The Still Life of Doriana

The Still Life of Doriana

by Sylvia Hiven

I know from the way Basilio looks at me that he’s intimidated.

I don’t blame him. I am, after all, Doriana.

“Good morning, Señora,” he says, bowing so deeply his cravat kisses the sienna-colored tiles.

He’s young, and handsome in a poor man’s way. A brilliant light in his brown eyes wishes to burst forth—but something in him hesitates to sparkle. It’s as if he buttons his light up within that worn vest, choking it with the tattered cravat. He’s afraid of it.

He fascinates me. But he mustn’t know that. I am, after all, Doriana.

Paintings lean against the wall. I see splashes of roses sprung out of a clay vase, and shiny-green apples spilling out of bowls.

“My samples,” he says. “I hope they speak to my abilities.”

I know his abilities. I know before I even get close that the scent of roses will tickle my nostrils, and the apples will look so fresh, I’ll want to reach out for one and taste it. The same vase and bowl sit upon a table nearby. Though the roses have long since withered, and the apples wrinkled and rotted, the vase and bowl are identical to their twins on his canvas.

“No portraits? How do I know you can paint a portrait if all paintings you show are still life?” I knife my gaze into his.

The light in his eyes flickers ever so slightly. “I don’t call them still life. They’re just… pieces.”

Behind my eyes, the throbbing begins. “I don’t want just another portrait, Señor Fernando. I don’t want to hang in some corridor, ever present but always ignored. I want people to say I look alive.”

“Do my roses not look alive?” He sounds wounded.

The throbbing deepens, and I know the afternoon will be one of pain. I’m eager to escape this bright house and back to my own, darkened rooms.

“Fine,” I say. “Come tomorrow at noon.”

#

I sit for Basilio for an hour a day. I tell him it’s because I have obligations—picnics and dinner parties—but it’s not true. The pain comes more frequently, and the light in which he insists I sit makes my world dazzle with agony.

The portrait flourishes to life beneath his brush. Splotches of black twist into my curls, smears of satin cream shape my cheek bones. Yet where I sit, I feel broken and old.

One afternoon, I sigh too loudly at the pain.

“Señora?”

His eyes flash with concern. I know he can see my deepening wrinkles, my pasty complexion, the decay of Doriana—but I do my best to pretend all is well.

“Just a headache, Basilio.”

“We should stop.”

“Come back tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll feel better when I’ve had some rest.”

A shadow has fallen into his eyes. “I should not continue this painting, Señora,” he says in a low voice. “I should not.”

#

The sittings are shorter and shorter. The pain is constant, and there’s no use pretending to Basilio anymore. He knows I don’t have long. He insists he should stop, that I should be under a doctor’s care and not sit stiffly in a tight corset.

I try to joke, smiling through my migraine. “Are you afraid my beauty will flee before you can capture it? Am I fading faster than your roses, Basilio?”

“I’m not amused, Señora. I do not wish to continue. Will you please release me from the contract?”

I’ve seen the portrait, and how it’s coming to life. Each day I deteriorate, but Doriana on the canvas is brushed into what I used to be.

“I already paid you in full,” I say harshly, once again Doriana. “You will finish, or you’ll never have another commission in this town.”

He returns to the canvas.

#

The light is different in the bedroom, but I can’t leave the bed anymore.

“You can still paint,” I say. “It’s almost finished.”

Basilio looks so miserable. I believe he has begun to care for me. Not in the way in which I might have preferred—like a lusty boy wanting a beautiful woman—but as a son watching his mother wither.

“You only have days, Señora,” he says. “You should spend them with family and friends, not—”

“They will not be allowed to see me like this. When the portrait is done, they’ll remember me as I was. They’ll see Doriana, beautiful and alive, not weak and dying.”

He puts down the brush and comes to my bedside. There is a terrible guilt in his eyes. “You don’t understand. My paintings… There’s a reason why I don’t paint portraits, and only paint…” 

“… Still life?” I finish softly. “I know your secret. Your ability. Why do you think I chose you, Basilio?”

He stares at me, horrified. “How did you—?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I see myself looking back from the painting: slender and ravishing, with ruby lips so tempting, both men and women will long to know what it would be like to kiss them. Doriana is eternal on the canvas, painted to life within the frame. Like that, I will live forever.

“It will be perfect.” I lean forward and kiss Basilio on the cheek. “Now, be a good boy and finish.”

Tears gleam in his eyes, but he returns to his easel and picks up the brush, swirling it in the paint that will bring the finishing sparkle of life to my portrait’s eyes.

I lay back down, close my eyes, and let him paint my life still.

---

Sylvia Hiven lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia. Her fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, PseudoPod, Eschatology, Bete Noire, and many others.

© 2011 All rights reserved Sylvia Hiven.

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