The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

a friend of theirs once saw. They were oblivious to the loitering men and the excited prostitutes with their high heels, ribbons and bells. And I watched as one after the other, they stepped or tripped over the poor boy slumped against the wall. No one turned, stopped, or looked at him. Not one of them. The boy with the sunken eyes was invisible. Fitting, I thought to myself. A nobody. In nowhere. Just like me.

      As tempestuous thoughts clouded my mind once more, I didn’t see the dark, short man slide past me. I wasn’t supposed to. He wore a black cloak, the hood pulled far over his head, obscuring his features. Only when I heard the invisible boy cry with fear as a wide column of black towered over him did I register the hooded man’s ominous presence. A chill ran through my already cooling blood. I felt the threat. People continued to walk past, unaware or uncaring, it was hard to say; even a person like me, whose mind was shouting ‘No,’ found myself unable to act.

      I watched as the sinister figure crouched down. My body was numb with the icy coldness, though my mind still raced. ‘No! No! No!’ it was screaming. A man dressed in dark hose and patterned tights tripped over me. I waited for the rebuke or apology. Neither came. Only a laugh interrupted the flow of his conversation as he regained his footing. I watched as he walked away, the sight of his legs blocking my view of the hooded figure and the bag-of-bones boy.

      The legs moved on. Now when I looked for the boy all I could see was the shifting hem of a black cloak. The sinister figure still had his back to me but was now standing erect, the voluminous folds of his garment drawn like a curtain around his prey. The hem slithered suggestively though the air was still.

      I sensed evil was afoot. I wanted to stop it. But …

      I looked around. There were so many people, all blind to what was happening in plain sight. They did nothing. Why should I? The memory of Margarita came into my mind unbidden, how she’d come to my aid. Then I realised. This boy could be me. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the day after.

      An instinct as quick and flaming as lightning scorched through me. It freed my ice-bound limbs, melted my snow-packed voice.

      ‘W-w-w- … LEAVE HIM!’ I failed to say one thing, managed to say another. It was the black cloak that froze now. I got to my feet.

      The people walking by flowed away from me, on the whole undistracted from their conversations, though aware something was amiss. I’d attempted to throw a great boulder into the centre of their consciences; I’d succeeded in creating only the most imperceptible of ripples. But as the dark column turned his hooded head in my direction it seemed I had done enough.

      Cruel eyes burned out of a shrouded face and stared at me. My heart went cold once more. I waited for the devil to come over and rip it out. Instead he placed something around the boy’s neck, and seemed to force something into his mouth. Then he swept around, the edge of his cloak flying up like wings.

      I watched as he disappeared into the night.

      *

      ‘Come.’

      His name was Luca and I would never have befriended a boy like him. But I was on the streets. My circumstances had changed. And for these few hours at least I had a heightened sense of life. And death. Desperation was settling in my veins as well as the cold.

      Sometimes vile events can make the good seem insubstantial and trivial. Or so it seemed to me then. My good fortune on meeting Raphael seemed ludicrous. No longer real. Terrible things had happened to me since then. My father had disowned me, and my descent into the underworld of Rome had been rapid. Absurdly so. Until that evening, I’d only known of its existence through a series of cautionary tales, not unlike the one Giulio had told us that morning in Sebastiano’s studio. Far-fetched fictions to frighten, about those who’d strayed from the right path.

      I dragged my feet along Rome’s bloodstained gutters and dark passages. I was damned. The world inhabited by Raphael no longer existed for me. I followed Luca. It was my only choice. What’s right and wrong never really changes, I know. But I was learning fast that the colours often run between the two in an all too imperfect world.

      *

      Luca didn’t speak much. I walked behind him through labyrinthine lanes, accepted the food scraps he offered me that he picked up from outside rowdy taverns. I did not care about colour or taste; I snatched them from him and forced them down my gullet, thankful to be eating. We passed a man selling cooked rabbit. My insides ached at the smell of it. I was still hungry. To my surprise Luca stopped and held out his hand to the vendor. He exchanged a coin for the meat. I looked at him but, like a guilty man, he would not look me in the eye and he placed his free hand on top of his shirt as if he didn’t want me to see what was under it. When the transaction was over the vendor walked one way and we walked another, Luca the proud owner of a cooked rabbit.

      ‘Wh-wh-wh-where did you …?’ My stuttering voice was accusing.

      ‘You’re on the streets now,’ he said, as if that was answer enough.

      ‘B-b-but …’ I pushed.

      ‘Don’t you go giving me any fine words and fancy morality,’ he snapped, cutting me dead. ‘Keep ’em. I don’t want ’em.’

      We carried on in silence.

      ‘We are nearly there,’ he said.

      ‘Where?’ I asked, but he did not answer.

      Up ahead I saw an arch. It was as if Luca could see our destination beyond it while all I could make out was night as black as pitch. I walked carefully over uneven ground. A line of moonlight had traced its way around a dark cloud. It caught ripple tips as feral boys threw stones into water, tiny twinkles of light cascading out. We were near the river – a place I would never usually visit after dark. It smelt dank, dangerous.

      The talk of that morning came back to me of a mutilated body that had been recently pulled from the tangle of riverweed. With that in my already gloomy mind, I jumped at every rustle of a leaf, every lapping of the water, every snapping of a twig underfoot, even when it was my foot the twig was under. I would have jumped at my own shadow if I’d had one. Thankfully Luca had the good sense to walk away from the feral stone-throwers. I followed him. He stopped near some bushes. We sat and ate the rabbit.

      The sound of an animal scurrying towards us gave me a shock.

      ‘Throw the bones in the river,’ Luca said. The animal ran over my feet. It made me start. It plunged into the water. My hand rummaged through the dark to find Luca’s. I heard another animal run and jump. Then another. And another. ‘A rat,’ he whispered. ‘Only a rat.’ I clung on to his thin hand. It was cold. I took off my jacket, wrapped it around his shoulders, and moved so close to him that I could feel his breath on me. I rubbed his hands in mine, stroked his face with my fingers, put my hand inside his tattered shirt. My fingers found a pendant hanging down upon his soft, hairless chest. He raised it up to show me. In the moonlight I could make out the image of St Bartolomeo. So that was what the dark figure had placed around his neck.

      ‘I didn’t want it,’ Luca said, taking the pendant from around his neck and offering it to me, a sudden tremor in his voice. ‘He forced it on me. Take it, please!’

      My instinct was to accept it and hurl it in the river along with the rabbit bones. But as I went to do so Luca caught my hand in his and guided my palm to his heart. To be this close to another human being strengthened my soul. Fear at the sight of the pendant had disappeared. I moved my fingers to a nipple. He didn’t pull away. I didn’t want him to.

       Chapter 7

      I was awoken by the cold the following morning. I opened my eyes, wondered where I was, looked around. I was on the banks of the Tiber. My jacket had been placed over me like a blanket. I pulled it on. A solitary silver button was hanging by a thread. Three were missing. Luca. Bit by bit the events of the day before came back to me. I breathed in sharply. Strange to think the skeletal waif of yesterday was the same boy who had made me feel so alive last night and was the same