The Grand Original - A short story.
The Grand Original
It happens to all of them. I’ve seen the same reaction again and again. Every time a man walks into that room, they break down; they all cry when they see Her. That’s how the men respond when they see Her picture in my studio.
It’s different with the women. They stare. Sometimes they gasp or hold their breath. Inevitably they say the same thing: “Mother.” They intuitively know her face.
I should tell you a bit about myself. I am Ciol Westerhagen, amateur archeologist. As an analyst for a fortune 500 firm, most of my days are spent rummaging through numbers, trying to make sense of a return on investment or developing someone’s portfolio. But since my husband John died, I have found myself traveling every chance I get, following a trail he started walking a while ago.
John’s mind never rested. He read so many things and thought so much, I often told him “much learning doth make thee mad.” He laughed every time I said it and retorted, “When a man is dead, a great library dies with him, but I want the library to be full!” His silly words about death were always so distant, so ridiculous; I never thought it would happen. And his library wasn’t half full when he died. He was so brilliant, and yet so seduced.
Ten years ago, we were happy newlyweds, roaming the countryside every chance we could get. Once when we were in Kansas City, John turned me on to antiques when he bought me a piece of jewelry from the 1800’s. It was a cameo carved from jade. We were both struck by the beauty of the visage on the cameo, with the initials K. D. W. It was the profile of an extraordinary and beautiful woman, probably in her late 20’s.
As we studied the face, it became clear that this woman, whoever she was, and even as dead as she was, could still draw something from the soul. It was such a face. While John said it reminded him of me, I knew he was only trying to boost my ego. I knew the truth. This woman was stunning, and we had to find out who she was.
We went to the archives in the Kansas City Museum, thinking we might be able to get some lead on who She might be. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was going to be an overwhelming task. There were thousands of women who could have been etched on that cameo. But John, as always, was indomitable, and even more interested in a project than he normally would have been.
He copied as many records as he could and we headed back to Minneapolis. Once we returned, John scanned the image and started an intense GOOGLE image comparison search. After four days (while he should have been at work) John found an exact match. She was Katherine Davis Willoughby, born 1802, died 1829. From the archives we learned only that she was the wife of a Kansas City banker, and that she died while giving birth. But we did find a complete picture. And I still have it to this day. It is in the same room as Her portrait.
It was Her beauty that intrigued us both. What John found most interesting is that I would be captured by Her beauty, almost more so than my male counterpart.
The profile of the forehead, the nose … so perfect. And such a delicate chin. The hairline was utter perfection, turned up in a slight demure bun.
Most elegant. I was jealous, for John was in love … with a woman long dead. I found it so strange to see the impulse in him for someone who had rotted in the grave over a hundred years ago. It made me realize there was something else going on, so I asked him.
“I’ve seen that face before; most of the time it’s in a fairly intense moment with yours truly.”
“Don’t take it personally,” he responded, “she’s just soooo beautiful, and it’s a strange aching I can’t explain.”
“Well, I just wish you wouldn’t drool so much, its embarrassing.”
John laughed. “Just remember, you’re not competing with her.”
“Really? I think you’re wrong. Even though she’s dead, she’s got you hooked.”
“Ciol, she’s dead!”
“Not in your mind.”
“Hey, look at it this way; it’s just beauty … that’s all.”
We ended the conversation, but I still knew how he felt about Her … he was in love, and that’s why he did the GOOGLE search.
Weeks later, when he was gone on business, I found more pictures of her in his desk. He had hundreds of images of her. Apparently Her banker husband was also quite taken with her looks and had her photographed regularly. There were pictures of Her in the Spring, walking willowy down a boulevard. There were pictures of Her in the Winter with an ermine muff cupping her delicate hands. And then there was the direct shot of Her Face.
If you saw it, you’d know what I mean. Men fall in love with this woman. Her eyes have a quality about them that makes you believe she is in the room, even though you know she isn’t. It’s so hard to describe. The smoothness of the skin; the symmetry of the cheekbones; the perfection of the gaze, the composite is ineffable. It’s a face that says “I am tender, I am tough, I am soft, and I am hard. I will love you and heal your miseries. I will touch you more deeply inside than I will outside … but I will touch you. I will take you to a quiet place, where the breezes blow softly, and the sun warms gently, and I will caress you when the storms come. You will love my arms around you, and you will feel no sadness…ever again.” She has that power.
That’s what John fell in love with, so much so that he would sit in his room at night, after he thought I went to sleep. Sometimes he would cry and call out Her name. “Katherine, Katherine, Katherine.”
When he died, I burned everything. Every picture. Every article. Every note. Everything. There would never be trace of her again, except the picture of her face. I never really resented him for loving Her, but I resented Her more for doing what She did…even though she was dead. And I thought that was the end of it.
After John was gone for several months, I started wandering around the country again, mostly as therapy to help me remember the good times. One day I got a brochure to go to France, just to do some travel that was completely different. I joined a tour that was in France for a month, visiting everything from the cathedrals in Rheims to Nice, to the Bordeaux Country. Then we went to Lascaux, to see the cave paintings. You’ll never guess Who was there.
As we walked deeper and deeper into the ancient caves, I kept noticing cave paintings of animals, but also a human figure with arms outstretched. As we walked into a large chamber, there She was. In the plainest of clothing, standing next to an elk, there was Katherine…but it couldn’t be her.
I asked the guide, “Who is this woman?”
He spoke very broken English, but he replied, “she is called Oeand, woman of the four rivers.”
“I don’t understand. What rivers?”
“We think the Tigris and Euphrates, the Gihon and Pishon…in the ancient Middle East.”
“How do you know that?”
“These caves were not inhabited by Europeans, as many have been led to believe. Anthropologists have traced the origin back to the Middle East. It seems some Middle Eastern adventurers wandered here many thousands of years ago and decided to stay. Legend says they were driven out of the Fertile Crescent because of their animosity to local customs.”
“It doesn’t quite make any sense to me, but I’ll do some research.”
I left France with a souvenir of the woman named Oeand. Strange name, I thought. But a name unlike any others I had ever heard. GOOGLE was blank on the name, always coming up empty, with the exception of the Legend of the Lascuax caves. I expected to find an extensive bibliography on Her, but it did not exist. She was not only beautiful; she was the essence of Mystery.
And She looked so much like Katherine, I couldn’t help but think reincarnation, but that never appealed to me. Always seemed hokey to think of past lives, and this was just too weird. Past lives always suggested something different, like being a cow or something like that, and earning your way up the ladder until you reached humanity. I just never bought it.
Since I couldn’t find anything on the Web, I started searching libraries… no matter where I went, there was nothing on this Woman, but one day I found something better.
During a walk through the Chicago Art Museum, I saw Her again… this time in a Renoir. It was too much to take. The same Woman showed up in Kansas, French caves, somewhere in the Middle East that I hadn’t found yet, and now in an Impressionist painting. Now it was my turn to cry.
Sitting in the gallery by myself, weeping, I kept asking, how can this Woman be present so often, in so many places? It was obvious I had to go back to the most ancient one, the one of legend, the one of the Lascaux caves and find Her. I needed to go to the Middle East.
An Israeli friend told me of a service in Tel Aviv which could help me start my search. The Hebrew National Archive was a starting point. So in February of last year, I went in search of Her.
The people at the Archive were wonderful. Many spoke fluent English and I felt embarrassed that I didn’t know the slightest bit of Hebrew. When I got there, I said I was looking for a woman named Oeand. No one had any idea of what I was talking about, but I assumed it was because of some variation in the French pronunciation of an ancient name.
For several days, I talked with people and kept asking for some kind of lead, some kind of clue, but nothing worked. We sat down and brainstormed different versions of the name: Wand, Wend, Waned, Wan, but it didn’t seem right. Then we thought, maybe the French pronunciation is right after all. I was astonished by the reaction of the team. The oe sound became “wee” and the “and” sound became “enh” with no “d”. The people in the Archive looked at me as if I was from another world. It was an ancient Middle Eastern word for Mother. Like em.
“Mother?” I said, “that doesn’t make any sense.”
An aging, gray-haired scholar with thick glasses named Lev looked at me with a smile through wizened eyes. “Yes, it does make sense, since we have an ancient myth that someone is the Mother of us all. It goes far, far back in time, mostly through oral tradition among many of the tribes throughout the desert, and we have some writings that seem to mention Her. Have you never read Genesis?”
“It’s been a long time, but you’re probably referring to the myth of Adam and Eve.” I laughed. Lev did not.
“Correct,” he replied soberly.
“Seems very far-fetched to me, but certainly interesting.” Then I realized, I had a picture that might be of interest. “Have any of you ever seen any sculpture or paintings of a woman who looked like this?”
I held the picture of Katherine Davis Willoughby in front of the whole team. Every one of them stared. No one talked for at least a few minutes, and it seemed some held their breath. Lev broke the silence.
“I think there is something you should see.”
He took me to a room down the hall from the main Archive. There on the wall, in a barely visible sand sculpture, was that unmistakable face. It was merely marked as exhibit # 3421. It was Her.
“Where did this come from?”
“There is a cave about 200 kilometers from here, through the Negev. Two explorers found the sand sculpture at that location in 1863, but no one has ever made any connection with any other person.”
“Until now.”
“Yes, “ Lev replied, “until now.”
“She is here, but She has been in the United States, she has been in France, this cannot be.”
“Maybe it’s not the same Woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps its something different, maybe a wonderful combination of genetic properties that only look similar.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well you’ve seen people that look alike throughout the years. As I recall, one of the silly things you do in the United States is find people to impersonate your Elvis Presley… correct?”
“Well, yes, but what difference does that make?”
“Maybe these people just look alike.”
“But such rare beauty, it’s hard to imagine …”
Lev philosophized, “Perhaps we’re seeing more than is there… perhaps it’s just an illusion we induce through our own perception.”
“Is it possible for me to get a picture of this sand sculpture? I’d really like to take it back to analyze it some more.”
“I don’t see why not.”
I took several shots of the sand sculpture, and thanked the team for their time and insights. By noon, I was headed for London, then from London to New York and home.
* * * * *
I dropped off the film at a local store on my way home just before crashing into an exhausted, jet-lagged sleep. I had lost several hours in travel, and knew I had to work the next day.
Back in my office, I settled into the routine of answering the godawful amount of e-mail and voice mails. I vowed never to go away that long again.
When I woke up, there was a message on my voice machine, stating that something had happened while my film was being developed.
I returned the call immediately. “Hello, this is Ciol Westerhagen, you left a message for me?”
“Yes, Miss Westerhagen,” he said with a very thick accent, “We have your pictures, but unfortunately we have developed your color film using a black and white process, and we damaged the film. It was a new person. We apologize.”
“I understand, but did the pictures turn out?”
There was a long pause.
“We will refund your money if you do not like the results.”
My curiosity was on fire. “I’ll be down in about an half hour.”
I arrived at the photo shop and went inside.
“Hello, I’m Ciol Westerhagen. You called to tell me my photographs were done.”
“Yes, Miss Westerhagen, please follow me.”
We walked to his dark room. He pulled back a curtain, and there She was. The black and white effects enhanced the photographic image. Oeand shown forth in all Her glory.
“Can you enlarge this photograph?”
“Why of course. How large would you like it?”
“Can you make one that is 3 feet by 4 feet? I’d like it as large as possible.”
“Most certainly.”
The enlargement was perfect, and I have the picture in my studio to this very day…next to the picture of Katherine Davis Willoughby, and the picture from Renoir. And several other pictures I have gathered through the years, some from Southeast Asia, some from South America, some as far North as the Arctic Circle. They all hold the same beauty and similarities, but none have the perfection of Oeand. Long dead, Her beauty still draws us all … and we wonder why.
Then again, maybe Milton was right when he wrote:
“Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Manlike, but different sex, so lovely fair
The what seemed fair in all the world seemed now
Mean…
And in her looks, which from that time infused
Sweetness into my heart unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspired
The spirit of love and amorous delight.”
(Book VIII, 470-475).
