LONDON, 1938 Spellbound, he watched in wonder as she raised the dagger and plunged it into her heaving chest. He’d felt her every emotion despite her silence. Her youthful excitement, her joy, her agony, her sorrow and now, finally, her resolution. Tears streamed down his face as red silk bloomed under her hands and she dragged herself to lie with her lover, to defy the world with the last of her strength, to be together with him in death. A tsunami of applause, shouts and stamping feet washed over him and exploded onto the stage. “Brava!” cried the woman sitting next to him. “Brava! Brava!” “Come,” she said to him as the applause dwindled. “I’ll take you backstage.” He followed blindly as his wealthy patron led him through a maze of damp, dingy corridors. His mind was lost in awe. His fingers itched to draw, to put paint on canvas. The exquisite lines she’d made, her hands, that face, those feet, the leaps, the spins, the beauty of her smile. Juliet… His Juliet. He awoke when they reached the crowded, smoky green room with its clinking champagne glasses and upper class voices. He abandoned his hostess without a second’s thought. He didn’t hear the angry retorts of those he shoved out of the way. He shrugged off the grabbing hands that urged him to slow, to wait his turn and, at last, there she was. A tiny figure. Almost childlike. Animated with a spirit that infused the air; that captured his heart and made him fall at her feet. The hubbub around her faded into the background. His whole being was tuned to her and her only. From his knees, he took her perfumed hand in his and raised it before him as if presenting an offering to God. His eyes locked onto hers. His imploring, hers a little amused and a little charmed. “I have to paint you. Please, my Juliet, let me paint you.” They were lovers before the first oil had dried. A life-size image of Juliet watched on as the thin sheets twisted around their two gleaming, writhing bodies, her ears deaf to their moans of delight. The weeks passed. They laughed and loved with a passion they had believed only to be found in art. They fought with equal fervour. His moods, her need to leave him to give herself to others in dance, his need for another poisonous high, her husband… They screamed at each other, surrounded by a thousand shards of the glass and pottery sacrificed to their rage. In a rare moment of calm, floating on a cloud of opium, he asked her to be with him forever. “We’re moths drawn to an inferno. It’s madness,” she’d replied. “But, oh how brightly we would burn,” he’d whispered. She made her decision a week later. The fight surpassed all before. “I can’t live without you,” he’d pleaded at the end. “I choose him,” she’d screamed. “I choose sanity.” He waited two days for her to come back. She waited three days to go back. She found him in bed, the needle still in his arm, rigour having frozen it in place. Four easels arranged in a semi-circle around him held his silent witnesses: her as Juliet; her, laughing, naked and en pointe in arabesque, her outstretched arm and supporting leg sparing her modesty; her peeling off a tutu, a single breast showing, a smile of expectation on her face; her, glowing, glorying in the aftermath of their lovemaking. The last was still tacky to the touch. Completed from memory in a frenzy of loss. His best work ever. Perfect. Image by Vladislav83 from Pixabay
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