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Chapter 17: The Interview

When the time for the interview finally came, Nikola was so wound up that she jumped at the sound of the doorbell.

She opened the door and found herself face to face with an attractive man, quite a bit taller and somewhat younger than herself. Nikola couldn't help but notice a sense of strength and confidence, something that she always found attractive in men. He had black hair and hazel eyes, tan skin and a friendly smile. He reminded her of her old lover Erik, but she tried to shake it off to concentrate on the interview. She had expected someone different somehow, more arty.

"Hi," he said, "My name's Greg Richards, from Perceptions Magazine."

"Hello, I'm Nikola Hesse."

"I hope I'm not late."

"Oh no, not at all. Please come in."

"According to my research, you recently arrived from Germany."

"Yes, that's true."

"But I don't hear any accent at all in your speech. You speak like a native."

"Oh, uh, thank you. I uh.. well, it came naturally once I arrived here."

"Oh really? Had you ever spoken English before?"

"Um, well, no, not that I know of. I guess I have a talent for languages or something. I don't know." Nikola wasn't sure why she hid the truth from Greg, but it seemed prudent to do so.

She gestured him inside and he looked around at the apartment and studio. He walked towards the opposite wall, where her works in progress were leaning, and studied them thoughtfully.

"They're not finished," Nikola said immediately. She really didn't want to answer questions about them. She cursed herself for not covering them up before his arrival.

"They are very different from your other work," Greg replied.

"Yes, I painted those from the dreams. I've been having some very strange dreams lately," she said softly. 

"I can't wait to see them when they're done."

Nikola smiled and nodded. She gestured towards a chair and said, "Would you like something to drink?" 

"I brought some refreshments, I hope you don't mind," Greg said as he handed Nikola a shopping bag. 

When she looked inside she found a bottle of a light, dry white wine, and an assortment of breads and cheeses. Nikola was surprised by the bottle of wine for an afternoon interview, almost as if he were trying to get her drunk. What kind of questions is he planning to ask?, she wondered.

"This is very generous of you. Thank you," Nikola said.

"Oh, it was nothing," he replied, facing Nikola. "Why don't we open the wine?"

"Of course," she replied with a smile, "I'll get a corkscrew and glasses."

They settled down in the living room with the wine and cheese between them and started the interview. Greg took out a tape recorder and set it up on the coffee table in front of him. He then removed a camera from his backpack and asked, "Do you mind if I take pictures of you and your studio during the interview?"

"No, not at all. But I would like to see the pictures you want to publish before you publish them."

"Of course. That's no problem. I'd want your permission for anything I publish. Do you mind if I take a few supporting shots of the studio now?"

"Go right ahead," Nikola replied without thinking much about it. She watched him take out his equipment and assemble his camera, and had a chance to observe him more closely.

The loose fitting outfit hardly hid his trim and well-muscled physique, fit for modeling and yet emanating strength. He wore a pair of wire rimmed glasses that were too small for his wide face and distorted his eyes. Nikola caught glimpses of color through them, but it was not until he took them off to clean them that she got a good look at his large hazel eyes. They reflected blues, greens, and grays before settling back to a pale amber. For a second, she thought she could get lost in those eyes, the powerful jaw and long neck, sinuously lined with muscles she longed to trace with her fingers. He put his glasses back on and broke the trance. Nikola came back to the present with a start, pushing old, painful memories aside. Greg's resemblance to Erik was remarkable.

He flashed a brief smile at her, got up with his camera and walked across the apartment. He started with a few photographs of her, sitting on the couch. She then watched him moving through her studio space, photographing various corners, and wondered why he would be interested in her working space. Then she noticed him moving towards the center of the space, and shooting her half-finished canvases.

She immediately jumped up and said, "Please don't take pictures of those, they're not finished and I'd rather that people didn't see them in this state." He stopped and looked at her when she spoke, but Nikola was afraid that she was too late, she thought she had seen him take several pictures of them already.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you felt that way." Greg walked back to the couch, sat down, and began the interview. He hit the record button and pulled out a list of questions he had prepared earlier. He started by asking about her major influences. She answered with lists of both historical artists she had admired, as well as professors and peers. He then asked her where her inspiration came from. Nikola hesitated when she heard the question. She had noticed him glancing over to the new work several times, but didn't want to talk about them. She tried to think back to the paintings in her last exhibition - the majority of which were her misty illusive landscapes - and tried to recollect how she felt when she painted them. It seemed like ages ago. She tried to formulate words to describe her feelings, but it wasn't easy. Nikola often had trouble discussing anything emotional, even in German, the language in which she studied art.

When Nikola thought back to those earlier paintings, she realized that, actually, they would be much easier to describe than the newer ones. In many cases, their inspiration was a reaction to the stress, chaos, and isolation of the world around her, or to some current event. She could discuss them in completely academic terms. The symbolism she had used was done so consciously, that Nikola could reconstruct her reasoning.

She sat facing Greg and spoke slowly. She couldn't help thinking about her newer paintings as she spoke, and their sharp contrast to her usual style. She would be hard-pressed to explain where they came from or what they meant. They frightened her sometimes. Whenever he looked over to them, she felt as if she were sharing her mind with a stranger.

While she was describing the landscapes, Greg interrupted her with, "I visited your gallery exhibition last week and noticed three paintings that really stood out. They were quite different from the rest. They depicted a woman falling."

Nikola looked up at him sharply with the mention of the "Woman in Red" series. Until now she was not sure if he had seen them - they were up so briefly, but apparently he had. She wasn't sure how much she should reveal to him. On the one hand he was the press, so anything said to him could, and probably would, become public knowledge. One the other hand, she felt very comfortable with him and longed to reach out to him. The dark spiral curl that fell over his forehead above those large knowing eyes brought her back to a place where for a brief time she was happy, comfortable, and never lonely. But that place had been gone for a long time. For lack of a better answer, she turned the question around, "What did you think of them?"

"The mood is quite a change from your other work. But, like all the rest of your work, they are quite beautifully done. I didn't see the resemblance until just now, but is that you in the paintings?"

"Yes. Do you think that's morbid?"

"It's very interesting. You don't often see an artist depict her own death. What inspired you to paint them?"

"A dream."

"Do you think the dream is a premonition?"

"Actually, it felt more like something that already happened. If you accept reincarnation, I suppose it could be from a past life."

"Is that what you believe?"

"I'm not sure what I believe. I paint what I feel at the moment and try to interpret it later, but I don't always succeed."

"So you just let it all come through you, huh?"

"I guess you could look at it that way." Nikola couldn't tell if Greg's last comment was sarcastic or not. Her eyes locked with his and she thought she felt sexual tension between them. She tried to convince herself that it was just her overactive imagination, and scolder herself for the thoughts. She broke eye contact and reached for her glass of wine. The interview continued.

"I was there later, and I noticed that they were gone. Isn't that unusual, to remove paintings during an exhibition?"

"They were sold. Sold without my permission, actually. But please don't put that in the paper."

"No, of course not. I can let you read the article before I submit it, and anything you don't want known, I'll take out."

"Thank you. You're being very kind."

"My pleasure. So what happened with the paintings?"

"Oh, it was no big deal really. I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to sell them yet, but someone offered to buy them and Martha sold them without consulting me first. I'm sure it was just an oversight on her part."

"I imagine that it's hard for an artist to part with any of her paintings."

"It is. They become like children sometimes. I guess I can't really compare because I've never had children, but I do get very attached to them. Some more than others."

"What about these works-in-progress here - you mentioned that they were also from dreams."

"Yes, I've been painting a lot from dreams lately."

"They are different from your other work. They have the same detailing and intense colors of the three from the exhibition. Both of the finished ones are very powerful images, and the two beside them look like they will be equally strong." He referred to two unfinished canvasses that rested against the wall to the right of "Silhouette" and "Confined." In one, Nikola was working on an image of the secret place, and the other had vague charcoal marks outlining the bully's silhouette against the fire. At this stage, each was still black and white, lines of charcoal dust over the gessoed surface, illustrating the basic shapes of the painting to come. "Is this your new style?" he asked.

"I hadn't really thought about it that way. I always saw these dream paintings as a kind of side trip. I suppose I've been doing a lot of them lately, so I guess it's more than a side trip, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a new style."

"You're a very beautiful woman. It's hard to imagine you painting some of these gruesome images."

"Can't beautiful women have gruesome thoughts?" Nikola giggled.

"Well, of course. That wasn't what I meant..."

"I know, and I'm sorry to tease you. Just the way you phrased it..."

"Yeah, I know. I left myself open," Greg said quickly, and smiled. He re-filled their glasses and glanced at his list. "I read in the exhibition catalogue that you grew up in an orphanage. Do you think it affected your decision to become an artist?"

"That's impossible to say. We only get to lead one life, so it's very difficult to say what things would have been like if we had lived another. I'd like to think that under any circumstances I would've been an artist, I really feel that I have a special calling towards it, but I must say that I did get a lot of encouragement at the orphanage from a nun named Sister Innes. She really went out of her way to support my efforts and get me supplies. She was great."

Nikola looked down and smiled at the thought the nun. She scolded herself for not writing to her more often. Sister Innes was one of the only things from within the dark halls of St. Mary's that she liked to think about.

"What was it like there?" he asked.

"It wasn't an easy place to grow up in. Often it was very lonely. The whole place was rather cold, in spirit as well as temperature, and regimented. Not exactly a homey environment, but I survived. Maybe that fueled some of my drive to paint, I don't know."

"Do you know anything about your real parents?"

"No, nothing at all."

"Have you ever tried to trace them?"

"I don't really have anything to go on."

"What about through your name?"

"It's not really mine. I was just left for the orphanage, without even a name." Nikola looked into her lap. It was painful to admit that she was an unwanted child, even after living with the fact for all these years. The feeling of being unwanted and unloved never really left her.

"Where does the name Nikola Hesse come from?"

"The nuns named me. They chose Nikola and Hesse was the last name of the Mother Superior."

"I see. Do you wonder about your parents?" Greg leaned forward in his seat.

"Of course. All the time. In the beginning, I always thought they would come back for me, but after a while I had to give up on that. I can't help wondering about them. Who they are, and why they abandoned me - I suppose I always will." Nikola surprised herself by how long and how candidly she was speaking to this relative stranger, but for some reason she felt more and more comfortable with him as time passed. She supposed that the wine was helping her to relax as well, Greg was constantly filling her glass, so it was hard for her to keep track of how much she drank.

"Do you have any memories of them?"

"No."

"I guess you were pretty young when you got there, huh?"

"Young enough."

"If you met your parents today, would you resent them?"

"I don't think so. I'd probably be so glad to finally find my heritage and meet them, that it would be hard to be angry. But, I suppose I would expect some kind of explanation." Nikola was beginning to wonder why he was asking so many questions about her childhood. She expected a few, but this was getting to be too much. She wished he would go back to talking about art. Perhaps he read her desire in her face, because he did.

"Do you enjoy being an artist?"

"Most of the time. I really can't imagine doing anything else, it's always been the most important thing in my life. Even when I had other jobs, I still came home to paint."

"How do you like your visit to New York so far?"

"It's been very interesting. New York is an amazing city. You really have everything here," Nikola said diplomatically. In her experience, everything included a few negative things as well.

"Have you seen much of it?"

"Just bits and pieces. I can find my way to the art supply stores and museums."

"You mean no one has given you a tour of our fair city?"

She laughed to this question and then said, "No, the gallery is much too busy for that. But I can find what I need."

"Would you like a tour? I know the city very well, and I'd be happy to give you one."

She laughed again, too nervous to answer right away. The thought of seeing this man again was very appealing. "Sure," she said, "I'd love a tour of the city. As long as it's not part of the interview. I couldn't stand watching everything I say for that long."

"Of course not. I'd enjoy doing it. Plus, I'd like to get to know you better."

"When shall we go?"

"How about Tuesday? During the week the crowds shouldn't be too bad."

"Tuesday's fine."

"When should I pick you up?"

"Not too early."

"Noon?"

"Okay, noon."

"Great, I'm looking forward to it."

Greg left shortly afterwards and Nikola spent the evening dwelling on the past, crying about a love lost many years ago, and wondering if she had revealed too much in an effort to recreate that past. She felt wide open and very vulnerable. She knew she shouldn't have accepted the tour, but she had to see him again, which would open her up even more. Life was much safer when she wore her shell. More boring perhaps, but definitely safer.

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