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Who is it? And Thomas would reply, An old friend. Does the friend have a name? the visitor would inquire, offering an encouraging smile. And Thomas would reply, I have been painting him for many years, in his youth and now in his old age. As for his name, I have forgotten it. As you can surmise
from our conversations, my memory isn't what it was. The years wash into one another, a watercolor memory. One fact bleeds into another. Emotions bleed. Faces bleed. I am forced to make lists, the latest list of familiar train stations, Santa Lucia in Venice, Keleti in Budapest, Atocha in Madrid. I have inventories of the natural world also, mountains and rivers, deserts, seas. It helps having a list of hard facts, don't you agree?
    Facts anchor the work, whatever it is you're composing, a picture or a piece of music or a novel or poem.
    But memory has to anchor the facts, alas.
    And so I fall short.
    Florette can vouch for that, can't you, chérie?
    And the visitor would turn to her with a pained expression and she would give him chapter and verse on simple things her husband forgot, bills unpaid, letters unanswered, ordinary tasks ignored. She spoke with conviction because everything she said was true. The visitor would smile and Thomas would smile back and murmur something ambiguous. Forgetfulness is the old man's friend. Forgetfulness is a dream state, wouldn't you agree? When the visitor took one last look at the canvas, Thomas announced that the portrait was far from completion. He needed more time, perhaps a lifetime's worth. This man's personality changed with each season. Probably he would never finish it. The portrait would be an uncompleted work of great but unfulfilled promise, like Mahler's Tenth Symphony or Fitzgerald's
Last Tycoon.
The other portraits were safely locked away elsewhere, in another region of the country. Arson and theft were common in St. Michel du Valcabrère, owing to the many itinerant travelers, so often undocumented.
    Then the visitor would leave and the portrait returned to the closet, where it would remain until the next inquiry. Florette thought these briefcase-wielding visitors were colorless people, with the closed and locked faces of suspicious landlords. She objected to them. She didn't like them in her house but Thomas insisted it was altogether easier talking to them for an hour than refusing to talk to them at all. They were persistent. They could make things difficult
for him, and for her, too, if they chose. Trouble was, they didn't know specifically what they were looking for. There was something they wanted but they didn't know precisely what it was. Unk-unks, in government argot: unknown unknowns. Still, they had to say they tried. They had to make the journey. And they're gone now, he said, touching wood.
    We can be ourselves again.
    You were superb, chérie.
    Would you like a tisane?

    Florette listened now for his step but heard nothing except the movement of the men in the woods. She had forgotten where she was. She opened her eyes and saw that the snow had ceased. Stars burned overhead and off to the south. Through the branches of the trees she saw the horned moon. She was counting the things she had and the things she was missing, a warm coat and gloves, wool socks, a cigarette, and the company of her aunt, always a welcome presence. When she was young and ill with the usual childhood diseases, Tante Christine was always on hand to nurse her. Her own mother couldn't be bothered. Her mother was not on speaking terms with illness. When illness was in the house, her mother went away and Tante Christine arrived. Tante Christine had a saying about the horned moon but she couldn't remember what it was except it was lewd. One more lost story. She and Thomas forgot things all the time and now she knew that in her life she had forgotten much more than she remembered, fragments of herself gone forever. Soon she would be a tree stripped of leaves, bare to the winter wind. Thomas