Paris Exposition Universelle, May 1, 1900
Paris Exposition Universelle,
Milomir wanders the fair, aimless, directionless, hopeless. He came to Paris delirious with dreams, ravenous to fill himself with art and design and splendor. To be part of that. To be someone who helped make the world more beautiful.
He was an artist, when he arrived. And now the world holds no more color for him.
He sits on a bench near the Palace of Electricity, unsure how he got there, uncaring.
Since his accident—he shudders, remembering the feel of the hammer in his left hand, remembering the way he watched his fingers splayed out on the table as he brought the hammer down over and over again until his flesh looked like a bloody bag of meat splitting at the seams—he can’t seem to care about anything.
Everything he’s created up until now is all he’ll ever create. He came here for a new beginning and instead found the end.
“Excuse me,” a young woman says. She’s lovely, with olive skin and green eyes he’d very much have liked to try to capture, before. “May I sit with you?”
Milomir shrugs. It doesn’t matter.
“What happened to your hand?” she asks.
Blood is seeping through his bandages. The doctors warned him he’ll probably need amputation, but he begged them to spare his fingers out of delusional hope that they might heal enough for him to work.
He wishes he had used a cleaver instead of a hammer. The hope seems the cruelest, most painful part of all. He destroyed himself, but left just a glimmer of possibility that he might one day create again.
“I smashed it with a hammer,” he says, aware how thick his accent is. He usually tries to smooth it so the French won’t look down on him, but he no longer has the capacity to care. Besides, she has a heaviness to her French that makes it clear she’s not from here, either.
“Why?”
He drags his eyes away from his ruination and studies her. She doesn’t look pitying or horrified. She looks curious. It’s the first time he’s gotten that reaction, and so it’s the first time he answers honestly.
“I was painting the menu art and the wall murals at the Belgian pavilion. Everything was going well. I was floating on inspiration, meeting other artists, drunk on the flowing lines and beauty of our new style. And then—then I was painting something new. Something strange.”
“For the Belgian pavilion?” she prods.
He shakes his head. “No. I can’t—I can’t remember what I was painting. Only that it felt as urgent and important as anything I’d ever done. And then I was finished. She was beautiful. She was perfect. She was horrible. I didn’t want to look at her anymore. And my patron—”
“Someone hired you?”
Milomir frowns. “All I know is a voice told me I would never make something more perfect, and I needed to prevent myself from attempting to. It would only hurt me, trying to improve upon what I’d done.
So I did this.” He holds up the mess that once channeled his dreams and now barely feels like part of his body.
“What was the painting you did? The last one?” she asks.
Milomir shrugs. “I don’t know. I tried to find it, later. I was terrified I’d ruined it with blood. But it was gone. I’m finished. This fair has cost me everything.”
“Perhaps, with time, you could learn to use the other hand,” she says, and at last she sounds pitying. He hates her for it.
He stands and leans close, too close, wanting her to stop pitying him. Wanting her to be afraid, because he’s been so afraid, ever since. “If I could do this to myself without knowing why, what else am I capable of?”
She doesn’t flinch. She nods in understanding.
“That’s an excellent point. You said you did the menus and murals at the Belgian pavilion?
Let’s go look at them. You can tell me what else you’ve worked on.
” She takes his elbow as though he hadn’t just threatened her.
For the first time since he ruined himself, he wonders if maybe things could be good again, eventually.
His hand throbs as evidence that they can’t, though. And that voice, planted somewhere deep inside, that seems like it could start whispering to him again at any moment…what else might it tell him to do?