A Stroke of Red

A stroke of red, it felt like.

She gasped for air, but there was none to be had. No respite, not a moment to spare; there was no need for a break, oh no, she rather liked the pressure, the sheer pressure that pushed her to do more. So much more.

She writhed in her bed, the thumb he used to pull her lips apart not giving her the pleasure of letting the moan escape. A stroke of red, it felt like.

Her legs trembled, but her hands were steady, steadier. Steadier still, for there was so much to do, like clawing at his back in search for the much needed - and at the same time not at all wanted - breath. Oh, the wonders of love, the sheer vision of having one's eyes closed. When the thumb had receded far south, she was surprised that it wasn't a moan that came out from her mouth, but a short hearty laugh. He had heard it too, and his scratchy beard chuckled into her womb, now ever so serious.

There was so much to love, so much to paint pink rose. A stroke of red, it felt like.

***

8:00 AM, SUNDAY

In the heart of central Kolkata, there was a lavish modern structure. It wouldn't be taller than a story, and though the expanse of the land its fences covered - and covered well, with beautiful gardens of only white jasmines on either side of the white concrete path – the actual building, also white, was a small one. Square, and jutting out of the earth in symmetric precision, the structure represented goliath years of expertise and technicalities: this was the Nandan Memorial for Arts and Crafts.

The person who had the honor of calling herself the curator of this prestigious display could presently be found in her office, sleeping on her wide table at an awkward angle, whilst a black cat yawned gracefully under the desk. An array of paintings marched on the wall behind her – marched, because how else to describe the moving beauty of the room? A designer would feel inspired in the room Trina Chandan called her office, or, more recently, a substitute for her bedroom.

She opened her bleary eyes when the cat, all seven pounds of squirming flesh, climbed onto her belly. Squinting into the sunlight streaming in from the open window, she discovered that she was now the weary possessor of a pounding headache, and at some point, had managed to lose both a tooth and a spouse.

She supposed she could blame the empty glass and the long night for the headache she had. The tooth? Darn, she didn’t want to think about that, even as she felt for her molars using her tongue, quite groggily. Trina stroked the cat gently, and the animal looked at her with her striking green eyes.

“Not my fault, mausi, stop glaring. I didn’t ask you to leave the house with me, did I?”

Trina rummaged inside a drawer, found some cat food she had stashed earlier, and let Mausi have her treat. She then proceeded towards the main hall, where a painting adorned the wall; Paritosh Sen’s “Music lover” never looked better. All the lights focused on it and the painting almost looked like it would radiate – it certainly did so with Trina’s feelings.

Trina stood there looking at the masterpiece deep in thought.

***

11:35 AM, SATURDAY

“Hey, I’ll be going now. You two, behave.”

Trina admonished the two lazy animals watching TV. Her husband waved a hand in response, while the cat lying in his lap remained unresponsive, glued to the images in the dumb box. Muttering something incomprehensible under her breath, and no doubt offensive, Trina snatched the car keys and left.

Saturdays were important to Trina, for the gallery was open to public on weekends, and understandably her presence was consequential. Her usual regime involved driving her big European SUV to her favorite bistro in Park Street, where she would order her coffee, black, to go, and with no sugar. Next, she would be driving to Nandan, but this was the part that differed today – for today was different. Trina prepared herself for a long drive further north, to Clementine Cemetery.

The drive took her through various roads, wider painted ones and narrower, bumpier ones, albeit through the same ever-present scenery of creeping green trees that seemed to converge over you, casting a shadow blotched by patches of yellow sunlight. She was long ways off, but the time rushed on quietly as Trina reminisced of the deceased.

It would be an overstatement to say Trina was shocked when she received the news, only a day before. The phone call was an awkward one: the curator could only say so many words, and the elderly voice that answered her did so vaguely. The woman spoke of one Samantha White, and though Trina Chandan had never heard that name before, she quickly realized that the one who had passed away was none other than Ms. Red.

Had it been five years? Maybe more. Her pasty face, and dull colored hair was etched in Trina’s memory, for Ms. Red had been… Trina squinted now, for she had no answer. What had Ms. Red meant to her? She wanted to say ‘inspiration’, but that didn’t quite fit, like a fake key that just might open a lock if turned with enough force.

When Trina finally arrived and got off her car, the trees had thinned and the clearing was marked with desolate graves. The air was warm, nothing out of the ordinary for the month of April, merely a statement. There were more fallen leaves than there was soil to step on, and Trina’s approach was marked with that unmistakable crunch. Making her way to the only building in sight, the old looking Church, Trina was surprised to find only a few people. Far too few.

There was an elderly woman present, no doubt the lady Trina had talked to over the phone. She said nothing and approached the open casket slowly.

Ms. Red looked well rested and peaceful, something that Trina had never seen her appear as while she was still alive. She would never admit it, nor could she explain it, but looking down on her made Trina feel really inferior. A thought ran in her mind; Ms. Red’s paint had run out. What a shame. And yet, it felt right too. It was too long due.

“I hope you finally found your happiness, Red.” Trina whispered. The pigeons in the rafters overhead were louder.

Much later, Trina found herself seated in front of the statue of Christ, next to the elderly woman who had cried a river when the body was lowered. Now, she looked as respectful as ever, sitting regally with her back straight. Over the course of the hours spent here, Trina had learned she was Mrs. White, the mother of Samantha, or Ms. Red as Trina preferred to call her.

“You are Mrs. Chandan, aren’t you?” She said suddenly.

Trina nodded.

“Just Trina,” she replied belatedly, extending her hand.

“She mentioned you as a friend in her letter.” Mrs. White smiled good-naturedly.

Trina was slightly taken aback. A friend? She never would have thought she had left so much of an impression in Ms. Red. A polite way of saying this would be that Red wasn’t exactly the most reciprocating kind. The next bit, as it dawned on her, downright shook her.

“Letter?” Trina asked.

“Oh yes, isn’t that what people do? Leave a letter? More of a suicide note, really, but I don’t prefer the term.”

Trina was shocked – not with the suicide itself, but the fact that how acceptable it seemed to her in the case of Ms. Red. She couldn’t really reply to that, so she held the elder woman’s hand, and the latter smiled again in response.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Mrs. White continued.

“I haven’t been in touch with her for the past two years. I am sorry.” She truly was.

But Mrs. White waved her hand airily, as if to say no harm done.

“You have been more in touch with her than I. She ran away from home when she was twenty. Never heard from her since. Until, that is, now.” Her blue eyes, so like her daughter’s, turned distant.

“How did you two meet?” Mrs. White asked when she came back from her reverie. Trina scratched the back of her ear, an odd habit she had every time she was at a loss for words. It took her quite some time to come up with an answer, but when she started talking, words seemed to flow.

“How? Coincidence, really. I stepped down on platform 9 of the Howra station. I was a young art enthusiast at the time, so when I passed by a woman clutching what looked like a canvas to me, my eyes were naturally drawn to it. Your daughter was an amazing artist, I have never known someone with so much talent. She was sitting on the floor of the platform, like many others there. I guess … I guess she was homeless at the time? She certainly looked like she had slept there for some time. All she had was that canvas. I don’t know why I took an interest in her – maybe it was the painting, maybe it was so eye catching to see a foreigner living in the train station that demanded my attention. I certainly don’t want to say something as cheesy as ‘it was her eyes’, but honestly, it could have been. I don’t know.”

“What did you do then?”

“What? At the time, I simply asked her a few questions. She never answered a single one. In fact, she ignored me wholly. I would have left then, but I had had a closer look at the painting by then. And …”

Trina visibly had difficulty in speaking now, as if she was trying to quantify something abstract. She tried using her hands to convey the meaning, perhaps because English was after all an adopted language for her, or perhaps, because there simply weren’t any words.

“When I looked at that painting –“ she tried again, “ – I was taken into her world. It was such a beautiful piece of work. Like she had poured her life into a stroke of red.”

Quite a dull statement, it seemed to Trina. So she rushed on,

“I knew then, that Ms. Red – sorry, Samantha – would become one of the greatest painters of the modern era, just by looking at that one painting. I don’t know whether we have achieved that yet, time is such a fallible thing. But she surely was Great. She made many paintings over the years, but truly, that one had captured my imagination in ways the others never had. That stroke of red had been her greatest painting.

“I asked her name, she wouldn’t answer. I asked where she had come from, she wouldn’t answer. In the end I had to take her home with me. She complied. In the next three years, she made headlines with her paintings. She made some money out of it too, to boot, but she obviously didn’t care about the money. I honestly don’t know whether she understood what was happening to her at all. I mean, in the three years I knew her, she never uttered a single word. I took her to a psychiatrist, and all I could find out about her was that she had suffered a tremendous trauma and had developed severe catatonia.”

Trina was turning frantic now; somehow, the years of frustration trying to understand Ms. Red had never disappeared, even after the two years Ms. Red had. Trina had helped Ms. Red attain a measure of fame and fortune, and just when Trina had thought they were getting closer, Ms. Red had simply left. For a long time, Trina hated Ms. Red, loathed even, on the grounds of artistic aspirations, for the artist had disappeared with that painting she had seen in the railway station; there was no painting like that ever made, easily the greatest, according to Trina Chandan. But really, she couldn’t lie to herself – Trina hated Ms. Red because she had left her after all she had done for her.

“Why?” Trina’s frustration had never left, even when she had spent the last years forgetting it. This was the reason she had come to the funeral, she realized subconsciously. Tears formed themselves at the end of her slanted eyes.

“Why? I tried so hard to make her happy, and in the end she killed herself. Why? What could she have suffered that turned her so distant from life, from her own life? All she did was paint, she was an artist, but god, I swear, I would have burnt all her paintings. Let the world be damned, let art be damned, in exchange, all I wanted was a smile. So why?”

Mrs. White held Trina close in a tight hug, as the younger woman cried like she never had.

It was a long while later when Trina found herself saying farewell to Mrs. White, another person who had left an unexplainable impression on her. Just like her daughter had. It was a longer while still before she realized that Mrs. White had never answered her question in the end.

***

11:50 PM, SATURDAY

Trina was applying moisturizer to her skin in front of a full-sized mirror. She couldn’t quite get a hold on her emotions, even now. Mausi, the black cat, crept behind her somewhere, playing with her toy.

Why hadn’t Mrs. White told more about Ms. Red? No, really, why hadn’t she asked her more? Trina had blabbered on and on, but what she really should have done was ask questions of her own. Scratching the back of her ear, she heard a phone vibrate, and thinking it was hers, she picked up her husband’s phone.

Minutes felt like hours – the string of messages from this unknown “Tanya” had somehow stopped time for her. In the end, predictable, wasn’t it? How Trina had thought her life was going in the direction she had planned out on, imperfect, yet good enough. And it had all come down in pieces. The fight wouldn’t have ensued, but the burning feeling inside was too much, just too much.

She had thrown cutlery around – a tantrum, really, trying to drag out the inevitable. He had replied in kind, with words – “You are never around”, “your work is more important than me”, “I felt alone”. Despicable words, filthier than the mouth that uttered them, the mouth she had kissed. She had flung hurtful things back, but she had never expected him to resort to violence.

The slap had left one of her teeth loose, a taste of metallic blood in her mouth, and solidified the next course of action. Trina had left swiftly then.

***

9:00 AM, SUNDAY

Trina was sitting in her office still, but had nothing to do, or rather no will left to do anything anymore. She had inspected the gallery twice now, and cured the old paintings showing signs of wear. Oddly enough, she kept revisiting all the times they had had sex together. It was simply astounding how once she had thought those memories to be sacred, now she thought them to be vile. How many other women had there been?

Later when the public filtered in, she could see Tanya in everyone’s face. It revolted her to a point where she actually had to lock herself in her office. The tears had stopped quite some time back. She wondered when her emotions would follow suit.

Daytime drinking had never found a better reason, Trina fathomed, and sipping at her whiskey, she looked outside the full-length window. The white flowers looked back innocently, seemingly so full of purity. But everything had been a lie. Like her husband. Like Ms. Red.

She had fallen asleep again, in her seat which she had dragged in front of the window. Sleep was the only way to stop the thoughts racing through her head.

It was later still when she woke up. She had dreamt of Ms. Red. Was that strange, she asked herself. She was only about to pour herself another drink, when she heard a knock on the door. Hiding her glass, she let the employee in.

“A package for you”

After a quick look at the name on the package, a one “Samantha White”, she tore the package open as carefully as she could. Inside was the painting, “a stroke of red”. Nothing else, no letter, no words, nothing. Ms. Red had taken her catatonia with her to her grave. Frustration hit her again – did Ms. Red think that a painting could make her feel any better about her death? About her pending divorce? About all the words she had never said? About all the words her husband had said? But as she was about the hurl the canvas across the room, she stopped. Something caught her attention in the back of the painting. It was faded elegant cursive writing, something that went as such:

“For Andrew and For Love”

After a night of crying endlessly, an impossible thing happened: a single tear escaped. There was so much that Trina still did not understand. Who was Andrew? Had Ms. Red married him too? Had he cheated on her too? Is that what drove her to catatonia? Were there so many parallels between her and Ms. Red, really? Was such a thing possible? Maybe not, but she knew one thing for certain: there had been love.

Later, there were many who raised their eyebrows when the curator removed Paritosh Sen’s “Music Lover”, and put “A stroke of red” in its stead.

***