They climbed through the dense undergrowth, Ossirian leading. They hiked steadily upward for several hours. It had stormed the night before, and the heady scent of petrichor and green were almost visible in the humid air.
After their first night together, Ossirian and Carolyn hadn’t spent more than a few hours apart. She had classes to attend, and he was painting, roaming the city restlessly with his paints. They preferred to eat late at night in the cafés that lined the boulevard east of the university.
Saturday had come and he had asked if they might go for a hike in the hills above São Paulo. She had been delighted. She went out to purchase supplies for a picnic lunch and when she came back, he had packed his paints and brushes and stuffed five or six blank canvases in a sack. She shook her head, smiling.
“You’re never going to stop, are you?” she asked. Her skin tightened as she realized it was a statement of truth.
“Never,” he said. “It’s what I am.”
“I’ll try to understand that.”
“How can you not? Have you no passion of your own?” he asked.
She felt wounded by the words, but his face was open and innocent of malice, as usual. She thought about it. “Understanding art is my passion,” she said. “Learning about the processes and construction, the minds of the artists. I’m passionate about the process.”
He shrugged. “I don’t understand, but that’s okay. It’s not necessary for anyone to understand you.”
She grinned at him. “Good. I don’t understand you.”
“What about me puzzles you, Muse?”
“Why you’d want to go hiking through the forest on such a day as this instead of being smart and taking me back to bed.”
Ossirian gave her a serious look. “I need to paint. Besides, why do we need a bed?”
“So you do have priorities?” she asked, tingling.
“Of course. Right now I need to paint.”
She sighed. “Very well. Let us go.”
“Have you ever had sex in the jungle?” he asked as they left her room.
“Once, outside my village. It was my first time.”
Ossirian grinned. “Tell me about it.”
As they walked, she told him of the boy from her village that had convinced her to go exploring with him. “He didn’t have to try very hard,” she confessed. “I was intensely curious.”
“Curiosity is a powerful force,” he agreed. They started up the hill toward the edge of São Paulo. Behind them the city stretched into the distance and they could just see the Vecchi Forest Museum to their left, through the trees. They were close to the edge of the Cantariera state park border. Breathing hard as they ascended, Ossirian said, “Tell me about your village.”
He was looking at her over his shoulder, so he saw the light come into her eyes and the smile spread across her lips.
“I’m from Isidro Ayora,” she said, voice feather-light and happy. “From the Ayora canton in the Guyas province. My village is small, three or so thousand. My parents are teachers. They were originally from Guayaquil. My mother grew up on the bank of the Rio Guayaquil, my maternal grandfather was a councilman in Guayaquil. My father was a fisherman’s son who decided he wanted to marry this daughter of a councilman. The councilor decided that the fisherman’s son was not good enough a match… but he would be, if he had an education.”
They climbed higher. Ossirian turned back to look at her and froze. He held up a hand. “Stop. Stop!”
She froze, eyes darting to the forest floor. “What is it? Snake?”
“No,” he said, and dropped the sack of canvases. He tugged one out and plopped himself on the ground, indifferent to the sticks and rocks and the damp loam. He balanced the blank canvas on his legs as he tugged a palette and several tubes of paint from the sack. He squirted thin worms of oil paint onto the multi-hued board and hunted for a brush.
“Ossirian, what-”
“Hush!” he barked, and she quieted. He looked at her, looked through her, and his face changed. The look upon his face terrified her.
His eyes roamed over her face, over her body. The attention would normally have made her happy, pleased to be looked at, but his eyes contained nothing of what she had come to know as Ossirian. He seemed to look through her to her bones, to her atoms. He examined her in a way she had never experienced, seeing the mechanical parts of her body, the angles, the tendons, the meat of her. She shivered, disliking the cold, impersonal attention of the other side of him.
“Raise your left hand,” he murmured. “Take hold of the branch above.”
She reached up.
“No, no… extend. Stretch for it. Let it pull your breast upward,” he directed, eyes staring.
She reached higher on the branch, going to her tiptoes to grasp higher. She felt her body shift, one side lower than the other, and felt the muscle beneath her breast shift and bunch. She realized what he wanted, and she flung her right hand and arm behind, as though she had just jumped for the branch.
“Yes, yes!” he called. “Excellent! Now hold!”
As though galvanized from within by some unholy electrical current, his arm snapped up and found the paint by instinct, his eyes still on her. His brush dipped and loaded and descended upon the canvas like a vulture on a corpse.
His hand flew, without hesitation, without pause. It darted back to the palette again and again to reload its bristles. He stopped, jammed the end of the brush in his mouth, and grabbed up a second one without looking away from her. Again his hand swooped and curled, forcing shapes into the blank canvas. As his hand moved, his eyes seemed to fade a little in intensity, and he whispered, seemingly reluctant to break his own spell, “Continue, my Muse.”
She stared at him, realized what he meant, and searched for the thread of her narrative. She said, “My grandfather… he paid to send my father to University. Found him tutors to bring his education up to adequate level. While my father studied, my mother argued with grandfather as to the reason she too could not attend.”
She puffed air at a gnat that buzzed around her nose. She saw Ossirian’s lips quirk as his hand recorded his vision.
“My grandfather sent my mother to University as well- a separate university than my father, being neither a slow nor stupid man. In time, both my parents graduated with degrees in education. They were married a week after the graduation ceremonies. Two weeks later, my mother was pregnant with me. They lived in Guayaquil until I was two, and then decided to move to a smaller village to teach. They chose Isidro Ayora because it was where my great-grandmother had come from. And when I was seventeen my parents allowed me to apply to the University of São Paulo. I have half a year left of my degree in Art History.”
Ossirian painted, gazing at her body. “That is interesting, but it is not about your village.”
She frowned a little. “Oh.”
“Tell me about your village.”
She thought about it. “Isidro Ayora is beautiful,” she said dreamily, “just beautiful. The air is sweet, the quiet is peaceful, and the people are generous.”
He continued to paint.
“We lived in a small house on the edge of town, with our porch against the jungle. All manner of animals would come out from the brush day or night, unafraid. The rains… the rains would bring sheets of water falling heavily, and I would sit on the porch with a cup of drinking chocolate and watch the leaves moves and the trees sway, the breeze almost too hot to let the rain touch the ground. The air would be green after the rain, and the leaves, the grass, the houses, everything would look new and clean.” She sighed. “My mother taught the children until they were fourteen, my father until they were ready to go to University or to work. I was a good student because I had to be. Until University, I never took a class without one of my parents in the room with me.”
Ossirian chuckled as his hand darted between palette and canvas. “And your first lover?”
She blushed. “Oh- his name was Danilo. Danilo Silva. He was a year older than I. Many of the girls in the village were taken with him, but he wanted me. And so I went for a walk with him, we found a quiet spot, and he took what I offered.”
“Was he good?”
“I thought so at the time,” she said with another slight blush. His brush dipped into the red and mixed with white to create a shade of rose. The brush dove to the surface of the canvas and delicately suggested the hint of a blush on the cheek of his representation. “Time lends perspective.”
He nodded absently. “Turn your face up a little. No, toward the sun.”
She looked up and to her left.
“There. Stay still.”
She tried to do so as he painted, his eyes halfway between her and the canvas. His hand darted like a hummingbird, never lingering.
She breathed in the heady scent of the forest, replete with humid soil smells, green plants, and that peculiar, indescribable smell of sunlight on a warm and happy day.
“And what became of Mr. Silva?” he asked absently as he smudged a line with the edge of his thumb.
Her smile faded. “He was… he became very sick. Stomach cancer. He died.”
Ossirian looked up, his eyes finding hers. “I’m sorry, my Muse.”
“Thank you.”
He waited, but she added nothing more, and he didn’t press. He put the brush in his mouth and flipped the canvas around. “It’s a rough sketch,” he said through his teeth, “but what do you think? Does it move you?”
She caught her breath.
He had created a forest nymph, ethereal and translucent. A waif of a girl caught between two trees as she fled something indistinct behind her. Her cheek carried a faint scratch and a single, bright drop of blood. Her eyes were pools of deep azure and gold, the pupils so distinct and exact Carolyn felt the painting would blink at her. Caught as it was in the motion of darting between the two trunks of trees, she didn’t realize until she had examined the painting for several minutes that the nymph was naked, and that her skin faded from pink to darker brown to the same texture tree bark near the cup of her belly and below.
“Ossirian, it’s beautiful.”
He shrugged, uninterested. “That isn’t what I asked you. Does it move you?”
She glanced at him, frowning. She gave the question more consideration as she studied the painting. It is beautiful, surely, and it is skillful, she thought, but does it move me? Would it if it weren’t me?
She shook her head. “I admire it. It does not move me.”
Contrary to what she feared, he seemed pleased by her response. “It is but a sketch, but thank you.”
He set the painting against a tree and began to clean up. The tang and bite of turpentine tickled her nose as he cleaned the brushes and the palette. She stared down at the canvas. “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what, my Muse?”
“You don’t seem upset that it doesn’t… move me.”
“Why would I be upset?”
“You created it.”
“I solidified the vision I had, it’s true. I did what I could in the time allotted me. But whether it moves you has nothing to do with what I painted.”
She stared at him, bemused. “You don’t think artistry is a factor?”
He put his tools away and stood up. “I think that not everyone loves everything the same. Not everyone hates everything the same. Do you find all Renoirs moving?”
“Well… I like some more than others.”
“And Picasso?”
She shrugged. “Some of his work is intensely moving. Some is merely beautiful.”
“Da Vinci? Michelangelo? Degas? Rembrandt? Vermeer? Caravaggio? Silva? Kingman?”
She held up a hand. “You’ve made your point, Ossirian.”
“Just so,” he said, and finished packing. He stood. She noticed he was covered in damp soil and bits of bark and leaves, but did not brush it off. It struck her as odd. She realized he still wore the same clothing he’d been wearing when she’d met him. “Whether a master painter or a beginner, whether it sells for millions or is given away, if it moves, it moves. If it does not, well… you can appreciate it, but that’s not the same.”
He held out his hand and she took it. He turned to lead her further up the mountain. She resisted. “What about your painting?”
He’d left the canvas leaning against the tree. He didn’t even look at it. “Leave it.”
She picked it up. “But… I like it.”
“Then it is yours,” he said. “It is wet still, and not likely to dry in the humidity. I can’t put it in the bag.”
“I’ll carry it.”
“We all do,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Hm? Oh, nothing, nothing,” he said. He stared up the slope. “Shall we continue? I would like to see São Paulo from high overhead. I think that it will look like an ocean of people and buildings. Have you seen it thus? Does it move?”
She said, “I’ve seen it from the sky. I flew here from Ecuador. But I did not think it looked like an ocean.”
“What did you see, my Muse?” he asked, and his eyes were on hers, directly intent, listening with seemingly every part of himself. She found his gaze terrifying. As though he could see her thoughts. No, she corrected herself. As though my thoughts were blood, and he a mosquito. He wants to drink my thoughts.
“I found it to be a great bowl of humanity. It gave me hope.”
“For what?” he asked, eyes boring into her.
“Hope that I might find myself amongst the millions.”
He grinned at her. “We all seek in the world, hoping for that. To find who we are out there. To be joined. To merge who we are and who we want to be. Two halves, separated. Yearning for reunification.”
She blinked at him. “Yes… yes exactly!”
“I understand.”
He turned to lead her further upward, his hand still tight on hers. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “You describing your home… that moved me.”
They climbed higher. Ossirian, panting, said, “I think I see a clearing, my Muse. It should be not much further.”
She didn’t answer. The walk had taken her breath for speaking. She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, tugging her upward. And then they came to a tree line where the light was brighter on the other side.
They broke into a sloped, grassy clearing, a wide meadow carved into the jungle. Ossirian stopped, resting. Carolyn set the painting on the grass in the sun and leaned over, hands on her knees.
“At least… going back… is… downhill,” she panted. Her body felt submerged in a lukewarm bath, her clothing damp and clinging. She wiped her forehead as Ossirian looked around.
They were in someone’s tended yard.
He started up the rolling lawn, a gentler slope than they had just climbed. And as they came to the crest, a house revealed itself, nestled into the trees and brush further up the side of the mountain. It was a striking building, with interesting shapes and colors abounding. Ossirian became restive, his eyes roaming hungrily over the lines of the house. He turned to say something to Carolyn and she saw his eyes widen. His mouth dropped open, and he stared over her shoulder. Startled, she forgot the uncomfortable damp, the long climb, and her fatigue. She turned to see what he was gaping at.
São Paulo.
The great basin of the city spread out before of them, below them, seemingly at their feet. The piles of buildings and the vehicle-choked roads seemed to undulate and ebb in the heat, humidity, and distance. It looked to her like a sun mirage.
She heard him whisper something, turned, and saw his lips moving. He shrugged the bag off his shoulder and dropped it at his feet, squatting. He produced three blank canvases and set them side by side. He produced his palette and brushes and began sorting through tubes of paint.
“It moves,” he whispered. “It moves, and it moves.”
He squeezed worms of pigment onto the palette and dropped to his knees in front of the canvases. He arranged them longwise, creating a single long blank with which to work. She watched him paint for a moment before sitting down near him, cross-legged, and looking out over the valley below. His gaze roamed restlessly over the scene before them. She watched as his hands translated his vision into a beautiful rendition of São Paulo, but also of a gentle ocean, a bowl of water made up of buildings, people, and colors that she had seen and never seen in her beloved city. As she watched, awed, he created a tryptic that both encapsulated the city, showed the movement of the heat and the humidity and the altitude, and also evoked the longing and love of the sea, albeit a restlessly moving sea of humanity instead of ocean.
He had painted what she loved about São Paulo.
She had lived in the city for three years, and he a few short months, but he was able to convey what she’d always felt, always known in her heart was the fundamental truth of the city; that it moved, ever. That it flowed and ebbed and crashed over one, threatening to overwhelm, to pull down, to own for eternity your eternal soul within the crushing depths of its body.
He had been finished for some time, and watched her looking at the work he had produced. He reached out, startling her, to brush tears from her cheeks with a thumb.
She stared at him in awe.
“It moves you,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“It does,” she whispered. “Profoundly.”
He smiled at her, and looked like what he was for once: a curly-haired, mischievous seventeen-year-old boy whose cheeks were bare of even the downiest fuzz. But his eyes betrayed what lived in him. “Then it is a good sketch.”
She stammered. “A-a sketch? Ossirian, it’s gorgeous. It’s lively and moving and it- it moves! Sketch? It’s a masterpiece!”
He shook his head. “It’s adequate. It conveys my vision. It portrays my intent. That is the best it can offer.”
Her mouth worked silently, words refusing to tumble from her lips. Finally, she found her voice. “Dearest God,” she swore softly. “What will it look like when you paint a masterpiece?”
He did not laugh or even smile. The blood drained from his face and he whispered, “The end.”
Her skin chilled. “What do you mean?”
He said softly, “I sketch. I paint. I practice. And one day, God willing, I’ll be good enough to paint a masterpiece. That is, after all, the point. To bring something beautiful into the world that will transcend. That will outlive. That will pulse like a beacon across the ages. There are many good paintings, but I think one masterpiece is allowed to each artist. It should be the culmination of every breath, every movement, all of your practice, all your life. And if the day comes that I am able to create such a thing, I know that it will be the end. What point would there be, after all, of living a life in which you can never surpass your greatest moment?” he shrugged. “I will paint my masterpiece and then I will die.”
She stared at him, her skin cold as a stone. “You believe that?”
He nodded.
“How do you live with that?” she asked, not realizing she was going to.
“I paint,” he shrugged. “My Muse, you understand that to fulfil one’s destiny isn’t a tragedy. Everyone dies. Not everyone lives long enough. If the day comes when I paint my masterpiece, then I can die fulfilled of purpose.”
She took his hand. “Not now,” she said. “Not any time soon.”
His grin was joyous. “I’m certain not.” He gestured at his triptych. “This is moving, but it is not a masterpiece.”
She smiled at him. “It is moving,” she assured him.
He nodded, losing interest. He cleaned up his tools. She had noticed that, although his attention flittered like a butterfly, drawn to a new focus at seemingly every moment, he never failed to care for the equipment which gave his work life. “All life moves. If it stops, it’s no longer living.”
She leaned back. He finished cleaning up. He looked at her, and although they hadn’t known one another long, she recognized the feral lust in his gentle smile. His eyes became clouded, and she shivered at the animalistic look in them. “Would you make love with me now?” he asked.
She glanced around. “Here? Now?”
“Yes, here,” he said. “And of course now. There is only now.”
The house to which this long lawn belonged was almost hidden but the slope of hill. The trees hid them from all other eyes. She looked back at him. He had crept inches closer, and she could feel the heat coming from him as though he had begun to boil.
His lips closed on hers, and she had time to murmur, “Yes,” into his mouth before he was on her, his hands caressing, his tongue tasting. She reached for him and smiled against his mouth.