There are few things taking Hansl's attention away from painting right now; few things more important to him, few things about which he is more passionate. None who have known him outside Chinon would believe it if they saw it.
     Perhaps it remains unbelievable even so.
     Clad in denim and soft cotton, Hansl is hard at work tonight. As he has been for many nights, now; he has been working as if obsessed. In the grip of an inner muse, hidden to peering, prying eyes, he attacks canvas after canvas, shredding those which are wasted ruthlessly, while those which have promise are examined, analyzed - and set aside.
     He wears a white cotton t-shirt, a pair of soft, snug jeans; nothing which will catch on itself or anything else, nothing which will get in the way. His hair is pushed back from his eyes and bears the marks of such, streaks of jewel red and flat grey-green hinted at on a cheek, at his ear.
     But it is the canvases he is moving between. One has been set aside reluctantly as finished, though he hovers over it from time to time as if uncertain; there on the canvas is a view from a train. The window is framed by the dark wood and the dangled curtains of another era. Out of the window, an agrarian setting, fields of grain waving with the shadow of woods and hills behind a farmhouse off to the side. A cart is being drawn by two oxen; in the back, some jumble of flesh which is not immediately apparent save as some dead or dying beast. It is only visible by some trick of light and angle, the sunlight filtering to bounce off the metal rings on the curtain inside the train.
     The next painting, the one which he presently is working on so feverishly, is a portrait. A German youth in the dress of the World War II soldier, the lightning bolts on his shoulder is taking form. One blue eye looks out at the world with an arrogant charm, the edge of a smile curling up. The medal of rank is over his heart, sketched out in a dull, crinkled grey. Hansl is frowning, brush held at the ready, drawing a smear of grey along his jaw as he rubs it, thinking of something - something that is needed. "But what?"

     Work, work, work...
     For nights, and for the weeks yet to come he supposes, this has been his mantra. He has pushed, he has challenged his charge in and out of paint, in and out of the studio. It could take years to dismantle defenses -- William is not naive -- but this concentrated effort has already elicited great strides. The artist working in the studio is not the same one in Paris, miles away now from Saarbrucken figuratively and literally.
     For the past night or more, he has left the student to his own designs. Not even the Bea Ragazzi have been seen in the Tour de Boissy for the past several nights. Food and wine were made available, brandies appeared as if by magic, but the teacher was not seen, not felt.
     One must respect the rhythm that comes with inspiration, and the momentum of a paint-oiled brush to canvas.
     Invisibly, with steps inaudible, William Plantagenet moves, his presence brought to nothing. Even the air forgets him as he passes from the hall to the study of his studio suites. He lingers unseen at the door in a momentary pause before issuing beneath the archway. William lingers there in nothingness to watch you work.
     He will not interrupt...

     He hears you not, feels you not. He is insensate to your presence, your existence. The blue eyes which stare at the canvas are absorbed in what he sees and what no one else does. Abruptly, he moves away from the partially formed painting, the smiling young S.S. lieutenant with his one visible eye, and moves to a third canvas. Here is a street - Berlin. The signs in the shop windows are in German, but it does not need signs and language to say that it is German. It is there, proudly announced in the people, in the stones. A cobbled street and blue sky, a fountain square and happy, prosperous townspeople. It takes a careful eye to see the ragged sleeves carefully mended on the children, the tense desperation beneath the skin of the women's smiles as they usher their children quickly along. The men are not muchly present. Here and there, discreetly, there are boards over smaller windows whose glass has been broken or removed. There is the veneer of prosperity, of respectability; but the gloss is only gloss, and the fat, only padding. It is not visible at once, but it creeps in, seeping in at cracks of the consciousness until finally one notices the deep shadows of the almost invisible alleys, the crimson-stained puddles just at those edges.
     "Too heavy-handed," Hansl mutters, to himself; you are not there. "It is not subtle. Hansl, you are a fool." He moves forward to the canvas, picking up the knife. One more for the scrap heap.

     "You are too quick to the knife," William's voice is soft but sudden, even as his appearance in the archway, his shoulder given to the limestone. "...and coming from a Norman, that is saying something." His hand motions you to put the knife away. "The prince asks for clemency."
     He is clothed in black and crimson, all in summer linen. His dark hair, still kept short, is only slightly tousled. The thickness of it, and the slight wave, hold a casual style created by the raking of his, or his lover's, fingers. The princely presence makes itself known as subtly as his voice. Subtle, but unmistakable.
     Pushing off the limestone arch, William slowly strides toward artist and work, his hands sliding into his pockets as he does. It is as if he is strolling along a boulevard, catching an artist at work on a Parisian street corner.
     "What do you not like about it... and why? If you simply kill it," his mouth, that mouth of his, spreads slowly in a smile, and indigo eyes become alight with amusement, "... you will not learn from it. So," he gestures to you, to the painting.
     Tell me what you see or what you do not see...

     He jumps, startled, and his eyes widen as he turns at the sound of your voice. When did you get here? Slowly, he obeys, though his eyes stay wide and startled. The knife falls back to the toolkit, and he turns, again smudging paint - this time on the bridge of his nose.
     It is not unusual for him to leave the studio, oblivious to being a walking Jackson Pollack until he goes to wash...
     Hansl watches you almost unwillingly. You are a distraction; more, perhaps, than you intend, him in his present state. "It is too heavy," he murmurs, face aimed sharply back at the canvas. "I do not feel I am capturing the air. It should be subtle; the subtle terror, the feeling that something is terribly wrong, but without the clear knowledge of what. This is what it was like. The longer the war went on, the more obvious it was. In the beginning, nobody knew. But bit by bit, it became known to us. People stopped coming home."
     He holds one hand out, indicating without touching the paint, the shadows of the alley. "I should not have put this in. I should be able to conjure up shadows without painting them in blood."

     He folds his arms across his chest, the linen tugging at his shoulders even though the jacket was made for him. There is only so much that cloth can do, ne c'est pas? His thumb and his forefinger press together at his lip, flesh squeezed in a moment of consideration. Dark eyes search the street, the boarded windows, move against the depth of paint, the materials and colors used. He absorbs it all. He both skims it and wades into it.
     "Body language," William murmurs, his hand moving from his mouth. "Bricks do not know how to be subtle, cobblestone, shuttered windows. Those are the obvious markings that something is not right, mais oui. The body language of the people will show it far sooner than buildings, yes?" He turns his head to look at you. "You have some of it with the women, their expressions. Focus it on the women, not the things around the women, their clothing, anything else. They carried it, they bore it, yes?" he softly speaks. "Let them show you and show anyone else who looks at it. They are the subject, not the boarded windows, the alleys, the cobblestones, or the shadows. Concentrate on them. Make them your chorus for your story and they will show you the way to what you are attempting."
     His hands slide into his pocket. "You can do this without ripping canvas. Listen to them, work them with your fingers until you can hear them in your ears... and then, I think you will find the feeling, the emotion, the spirit you are trying to infuse. It is really more pulling it out of the canvas than it is putting it on the canvas."

     He nods to you, though without looking at you, attention on the canvas as he pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly. "It wasn't like that at the beginning," Hansl murmurs, more to himself than to you. "It ... didn't happen right away. Things do not." He again rakes a hand back over his forehead, through his hair, leaving himself again streaked with touches of paint. "I wanted her," he indicates one of the women in front, "to seem more afraid. But every time I try to, she refuses. She is a temperamental one."
     His hand drops, and he frowns. Not as if he is angry; instead, as if he is concentrating very hard, thinking on what he sees. "I wonder if there should be children in it at all. I ... it is perhaps too biographical. I am trying to say something, but I wonder if it is perhaps not something which bears being said."

     He looks at the work. "No, those things to not happen right away. That kind of cultural decay, oppression. It is ... like water, yes? Seeping into the veins of rocks and bricks until the empire lies in rubble." William pauses, his mouth and eyebrow quirking. "I do not believe I can truly speak to oppression, being a Plantagenet," comes the dry, humored tone. "Not from your vantage point." His mouth curves in a smirk as he glances from you to the painting.
     "I think what you are looking for is that seeping, omnipresent terror, that apprehension. It is more in the quiet looks across the counter at the local bakery, yes? Not being able to trust your neighbor, not even your family."
     William pivots, glancing to you again. "Too biographical? Non. There is no such thing in painting, or any art. I would concentrate not on what you are trying to say but the emotion, the feeling that exists behind that. Feel. Do not think. You are thinking. And so... you find it easy to stop yourself. Feel what it was to be on that street. I know you remember."
     He remembers seeing the same faces in France. The resignation. They had indeed resigned themselves to their fate. What price art.
     "Do not separate yourself from your work. I think you should swim in those images, let them breathe against the canvas, no matter how disturbing. The only way through... is through, mais oui."

     "It was like rot."
     Hansl says it quietly, but with a flatness of memory, his face the perfectly expressionless blank of his disguise. He is not attempting to conceal his emotions; he is merely, in that moment, very far away, seeing and smelling somewhere else - somewhen else.
     "It was the feeling of something wrong," Hansl speaks slowly, stumbling with his French for a change, looking down at his hands with a little frown. "The gas - did I leave the gas on? Nein, nein, then what? My keys - my keys, no, they are in my pocket. Everything looks to be in its proper place, but everyone knows that something is wrong. Nobody wishes to speak of it, but it is there. Nobody knows, maybe. But they all know there is something wrong, as if there is someone there, off stage, staring holes into their backs. They smile for the audience. They smile because they know somebody is watching. But they are afraid."
     With an abrupt impatience, he swipes his hand at his forehead, lowering his gaze to the floor. "I read," Hansl mutters, "books about it, written by people who were not there. Sometimes by people who were. But they all say the same thing. They all show that at least a little, they forget."

     "Ian spent more time in Germany than I did," William notes quietly. "I spent most of that era flying over France and Britain, gunning down planes by the light of the moon, as I had done in the first world war. But I have seen the rot before," an eyebrow lifts, as he looks from the painting to you. "...in my own family, and our own empire that was reduced to nothing less than fifty years following my father's death. But," his eyes soften in compassion and in understanding, "...no matter how often one sees it, one never gets used to it."
     He pauses a moment. "It is ... unease that becomes a disease, and the disease permeates everything, like a clinging plague." His eyebrows open outward as he looks back to the painting. "A spiritual plague. Everyone is sick. No one yet knows who first started the cough."
     "I was a benevolent dictator in my day," William smirks. "From this castle and another in Rouen. I did what I could to ensure their success. We were all in it together, in the end. I still do this. Why do you think Chinon is not suffering the economic issues of the rest of the nation?" The do not call him The Benefactor for nothing.
     "But I was the exception, not the rule," he notes quietly. And it was, of course, a completely different Time.
     "I think you should save this painting, Hansl," William notes. "I think there is plenty that can be salvaged here," his hand is then on your shoulder. "If you are too hard on yourself, you will be too tight for the work to come out of you," he murmurs. "You stop yourself before you have a chance to move on, and then in frustration out comes the knife." His hand lifts to cup the back of your head. "Let the critics come in after the work is done. Be the painter, not the critic."

     He exhales, quietly but noisily. It would be quiet to human ears. For a vampire, for one with no ordinary need to breathe, it is loud. "I have never been important," Hansl answers finally, without false humility. It is humble, but it is without intention of humility; without anger, or despair, but merely his stated belief. "I have never tried to be important, mein herr. I have just always tried to do well enough not to disappoint."
     There is that thread of vulnerable pride in him, the yearning to please, to ascend not through mere blood or name but through his own actions. His father, his teachers, his friend and mentor, his sire, his lover, and now, you. It keeps him going, has kept him going, from being flesh to tin to malleable clay and back to tin and now, finally, returning to flesh. It gives him a clumsy look as his shoulders sag, not in defeat, but in the shallow slouch of the farm boy, as his gaze returns to the floor, face coloring as your hand falls to his shoulder, cups the back of his head.
     "I will save it," Hansl murmurs, "because I have not gotten it right yet. It needs to be done properly, to be worth more than the exercise's sake."

     "Those who try always fail," William smiles a touch, more in his eyes than at his mouth. "Be Hansl. And you will not disappoint. That," his voice drops to a whisper as his hand, resting on your neck, draws you in just a touch, "...is the secret to it all. One I worked hard to learn, so... save yourself the trouble."
     His hand releases you after another embrace of fingers to your skin, a kneading pat that finally withdraws. "Save it... keep working on it. I do not think you are as far away from what you wish to convey as you do." But he would say he is the optimist to your pessimist. That is the way of it. Confidence like his should be bottled and sold as a drug.
     William's hands return to his pockets. "Do you have any others you would like me to see while I am here? I do not want to pry. If they are not ready, that is fine. But if you wish me to see something, do not hesitate." There is such warmth. And while you have felt the heat of hunger, of desire, and of seduction, this is far more personal. It is emotional. It is true caring expressed easily, familiarly.
     Indigo eyes absorb your vulnerability, seeing it clearly. But unlike others of his age, or even of your age, there is no attempt to use that vulnerability to control, to seduce, to reduce. He simply reflects it back to you in his compassion. He holds it, but he has learned not to break it. He simply responds in kind.

     The touches are what undo him. You have no such intention of it; but it does. Fingers intrude on his consciousness, leave him trembling inside, uncertain and unsteady. He does his best for it not to show as he looks tot he canvas again. Others? He is in hell, but pleasurable hell, to be sure.
     "There is the train," Hansl finally says. "I think it is done, mostly. It ... says little to others, maybe. But it meant something to me." He moves forward hurriedly, setting down whatever is in his hands. Let the painting be his shield. He has no other, right now. Optimism? Pessimism? For him, there is only muddled confusion. The colors left in water after cleaning a brush.
     He inhales, exhales, absentmindedly pushing his hand through his hair again. He is awash with color, streaks and smears of it everywhere, on his skin and in his hair and on his clothes as in the aura that surrounds him. "When I was leaving the Forest - where I am from," Hansl explains awkwardly, almost stammering as he looks down with that pointed blue gaze. "It is in the shadow of the Great Forest. Rich land - I do not know how it must seem now, but at the time, the Forest seemed to me to be everything - when I was leaving, Huf Des Donners died. I did not know until I saw it from the window. It was when I knew that I would never come back."

     Air moves from him, his breaths mandated by magic, and also by sympathy. "You must have been very apprehensive," William murmurs. He does not say terrified but it is what he means. He knows better than to tell a young soldier he was terrified. Soldiers will say that on their own, no prince needed to put words in their mouths. "How old were you when you were made to leave your forest?"
     He does not ask you to follow him. He does not suggest that you should. He merely surrounds your shoulders with an arm, and it may occur to you that you and he are walking. Now, it is not about the pictures, it is about the artist. The expanse of his attention is quite large. He becomes France as you walk with him, leaving the studio through the arch where he first appeared, to enter into the study and artist's library. There, sofas and chairs are arranged. It is far more comfortable.
     "I ... know what it is like... to suddenly find yourself on a train, though mine was not a locomotive. But... it is the same, yes? Whether a train or a troop. The fate is the same." Quiet, his voice holds an intimate warmth. A thick summer day, filled with bees and wine and heated limestone must sound like this.

     He does not want to admit it, but it shows in his eyes, lurks there; terror, the memory of fear, the agony of loss. He wis barely aware of walking, his shoulders hunching a little with that memory. "...It was my fourteenth birthday."
     The words slip out, unbidden, almost unwilling, his memory fixed on the train carrying him to the city - to the gymnasium where he would be trained in art, where he would learn other things as well. The memory of a beloved friend, dead, its death hidden from him until it was unwittingly revealed. The grief is still with him, locked away in the memory of fourteen. Hansl swallows, rubbing the back of his head self-consciously. "It was my father's, my family's gift to me, that I would go and study art in Berlin."
     He eases himself down into one of the seats - on one of the sofas, looking a bit blankly. How did he get here? Surely his own legs did not bring him here. "It was a gymnasium," Hansl starts, then lets it trail off, looking to the side. He is not seeing his surroundings. He is seeing grey stone and brick, an overcast thick sky, uniformed young men and boys in a courtyard in neat and orderly rows. "...attached to Hohere Graphishe Fachschule..."

     He has nothing in his experience as carefully planned, as methodically manipulative -- even for his family -- as a Reich gymnasium. "But that was not all that you studied," William murmurs. A large hand, the hand of a knight, lands on your knee, patting you there as he rises. He pours two brandies, and the room is filled with the scent of apples. The brandy is a sunny color, golden rather than burnished. He stands beside where you sit, his hand offering a glass to you.
     "Fourteen is young to be separated from family, from friends. After the forest, it must have seemed very strange. A different world altogether." He does not speak now of his own experiences -- they are not valid or apropos to this experience of yours. He was in his first battle at the age of nine, much like his father. But the time was a different time. There is no comparison.
     Your drink surrendered to your hand, William comes to sit beside you. Sitting forward, the glass in his hands, he looks to you.
     "Too young," he says at his own thoughts, both for you and for himself and he takes a swallow of the brandy, the Norman apples rolling over his tongue and down his throat. The color of his eyes are enfolding in their brilliant color. Deep blue to violet, there is safety in the dark of their color. And whoever would think any would be safe with a man such as this with eyes like that?
     He can imagine, now, this young man that he sees even younger, trying to prove himself worth his family's sacrifice, his country's attention. And then a Templar sire. And now a Templar teacher. You have been at the mercy of fate and strong winds for a long time.
     The fear, the grief, the sorrow -- these things are not so deep. They can be felt and seen, perceived and understood.

     He looks to you, then to the glass, accepting it with a murmur of thanks. "Nein," Hansl murmurs, voice soft, a little hoarse, "not all that I studied. No."
     There was so much. There were so many. He remembers them, memory will not let him let them go. "...Some disdained me because I was from the farm," Hansl tells you, sitting leaned forward, both hands around the brandy as he makes his confession to you. He does not look at you as he speaks. "But ... there was someone who did not. Who stood up for me." He sits up suddenly, very straight, speaking in a stentorian, commanding voice.
     "Kameraden! Wer ist wenn nicht fur das Ruckgrat unseres Landes deutsch? Betrachten Sie ihn. Schauen Sie nicht und sehen Sie seine Kleidung. Betrachten Sie ihn, gibt es keine Spur des Schlammes oder des Lehms in ihm! Er ist nicht einer der judischen Schadlinge, die Lause, die unseren Leuten anhaften und ist weg an allem, das gut ist! Er ist deutsch und unser Bruder, und wir mussen an das uns erinnern!"
     Warmth floods his face, and he closes his eyes, leaning forward again. "...I would have done anything for him," Hansl mourns quietly. "For two years, I was his shadow. I blinded myself to warm myself by the fire of him. And when I was sixteen..." He shrugs. "It does not matter," he adds self-effacingly. He takes a large swallow of brandy, his hand trembling. "It was a long time ago, ja?"

     "Time is funny," William murmurs, looking from you to the Norman gold in his glass, "... it is very flexible. It bends more than passes." He takes a swallow of the brandy and then looks at you. "When we think the past is behind us, we are surprised to find ourselves facing it. Long, and not long," he finally states. Both are true...
     Time is flexible...
     "You do not have to speak of it," William murmurs, giving you a way out if you wish to take it. One can only push so far, so much. Past a certain point, talking may not be useful. He is experienced in this sort of extraction and revelation. "But it is clearly with you still. I suspect you have had no one to tell, no one to express it, these emotions you have held since then. They come through in everything you do, and how you do it. How do you begin to show it? None of the paintings seem sufficient," he posits. "It will take more than one. It may take one-hundred attempts before they begin to truly show the terror you felt, that the country eventually reflected."
     Through repetition, perhaps, can freedom be found...
     He takes another swallow of the brandy, then looks at the gold. "Did he betray you," he asks it quietly, his gaze shifting back to you. His mouth quirks slightly at the corner. "I know the story does not have a happy ending, oui? Otherwise, you would have returned home to your forest, and we should never have met..."

     Where before there was the distress, there is suddenly the hollow, distant gaze, the iron jaw of the soldier. He stays leaned forward, but it is as if his soul, the spirit of him, the innocence and the laughter and the vulnerability, suddenly has fled. Where before there was something of life to him, something vital, now it is gone; all but extinguished.
     Did he betray you..
     "He betrayed me, or I betrayed myself," Hansl whispers. He downs the brandy, all of it, in one long, smooth, fluid swallow; head back, glass lifted, no thought for the burn or the effect. "These things happen."

     His hand is there again, strength at your shoulder like a shield as you withdraw. He knows the conversation is at an end, but he does not excuse himself or change the subject. William sits with you in silence, his hand on your shoulder as he finishes his brandy.
     What else do soldiers do when they talk of war but this?

Posted by rowan at July 22, 2007 09:40 PM