Episode 65
Travelling Light E065S02 Transcript
[Title music: rhythmic electronic folk.]
H.R. Owen
Travelling Light: Episode Sixty Five.
[The music fades out.]
The Traveller
9th Shebath 851
To the community at Emerraine, who carry the Light.
I left off in my last missive speaking of my high spirits following my conversation with Óli. I am both pleased and a little mortified at myself to report that this good mood has lingered now for well over a week.
It is probably for the best Óli cannot see me walking about the Guillemot with an idiotic grin on my face at the thought of them. I am sure their ego would swell quite unmanageably if they knew.
I have kept my word and written to them since our call. It has not yet been time enough for my letter to reach them, nor for their response to reach me. Still, it felt good to make real effort to maintain the connection between us.
I have consulted with Masha and she recommended a port to which Óli can address their reply. There is still a very real chance I will miss it. There is a reason ongoing correspondence across systems is generally not attempted.
Our schedule may change for some reason, and we might arrive before Óli’s response has time to, or have to cancel that stop on our itinerary entirely. Nevertheless, it is something to look forward to. And even if I do not receive a response, I will, of course, write to them again.
It is strange, I do not think I realised how heavy my heart was before our conversation. I had not let myself look full in the face of all the ways I… [sighs] That I was hurting them.
Leaving Clanagh; the suddeness of my departure; joining the Guillemot. All were choices I made knowing, in my heart of hearts, that they would hurt my friend. I carried the weight of that knowledge with me even as I refused to acknowledge it.
The weight is still there. It saddens me, deeply, to remember the casual acceptance in Óli’s voice when they said they knew I would not put their feelings first. I will have to reckon with that one day.
But by bringing this pain into the open air, by truly acknowledging it at last, I can at least set the weight down for a time. I can concentrate on the path in front of me, and trust Óli’s friends to take care of them in my absence.
I wonder if they will include a picture in their letter. I would like that, very much.
Neither am I alone in my good mood. Oyan in particular has been in excellent form, since their friend Sandé from Ha'asbuk University has joined us for a time.
The Guillemot does not, as a rule, take passengers. While it might bring in some extra income, I cannot imagine Captain Scarry being pleased at having someone aboard who could not be set to at least three useful tasks per day.
He has made an exception, however, for Sandé, seeing as she is an old friend of Oyan’s and besides, only coming with us for a short time. We are bound for Potfarne Station, where an old friend of Sandé runs a local radio station.
Apparently they have an advice segment which is considered extremely entertaining, and regular interviews with people from all over the galaxy which, when Sandé told me about them, reminded me of my work for the archives.
I am very much looking forwards to meeting them, and learning more about their work. Perhaps I shall even have the chance to join them for a broadcast – I have been told I have a rather pleasing voice.
Sandé’s presence has brought a freshness to the ship I think we all needed. She is a witty, vibrant conversationalist, and it has been enormous fun to see the ship through her eyes. I have been feeling very validated by some of her observations.
She made a joke over dinner the night before last about the utterly esoteric system by which Resimus has organised the books in the crew lounge – a system which everybody else accepts despite it being quite objectively ludicrous.
She also has a keen eye for relationship dynamics. She took great pleasure in teasing Oyan over their bickering with Resimus.
“You always said you hated having your siblings underfoot, squabbling all the time. Now look at you. You’ve gone and got yourself a new sibling to argue with!”
“I’m an only child,” Resimus sighed. “I never knew how good I had it, before I met Oyan.”
Then again, not all her observations are quite so accurate. I spent some time over lunch one day telling her, and everyone else, about the new year’s eve celebration Óli organised back on Kerrin.
“I’ve heard of jumping over waves before, for luck,” said Masha, “but it was for birthdays, not new year.”
“I think we should adopt it,” put in Tarlin. “It sounds like a hoot!”
From the other end of the table, Captain Scarry scoffed. He had barely spoken the entire meal, eating as if it were a matter of pressing ship’s business that he finish his plate as quickly as possible.
“Ridiculous business,” he muttered, without looking up from his food. “It was not even the proper new year! Just fuss for fuss’s sake.”
“I thought it sounded rather fun,” Resimus offered.
Scarry glared at them. The conversation fizzled out, and we continued our meal in silence until Tarlin offered a new topic.
After the meal, Sandé helped me clean up while the others drifted back to their work. Tarlin took up a bowl of root vegetables to peel ahead of the evening meal, settling down at the galley table with an audio entertainment for company.
“Your friend Óli sounds like quite the character,” Sandé commented. “You must miss them a great deal.”
I gave a rueful smile. “I do, very much. They are very important to me.”
Sandé hummed thoughtfully, wrapping up the leftovers. “I suppose I just wonder how politic it is to wax quite so lyrical about them, given the company?”
I did not follow her meaning. “I was not waxing lyrical. They threw me a party. It was nice. I wanted to share the story.”
“And it is a lovely story. They sound like a lovely person. But, uh…” She shot a look at Tarlin, but she was lost in her work, wrapped in the story she was listening to. “It does seem a bit unfair, talking about them like that when the captain’s sitting right there.”
Now I really was lost. “The captain? What has he to do with it?”
“You know!” Sandé prompted, despite the fact I very much did not. “It upset him.”
“Oh. No, no, he is just like that sometimes. He takes moods. He is not really as curmudgeonly as he seems, once you get to know him.”
Sandé looked sceptical. “And you have got to know him, have you?”
“As much as can be expected. I have only been aboard for about two and a half months.”
“I see. And, uh… Has he been looking at you like that all those two and a half months? Like he doesn’t know whether he wants to shoot you or shag you?”
I burst out laughing. [laughing] “Um. [clears throat] Sorry, I, uh. I do not mean to be rude. Um. But, no. No. You have got it all wrong. He is actually very upset with me at the minute because I, uh, I said some things to him I should not have. That is probably what you are picking up on.”
Sandé’s scepticism did not waver. “You sound very sure.”
“I am sure. Besides, he would not be – what, jealous? Of Óli? Óli and I are not really involved in that way.”
“Aren’t you?”
A blush rose to my cheeks. “No. I mean, they are, uh… That is, I certainly would not, um… We have not, uh… [laughs nervously and clears throat] They are very important to me, as I said. A very good friend.”
I had no desire to say any more, not to someone as relatively new to my acquaintance as her. Laughing] But I think this absurd observation of hers about the captain demonstrates the very obvious limits of her perspicacity! Ridiculous.
Anyway, it was a very amusing misstep on her part. I am sure you will agree. Otherwise, she has proven an amiable and intelligent travelling companion. I shall really be sad to see her go.
But there is plenty for me to be getting on with here. I have not had so many shifts in the engine room as I used to but I have a shift in cargo in a few hours, and would like to get some reading done before then. I shall write agains when I reach Potfarne Station. Send my love to everyone.
[The click of a data stick being inserted into a drive that whirs as it reads]
The Traveller
Entry SE85109-1. Concerning the art of Yonan Putzin, and the forgery thereof.
Keywords: arts and crafts; art history; Edrith Nithraven; fakes and forgeries; Yonan Putzin.
Notes:
I was in the middle of a shift in the communications deck one day when Scarry received a missive from one of his contacts in the art world concerning a possible sale.
“What are they offering?” I asked after Scarry had studied the message and its attached documents. His mouth twisted thoughtfully.
“It’s a painting,” he said slowly. “But, uh… Hmm. Can you buzz Resimus up for me?”
I relayed the request through the ship’s intercom and in short order, Resimus arrived from the cargo deck. They studied the missive over Scarry’s shoulder.
“What do you reckon? Worth a go?”
Resimus made a gesture, weighing the options. “It’s a risk. They aren’t charging as if they suspect it’s anything other than what it looks like. But that could just be ignorance on their part. How’s the kitty?”
“Fine. If we’re wrong, we can take the hit.”
“In that case, I say go for it. I won’t know anything for sure until I’ve done some tests but it’ll still have resale value, even if it’s nothing exciting.”
Scarry, I have learnt, is not one of those leaders who asks for his crew’s opinions only to ignore them. So I was not surprised when, upon hearing Resimus’s advice, he lost no time in arranging the purchase.
Indeed, I did not think much of the exchange at all until the day of the sale. As soon as the painting was back aboard the Guillemot, however, Resimus brought me down into the tiny workspace they have in one of the cargo bays.
“I thought you’d like to see this. One for your letters home, perhaps.”
I helped them lift the painting onto a work table. It was a landscape, competently done to my inexpert eye, but nothing I had not seen before. “Is it very valuable?”
Resimus made the same this-and-that gesture I’d seen in the comms deck. “That rather depends on my test results. There’s every chance it’s a forgery.”
“You do not seem very upset about it,” I pointed out.
“No. No, I suspected as much as soon Cap showed it to me. That’s why he showed it to me, in fact.”
They explained as they moved around the painting, scraping up a tiny fragment of paint from every colour present and collecting them on slides for testing.
“Yonan Putzin was originally from Gereford, on Whel. He saw reasonable success during his lifetime, and has only become more popular since his death last century. He’s considered one of the defining Whelian artists of his era.”
“I think I know him,” I said. “Was it him who did that wobbly portrait of the Gorbank Princesses, the one that looks like they are at the bottom of a glass of water?”
[laughs] “Yes, that’s him!That painting alone has probably been reproduced a million different ways, printed on tea towels and t-shirts and all sorts. An original Putzin would fetch a very healthy price today. We paid a very healthy sum for this piece.”
“But why, if you thought it was a forgery?”
Resimus shot me a knowing look. “Have you ever heard of Edrith Nithraven? No? I’m not surprised. She’s, um…
“Well, l-I don’t mean to be rude. But she’s what I think of as an artist’s artist. They don’t put her stuff on tea towels. It’s highly abstract. Stunning, but not the most accessible. Unlike Putzin, who’s, uh, as accessible as they come.
“Nithraven was born on, oh, some rock. Mit, maybe, or Mot? Anyway, she trotted off to art school on Whel and almost immediately found herself in financial difficulties. She was a bit of a show off – spending to impress the ladies.
“So, she did what any self-respecting artist would do. She tried to sell her art. And she failed. Miserably. She was too new, her style too different. She was this close to having to leave art school and go crawling back to Mit. Or Mot, or whatever.
“And then, her luck turned. She attended an estate sale, an auction, and picked up a painting she rather liked for not very much money, only to get it home and realise it was, in fact, a previously unknown work by Yonan Putzin himself.”
I was incredulous. [laughing] “Nobody in their right mind would believe that!”
“Well, I can’t speak to the rightness of anyone’s mind, but she managed to convince the people who mattered. She sold the so-called Putzin, paid her debts, and got back to living in the style to which she had become accustomed.
“Of course, eventually, the money ran out again. And would you believe it, she managed to stumble across another Putzin, even finer than the last. And then, a few years later, a third.”
[laughing] “There is no way people kept falling for this! Once, perhaps, but three times?”
“Oh, more than three. It’s thought there are at least 29 Nithraven Putzins knocking about, possibly more. You have to remember, this was before we had the tech we have now. Not just to test for fakes but to communicate with one another.
“After she finished art school, she was moving all over the place, meeting new people, making new contacts. And, every so often, stumbling upon another original Putzin at just the right time to keep her bank account in the black.”
One of Resimus’s devices beeped, announcing the end of its testing cycle. Resimus checked the read-out and nodded, satisfied.
“That paint has synthetic selfium in it,” they said. “It’s not widely used but it was a known favourite of Garalel an Fynan mor an’Tor, who passed on her preference to many of her students at Whel College of Art, including Edrith Nithraven.
“More damningly, selfium wasn’t synthesised until about 5 years after Putzin’s death. We are definitely not looking at a rare piece by the Whelian master.”
They moved to the controls for the light above the work table, keying in a series of data points based on the information from the other machines, talking as they went.
“The thing about skint art students is, they’re skint. Nithraven wasn’t about to spend money on new supplies. She didn’t buy the right pigments to match Putzin’s; she didn’t buy the right brushes; she didn’t even buy new canvasses.”
They pressed a button, plunging the room into blue-tinged dimness, as if night had suddenly fallen inside the ship. Resimus let out a sigh of rapture.
“There she is…” they breathed, eyes locked on the painting on the table.
It had been a landscape – a perfectly pretty one, all rolling hills and grazing livestock. But now, the paint was dull, the colours blurring into one another under the wash of blue-black. And another painting glowed in its place.
Bold, hard lines split the canvas, shapes picked out in great sweeping gestures. The image burst forth with such a sense of motion, such vivacity and immediacy, I felt breathless looking at it.
“She painted over her own work,” Resimus said, their joyful smile evident in their voice. “Not every time. Some of her Putzins have nothing underneath but bare canvas. But every so often, you find one. An original Nithraven, never seen before!”
“Do you have to remove the top layer?”
“No! No, no, no, no. No, that would risk damaging the art beneath. The new owner might display it under a light like this one. Or they might just keep that knowledge for themselves. A little secret, between them and us and Edrith Nithraven herself.
“I said earlier that original Putzins go for a very healthy sum. But a Nithraven? Oh! This is going to fetch some seriously silly money!”
[Title music: rhythmic instrumental folk. It plays throughout the closing credits.]
H.R. Owen
Travelling Light was created by H.R. Owen and Matt McDyre, and is a Monstrous Productions podcast. This episode was written and performed by H.R. Owen.
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