You Are Nothing To Me

The studio was a well lit temple to his works; the works in progress, for the entire area, some fifty feet by twenty, was over-stuffed with half finished canvases that hung like corpses in a forest of trees, forgotten and left for the birds. The windows soared vertically into the gloom of the vaulted ceiling and none of the light penetrated the heavens despite the dozen or so reflectors that moored the room at each corner. It felt, to me, like a mausoleum.
In the farthest corner of the room we found him, leathery and grey, in a state of repose. I wondered if he was dead but Carmine bent to his bedside and spoke a few words into his ear and eventually his eyes opened and, with some effort, he sat up and blearily looked at us, as we stood in a semi-circle around his cot.
He immediately became animated, latching onto Carmine's arm in an attempt to stand to welcome his visitors. The eagerness in his eyes was upsetting to me. I had expected a master and was shown an old man, lost and confused, but with enough hunger in him yet to seem desperate. I wondered if his years in prison had saturated his soul with the fawning attitude he absently presented and I suddenly had no desire to speak with him. I was afraid of this.
A nurse appeared and went to his side to replace Carmine who, looking slightly hurt, shuffled off to the side and looked at me with concern. His eyes told me the worst and I knew he was offering me an apology even before he opened his mouth.
"We shouldn't have come. He has been ill and I had hoped a visitor or two would perk him up a bit."
In a matter of moments we were hustled out by an intern who admonished us for disturbing the old man, but we got what we wanted, I suppose: a glimpse into the genius behind the strange and wonderful hauntings that populated his mind. Ultimately it only removed any doubt that accidents happen and perhaps the accident of his youth was the recognition he found in Germany before the war.
"You shouldn't judge him so harshly.", Carmine said to me, days later, when we sat at the August Cafe, "No man is invulnerable to the ravages of time."
"Carmine, you misunderstand.", I said to him. "Time has nothing to do with what ruined him."
We talked late into the night about colour and form, neither one of us able to evoke in the other an appreciation for the things that made us vulnerable.
The next day I boarded a train home and from the window I saw Carmine, looking lost and alone, and I knew then that he truly was the heir to misfortune and grief, and I sat back wishing I could erase him from my mind.