The Painter's Window

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. It was her room too, since she refused to sleep in the other room – the room where her mother had died.

She looked so idyllic, so perfect, sat on the floor, looking at the still green trees, with their leaves of jade and branches tickling the azure sky like a grandmother’s tender fingers. The flaxen sun cast slants of clean light down on their meadow, turning the lips of red tulips volcanic and the feathers of daisies so white they’d put an angel’s robes to shame. The cerulean ribbon of a distant river sparkled frozen further away.

“Look at the sun today, Dad,” Sasha said, drumming the heels of her daps on the hard concrete floor. “Do you think it looks pretty?”

Leant at his desk amid crusted paint palettes and tinned fruits, Russell Graves smiled to his daughter. The shard of a mirror stuck to the wall opposite showed him more fissures in his face than he’d ever thought possible for a man only thirty.

“Not as pretty as you, Little Plum.”

Sasha giggled. Russell smiled on through the sudden memory of his daughter, a year younger, reciting the word “plum” over and over as she ate from one of the first cans. Back then, it’d been obvious that everything would be sorted soon. The three of them just had to hunker in the bunker and wait for the army or the police or the vigilantes to deal with things.

“Just a week or two, Little Plum,” Sasha’s mother said, mopping plum juice from around her lips. “Then you can go back to school, and you’ll be telling all your friends how lucky you were that your mum and dad had all this tinned food. Enough for a year – not that we’ll need it.”

“Dad, are you crying again?” Sasha shifted on her knees.

“I’m fine, Sasha.”

Sasha went back to studying the window. She spent most days just staring at it, at the stillness of the meadow. No telling what was beyond.

Russell leant over the canvas again, making tiny, delicate caresses with a hazy shade of yellow. He whistled an old song while he painted, and the electric lantern hanging from the ceiling blinked.

“What if the electrics goes again, Dad?”

“They won’t. We’ve got the generator. That was just…” Bad luck, he wanted to say. He gulped down the truth and the lie. Maybe if she got older, he’d tell her.

It’d been five months into their stay. The radio they listened to when Sasha slept spat static at them. Occasionally, they found a lonely station broadcasting into the void. A lunatic. Sasha’s mother was starting to weep openly, and Russell hugged her tight to stop her waking the girl.

“We have to keep strong,” he whispered to her.

“What’s the point though? There’s no one out there anymore. Everything’s gone… gone to shit! What the hell are we supposed to tell her?” Her nails dug in against his back, and her eyes were aflame with accusation, as if it was his fault. And maybe it was – his fault they hadn’t perished with everyone else they’d ever known.

Russell had no answer. He unclasped his arms from around her. The two of them sat in their room, in the dark, with just the crackling radio for noise.

“You told me you prepared for everything,” Sasha’s mother said.

Russell nodded, not looking into those hot eyes again. “We’ve got enough food for-”

“Six more months?”

He looked into the corner, where his canvases leant together and cans of paint piled to the low ceiling. Beside them, the cupboard of rations, once overflowing with canned food. In truth, he was terrified at how quickly it’d shrunk.

“Less?”

He raked a paint-stained hand through his matted hair. “I can’t say.”

“Always scared to say.” She sneered at him. “Scared to admit that all this will be for nothing, because we are fucked! Doesn’t want us to face the real world!”

“Please, keep your voice down.”

She sucked in a breath, and he lurched forward to envelop her in another hug. They stayed together for a minute or two. He slowly unfolded from around her when there was no sound from Sasha’s room.

“We can’t keep lying to her.” Sasha’s mother was weeping again. “You said you prepared for everything. You have cyanide.”

A visceral disgust wormed through him. He clenched his fists, and calluses of dried paint cracked. His wife looked at his fists with bleak eyes. Once, she’d told him she loved how calm he was, how easy he took everything, how prepared he was. It was the painting that kept him sane.

His fists disintegrated at the memory of their wedding day, already as distant as another country. Tears swam up under his eyelids.

“Please…”

“Give me a pill, Russell, or I’ll tell her about the window.” The woman’s eyes were set like steel. She’d made up her mind, probably weeks ago. She’d been watching the food stocks go down, calculated how long they had. He’d done the same, of course, but he hoped – for what, he couldn’t say.

“Another few weeks.”

“No one’s left.”

“We have to-”

“Russell, please, if you love me, give me the cyanide. I can’t go through with this lie anymore. I can’t look her in the eyes.”

“Dad, I think I can see a fox out there, in the grass!” Sasha called.

At his desk, Russell blinked, at two places in time. He looked over at the window, but knew he wouldn’t see a fox or any other animal. Sasha gave him a grin. She was still too young for cynicism. He turned away quickly though. He was starting to understand why his wife hadn’t been able to look Sasha in the eye.

Six months ago. Russell dragged himself to the cupboard. He gently set aside the cans he pulled free. Behind them, an inconspicuous hiding place – a dollhouse drawer. He slid the tiny drawer open. Inside, an unlabelled packet with three bulges inside. His wife padded up beside him, and he wordlessly tipped the packet into her palm. A plain capsule lay in the groove of her hand, devoid of any colour.

“How long does it take?”

“I don’t know.” He choked on her name, and hung his head while she drifted to their daughter’s room. “Don’t wake her.”

His wife nodded. “I won’t.” Those were her last words, as far as Russell knew.

The following morning, Sasha awoke to Russell wrapping her mother in bed sheets. The only time he’d left the bunker had been to lay his wife’s corpse on the earth. He’d been careful not to let Sasha follow. He’d cut the electricity just for a few minutes, so she wouldn’t even glimpse the world past him.

He looked up from his painting at the blank concrete wall. His hand strayed over the tins of fruit to the two pills he now kept in the drawer of his desk.

No. Not today. Another day, at least.

He wondered if he’d be cowardly enough to bargain with starvation when the food ran out. Rubbing at his lined face, he swivelled in his chair. His daughter still meditated before the window.

“All right, Little Plum, time to brush your teeth.”

Sasha rose, and clopped to the enclave that served at their washroom. He pulled the curtain across as she turned the tap and water started to gurgle down from the rain-catchers. He selected a painting from the pile of face-down canvases beside him.

Russell scuttled across the room to the window, canvas under his arm. He reached up, and took the window down from its hooks. He leant it against the wall while he lifted the new canvas into its place. This one was painstakingly similar to the scene Sasha had been studying all day, except the moon was lurching up over a dusky meadow. The trees were only shadows, and the flowers were consumed by murk.

He stood back, and fought not to wonder what he’d do if she realised his deception. Could he open the door to the world for her? Let her see what lay beyond this bunker? Would she understand why her mother had decided to die then?

Or maybe she already knew. Maybe it was how she stayed sane.

Russell tucked the day’s window away with the rest of his collection. The one he’d freshly painted today lay on his desk, ready to be hung just before Sasha woke up tomorrow.

Yes, there would be a tomorrow. As for the day after, or the week after, or whatever lay beyond, he’d decide that later.

The curtain drew open, and Sasha bared her teeth at him. He smiled as he knelt to kiss her forehead. Adept now in his trickery, he positioned his body to block her view of his drying painting, then led her to her bed.

“We might see the fox again tomorrow, Dad.”

“That would be nice,” Russell said. “Sleep tight, Little Plum.”

He sat at his desk, watching as his daughter nestled into her duvet to sleep. An hour or so later, he added the final shades to tomorrow’s window.

Tomorrow, Sasha would have another perfect world to look out at.