Love Artistically

1.
It was not until the moment the brush touched the surface that he knew what the painting would look like. It was an artistic quality that helped him preserve the freedom of creation in his hobby. Therefore, one of the worst things he knew was painting on command. If you first got a pointer, your thoughts were locked down, and the result would never be half as good as it could have been.
He followed the strokes of the brush with his eyes as he conducted them, watching them while they slowly began taking shape. Now he knew exactly how it was to be done. Oh yes, it would encapsulate his memories, become a tribute to the past. His throat felt thick thinking about it, but he bit his lip and continued his work. The painting would be finished, and it would be exquisite.
It would depict her.

2.
She had been the love of his life, and he would never forget her. He always had an image of her inside his mind. She lay there, floating teasingly in the outskirts of his conscious, only showing herself when it suited her. At times he woke up at night in despair, not being able to picture her face, but she would always come back to him later on, striking him with twice the power. It was not rare that she made him break down, partially out of relief, and partially out of the unbearable longing for her. He had not reached the step of sorrow where he could think about her without feeling sad, and he was unsure if he would ever get there. Meanwhile, he was cast away without her.
The taste of salt water on his tongue was driving him mad.

3.
Of course, both of them had known how fragile their relationship was. She lived on her clairvoyance and he was telepathic. It did not take long for her to see what lay before them. The thought of the future scared them both, but none of them was willing to stride off the path they had chosen. Whatever it meant, they would at least be together. If not else, for the shortest of times.
She never could stand leaving him in the mornings. She used to drag her feet behind her, staying as long as she possibly could. She would stand there in her white dressing gown, just looking at him, taking in every ounce of their existence with eachother; and he would dress and half-heartedly argue with her, telling her to hurry up. She knew he did it to cover his own fear. Because before they parted every day they met in a tense embrace that neither of them wanted to pull themselves out of.
Every day of their life together could be their last.

4.
Afterwards, he wondered if they should have done things differently. They had had the possibility to change everything, to affect things. They had had, what should it be called, better circumstances than others. But they were naïve then, thought she could be wrong, or that they could be invincible and resist their fate. Sometimes, when the anxiety grew especially strong, she would suggest they take another path in life to form their fate themselves. The times she mentioned this she never said out loud that she wanted to part from him, but he saw it in her thoughts. It had occurred to him as well, but his love for her was too strong for him to consider it for real. He asked her if she loved him. She said she did. Then he asked her if she was afraid of the future. She said she was. And when he asked her how she wanted to face her fate, she would burst into tears and come so close to him as she could, and he would rock her from side to side telling her he would never leave her, because he loved her so much.
I love you so much.

5.
He had left the house as soon as he could. When she was no longer there, he did not want to be there either. The last day he spent there, he walked around, looking. The rooms were empty and robbed of furniture and decorations, but her presence was everywhere, and he tried to take it all in with his breath, all the things that he sensed around him, while the feeling of loneliness grew overwhelming. He made it as far as to the bathroom, where he could still smell her perfume, before the violent tears came blurring his sight, and he sank onto the floor and rocked himself into an empty, dreamless sleep.

6.
There was a little decorative animal on the windowsill. It was a swan. It hadn’t really been hers, but he had given it to her and she had loved it. She used to say everyone had a little swan in them, and he had answered that not one was as beautiful as hers. She would look at him with a smile and put it up on her shelf. She had her own shelf for things she cared a lot about, and it warmed him up to know that his gift had been placed there once. Sometimes, he wished he had a shelf like that of his own, cause then he could have put her there, and she would still be around.

7.
He had been told to move on. Maybe he would when the time came. Maybe a ship would come by and pick him up from his isolated island, or a bottle would come with the water, notifying him that aid was on its way. It would be hopeless to build a raft, because no matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t imagine where he would find the wood for it.
At least he knew she would be waiting for him when he got out of there.

8.
He remembered one night when they had gone out. They didn’t do that too often, usually they would spend all their time together in the house. But that one night, they didn’t. She was delicate and beautiful as always, this evening she was wearing a skin coloured dress that reached almost all the way down to her knees, and was covered with glitter. He thought she looked like an angel, and he was proud to have her beside him as they walked down the street.
They ate at a small restaurant, and afterwards, they went ice skating in the park, and she was glowing in a particularly enjoyable way. Her cheeks were all red, her eyes glistening, and she told him what a wonderful time she was having. He pulled her close, the way he often did, and held her as close as he could, and he smiled into her hair as he thanked God fot letting him be so happy.
No one wanted to ruin the evening by talking about time.

9.
Time was an unpleasant expression. It contained the future. He started hoping that the days would get longer and longer, and maybe then time would not disappear so quickly. He was scared when he realized how many days they had already been given… it could mean that things were drawing to an end.
She always claimed she had not seen when it would happen, and he had believed her. But something told him she had a feeling.

10.
They used to meet eachother after work, by the birches a kilometer or so from the house. Then they would walk home together in silence. He liked that walk, and he missed strolling there with her when she was gone, looking at her enjoying the fresh air and the wind that stroked her cheeks.
A bad feeling was plaguing him throughout the day. He did not want to listen to it, but he came five minutes late to the birches that afternoon and by then she was not there. That in itself felt wrong. She was always there first. It did not feel good, not good at all. He sat down on a bench, stood up, wandered around, sat down, stood up again… He waited for two hours and she did not come. He did not know what to do. He felt up-side-down. He bent over and threw up in the grass. On his way home he did not dare breathing. She might have gone home early… forgotten to call him… and was in the house, waiting for him.
He searched the house and she was not there either.
He sat down by the phone, guarding it. He did not dare do anything else; he just sat there, on his guard. He hoped it would be her calling. He hoped something had just kept her. He hoped that she would come through the door anytime, hug him and say that everything was going to be just fine.
When the phone finally rang and he saw the number to her parents, he started feeling really sick. He stretched out a shivering hand and picked up the phone. He expected to hear the worst imagineable news.

11.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember the details of her face. The painting was almost finished, and he did not even feel sad when he looked at it. She looked so happy that he had to smile himself. He imagined her looking up at her shelf, getting that special glimmer in her eyes. He switched the brush for a smaller one, blended a white and yellowish colour and used it with care to make her eyes shine, like they had been doing that night when they had gone out. He did not want the painting to show her when she was worried and anxious.
He let the contours of her stay vague and fade into the background, a soft depiction of faint leaves swirling down a grey street in the autumn wind. There she stood smiling, on her last walk home. She could not be painted to clearly, he had to leave something for himself, something that was only his. Something he would never cease loving.

12.
He had hung up the phone, not knowing what to do next. He walked out into the bathroom and threw up again. Then he went outside, raking the grass. He felt strangely absent from the world, and nothing that he did seemed to matter anymore.
He fetched the mail and sorted it into piles before he started defrosting the freezer. But when he caught sight of her favourite ice cream lying there, neatly in its box, it suddenly and seemingly out of no reason appeared to him what it meant that she was gone. His throat went thick and he started to cry.

13.
He saw her death in his dreams. They tormented him all the night through, and she was no longer as beautiful as he remembered her. Her face was bruised and her clothes bloodstained when she met his eyes, gasping for air. He shouted her name and desperately tried to wake her up, when the light in her eyes faded away. He grasped her wrists as hard as he dared while letting go of all his sorrows in a scream, he rocked her back and forth, patting her thin body, but she never woke up.
She never woke up but he did. He woke up with a wet face and sore throat. For a second or so he wanted to go back to the dream so he could see her again, but the following second the idea sickened him so that he did not sleep for the rest of the night.
He had never seen her die in real life. But he thought that he had in a way, since he had known about it, and done nothing. All because he was selfish… because he wanted her to stay with him.
Maybe they should have parted earlier, saved them both all the suffering. Maybe it would have been better if they had chosen other fates.
He thought of what she used to say about fate as he laid the very last hand on the painting, signing it in the lower left corner. It was one of his most stunning works so far, and soon he knew that he would love it. But it was important that it was love for the work itself. The love for her would sometime fade along with him, but the love he place in that painting would last for as long as someone kept it on this Earth.
He assembled his brushes, colours and palettes and washed his hands. The painting was still up on its easel, and he let it be. He smiled at it, and the woman on the painting glanced playfully at him while her lips slid apart smiling too. That was how he wanted to remember her.
The proper way to remember her.

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This is a translation of an old short story I wrote. I got some good feedback on it at the POTF forum lately and figured, what the heck, let's put it up in the Jar. I kinda miss the short story writing, it's an exciting genre of writing. It was interesting to see how the story kinda changed a bit with the translation from Swedish. Anyway, here goes. If this works out nicely I might be barging back into the mine digging of short stories again.

See ya.