Chapter 60 – Pyramid of Skulls

I wake up in an artist's home. It's easy to tell at this point, that a space belongs to a painter.

I spot him, standing not to far away, mixing paint. He looks like a professor in university, with a beard and receding hairline and a tweed jacket.

I feel like he should be giving me some kind of philosophy course.

I keep these thoughts to myself, and make my way slowly to him, trying not to spook him.

I am some stranger that just walked into his house after all.

"Hello," I say softly, trying not to spook him.

Unsurprisingly he jumps on the spot, dropping his brush. "Who are you? How did you get here?"

"I was sent here. To learn. I'm Melody."

"Who sent you?"

"That's not important..." I trail and look around, and I'm rewarded with a signature at the bottom of one of his paintings, "Mr. Cezanne. What is important is what you can teach me."

"Did Emile send you? I told him I'm fine. He doesn't need to send me a babysitter."

I jump on the opportunity. "Emile just worries because he cares."

"Emile should worry about himself."

I don't pursue this conversation because I don't know enough not to get caught. Instead I ask the question that's burning my lips, without caring about sounding crazy.

"What year is this anyway?" I ask him.

He looks at me with slightly concerned eyes. "1901."

It's too late to meet Gustave. Vincent Van Gogh told me he'd already been dead in 1888.

If he'd still been alive, it would have been comforting. It would have meant we'd been alive in the same century. He would be... 82 if he was alive now.

The man in front of me is an artist and he was alive when Gustave was alive. I have to ask. "Did you know Gustave Courbet?"

He smiles. "His palette smelled of hay."

I narrow my eyes at him. "Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"A little bit of both."

He said smelled. Past tense. I knew. I already knew this, but it still hurts. I don't know how I'll be able to go back and live in a time when he's dead

It'll kill me.

I need to think about something else, so I look around, and my eyes fall on the painting Cezanne has been working on. I frown. "Is there a particular reason why you're painting skulls?" I ask.

After the last painting, it's kind of weird that we're back to a skeleton, but in a different form.

I wonder what it means.

Is the curse trying to tell me death is imminent?

Because I'm absolutely not ready for it to end.

But a lot of paintings have been about death. It's not new.

I just get more and more unsettled the longer this curse lasts. I don't even remember how many paintings it's been since I last saw Gustave.

He feels like two lifetimes away.

"Because they're so beautiful to paint!" he exclaims.

I frown. "I'm not sure beautiful is the right word."

"They're just like self portraits, confronting the viewers head on. Don't you see your mortality when looking at them?"

There's a feverish look in his eyes, but something hollow too. I hadn't noticed it before, but now I do. "Is this something you do a lot? Thinking about your mortality?"

Cezanne lets out a breath, and sits in the couch that looks like it's imprinted with the shape of his butt. I think I see dust kind of flying around as he does. "Life has become deadly monotonous lately," he says in a breathy tone. "It feels like I'm getting too old to properly express myself."

"I think maybe this is why Emile is worried about you," I say softly."

He ignores my remark and straightens up a bit, "Have you ever heard Verlaine's quatrain? For in this lethargic world. Perpetually prey to old remorse. The only laughter to still make sense. Is that of death's heads?"

I got to sit on the stool not too far from his chair. "Have you ever heard this one? If you worship the alter of death, don't be surprise when you call it home."

"Who said this?"

"My grandmother. She never liked to talk about death."

"What else is there to talk about? When the end is near."

"You're not that old."

"I'm old. And tired." He sighs. "This world makes no sense to me. The people make no sense."

I feel like I need to lift up his spirit. In another life, a few paintings ago, I might have agreed with him. But I think my pessimism is the reason for a lot of my problems. If I want to deserve Gustave, I need to be better. "It doesn't have to make sense to be beautiful. If it wasn't, you wouldn't paint it, would you?"

He doesn't answer me. Instead, he looks at me with a wicked smile. It's almost scary. "You're not real, are you?"

The way he says it, it's not a surprise for him. It's something that happens. Another artist that sees things that aren't there. How many of them do?

"Does this happen often? Seeing things that are not real?" I ask him.

"Get out. There's no point to this. If you real, or if you're not, I don't want you here."

"Because I'm right?"

"Get out."

"But I am right."

"GET OUT!" he yells and throws a canvas at me.

The old man has a mean throw and a perfect aim, because he hits me square in the face, knocking me out.