The Artist’s Muse

Au moins une fois par mois.

Je cherche un millionnaire

Qui me dirait froidement,

Tout ce que j’ai c’est à toi,

Je cherche un millionnaire.

C’est pour ça que je fais le boulevard …’

As I look at the back of her head, bobbing in time to the song, I know that I owe it all to her – staying off the streets, making my mother proud. And that’s all I ever want to do.

***

Mama hasn’t always been this way, withdrawn and weak. And I’ve not always done my best to help her. She annoys me, to show so little fight, but I know it’s not her fault.

Life’s changed her, changed me, pounded us like lumps of clay, soft matter, so that we’ve lost ourselves for now. For some, life may be for living, but, for me, the only thing it’s good for is for learning, as I have no choice, no power, to do the former. I may not go to school but I have a brain and know how to use it when I get the chance. And in the most extreme times, I’ve learnt the greatest lessons. That’s why I owe it to Mama, to you, to put a few things straight.

***

A time before Vienna

There was a time when we were happy: my father, my mother, my sisters, and me. A time before Vienna, in a village called Tattendorf, far, far away. My mother was a happy soul, always laughing, and she adored my father who was a much-loved teacher in our local school. Our lives were good and the only poverty we knew was the poverty of others. And every Christmas, rich factory owners from Vienna would come and make it go away. Or so it seemed.

Once a year they would arrive, compassionate, immaculate, god-like in demeanour, and they would shower upon the poorly dressed and damaged food and clothes, sweets and treats. And I would admire them.

The poor themselves, I admit to my eternal shame, I would regard with great disdain for no other reason than their poverty and what it had reduced them to: accepting cast-offs, begging for money, grovelling, having no self-respect. I did not understand, at the time, their agonizing humiliation at having to kiss the shoes of the very people who had made them poor in the first place. I suppose few of us ever do. Until it happens to us.

But Fate generously gave me that opportunity when Mama and I worked in the factories after we arrived in Vienna. Some of the owners were the very same rich men who used to visit the poor children in our village, arms laden with presents. They didn’t remember us, their benevolent smiles now replaced by demands and gripes for not coping with the twelve-hour days and a pittance of a wage.

Like sinners in a hell of never-ending toil, we worked and worked. And if the toil should accidentally end in one place, then we would scrabble around so that it could start up all over again in another. We were infinitely dispensable, disposable, replaceable, as we frequently discovered. And you know the story about Herr Bergman and me.

That’s part of the reason why Mama is as she is now. Employers don’t want weak workers or those who speak out when rights are wronged. But it’s not the whole story. The main cause for our fall started back in our village. Sometimes I can’t understand it. Can life be so unfair? Sometimes I even think it was my fault because it certainly wasn’t my mother’s. Perhaps you can decide.

That last Christmas in Tattendorf we were happy. To have lost paradise – that’s how it seems to me today when I think about it.

The fall was swift and brutal.

Christmas had come to an end. As we were putting the decorations away, one of the gilded walnuts rolled towards me. Father had warned us girls not to touch them, but, calculating that he would never find out, I removed the nut from its shell and put it in my mouth. Anticipated pleasure turned into unforeseen pain. A taste of putrefaction invaded my mouth. Instinctively I spat out the rot.

I waited for the consequences, as Mama was always quick to deal with us when we’d done something wrong. And though she quickly gestured to Katya to help me clean up the saliva-drenched pieces, she barely turned away from the conversation she was having with Papa.

I held up the gilded shell and wondered how such a perfect surface could have hidden something so disgusting. Something wasn’t right.

Father stopped working at the school very soon after Christmas. Several months later mother screamed at me: ‘Wally, run. Get Father Neuberg. Hurry!’

Father Neuberg came immediately to hear Papa’s last confession and while we sat with him he repeatedly said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Now I know why.

When my mother’s sobs exploded I knew Papa was dead. We were alone. My sisters and I without a father; my mother without a husband. We were appropriately devastated, dressed in black and grieving as we should. Losing Father was hard.

Though (please don’t think me callous) being poor was harder. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing could have prepared us for the devastation of being poor. At first, the neighbours were kind, coming round with pots of soup and loaves of bread. But as the demands came in: ‘You still owe me for three prescriptions …’; ‘You owe me for the groceries …’; then propositions addressed to Mama – the neighbours retreated so far back into their cottages that they disappeared from sight, no longer even answering their doors to us.

Then it came. ‘Notice to quit’ in a letter from the school authorities.

Dear Mrs Neuzil,

We would like to extend our warmest sympathy to you and your family at the loss of your beloved husband. We would also like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for your husband’s faithful service as a much-valued teacher at our school. His hard work and devotion were examples to us all and greatly appreciated. His passing has been a genuine loss to the community and it has been very difficult to replace him.

Yet replace him we must, for the sake of our children. Thus, it is with great respect that we thank you for appreciating that we must house our new teacher.

We do not expect you to vacate the property immediately and so we have agreed upon what I’m sure you will see is a very generous offer. That is, that you will be allowed six weeks starting from the receipt of this letter to find alternative accommodation for you and your family.

Good wishes for the future,

The School Authorities

I took the letter out of my mother’s hand as she prostrated herself, sobbing, across the table in front of her. No husband. No home. Four daughters.

I hope you see it now – that no one is more deserving of kindness and pity than a mother of four young girls. Hard lessons to learn for all of us. And although I know it has nothing to do with that silly rotten walnut, part of me wishes that it did, as at least then it wouldn’t seem so random, so unfair, what’s happened to Mama. At least it would have meant that the gods had a plan. Even if we didn’t understand it. That someone was responsible.

***

But back to me. One week I’m counting sheets of glasspaper, avoiding paternally disposed salesmen who want me to call them Daddy, and the next I’m counting my blessings for having found a job as a model. Oh, so I’m making light of the attack. But don’t think that I found it funny at the time because I did not.

In fact, it was only after something Hilde said to me at the studio when I’d told her about it that I decided to laugh about it at all. She told me that a hard life can seem like a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think and so, challenging though it may be, I’ve decided that I’m going to be doing a lot more thinking from now on. And, if you think about it (as I have), then you’ll realize that it’s Herr Bergman I’m mocking, not me.

So, now, I’m here. Modelling. Or rather learning how to model. And I’m not finding it very easy. Even the seemingly simple poses are proving to be a physical challenge. ‘Start her off with something easy to hold, Gustav,’ Hilde tells him. ‘It’s pretty tough for beginners.’

And so he does. Asks me to sit for him. Just sit. Now you mightn’t think that you’d have any trouble, just sitting down. But I do. Maintaining the same pose for sometimes over an hour can be agony. The muscles in my neck hurt from the effort not to move. I can’t even feel the nerves in my buttocks, as I’ve been clenching them so tightly in my attempt not to slouch. It’s not easy work.

Herr Klimt makes lots of sketches, showing them to me as he goes, and although I don’t consider them to be great likenesses they are well executed. He even lets me take one home. It becomes my most prized possession – little matter that it is my only one (apart from my black satin ribbons).

When I’m not modelling I’m watching others model while the artist paints. He is a quiet man. Quiet as he works. Yet he likes to touch as he draws. His gnarled hands, paint hardened under fingernails, gently stroke what he sees before committing it to paper. His thumb, rough-skinned, outlines the contours of cheeks, the line of a jaw, the sweep of a forehead. When he does it to me I don’t like it but Hilde says, ‘Imagine you’re just fruit in the fruit bowl. And don’t squirm if he comes close to sniff you.’ I flinched the first few times. But now I am getting used to it, finding it almost reassuring.

I see Hilde every time I am at the studio; she’s always there, and the two girls I recognize from the large canvas in the corner have become familiar faces. And bodies. With a nod of Herr Klimt’s head they both take off their clothes and get themselves into position on the day bed in front of the window. They’re pretty, a year or two older than me, though far more experienced.

I chant Hilde’s reminder: ‘it’s just a body; it’s just a body’ over and over again. I think of fruit in a fruit bowl. Objects. Things. Shapes. Textures. Smells. Break it down, Wally. Break it down. Lines. Contours. Shapes. Break it down still more, Wally. She sees me – Hilde – as she’s draping the sea serpent models in sheer green and as she passes she leads me into another room, drawing the door to as quietly as she can.

‘Now look,’ Hilde tells me.

We sit at a table upon which Hilde has placed a small pile of sketches.

‘Go on,’ she commands.

I leaf through them. Pictures of girls. Women. Of all ages. Not all beautiful. Not all whole. Body parts. Sketches of heads, hands, legs, breasts. Some bodies – completely naked. Some are beautiful. Others unnerve me with their detail. I’ve never seen anything like it, sketched or in real life, and I blush just to look at them. ‘Never look down at your body,’ my mother always says. And I never do.