CHAPTER EIGHT
Or-lagh Cam-ran’s of-fice was hung with more art than I had ever seen in my life. And I’d been to the Lou-vre.
At some point the walls had been oak-pan-eled, but there was barely a square inch vis-i-ble. The ef-fect was a dis-ori-ent-ing mo-saic of faces star-ing down at me as I walked into the echo-ing room. Ev-ery paint-ing was a por-trait, in ev-ery ma-jor ar-tis-tic style from the last thou-sand years. Rem-brandt warred for space against Van Gogh, Pi-casso bat-tled against Kahlo, Raphael and Géri-cault and Da Vinci hung in clash-ing gold and sil-ver frames. Most of them looked like prints, but sev-eral could fairly con-vinc-in-gly be orig-i-nals, given Or-lagh’s enor-mous wealth.
Or-lagh was seated be-hind an enor-mous desk topped with vases of dark red roses. Glossy auburn hair fell to her breast-bone, and a del-i-cate golden tiara perched on her crown. She wore an em-pire-waist Aes-thetic dress in deep navy and emer-ald green, folds of rich silk and sheer over-lays skim-ming her am-ple curves. She must have been at least sixty or sev-enty years old, but the rounds of her cheeks shone pink and smooth, her com-plex-ion glow-ing from within. A stranger might think her thirty, at most. Her sur-geon must be in-cred-i-bly gifted. Not even her hands were wrin-kled with age.
At the sight of her my stom-ach flipped, but not in the anx-ious roil of the past week—it was a flut-tery starstruck feel-ing I had thought my-self im-mune to, given my mother’s count-less fa-mous friends. This woman was a liv-ing leg-end. She was ev-ery-thing I as-pired to be—wildly suc-cess-ful and tal-ented be-yond mea-sure, yes, but also beloved as a kind of na-tional trea-sure, wrapped in a blan-ket of ado-ra-tion that would al-ways keep her warm.
“Penny,” she said, her voice re-mark-ably smooth and lus-trous con-sid-er-ing her pur-ported throat can-cer.
In front of the desk were two chester-field so-fas brack-et-ing a low cof-fee ta-ble, which was strewn with news-pa-pers in sev-eral lan-guages—in-clud-ing Rus-sian and Ara-bic. She ges-tured for me to take a seat, and swanned over to perch on the sofa op-po-site, her gown glid-ing along the rich Per-sian rug. As she moved, all the hun-dreds of por-trait eyes seemed to fol-low her at once. There was an al-most re-li-gious rev-er-ence to their gaze—though it was per-fectly pos-si-ble I was just imag-in-ing things.
They were, af-ter all, only paint-ings.
She stud-ied me in-tently. “It is true what they say about you. A rare beauty, in-deed.”
My mouth went to say thank you, but for some rea-son the words stayed lodged in my throat.
Or-lagh tilted her head to one side. Her eyes shone green as clover, shot through with hazel and sage.
“You think it a curse,” she said silk-ily. “The ugly have an eas-ier ride of it, no?” She laughed, gen-tle yet bit-ten with some-thing darker. “They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. But we, Penny—we are the play-ers. It is what we were fated to be. And while we shall suf-fer for what the gods have given us, we will also pros-per. If we so choose, of course.”
There was an old-fash-ioned ca-dence to her speech, as though she had been born a cen-tury too late. Per-haps it was a side ef-fect of liv-ing and breath-ing Shake-speare for so long.
I shifted on the sofa, un-com-fort-able un-der her sear-ing stare. “My mum al-ways says that beauty opens doors for us that re-main closed to most peo-ple.”
Or-lagh showed no glim-mer of recog-ni-tion at the men-tion of my mother, de-spite Mum’s omi-nous warn-ings. “It is true, yes, but it can also lock cer-tain oth-ers.” Her gaze roved over my body, and her eyes nar-rowed. “Tell me, child. If you so re-sent your beauty, why do you in-flict such ag-o-nies on your-self in or-der to main-tain it?”
I felt a flicker of ap-pre-hen-sion. How had she honed in on that so quickly? “I don’t know what you mean.”
She leaned back in the sofa, smooth-ing her skirts with an el-e-gant hand. “I have a rare abil-ity to sense star-va-tion. It’s not just the frankly ran-cid breath. There is a ra-bid-ness to the gaze, a lack of sub-stance to the pos-ture, a weak-ness to the thoughts. And in you these qual-i-ties are sorely man-i-fest.”
Ouch.
“A weak-ness to the thoughts?” I all but stut-tered.
“I do not mean to of-fend, my dear,” she said, but her tone was plain and un-apolo-getic. “Tell me, is act-ing your true pas-sion? Is ac-claim in this arena the thing you de-sire most in the world?”
I nod-ded, but mostly be-cause I thought it was the cor-rect an-swer. The real one was far more com-pli-cated.
“Un-less you can con-quer this de-struc-tive be-hav-ior, I fear your de-sire may be left un-sated. For if you must in-sist upon shrink-ing your-self, how do you pro-pose to com-mand a stage? If you can-not hone and sharpen your thoughts, how will you ever mas-ter Shake-speare? If you know not who you are, how can you truly em-body an-other char-ac-ter?”
Her words wounded me, be-cause I knew she was right.
I looked out of the enor-mous win-dows, past crim-son tus-sore-silk cur-tains to the rolling Great Lawn. A clus-ter of stu-dents lounged by the lake, sip-ping cider from bot-tles, laugh-ing and rolling over each other. Their care-less joy was alien to me. I was too earnest, too se-ri-ous, too painfully self-aware. Would I ever feel like that? So … free?
Or-lagh folded one leg over the other. “You know, I of-ten think about how much more preva-lent such sick-nesses have be-come in the last half a cen-tury. My con-clu-sion is usu-ally that mass pho-tog-ra-phy is to blame.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, his-tor-i-cally we had sig-nif-i-cantly more con-trol over the ways in which we were im-mor-tal-ized. One might sit for a por-trait once a decade, if one was par-tic-u-larly af-flu-ent, and the work-ing classes never had to worry about such triv-i-al-i-ties be-cause they were sim-ply in-ac-ces-si-ble to them. And so as long as one was com-fort-able mov-ing about one’s daily life, and one could af-ford cloth-ing of de-cent qual-ity and soap with which to wash one-self, com-par-a-tively lit-tle thought was given to one’s ap-pear-ance or shape. There have al-ways been beauty ideals, of course, but not so rig-or-ously doc-u-mented or up-held—es-pe-cially among the lower ech-e-lons.
“Yet nowa-days there’s so much pho-tog-ra-phy that there ex-ist hun-dreds if not thou-sands of pho-tos of ev-ery sin-gle one of us. For me, it is likely mil-li-ons. Sta-tis-ti-cally speak-ing, not all can be flat-ter-ing, so we must sit with the dis-com-fit-ing knowl-edge that this ‘ugly’ im-age of us will ex-ist, in some sense, for-ever.” She shook her head. “It is nei-ther nor-mal nor nat-u-ral to be so aware of our ev-ery un-for-tu-nate an-gle, our ev-ery per-ceived flaw. And it is nei-ther nor-mal nor nat-u-ral for us to be so fre-quently im-mor-tal-ized. It car-ries with it a cer-tain anx-i-ety.”
Ev-ery sin-gle word chimed true as a tun-ing fork. I was ut-terly en-rap-tured by Or-lagh, by her elo-quence and in-tel-lect, her clar-ity of wis-dom. I had a new ap-pre-ci-a-tion for the in-sult she’d lev-eled at me: weak-ness of thought. It was hor-ri-bly, help-lessly true.
I didn’t want to be like this. I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be able to pol-ish my thoughts into rare jew-els, to cap-ti-vate with my mind, not just my body. Be-ing in her pres-ence made me want to swell, not shrink.
“So how do we stop fix-at-ing on it?” I asked. “Cam-eras aren’t go-ing any-where.”
She pat-ted a vin-tage black ana-log phone on her desk. The hand-set was a faded gold. “Well, I don’t have one of those ghastly smart-phones for one thing. This was all we ever needed as a species.” She shrugged, the lux-u-ri-ous folds of her dress shim-mer-ing and flow-ing as she shifted. “Plus, you would do well to re-mem-ber that ev-ery-one look-ing at said im-ages will be dead in a hun-dred years.”
And then she started to laugh. Big, bold, lav-ish laugh-ter, so roomy and pala-tial that I felt I could roam around in-side it like a bell tower. I couldn’t help but smile, al-though it lacked the same zeal.
“Sorry to take up our men-tor-ing ses-sion with this,” I said fi-nally, once the rau-cous laugh-ter had bub-bled away. “I know we should be talk-ing about act-ing.”
“Non-sense.” Her eyes were dewy with mirth. “It is all part and par-cel. This ail-ment is, as it stands, the great-est bar-rier your act-ing faces. If I can help you over-come it, I will have per-formed my role as men-tor quite nicely.”
A pair of post-box-red drag-on-flies danced past the win-dow, flut-ter-ing and chas-ing.
“I guess … I don’t know who I am with-out my beauty,” I said fi-nally.
Or-lagh was right. My thoughts were weak, shal-low. The most dom-i-nant im-age in my mind was the bare scalp at the back of my head. I’d ex-am-ined it ear-lier—it was as small and round as a ten-pence piece, but it felt so much larger. And as I’d coaxed the hair into a sim-ple pony-tail, an-other lock had shaken it-self loose. I felt frozen by the fear of it—by how quickly it was hap-pen-ing. How soon would I be bald?
Or-lagh raised a per-fectly hooked brow. “Tell me, are you afraid to be fat?”
I thought of Catalina and her rolling curves, of the Raphaelite fig-ure be-fore me, and felt im-me-di-ately guilty. I hadn’t meant to equate thin-ness and beauty. “No. I’m not fat-pho-bic. At least, I don’t think I am.”
It was both true and un-true, in a way I couldn’t quite un-pack.
She shrugged. “Who could blame you if you were? Thin-ness is very much the in-grained West-ern beauty stan-dard—for a plethora of rea-sons I won’t bore you with—and hu-mans are bi-o-log-i-cally hard-wired to want to be at-trac-tive. So that we might find a mate, of course, and per-pet-u-ate the species. No mat-ter how in-tel-lec-tu-ally and so-cially so-phis-ti-cated we be-come, we are still an-i-mals. And so we must com-pete for sex.”
“I don’t think find-ing a mate would help me per-pet-u-ate the species.” I laughed. “I’m ex-tremely gay. And hon-es-tly, I don’t think big-ger bod-ies are unattrac-tive. They’re beau-ti-ful.”
She nod-ded, as though this were what she sus-pected all along. “And so your self-star-va-tion is about con-trol. You can-not con-trol much, but you can con-trol your body. And so you do. Ruth-lessly.”
A strange sense of vul-ner-a-bil-ity washed over me. Or-lagh had torched through the tan-gled un-der-growth, straight to the root of my pain. It left me feel-ing raw and ex-posed.
This leg-end in front of me—an icon who had en-rap-tured mil-li-ons—seemed gen-uinely in-vested in my petty prob-lems. Cou-pled with Catalina’s con-cern, I felt cared for in a way I never had been be-fore. And yet I couldn’t un-der-stand it. Why would they want to help me when they had noth-ing to gain from it? Why did they care about the self-in-flicted star-va-tion of a rel-a-tive stranger?
“I do want to over-come it,” I whis-pered. “I don’t want to live like this.”
For sev-eral mo-ments, Or-lagh stared up at the crys-tal chan-de-lier hang-ing from an or-nate ceil-ing rose. She looked deep in con-tem-pla-tion, as though mak-ing a dif-fi-cult de-ci-sion.
Even-tu-ally she mur-mured, “What if there was a way to free you of these par-tic-u-lar shack-les? To let go of the need to ob-sess over your ap-pear-ance?”
“I’ve tried ther-apy,” I said. It was a lie—my mother was far too para-noid to al-low a stranger to un-pack our most sin-is-ter se-crets—but I could not face a lec-ture from Or-lagh about get-ting help.
An-other tense beat.
“What do you know about the por-traits of Do-rian?” she asked.
I frowned, search-ing my mind for a clear an-swer but land-ing on none in par-tic-u-lar. “There are a lot of ru-mors.”
“Many of them balder-dash, in truth. The por-traits can-not pre-dict for-tunes, or change the past, or be-witch their be-hold-ers into sui-cide. But cer-tain oth-ers…”
Or-lagh smiled a pe-cu-liar smile, and I stilled, frozen by the in-ex-pli-ca-ble sense that some-thing fun-da-men-tal was about to shift. She had the air of a for-est witch lur-ing me to her lair.
“There is one tale in par-tic-u-lar that has its roots in truth,” she mur-mured. “You may have heard it, but I shall share it with you as if it is brand-new.”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath, then be-gan talk-ing on the ex-hale. “Be-neath the cam-pus lies an un-der-ground gallery con-tain-ing a few dozen por-traits, painted by an enig-matic hand. Those por-traits—of Do-rian alumni, mostly, many of whom you might rec-og-nize as some of the most fa-mous faces in the world—are said to age on be-half of their sub-ject. To grow old and wrin-kled and skin-tagged while their liv-ing sub-jects re-main young and un-blem-ished. Pure mythol-ogy, of course.” Her eyes shone bright as emer-alds. “Or so most peo-ple think.”
“But it’s true?” I asked, feel-ing my re-spect for the woman wane slightly. My mind was too log-i-cal, too hard-edged and sci-en-tific, to buy into fan-tasy and fa-ble.
And yet … she re-ally did look thirty years old.
When I ex-am-ined her closely, it was the hands that gave me pause. She wore a gold cameo ring with an apri-cot-col-ored back-ground and a creamy fe-male pro-file, with a neat brown freckle on the fin-ger right above it. The skin was still smooth and peach-tinted, the whites of her nails like im-mac-u-late cres-cent moons. Hands were al-most im-pos-si-ble to make youth-ful by knife alone.
Per-haps it was not surgery that pre-served her beauty so per-fectly.
“The Masked Painter,” Or-lagh con-tin-ued ar-dently, “as he is known to those who en-counter his mys-te-ri-ous pow-ers, can cap-ture a per-son with such pure light and shade that the paint-ing gains an al-most sen-tience. The paint it-self is blended with blood and bone, al-most as an an-chor-ing. And the sub-jects, in the real world, are pre-served ex-actly as they were the day the paint-ing was com-pleted. Un-less marred by some bru-tal ex-ter-nal force, their bod-ies will never change. They may cheat even death.”
A shiver ran down my spine.
Be-cause I had just re-mem-bered my mother’s warn-ing.
Be care-ful.
Had she had this same con-ver-sa-tion with Or-lagh two decades ear-lier?
More im-por-tantly, what had come of it?
I thought of my mother’s im-pos-si-bly youth-ful glow, de-spite years of ad-dic-tion and de-pres-sion. I thought of the way she ate and ate like a wild an-i-mal and never gained an ounce. I thought of the tiny tu-mor doc-tors had found on her brain when I was a small child, and the mirac-u-lous way it had never grown or pro-gressed.
And I won-dered.
“Why are you telling me this?” I whis-pered, chest tight with fear—and, worst of all, an ugly kind of hope.
Or-lagh ran a fin-ger over the brass studs on the arm of the chester-field. “You may have no-ticed that I bear a cer-tain youth-ful-ness de-spite my rapidly ac-cu-mu-lat-ing decades.” A sub-tle shift in her shoul-ders, as though she were slightly ashamed of the rev-e-la-tion. “I can-not tell you the free-dom this paint-ing has gifted to me through-out my ca-reer. To be un-shack-led by the de-mands of main-tain-ing beauty—the in-jec-tions and the peels and the di-ets suf-fered by my peers—and fo-cus solely on my art.”
My heart gal-loped in my chest, like a race-horse pound-ing to-ward some im-per-cep-ti-ble fin-ish line.
“Do I feel guilt for the de-ci-sions I have made?” she mused aloud. “Some-times, I’ll ad-mit. The pa-tri-archy has long de-mo-nized the ag-ing process in women. By ty-ing our worth to our beauty and our beauty to our youth, they en-sure even the most pow-er-ful women will one day lose that sta-tus. And so should I have de-voted my life to shat-ter-ing such op-pres-sive so-cial struc-tures, in-stead of de-fy-ing them? Per-haps. But mar-tyr-dom just seems so tire-some. Why choose pain when one can choose plea-sure?”
“Why are you telling me this?” I re-peated, only this time there was a note of plead-ing in the words.
Or-lagh rested her thumb on her lower lip. “The Masked Painter has been re-tired for some time—his own por-trait ages grace-fully in some dark at-tic some-where. But he is an old friend of mine. I’m sure he could be con-vinced to wield his paint-brush once more. If you so de-sired, of course.”
There. The axis tilt my flut-ter-ing pulse had some-how an-tic-i-pated.
I had never bought into any-thing that could not be proven by sci-ence. I was as athe-ist as they came, and as cyn-i-cal as a can-tan-ker-ous old man. I scoffed at talk of as-trol-ogy and man-i-fes-ta-tion, of star signs and tarot decks. My brain was a chess-board, not a book of fairy tales.
But this?
Maybe I just wanted to be-lieve so badly that I would sus-pend all logic and rea-son-ing.
When I spoke, it was al-most a croak. “My body would stay as it is now … for-ever? With-out even try-ing?”
“In-deed.”
My heart bucked with long-ing. I could eat. I could eat and eat and eat, hearty stews and cheesy chips and toasties with soup, choco-late chip cook-ies and ice cream and pan-cakes drip-ping in syrup. I could main-tain my most im-por-tant cur-rency ef-fort-lessly, as my mother did, as Or-lagh did. I could stop starv-ing, stop feel-ing like a brain hurl-ing it-self at the bars of its body, and open my-self up to the world around me.
I could stop suf-fer-ing at the al-tar of beauty and just be beau-ti-ful.
“And hy-po-thet-i-cally … say my hair was fall-ing out.” I swal-lowed hard. “That would stop?”
Or-lagh peered at me search-in-gly, but did not pry. “It would. But it would also not re-grow.”
A thought struck me. “They say you have throat can-cer.”
She bowed her head. “A ruse. Too long in the spot-light was be-gin-ning to at-tract ques-tions about my lack of ag-ing.”
Barely breath-ing, I asked, “You would help me do this too? Ask the Masked Painter to paint me?”
“If it is some-thing that might ease the bur-den for you.” Her ex-pres-sion was strange—as though she were al-ready re-gret-ting shar-ing this with me but could see how much it meant. “I can-not say it would rid you of the de-sire to self-flag-el-late, but it may of-fer some level of peace. I ad-vise you to go away and think about it, for a stretch, and—”
“I don’t need to think about it,” I said quickly. “I want to do it.”
Or-lagh pursed her lips. “There will be pain in-volved. Droplets of blood. A scrap-ing of bone.”
At this I wa-vered, but only for a few sec-onds. I was al-ready in pain. At least this would be tem-po-rary.
“I don’t care.”
A long, pen-e-tra-tive si-lence. And then, “Very well. I shall make the nec-es-sary ar-range-ments.”
I was so im-pa-tient to make this bar-gain that I for-got to ask the most im-por-tant ques-tion of all: But at what cost?