When the World Goes Quiet by Sardar Gian

Author:Sardar, Gian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2024-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

That night, she uncovers and studies the painting. A reminder of colors, destiny, and purpose. Even a reminder of her own childhood—when she’d first seen it—that wild, untamed hope.

Behind her, Coletta leans against the wall. “It’s like a love affair.”

It takes Evelien a moment to understand the woman is referring to the painting. She takes a step back. “Yes. It’s beautiful.”

“Only a young person would describe a love affair as beautiful. No, I mean it’s skewed. It’s a boring scene in Antwerp, really. But through his eyes, it’s magic. Like how one sees the world when first in love. Beautiful, but in no way accurate.”

Heat rises in Evelien’s cheeks. She never felt that way with Emiel. With them, love was a slow burn, something that evolved over the years. “I suppose what I really see is fate.”

“Absolutely.”

“If the painting was always meant to be mine, and there’s an order that led to that, then everything that’s a part of that order—the war, the sadness, me missing my family when I first came here, all of it, every bit was meant to happen. Like you with Emiel.”

“A painting is not a child, but I agree with your assessment.”

August emerges from the hall. “You need fate because you don’t trust yourselves. Both of you.”

Coletta turns to him. “Ah, the old naysayer himself.”

Unfazed, he continues. “Fate is a crutch. You can’t feel wrong if you think what you’re doing is fated. Where’s the importance of choice? Where’s your moral responsibility?” He glances at Evelien and then takes a seat in the parlor, leg extended as he rubs his knee.

“Is it wrong to believe in something because it makes you feel better?” Evelien asks, thinking of all the ways she’s escaped in her mind, and even the painting hidden in the wall close by, a boring landscape seen as magical.

“Depends on what that belief makes you do. If it doesn’t hurt someone, then why not? But if you relinquish responsibility, in the name of your belief, then I say it’s a wrong packaged as a right.”

“The amethysts,” Evelien says, remembering. She turns to Coletta. “For Martine.”

“Right, right,” Coletta says. “First, the painting. Above the mantel? Is that where we’ll put it when the war’s over and it’s officially yours?”

Evelien tries to focus on the painting. “The mantel, yes. That’s where it will go.” One more lie, stacked upon the others.

“Emiel will love it,” Coletta says.

Another lie. Because Emiel did not love it. The couple of times he saw it, he thought it garish and untrained. The last time they spoke about it was a year before the war broke out. Even thinking about life before makes Evelien feel ashamed at their luck, their lives they didn’t know to cherish.

“All your Fauves,” he’d said when she told him Mr. Vanheule had just had the painting reframed, “are so childlike and bright. Now van Eyck and Memling,” he continued, listing off two of the Flemish primitive artists, “they had talent.”

She’d only meant to tell him

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