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I wonder at the time it’s taken her to make me look as though I’m wearing not a trace of make-up. And yet …
I am pearly flawlessness. I am innocence. I am sugar-coated youth.
***
As I step outside into the street I turn to bid farewell to them all and see an expression of sadness cross Frau Wittger’s face. We embrace, though carefully. ‘We don’t want to be spoiling all that work we’ve done on that pretty face of yours now, do we?’ And as I turn to go, my hand reaching into my pocket to make sure that I’ve not lost the address of the artist for whom I am to model, I hear her exclaim, ‘What am I thinking? You’ve never been there before. Hang on there, girl, I’m coming with you.’
She hurriedly grabs her coat, gloves, and hat before following me out and taking my hand. As I wave to my sisters I look up to catch my mother looking down at us from an upstairs window. She blows me a kiss for luck.
I squeeze Frau Wittger’s hand twice, once for me and once for Mama. We are doubly thankful that this woman will be by my side on this important journey on the way to such an important meeting.
‘Destination – Josefstädter Strasse 21. Knock on the door and ask for Herr Klimt. He will be expecting you.’
Josefstädter Strasse 21 is in Vienna’s 8th district, home and studio of the artist Gustav Klimt.
To begin with, we walk there in silence. It’s late afternoon. Shadows lengthen as the day fades. And as the light goes down so my anxiety builds, my mind struggling to imagine what I don’t know.
Just as I start to feel that I am condemned, I see a girl stumble out of a side street. She’s swaying. I look away from her as something tells me I won’t like what I’ll see if I carry on looking. But it’s too late. I have seen too much already. There is still enough daylight for me to see her smeared bright pink lips and poorly hidden bottle of I don’t know what (though I have a good idea), the neck of which peeps out from beneath a scarf in her bag.
A well-dressed man wearing a top hat appears out of the same side street immediately behind the swaying girl. He pushes her aside with disdainful familiarity, storming past her without casting a backward glance. There is something between them. Her suppliant neck moves after him. I don’t fully understand what I have seen. But I know that it’s ugly.
‘He’s an artist,’ Frau Wittger says, breaking the silence. Changing the unspoken subject. I watch the back of the well-dressed man who pretends not to know the smudged-lipped girl. ‘Oh no! Not him, silly. Oh no. Not him at all. No, the man we’re going to see. He’s the artist. Very popular. Really very good. Gets a lot of commissions. Paints a lot. No, dearie me no. Nothing like that man. You’ll be secure there. If he likes you.’
I feel alarm at the possibility that he might not, especially after the disturbing scene I have just witnessed. Frau Wittger, sensing my concern, continues, ‘But he will, dear, of course he will. Adore you. How could he fail to? Just look at you. Yes, he will like you. You’ll get a lot of work there.’
She walks along, fiddling her coat buttons nervously, before adding, ‘Why, you will become his muse. Imagine that, an artist’s muse? And it’ll pay the bills. Certainly be a help to your mother.’
I have no idea what a muse is but assume that it’s preferable to what the girl with the smudged lipstick is to the man in the top hat. As for my mother, that’s why I’m here.
As the daylight retreats further so the streetlights come on. They add a comforting glow, eliminating the sinister. Though not for long.
As we carry on down the street, out fly the brightly coloured women. First one. Two. Three. Then whole flocks descend, feathers bold and beautiful, ready for the paid employment that Frau Wittger wants to protect me from.
A very beautiful girl spots us, recognizes Frau Wittger, and flags us down. Frau Wittger tries to keep her at bay by waving acknowledgement and turning sweetly with a ‘you-know-how-it-is; must-dash’ smile. But the girl is not to be deterred.
‘It’s Ursula.’ I hear the note of resignation in Frau Wittger’s voice. Sigh-deep. ‘We are going to have to stop or that girl will tackle us to the ground!’
As we approach her I recognize the rosy pink cheeks on a startlingly white skin, her bright eyes dazzlingly set in smokily shaded sockets and her lips daringly red. She should be on the stage.
‘You’re looking good, Ursula dear,’ Frau Wittger remarks.
‘Yes. All my own work,’ the brightly painted lady replies, leaning forward, sweetheart chin resting on open-petal-shaped palms, red lips puckering ready to blow us a kiss.
‘Yes. Very nice,’ Frau Wittger answers unconvincingly. ‘But you really don’t need so much. It’s heavy. And besides, remember what happened to poor Silke’s skin when she slapped it on every day? The lead’s not good for you.’
‘Yeah well, I agree,’ Ursula replies with a wag of her head. Don’t know why she bothered. Though you can’t blame the greasepaint for that. She was whacked around the head with the ugly stick was our Silk’. Whacked good and proper. A waste of good greasepaint trying to improve on God’s shoddy handiwork there.’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about and well you know it,’ snaps Frau Wittger before narrowing her eyes as if she’s just noticed something she can’t ignore.
‘But wait, hang on just a second. Come here, Ursula.’
Ursula laughs sheepishly. ‘Get off me!’ Her uncharacteristic coyness causes Frau Wittger’s eyes to narrow even more.
She takes Ursula by the hands and gently pulls the young woman towards her to get a closer look at her face. Ursula winces and lets out a poorly stifled ‘ouch!’ The older woman pulls up the girl’s sleeves to reveal bruises the size and shape of large fingers about her wrists. As the girl pulls her hands away she looks down and the streetlight catches her face, revealing a raised surface on her left cheek, bumpy and rough.
It becomes apparent why Ursula has resorted to such heavy make-up. The greasepaint has successfully served to mask the discoloration of her badly beaten cheek. But lead can’t eliminate the scabrous contours caused by knuckles breaking skin. Even I can see that.
Ursula rolls her eyes defiantly. ‘Well it’s nothing. It really is nothing. I can look after myself. I can.’
Frau Wittger puts her arm around Ursula’s shoulder, taking care not to hurt or damage her in any way. Who knows where else the girl might have been beaten? There is a sensitivity and strange quietness in the scene as the beautiful girl places her head on the older woman’s shoulder. They melt into one.
‘Please, please come to see me. You know where I am if you need any help. Or just to talk.’
I see flickering looks. Love, sorrow, gratitude. Inevitability. They gently pull apart from one another.
‘And who’s this young ’un here then?’ Ursula turns to me as if suddenly aware of my presence. She flicks one of my hair ribbons dismissively in an attempt to deny the undeniable truth of her situation.
‘Looks like you’re off to Josefstädter Strasse. Am I right?’ She laughs.
I nod as Frau Wittger says, ‘Yes, Wally is going to be a model. A muse, isn’t that what we said, dear?’ She chuckles affectionately.
Ursula throws her beautiful head back so that a tendril of curled hair falls loose and cascades around her temple, giving her a cavalier, almost rebellious air. ‘Nice work if you can get it; don’t you forget that. But make sure you don’t go and spoil it for yourself like what I did.’
She sees my look of surprise before continuing, ‘Yes, I did try out as a model but – it’s hard to credit I know –’ and she looks at me, eyes wide open and a can-you-believe-it expression on her face, before explaining ‘– but I was, let’s say, a little too chopsy, if you gets my drift. Too many ideas of my own when it came to what he should and shouldn’t have been painting. Even offered to help him one day what with all that colouring in he likes to do. But he didn’t like it, ungrateful old goat. An’ I’ve always been good with colour. I could have been a great help.’
She snorts and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Always been great with colour as a matter of fact.’ She snorts once more before rolling her hands up and down her clothes as if displaying the proof. ‘Green dress. Brown boots. And just look at my face. Nice touch of green on my lids and my lips, inspired by a dancer I saw at the theatre last month. Could spot her right from the back of the gods. Said to myself that’s what you need, Ursula love, and that’s exactly what I’ve got …’
Amused and enchanted by the colour-conscious Ursula, I am also horrified that she could be my future. But before she can say any more Frau Wittger takes my trembling hand and reclaims control of the situation before Ursula – she who can only speak loudly, no internal check, she who just opens her mouth and says whatever she wants to whoever she fancies – throws any further verbal fireworks. ‘Well, really, all Ursula is trying to say is that as long as you don’t go shooting your mouth off (just like what Ursula’s so good at) then you will be fine. Really fine.’
‘Yes, that’s my advice. What I was going to tell you. But …’ Before Ursula can finish her sentence she starts to vibrate. She’s bending at the knee, her pinned and curled hair bouncing and flouncing loose still further as she makes o’s with her painted red lips, alternately covering them then pointing to a short well-dressed man with a walking cane heading towards us.
‘Oh my! Oh my lordy! Oh! Oh!’ Before either I or Frau Wittger can answer she rushes off, smoothing her hair to make sure the escaped tendrils aren’t waving Medusa-like from her head, hands hiding momentarily her battered cheek. She’s swinging her hips excitedly and teetering forward, towards the man who is much older than she is. And as she walks away I can tell from her girlish figure that she is not much older than me.
She turns and mouths back at us by way of explanation, having suddenly discovered the facility of volume control, ‘Oh it’s Klausy. He’s a good ’un. I’ve got to go.’ And with that she calls to him.
We look at one another, Frau Wittger and I, and do not say a word.
Ursula links arms with the short well-dressed man with a walking cane and they turn into a side street and disappear into its darkness, the tinkling of her young, shrill, sing-song voice lingering long after she has vanished from sight.
I want to go and pull her back to us but I don’t. Can’t. In my head I am crying, ‘Don’t go!’ I blame Frau Wittger. Why isn’t she helping her? We walk on in silence along the street of light and shade.
And I am aware of yet more solitary-predatory men. Brooding and hungry, causing the flocks of women innocently clucking in the light of the streetlamps, which have just come on, to cease their noise. Menace and fear before show time.
With a theatrical wiggle of their hips, and a come-hither glance cast towards the vague shapes of their audience, faceless in the descending darkness, countless Ursulas make some last adjustments to their hair before flying off, solo, wheezing softly into the unknown.
Frau Wittger keeps me out of the spotlight and I know not to draw attention to myself in any way. No solo flying. No soft wheezing. Yet a beast of a man is tracking us. As he lurches towards us I see that he is corpulent, whiskers failing to disguise his folded, falling face, and the night unable to mask his enlarged, pickled nose, the nostrils of which flair, breathing us in. He is old. At least forty. And he stares at me, saliva dripping, drooling. ‘How old?’ he asks Frau Wittger of me.
‘Not old enough, sir,’ she answers.
I pant with terror. I dare not move. He looks at my ribbons, my hair, my virgin skin. Frau Wittger’s body stiffens and bristles, soft arms rendered implacable weapons to keep the foe at bay. The man sneers, giving a low, deep, dismissive laugh that is suddenly broken by the soft coo-cooing of a delicate birdlike creature. She swoops and falls around us advertising her wares.
The sight of this fragile, tiny girl, weighing not much more than a bag of cherries, so easily available, catches his attention. He puts out his bearlike hand and grabs her before she flies on. She twitters with the excitement of the young girl that she is before singing a more disturbingly seductive song – gay bright young chirrups dropping to rollingly suggestive coos. My senses pound in pointless rebellion as I hear his low, grunted response.
I sense danger.
My breath leaves my body in despair as he leads her roughly away. But as they fade into the distance I feel relief. Gratitude. I see a tiny, fragile, young girl hanging off the arm of a fat, ageing man. A repulsive sight. But I don’t look away. I watch them. I make myself watch them, as they find their chosen side street where she will allow herself to be snapped. Broken. I am sad for her. Glad for me. What am I to do with this unpalatable truth? Do you think you would have helped her? I thought I would have too. But I didn’t.
I cannot look Frau Wittger in the eye and she does not look at me. ‘How can she?’ escapes from my mouth. As if she’s got a choice. I hold tightly on to my guide. Seeking protection.
She lets out a sigh. ‘Poor cow.’ She rubs my arm reassuringly in return. ‘The modelling work will pay your bills.’
Chapter 4 (#ulink_3b732f37-ac6b-56ca-9553-2dcd34f29ad7)
A vision of red hair in green silk pulls me in quickly, waves a hand briskly, blows a kiss into the air, then shuts the door after us, leaving Frau Wittger on the street. ‘It’s flamin’ freezin’!’ she says in justification as she leads me into the studio.
‘I’m Hilde by the way,’ she tells me. ‘So you’re looking for work here?’ And before I have time to answer she starts putting me through my paces.
‘Move your arm above your head. Look down. Bring your hair forward. He asks you to do it, you do it. You’re the model. He’s the artist. An’ a big ’un at that. Fat as well as famous.’ Hilde pauses dramatically just to make sure that I get exactly how big the painter is before giving in to a whispered, conspiratorial, ‘If you like that sort of thing.’ Then she glowers at me as if I am the one who’s given utterance to such treachery before continuing indignantly, ‘I love his stuff actually. Everyone does. People pay good money to have a painting by him. They do, you know.’
I’m not disagreeing, not saying a word in fact, my whole being so paralysed with fear; I ceased existing on the more rarefied holding-an-opinion plane the moment I stepped over the threshold of the artist’s home a few minutes earlier. Besides, she’s not waited for me to give an answer yet. And all I can see is Hilde’s finger wagging up and down in front of my face. ‘It’s a good studio to be in, this one is, girl, I can tell you.’ She walks away muttering obscenities about ‘sweaty bastards at the Naschmarkt’, and ‘them that loiters in the woods at Schönbrunn’, as if I’ve brought them in with me.
Hilde shudders. I assume that it’s because she’s dressed in next to nothing. A green silk next to nothing embroidered with oriental pink blossom. But the look that sweeps across her face tells me it’s more than just the cold that’s making her twitch so. It’s a fear as intense as my own. I take the artist to be the cause. Because his faceless presence is certainly what’s making me uneasy.
I have no knowledge of the innumerable times that this woman with the red-gold hair has had to pace around the Naschmarkt, or the woods at Schönbrunn – times when she had no choice but to appeal to an altogether different kind of connoisseur to the one she so fervently believes Herr Klimt to be. Just to get by.
‘He’s an artist. He is,’ she argues, though with whom I’m not completely sure. ‘A real, honest-to-goodness one. With all them paints an’ stuff.’ She extends her finger, waving it in the direction of a table, gloriously messy with brushes, palettes, paints, and oily rags. I am struck by its resemblance to Frau Wittger’s dressing table with its stained sponges, pots of colour, piles of powder and scrunched-up tissues. One transforms a canvas. The other a face. My face. Similar tools for not dissimilar trades.
‘And you, young lady, you. Are very lucky.’ Hilde is as fiery as Frau Wittger warned me she would be, her voice ice-prickly, staccato words stabbing. ‘Yes. Remember that. You had better believe it.’ She brings her face up close to mine as she says these words yet I feel no threat. Not from her. The mass of wavy gold-red hair, curls billowing softly around her face like the morning mist, enchants me; and the warmth in her eyes melts the brittle ice knife of her tongue before it can pierce me. (‘She’s got a tongue as sharp as vinegar but don’t let her fool you as she’s got a heart as soft as honey.’ And I don’t, Frau Wittger. I don’t.)
I hold her gaze as she looks at me. With a bold, businesslike wipe of her hands, she pulls away. ‘You’ll do!’ She has made up her mind. Satisfied, Hilde walks up to a covered canvas, beckoning me to follow. ‘There!’ she announces dramatically. ‘See?’
I look at the unfinished painting and I instinctively try to cover myself up. Protectively.
All I see is a naked breast.
I force my eyes to study the entire canvas: follow the gentle curls of red hair, the round outline of a body; try to fix myself in the texture and colour of the fabric that surrounds it, diaphanous and dark, decorated with gold circles. Yet my efforts to see the painting as hair, body, texture, colour, do nothing to protect the sleeping girl at its heart. The fabric has slipped away to reveal the concentric circles of nipple on top of snow-white breast. And I can do nothing to stop it. I blush with shame.
‘Oh that!’ Hilde laughs at my shock and embarrassment and with her left hand she flicks my concern away. She sits down next to the canvas and adopts the same pose as the figure in the painting. She slips her green silk robe over her left shoulder, letting it slide down to reveal herself to me. ‘It’s only a body, love,’ she tuts at me with a roll of her eyes – before yanking the robe back up, her point made.
‘To him, I’m, well, I’m …’ She pauses, heightening the drama of the moment, while I gasp in fearful expectation.
‘Danaë.’
Hilde. Where she has sought to demystify she has brought confusion, where she has sought to becalm she has brought dread. I do not know who Danaë is. And now I do not like what a model does.
My mother always says that I shouldn’t fiddle with my hair. Says it makes her feel nervous. Like there’s something wrong. Makes her feel guilty. Especially when it’s tied back. Like tying knots in knots. And that shouldn’t happen. Tying knots in knots. And that’s what I’m doing now. I can’t help it. Knots in knots in knots. I look at the painting again. Danaë is curled up in a knot. And that doesn’t help her. Perhaps if she’d tied herself in another one.
‘Stop that!’ I’m making Hilde feel guilty, which is making me twist, twirl, curl. Furious fingers screwing their way to oblivion; Hilde’s voice growing sharper prickles by the second. ‘Stop that now!’
We seesaw hysterically. Until I fall off.
Hilde plumps up her pillow-soft hair to catch me.
‘There! There! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. You’re only a child. What was I thinking? Here. Come here.’ She enfolds me in her warm embrace, kissing the top of my head. Oh to be allowed to remain the child that I am. But I’ve seen too much to expect that to happen. I am afraid.
Before I can stop myself, tears roll down my pale face, trickling pink hot rivulets on face-powder-dry white riverbeds. One riverbank-breaking smear deftly made with the back of my left hand and I have created lakes that sit at the bottom of both cheeks. I taste the powder, see it transferred to the back of my hand, and sob some more.
‘Ssh! Ssh! You’ll be fine.’ Hilde’s voice strokes me like a feather, all prickles gone.
‘Now. Let’s start again, shall we? How old are you sweetheart? Twelve? Thirteen?’
‘Fourteen,’ I reply, unconvincingly. I am thirteen now but Frau Wittger warned me that to say so might mean I’m sent away and told to come back next year. Or, worse still, simply sent away. I think of Mother. I think of my three little sisters. I must help them. I remember Ursula, the girl I came across on my way here. I don’t want them, or me, to end up like her. I don’t want to stay but I can’t go. I try really hard to look grown-up. To stop snivelling.
‘Old enough.’ Hilde looks at me encouragingly, nodding her head and smiling.
I stop sobbing.
‘Look!’ she says chirpily. ‘These are what I meant to show you.’ She takes me on a tour of the studio that she hadn’t expected to do, walking me through some of the canvases propped up against the sides of the room. ‘Now this is me. Here I’m a goddess. (Can’t remember which one; I’ve been so many!) And I’m wearing –’ she breaths deeply to emphasize the point ‘– a deep, red wrap.’
She nudges me. ‘And look. Look. This one’s not finished yet but you can see that she’s got on a white dress. And her hair curls at the ends just like yours. And this one’s me. Again. I’m wearing … And her here, she’s dressed in …’ I grasp the point, am thankful for the effort, and feel my breath calm once more.
I catch sight of my reflection in the largest mirror that I have ever seen. I’m smiling. But I am also blotchy. Tear-stained. Shiny black ribbons against lurid red hair. Ghastly. Raw. I don’t smile for long.
‘And he paints us beautiful,’ she tells me, ‘better than in real life.’ She throws her head back, laughing at her own attempt at a joke, when all I can think of when I see my own ghoulish reflection is ‘I hope so’.
‘Well, I’m probably not the greatest of challenges,’ she continues. ‘But believe me, we do have some right ugly Frau vons walking in here hoping for him to turn – what do they say? Water into wine. Mud into gold. Make a silk purse out of a sow’s arse. Or is it ear?’ Chuckling maliciously, she shows me an unfinished painting of a dark-haired woman in a gold patterned dress. ‘Arse. That’s what she is. Oh, you should see her in real life.’
She places her hands on her hips, bends over in mirth, then gives me a nudge strong enough to make me reel. It works. I stop thinking about myself. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she adds. ‘And who says you can’t polish a turd? Or an arse! This one’s bleedin’ gleaming! It’ll make him piles!’ I put my hands to my mouth to stifle a snigger. ‘Of money,’ she explains. ‘And just think –’ she turns to me now warmly ‘– of what he can do with you as his model.’
Model. That’s what I have to be. Why I’m here. Yet the very word ‘model’ still tears me in two. I look at the women who surround me in the paintings for some sort of sign that to be a model, a model for this artist Herr Klimt, is a good thing to be (guiltily avoiding the direct gaze of the polished turd in the gold dress as I don’t expect her to reward my treachery with any words of wisdom).
Then I see her, find the reassurance that I’ve been looking for, in the eyes of a woman to whom Hilde has not yet introduced me. The woman I see has hair like a dark halo, which frames her face, a face that returns my distressed look with serenity and peace. I see no monstrous artist reflected there. And if there’s an arse hidden behind a silk purse it’s not peeping out at me. She looks beautiful. But even that proves to be enough, on a day as important as today, to tilt me over into despair.
First childish sobbing, now self-pitying despair. I even annoy myself but I can’t stop feeling set adrift, my emotions flying to and fro on savage waves. And what makes me calm makes me frantic because I cannot see me in a painting. The women I see are adults, fully formed. Not underaged, poorly fed pretenders. When I look to the future I can see only a workhouse. Or worse, the streets. My eyes well up with tears once more.
‘There there!’ says Hilde in exasperation masquerading badly as compassion. Before I can say a word she moves instinctively on, patting my forearm, briefly, as she guides me towards one of the largest and loveliest paintings I have ever seen through watery eyes, propped up at the very far end of the studio.
‘Calm now. Calm. Breathe deeply. This is a good studio. The best. Gustav’s not so bad. And you’ve got to love his work.’ Hilde lifts a cover to unveil what she calls his ‘crowd-pleaser’ and stands back to let it take full effect.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she coos, pulling me to her, her arm firmly around my shoulders. ‘Every model who’s ever set foot in this studio claims to be her here. Odds are you’ll look back one day and say that it was you an’ all. A pale princess with orange-gold hair, studded with flowers, caught forever in an embrace with a dark-haired prince wearing a leaf crown and kneeling on a floral carpet. Why wouldn’t you? And then there’s the gold.’ The huge canvas shimmers brightly and for a while we are both rendered speechless.
‘It’s gold leaf.’ Hilde breaks the silence. ‘The one over there, of the woman with the horse face, the one who looks like she’s wearing a tin dress, well, that one will look more like this one when he’s properly finished it.’ Then she checks herself. ‘Though not the face of course. Only the dress.’
I’m starting to want to be here and the bewitching spell cast over me by the pale princess on the glittering canvas is only broken because Hilde stands between me and it. She goes down on her knees.
‘Look. Who does she remind you of? Anyone?’
She puts her head to the side, draws her hands up, sweeping her long tresses back, all orange-golden and red. She smiles at me before closing her eyes. ‘See it now?’ she shouts as if I’m standing at the opposite end of the studio.
