It was two days later when the front desk informed Jésus that his painting had arrived. He hurried down as fast as the elevator would allow, hoping to catch the delivery men before they left, but they’d long since vanished by the time he got there. Worse, the concierge working the reception was one he particularly disliked: a lanky middle-aged man who talked to himself and always claimed problems had been taken care of when they clearly hadn’t been. Jésus had deliberately made the decision not to learn the man’s name, and always studiously avoided glancing at his name tag. He considered it a personal favour to the concierge that he had made no active efforts to have him fired. Still, despite his other failings the man was probably strong enough to carry the painting up to the apartment, though the thought of him touching it made Jésus ever so slightly uncomfortable. The concierge sighed at the request and called to the little room behind him for someone to watch the front desk, eliciting a snort from the art dealer over the pointless delay. He had a dinner reservation at Le Gavroche at seven, and he intended to work up quite an appetite finding his new prize a place to live.
Despite the irritations of transporting it, the painting was soon sitting comfortably in Jésus’ apartment, waiting to properly see the space it was to own. He dismissed the concierge with a palpable sense of relief and removed the covering. It was everything he remembered and more: that familiar riot of colours, the lines arcing through and around themselves, spiralling in patterns his eyes simply refused to follow. And there, after a few moments of watching, the woman again, her eyes still focused on him and her mouth still set in that unreadable line. He sighed in appreciation and relief. He had been right, after all: it was beautiful.
Jésus began to search for a position on his walls that did it justice. The hallway was too immediate, it would overpower everything else on display. The living room wasn’t right either, as all the walls big enough to hold it were at entirely the wrong angle. It would be too distracting in the bedroom as, even though he rarely showed it to visitors, on those occasions he did bring men back, there was a very specific mood he was interested in setting. That left the study, the smallest room in the apartment, though it was by no means modest. Compared to his sleek modern living room he kept the study almost parodically traditional, with a darkly stained oak desk and shelves of books he’d had custom-bound to fit the tone. It was where he situated his more traditional pieces.
One of his visitors had once asked him how he could be so calculated about his own home, and Jésus had been slightly taken aback. He’d never really considered the question, but on reflection he decided that perhaps he didn’t consider anywhere truly a home. It was all simply space to be refined, to be turned into something of value. There was nothing valuable about simply living in a place. Any animal can do that. And perhaps if people didn’t understand that they didn’t deserve to have it. He didn’t say any of this out loud, of course, it wasn’t the man’s business. But the question stayed with him. It had nothing to do with home, not really. This space was his because he could realise its true potential, and that ownership, that curation, was a lifelong project
‘The study,’ he said finally, staring at the painting. ‘The right home for you, I think.’
Previously pride of place had been given to a religious piece by Karel Škréta, but looking over it now he had to fight back the urge to tear it from the wall and hurl it out of the window. He was no stranger to the need to move past what had come before, in some cases even to destroy it, to burn it all down and make way for the new, but he had never before felt it as such a powerful urge. He took a breath and carefully removed the Škréta from its position.
The rest of the day was spent meticulously rearranging his apartment, moving and reorienting almost everything until he was once again happy with the layout. In the end he got rid of a few of the pieces he’d had for a while: a glass sculpture by a formerly up-and-coming artist named Karl Velter and a series of Barlach lithographs he had picked up on a whim while flirting with expressionism. He stood there, admiring his acquisition in its new home.
Knock knock.
He was roused from his contemplation, realising with some confusion that he needed to turn on the light. When had it got dark? He felt the deep gnawing of hunger in his stomach. Remembering what had stirred him, he hurried to the front door and threw it open. The hall outside was empty.
Were there children in the building? Jésus curled his lip. He had no quarrel with those who had children, of course, so long as they had the decency to breed quietly. No sign of the little timewasters, though. Luckily, he hadn’t quite missed his dinner reservation, though he was acutely aware that he hadn’t freshened up after shifting his displays around and must look a mess. Then he realised he didn’t care.
But that was nonsense, surely. He had planned it as one of his ‘exhibition dinners’: meals he took alone, well dressed and dazzling, to remind the great and the influential of his good taste. He was Jésus Candido, after all, and his appearance was as much an artistic expression as the rest of him. And yet, when he looked at the world outside his apartment, so drab and colourless after the vibrant hues he had so recently fallen into, he could not bring himself to be concerned about how he looked. He ate quickly, ignored the other patrons, and returned home immediately after.
Jésus was in his apartment. It looked as though it had been drawn from memory, sketched out and painted in those same crawling technicolour lines that had so captivated him before. He knew he was dreaming, but that didn’t bother him at all, and a gentle calm washed over him.
This , he heard himself thinking, this is home .
Knock knock.
Someone was at the door. Compared to the thin swirling strokes that composed the rest of the apartment, the entrance was thick and smudged, as though made with an old brush, overloaded with cadmium red.
Knock knock knock.
They wanted to come in.
The sound became more insistent, more aggressive. He reached for the handle, and the door ignited, exploding into a bright and hateful fire. He felt the heat as it charred and cracked the lines that made it and stained the dazzling colours a charcoal black. He dreamed the smell of burning wood as the flames spread through the apartment. It was not the comforting wood smell of a fireplace or a bonfire, but the awful stench of everything he knew being rendered down to ash and heat-scoured earth. It was all ablaze now, his whole world incinerating: everything he had so coldly assessed and positioned and believed himself apart from, devoured in a wave of genuine loss. He felt the flames reach him, melting his flesh and shattering his bones in their intensity. But they left his eyes, trapped and staring wildly at the figure moving slowly through what had once been the door. The pain was only bearable because it wasn’t his. It belonged to the dream, and all he could do was endure and hope to wake.
Still, the figure approached, and he saw that it wore the face of the painted woman. It was as twisted and distorted as it had been on canvas, that same chaotic mess of curling lines and angry hues. She wore a drab olive dress and she was burning, ravenous, desperate to consume and utterly destroy everything she touched with the fire that was her flesh.
Jésus awoke clawing at himself, desperate to extinguish flames that were not there and to defend a home he did not have.