would have said, "The camera never lies". He would have told her the truth.
"Did you seriously think you could follow me home?"
He laughed at her again. "Not at all. You looked too smart for that. I was waiting."
"Why were you laughing at me?" Patti was still angry. He watched her closely, trying to determine whether the blue sparks from her eyes were mere optical illusion. He could see them quite clearly, even now.
"To make you turn round." The laugh, he had copied from an old vampire film. Patti had only heard a human maniac. Here she sat, drinking red wine that he had poured. If he had not forsaken colour, maybe there would have been something in that.
"Why me?"
"You looked interesting in the neon."
The pink "Bar" had given her face only a hint of colour. Turning to wave goodbye to someone, her blue gaze had slid like radar over him. The camera strap had bitten into his neck.
"So you took my picture."
"It's not as if I stole your soul."
"Didn't you?" She looked at him now quite seriously. Her mouth twitched. "Aha, but I shot you first!"
He grinned back at her. "We'll see when I develop the film. Photo finish! ... Can I see the gun?"
She handed it to him. Engraved on the handle was the legal wording: "The intense flash produced by the NightGuard L350A will NOT damage the eyesight permanently. Warranty limited under normal use, expy. 96325. Not for use by minors."
"Neat! Blind your enemies with a single flash. I'm glad you weren't carrying a pistol."
She considered. "So am I."
Marc frowned and refocussed on the review. He recognised the moment that things had changed. There were no more pink bar signs. He regretted including that picture. It was too powerful for everyone to see.
"Portrait of a Lady, Year One" is not a gentle picture, indeed reminiscent of the work of Mapplethorpe in its intensity. The model is still a victim, here identified by the glycerine tears and heavy cosmetics. Despite these camp trappings the 'grapher manages to maintain the rivetting glare of the model. Here she is fighting back, apparently throwing her drink directly at the camera. Although the medium has progressed into the third dimension, the use of monochrome fails to retain the endearing naivety of the first.
"Don't talk. Just sit there. No, like that." Marc pushed her back in the chair, grabbing the camera but not in time to catch the line of her throat as her head hit the wall.
"You bastard! Don't push me around!"
He did not reply. The new camera was heavy but he held it still. There was something menacing in the silence. Patti swallowed and glared past him at the wall. She swallowed a mouthful of wine without tasting it.
"I can wait," he said lightly. She was wearing green but it was a dark shade.
"Marc, this is stupid! Tell me how to pose and I'll do it!"
"This is not going to be posed. Just relax."
"Why?" she shouted. "I'm in a room with some bastard who'd rather get a new camera than let me take a med check! What next? You want me to bleed for you?"
"That would be nice."
The calmness of his voice snapped her. Crying without a sound, she hurled her half-empty wineglass straight at the camera.
He moved faster than she had thought him capable of, left hand swinging the glass against the wall. It shattered with a high note.
Patti hid her face in her hands, some small protection; but he set the camera down gently and came towards her slowly with the bottle and the other glass. Astounded, she dropped her hands to stare at him. There was a red poppy on his white shirt. He dropped down at her feet and rested his elbows in her lap, smiling at her.
"Marc, I'm sorry ... you're cut. Where?"
"Just my arm," he said, smiling that lop-sided grin at her. "Cheaper to fix than the camera. "
"You don't have to be cruel. Or hit me. You shithead."
Unfazed, he grinned and poured her another glass of wine. "I'm sorry."
"I don't like the way you see me, Marc."
He drank from the bottle, still staring at her.
"But I am a camera!" he announced, and laughed. It was the vampire laugh. Quite unable to help herself, she smiled back.
"We'll get you that med check. When I sell the picture," he decided. "Maybe even another wine glass. Drinking from the bottle is so degenerate."
Her smile faded. "You took my picture?" she said disbelievingly. Marc did not reply. His blood made patterns on her skirt.
The air in the city was very still and the dead trees glowed darkly against the dull sky. Marc dreamed in colour and he recalled that trees were green. There was no seeing it now. He stripped off and walked naked through the apartment in the grey gloom. The bath had filled and the mould in the corner made faces at him as he lay soaking. He closed his eyes and, quite calmly, began to recreate the third picture of Patti.
"Portrait of a Lady, Dreaming" is merely a tedious reprisal of the early boxed works. The 'grapher still uses the same model, but experiments with found materials as a visual footnote which is, unfortunately, difficult to overlook. In the box the model is lying on a couch, fully clothed. She appears to be asleep and presumably the fragments of text floating around her represent her dreams. Most of the snippets are incomplete, but they are all taken from the standard pornographic works - De Sade, Miller, Baille et al. At the back of a box is a mirror, which enables us to see the flip sides of the cuttings, apparently taken from the works of the C19 Romantic poets. The discerning viewer may ask whether it is worth the effort.
That spring Patti was seldom in the real world. They had given her synthetic psilocybin to take her mind off her body, and now when he spoke to her she rarely replied. He stood next to the couch, watching her sleep, and was relieved that he did not have to tell her about his operation. She would not notice his absence now. She could not complain about art getting in the way. There was a touch of colour in her cheeks and she was smiling. He stooped to kiss her, and her eyes opened. Familiar skies; but she did not focus on him and her eyelids dropped. He realised that they had made love for the last time.
Marc's memories of his return from the med centre were fragmented. He was drugged with the heavy illegal pain-killers they had given him, that made him see double when he could see at all. He remembered dark bruises all over his skin where he had walked into walls without feeling the pain. His head hurt constantly. He did not recall regretting his choice. One bad black morning he had got out of bed, unable to sleep any more, and taken the old 3D camera.
"Patti?"
She made a sound.
"What are you dreaming about, Patti?"
She sighed, and whispered "Love."
Experimenting with his new vision to keep the pain at bay, he played with her image. By this time she was past reading, so he used her books too. Occasionally he saw bursts of colour between the words, but they diminished and gradually disappeared, until it was all in black and white.
He recalled hitting her for the first time when she woke up and told him about all the colours in his eyes.
The flashing white lights in the middle distance were becoming more insistent. Pulling himself out of the bath, Marc thought he saw them reflected in the mirror, before he remembered that he'd taped the portrait of himself there. It sneered back at him. His head did not hurt now; finally perhaps the feedback thing was working.
He pulled a faded Oriental robe around himself and wandered back into the dark room. Slumped in the chair, he reached for a different newssheet and read:
The fourth portrait in the series is as firm an indication as I have seen that modern art is not only dead, but is rotting in a particularly unpleasant biological fashion. Here we see another rather poorly executed hologram, this time of a skull. The pale flowers adorning it must serve as some outmoded indicator of femininity, since they can serve no other useful function. This reviewer was unable to contemplate seeing the final work in the series, which would presumably have been a heap of dust, or - if the 'artist' was being especially pretentious - a biblically referential clump of artificial grass.
Patti woke up. It was early evening and there were colours all over the place. She wandered through to where Marc lay asleep and frowning.
"Wake up, darling. The light's gorgeous. Wouldn't you like to take my picture in that red dress?" She laughed. There was a livid purple scar above his left eyebrow which she hadn't noticed before. It made him look rather dangerous. He opened his eyes.
"What time is it?" He was not looking at her.
"Who cares?"
Patti walked to the window and looked out. "I don't really want my picture taken. It's not the same in black and white."
She watched clouds against the towers. They floated and swooped. After a while she realised that he had not answered her. She turned round and he was staring, but not as if he was framing a picture.
"Marc, is something wrong?"
He thought about the question. For the last time he saw red. It was the colour of blood and roses. He had seen roses at an exhibition once. Suddenly he recognised the source of the pain in his head.
He thought about what he had done to the books.
Her blood was black, not red.
Afterwards, he watered the plants.
The other reviewer, Jan, had said to him, "Is it true they can tell the age of the bone from this kind of image?"
He shrugged, feigning indifference. His skin crawled.
"So where did the skull come from?" she asked.
"Some med place", he said, lightly. He had seen his own skull under the skin when they cut him open.
"But isn't that ... indecent?"
"Not really." He essayed a smile, but the muscles in his face were getting harder to control and it came out as a sneer. "Using something that's dead? Artists have been doing that for centuries. Walk round one of the private galleries, the ones with paintings. Dead people. Places that don't exist any more. Dead things used for the paints. What's so different about this?"
"I don't know." She flicked her pale hair back from her face, frowning. The gesture reminded him acutely of Patti. Even here it was surprisingly easy to forget her. "Using a human skull isn't the same. It's not a clear-cut, black-and-white issue."
"Oh, it's black and white all right! Black. And. White." That was when he had started laughing at her. People turned to look. Embarrassed, she moved away to examine the last portrait.
A salesperson hovered, trying to ignore Marc's laughter in the background.
"If you check your programme, Miz, you'll note that this image has been produced entirely from spectro-dimensional analysis of the previous four works. Quite amazing, hey?"
"Go away." Jan was aware of Marc moving towards her, still laughing softly. The exit was on her left, past the final case.
"So what are you going to write about this one?" He stood behind her, to her left, blocking her exit. She stepped away. "I don't know."
She gazed at the portrait for a while in silence.
"Is it really all done by the computer?" she asked him at last, in a level tone.
"Oh yes," he said seriously. "The model's dead now."
"I'm sorry. How ...?"
"She had cancer." He might have been talking about anything unimportant. "So, what will you write?"
"I'll say that it's the best. That you should work in colour more. That - "
"I don't work in colour. Get out. Don't come back." His voice was deadly. He turned and walked away from her, back into the main part of the gallery. After a couple of minutes, one of the security people came and asked her, politely, to leave.
Jan could not write what she felt. She wrote instead:
"Portrait of a Lady, Reconstructed, is evidence of some artistic sensibility which has not previously been apparent. Those viewers who left before reaching this exhibit should pay a return visit, preferably avoiding the inevitable sales pitch from the sponsors. This work was supposedly produced using only the software packages which are being promoted here. However, the precise tech spec of the dimensional mapping and spectral extrapolation are irrelevant to the purity and beauty of this 3D colour portrait. One can only hope that the artist's subsequent work will continue in this direction."
It was dark, although the clock said noon. Marc picked up the scalpel again. His eyes began to weep.
© Tanya Brown 1992