"What color is it?" (He is blind now; it is necessary.)
"It is white, except for where the spatters of blood soaked through its protective covering," says the policeman (who sounds tired and annoyed and who he is unlikely to know long).
"Ah."
His cane makes clicking noises on the hard wooden floor, then stops as he thrusts it in the easel's general direction. "There?"
"Another step."
Another step. The very tip of the cane (painted white, he recalls, but probably not the same shade of white. There was a time when that would have bothered him, the asymmetry of it) brushes against the side. He leans closer and presses one finger to the place where the cane had touched.
The canvas. One of the, ah, unspattered areas, rough and dry against his skin. Laboriously he drags the finger downwards until it comes to a sticky patch.
This is what red feels like, he thinks.
"The body?"
"Moved already," the detective replies. "It was a bit, well, messy."
Messy. Yes. He knows. The dead man was his best friend, and the dead man was his messy friend, in life. (And in death it would seem. He did not intend it so.)
"And the axe?"
(The axe which he borrowed from his apprentice and stained that apprentice's hands with. Murder! A pity; the boy showed promise.)
"On the table. Just to your left," the policeman says helpfully. Helpfully, because here is a rich man who deserves help - he is blind and his best and most well-known friend is dead. Helpfully, because it is satisfying to see the once-great, now-pathetic hanging onto one's words.
They did not move it after he left. Good.
"He used to like axes, you know. He sketched them often." Daniel preferred (prefers) sketching to painting. He was (is) better at painting. There is probably a message there, the blind man decides. Perhaps he will write an elegant eulogy to his dead/murdered friend based on one such message.
"Is that so?" The policeman is polite. Disinterested.
"Yes." Yes. Daniel the carrier took his eyes with a disease and he will take Daniel's words and twist them into lovely falsehoods as he twisted Daniel's neck before bringing the axe down on the painter's spine, before the darkness had fully veiled his vision.
His hand draws away and reaches for the axe. Then he stops. He planned to kill the copper when he heard the nasal voice but now he thinks otherwise. Why not let the man live? (One life for two eyes is enough.) It is not as if he is angry any longer.
Besides, it has a certain balance to it; the image Daniel never painted on this blankness under his fingers, which he the lesser friend will now complete (and bury away from the eyes of the world).
"May I have it?" he says, tugging the edge of the thing meaningfully.
"Er... I suppose so," says the policeman, disarmed. "Since we've the culprit and everything."
"Thank you," he says, his voice shaking with grief for the friend so suddenly torn from him, his head bowed. (He has the last thing he wanted: the canvas he forgot to cut away.)
-v-
ALTERNATE VERSION
I.
You are blind.
Untrue: there are days, maybe weeks, the doctor tells you, until your vision is stolen away. But after that.... Well.
And already the edges of the world blur.
"Why?"
A disease.
"A disease?"
Contagious but rare. Man-made. Magical. Sometimes deadly.
"Deadly."
Not for you, sir, not for you (you have too much money to die like a commoner in the streets). The best medical techniques will be had. Blindness is unavoidable but death is not.
You want to ask them what the difference is: you, a painter.
You who will not always be so.
II.
You tell Daniel. He stares at you, and then he starts to laugh.
III.
Daniel is a carrier, you see; immune, like most of the human population after the wars in which the disease was developed, except for the Royals. (Which explains why you, the Earl's last descendant on the wrong side of the sheets, lack that precious gene, that thread of gleaming atoms that now delineates the shape of your future.)
It comes to this: he stole your eyes away from you by his very presence in your life.
IV.
You kill him.
Not then. Not then. You weep and throw a fit but kiss him on the cheek before you go. No. You kill him a week later when the fog is still thin enough for you to move unaided. You use an apprentice's axe - a shame, he was a promising lad, but there is not help for it.
He dies, the b*****d, in a profusion of the colors his curse is sucking from you even now.
V.
"What color is it?"
You are blind.
True: two days after the axe fell the sight simply dropped away. It is necessary.
"White, except where blood spattered onto the canvas," says the police officer, helpfully. Helpfully, because here is a rich man who deserves help - he is blind and his best and most well-known friend is dead. Helpfully, because it is satisfying to see the once-great, now-pathetic hanging onto one's words.
You almost kill him too; the axe is there, under your fingers, they left it, it waits, it is willing, so willing - but there is no need. You are blind, not mad. Blind, not angry. A life for a life, and all is even.
And of course now there is no guarantee that your blow will fall straight and true.
The examination does not take long. (You are blind. Why would it?) But when the very tip of your cane - painted white, you recall, but probably not the same shade of white. There was a time when that would have bothered you, the asymmetry of it - brushes against the canvas he died falling against, you think This is mine.
When you go you take it with you, wrapped neatly and held by your new assistant, who came as a replacement for the apprentice you lost to his murder charge. It is all you want that is left.
-v-
Er. Help me, I don't even know what this ******** thing /is/. It makes less sense than my poetry. Which is saying something.
