The Painting by Nina Schuyler

wasn’t at all.
    She asked his name.
    After a strange, elongated pause, he said he couldn’t remember.
    But you’re not French, she said, smiling, sitting upright in her chair.
    No.
    Well, we’ll think of a name for you.
    He hadn’t forgotten his name, but there were many things he was working hard not to remember, and he knew he had to be particularly careful around this woman because she reminded him of someone, not by the way she looked, but by her very being, the goodness that radiated from her. He felt it when he first met her, the way she seemed to glow. He barely spoke with her in the hospital because it terrified him, the resemblance; he wanted to be close to her and at the same time stay far away.
    He tosses the newspapers on the storage room floor, and as he listens to her singing, he feels his eyelids twitch with grim apprehension.
    S HE PLUCKS OFF HER large-rimmed hat and surveys the room, the shelves stocked with canned foods, water stored in beautiful midnight-blue glass bottles, fancy boxes of chocolates wrapped in dark-red cellophane. There is probably more food here than in five Parisian kitchens, perhaps even more, she thinks, trying to push away the disdain at her younger brother’s plenitude. Such lavishness, such decadence, and she feels ashamed for herself, for her young brother, Pierre, then angry at his extravagance. She dismisses these thoughts quickly, reminding herself not to think badly of him. A plain biscuit, only, and coffee, no sugar, that will be her lunch.
    Hello? she calls out to the back office, where she usually finds Pierre. The room answers with silence, and she is relieved. He is probably courting some customer; too in love with the war for the money it pours into his coffers, he is blind to everything else, as if someone swept his insides with a broom, removing the things that make a man noble, honorable, and virtuous. She is about to lament his poor moral condition again, but catches herself. I must do better at loving him, she chides. Not snap at him for his stinginess or when he complains that I should marry or that I am more manly than womanly. He generously gives me money or food or other provisions when needed, yet he does it with an air of superiority.
    She makes herself some coffee and sinks into a chair, tired from her work. A month ago, she repaired her first rifle and the head boss watched over hershoulder, his face full of skepticism. Today, he told her she was his best worker and paid her an extra franc. All she wants is to do good, to live in goodness. When she’s had too many bad thoughts in a day, she imagines a string of pearls running through her front side, down her body, looping around and coming up her spine to her skull. Over and over she runs this string, a ritual of cleansing. Lately, the pearls have stayed packed away in their box. She is so busy with her war efforts, she has so little time to think.
    She stands, stretches, and pours herself more coffee. Outside, a tree stripped of its leaves; its long, thin branches scrape against the window. So beautiful, she thinks, the tree baring its essence. And this is what she looks for in people, hunts for in their eyes. In adults, there is usually only a flash, if that, and then the dullness. But in newborns, it is always there—an honest knowingness that exists beyond words. Sometimes she thinks she sees it in her eyes, a certain unmistakable glow, and she imagines her insides illuminated. But when she mentioned this light to Father Bertrand, his rheumy eyes dropped to his scuffed shoes, and he warned her she had much to learn before God came to her in such ways. He must have seen her face fall in shame because he took her lightly by the elbow and said she was a good child of God.
    She hears a loud thump upstairs. She glances up and smiles. The Dane, she thinks. What name should she give him? Maybe Case, she thinks, and if he looks at her puzzled, she will say, In French, it means chest. But he probably