The Artist’s Muse

I don’t know how long I lie there but it’s Katze who brings me to the surface. This cat has a greater instinct for compassion than the woman who’s just left. With the beating of her heart and warmth of her tongue this creature consoles me.

Emilie Flöge. Now I have her name I can’t let it go. My anger towards her grows. I tell myself that it was nothing. She snubbed me; that’s all. I’m over-reacting because of … Well, I have good reason. You know that I do. I should blame Gustav. And I do. Oh how I do.

But. Gustav. Since I came to Vienna I’ve long recognized how men treat girls in this city – there was never any secret about the danger he posed. No disappointment should come (though it does) when you get what you know has always been on the cards: he was always going to catch me. I knew. Yet the colour of knowledge, so recently cloudy and white, shrouded in a mist that I hoped would never lift, is now a burst bubble of red, pierced, its contents a trickle down the inside of my legs that turns to a red-brown stain on the edges of my dress that sweeps across the floor attracting dust, dirt. And the attention of Emilie Flöge. Emilie.

Since I came to Vienna I’ve known only the kindness of women who’ve sought to protect me from the dangers of men. But Emilie Flöge. She saw, understood and said nothing. Treated me as nothing. When all I tried to be to her was kind.

I go home that evening and let myself into the apartment as quietly as I can. I don’t want anyone to notice me, although soon everybody has. I thump and scrub my skirt – hard, furious. It’s hard to be inconspicuous when you’re trying to kill something that won’t get out of your head. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. And yes, I feel ill. And no, I’m not hungry. I take myself off to bed. I’ve had enough of concerned looks and my fill of probing questions. I long for the oblivion of sleep. But tonight, even there, all I can do is remember.

A wounded horse. An angry mob. A vixen. A cur. And a woman with a mirror pendant, her back to me: I call out her name. I know she hears but she does not answer. Her silence screams betrayal.

When I wake up in the morning my mind is made up. I will wage war on Emilie Flöge. And all women like her.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_ab480b47-14c3-56ba-9781-8c501cbdb9d6)

Hilde said something strange to me a few weeks ago, the import of which I did not wholly grasp at the time. It must have been just before I discovered Consuela was pregnant. ‘You know, Wal,’ she sighed, ‘I pity the girl a man desires, because she’s never going to be the one that he goes on to marry. No. Society doesn’t like that at all.’ When she said it I took it as sour grapes at worst, feigned sincerity at best. But since I’ve joined the ranks of girls a man desires, Hilde’s words have replayed in my head, drumming their warning over and over again. ‘The girl a man desires …’ Hilde, Consuela. And now me.

Though I’ve told no one and it’s been two weeks since it happened. You are the only one who knows. As for the military campaign I’d planned to wage on Emilie Flöge, this has not got off to the most brilliant of starts. Short of laughing when Hilde or Consuela make her the butt of a joke, my war hasn’t amounted to much, especially when you consider that the more knowledge I gather about her the less power I have to wield.

Let me explain.

What I’ve discovered so far is this: her sister Helene was married to Gustav’s brother Ernst – older I think – who died, leaving her a widow (she might have been the sister I saw). They say he looks after the whole family now: Emilie, his sister-in-law Helene, and another sister, Pauline. Hilde told me they were a millstone round his neck but, when I see them together, it doesn’t look that way to me. Doesn’t look as if Emilie Flöge is a drain on him financially, a burden on him emotionally – no, these truths are as certain as castles in the air on a windy day. These are not to be my trump cards in this battle.

Though I have another battle to contend with on a still more personal front.

Ever since that Thursday when he showed me I was ‘desirable’, I have turned up for work every day. It has not been easy. Forcing myself out of bed, I have pushed my body out into the street, dragged my feet over cobblestones, breathed deeply before entering the studio. I have done everything within my control to conceal the truth. Yet it is what’s outside my control that threatens to give me away. Oh my own treacherous body. Tangled and taut, it struggles to accept food, rejecting sustenance completely as the day and the time comes round again.

Thursday afternoon: 3 o’clock. My insides tighten. The taste of bile surges up through my throat once again, fills my mouth. Oh no, don’t go thinking I’m pregnant. There could be no two women in more different states. While Consuela expands and blooms with new life, I dwindle and struggle to come to terms with the death of my old one.

Yet Gustav is newly fascinated with his blooming model, drawing her ever-changing shape until he is forced to drop his pencil and run across the hall to his living room. He barely looks at me. If I didn’t know better I would say that he felt if not guilty then uncomfortable around me.

When he has gone to join the three sisters, Consuela and I make the most of this time to lie still and be silent. Though tempted, I resist the urge to infect the peace with my ugly confession. I need to get through this on my own. I am trapped and have no choice but to be here. The sooner I accept that the better.

I lose myself, rubbing Consuela’s back, enjoying the closeness as we listen to the excited voices coming from across the hall. Mainly women’s voices punctuated by a low-growled monosyllable here and there. Gustav. The Bear who sounds more bearlike still when muffled by thick block walls. As for the sisters, they are the Witches: nasty, ugly, old. Their cackling scratches me with broken nails. They have surely cast a spell on him as he treats them with such reverence and care.

Perhaps it is true – these are the women he would marry (nature helping the sisters fulfil the other half of the condition – that he should never desire them – in making them as physically unattractive as frogs). And where does love come in? Desire or marriage? And where does that leave me? Consuela? Her baby? I pray that it’s a boy. Torturing thoughts throw my imagination forwards to the world of the future. I pull it back before it sees too much.

But then we hear something else. Something unexpected to set my thoughts on a completely different path.

The same Thursday afternoon it grows uncomfortably hot for Consuela. I go to the door to let the air in. And in with it comes the soothing breath of hope from across the way. It blows gently on our skin, massaging us with the cooling currents of change.

Change. For women. In the form of votes. It’s Emilie who mentions this first. That my nemesis should breathe the words that herald my liberation astounds me. I’ve seen the posters. How could I miss them? They’re plastered all over Vienna.

‘Do women really believe they’ll get the vote?’ It’s a woman’s voice that utters these words though I can’t put my finger on who she is.

Then I hear her: ‘Please, Pauline. Really. It’s 1911. In this day and age women should surely have it.’

Emilie Flöge’s voice fills me with both awe and hatred: her words are inspiring, but how can the woman, who saw my bloodstained hem and said nothing, possibly mean them?

‘There is to be a rally on the 18th of March and I for one shall be going,’ she adds. I make a mental note of the date as the Flöge sisters express their interest, all at the same time, their excitement at the prospect of a women’s rally now expressed in volume and speed so that, for a while, I am unable to pick out a single word.

Then I get one. ‘Eman –’ I lose it: it comes again. ‘Eman –’ I strain to make it out, waiting for it to be said again. ‘Emancipation.’ That’s it. I’m not sure what the word means, but as I lie there listening to the conversation in the room across the way, it is bandied about with such relish, that I work out it has to mean something wonderful.

‘Oh yes, emancipation, Emilie, for women! Women have been shackled for centuries! It’s time for all of us to slip our chains.’ (I think that’s Helene.)

As these words permeate my consciousness, lying there, next to Consuela, rubbing her back, it dawns on me how they apply to me, much more than to any Flöge sister, as I lie shackled to the bed in the studio, my insides pulled and constricted by fear. Fear to speak out for fear of losing my job. And over the Thursdays to come, as I lie there in my chains, soothing Consuela, remembering to leave the studio door open, the women’s words seep in with a key for my model’s manacles. I dare to hope that change is on its way.

Though the fact the message is delivered via the likes of Emilie Flöge sticks in my throat.

***

She might have been reduced to tears at having to go to French classes on her own but I learn that Emilie Flöge is a strong woman. She exercises a power over Gustav that changes the tone in the studio for a short while, impacting greatly on us all.

We girls wear what we’re told are ‘clothes for liberated women’ for many of our modelling sessions at the moment, and the talk of emancipation has burst the four-walled banks of the living room and is now sloshing around under our feet in the studio, covering the floor in a slippery, insubstantial layer of hope, which, to walk on too enthusiastically, leaves a girl flat on the floor.

That’s because even Gustav is talking the talk. And, after what’s happened, it’s difficult for me to take him too seriously (even though a part of me can’t help hoping the hope. Am I a fool to do so?). When I cast my eyes to the floor to avoid his gaze I am immediately reminded of how dangerous he can be, and I shudder at the memory. Besides, Gustav may be familiar with the individual words – words such as unity, liberty, rights – yet when he puts them together in a sentence he clearly has no understanding of what they really mean. Though if the women of the world united we’d soon see some improvements around here.

The three Flöge sisters run a fashion house on the Mariahilferstrasse 1B, Casa Piccola, telephone 1621. It’s a very fashionable street. And they socialize with very fashionable women who wear their very fashionable clothes, which they buy from their very fashionable shop. I’ve seen portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer and Sonia Knips around the studio – it always helps to put a face to a name. And Hilde’s been to their shop a few times – oh, but not to buy anything, just in case you’re wondering! She’s had to go there for Gustav.

It’s ‘stunning’ and the interior is ‘so modern’. Should be, as Gustav got Jo and Kolo, his Wiener Werkstätte friends, to design it all. All right for some. Helene, Pauline, and Emilie: the very fashionable Flöges who want to free women with their exclusive designs and crusade against the foe with their prohibitively expensive made-to-measure range. United. Little matter that they don’t get on.

Nevertheless, they’ve unwittingly introduced subversion into our fold by spreading the emancipated word, a word only ever intended for somewhere vague out there, to be passed around among educated women, never within their own kitchens, parlours, workrooms, and studios. Though they don’t tell you that part. No, I’ve worked that one out for myself.

Consuela and I are early to the studio this morning. Earlier than usual. She’s in the final phase of her pregnancy and the studio has never looked so clean and ordered. It’s going to be a busy day. We’ve arrived even before Gustav has gone to have his usual breakfast at the Tivoli Café (it’s not far from the Schönbrunn Palace) and we listen to him while he waits for his horse-drawn carriage to arrive to take him there. I am not sure what to make of what he’s saying. Consuela laughs. I think she’s heard it all before.