Rachel began to paint. But her
image of the mask would not be healed, she could not control
her hand. It seemed to automatically shatter, and the
fragmented face fell across the canvas under her rapid
brushwork. It was as if she had to relive the breakage before
she could repair the damage. This painting had to begin with
destruction.
Five hours passed. She
practically dropped her palette and brushes on the cluttered
old worktable, her arms felt so weak. Out in the opaque night
beyond the window an owl called with an eerie sense of timing:
it had summoned her back from another world, the world of
painting. She found the depth of her involvement disturbing
and retreated from the room without surveying her work.
The painting took over her
life. It demanded her attention every night and every weekend
for several months. When the summer holidays arrived she
could do nothing else. By then she had filled the three
canvasses and they seemed to tell different parts of the same
story. She felt they should be physically connected in some
way, but the solution to that problem did not emerge until the
painting actually stopped.
The privacy and isolation
offered by the studio was such a relief that, unexpectedly,
Rachel found herself weeping silently as soon as the door shut
behind her. She'd been suppressing the whole gamut of human
emotions for long enough to require an outlet, but she had
never been one to indulge herself and wallow in moments of
negative despair. Her reaction was always to launch into some
positive activity, even while the tears still flowed. The
first thing she did was bolt the door, the studio being the
only room in the cottage besides the bathroom to possess such
a thing.
She couldn't avoid the allure
of the painting - the room seemed to contain very little
else. The three large canvasses propped against the walls
enclosed her on three sides, the paint still wet and
glistening. She stood back and surveyed the image in silent
amazement, for although she could remember the act of actually
creating them, the images themselves seemed disturbingly
unfamiliar.
