Free The Portrait by Iain Pears

me out of Scotland, barring my way back to where I came from. And when she died, I did go back. But not to her funeral. She was buried alone, and I don’t even know where. She was a wicked woman, harsh and punishing, who used her own sufferings as a weapon against her child and her husband. She deserved no pity, and got none from me.
    Now, to work. I have finished sketching, had enough experimenting with your fine features. I tried all sorts of angles and poses in my head, and have settled on the one that was in my mind from the very beginning. The characteristic one you have of sitting in a chair with one shoulder slightly forward, and your head fractionally turned towards it. It gives you a sense of being about to move all the time, of energy. Quite undeserved, I think, as you are one of the laziest people I have ever known. Your energy is not physical at all; it is a fine case of the body reflecting the mind, creating an illusion which has nothing to do with the pills for the heart, weak arms and your tendency to puff and wheeze your way up stairs. It is an example of the superiority of the will over reality; I could beat the hell out of you, pick you up and carry you halfway across the island even against your will. Most people could; but I suspect the idea has never crossed anyone’s mind since you were at school—where I imagine you were bullied, as children do not appreciate the power of the intellect. A further problem to be solved, of course—for the painting must convey the intellect through the physical—how to communicate the strength of one and the weakness of the other at the same time?
    I’m not asking your advice; merely posing the question. It would be a fatal error to ask any sitter how they wished to be portrayed. People cannot tell the truth about themselves, for they do not know it. What do you think the balance should be between painter and subject, in any case? I know your answer without even asking, really. The subject is merely the means by which the painter expresses himself. The painter is merely the means through which the critic’s ideas take form. It is a route that runs to perdition, you know; it will cut the artist off from everything but his own ego, sooner or later, and he will have an eye for nothing but what the Morning Chronicle says of him.
    Enough of this. You are looking weary, and it gives you a faintly undignified expression. I cannot stand it. I keep seeing that rather bony bottom of yours sliding uncomfortably across my chair, and the vision is beginning to hinder my work. So I suppose I had better continue with my confession and tell you when I duped you. I could see by the look on your face when you came in that you wanted to know. Indeed, I had a fond, and slightly malevolent, pleasure in thinking about you going to sleep last night, tossing and turning in your uncomfortable, flea-ridden bed, wondering which of the tens of thousands of pictures you have viewed in your life showed you up to be a fool. Not a great one, certainly, but a small one; that, for you, is the worst of all, is it not? The idea that someone out there is laughing at you. And how many other people have been told? Is it common knowledge? Did you go into parties and hear someone snigger, all those years ago? Is that what they were laughing at?
    Relax, I do not have that much malevolence in me; you should know that by now. I am not above a practical joke, I can be cruel, but am only rarely mean. Only on special occasions. My lips were sealed; it was a private pleasure, and all the more enjoyable for that. Besides, the whole business was unimportant in comparison to the result of it.
    Shall I give you a hint? No; don’t try to guess, it will only make it worse if you panic and decide that genuine master-works were by my hand. It was a Gauguin. That painting which occupied a small place in your smoking room before you sold it to that American woman. I felt like telling you then, because you got a respectable