Tawny - The Tortured Artist

Saturday. Yesterday was Friday. Tawny stretched his long arms out before he shambled out of bed, careful not to make too much noise. Sunlight filtered through a crack in the curtains, reflecting on small motes of dust that floated through the air. Tawny pulled them open, illuminating his room in the morning sun- a disheveled wooden bed, a splintered endtable, an old metal wardrobe, and an artist’s desk covered in paints, pencils, and taped-up drawings on sketch paper. He walked over to the desk and glanced at a painted canvas sitting in the center of it. He smiled. The paint had dried perfectly. It looked just as beautiful as it did yesterday- a woman walking through the jungle, running her hands through the ferns. Granted, Tawny didn’t know what a jungle looked like. He only had a vague idea from the books his mother gave him to read as a kid. Jungles had big trees with large, long leaves and damp earth covered in branches and small plants. There were lots of pretty birds, like parrots and birds-of-paradise, that nested in the trees. Some of them produced colorful flowers that couldn’t be found in the desert. He planned to paint those flowers later, though he could only guess at what they looked like. He grabbed a change of clothes from his wardrobe and ran to the bathroom. After a quick breakfast (poha and aloo pakora- pressed fried rice and battered fried potatoes) he walked up to his mother. She was shorter than him, and her hair was starting to turn grey. “Need any groceries done?” he asked. His mother shook his head. “No, we’re all set.” “Need me to cook?” “I’ll do it myself. Bacha, we’re all set. You can go have fun.” “All right. Call me if you need anything!” Tawny grabbed his leather sling bag and scurried out of the door while pulling up his text messages. A couple of texts later, he beamed- Maya (his girlfriend, his best friend, the light of his life- if she considered him the same, of course) was also free that day. He walked down the street to her shop with a spring in his step. The air was surprisingly clear that day, and the world around them surprisingly cool. Sancoline was located in the middle of the desert, in what was once Southwestern America. It had always been desert there, but the old desert had been swamped in the Erosion, and all of its unique rocky and red-sanded landscape wiped out with the rest of America. The outside world was a wasteland. It was a miracle humans had survived long enough to build the original Sancoline. It was a further miracle that a literal angel had chosen to rebuild it into the thriving city it was today. Somehow, the city’s large black base kept the burning desert sands out of the streets, making it a pleasant place to live. On his way to the shop, he passed a temple dedicated to worshiping the angel. A couple of the monks who worked there were busy sweeping the stairs. Finally, he reached Maya’s building. Maya, a heavyset Mexican girl with two giant bows in her hair, was standing in front of the Angulo Repair Shop, the shop that she and her family worked in and lived above. She waved to him and quickly took his hand. “Where are we going?” Maya asked. “I’m not sure.” He laughed. “Oh, does your family need anything? Groceries?” “We’re good. Dad told me.” “Okay.” “Oh, I know!” Maya smiled. “I heard there’s a new cafe that I really want to try out. It’s mostly for sweets lovers, but I hear they’ve got a fantastic selection of drinks.” Tawny’s eyes lit up. He nodded. Maya was always curious about new restaurants and food, and so was he. “But it’s in the Rose District.” She was just checking with him. Something that small wasn’t a dealbreaker. “That’s fine!” Tawny nodded. “Okay. Let’s go, then.” She pulled him towards the subway station. The Rose District was a long distance away from part of the Clay District in which they lived. The city’s layout made it simple to travel there, however. Tawny and Maya quietly took the subway there- a mere fifteen-minute ride at the train’s speed. When they clambered up, they emerged in a completely different environment. The clay and stone buildings of the Clay District were replaced with tall glass and metal towers, the cobbled sidewalks and cracked streets replaced with clean-paved concrete. “This way.” Maya took his hand again and led him down the street. The Rose District, the place where Tawny was now sipping a bitter cup of matcha tea, was, in a word, more metropolitan than the Clay District he and Maya lived in. He’d grown used to the people living in the Clay District as low-key workers, dedicated to their community, but the Rose District was practically built for wanton consumption. And the higher up you went in floors, the more expensive and exclusive the services were. The drink he was sipping, from a first-floor restaurant, cost eight dollars. You could buy green tea for cheap in the Clay District and prepare it yourself, but matcha was rarer. And then there were the fashion stores, and then the parlors and event venues, and even residences, as the floors grew higher. Somehow, he had an instinctual dislike of the tall towers and balcony seats that rose above the tenth floor. He guessed those were for weddings, or for people in the Neon District if they were sick of the lights and music there. If he and Maya had a wedding (if she wanted to marry him, of course- it was totally her choice) they’d probably rent a smaller place. “Is the matcha bitter?” Maya asked. “I’ll drink it anyway.” “Give it here.” Maya pushed her half-finished drink to him. “Let’s trade. This rooibos stuff is too sweet for me.” Tawny took a sip of her tea. It was flavorful, even without sugar- just his kind of drink. “I knew you’d love it!” She took a sip of the matcha. “Mmm. It’s got such an earthy taste to it.” “Still painting?” Maya asked. They were back in the Clay District now. Maya had always known about his paintings- painting was a hobby of his which he pursued when he wasn’t picking fruit at the hydroponics farm. Their whole house was filled with paintings, all of which he had done himself. He’d even sold some of his pieces. “Yeah. I tried to paint a ‘jungle’ yesterday.” “Oh, like where tigers live?” “Tigers, leopards, birds-of-paradise…” Tawny paused. “Just the birds, though. I know what a parrot looks like, so I’m going to see if I can paint something similar.” “Cool. I mean, who knows if there are any more jungles you could reference. But, that’s cool.” “You?” “Just helped my mom cook for the week. She made me chop up a whole bunch of tomatoes and onions. Guess she’s making some kind of spicy stew.” “Delicious.” “Right?” She smiled. “I’ll nab the recipe. Then we can make it together if you want.” “You don’t need to do that much.” “It’s fine.” Maya smiled. “I want to spend some more time at your place anyway.” Something about Maya’s statement made his cheeks flush red. He stammered on his next words. “I-If you want to…” Maya laughed. “But I do. I do want to.” “Okay then. We’ll buy tomatoes tomorrow and cook something.” “It’s a date.” She wanted another date, Tawny thought. That was really sweet of her. He didn’t want her to think about him so much, but there was no stopping her once her mind was made up. By the time Tawny reached home, it was already late afternoon. He took in a whiff of a fragrant mix of spices as he opened the door to his apartment. “Dinner is ready!” he heard his mother shout. “I’ll get washed up.” Dinner was mostly silent, with him sitting adjacent to his mother. His mother seemed to be in good spirits, though- she was eating her sabzi quickly, and seemed to relish the flavor. There was a third chair, across from his mother’s- it was his father’s. He wasn’t dead, Tawny reminded himself. He was merely interned. A domestic violence charge had ended his marriage to his mother, annulled any legal connection to his son, and sentenced him to 10 years in an internment camp, by order of the angel ruling over them. Tawny had always felt responsible, having called the Knights on his father in the first place. Even though his mother was happier now, the fact that he was gone was a dark spot in her life. It made her sad to think about the fact that he was interned. But he didn’t want to show any signs of thinking about it, not when his mother was in such a good mood. With dinner complete, Tawny walked back to his desk. He selected some yellow and black paint, and began to paint the shapes of parrots. It was late into the evening, so late the stars shone bright, when Tawny closed the curtains on his windows, roughed up his bed until the sheets were about flat, and entered them. A few minutes later, he was asleep. Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday. He didn’t have any work today. Tawny felt his muscles ache as he opened his eyes. He stretched his arms up, feeling his back crack. The sun peeking through the curtain was already strong. He’d overslept. Tawny turned his eyes to the artist’s desk. There were two canvases sitting on top- the unfinished jungle painting, sitting on the left side, and one other, sitting in the center. Tawny’s eyes narrowed. Why was there a second painting? He had a vague memory of getting exhausted of painting yellow parrots and moving onto something else, but completing it? He didn’t remember that. He stumbled to the bathroom and washed the sand from his eyes before walking back to his room. His mother followed him, asking about breakfast. She beamed as she saw the painting. Tawny stared at the painting sitting on his table. On the little canvas, a man held a sleeping baby in his lap, stroking his face with a forlorn look in his eyes. He was wrapped up in a red shawl, with the baby wrapped up in a more ornate red and gold wrap, whose end draped over the man’s shoulders. The dune-covered desert landscape around him was dark, the endless sands only interrupted by a couple of nearby tents. It was the dead of night, the only light before him a small candle. Above him, not even stars peeked out. “It’s beautiful.” His mother smiled. “It’s a man and his newborn son, spending time together. How sweet.” She turned to Tawny. “I’d love to hang it up, but we don’t have much wall space. Oh, do you mind giving it away? It could be a present for the Lopez family down the street. They just had a baby boy. They’d love it.” She paused. “Only if you want to, bacha.” “You don’t see anything wrong with it?” “You’re the only one who’d know. I don’t see anything.” Tawny nodded. “Then I’ll think about it.” “Okay. I’m going to make breakfast, then.” She walked out of the room. How could I tell her the truth of that painting? Tawny wondered, as the despondency suffused in the strokes of the painting entered his mind. That the bundled child was dead, and the man was simply holding its lifeless little corpse, wondering what could have been. Memories of a bottomless despair gnawed at the back of his mind, echoes of whatever he’d experienced last night. They traced patterns on his back like cold hands. In his heart, he mourned the baby in the painting. The baby was loved and wanted by the whole caravan- its birth was auspicious, celebrated with a glorious feast. If the baby lived, perhaps as he grew and learned to walk and talk, he would make friends. Perhaps he would follow his dad around while he cleaned the tent, babbling about helping him. Perhaps he would bring his mother great joy when he smiled and laughed. Perhaps he would grow up to be intelligent, and fix problems around the little caravan himself. Perhaps he would grow up to be strong and kind, and everyone would treat him like a big brother. Perhaps he would live eighty long years, and be a good patriarch to his family. But all of that was wasted now. The babe was dead. He would not grow. He would not cry. He would not open his eyes. Nothing would bring him back to life. And the father could only hold his little corpse and wonder what could have been. Why did such dark thoughts strike now? Tawny wondered. And who was the man? Who was the child? Was one of them someone he knew? Which one? Or were they both him? He looked at the child in the painting. Its eyes were squeezed shut in such a way that Tawny understood that it had been fighting as hard as it could, begging to God for its life, and lost the battle. Tawny glanced at his wall. A pocket knife hung there, a gift to himself as a teenager. He was struck with the urge to cut up the painting. Could he end the child’s pain that way? Or did the pain come from his own hands, their blue veins popping out of his wrist? His own eyes? His own heart? Could he end the pain if he- Snap out of it. Tawny shook his head. He made the painting while he was upset about something last night. That’s why it made him feel so awful. That was it. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t remember what. Surely the Lopez couple wouldn’t notice if he gave it to them. Right? Tawny sighed and flipped the canvas over. It just wasn’t worth thinking about right now- not when his mother was in such a good mood. That poor baby… he wished he could have protected it.