Becoming a Painter

From The Tears of a Painter

Two years after my father died, I finally accepted the fact he wasn’t coming home to us anymore (I write about that here). My body resumed its natural course of growth. I caught up to my classmates, and people stopped looking at me as though I was a lost orphan. I still had my mother. And I put everything I had into making her happy.

Mark left for boarding school in the highlands of the Rift Valley. He’d been waiting for that moment since I met him, and anyway, things between his father and him were getting worse. They’d become two male buffalo, butting each other every chance they got. Mark even gave up sailing. Sailing— which he’d loved more than anything. Before we’d even moved to Mombasa, Tim had bought him a sailing boat, and Mark had named it Barracuda; they were a power duo on the boat. The beach house had trophies everywhere. There was a smaller one on the centre table, half a dozen on the sides tables, a few in Mark’s room, some in his parents room, the guest rooms. There were even a few up at the farm. Then one day Mark just gave it up. He simply refused to get on that boat. Tim ranted and raved. Ungrateful brat was what he called him. But Mark held strong.

That was also around the time I met Roopa. We were in the same class at school, our desks placed beside each other. Our friendship was as though it was meant to be by the gods of life. It was everything I’d wanted since the moment I’d moved to Africa. One moment we were in her garden, scooping out sand, laying down sticks and building a fire, collecting leaves and buds, mixing them all together in one of her mother’s old aluminum pans, pretending we were brewing a potion that had powers to turn whoever consumed it to stone, the next moment we were borrowing her mother’s dupattas and staging a fashion show down the corridors of her house. Roopa saved my childhood. Her and her mother.

I loved her mother so much, that I often secretly pretended I belonged to her instead of my own one. All this running around is going to make you hungry, she used to say, and we’d sit on their upstairs terrace and eat cheese and chutney sandwiches with a biscuit or two and a cup of tea. If the tea was too scalding, she’d allow us to pour some into our saucers and sip it directly from there.

I often invited Roopa to join us at the beach house. And there, too, she became part of the family. For Mark’s graduation I managed to convince Roopa’s mother to let her drive up with us. I was going with Tim and Kirstin, although my mother wasn’t coming with us— there was about a year when I was fourteen and fifteen, when my mother fell out with Tim and Kirstin. They stopped coming over to our place for dinner, and we stopped going to the beach house on Saturdays and Sundays.

The first weekend we didn’t go, my mother gave the excuse that Kirstin wasn’t feeling well. It felt strange staying away. The beach house was like our second home. The next weekend, she declared Kirstin had been acting a little funny lately— she must be going through something.

Won’t she want to see us? I asked.

Best not to get involved.

But I phoned Kirstin anyway, because I missed her. Mummy said you’re not well. Are you all right?

Oh sweetheart, of course I’m all right. You can come over anytime you like and see for yourself.

I did. We arranged an afternoon together. She sent their driver to collect me from school. And she was her normal self, hugging me and all. We talked about art, Mark at boarding school. We baked a cake. We ate outside under the shade on their veranda.

When Mark graduated, Kirstin asked if I wanted to come along with Tim and her who were driving up.

We could surprise Mark, I’m sure he would love to see you there.

Can I bring Roopa? I asked on a whim.

Of course.

That was how Roopa and I ended up going for his graduation. And Kirstin had been right— he was happy to see us. His grin was huge when he spotted us standing with Tim and Kirstin.

Come here, skinny legs. What are you doing here anyway? he asked as he hugged me.

Then that September, he left for university in England, and I started the last year of my O levels.

It was during that period that I started taking a serious interest in art. Sure, I used to dabble as a child and enjoy it, but it wasn’t until I reached my later teens that painting started to run my life. I had chosen art for my O levels, and I spent hours after school in the art room trying to emulate painters like Henri Nicolas Vinet. His Vista do Rio de Janeiro was one of my favourites. Another was his oil on canvas of the people and the dog outside the straw thatched hut under the coconut trees, Paisagem com Figuras e Palhoça.

I’d won a few awards in school, and people started noticing my work. My portraits especially took people by surprise, because I had become so good at depicting what I saw. Our class held an exhibition, and one of the parents, an artist herself, was quite enamoured by my pieces. She actually bought two of them. One being a portrait I’d painted of her daughter.

Most of my letters to Mark, at first in boarding school and then in England, were packed with news of my endeavours in painting. Sometime in my sixteenth year, I developed a secret crush on the Post Impressionists. Not counting the early years after my father died when I went through a phase of painting the people I’d begun seeing in the night peeping up from under my bed with hollow eyes, bulbous noses, and tall, thin bodies, sometimes even two heads, I was a realist through and through. Early on, my mother had scolded me quite severely for wasting my talent on painting macabre people. What will your teachers think of this? Why don’t you paint something beautiful? Of course she hadn’t believed the people were real, and living under my bed. And no one wanted to see a person with a head crawling out of his stomach. So I became a realist. And a good one too.

But somewhere around my sixteenth year, the urge to bring out the forces sleeping inside me started to take hold again. This time however, it wasn’t as easy as it had been at seven or eight years old. And so I started to look at the post impressionists for guidance, desperately trying to replicate what I saw. 

I was lousy at it. Of course— because you can’t replicate another’s soul. It has to be yours. But I didn’t understand that at the time.

I’m nothing like the post impressionist, I wrote to Mark in one letter. Look at Gauguin or Bonnard. Their work breathes the soul that lies within. I have no idea where to find my soul let alone paint it.

He hardly ever replied. I received one, maybe two in six months if I was lucky. Often a whole semester went by with not a word from him. If I look back though, I don’t think I minded that much. The letters were more of an account for myself— an outlet to vent my artistic frustrations. And in his defence, as I later discovered, he did take note of what was in them.

There were a few letters (okay, maybe more than a few) where I lamented about not having my own easel at home. Every artist needs an easel, I wrote in an overdramatic teenager-ly sort of way.

He returned that year for the Christmas holidays— it was his first year at University, and I was so excited to see him again. Perhaps it had to do with him being in England now, that made the time apart seem so much longer. I remember his flight getting in on a Thursday night, and my mother saying I couldn’t go to the airport with Kirstin and Tim because I had school the next day. I was sixteen for heaven’s sake, what difference would one late night make?

I called him to complain, so he said he’d pick me up from school the next day.

Roopa came to the car with me.

Welcome back— I hope you don’t think you’re a big shot now, she quipped. Now that you’re home from Uni.

I’ve always been a big shot. You should know that by now.

Yeah, yeah.

He reached over and pulled me into a headlock. You been keeping an eye out for this one or what? he asked Roopa. Making sure she doesn’t get into any trouble?

Her last name is trouble, Roopa answered.

In the car, alone with him, all of a sudden I went shy.

You’ve grown, he said, looking over. Did you get taller or what?

You think so?

He nodded. Sort of, yeah.

He had changed too. There was something different about his eyes, but not only that, his body too. I was a sixteen, of course I noticed those things. His chest and shoulders were broader. I pretended not to look.

So—howzit? he asked.

Not bad.

Yeah?

And you? How’s England?

Bloody cold.

I smiled. Of course it would be. He’d grown up here, on the coast.

It rains all the time, he said. Hey—I have something for you at home.

For me? Really? At your house?

Yup. You’ll love it.

Am I coming over now?

If you want to.

I haven’t asked Mummy. You know how she gets.

He drove to his house anyway. And I pestered him the whole way there, trying to find out what he got me. No one was home but the house staff.

I started rowing in a club at Uni, he said as we made our way to his room.

Where can you row there?

Rivers… The Cam mostly or the Ouse, he said, looking back. I noticed his gaze run the length of me, and a powerful thrill shot through my body. The Cam’s near our campus. The Ouse is further away, but better for rowing.

Is it like kayaking?

Not so much.

We reached his room. Luggage was strewn across the floor. But near the door, leaning up against the wall, stood a long, thin box, the British Airways luggage label still attached.

Did you bring your oars with you?

He chuckled. No silly— it’s for you— for Christmas or your birthday or whatever, but you can have it now. Saves me the trouble of carting the whole thing up to the farm.

This is for me?

He nodded. Open it.

I lay the box on the ground, wondering what in the world it could be and ecstatic that he’d thought enough about me to bring me something back with him. Do you have a scissors?

Just tear the bloody thing open.

He knelt to help me and our heads bumped.

Ouch. sorry.

You okay? he asked.

Yeah.

He finished pulling off the tape and stood up. There. Now open it.

I did and it was an easel.

I’m not exaggerating when I say I gasped.

Is it for me?

Who else would it be for?

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve wanted one since forever.

I know. You’ve been going on about it long enough. Now you can finally stop writing me essays on the topic.

He had to pry my arms from around his neck. Okay, okay, let go or I’m going to collapse from a lack of oxygen. But a smile took over his face.

When I let go, he ruffled my hair. Do you like it?

I love it! Thanks so much, man. I can’t believe you got me one.

Good. Now scoot. The guys are coming over. We’re driving to Lamu for a few days.

You’re going to Lamu? I was disappointed, but masked it well enough, I think.

Yup.

You know your mum’s going to be pissed—it’s your first weekend back, and you’re off.

Beats hanging around this place, he said. I knew he was talking about his father.

You’re coming up to the farm though, aren’t you?

I have to.

It wasn’t only the guys who came over. A whole group of his old friends who were back from university for the holidays too arrived. All the girls were flaunting themselves on the sofas, lounging around, laughing; I could see they liked him. How stupid, I thought, and knew at once everything I’d relay back to Roopa.

Geoff, still one of his best friends, winked at me. Are you happy to have Mark back?

Shut-up, I said.

He chuckled at Mark. She still bug you?

Mark swatted my head. More than ever.

Want me to drop her home? Geoff asked him.

No. I’ll take her.

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Thank you so much for reading to the end. This piece is part of a longer work of fiction which starts here. I had the joy of making up all the characters and events. If you’d like to find out what happens next, please subscribe and you’ll get the story delivered straight into your inbox.