There are so many things in life that cannot be explained.
Why can certain chords in music suddenly make me think of the brown and golden colors of autumn leaves?
Why does the Mass of Sainte Cécile send my thoughts wandering into caves whose walls glitter with great jagged masses of pure silver?
And why, in the middle of the noise and chaos of Broadway at six in the evening, did I suddenly see a quiet Breton forest in my mind? Sunlight filtered through the fresh green leaves, and Sylvia was bending over a tiny green lizard with a look that was half curious and half tender.
“To think that this little creature is also one of God’s children,” she had murmured.
When I first noticed the watchman that morning, his back was turned toward me.
I barely looked at him. He was no different from any other man wandering around Washington Square. When he disappeared into the church, I forgot about him completely.
Late that afternoon, the weather was still warm, so I raised the window and leaned out for some fresh air.
The same man was standing in the churchyard.
Again, I paid little attention to him.
I looked across the square at the fountain. My mind drifted among vague impressions of trees, asphalt paths, nursemaids, and people enjoying the holiday.
Then I turned back toward my easel.
As I did, my eyes casually fell on the man below.
His face was turned toward me this time.
Without knowing why, I leaned forward to look at him.
At that exact moment, he raised his head and looked directly at me.
The instant I saw his face, I thought of a coffin-worm.
I could not have said what exactly about him disgusted me. But the image that came to my mind was so strong and sickening—a fat, pale worm crawling through a grave—that I must have shown my disgust on my face.
He quickly turned away.
The movement reminded me of a fat grub disturbed inside a chestnut.
I went back to my easel and motioned for the model to resume her pose.
After working for a while, I realized with dismay that I was ruining everything I had painted.
I picked up my palette knife and scraped the paint away.
The flesh tones had become yellowish and unhealthy. I could not understand how I had managed to put such sickly colors into a study that had been glowing with healthy, natural tones only a short time before.
I looked at Tessie.
She had not changed at all. Her cheeks and neck still had the fresh, healthy color of a young woman.
“Is it something I’ve done?” she asked.
“No. I’ve ruined this arm somehow. For the life of me, I can’t understand how I managed to put such muddy color on the canvas.”
“Don’t I pose well?” she insisted.
“Of course you do. Perfectly.”
“Then it’s not my fault?”
“No. It’s mine.”
“I’m very sorry,” she said.
“You can rest for a while.”
I took a rag and some turpentine and began working on the ugly patch of paint.
Tessie went off to smoke a cigarette and look through the illustrations in the Courrier Français.
I could not tell whether the problem was with the turpentine or the canvas.
The more I scrubbed, the worse it became.
The ugly color seemed to spread like gangrene.
I worked desperately to remove it, but the sickness appeared to crawl from one part of the painted figure to another.
I tried to stop it.
Instead, the color on the breast changed too, and soon the entire figure seemed infected, as if the canvas were a sponge soaking up poison.
I attacked it with the palette knife, the turpentine, and the scraper.
All the while, I was imagining the argument I would have with Duval, the man who had sold me the canvas.
But then I realized that neither the canvas nor Edward’s paints were responsible.
“It must be the turpentine,” I thought angrily.
“Or perhaps the afternoon light has blurred my eyes so badly that I can’t see properly.”
I called Tessie.
She came over and leaned across the back of my chair, blowing smoke rings into the air.
“What have you done to it?” she exclaimed.
“Nothing,” I growled. “It must be this turpentine!”
“What a horrible color it is now,” she said.
“Do you think my flesh looks like green cheese?”
“No, I don’t,” I snapped. “Have you ever known me to paint like this before?”
“No, never!”
“Well, then!”
“It must be the turpentine, or something,” she admitted.
She put on a Japanese robe and walked over to the window.
I kept scraping and rubbing until I was exhausted.
Finally, I grabbed my brushes and threw them straight through the canvas, shouting something so violently that Tessie could hear the anger in my voice even if she could not make out the words.
“That settles it!” she exclaimed.
“Go ahead and swear, act like a fool, and destroy your brushes! You’ve spent three weeks working on that study, and now look at it! What good does tearing the canvas do? Artists are such strange creatures!”
I felt about as ashamed as I usually did after losing my temper.
I turned the ruined canvas toward the wall.
Tessie helped me clean my brushes and then disappeared behind the screen to get dressed.
From behind the screen, she continued giving me little lectures about losing my temper, until apparently she decided I had suffered enough.
She came out and asked me to button the back of her waist where she could not reach it.
“Everything went wrong after you came back from the window and started talking about that horrible-looking man in the churchyard,” she announced.
“Yes,” I said with a yawn. “He probably bewitched the painting.”
I looked at my watch.
“It’s after six,” Tessie said as she adjusted her hat in front of the mirror.
“Yes. I didn’t mean to keep you so long.”
I leaned toward the window again.
Then I recoiled in disgust.
The pale-faced young man was still standing in the churchyard below.
Tessie noticed my reaction and leaned out beside me.
“Is that the man you don’t like?” she whispered.
I nodded.
“I can’t see his face very well, but he certainly looks fat and soft.”
She turned back toward me.
“Somehow, he reminds me of a dream I once had. A terrible dream.”
She looked down at her shoes.
“Or perhaps it wasn’t a dream after all.”
“How should I know?” I said with a smile.
Tessie smiled back.
“You were in it,” she said.
“So perhaps you might know something about it.”
“Tessie! Don’t tell me you’re dreaming about me.”
“But I did,” she insisted.
“Shall I tell you about it?”
“Go ahead.”
I lit a cigarette.
Tessie leaned back against the open window and began speaking with complete seriousness.
“One night last winter, I was lying in bed thinking about nothing in particular. I had been posing for you that day and was completely exhausted, but somehow I couldn’t fall asleep.”
“I heard the city bells strike ten, then eleven, then midnight.”
“I must have fallen asleep around midnight because I don’t remember hearing the bells after that.”
“It seemed as though I had barely closed my eyes when I dreamed that something was forcing me to get up and go to the window.”
“I got out of bed, raised the sash, and leaned outside.”
“Twenty-fifth Street was completely deserted as far as I could see.”
“I began to feel frightened. Everything outside looked so black and unpleasant.”
“Then I heard the sound of wheels far away.”
“For some reason, I felt as though I was supposed to wait for them.”
“The wheels came closer and closer.”
“Finally, I could see a vehicle moving down the street.”
“It came nearer.”
“And when it passed directly beneath my window, I saw that it was a hearse.”
“I was trembling with fear when the driver suddenly turned and looked straight up at me.”
“When I woke, I was standing beside the open window, shivering from the cold.”
“But the hearse and the driver were gone.”
“I had the same dream again last March.”
“Again, I woke beside the open window.”
“And last night, it happened again.”
“You remember how hard it was raining.”
“When I woke up standing at the open window, my nightdress was completely soaked.”
“But where did I appear in the dream?” I asked.
“You—you were in the coffin.”
“But you weren’t dead.”
“In the coffin?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know I was there? Could you see me?”
“No. I just knew you were there.”
“Had you been eating Welsh rarebit or lobster salad before bed?” I asked, laughing.
But Tessie suddenly cried out in fear.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shrank back into the corner beside the window.
“The man below!”
“What about him?”
“He drove the hearse!”
“Nonsense.”
Her eyes were wide with terror.
I went to the window and looked down.
The man was gone.
“Come on, Tessie,” I said. “Don’t be foolish. You’ve been posing too long. You’re nervous.”
“Do you think I could forget that face?” she whispered.
“Three times I saw that hearse pass beneath my window.”
“Every time, the driver turned around and looked straight at me.”
“Oh, his face was so white—and so soft.”
“It looked dead.”
“It looked as though it had been dead for a very long time.”
I finally persuaded her to sit down and drink a glass of Marsala.
Then I sat beside her and tried to calm her down.
“Listen, Tessie. Go out to the country for a week or two. You’ll stop having these dreams about hearses.”
“You spend the whole day posing, and by night your nerves are worn out.”
“You can’t keep living like this.”
“And instead of going straight to bed after work, you run off to picnics at Sulzer’s Park, or go to the Eldorado or Coney Island.”
“Then you come here the next morning completely exhausted.”
“There was no real hearse.”
“It was just a soft-shell-crab dream.”
She gave me a faint smile.
“But what about the man in the churchyard?”
“Oh, he’s just an ordinary, unhealthy-looking man.”
“As surely as my name is Tessie Reardon,” she said, “I swear to you, Mr. Scott, that the face of the man standing below is the face of the man who drove that hearse.”
“What difference does that make?” I asked.
“Driving a hearse is an honest profession.”
“Then you believe I really saw the hearse?”
“Oh,” I said carefully, “if you really saw it, then perhaps that man really was the driver. There’s nothing strange about that.”
Tessie stood up.
She unfolded her scented handkerchief and took a small piece of gum from a knot in its hem. She put the gum into her mouth, pulled on her gloves, and held out her hand.
“Good night, Mr. Scott.”
“Good night, Tessie.”
She walked out.