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Curled up at his master’s feet, the brownish Basset hound snored sonorously. His fur acquired amber colors as he lay next to the burning fireplace, basking in the pleasant warmth of the fire and with the crackling logs crooning their monotonous lullaby. It was a symphony of sounds that, together with the pattering of the rain on the window and the clinking of the spoon in the porcelain teacup, created a sort of hypnotic atmosphere that would have induced sleep even in the most zealous man of London, but that nothing could against who had made of languor their only creed.
Thus sat Mycroft Holmes in his ochre bergère, his eyes absent-mindedly scanning through his paperwork and then raised, from time to time, to peer at the figure of his younger brother standing at the other side of the room. Sherlock was quiet, and for that Mycroft was grateful. There was some kind of complicity in that silence, as if the only words they could speak to one another after Cordona were made of pure thought, still too rough and incoherent to find their way through their lips. How to start? Mycroft had never been one for asking his brother how he was doing, and Sherlock, for his part, had never been one for providing answers to any question he deemed stupid. And even then, what ever could have been his response after all that unfolded? The truth Mycroft had been trying so hard to conceal had been exposed at his brother’s will and expenses. But what truth did Sherlock really saw? Did he see the truth of an unscrupulous doctor who killed his poor, psychotic patient to carry out an experiment? Did he see the truth of a non-existing friend, born from grief and mourning? Or did he see the truth of a sick mother attempting to drown her own son? All of them were the truth and none of them were.
But one thing for sure: he had buried a part of himself beneath the sun-kissed soil of Cordona.
“Sell it to me”.
Mycroft raised his head from the documents he was pretending to read when his brother’s voice intruded on the incessant, gloomy harmony of the room.
“The portrait”, he repeated. “Sell it to me”.
“Why?”
“I have found a roommate. I’m moving in next week and I think it would look perfect hanging over my fireplace. I mean, you don’t seem to care that much about it...”
He motioned to a roll that lay abandoned on the Davenport desk. The thin layer of dust suggested that the canvas hadn’t been touched in ten or fourteen days at most, and certainly he didn’t expect Mycroft to suddenly become overwhelmed by nostalgia and wanting to reminisce about their childhood, unrolling the picture and looking at the figures trapped in the paint. There was no point in leaving it there as a receptacle for dirt.
The older Holmes redirected his attention back to his files and took a sip of his Darjeeling tea.
“I thought you didn’t want it. You departed Cordona in such a hurry and left me behind to settle all your things. I had an annoyingly large number of people to inform about your unexpected disappearance, you know? I also had to resell all the furniture to the very same traders you bought it from, and I can assure you, it hasn’t been easy”.
“So?”
“So, I will not stand for your reproach just because I didn’t hang it on my wall. You are right: I don’t care about it and apparently neither do Cordona’s traders”.
Sherlock cracked a smile at his brother’s unpleasantry as he rolled out the canvas, and reflected that if that was the way he had presented himself to those poor merchants, he wouldn’t have minded delaying his departure just to witness the scene.
“Does it amuse you?” Mycroft remarked with a lifted eyebrow.
“What? Imagining you going out of your way to sell this picture to the art dealer of Grand Saray? Extremely”.
He cleared his throat and continued with a voice that in his intentions was supposed to sound like his brother’s: “Trust me, good lady. This painting is a pure work of art! It is called ‘The agonizing pain of getting kids to sit still’.”
Mycroft wrinkled his nose with irritation at that imitation, mediocre at that, and rose from his armchair. He stepped at Sherlock’s side and pointed his gaze at the object of their discussion: he remembered well when it was painted, the sluggishness of every stroke, the eyes of the artist peeking over the canvas from time to time... and the absolute boredom of standing there completely still for hours every day.
As much as he hated to admit, he too had been a child once, and while far from the common conception of what a child is and how a child behaves, he had always believed in the uselessness of having a portrait of himself. First of all, as a child, he had always found the tediousness of those posing sessions to be poison to the soul; getting bored was an art in and of itself and few knew how to practice it. And secondly, as a child in the Holmes household, he had developed long before the dawn of his fourteenth birthday the idea that getting a portrait of themselves was the swan song of the narcissist. What was the point, he wondered. To be enamored with one’s own face truly was the disease of the century!
Then he saw him. Their father stood there, frozen in pigments, but his clear and proud stare seemed to transfigure the canvas, turning it into a mirror through which he could read every little inflection of their souls. Just like he used to do, a simple look was all it took for him to know everything he wanted to know from his sons. He didn’t speak much and his demeanor was solemn and collected.
Mycroft closed his eyes for a moment, in the back of his head the echo of his firm voice. He wished for a moment that it could provide him with an answer on why a man like Siger Holmes had wasted his time and money on a pretty unremarkable portrait like that. But the voice fell silent and the father returned to be an effigy of lines and colors.
***
“Mom, I’m bored! Can we please go play?”
“Not yet, my love. Be a little more patient, it won’t be long”.
“But why are we doing this? It’s stupid!”
Sherlock sprawled on his mother’s lap with a groan, his little feet kicking in the air, last strenuous display of resistance.
Siger heaved a heavy sigh while he stretched his arm over the back of the settee and squeezed his son’s shoulder, forcing him to sit straight. He could only imagine what literal inactivity could do to a mind as curious and exceptional as that of his children; Sherlock was still very young, so his acts of rebellion were limited to occasional tantrums, but Mycroft was an entirely different story. The older boy was standing right next to him, his shirt and knickerbockers perfectly ironed, not a hair out of place and his bearing somber and composed. If it wasn’t for some sporadic blinking, one would have sworn to be in front of a marble statue. But what was going through his head? That was what truly concerned Siger Holmes.
Teachers and preceptors had told him about the extraordinariness of his children, but what they had not told him about was the impertinence that came with it.
And as a matter of fact, while he was still intent on rebuking Sherlock for his posture and constant whining, another irreverent voice made its way through the argument.
“Why are you scolding him, dad? He is not wrong. This is indeed stupid. Ludicrous even”.
The older Holmes kid nonchalantly walked past his father and dropped on the sofa like a sort of decadent idol.
“By this time we could have had ten portraits in ten different poses already, if we had hired a photographer instead of a dauber. No offense, Mr Stoddart”.
“Mycroft!” exclaimed Siger in a spur of prideful paternal authority.
Lionel Stoddart placed the palette on his worktable, his plump cheeks rapidly turning red – one wouldn’t know whether from anger for the unflattering epithet or embarrassment because it came from a fourteen year old.
“Maybe we better take a break. Don’t you agree, Mr Holmes?”
“No! That’s enough!” the father exploded. “Mycroft, come back here! Sherlock, sit straight!”
He jerked the two boys by the arms, putting them back to their positions.
“And now I don’t want to hear a pin drop. Am I being clear?”
Thus said, he moved back behind the settee and resumed his pose. He could feel Violet’s reprimanding eyes on him and right there he knew for sure that she wouldn’t have stopped at just a look. Maybe he should have married one of those docile daughters of the minister, educated according to the British custom to always be compliant, never raise their voice against their husband and not to transform their study into a cabinet of curiosities. Oh, a woman like that would have made two perfect gentlemen out of her kids! No rebuttals, no arguing, no snarky remarks, just a perfect family as it should have been.
Nevertheless, whenever his eyes fell on Violet, he became pervaded by a peculiar warmth: every sweet word she spoke trickled from her lips like honey, every sarcastic comment pierced his pride like a forest of thorns and every cheerful laugh melted his austere heart.
He loved her. He loved her completely and incessantly.
Oh, what a fine, submissive wife he could have found if he only had refused to keep a bottled Fiji mermaid on their desk!
“OW! Mom! Mycroft hit me!”
The sudden cry of the youngest of the family reawakened Siger from his soliloquy.
“What happened?”
“It was Mycroft! He smacked me on the head!”
“You’ve got no proof”, Mycroft objected.
“I don’t need it! Someone hit me here,” Sherlock pointed at his nape, “and it could only be you”.
“You always need proof, Sherlock. It’s your word against mine, and you don’t even have a witness”.
“Dad! You saw him, right?”
Siger exhaled loudly and rubbed the root of his nose. God only knew what kind of children he would have gotten if he had chosen another wife!
“This is too much. Let’s take a break. You little pests, behave! And Mr Stoddart, if you don’t mind following me, so that we can discuss your payment”.
Violet flashed him a smile, a sort of thank you for not lashing out against the children, as he began to climb the staircase to the first floor where the last sound that was heard was the door of his study closing.
“Finally”, Mycroft grumbled and abandoned himself again on the couch. He opened his book, an illustrated hardcover of ‘Ship of Fools’ by Sebastian Brant, and from that moment on his whole attention was captured by the yellowed pages he browsed with avidity.
Violet looked fondly at the scene, then turned to her little one.
“Sherlock, do you want to play?”
“Yes!” he jumped to his feet. “Hide-and-seek, please!”
“Alright. Just one game, though, and we keep it here on the ground floor. And then you promise you will behave for the rest of the session”.
Sherlock pouted, his tiny lower lip protruding outwards, a stance that indicated that he was analyzing the pros and cons and deciding if the deal was worth a game of hide-and-seek. At last, he let out a snort:
“Fine. But you count!”
Feigned disinterest arched Mycroft’s eyebrow as he peeped over his volume: his brother had run off somewhere, an unfamiliar clanking sound as the only trace he had left behind, and his mother was standing with her face against the wall, chanting all the numbers up to sixty. What a silly game – he thought. Mom knew all the nooks and crannies of their house, from the garret to the basement, and surely she knew more than a couple of tricks: he had still impressed in his memory that one time Sherlock had hidden inside a closet in the attic and she had easily found him, but instead of revealing his hiding place by simply opening the doors and surprising her little boy crouched in the corner, she concluded that pretending to ask her husband if he had called the exterminator the get rid of all the rats in the attic and watching her son run out of the wardrobe screaming like a madman was a far more entertaining option.
From time to time Mycroft wondered how a woman like his mother could have fallen in love and married a man like his father. She was summer, he was winter. She was all the fresh fragrances of nature, he was the scent of newly-printed books. She was all that was beautiful, he was all that was righteous. And love stories like that only existed in romances.
Five minutes had already passed since Violet had started her search and still no lead to where Sherlock was hiding. A mask of apprehension aggrieved her lineaments, slowly distorting to anguish the more time passed and the longer her calls did not receive any response.
“Have you seen where your brother has gone?” she turned to Mycroft, who shrugged.
“That’s cheating”.
“Mycroft, I’m seriously worried. I can’t find him”.
The boy lifted his head from the book in his hands, inspecting her restless expression, then sighed:
“He took exactly fourteen steps from when you started to count and no door was opened or closed. Considering that he wasn’t allowed to go upstairs, he is either hiding in the hallway or in the kitchen. The hallway, though, has no cabinets or hidden corners. The kitchen, on the other hand...”
Without letting him finish, she hurried to the kitchen and began opening all the cabinets with growing irritation.
“Wrong”, Mycroft insisted as he followed her, his book still under his arm as if he was eager to be done with such nonsense to go back to his reading. “Think about it, mom, think about the sounds you heard. It’s so obvious. After taking fourteen steps, which are roughly seven of yours, he touched something that made a metallic sound. And the only thing in this kitchen that makes that sound is...”
His bright, vivid eyes fell on the small door of the dumbwaiter which, in the furthest corner of the room, provided a rapid connection between the kitchen and the pantry downstairs. Sherlock was clever and extremely competitive, it wasn’t actually a surprise that he had found a way to operate it from the inside. After all, he was not breaking the rules: he was still on the ground floor when he had hidden inside the dumbwaiter!
What a smart rascal! – Violet mused while she put all her efforts into pulling up the cart, suddenly heavier than usual. And soon her little boy’s freckled nose peeked out into the shaft. He showed her a toothy grin which would have never worked to melt her iron resolution to ground him if it weren’t for his missing incisor; and all the tenderness and motherly love she tried to suppress in that moment came back like a flood and she took the kid in her arms and smothered him with kisses and cuddles.
“Don’t you dare to scare me like that ever again!”
“Did I really scare you?”
“I couldn’t find you anywhere! For a moment I thought you had run outside and you know I don’t want you to go out alone until that old well near Watling Street is sealed”.
“But I’m always careful!” he protested.
Decisiveness glimmered in her dark pupils. That one rule was not allowed to be broken, that was what that look was saying.
“No, Sherlock. No playing outside until it’s safe. Promise?”
The little boy nodded: “Promise”.
The mother pecked him on the cheek. Every time she contemplated the earnest expression on her little one’s face, she couldn’t help but to feel her heart overflowing with love and adoration. She would have built temples for her Sherlock. She would have fought wars to protect him, she would have crossed the world to bring him happiness, and one day he would have become a magnificent young man she would have looked with the highest pride in her eyes. He was her reason, his love her animating principle.
Violet observed his tiny hands playing with her necklace, his puckered lips as he still sulked after his debacle at hide-and-seek. And in that instant her gaze fell once again on the dumbwaiter – a pretty recent installation in their house, certainly Siger would have never thought about it.
“Hey, Sherry”, she whispered. “Do you want to play a joke on dad?”
The boy cocked his ears and listened carefully to his mother’s instructions.
The sound of rushing steps once again distracted Mycroft from his reading yet this time he refused to pay heed to them. But no matter how strong his will was, his senses were more acute and he couldn’t ignore the figure of his mother dashing upstairs and her shrill voice talking to father:
“Siger! Please, help me! I can’t find Sherlock!”
The man’s chair scraped on the wooden floorboards as he stood up and quickly reached for his wife’s trembling hands.
“Violet, my dear, calm down. What is wrong?”
“It’s Sherlock”, she sobbed. “We were playing hide-and-seek and now I can’t find him. I have been calling him all around the house, but he doesn’t answer, oh Siger! I’m so worried!”
He gently caressed her cheek with the back of his hand and smiled sweetly.
“Don’t fret, my love, maybe he’s just hiding inside a closet and can’t hear you”. Then, he turned to the painter that, in the meantime, had joined the spouses in their distress. “Mr Stoddart, can I count on your help?”
“Of course, my friend”.
Their searches carried on for ten minutes before concern took hopefulness’s place in Siger’s mind. He had rooted through all the possible hiding places in the house: he had opened any wardrobe, any cupboard, inspected every room, Lionel Stoddart had even checked the stable to make sure the boy wasn’t hiding inside the family brougham, but to no avail. Sherlock was nowhere to be found.
“Violet, please, try to remember. Did you hear anything? Do you remember if he opened the front door? Maybe he is outside”.
The woman was shaking, forcing tears to come out from her eyes to make her performance more believable.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
She lowered her head, apparently from sorrow but actually to conceal the light curve of her lips. Mycroft, still lounging on the sofa, followed with dissembled curiosity the prank his mother and his brother had put up for father. Surely, that was enough, it was time to cut it short, and by the way Violet opened her mouth to speak again, he trusted mother had had the same idea.
But before a single word could come out of her lips, a flash of fear crossed Siger’s grayish eyes. Violet too read that look and promptly stood up, completely abandoning her act.
“Wait, Siger...!”
She had not the time to finish calling his name that he had already run outside, dragging the baffled painter by the arm.
“Stay with Mycroft, Violet! You, Stoddart, come with me! Hurry, we must find a constable!”
Shock and panic guided Violet’s feet as she scrambled past the sitting room and to the kitchen, rapidly maneuvering the dumbwaiter.
“Sherlock! Sherlock! Come out!”
“What? Why? Where is dad?”
“Come out, quick!”
“Is he angry?” the kid asked with naivety.
Violet took a deep breath, frantically helping him out of the shaft.
“Not yet. But he will be soon”.
***
Mycroft’s eyelids opened once again, again on the painting that Sherlock was now gently tracing with the tip of his fingers.
“You said you have found a place to stay”.
“That’s right”.
An image, a reflection captured onto a frozen water surface. That was all that portrait was.
“So, are you going to sell me this painting or not?”
To call their father a narcissist – what a blind fool he had been! He had judged without understanding a single thing about him. And he claimed to be the only one who remembered! False memories, pretenses, the desire of having someone to blame for what had happened. And the more Mycroft looked for a culprit, the more he looked for the one who ripped his father away from him and Sherlock, the more he looked for the one who put that role on his teenage shoulders... the more he realized he was surrounded by ghosts.
He saw them in the streets they used to walk, he heard their voices when rereading their favorite books, he caught essences of their souls every time he looked into his brother’s eyes. He saw their father, he saw their mother.
And sole keeper of memory, he realized. That portrait was not a symbol of vanity, but a symbol of love. It was not the myth of Narcissus, but the one of Pygmalion. A work of art, higher expression of all the forgotten details coming to life through memories. The smell of paint, the antics of children and the mechanism of a dumbwaiter. If only he had known earlier how much a simple portrait could hold!
He stared again into his father’s eyes. That was his parting gift. And it was for Sherlock to keep.
“You can take it”, he said with solemnity. “I don’t want anything for it”.
Genuine surprise shone on Sherlock’s face.
“Really?”
“Really”.
“Well... thank you, then. Could you please roll up the canvas while I hail a cab?”
“Of course”.
He glimpsed the picture one last time, pondering over when he would have got to see it again. On whims of sentimentality he had considered keeping it for himself; sooner or later his memory would have faded, events and faces would have lost their clarity, turning into the fog that begets numbness. What he would have given to spare his brother such degradation! Giving him the portrait was his final attempt to protect him: whatever dark thought crosses your mind – he would have wanted to say – remember your mother’s embrace. Whenever you are afraid of the monsters you’ll encounter in this life, remember your father’s strength. Wherever you lose yourself, remember your way home.
That he would have wanted to say. But instead he simply rolled up the painting and held it out to Sherlock when he returned.
“Where can I find you?” he asked.
Sherlock sneered.
“You are the smarter one. Let’s see how long it takes for the Queen’s Hound to find me!”
Then, Mycroft observed his apartment’s door closing behind his brother’s back with a sly smile on his lips.
“Hide-and-seek, I like it”.
***
“Do you have the slightest idea of how scared I was?!” Siger’s roars shook the house walls. “I thought you had fallen in that damned well! I was ready to put myself in danger, to put everyone in danger, to save you! And you?! You were inside the dumbwaiter! This is the worst thing you have ever done, Sherlock! Oh, and don’t you think”, and he pointed his finger at Violet, “that I’ve got nothing for you! You are his mother, you are supposed to be serious and responsible! Do you know that that constable I dragged here could have charged me with wasting police time? And I’m not even talking about the shame! The utter embarrassment I felt! Oh! Are you laughing? Really?! Is this funny to you?! This is why our children don’t respect me! Because you laugh!”
“Oh, darling!”
Violet suppressed a giggle as she locked her arms around her husband’s stiff neck. He stared at her with severity, determined not to fall again for her loving, tempting affections. They had definitely gone too far with that prank. To make him believe his baby was trapped inside a well? As much as he trusted that the joke had gotten out of hand and none of them actually aimed at that result, he couldn’t simply ignore the sheer anger that grew within him the moment he came back with an officer and found the supposed missing boy happily sitting on the sofa dangling his feet with the most candid expression on his little face.
And still, apologizing to the policeman hadn’t been nearly as frustrating as hearing his wife and son snigger at his reproaches! His whole face burned with indignation, he clenched his fists and opened his mouth to breathe in and prepare himself for another philippic. To think that merely showing a little bit of remorse would have done so much for his poor nerves! Now, they would have been so, so grateful if he had married one of the minister’s daughters!
But it was then that another sound caught everyone’s attention. A snort, then a stifled chuckle shyly rose from the settee. Siger leaned over the seatback in bewilderment, as his older child, always stoic and marmoreal like Galatea, exploded in a guffaw which echoed in the whole house.
“MYCROFT!” he shouted to stop that sudden burst of hilarity. But it was in vain.