The following was inspired by Vlad Potemkin's story, "The Painting." I sent a copy to Vlad; he liked it and encouraged me to post it.
*
Charlotte Renfield was shopping. The 36-year-old associate professor of history at the University of Chicago had decided to spend the last full day of her latest trip to London by venturing off the beaten path a bit and looking for something "significant" as a souvenir. So she found herself shopping, in Islington -- not on Saturday, when hordes swarmed round -- but in mid-week, and in the rain.
The untidy little gallery was deserted when she wandered in, except for the 40-ish Romany woman who was obviously the owner. Actually, it was much more a "curiosity shop" than an art gallery and displayed a variety of wares: a case of campaign medals, a plaster bust of George IV, shelves of elderly books and East European crafts, an elephant's foot, a painted cast iron figurine of Sary Gamp, a Turkish scimitar, a few paintings -- amateur watercolors, mainly, but then there was...THE painting.
It was a smallish, weird oil, showing a dim, garret room strewn with books and papers and other scholarly debris. There was a lancet window, through which a bit of Notre Dame could be just seen against an overcast sky. A tenuous shaft of light from the window illuminated the central figure: a naked blonde woman, 20s, hanging by chains, her mouth wedged open in a soundless moan by some sort of ring-gag. Tentacles of darkness seemed to reach out for her sweating, straining body, and, in the background, barely visible, there was the shadowy figure of a large man, a brute. As Charlotte concentrated on the blur, more details appeared to her. He was big and dark and foreign (Asian or Semitic, maybe). Hulking, with a heavy body, massive shoulders, and long muscular arms; short, strong bow legs; big, thick, dark c-c...um...um...v-very virile.... Sneering lips, crooked yellow teeth, flat nose, flaring nostrils, small feral eyes. He's crude, but also very intelligent and very demanding. He's the master there, forcing captive women to do...th-things...humiliating things...made to m-masturbate while people watch and not being allowed to cum, or having to cum over and over and over...being naked and d-disciplined...and...and...oh, god....
Charlotte looked away, conscious of sweating and breathing hard...and getting wet....
"Fascinating, no?" said the shop owner, hovering at Charlotte's elbow. "It comes from estate sale in France. Swedish girl, studying in Paree.... They say she had the break-down and ran off. Present whereabouts? Pfah!" She shrugged. "Not so surprising, really. Swedes, you know...most of 'em on the edge, anyway. All those long, black nights...."
The woman's accent seemed to be a weird mixture of Eastern Europe and Birmingham. Like her speech, her appearance might have been improved with a little effort.
"Who's the artist?" Charlotte squinted at the signature. "Packman? Pittman?"
"Pickman," the woman murmured.
Charlotte shrugged. She knew that she had to have this -- after all, she did love the bizarre, and Halloween was her favorite holiday -- but she wanted to establish a pose of indifference as a basis for haggling over the price.
In the event, she proved only second best at haggling, and she left the shop lighter by more cash than she liked to think about, but with the receipt and provenance in her purse and the picture securely wrapped in brown paper and plastic against the weather. (An hour later, she'd bought a stout and stylish carrying case for it in Regent Street.)
She resisted the impulse to unwrap it that night. Instead, she went to bed not long after dinner, knowing that she'd have to rise early for her flight home. But her sleep that night was not untroubled. She dreamed dreams, from which she would awaken, sweating and horny, but unable to remember even a shred of them.
She was tired the next morning, but she got to Victoria Station and thence to Gatwick and thence, after a numbingly uncomfortable flight, back to Chicago. Even teeming O'Hare looked good to her at that point.
A few hours later, she was back in her Hyde Park flat (a term she preferred to "apartment"), a few blocks from the heart of the campus. She stripped, showered, made herself a vodka-tonic, and then, energized and still naked, unwrapped the painting.
As she tore away the last of the brown paper, she already trying to visualize the best place to hang it. She flipped it over...and froze. She blinked...and looked again. "FUCK-ING-HELL!"
It was not the same picture. The technique was the same, but the picture was not. To begin with, the girl was gone; the chains still hung there, but unoccupied. There were other differences, too: the window was now squarish and showed the dome of St. Paul's. The dim, miscellaneous contents of the room were gone; it looked empty...or unfinished. The brute in the background was farther forward now, but still as indistinct as before...maybe more so. In fact, though the paint was dry (it might be acrylic, instead of oil), it seemed almost like a painting in progress.... "That gypsy bitch switched paintings," Charlotte muttered. "But how? I watched her wrap it, and it was never out of my possession afterwards. Crap! Some damn gypsy trick...." Outraged, she got out the receipt and reached for her phone. "Okay, 'Argos Gallery...Sofia Tedescu...Phone....'" She'd punched in 01144-207- before she realized, "Shit! It's after midnight there, now. Fuck it!" Then, after she'd cooled, slightly, she wondered, "So what's she going to say? 'Ima so sssorry Ia cheet you, Meez Rrrrenn-veeldt. Ima sendin' zee mo-ney back, you betcha!'"
She dropped the picture behind the couch, in disgust, stared out the casement window at the gathering night, reached for the tantalus, and proceeded to get drunk.
Struggling up early the next morning, she breakfasted on English muffins and Earl Grey tea and, at 9:00, rang the gypsy's shop. No answer. Crap! She went back to bed.
******************
The next couple of weeks were occupied with getting ready for the Fall Quarter -- updating lecture notes and reading lists, preparing for a new inter-disciplinary Victorian course, meeting with her graduate assistant, and (of course) attending the cocktail parties welcoming new faculty. Then, once the quarter began, there was a period of adjustment of almost a month.
It was therefore late October -- and she'd already rather half-heartedly decorated her flat for Halloween -- before she hauled "that damned picture" from behind the couch and picked up the phone, intending to try calling the gypsy again.
