From the Title Story... ENNUI...

ENNUI

By David Niall Wilson

Dedicated to Walter Sickert & Patricia Cornwell

The light in the dank room consisted only of moonlight filtered in through dust coated windows, and the flickering, unsteady flame of a tiny bull’s-eye lantern. It was the kind the bobbies carried on the streets, clipped to a belt or held high in the dripping, soup-thick fog. The lantern stood on the table just inside the window, facing the center of the room, its pale light playing over the face of a stretched canvas, propped on a wooden easel. There was a larger lamp in the corner, and there were candles, but only the bull’s-eye was lit.

The pale surface of the canvas glowed eerily in the half-light. Charcoal lines feather-scratched a room. A man, seated at a table. A woman, leaning behind the man on a sideboard, stared up at a cage of trapped birds. A portrait hung on the wall behind them both. A half-empty drink sat on the table, its pessimism inherent in the angles of liquid and captured light.

The artist stared at his sketch of the seated man and the bored woman. He held the top edge of the canvas in one hand and leaned the other, fisted, on his hip. His gaze broke through the shadows and applied color and form to the dark, charcoal lines. Brushes and a palette sat beside the lantern on the table, covered in mixed colors and a large splotch of bright crimson. He ignored them.

Beyond the window, away and above, the huge thirteen-ton bell called Big Ben chimed the hour. Eleven PM. The scrape of booted feet passed not far beneath the window and the man leaned back from the canvas and glanced down from the window. He could make out nothing through the fog but an occasional will-’o-the-wisp flicker of light.

Lifting his tiny bulls-eye lantern it by the tiny metal handle, he leaned in close to his canvas. He was nearly ready to paint, but had to be sure that the sketch was right. He played the weak light over the drawing’s surface, first illuminating the man’s figure, slouched in his chair, staring into a distance that was not, and never would be, depicted. The man’s hand had slid far away from a forgotten drink, and he seemed unaware of, or unconcerned with the woman behind him.

Next the light rode up the folds of the woman’s dress, the tresses of her hair, and stopped on her face. Chin tilted, she gazed at and through an ornate birdcage and through the wall beyond. The artist moved the lantern laterally across the canvas to the portrait, hanging on the wall behind both the man and the woman.

Another woman in evening dress gazed at right angles to the first woman, over the man’s shoulder and away. The lantern moved closer. The artist leaned closer. The sketch of the framed portrait became his focus, a sketch within a sketch. Beyond the woman’s shoulder, a black and white blur. Oval. The shape of a man’s face – tiny charcoal-dot eyes.

Again he dropped the lantern’s light to the man. Behind the seated figure was his shadow, and yet, the shadow was a creature unto itself. Dark cloak. Rimmed hat. Its hand curled talon-like and disappeared into folds of the man’s shadow – for that’s all it was. The lantern flickered, and the artist turned it carefully. The bull’s-eye only illuminated when the angle was right.

The painting had a name, and he breathed it into the heavy, silent darkness, knowing there was none to hear it. He stared into the shadow behind the seated man, and the eyes lurking beyond the shoulder of the woman in the portrait. His breath grew rapid; his chest pounded. He clutched the edge of the table to steady himself, but he did not look away. The one face in the painting that stared straight ahead glared at him.

“Ennui,” he whispered.

The painting laughed.

The artist turned away. He stopped by the door, grabbed a coat from its hook and slid it on. Uniform blue. He squared his shoulders and flipped a hat from a second hook, tilting it rakishly over his brow. Artist as actor, his movements changed. He swung the door open and slipped out into the moonlight. The artist gone, the soldier – a private with a bright white band about his hat, disappeared into the gloom.

* * *

At a stone window where the light was sliced to ribbons by dark, iron bars, a woman stood. She was short. Her hair appeared dark, but in that light all hair was dark, or white. There was no lamp. A candle burned behind a glass shade atop a wooden secretary in one corner. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn to either side of the window.

The sound of a key grating in the door caught her attention, and she turned. She did not leave the window. She did not smile. Sharp, thin features, dark staring eyes and a mouth with lips pursed in an expression somewhere between expectation and disgust. The door made no sound as it slid open. It happened very quickly. The portal slid wide, he slipped inside, and it closed. She regarded him with a steady, emotionless gaze barely concealing the desperation of her need.

He leaned against the door, a large object held tightly in his arms. It was swathed in dark cloth to hide it from her sight. It rustled. She watched as he set it aside, placing it carefully on the seat of a carved mahogany chair. He approached slowly. She saw the stiffening in his back, the clenched muscles at his throat. She tasted the fear dripping with the sweat down the back of his neck. But he came.

“My darling,” he said. His words were formal, too little emotion and too much forethought.
“Hello, Antoine,” she replied.

He met her gaze. “I have been working,” he said. “You know this. You must have felt it.”

She turned away with a shiver. The window beckoned and she glanced out over the streets beyond.

“They celebrate,” she whispered. “There is wine, and song, music and laughter.”

Turning back, she took a step toward him. “Antoine I want to be there. I want to feel life swirling around me, and through me. I want to be free.”

Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes, but he did not release them. Ignoring her plea, he spoke.
“I have brought you a present,” he said softly.

She glanced at the parcel, intrigued. Something new. Something she had not seen a thousand thousand times, memorized bit-by-bit and banished from her mind out of sheer boredom.

“I dream every night,” he told her, voice low and confidential, though there were none to hear. “I dream of you alone, at the window - beneath the covers and naked, reading. In all my dreams, you are alone. I am alone. I have brought you a present to try . . .”

“To make amends?” She laughed. Her voice was musical and deep, and the laughter rose to carom from wall to wall and off the domed ceiling. “If that is your wish,” she said, gaze hardening in an instant, laughter dead, “then release me. One way or the other, release me. Then I shall consider us without debt, one to the other, and not before.”

He turned and hid his face in the motion. He strode to the chair and drew back the dark cloth, revealing what lay beyond.

It was an ornate birdcage. Within, twin birds, brightly plumed and perched together on a dowel of wood stared outward. Their heads twitched nervously from side to side. Antoine lifted the cage by the ring on the very peak and carried it toward the dresser, where her single candle flickered. As he approached, the flame danced.

She watched, but she did not move. She sensed the birds, felt the delicate rhythms of life pulsing within them. Stepping closer, she leaned in to watch as the first preened, cleaning unseen residue from between bright green feathers.

“They are beautiful, are they not?” Antoine asked. The question was so full of hope, so pathetically needy, that she nearly laughed.

“Delightful,” she replied after a pause sufficient to bring fresh sweat to his brow. She tasted it in the air between them. She felt his blood, pulsing, and her thoughts began to lose themselves in that pounding rush. It roared, surf against yielding sand, drawing sanity further and further into its undertow. Her hands dropped to the edge of the dresser and she gripped. When she heard him backing away, she remembered herself.

“You will tear the wood,” he said softly.

She did not reply.

He stepped closer, drawing the nail of one finger up the side of her throat. Twin white scars marred the soft, smooth perfection of her skin. He circled each slowly. Presenting himself. Showing her that he did not fear her – or – that if he feared her that fear did not rule him.

He started to speak again, but sudden sounds from the street below erupted. Sirens. Men crying out to other men. She moved to the window, head tilted to one side like an animal. Blood. There was blood in the air and…

She whirled. The scent was not just in the air beyond the window. There was more. There was – his back, slipping through the crack of the doorway and the slab of iron gliding soundlessly back into place.