Clairvoyance, by Helaina Pisar McKibbin

Clairvoyance, by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1936

Clairvoyance

René decided to cook an omelet for lunch. He opened his icebox and noted that he had six eggs left. That would be enough for a meal and leftovers. He cracked five of the eggs against the side of his porcelain bowl. The yokes stared up at him, five perfect yellow eyes. They looked beautiful, and he regretted having to mix them with the whites. When he tried to crack the sixth egg, he found that he couldn’t no matter how many times he struck it against the side of the bowl. The shell was apparently stone-hard. Eventually, he became so frustrated with this uncrackable egg that overcoming the obstacle became more important than enlarging his omelet, so he threw the egg on the floor making it unusable. It didn’t break. He stomped on it which made no difference. The egg was unbreakable, so he picked it up and left it on the kitchen counter. Then he beat the whites and yokes of the other eggs already in the bowl and added fresh herbs from his kitchen garden to the mixture: Parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil for a perfect Omelette aux fines herbes. Once the concoction was in the pan, he stirred it to a perfect consistency, not too hard, not too runny and flopped it on a plate with flourish as if it were a crepe. 

No sooner had he sat down at his kitchen table to eat that he heard a loud stage whisper coming from the counter. It said, “Paint me.” At first, he thought he had imagined it, but the third time it spoke, the egg punctuated each word by jumping up and down, hitting the counter with a bang saying, “Paint me” repeatedly leaving no doubt as to where the sound was coming from.  The egg was so sturdy that it didn’t break with these antics any more than it had under René’s foot. It was getting loud and annoying so René, thinking of his masterpiece with misnamed objects called The Key to Dreams, said to himself, if a glass can be called a storm, why shouldn’t an egg speak and be obeyed, so he put the rest of his unfinished omelet back in the icebox, picked up the intact egg from the counter and placed it on the rickety wooden table near his easel in his central room that served as a sitting room, a dining room and a bedroom. Then he started to paint the egg on a fresh canvas. So as not to slavishly copy his model, he painted the white egg brown with a few spots here and there, those “freckles” eggs sometimes have. He thought it would show up more clearly that way against his ecru canvas. He added shading at the bottom of the egg to make it look as three-dimensional as possible and sat back to study the result.

A few seconds later, the egg, which had behaved perfectly during the sitting, began speaking again in its ominous stage whisper saying, “Paint me.”

“What?!” answered René, “I just did.”

“Paint me,” said the egg bouncing up and down on the table, the way it had on the kitchen counter, so René conceding that his painted egg did not look like the model covered it with ecru paint, the same colour of the canvas so as to erase it. Once the paint had dried, he painted a stark icy white one on the ecru canvas. He didn’t add shadowing this time. After all, he thought, since the painted egg was floating in isolation on the canvas, it wouldn’t have anything on which to cast a shadow. Keep it simple, he told himself. 

No sooner had he put his brush down that the egg repeated its strange command, “Paint me.” René leaned back in his chair sighing with disappointment. What do I do, he wondered. This egg is like a lash hair stuck on your eyeball. You can’t get rid of it. Of course, he could have disposed of the pesky thing by taking it down to the street and throwing it in one of the metal garbage bins on the sidewalk, but he didn’t want to. This was a mystery to be solved, not avoided. What could the egg want? A chicken lays an egg which, in turn, becomes a chicken which in turn lays eggs, he thought remembering the brown hen between two eggs in one of his other paintings, A Variation of Sadness. Maybe I should paint the chicken the egg would produce or, better yet, instead of a chicken, a crow in flight. Crows are much more beautiful than chickens. The black against the ecru canvas would be gorgeous.

So, he threw the painting of the egg to the side and put a fresh canvas on his easel. He painted a large black crow spreading its wings against the ivory sky that was now his canvas, adding specks of pure white to the bird’s wings as if they were shiny enough to reflect the light of an unseen sun. Then he waited about twenty minutes to see what the egg on the table would do. It did not repeat its command but just lay motionless on the table acting like an egg. 

René got up from his chair and walked to the table. He picked up the egg and cracked it against the wood. There, I did it. Let it make a mess, he thought proudly, as he watched the yoke drip down one of the legs of the table forming a slimy yellow pool on the carpet. However, when he took a good look inside the shell now broken in half, he noticed with horror that it contained a dead black chick, a chicken fetus with a small drop of blood hanging out of its beak. Disgusted, he picked up the shell halves and the chick with a turpentine cloth and took it down to the street to throw the mess in the metal bin on the sidewalk. 

When he returned to his apartment, he noticed a big hole in the shape of a bird in flight on the canvas. The crow, now a real bird, had flown out of the picture. It was perched on the arm of his couch which also served as a bed. 

“Do not be afraid,” cawed the crow, “You killed me when you stomped on my egg, but you resurrected me in your painting. All I had to do was crawl out of the canvas. Besides you upgraded me from a slaughter bound chicken to a crow. So, I have a good chance of surviving. Now, my friend, please open your window and set me free.”

René was moved to tears. He stretched his hand out, and the bird flew to him landing on his palm which it pecked affectionately. René smiled through his tears. He walked over to the window, still holding the bird, and opened it with his free hand. He held his arm out of the window and the bird took flight, disappearing into the now setting sun. René, who was exhausted by all the work he had just done, lay down on the couch for a nap. When he woke up, it was dark outside. He felt lonely without the bird. If nothing else, he wanted to have its picture, something to remember it by instead of the gaping hole that now filled his canvas.

He took the torn canvas off the easel and placed yet another fresh one on it and proceeded to paint the same black crow as best he could remember it from the original painting, but he added things to the tableau such as a brick red tablecloth over the wooden table by the easel. On the clad table lay a small white egg. René liked the contrast between the colours. More importantly he added himself painting a black bird on a canvas, within the real canvas, while looking at the egg as if he were painting that instead of a bird. He also added the easel under the canvas and an artist palette with paints attached to the easel. He was satisfied with the result because it could leave no doubt that the picture was a picture of a bird and not the bird itself. As such, it would stay put inside the painting and not fly out of the canvas to become real. It would not change in any way, but he would be able to hang on to the memory of his newfound feathered friend. He called the painting Clairvoyance because it depicted that frozen moment in time when the bird was in the future even though now, it was in the past, and in the past, or rather in infinity, it would remain.
 
Helaina Pisar McKibbin 
 
​Helaina Pisar Mckibbin lives with her husband in Los Angeles where she worked as an ESL and French teacher for many years. She is now focusing more on her writing which includes short stories and poems. Some of these have appeared in the following journals: The Storyteller, Rattle, The San Gabriel Querterly, Onthebus, Blood and Honey, and Twin Bird Review. She has also published some translations from French to English and vice a versa.