“Hello, Dali,” he heard himself say. Janus looked around as his voice reverberated briefly in the oak paneled gallery to make sure no one else heard him. He had been talking to himself a lot lately, ever since the accident. No one heard him. Or if they did, they didn’t care to acknowledge it.
Now that his wife was finally dead, Janus could get out and do things again. That was a horrible way to put it, he thought, but that’s how it crossed his mind. The coma, the respirator, the hours of talking to Miriam with no response, not even a twitch, had taken its toll on him. The so-called quiet moments, with the maddening cadence of the machine, its tube down her throat, filling her lungs with air, and then letting gravity force the air back out, haunted his wretched sleep.
And when she was gone… well, she was gone months before – drained from the body like some precious fluid… but when the heart that had owned him stopped beating despite the doctors’ best efforts, and they had shut off the machinery and the electronics, and they had left him alone to spend a few last moments with the body that, dead, looked no different than it had looked alive for the prior months, true silence rushed in with a roar that frightened him.
And then, after so many months of effort to keep her alive, everyone suddenly seemed terribly eager to bury her, as if to hide their mistakes, or their mistaken belief that they could save her, despite the months-long gray line drawn on the black monitor screen suspended above her bed.
And as Janus had quieted the clatter and wheeze of the respirator with his own voice, so did he quiet the roar.
He stared at the Dali. “Interesting,” he said aloud, again to no one’s ears but his own. Interesting indeed that he would venture out for the first time in months and, on a whim, divert into the art museum, and wind up here.
Warrior, the placard read.
Janus identified with him – the gaunt face, the distant, tired eyes that reflected… what? The faces of those he conquered? Of the one? Of her?
Janus looked around again. Had he said that out loud?
“No, I didn’t,” he said out loud.
But fear gripped him. He backed away from the painting. Could others read his face as he had read the Warrior’s? He had fought long and hard. He had survived. Could they see her in his eyes? Could they see the freedom he saw, at the top of the ladder on the other side of the door, in the crimped hose clenched in his fist?
“You were a fraud, Dali!” The sound of his voice reverberating in the gallery made Janus aware he had shouted, to the dismay of the others who heard him.
Janus fled to his home where he fought to drown out the silence with his own voice.
12 comments:
Inneresting. I'd be curious to see how this might play out in the long form. Seems like it might be a good jumping-off point for a novel or novella.
Did you send a link? I won't read it if there's not a link. Please tell me you sent us a link.
Please?
YES! You sent a link.
Hooray!
Tiff - Ummmmmm. Well, because you asked me to tell you... Uh, yup. I sent a link.
Very nice. I like how you compare the anguish in the painting with the husbad's grief over the lingering death of the wife. Powerful stuff.
I liked the bouncing between the museum and the hospital.
Extremely human
....roar of silence. Paintings, art can evoke some powerful emotions. Absolutely fabulous.
Dude.
He KILLED HER???
No way.
Janus the two-faced. It fits.
tiff - I had to do some research after your comment. You are much more well-read and -studied than I. I had no idea what or who Janus of mythology is. I swear!
I always have trouble coming up with names in my fiction because I don't want to name my characters Bill or Tom or Betty, as those names always seem simple, pat, or common (my apologies to anyone reading who's named Bill or Tom or Betty!)
"Janus" seemed exotic to me, seemed to identify a white male 65-ish, balding, gray haired, perhaps the son Scandinavian immigrants.
But this isn't the first time I've plucked something from the air and discovered later that it fits the plot perfectly... . . . . .
I'm with Tiff. "Janus" made this an exercise in two-faced uncertainty, both internal and external. You may not have known it when writing, but something in your psyche knew it. Call it the Muse.
I would really really change the opening line. "Hello Dali" is a little too cute to launch a theme as weird as this.
The opening line is a testament to how I wrote this. I thought I would write something cute, but the cute didn't come. This story was conceived with the completion of each word. I didn't know where it was going pretty much until right before I got there. Not the best way to write a powerful, meaningful story, I guess, but a fun exercise in improvisational writing.
Hmmm. Have I coined a phrase?
Extremely well-written, sensitive, total command of your words. You had me right in your palm. That "twist" at the end, wow! Like a punch in the gut. Well done, Farrago!
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