Free The Forger by Paul Watkins

picked out a few of the men, selecting each one with a jerk of his chin. He didn’t make his choices by who was first in line, but the other men offered no protest. Either they were too tired or they knew they would never be picked if they kicked up a fuss. They shambled away down the street with their hands in their pockets. The chosen men followed the foreman into the warehouse. A few minutes later, they rode out of the warehouse on rickety bicycles. They carried wooden placards on their backs. On the placards was the wine company’s motto— BUVEZ LES VINS DU POSTILLON.
    Ever since Fleury had brought up the idea of staying in Paris, I tried to push the idea to the back of my mind. I still had a month to go before the Levasseur grant ran out. But every morning when I saw those men outside the warehouse, waiting for work, I tried to imagine myself down there with them. Even if I did decide to stay, I had no idea where the money would come from. At this rate, it certainly wasn’t going to come from the paintings. And then there was the threat of war, which was on everyone’s minds these days. The whole idea of remaining here seemed hopeless to me. I kept seeing those men lined up outside the warehouse. I could practically feel the weight of the placard on my back as I bicycled around town. Buvez les Vins du Postillon. It had become an ugly little chant in my head, like a meaningless taunt shouted across a playground at some unpopular child.
    I sat down at my three-legged kitchen table, which was bolted to the wall to stop it from falling over, and pawed through the strange blues and browns of the French notes in my moneybox, wondering how long I could make it all last.

Chapter Four
    “Y OU KNOW THE WAR is coming, Monsieur Alley-fax.”
    Pankratov and Valya and I were alone in the atelier. Balard and Marie-Claire had been sent out on assignments, the result of Pankratov’s pinning a giant map of Paris up on a wall and making each of us in turn throw a dart at the map at a distance of ten paces. Wherever the dart landed, the person had to go and paint that place. Since my dart missed the map entirely and stuck itself in the door, Pankratov said he would take pity on me. He decided that since I could not even throw a dart, I would mostly likely just get lost trying to find any location on the map. I would paint Valya instead.
    I tried to look suitably humiliated. The truth was, I’d done it on purpose. I didn’t like painting in the street. People were always coming up to you and staring over your shoulder and making comments under their breath that they thought you couldn’t hear.
    The others clattered away down the stairs, hugging their boxes of paints and their collapsible easels. Then it was just me and Pankratov and Valya.
    “How do you want me to be?” Valya asked Pankratov, to show she didn’t care what I did with her body on my canvas.
    Pankratov shrugged. “Ask the American. I’m not painting you.”
    She turned to me. “Well?” she asked, holding out her arms.
    I asked her to stand by the large window. I said she should keep her clothes on.
    She obeyed without a word, as if this was what every artist asked her to do when given the chance and it was all very boring and she had done this a hundred times already.
    That day, I tried to paint the cold outside. I gave the work a steely look to match the light of the late afternoon. Valya was in silhouette. I painted her as if she were shadows coming to life, the way incense rises to form shapes around the altar of a church. I painted the crumpled light that each windowpane allowed into the dark space of the atelier. I allowed it to be warm inside, but just beyond the thin veil of the glass, I made winter settle on the woman by the window.
    While I painted, Pankratov sat in his camp chair, fingertips pressed together in front of his face, eyes unfocused. “The war,” he said again.
    I didn’t look up. I measured out varnish and paint, then stirred them