Surrealissimo fic: Red, With A Hint Of Orange (13/13)
Huzzah and whoopee, it is finally finished!
Follows more or less straight on from chapter 12, posted positively ages ago (click the tags to find all 13 chapters).
*****
A café, chairs out in the street - they sat in the sun like it was a holiday, like everything was wonderful. Bauer felt his skin warm and thought of Paris.
The south of France, he said it and it sounded like a vacation, as though they hadn’t run away, as though they weren’t fleeing the fascists. As though every meeting was still about the future of Surrealism and not about how to leave the country as they feared for their lives.
Every evening, back to his own lodgings; his tiny room, his single bed. Rosey across town, a few streets felt like miles away, and Bauer somehow making it through each day as though that didn’t matter. Sitting across the table from him, sometimes not seeing him for days, feeling as though something inside of him was rotting.
They made plans - America - planned to leave as soon as possible, as soon as they could without arousing suspicion. One by one, as soon as their paperwork could be arranged. So steadily their numbers dwindled, and every day Bauer felt the anxiety, churning deep in his gut, felt the approach of something ending, and every night he dreamed with grey at the edge of his vision.
By the door to his room, a bag - his few meagre belongings, an envelope of bank notes, one small wrapped canvas. Everything else sold or left behind, but when he had packed, Bauer had found himself unable to part with one in particular. The purple - the wrinkled bed-sheets, the empty room, and Bauer still blushed to think of it, even now. He carried the bag each time he left his lodgings, never comfortable if it was out of his sight.
And still their numbers dropped, some leaving for America, others simply gone. Bauer and Rosey spoke less and less to each other, did not dare spoil the time they could find together.
Some days he would sit with the bag on his lap, imagining the wrapped painting inside it, picturing the precise shades of purple, remembering the anticipation, reds and oranges and deep, deep blues - remembering the promise of his first meeting with Rosey. Remembered explaining his language of colours, the surprise and the yes and the at last of finding someone who understood, who could communicate the same way. The completeness of it all, the sense of everything gradually fitting into place.
And now all that was crumbling - the constant sensation of the ground dropping away from beneath his feet, of standing on the edge of something, vertigo madness that kept him awake at night. Instincts and urges he couldn’t quite name or understand; Bauer felt driven by a need to do something but could not say what that something was. He made guesses, changed his lodgings, avoided people, spent entire days in his room without ever seeing the sun. He had whispered conversations with Breton, then went days without speaking to him.
Rosey, he knew, felt pushed away, even if Bauer did not mean to push. Just the thought of Rosey in danger, though, and he couldn’t bring himself to speak to Rosey if there was any sort of risk involved - odd moments of ice-cold terror would freeze him in place, motionless and speechless, even in company.
Ever conscious of time and its limitations, he made resolutions in his head; he would apologise to Breton for questioning him, he would thank Aragon for the poem which brought him to Paris, he would tell Yoyotte what an insufferable fool Bauer thought he was.
He never did, though. To do so would be to admit that time was running out, as though he could see his own death on the horizon, an ending where once there had been brilliant white possibility.
Only one resolution was ever seen through. He found Rosey one morning, in the bleak little room Rosey was renting. The bag he always carried had been slung over his shoulder; now he placed it carefully on Rosey’s table, opened it up and brought out his offering.
The canvas, wrapped in paint-stained cloth - he presented it to Rosey without a word. Rosey offered a questioning glance, a raised eyebrow, and waited for an explanation.
Feeling his face flush, Bauer sought for a plausible reason.
“It was my first. After we met.” To add anything else would have been too final.
Rosey took it from his hands and placed it on the table, unopened. Then, as Bauer watched in confusion, he crossed the room to open a small trunk which had been serving as a nightstand. From it, he pulled a hardbound book, stuffed with loose leaves of paper; he rifled quickly through the pages to pull out one yellowed page, folded carefully into quarters. This, he brought back and offered to Bauer.
“You wouldn’t see it, before. Will you take it now?”
And Bauer understood, felt the impending fall, knew the loneliness that would soon enfold him. Still, he took the paper from Rosey’s trembling hand.
“I won’t read it yet,” Bauer told him, slipping the paper into the pocket of his jacket. “When we leave France. When we get to America. I’ll read it then.” He did not add that there was no need, that he remembered Rosey’s poem, could tell even now what Rosey had thought and felt when it had been written all those years ago.
Rosey picked up the wrapped canvas.
“When we meet in America. I’ll open it then.” And he placed it inside the trunk.
Bauer did not dare stay long; they risked so much even visiting like this. He steeled himself for one embrace, cursed himself when it led, inevitably, to one kiss, and whispered once more before he left, “When I see you next - when we’re across the sea. When we reach the horizon. I’ll read your poem then.”
He let himself out into the street, blinking with surprise at the brightness of the sunlight.
END
Follows more or less straight on from chapter 12, posted positively ages ago (click the tags to find all 13 chapters).
*****
A café, chairs out in the street - they sat in the sun like it was a holiday, like everything was wonderful. Bauer felt his skin warm and thought of Paris.
The south of France, he said it and it sounded like a vacation, as though they hadn’t run away, as though they weren’t fleeing the fascists. As though every meeting was still about the future of Surrealism and not about how to leave the country as they feared for their lives.
Every evening, back to his own lodgings; his tiny room, his single bed. Rosey across town, a few streets felt like miles away, and Bauer somehow making it through each day as though that didn’t matter. Sitting across the table from him, sometimes not seeing him for days, feeling as though something inside of him was rotting.
They made plans - America - planned to leave as soon as possible, as soon as they could without arousing suspicion. One by one, as soon as their paperwork could be arranged. So steadily their numbers dwindled, and every day Bauer felt the anxiety, churning deep in his gut, felt the approach of something ending, and every night he dreamed with grey at the edge of his vision.
By the door to his room, a bag - his few meagre belongings, an envelope of bank notes, one small wrapped canvas. Everything else sold or left behind, but when he had packed, Bauer had found himself unable to part with one in particular. The purple - the wrinkled bed-sheets, the empty room, and Bauer still blushed to think of it, even now. He carried the bag each time he left his lodgings, never comfortable if it was out of his sight.
And still their numbers dropped, some leaving for America, others simply gone. Bauer and Rosey spoke less and less to each other, did not dare spoil the time they could find together.
Some days he would sit with the bag on his lap, imagining the wrapped painting inside it, picturing the precise shades of purple, remembering the anticipation, reds and oranges and deep, deep blues - remembering the promise of his first meeting with Rosey. Remembered explaining his language of colours, the surprise and the yes and the at last of finding someone who understood, who could communicate the same way. The completeness of it all, the sense of everything gradually fitting into place.
And now all that was crumbling - the constant sensation of the ground dropping away from beneath his feet, of standing on the edge of something, vertigo madness that kept him awake at night. Instincts and urges he couldn’t quite name or understand; Bauer felt driven by a need to do something but could not say what that something was. He made guesses, changed his lodgings, avoided people, spent entire days in his room without ever seeing the sun. He had whispered conversations with Breton, then went days without speaking to him.
Rosey, he knew, felt pushed away, even if Bauer did not mean to push. Just the thought of Rosey in danger, though, and he couldn’t bring himself to speak to Rosey if there was any sort of risk involved - odd moments of ice-cold terror would freeze him in place, motionless and speechless, even in company.
Ever conscious of time and its limitations, he made resolutions in his head; he would apologise to Breton for questioning him, he would thank Aragon for the poem which brought him to Paris, he would tell Yoyotte what an insufferable fool Bauer thought he was.
He never did, though. To do so would be to admit that time was running out, as though he could see his own death on the horizon, an ending where once there had been brilliant white possibility.
Only one resolution was ever seen through. He found Rosey one morning, in the bleak little room Rosey was renting. The bag he always carried had been slung over his shoulder; now he placed it carefully on Rosey’s table, opened it up and brought out his offering.
The canvas, wrapped in paint-stained cloth - he presented it to Rosey without a word. Rosey offered a questioning glance, a raised eyebrow, and waited for an explanation.
Feeling his face flush, Bauer sought for a plausible reason.
“It was my first. After we met.” To add anything else would have been too final.
Rosey took it from his hands and placed it on the table, unopened. Then, as Bauer watched in confusion, he crossed the room to open a small trunk which had been serving as a nightstand. From it, he pulled a hardbound book, stuffed with loose leaves of paper; he rifled quickly through the pages to pull out one yellowed page, folded carefully into quarters. This, he brought back and offered to Bauer.
“You wouldn’t see it, before. Will you take it now?”
And Bauer understood, felt the impending fall, knew the loneliness that would soon enfold him. Still, he took the paper from Rosey’s trembling hand.
“I won’t read it yet,” Bauer told him, slipping the paper into the pocket of his jacket. “When we leave France. When we get to America. I’ll read it then.” He did not add that there was no need, that he remembered Rosey’s poem, could tell even now what Rosey had thought and felt when it had been written all those years ago.
Rosey picked up the wrapped canvas.
“When we meet in America. I’ll open it then.” And he placed it inside the trunk.
Bauer did not dare stay long; they risked so much even visiting like this. He steeled himself for one embrace, cursed himself when it led, inevitably, to one kiss, and whispered once more before he left, “When I see you next - when we’re across the sea. When we reach the horizon. I’ll read your poem then.”
He let himself out into the street, blinking with surprise at the brightness of the sunlight.
END