In the pale sulfuric light, he envisioned what it could be, if only he had the skill. A perfect recreation of the perfect night, a perfect recreation of the perfect person, a perfect simulacrum of beauty itself. He lowered the photograph as he adjusted the wick of his oil lamp, so that the canvas was just slightly more illuminated, its pale surface ready for his art, his genius, her radiance.
The photograph had been taken right here, right where his canvas now sat, under the unevenly distributed light of the lamps he used to illuminate his home. One could almost sense the room’s color from the photograph, despite its monochromatic tones. A fiery light burned on either side of her, brightening her already porcelain face in contrast to the dark brown of the basement room in which he worked. In the picture she smiled, coquettish, the look of one with a secret she would never tell.
He gazed at her half-smile, angelic and innocent, kissed by torchlight, then muted by the photograph’s development, as though her true nature could not be revealed by anything so crude as a camera. He scoffed at his own hubris. An artist, he could be. But to capture the radiance of such a creature required a god.
And yet he had tried. That night, the night he took the photograph, he had tried, hunched behind a lens on a tripod, its back end draped like a cape behind him, looking through the camera at her. At her perfection. He had held the trigger in his hand outside of the cape. Just like that, beautiful, he told her, clicking the mechanism that would illuminate his entire basement in a flood of momentary sunlight. You’re doing great.
He studied the photograph again, closing his eyes, remembering the first time he glimpsed her. The night had been cold, frightfully so. The kind of cold that turns breath into smoke, makes pedestrians mimic the innumerable stacks dotting the city’s soot-covered skyline. The type of cold that stops the carriages from running, that freezes the pipes, that kills the strays.
The tavern had been crowded and humid, pungent with the smells of cheap perfume over body odor, the sweat of men caked with the sediments of factory exhaust. Smoke filled the place, making the lamplight wax and wane in unpredictable patterns as the men of the tavern drew in and exhaled their tobacco. He had taken a seat to the side of the cramped room, within view of the central pedestal where the ladies would dance, yet far enough from them that he would not be expected to pay for the view.
Because it was not the ladies’ company he wanted. No, nothing so brutish. He had tried, once before, years ago, but quickly found that the ladies of the tavern were not to his taste. No, he was there to experience them, experience their art, experience this, experience life—experience something other than the dingy, muddy streets and exhaust-filled skies that characterized his day-to-day existence.
A woman approached. Greta, she had said on his first visit. Sarah, she had said the next time. Alice, a third. When he confronted her about the various names, she simply said, whatever, darlin’, what can I get for ‘ya?, and then grabbed him his glass of whiskey like each time before. Her face was hard and gaunt, and she reeked of booze and tobacco and regret. She placed a glass of whiskey in front of him, and he placed a few coins in her outstretched hand.
One of the ladies climbed up onto the stage in a large flowing dress, blowing kisses at the men leering at her. She slowly undressed, until she lay in a corset, moving her body to accentuate her breasts and her derriere for those holding out bills near the dais. But even though she was showing off for them, her gaze was elsewhere, off into the smoke, closer to the door.
A man strode forward, then, in a pristine black suit, cane and top hat in hand. He breezed past the wolves, walking directly to their prey.
To his prey. The man opened his jacket, certainly showing something valuable, before gesturing toward the back door of the room. The lady smiled, now ignoring the other patrons, before leading the gentleman to his dance. The next lady walked to the stage, and began a show of her own. He looked away. He’d seen it all before.
That is, until he looked in the corner, where she sat, eyes transfixed on the lady now dancing. Her face was pale, and round, and soft, and beautiful. She shone with some inner light, it seemed, a flower amongst the ash and smoke and darkness of this place. She was young, a trainee, perhaps, taking lessons in how to survive in this world from the grizzled women who had come before her.
She was beautiful. No. No. She was beauty itself.
It was then he did something he did not expect, something that eluded even his control. He drank his whiskey deep, his eyes not leaving her countenance until the glass had been drained. And then he waited, waited until her eyes roved to his corner of the room, until he could ensure that his gaze met hers through the tavern’s amber haze.
When it finally happened, he smiled, friendly, kindly. I don’t want to hurt you, he wanted to convey. I just want to experience you. She looked away quickly, the faintest traces of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, her eyes occasionally flitting back to him. And soon his eyes saw her perfection change. In the lamplight, the faintest hue of pink began to color her ivory cheeks.
When she looked again, he gestured to her, two outstretched fingers extended toward her, bending slowly back to him. Come.
And she had. It had taken a few minutes, but eventually she crept over, furtive, not taking attention away from the ladies performing. He ordered her a glass of wine, and then finished another two whiskeys.
An hour passed. I just want to photograph you, he said. You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, he repeated. You’re simply radiant. She continued to laugh, cutely, flirtatiously. Please come, he said. I will pay whatever rate you wish.
She had gotten up and spoken with another woman, who handed her a threadbare coat. When she returned, she told him her price.
Gladly, he replied.
And then, he photographed her. Right here in this basement, where his canvas now sat. He had captured her face, the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. Beauty itself. She’d looked fragile, in those pictures, vulnerable. But it was not enough. He needed more.
That price you gave, he told her, I will double it if you undress. She had hesitated then, her face apprehensive about the step before the precipice. I will triple it, he followed, pleading. And it was then that she slipped off her dress, her arms covering her body, and then, finally falling limp to her sides.
In the nude, she looked even more helpless, even more beautiful. She was something to be guarded, desired, loved, appreciated. It was not only her face that was radiant—her very essence radiated, down to her proportions, to the way her hips curved into her midsection, curving again toward her small breasts, curving again toward her angelic face, crowned with auburn hair cascading back down over her shoulders and shining like silk in the moonlight, even here, even in this cave. When he’d finished, she got dressed to leave.
What’s your name? he’d asked.
Agnes, she responded.
But that won’t do, he said. You should be Rose, or Violet, or Lily. You’re too beautiful to be an Agnes. He contorted his face into a grin, then, conveying his sincerity, conveying his wonder.
Then you can call me Lily, she’d answered, before walking out the door, never to be seen again.
He smiled, looking back on that night, looking at the photograph, remembering those scant hours with the perfect being, remembering how finally seeing true beauty in this grotesque world had changed him.
An abrupt noise interrupted his reverie. His canvas coughed, and then groaned. Confound it, he thought, the drugs should have lasted longer than this.
But this world needed to see Lily’s beauty, even after her death. And it was now that he would give it to them.
~~~
He had begun collecting his materials months earlier, once he knew he would never see the real Lily again. The night after he first met her, he had returned to the tavern, hoping to see her again, taking notes from the experienced ladies on how best to separate the factory workers from their coin. He had practiced his speech that entire day. I’ll help you, he’d wanted to say. You deserve so much more than this, he’d wanted to promise. The world should see you.
But she was not there. Nor was she there the next night, or the night after that, or the night after that. His anxiety grew like a tumor. He stopped sleeping. One drink a night became two, before becoming three, until he was lost in his cups more often than not. Night after night, the ladies danced, men came, people drank, and he waited and waited for a girl who never again entered the tavern.
Eventually, he steeled himself to ask. Greta, he’d entreated, trying to flag down the waitress. The girl. Lily, where is she? It had been several weeks by this point, and he’d been to the tavern every day, hoping to catch just a glimpse of her.
Lily? she’d replied, her voice smoky, sandpaper-rough. Who the fuck’s Lily?
He jolted then. In the weeks since he’d seen her, his mind had been filled with images and scenes and dreams and desires of what he would do for Lily. How he had been blessed to have been the person to see her, to truly see her, and how it was his divine providence to show her to the world. I will take Lily to meet the mayor, he thought, and I will take her to museums, because she belongs in one, he told himself, and she will be the most famous woman on earth, because I will show this dark world that it cannot exist without her light.
But the waitress’s words reminded him that, for all of his grandiose plans, he was the first to call Lily by that name—her prophet, of sorts, certain to be revered only when history realized her importance. He looked down at his glass, embarrassed, forgetting that no one had yet seen her as he had. Agnes, he said. I meant Agnes.
The sides of her mouth dropped, and a momentary shade passed over her face as her composure faltered.
Agnes, she’d said, her voice catching. Agnes ain’t comin’ back.
His brow furrowed, puzzlement taking over.
‘Er dad found out she was ‘ere, the waitress went on. Bashed ‘er over the ‘ead a few times, ain’t no daughter ‘uv ‘is gonna’ be no slut, I guess. Except the ole’ man ‘it ‘er too good, and she never woke up. A friend ‘uv ‘ers came and told us a day or two ago. Its ‘orrible, pretty thing like that. Maybe it was a blessing to ‘er. Not to ‘ave to live like this. She looked down at him, shaking her head.
He looked up at her big gray eyes, glazed over with the sheen of repressed tears, hidden behind a fake half-smile of crooked, decaying teeth. And then he screamed. Raged. Broke. He threw his glass at the wall, shattering it into a thousand glittering shards, the tiny explosion raining crystal down on nearby tables.
Men stood to confront him. Ladies gasped. The waitress recoiled in horror.
And he ran. Ran out of the tavern, down the street, by tenement blocks and factory homes and motor carriages and beggars and straight into his home, where he broke down as though the only spark of light in his life had been blown out before it could catch fire.
He awoke with Lily’s face emblazoned in his memory, an iron-hot brand that marked him forever. He turned the image in his mind, recalling her from every angle, conjuring the tactile sense of the memory of caressing her cheek, imagining her soft reaction. He recalled her breasts, the slight curve of her stomach as it widened to her hips, and it struck him that his thoughts of her were not sexual. Indeed, the moment he envisioned sex in the context of Lily he felt embarrassed, ashamed even. No, he did not view Lily as a her at all. Rather, he remembered her as one remembers an impossible sky, a natural wonder, an artistic masterpiece.
The world needed to see her light, but its darkness had destroyed her before she could save it. Before he could help her save it. He cried for weeks, his melancholy at the loss of true beauty almost too much to bear. Nights on end he clutched her photograph, lamenting her loss, before realizing the only thing he could do, for himself, for his sanity, for this wretched world that had destroyed her, was to bring her back.
In his mind he combed through her features, comparing his memory with his photographs of her, determining which aspects of her would be the most striking, the most difficult to recreate. Her eyes, of course—it would be difficult to find a match for the deep, emerald green that providence had blessed her with. Her nose, as well, could prove difficult. While on the smaller side, the way it fit onto the frame of her round face was, itself, a thing of beauty. The thought of her face, of course, also reminded him that his canvas would need to have unobtrusive cheekbones, to ensure he could replicate her softness. Her hair was wavy, shoulder length, a deep brown kissed with red. That should be one of his easier tasks to find, but keeping it fresh and intact could be an issue. And then the breasts. It would not do for them be inaccurate. Too small, and they would not demonstrate her femininity, too large and they would be obscene.
His search began in the opium cellars. There were dozens across the city, the last stop before the grave for the poor souls chewed up and spit out by the city and its industry. From the westernmost bridge to the muddy boundary where the river met the sea, the cellars were littered with women maimed by accidents with industrial sewing machines, men with faces melted from exhaust explosions, and children orphaned by a parent’s premature death. They were dark, rotting places, where needles substituted for glasses, small lighters momentarily took the place of bright oil lamps, and despair of an entirely unique character held court.
The door to the first cellar he visited was wooden and built so that one had to descend directly into it from street level. A bespectacled old man with spindly fingers and graying skin staffed its entrance. Ten pence to enter, son, he’d said.
He looked at the old man with the most plaintive expression he could muster, holding his hat in his hands at his chest, already appearing misplaced here. I don’t mean to be a bother, sir, I’m simply looking for my cousin … we can’t find ‘m, you see, and this is our last hope. Please, just a look. The man nodded, and gestured at the door leading to the cellar’s interior.
The entrance was naught but a foyer, of sorts. The light had spilled into it when he opened the cellar hatch, but that was the extent that daylight could penetrate this place. The doors closed, and darkness closed in, even more so when he opened the entrance into the main room. He could tell a difference in his environment immediately; the smell alone nearly stopped him, a wall of body odor and sex and piss and vomit. He suppressed a gag and held his sleeve to his nose, hoping that the scent of his coat could mask the smell of their addiction.
It was not only the odor that hit him; noteworthy, too, was the darkness. A solitary candle rested in a sconce on the left side of the room from which emanated a low, flickering light, momentarily illuminating the shapes lying haphazardly along the floor. The cellar room was large. So large, in fact, that the back corners received almost no light at all.
He began searching, walking to each of the prostrate shapes, examining their features. The first barely reacted, with only her blank eyes following his movements as he shook her shoulder. This one will not do, he thought. Nor would the next, or the next, or the next, until he found himself beside the candle. He turned his head at a new noise; in the back corner, the faint sounds of two men partaking, the sounds of fingers slapping arms, hushed voices pregnant with risk.
And then he felt it. A young woman, arms outstretched, fingers now barely touching the laces of his boot, as though reaching him had been the objective of some obscene race. He recoiled from the touch, surprise rushing over him followed almost immediately by disdain, and eventually, pity. He looked at her, and she looked at him, her face sharp, her skin pale, her eyes sad, and her nose ... perfect. He reached down, grabbed her hand. Let’s get you out of here, he said. She said nothing, seemed barely to register her existence at all—let alone his.
He carried her out, thanking the man on the way before loading her into his carriage and taking her home, taking her straight to the basement. There, he placed chloroform over her mouth to ensure she would not wake up, and strapped her to the chair where Lily had once posed for him.
One final time, he examined her nose, holding Lily’s photograph up to her face. He had been right. It was perfect. He pulled out his scalpel, carefully extracting the skin and cartilaginous tissue of her nose, taking every care to preserve the delicate curves of the nostrils, the slight dimples where they would meet the nose’s central ridge, placing cotton bandages between where he was working and the skin to diminish the amount of blood spilled during the operation.
His work took just half an hour. He fondled the liberated nose like a religious icon, looking incessantly from it to Lily’s photograph, yearning for the day it could be placed onto his masterpiece.
Do you know how important you are? he asked her, caressing her face, receiving no response. Of course you don’t. But it is a kindness, this. To spare you from this wretched existence and make you part of something perfect, to make you perfect. He smiled at the girl’s unmoving, bloody, comatose body, knowing that his Lily was worth a thousand of her. Then, he snapped her neck.
In this same manner he collected all the parts he needed for his work. The nose he had found on his first endeavor. That, he learned, was luck. In the following months, he made slow progress. It took another four visits to the opium cellars before he located ears sufficiently like Lily’s, and another six after that before finding the perfect breasts to add to his canvas. While he was able to find a human-hair wig to match Lily’s, he was not so fortunate in locating her eyes, the emerald green proving nearly impossible to match.
But he had done it, eventually, placing a man’s two orbs in the same preservation liquids as the other parts, the donors’ bodies left by the river, or in the street, or wherever convenient, always with a needle in the arm, always a reminder of what the world had made them, a reminder of what he had saved them from.
But the canvas, the template on which he would bring Lily back into this world, long eluded him. Until, one day, he found her.
She was stepping out of a motor carriage, dropped off by a driver no doubt searching for a safe place to park the expensive vehicle among the impoverished masses. She’d acted lost—and indeed, looked it. She wore a frilly robin’s-egg dress, fitted, but not obscenely so. On her head sat a matching bonnet, which accentuated her face’s shape with lacy white frills. Her clothing screamed of privilege, even more so when juxtaposed against the blacks and browns and grays of the working classes. She looked around nervously, her unease growing more palpable by the second.
He knew, there and then, that she was the one.
May I help you, m’lady, he’d said. It appears you are looking for something.
Oh yes, that would be lovely, she’d said, the education apparent in her voice. I am hoping to be fitted for a new dress and my seamstress is supposed to be here and I have just never been here before. My driver is coming to walk me soon once he is able to find a garage, but if you know where Wilhelmina’s is, I would be much obliged. She’d smiled at him then, her gratitude plain.
Wilhelmina’s! he’d exclaimed. Why it is just this way! I can show you where it is, if you have thirty seconds to walk. Surely your driver will not be back by then.
She giggled as if out of practice. Well, that would be splendid! How silly of us to be this close and not even know it.
After me, he had replied, marshalling a cheery voice to convince her of her safety. Right this way! They went into an isolated side street, and after a block, turned into an empty alleyway.
Are we almost there? she’d asked, her voice betraying the first traces of unease.
He turned toward her, pointing to a door just ahead. We’re here! Just go up there and let them know you’ve arrived. I can send your driver over. He then stepped back toward the wall, gesturing with his arm to the door.
She hesitated, perhaps realizing in the deepest recesses of her mind that something was wrong. But manners and politesse won out. Thank you, good sir, she’d said, gathering up the dirty hem of her dress before turning her back toward him.
He struck her as hard as he could on the back of the skull. She collapsed, motionless. Thirty seconds later, and he had dragged her body into his home.
“You’re probably right,” he said to its unhearing ears. “It won’t do to have you waking up during this.” He prepared another vial of a strong anesthetic combined with a certain coagulant, and injected it between its toes. The canvas again went silent.
He began with the hair. That part was easy; he took his scissors and cut it as short as he could. Those who would eventually see his work would never know that the hair they were seeing was a wig, and so he needed only to ensure that the canvas’s real hair did not show.
From there, his task became monumentally more difficult, requiring his artistry, and her perfection. Taking one last look at Lily’s photograph, he pulled out the new nose, eyes, and ears from the preservation liquid, admiring them one last time before they achieved their ultimate purpose.
He first dug a small teaspoon into the canvas’s eye sockets, the spoon caressing the curves of its eyes, before hitting the tougher musculature that housed the nerves connecting eye to brain. With some additional effort, he pushed through, popping out each eye with a satisfying squelch. He placed cotton swabs in the sockets to soak up the tiny pools of blood that were developing where its eyes had been.
The nose proved more difficult. His scalpel hit its first mark on the right side of its bony ridge, and immediately, a ruby droplet appeared on the canvas’s face, a jewel on a necklace. He paused to admire it for a second, the yellow lamplight reflecting off the liquid, itself a form of art, and he smiled. Beauty, he thought.
His scalpel continued, removing all traces of its former imperfection down to the bone. As he’d done with the eyes, he covered the wound in cotton swabs. He then turned to the ears, cutting the canvas’s cartilage until its imperfections were gone, to be replaced by Lily’s radiance.
An hour later, the canvas had been stripped of its facial imperfections, prepared to be made whole again, prepared to be made perfect. He looked to the two eyes he had collected, small pieces of Lily that the gods had seen fit to retain in this world, for his art, his masterpiece. Even now in the flickering lamplight they shone with the same jeweled radiance that Lily’s had in life. He removed the blood-soaked cotton swabs from the eye sockets, inserting each eye into its proper place, marveling at the result.
“Amazing,” he said to himself, lost in the moment of his vision turning into reality, a tear slowly trailing down his cheek.
But there was more work to do. He pulled out his needle and thread and began to attach the nose to the canvas, ensuring that it fit just so before applying the stitches that would bring back Lily’s beauty. He performed the same task with her ears, reattaching the perfect part where the imperfection had been, making the canvas more than the mere sum of its replacement parts.
From there, he moved to its breasts, which were large and all too unbefitting Lily’s frame. He brought out the small handsaw he had found for this purpose and removed the first of them. The blood surprised him, creating a flood he did not expect. While the face bled, it had not bled mortally, and the canvas, he knew, would still survive. With the breast, however, the significance of the bleeding indicated a mortal wound.
He began to panic. What, then, would all his work have been for? The profusely bleeding chest threatened the canvas, threatened Lily’s legacy. He took all of the remaining cotton he had, all of the remaining fabric, and attempted to bind the gushing area where the breast had been. It kept bleeding.
His breathing quickened. No, this will not do, he thought, and quickly began fretting throughout his basement. “Stop,” he said, commanding himself. “All you need are the pictures. Get the pictures.” The thought of Lily’s photos instantly calmed him, his frenetic pace slowing. Now, he could think, finally, once more. The makeup. Hide the sutures.
Yes, that was the first task. Hiding the surgery, making the canvas look as natural as possible, as beautiful as Lily had been. He placed heavy powder on its face before adding additional layers of concealment, paying special attention to the suture lines around the nose, making sure to highlight the eyes and the radiant green they now emanated. Once he was convinced of its beauty, the most beautiful the canvas had ever looked, he removed the bandages from the exposed breast and the gash where its twin had been, and then draped a dress over it. Finally, after ensuring that the eyes were open, he placed the wig on its head, arranging the locks so that they fell just like Lily’s had in the perfect photograph taken so many months ago.
Quickly, so quickly, he ran behind his camera, which he had prepared for this precise moment, again climbed under its black shroud, again held his hand outside to activate the flash, and again, marveled at the beauty he beheld through his lens.
When he emerged from behind the camera, he was weeping. “Lily,” he said, sobbing. “Lily, I am so close to bringing your light back.” He sniffled, before fully breaking down in front of his canvas. “One day soon, I’ll perfect it. Perfect you. But until then, I can begin to show the world what it destroyed.”
Early that morning, in the smallest, darkest hours when the world slept a deep sleep, he placed his canvas outside City Hall as a public display of his art, of Lily’s brilliance. He smiled at it, seated next to a gigantic stone fountain. Art framing art.
And now, seeing what he has created, this new Lily, this Second Lily, knowing his power to bring her light back into this city, into this land, he prepares to perfect his work, to keep sharing her radiance with the world.