The Restoration Artist by Lewis DeSoto

One day I was called in to Brother Adams’s office. On his desk lay one of my drawings, this one of Brother Adams himself. I’d drawn him as a baboon, exaggerating his brush-cut and large ears. Adams watched me as I looked at the drawing. He picked up a thin bamboo cane from the sill and tapped it in hispalm. Brother Rod. I was well acquainted with Brother Rod, having felt his painful bite on my backside many times. I resigned myself to getting a beating. But Adams surprised me.
    He told me to pick up the sketch. Underneath was a book.
Understanding Drawing
by Geoffrey Smedley. Adams told me that he was going to take a chance on me, that he was going to put his faith and his hope in me. The talent for drawing was a powerful force, he said, a gift that should not be squandered in amusing buffoons. That book became a bible to me. I still had it. But I no longer deserved Brother Adams’s faith and hope.
    It was true what I’d said about not being inspired. How could I be? I hadn’t lifted a brush since that day in Cyprus. The door to my studio in Paris had remained shut for a long time. I looked up at the painting on the chapel wall and shook my head. “No.”
    “Do you have somewhere else to be, other things to do at the moment?” the priest asked.
    I shrugged. He was right, but that didn’t mean I wanted to paint.
    “It would mean a lot to the people here, to have that painting restored, to have something beautiful in the church. Who knows, it might even bring in a few tourists if word got around that we had an original Asmodeus.”
    The way he looked at me, with a meaning behind his words, made me realize that he was trying to offer me something.
    “I don’t have the materials for any restoration.”
    “They can be ordered and sent over from the mainland.”
    “It could be expensive.”
    “Then I will take up a collection from the congregation. They are poor but they would give if it was for the painting.”
    “You have a solution to my every objection, Père. I’ll think about it. I don’t promise anything.”
    “Thank you.” He patted me on the arm. “If you’re going to be spending any time over here I should warn you about the tides. As you see, our
chapelle
is not actually part of the island. At low tide, as it is now, you can come and go as freely as you like across the sand. But at high tide the chapel is cut off. You can cross by boat, or even swim, although the current is very strong and I would not advise it.”
    “There are worse things than being stuck here, I suppose,” I said. “One could at least work in peace.”
    “I will make sure to give you an almanac listing the tides and help you obtain whatever materials you need.”
    I nodded, but it wasn’t the painting I was considering. I was thinking again of the boy.

C HAPTER 8
    B ALANCED ON A SCAFFOLD ASSEMBLED FROM A LONG board supported between two tables, I was within easy reach of the painting on the chapel wall. Next to me, an empty Mère Poulard cookie tin held a quarter
boule
of white bread, a Thermos of tap water, a bar of soap, and a handful of clean white rags. These had all been provided by Victor at the Hôtel des Îles. My paintbox, or rather Piero’s, containing brushes, a handful of colours and a small jar of turpentine, was arranged beside the tin.
    I had no intention of agreeing to the restoration, but something had drawn me back here. A couple of days had passed since I wandered in on the Mass and despite my explorations of the island, I had not seen the boy again. If he existed. Perhaps he had been part of my delirium that day.
    I had spent a couple of hours examining Asmodeus’s “Love and the Pilgrim,” even lifting it off the wall and carrying it out into the sunlight. While the painting could never be restored to its original state, or certainly not by me, I could seeit would not be difficult to at least clean off some of the grime and do a bit of retouching. This wouldn’t bring back the former brilliance of