Painted Ghosts, page 10
Carl and Raj stood apart watching the women.
‘I never did find it,’ Daphne raised her head and gave a cynical laugh. ‘My true self — at least when I did through Ben, when I did — it was smashed in front of me. By you.’ She stood up.
‘But you can help Devi.’ Shanta looked up to her. ‘You can change things for the women here.’
Daphne turned from her and headed for the car before Carl stopped her. ‘We could build a school, mum. Really make big changes for people like Devi—’
‘Raj, the taxi,’ Shanta motioned for her son to open the car door for Daphne.
Having done so, he spoke to Daphne as she came over. ‘You must help us, Daphne—’
She walked past him in silence. Devi jumped up and ran to her as she reached the car, bent before her, crouching, and touched her feet in a gesture of respect. ‘Please madam.’
Daphne looked down at her eyes and gently eased her to her feet. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said sweetly, ‘you don’t have to.’ And turning to them all said, ‘Take it. Have it all.’
Shanta stood. ‘Daphne?’
‘I’m not doing this for you,’ Daphne said without looking at Shanta, ‘I’m doing it for the Devadasi—’ Daphne got in the car.
‘I am the Devadasi,’ Shanta said.
‘Please auntie,’ Devi said.
‘Work with us, Daphne,’ Shanta stood by the open window of the car.
Daphne turned to them, shaking with emotion. ‘I said take it. All of it.’
The last candle died.
*****
Daphne dipped her brush in a mixture of white, dabs of reddish brown Burnt Sienna and Naples Yellow, the buttery yellow she loved, with a hint of Alizarin Crimson, that dark bloody colour. Work was still needed on how the light was falling on the Yakshi’s skin, the right side of her face, the exposed arms, thighs and lower legs. Humming, she stroked paint sparsely over areas she wished to soften and lighten.
Next, she must darken the background with a mixture of Burnt Umber, Ultramarine with a dash of Purple Lake. Memories of Rembrandt’s painting of the woman bathing guided her in her choice of background. She wanted to make it appear cave-like, as though the Yakshi is emerging from darkness, a figure of hope coming out of a void. The left side of her body is still in deep shadow, still attached to the darkness, as she comes forward into the light. Light sparkles too on the leaves of the branch she clings to with her right hand.
Daphne gasped, excitedly — the picture was taking shape, becoming real. It was not just an image of a Yakshi, it had the spirit and emotion of one. She seemed real, an individual, not just one of a crowd of similar faces. This Yakshi had a personality of her own.
She wheezed a little, putting down the brush. Feeling giddy she headed into the bedroom and slumped on the bed. She needed water.
What did the Yakshi say: ‘Some years the monsoon does not come to parts of the land. They wait in those parts. Trees and people. And no rain. The ground is hard. Nothing grows. Trees die. We must know who we are, or we are dead trees, dead inside. When the rain comes it brings new life.’
Her painting was visible through the half open bedroom door, the Yakshi holding up new green growths above her head. The monsoon would be here in a few days.
*****
‘Where is she?’ Shanta said as they entered Daphne’s hotel room down the road from Kali Ko-op.
‘In her room, probably.’ Carl nodded at the bedroom door.
He was about to head there when Shanta’s attention was taken by the painting on the easel near the door to the veranda. ‘She’s done it. She’s finished.’
When Devi came in the room with Raj behind her, she joined them around the picture. ‘A Yakshi — Shalabhanjika. Who did this, it is so much like real —?’
‘Daphne,’ Shanta said, smiling. ‘She’s a real artist now — who she should have been all her life. Now she’s found it.’
‘She’s so real,’ Devi pointed.
‘Don’t touch, it’s still wet,’ Shanta said and Devi drew her hand back.
‘Mum,’ Carl called through to the bedroom.
Devi was mesmerised. ‘She look like she will jump out of the picture at me. Scary and strong. Look at her eyes.’
‘I’ve only seen two other pairs of eyes painted quite like that,’ Shanta said. ‘The two princesses at Ajanta,’ she nodded. ‘Their eyes make their personalities come alive. And Daphne’s done that. She’s given her the power of the past. Like Amrita Devi gave the tree spirits when they chopped them down in the forest at Jodhpur.’
Devi was nodding.
‘Mum,’ Carl called again. ‘Where are you? Come and show us your picture. You’ve got it at last. All those stupid things I said before — you can do it.’
Raj looked on, nodding at the painting. ‘It is good. It has atmosphere.’ He turned to his brother, whispering, ‘I know a good doctor—‘ Carl took Raj’s hand and shook it.
‘Thanks bruv,’ Carl said.
‘She will do it won’t she?’
‘You needn’t worry, the money will come to Kali Ko-op.’ And looking Raj in the eye said, ‘You will bring Devi along with us to the doctor—’
‘Hanji — yes,’ Raj nodded.
Devi turned from the picture. ‘Auntie. Where is auntie?’
‘Mum,’ Carl called again. ‘Where are you? We’re all here, for god’s sake. Probably gone out.’
Devi went to the bedroom door.
‘It’s so real,’ Shanta could not keep her eyes off the image. ‘She knows the spirit of the tree and she knows how to paint ghosts. This is so perfect. Where is she?’
Devi’s screams echoed from the bedroom and they were silenced a moment. They found Daphne lying on the bed with Devi kneeling beside her, holding Daphne’s hand. ‘She’s cold.’ Devi was in tears. ‘Auntie’s hand is cold.’
‘Get a doctor.’ Raj went for his phone.
‘Mum, no—’ Carl stepped forward and knelt to her, holding her hand, then put his head on her chest. ‘No, mum, no—’
While Raj spoke on the phone, Shanta eased Carl away so she could look for herself. ‘She’s cold, no breathing, no pulse. She’s gone.’
‘The doctor will be here soon.’
Carl choked back tears. ‘Mum, no — The doctor can do something?’
‘She’s gone, Carl.’ Raj eased him back.
Shanta stroked Daphne’s face. ‘She did find herself in the end, you can tell by the way she finished the picture — She left herself in the painting,’ Shanta whispered. ‘Her painted ghost.’
Raj helped his brother to his feet. ‘She’s free now, Carl—’
‘So are we.’ Devi smiled through her tears and putting her hands together in prayer shape she bowed to Daphne.
‘We can be ourselves,’ Shanta said.
The brothers hugged and Devi held on to Shanta.
Shanta held her close. ‘A painted ghost in all of us — come to change us.’
THE GARDEN OF IZZAT BAIG
1
2010
‘You have to work at it, ’Stella said. ‘Over and over again. ’She threw her brush down, the tip spreading an untidy slip of Alizarin Crimson over the palette. ‘And smudge it out, and—’
The sun was pushing up towards its midday zenith and although the veranda and overhanging palm trees provided shade, the increasing heat was beginning to drain her. Ahead, the white sands of Bagolem beach fell away to distant hills at the north end, the hump of an island and the infinite turquoise of the sea.
Lena leaned forward towards her own picture, scowling critically. ‘At least with acrylics you can rub it out and start all over again.’ And leaning backwards she adjusted the red headband that enclosed her dreadlocks, now tinged with grey
‘That’s if you’re quick enough in this heat — Acrylics dry too quickly. I have to get it right or it sets and then that’s it, and I can’t rub anything out or change things. It’s so annoying.’ She ran the fingers of her right hand through her own hair, the dark brown tint hiding shoots of grey.
‘That’s Goa for you, in April—’
The little brick chalet was one of a short terrace, each with its own veranda looking out to sea. Palms hung over the terra cotta tiles of the long roof. Seats on the verandas of all the chalets afforded views up and down the crescent shaped beach lined with restaurants and chalets, each framed with palms that waved in gentle breeze. Young men launched boats of tourists out to see dolphins and remote beaches, groups swam, laughed and threw balls or ducked each other. Women in saris tended to toddlers where the waves gave up to flat sands. A short way towards the island, fishermen sorted equipment in boats or sat mending nets, cigarettes hanging from their lips.
‘If only we could do that with life,’ Stella let out a short laugh. ‘Rub it all out and start again.’ She frowned again at her efforts to get some colour and shape into figures by the sea. Hers were stiff and stick-like, or gross, and the dog she had sketched was two dimensional, as though caught in pose in cardboard.
She had woken at five thirty with an edge of depression and anxiety, had wanted to sleep longer but her buzzing mind would not let her. Wandering out into the sun’s early rays she had watched the fishermen haul up heavy boats, ten men heaving each creature up over wooden runners lubricated with black tarry oil onto the brow of sand away from the tide’s reach. Hulls made of dark hardwood slats bound together with rope thickened by tar, they lay like huge insects, dark, asleep.
Men stirred piles of nets, pouring out silver trails of fish while an entourage of women in saris rallied with plastic bowls.
Stella wished she could paint that, and more, that she could portray the movement and atmosphere, could capture the smiles and cries. To paint the talk and laughter, to get to the soul of that moment, to catch even the man texting on his phone and the eight year old girl in a pink frock dancing it seemed with her matching pink bowl, trying to gain access through the forest of legs to the smaller fish. To get all that down would require more genius than Stella could summon. And would the girl with the bowl sell them, Stella contemplated, was she an important breadwinner for the family?
The moment evolved, the players changed position as though choreographed haphazardly, until the participants drifted away and the image dissolved.
You had to get into a scene in order to paint it, to go right into the spirit of what you perceived, for it was transient, it changed, disappeared, so that all the artist was left with was astute memories.
She remembered reading that Chagall in his twenties worked memories of childhood and perhaps he was never released from portraying his visions through childhood imagery.
You had to have a photographic memory, Stella told herself, to be able to cite the important gestures life presented to you, as well as the ability to interpret and present those visions as your own. And yet this had eluded her all her life: she was just not good enough.
‘You try too hard,’ Lena let out a short laugh as she worked her brush.
Stella took a rag and began to smear out her figures. ‘You can never do that. I mean I keep trying, but I cannot get this bit right,’ she tutted. ‘The specks of people on the shoreline. Mine are stiff or flat meaningless blobs — completely lifeless.’ She drew breath. ‘Why does he do this to us?’
She stared ahead at a group of men swimming and calling to each other. It was Friday and in the late afternoon Bagolem beach would be populated with holiday makers from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangaluru and other flourishing cities. Goa was high on the list of families seeking to enjoy themselves. Children flipped in, shepherded by mothers in saris, soaked, but with joyful laughs. Men in shorts joined them, shouting and laughing. A small group of women in hijabs allowed the warm waves to sweep over their feet. There was no one in the world it seemed to Stella that did not enjoy a beach and the freedom of spirit it allowed.
She smiled for a moment, then turning back to her work, scowled at her inability to put any of that in paint. ‘Why does Arun do this to us?’
‘He doesn’t do it to us,’ Lena laughed back at her. ‘We do it to ourselves.’
Stella watched her half sister a moment: a tall woman with little flab for someone in her mid fifties, but with sturdy arms, long fingers, and a face still young looking, but with a touch of melancholy in the eyes. Lena’s father had been Jamaican, Stella’s dad and their shared mother, white. Compared to Stella’s ever expanding waist line, fat arms and double chin, all acquired over the twenty years leading to her late fifties, Lena appeared agile and lively, yet her expression now as she glanced at Stella betrayed a message of having lived highly but with the struggle of experience.
‘Do you reckon?’
‘It’s a painting holiday, what do you expect? He’s pushing us out of our comfort zone.’
Stella stared at her canvas again. ‘Is that so?’ Frustrated with her work she stood up for a moment and went to the edge of the veranda. ‘Don’t remind me.’ More swimmers were diving through waves with yelps and she watched a couple of young men approaching people to go on boat trips. Beachside restaurants were still serving late breakfasts. Waves beat a rhythm as they fell on flat sand.
Bagolem was a place Stella kept coming back to, calling it her bolt hole. Last year she had discovered Arun painting in a studio cum shop at the back of the main road. Befriending him, she got him to promise when she came back again to give her proper painting tuition. She liked him so much she said she would help him find galleries and set up a bigger studio then. It was easy to get him to agree to teach Lena as well and this their first private session led by him had gone well for Lena, at least. Stella had not reckoned it to be so hard though.
‘You’re not giving up? ’Lena loaded her brush with Cerulean Blue mixed with white, letting out a short laugh. ‘That’s not like you.’
Stella stared out to the horizon. ‘There’s things you can do, and things you can’t.’
Lena glanced up from her painting. ‘He’s a fit bloke, I’ll give him that.’
‘You keep your eyes off him and on your canvas.’
They finished at one and headed for the Pink City restaurant for lunch.
They swam in the afternoon and took Martinis in the shade.
In the evening they ate at the Rocking Globe under lines of lights coiled around the trunks of palm trees and up through their branches. The banyan tree with massive fronds that reached back down to the sandy earth was also draped with purple and red lights. For Stella it was a wonderland.
On stage beyond rows of filled dining tables a singer crooned a slow jazz number about a fickle man. Tall, in her thirties, wearing a red dress, she wove magic notes to her audience with unpretentious flare. A bass guitarist, drummer and guitarist accompanied her, their soft backing tones never overwhelming her voice.
Stella was reminded of Lena in her heyday up there belting out her own songs. She never had red dresses, it was sometimes ripped jeans, or leather, colourful head bands, scarves, sexy boots, or even tops she had made herself in vibrant colours. She sold her songs onstage, prancing for her audience, exciting them, drawing them on until they were lost in her music. One night when they were both still in their teens Lena’s singing was so intense Stella believed music actually had healing powers. She had watched people come alive, yelling, dancing, laughing — leaving all their problems in the dark while they awoke. She was older and more sceptical now.
She glanced over at Lena.
‘The moon is up.’ Lena nodded at the half shape hanging like an upturned sickle in the sky. ‘Magic in the evening. Purple dusk gives way to night’s deep canopy . . .’
‘You see,’ Stella smiled at her. ‘You’re a poet — no, a song writer—’
Lena’s sudden laughter faded quickly. ‘Nah.’ She sipped her gin and tonic and turned away from her.
‘You are — or at least you were — a song writer — and such a good one.’
‘No I wasn’t.’
‘It might have gone now, but—’
‘No,’ Lena snapped.
‘I was only saying—’
‘That world has gone—’
The singer was bringing her song to a close, allowing the mellow tones of her voice to fade with the bass line so that it sounded like she was slowly walking away into the forest or along the beach.
They sat in silence, sipping, Stella watching her half sister grapple with memories that now seemed to have lost their glow. Lena looked troubled and tired, remembering perhaps as Stella did now those times when she stood up on stage and felt the awe of being alive, of sharing what you have to give. Lena told her when they were teenagers that once you have tasted the life of being on stage, you always crave for it. Once a performer, always a performer. Once you have warmed to the stage it will always warm to you.
Stella sensed the agony and conflict Lena was feeling, the yearning to be up there and the struggle with the dark side of that addiction. Lena had told her the stage can bring you down too.
The spangles of silver moonlight sparkled on the waves beyond the brightness of the banyan tree.
2
Stella was up early the following day, dabbling with her painting. On the beach five men were launching a boat for a trip, the tourists standing in a disorderly queue as the sea tried to reach their feet.
