Ten

Every day, they took Eric some food, and while Bridget tried to make sense of the kitchen, Merle sat and talked to the old painter.

Bridget was amazed what they found to talk about, the young girl and the old man, but talk they did, while she tidied and cleaned and swept in the cavernous building that Eric had made his home.

Often, when she came into the room where they sat, the conversation would falter a little; when she left, she’d hear them chatting away again. She didn’t mind. She was pleased that her daughter had a friend, even if he was ten times her age, and she was pleased for the old man, too.

Bridget eavesdropped on their chatter one day, as she swept the early fallen leaves from the gallery right outside the painting room, as she called it. It was as if Eric was the child and Merle the adult; his talk was fun, light, silly, and hers was, too, at times but scattered in her foolishness would be unexpected words of deep maturity, as if she were old beyond her years.

Out of sight behind the gallery door, Bridget pictured them. The old thin man, and the paint-spotted, wrinkled skin on the back of his hands, clutching the leather of his big armchair. At his feet, little Merle, gazing up at him, as if gazing at the moon, her skin smooth and fair. Merle was holding a thin, worn, but well-loved paint brush, Eric was explaining about oil paints, how each color has a different nature, and must be treated with respect, as if they were all caged animals. About how paintbrushes can tame the beasts, and put them on the canvas, to make beauty, or power.

*   *   *

One thing that Bridget heard confused her utterly. She’d asked Merle about it later, as they walked home.

I might be lots of people, she’d heard Merle say to Eric, seriously. Why do I have to be just one? I am lots of people and I love all of them and they love me.

Bridget didn’t hear Eric’s reply, and when she’d asked her daughter about it, Merle shook her head, puzzled.

“Sorry, Mommy,” she said. “I don’t think I remember that. That’s funny.”

And she’d wrinkled her nose, and giggled.

*   *   *

Another day, Bridget was surprised when she came out of the kitchen into the painting room, and found the old man laughing himself silly at something Merle had said.

He seemed to be better, and after a few days, the point was proven.

*   *   *

Bridget and Merle were at home, having supper.

They were talking about Eric when there was a knock on the door. The front door.

“That’s odd,” said Bridget, getting up, because nobody ever used their front door.

She came back into the kitchen a few moments later, bringing Eric with her.

“Look,” said Bridget, “speak of the Devil!”

“Mommy, that’s rude!” cried Merle.

“No, it’s just what you say when, well, when that happens.”

They fussed over Eric, and sat him down, and though he refused food, he accepted a cup of tea with a smile.

“Well, look at you!” Bridget said, after a while. “All dressed up!”

“Mommy, that’s rude,” said Merle, but the old man laughed.

“I thought I should make an effort,” he said.

Eric wore a smart black suit, obviously quite old, but still presentable, and a clean white shirt. His shoes were clean, and almost shiny.

“So, to what do we owe the pleasure?” asked Bridget.

“Does there have to be a reason for a friend to call on another friend?”

Merle tugged her mother’s sleeve.

“Mommy, is Eric our friend?” she whispered.

Bridget laughed.

“Of course Eric is our friend.”

“But actually, there are two reasons for me being here.”

He cleared his throat and had another sip of tea.

“For the first, I have come to thank you, for helping me.”

“But of course we were going to help you,” Bridget said. “You don’t need to thank us.”

“But I do. Not just for the food, and so on … Maybe I should explain. I have not painted anything for years.…”

He hesitated, waiting for some kind of response.

“But that painting…?”

“I have been working on that painting for a long time. About a year. But let me put that in perspective for you. Before I began this painting, I had not painted anything, anything, in more than twenty-five years.”

He was silent for a time, perhaps, thought Bridget, remembering things that he would rather not remember.

“When I was young,” Eric said sadly, “the pictures poured out of me. Like water. I could not stop them. I could not paint fast enough to paint everything that was in my head. I felt like a magician, making magic. From nowhere, images would come, and in a few hours or days, another object existed in the world where none had existed before. Like magic.

“I painted portraits, landscapes, still life—I painted everything. Then, I made a little money with some simple pictures. For someone like me, it was unbelievable. I was born in a poorhouse, you see. I begged on the streets until I realized that I could earn more by sketching. Suddenly, I had everything.

“I was married then. My wife was young and beautiful, and we had three beautiful girls, almost as beautiful as Merle here.”

Merle giggled at this, and sat up straighter.

“I had everything, and for a time, for a very fair amount of time, we were happy. Then…”

He paused.

Bridget looked at Merle, briefly, then back at Eric.

“Then what?” she asked.

“My wife died. With the birth of our fourth child. She was perhaps too old, and … well. And I stopped painting. But you know, it wasn’t just losing Martha that stopped me painting. Something else died then, with her. The ideas stopped coming, I was confused, I didn’t know what to paint, but it was worse than that.

“One day, after a year or two had gone by, I realized I no longer wanted to paint. At all. I had had enough. The well, if you understand, had run dry. That was the worst thing. I no longer wanted to be that magician.”

Bridget nodded, but frowned. “But this painting…?”

Eric shrugged.

“Maybe the well filled up again.” He winked. “Maybe. Because about a year ago, I picked up a pencil, and I made a sketch. In about half an hour I sketched out that whole painting. The next day, I built the wooden structure on which it sits. The day after, I began to paint. It has taken me a year to finish it.”

“Finish it? Finish it?” cried Merle. “Have you finished it?”

Eric nodded, smiling.

Then he laughed spontaneously.

They laughed, too. Merle clapped her hands.

“Which brings me to my second reason for coming here today. I have been approached by the National Museum. They are very interested in my new painting. Without being modest, they are of course interested to see what the great Eric Carlsson has been up to in twenty-five years. There is talk that it will hang on the grand staircase in the museum, adorning that splendid marble space. It will be the very first and last thing that visitors to the museum will see.”

“But what does this have to do with us?” Bridget asked.

“Because tomorrow I have some gentlemen from the museum coming to view the painting. And I should be honored if you, both of you, would be there, as my neighbors. As my friends.”

Merle almost exploded. “Oh, can we, Mommy? Please say yes!”

Bridget laughed, and held her daughter’s hand. “We’d be honored. But tell us, what is the painting called? Does it have a title?”

“Yes,” said Eric. “It is called Midwinterblood.”