The Artist’s Muse

Before I can answer, she jumps up, giving her beautiful wavy orange-gold hair a shake before adding, ‘He told old misery guts Emilie that it’s her but she’s not the one who ended up with neck ache and creepy crawlies in her hair from all them flowers. Besides, it’s like looking in a mirror for me when I look at it. And have you seen her?’ Her already familiar chuckle tells me that Emilie, whoever she is, is no looker.

I assume – wrongly – that she has to be another of Klimt’s models.

‘If he likes you, you could be a Golden Girl too. And he pays good money. You’ll be able to pay your rent. Put food on the table. Think how happy you’ll make your mother. Oh yes, Frau Wittger’s told me all about your circumstances, dear. Now, let’s have a good look at you. If I like you, he’ll like you. Don’t worry, I know how much you need this.’ She pulls me towards her and moves my limbs as if I’m a jointed mannequin.

‘Ouch!’ I’m not used to another person controlling my body in this way and though I try not to cry out, Hilde’s hands are pushing my fingers back, apart, together. ‘Nobody said modelling for an artist was easy,’ she snaps. ‘We’ve got to suffer for his art.’ She cackles. ‘So you might just as well get used to it. Now shut up and let’s get that face of yours sorted. Remember, there are worse things you could do to earn a crust.’

As Hilde quickly makes good my tear-damaged face I think of Ursula and the birdlike girl I met on my way to the artist’s studio, I remember Herr Bergman with disgust, and I know that Hilde is right – there are far worse things than to be an artist’s model.

‘Don’t force the child, Hilde. Be gentle with her.’ From behind me booms a man’s voice. It’s his voice, the voice of the artist. He has entered the studio without our hearing his footsteps. His accent is strong, his tone gruff, yet his words are kind. ‘I don’t want her to do anything that she feels uncomfortable with.’

Hilde spins me round so that he can see me.

Wiry, uneven tufts of coarse, grey hair grow out of a parched skull. A messily pointed goat-grey beard straggles down to meet straying white-grey chest hairs that escape up and over the neck of a dress. No. It’s not a dress that he wears, more a paint-spattered grey-blue smock that ineffectively hides his stocky body. Bare, hoof-like feet protrude beneath. Part high priest, part satyr. The artist is an alarming sight. Old.

He walks up close to me, assessing me in turn. And as I breathe in deeply to steady my troubled mind I take him into me. A smell of staleness overpowers the gentle fragrance of my own cleaned and powdered skin, filling my nostrils, entering my mouth, a staleness so strong I can taste it. I start to cough. I cannot help myself and quickly clap hands to mouth.

As I do so he envelops my small, soft hands firmly in his, and pulls them to him, turning them slowly, looking at them silently, broodingly. He brings them to his nose, sniffing, snuffling. Instinctively I close my eyes and transport myself to another place. Yet the place to which I find myself transported is an imagined side street with the tiny fragile bird of a girl and the grunting man from that afternoon. I open my eyes again quickly.

I am a commodity, ripe for inspection. And I need him to pick me.

His small eyes wrinkle and crease in a smile as he turns away from me, moving towards a table, this one strewn with sketchbooks and crayons.

‘Sit here.’ He gestures to the bed in the window, and I do as he asks. I am relieved. Petrified.

‘Name?’ he asks me.

‘Walburga Neuzil, sir,’ I tremblingly reply. He continues to scrutinize me as I find the courage to add, ‘My family call me Wally.’

‘Well, Wally,’ he says while studying every part of me, ‘it would be a waste to lose such a delicate flower, but …’ He pauses dramatically. I anticipate rejection. ‘It is important that you want to be here.’

It’s need not want that has its hands at my back, pushing me forwards. Strong, Wally, be strong. I can do it. I must do it. I wilfully conjure up in my mind the image of the fragile bird-girl. Then of Ursula. I think of the care and time Frau Wittger has lavished on me. Of my mother feeling unwell back home at our rooms with my three younger sisters to look after. Her tired drawn face. Her disappointment if I’m accepted. Her devastation if I’m not.

As I sit there, my red hair in pigtails with black ribbons, my clean skin glowing pink all over, the odd tearstain here and there, I look over at Hilde, who stands at the artist’s shoulder, mouthing words of praise and encouragement at me. ‘You do want to be here?’ he asks me. And I nod in assent. Slowly.

The artist mistakenly reads my reluctance for modesty, though in truth it’s both.

‘Now, my beautiful child, I want you to sit for me, that’s all. Due to the hour the light is not good and so it can only be for a short time.’ For what seems to be a very long and uncomfortable time to me, Hilde bends my legs, folds my arms and turns my head, much as she did before, while the artist draws sketch after sketch of me. I experience a burning sensation as I hold my left arm in the air. The suffering for his art has begun. I waver and wobble as my upheld arm throbs and twitches, Hilde silently whispering, ‘Keep still,’ at me.

This is my first time and I don’t really like it. I don’t really like it at all.

There’s a knock at the studio door.

Nobody responds to it. Nobody moves towards it. But like the school bell at the end of a lesson I have now had my concentration broken. All I want to do is go out and play. (Oh, if only.) My trance shattered, all I want to do is stop. Another louder knock follows. Still no response from either artist or Hilde – though as I look towards her I see that Hilde is now starting to look restless too. Then an urgent longer set of knocks hammers down upon the door, this time accompanied by a woman’s voice, shrill with anger, calling, ‘Gustav? Gustav? I know you’re in there. It’s time to go.’

At this, at last, the grizzled artist grumpily sets down his tools and holds up his sketches for inspection. He gets up and for a moment I am concerned that I won’t do. That he will rush off without a word. Relief that it’s over and panic that it might never happen again surge through me.

Hilde taps his arm. ‘She’ll do,’ she tells him, stroking the back of his neck affectionately.

‘She will,’ he says, before brushing her off and opening the studio door only to close it immediately after him.

For the moments that follow Hilde and I don’t move, concentrating as we are on the woman’s voice, which gets louder as she harangues the artist for making her wait, for not answering the door, for ignoring her, for making them late for their French class. ‘It just won’t do.’ Her voice continues to fill the space until it slips away along the corridor and – slam – out of the front door. And still we follow its shrill now wordless sound until it disappears completely.

And we laugh.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_09147d7f-669b-5d7e-a9cc-6618aade574e)

As I leave the studio I run home in the dark, conscious of my limbs, my breathing, how I hold my head. I imagine that I am the most supple of dancers leaping her way effortlessly home. I will myself to ‘shine from within’ but rapidly think better of this as it occurs to me that it doesn’t do, even with my key clutched in my hand for protection, to shine too brightly down secluded side streets. Once home, I fall back against the closed front door, panting with relief. And I smile.

‘So, how was it?’ Frau Wittger shouts down the stairs, wanting to know how I’ve got on before she’s even seen me.

I leap up the stairs with excitement. ‘I’ve done it. I’ve done it,’ I shout. ‘I’m going to be an artist’s model.’ I can’t wait to see Mama’s face light up, if only a little, at the news and I bound into the bedroom. Olga and Frieda are asleep. Mama isn’t there.

For a moment I am worried until Frau Wittger calls out in a loud whisper, ‘She’s here with us in the kitchen.’ Frau Wittger and Mama are sitting around the kitchen table, a lit candle in the middle, shedding just enough light to reveal the pained look of anguish on my mother’s face. The flame flickers, accentuating the hollows of her already sunken cheeks, exaggerating her expression of self-sacrifice. Although it’s not herself she’s sacrificed. She says nothing.

‘So, girl,’ Frau Wittger asks, looking for details, ‘how was it at the studio?’ But as she pulls the tone up so my mother drags it down with her air of self-pity.

I can’t answer. The weight of expectation. The burden of disappointment. These are my mother’s gifts to me. I return home with news of a job but all she can do is sit and look sorry for herself. I’ve done it for her, all for her. Can’t she see how afraid I am of the cloven-hoofed, coarse-haired artist in the dirty smock? And to know that I’d brightened her life just a little, made her smile even for the briefest of moments, would make it all worthwhile.

‘What’s his name? What’s he like? Is he any good?’ Katya is still up. She should have gone to bed with Olga and Frieda three hours earlier, but she’s strong-willed, stronger-willed than our mother, and that’s why she’s sitting at the table asking the questions. Perhaps it’s my mother who should have gone to, or rather stayed in, bed. Katya is eleven years old, with light brown hair, her moon face a waxing, waning crescent as she shifts her head excitedly in the candlelight, waiting for my answers.

‘He’s the best artist in all of Vienna,’ Frau Wittger answers for me, trying to engage my mother. ‘His name is Gustav Klimt. Don’t you recall? I told you.’

‘Really?’ says Mother, vague. ‘I can’t remember.’ And distant.

‘You’ve heard of him,’ the older woman insists. And with that the licking flames from Frau Wittger’s tongue set about melting the frozen pinnacles of the iceberg that is my mother.

With burning promises and incandescent claims she makes me believe that I’m the luckiest girl in the world. ‘Vienna is plastered all over with his name … His work is everywhere. You’ve got to see his murals in the Burgtheater, the Beethoven Frieze in that new white building, then there’s the paintings he’s done for the university – although I think there’s been a little to-do over them. Anyway, he’s on his way to painting the entire city. Then there’s a list of society ladies as long as your arm all waiting to get done by him. Herr Bloch-Bauer, you know, the man who made his money in sugar – him – well he wants Klimt to do his wife an’ all. Not sure if he already has? But just think, our little Wally will be mixing with the likes of them!’

Mother pulls a face. I can tell she’s trying, though it’s not quite yet a smile.

‘Bottom line is – he’s famous,’ Frau Wittger concludes, sitting back and crossing her arms with finality.

‘Thank you for all that you’ve done for my family.’ Although it’s not pride, joy, happiness my mother expresses, I am touched by the gratitude she shows towards Frau Wittger. My kind mother is still in there somewhere behind the shattered pieces of herself.

Frau Wittger gently pats the back of my mother’s hand in quiet appreciation, acknowledging the effort it has taken for my broken mother to engage. Yes Frau Wittger has been far more than a landlady. She’s fed us, found work for us, kept us off the streets and out of the workhouse, but it’s not simply thanks she wants, it’s hope, for us to have the strength to cope and do something with our lives.

As I look at her illuminated in the candlelight, her every line shows a depth of understanding of a life well lived. The ugly, evil, old hag who opened the door of her home to us when we first arrived in Vienna, who I thought might push us in the oven, roast us, eat us, has vanished. She has been replaced by the woman whose light shines forth tonight, burning so brightly that I feel its warmth. She has done what I could not – got through to my poor, locked-in mother.

‘Aren’t you proud of your daughter?’ Frau Wittger asks her. I look at my mother. Her eyes are like watery pools. And she nods softly.

And I am overcome with joy.

‘Let’s have some hot chocolate to celebrate!’ Frau Wittger fetches her best cups, the ones with the elegant gold-painted handles, and sets about heating up the milk singing something in French as she goes. ‘I love this song. It’s by Gaby Deslys,’ she shouts.

‘Je cherche un millionnaire.

Un type chic qui voudrait bien de moi,