The long-awaited package arrived at Zosia’s doorstep when she was busy vacuuming. She missed the postman even though he had knocked hard, as the doorbell has been busted for years. It was a registered parcel, but living in the same flat for fifty-five years released Zosia from the delivery confirmation signature. That was the deal she had with the postman, and every Christmas she would give him some cash in a red envelope.
She lived on the top floor at the end of a spiral staircase. She stepped out rarely, partially daunted by the five flights of stairs, partially due to the lack of desire to engage with the world beyond the farmer’s market. But she did check her doorstep few times a day to make sure she hadn’t missed a delivery, or a note from a neighbor. And now, sure enough, the package she had ordered from Japan was there, on her doormat.
The drafting table was set up in the living room, facing the western window, which gave her the best light in the afternoons. The bedroom window faced east and it was small and useless for illumination. She preferred to paint by daylight whenever possible. She didn’t trust lightbulbs for their distortion of natural color. She trusted sunlight, even if it was mostly dispersed through clouds.
Today, the sky was darker than usual, so Zosia did turn on her two drafting lamps. She sat on her stool and placed the parcel from Japan on the desk. It was wrapped in regular packing paper, although it did have an unusual sheen. It was held together by hemp twine. She cut it and carefully slipped it off. The box inside was gift-wrapped in glossy tissue. It was greyish-blue with a pale pattern of bird shapes, perhaps cranes, in various stages of flight. There was no cord around the wrapping, so she flipped the package over to see how to open it without ripping. The edges of the paper were neatly tucked in and she untucked them without effort.
The box with mineral pigments she had ordered was made out of decorative cardboard with fabric-like texture. Those Japanese really know how to deliver the goods, Zosia thought, and opened the lid. The twenty-four small jars were arranged in two rows separated by a balsa divider. Each jar was labeled in Japanese, but also had its name spelled in tiny Latin lettering. She picked up one jar with a particularly pleasing yellow powder and read out loud its name. YAMABUKI. Whatever it was, it felt vibrant and breezy, and whatever plant or rock or shell it came from, she was sure she had never seen anything like it before.
She spent an hour studying the jars one by one and made her preliminary selection of six colors. Ultimately, she would need only three. Narrowing her palette was an old trick to maintain a uniform esthetic.
Zosia lifted her eyes. The clouds seemed to be slowly dispersing. There might be enough daylight coming in soon. She slid off her stool and went to the bookcase. Two of the upper shelves were filled with children’s books she had illustrated. She picked one at random. It was a story about a vegetable garden and a farmer who had problems with rabbits. It was written in verse by a well-known poet.
Furry, skinny, and terribly pesky
The rabbits made Farmer Tom testy
They dug up his turnip
Which made Tom burn-up
They dug up the beets
His favorite treat
And carrots, of course
Which were for the horse
Gone, too, was the parsnip
Which made Farmer Tom flip
*
I will not rest
Not for a minute
Until each pest
Is stripped to its sinew
And put in a boiling stew
Or turned, Tom thought,
Into rabbit skin glue
Zosia laughed. Those were the days. Her illustration on the opposing page was bursting with color. It was the third or fourth book she had done, and her style was already crystallizing. Her style. Well, yes, that was her style back then. The publisher liked it enough to ask for more, and she obliged gladly. It was work, good, steady work, at least until the shortages of printing ink started. Somehow, they would never run out of black ink, just the color ones.
Zosia grabbed another book, one from the final chapter of her illustrating career. At the time, they hadn’t told her about ink shortages, so when she noticed the book at a kiosk and opened it, she was shocked to see her work printed in black and white. Only the cover retained color, her color, the one that made her employable. Inside the book, her splashy watercolor art, reproduced in black and white, was muddy and anonymous. The kids didn’t like it. Can you blame them?
Zosia didn’t blame the kids and she didn’t blame the publishers. Or the economy. Or the weather. When a new government arrived and the economy improved enough to afford printing books in full color again, they came back to her with offers. But the books were different now, and animals were very kind to farmers and farmers were kind in return, and no one tried to eat anybody, or maim, or even threaten with violence or verbal abuse. And Zosia was different now, too. Well, at least she wasn’t the same.
Zosia put the book with her muddy and anonymous illustrations back on the shelf. She was fearing a wave of stupid nostalgia, which would probably make her feel weepy. It was not what was needed right now. She already had a full bottle of tears labeled SENTIMENTALIS.
Back at the drafting table, Zosia began to make her final color selection. She would never paint with more than three colors at a time. Two of them were analogous, not too far removed from one another, and the third one would complement them by contrast. Two bright ones and one dark, or vice versa.
All six jars she has chosen looked equally alluring. She studied the warmer hues first. She lined up YAMABUKI with, what does it say, ah, IWAKABA, then added IWA…, ehh, IWABENI. The three jars next to one another looked like a summer sunset in three snapshots of yellow, orange, and flame red. Really? That’s where your mind is going? To a postcard? Come on, woman. But they sure look glorious together, don’t they? Nagasaki, Jesus H Christ! Exploding glory… Stop! But the Japanese read from right to left, don’t they? Violence reversed, then. Stop thinking. Look. Which color goes? Which two stay? Eenie, meenie, miney, yamabuki. Go.
Zosia put the yellow back in the box.
Now the cool hues. The tealy patina of URABAROKUSHO looked great next to ASAGIGUNJO ultramarine, which was curiously muted by a bit of something yellow, or light brown, or something only a mad Japanese chemist could concoct, marveled Zosia. The third of the cool pigments was even more muted, a tea-leafy UGISUCHAROKU, which instantly made her feel, wait, don’t feel, don’t think, just pick a goddamn color already.
Zosia sensed the threat of teal working with orange. That combination made her shudder. Too pleasing, too common, predictable. Out with the tealy patina then. And just in case, out with the orange. The red stays. Two darker hues on the cool side, and the hot red for, well, for whatever happens. Jeeez. Finally. So, these are the three. Nice.
A-SA-GI-GUN-JO, U-GI-SU-CHA-RO-KU, IWA-BENI. I should, I really should learn the names, Zosia thought. Calling these stardusty minerals ultramarine blue, dark olive green, and carmine red is pedestrian. Shameful, really. And disrespectful to the mad chemist.
She had never painted with any Japanese pigments before. Her powders would come from European sources, all synthetic, lab-made, and cheap. All imitating nature. Sure, other options were available, but she painted by volume, and the costs added up fast. Volume was key to survival, and she did it all after the children’s book fiasco. Twenty-five years of portraits on commission, Old Town views, old Ghetto views, and views of anything, anywhere, again and again, in expanding circles which bulged out of the city into the nearby forests and farm land, then looped back to the spiral staircase and that door which now rarely opened.
After the children’s book fiasco
Madame Z started to paint alfresco
She did it all without rancor
Once around, then for an encore
And again, and again
An old choo-choo train
With no steam in the boiler
The end? Alert! A spoiler.
Christ! Funny lady. I should be writing old folks’ books, Zosia quipped aloud. There’s a career choice for you. GERIASCENE LITERATURE. A new section in bookstores, all in nursing-home rhyme. And cover art would be always printed in black and white, naturally. Alright then, it’s time to get the binder, you idiot. Time to work.
Zosia opened her art supply cabinet and took out a medium-size glass bottle. It was the rabbit skin glue, already prepared and recently rehydrated. It had a nice light-yellow color, slightly muddy. She preferred rabbit skin glue to other hide glues, as, somehow, it bound her pigments into a more manageable paint. It felt just right under the brush. And it was an unusual choice for a watercolor binder. Although, as she has learned recently, the Japanese had been doing this for ages.
Japanese mineral pigments were not sold locally, so she had asked her art supply store to order them for her. The delivery would take about a month. But the store did have Japanese watercolor paper in stock, so she got some to test it with her cheap synthetic pigments until the real article arrives. The paper came in sheets, with uncut, naturally frayed edges.
Zosia brushed off the drafting table for any possible protrusions or dust, and placed one sheet of paper on it. Then she slid off the stool and returned to the art cabinet. Inside, there was a smaller cabinet, an upright case, really, made out of cheap plywood. It had two doors held together by a hook. Zosia flipped the hook open with her middle finger and opened the case.
There were three shelves inside. On each shelf, in neat rows, rested eyedropper bottles. The top shelf was labeled REFLEX. The bottom two were named EMOTIONALIS. All bottles were marked with a single-word description of their contents. Zosia pondered briefly, then she took two bottles from the REFLEX shelf. One said ONION, the other one SMOKE.
She would never paint with more than three kinds of tears at a time. Two types of REFLEX tears complemented by only one EMOTIONALIS.
Zosia had started collecting tears the day the postman delivered the first installment of her retirement pension. She was sixty-one, and done running around in concentric circles. The pension was basic, the lowest the state allowed, but she could survive now without selling a single painting.
She was not a natural crier, but the sudden financial relief had released a brief torrent of tears. It surprised her that so much liquid could come out of her eyes in such a short time. Before it was over, she managed to save a scant measure of tears by sucking them up off her cheeks with an eyedropper. That was the beginning of her collection. She labeled the first bottle JOY. Its content hasn’t increased by much since.
Expanding the tear collection had proven difficult precisely because Zosia was not a natural crier. She dreaded melodrama and all things maudlin. The SENTIMENTALIS bottle took years to fill, and she frequently had to resort to looking at the faded photos of her father to induce the desired response. Those tears were guesswork-based, as Zosia has never met her father. He had vanished during the Second World War, shortly before she was born. So, she tried to cry to the memories of what could have happened, producing tears of conjecture. It didn’t work very well. For her mother, Zosia held no emotions.
Most of the time her eyes would yield second-hand tears. She had never married, never truly loved anyone, and she was childless. Her GRIEF jar was full of tears of hypothetical regret over bad divorces, betrayals, and miscarriages. She had to rely on emotions of friends, neighbors, or film characters. Books didn’t do it for her.
Tears are tears, chemically speaking, Zosia would reason, and she would sometimes find herself in the kitchen dicing onions. Through experimentation, she had settled on the yellow onion, as it contained more sulfur than the other kinds, and it was cheaper. She also found out that room-temperature onions sliced with dull knives produced better results.
Other eye irritants worked well, too, except for household chemicals, which is where Zosia had drawn the line. The more dust in the house, the better. And smoke, especially coming off spicy food. Those tears were placed on the REFLEX shelf.
Adding tears to her watercolor had been an impulse she couldn’t resist. Mixing her synthetic pigments with animal glue binder was fine, but what if there would be something from her in it, too? Something of her. So, it felt natural to dispense a few drops of tears into the mix, and she was pleased with the effect. The new paint felt the same in action, but when it dried, it gave the color a special texture. Whether it was the salts, or some enzymes, the tears left a veiny residue once the paint dried. Zosia was thrilled by that discovery, but not entirely satisfied. Maybe that’s why she has never attempted a self-portrait in all those years.
Now, with her Japanese pigments, all earthy and mineral and all made by hand, Zosia felt some form of completion was near. She vigorously rubbed the rabbit skin glue bottle with her hands until it properly warmed up. All three pigment powders, the tea-leaf green, the off-kilter dark blue, and the fiery red, were already poured into three ceramic bowls. She added the glue binder to each and stirred until they reached perfect consistency.
With the eyedropper, Zosia added five ONION tears to the green, and five SMOKE tears to the blue. She didn’t mix them in, allowing instead for the liquids to blend comfortably on their own.
She looked at her EMOTIONALIS collection. How about that? All those tears. All those years, and the none of those tears belong to me, she suddenly thought. They are mine, alright, but not of me. They are from my eyes only. I’m a synthetic tear machine relying on outside vendors.
It was clearing up outside and the light was near perfect. Perfect for what? For your stupid science experiment? That’s what it is, isn’t it? You’re a hack manufacturer, woman, let’s face it. Outsourcing the key component. It’s not in you. Nothing is in you. You’re full of nothing.
With feelings all imported
Madame Z felt distorted
For any grief or glee
She paid a customs fee
Good Lord! Yes, start feeling sorry for yourself now, that’s right. Do you even know how? Or do you need to borrow that sensation from somebody else? Or laugh it off with your dumb limericks, la-di-da. Moron.
Zosia violently grabbed the tear collection case with both hands. Several bottles fell out but didn’t break. She held the case over the floor for a good minute, without blinking. Her eyes started to burn so she closed them. Those would be reflex tears, after all. Or would they? Her arms began to tremble and the bottles started to clink. A few more fell out. Finally, she put the case back in the cabinet and exhaled.
Zosia slowly picked up all the fallen bottles. She was glad that there was no broken glass on the floor. And no puddle of assorted sentiments. Relieved, she neatly placed the bottles back in the case and latched the little doors.
The room was brightening up with an afternoon glow. Zosia returned to the drafting table and turned off the lights. She noticed that the three Japanese pigments with rabbit skin glue were beginning to coagulate in the bowls. She sat down on the stool. Unhurriedly, she poked the drying, already wrinkling skin of the red paint with her finger. The skin broke, oozing whatever was left underneath of the living color.
Old Town Views / Old Ghetto Views, maybe a framework for the collection in there somewhere, another excellent installment, limiting the palette helpful advice!
Tears of conjecture! Nursing-home rhymes!