The Artist’s Muse

‘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,

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.

‘Wally.’ Hilde puts her hand on my forearm to soothe me. ‘Stop feeling and start thinking. It’s what a model does. Model. And remember, arse, elbow, peach, or pear – it’s just lines, shapes, and colours.’

I’m feeling queasy when I come in the next day. Don’t know why. But Hilde soon has me stretching out at an impromptu bar, warming up for the day’s performance, because that, she’s forever telling me, is what modelling is. I need to be as flexible as a dancer and as convincing as an actress.

The two girls from yesterday are here again and as they undress – ready to turn back into water serpents – the pain in my tummy comes back, only to get worse when I hear Herr Klimt call my name. I am to model for him first. I am grateful to feel Hilde’s warm hands guide me over towards him, otherwise I am sure that I would stay rigid by the bar, all flexibility and desire to convince frozen solid.

The next thing I recall is sitting on a chair in the kitchen with a blanket tightly wrapped around my shoulders, my head pounding. ‘You fainted. Hit your head on the corner of the bed,’ Hilde tells me, her voice a muted mixture of concern and anger. I’m sorry to have let her down. ‘Best if you go in and look and learn today,’ she tells me with a smile that perturbs me, shot through as it is with pity.

After I’ve had a glass of water I go back into the studio to watch Herr Klimt while he paints his water serpents and as I’m pulling the door to Herr Klimt’s cat squeezes itself in. Before I can throw it back out Herr Klimt let’s out a loud ‘Ssssh!’ Quickly, I hide myself, sitting cross-legged in the shadows, relieved that I’m not the body on the bed. Then I see Katze. I beckon her to me but she darts towards the girls, her paintbrush tail sweeping gently across a foot, which twitches involuntarily.

Herr Klimt shouts, ‘Break!’ Flying, flinging, and flinching follow. He storms out into the garden taking Katze with him while the water serpents and me – we don’t move, don’t say a word. He re-enters the studio and walks on through, slamming the door behind him.

Ten minutes later he returns. With a point of his finger the water serpents are out of the studio to receive from Hilde the instructions Herr Klimt is too angry to give. She hands them a postcard Herr Klimt would like delivered. Addressed to Fräulein Emilie Flöge, it reads, ‘I have finished the designs. Drop by the studio to discuss them. Gustav’

The artist turns his attention to me.

‘How old are you girl?’ Herr Klimt asks me. I’m worried. I’ve told him my age before. But he can’t catch me out that easily. ‘F-f-fourteen,’ comes my stammering reply. I need this job. I will get better. Something unspoken passes between Hilde and Herr Klimt as the painter walks out of the studio.

She takes one of my hands in hers, smoothing my hair protectively with the other, so that it frames my face and hangs loose around my shoulders. ‘Remember, I’m here.’

The dizziness can do nothing to keep out the certain knowledge that my time has come.

Hilde prepares me. Respectful. Silent. When she is done, I shiver with cold and with the knowledge that I am naked. She puts her arms around me, rubbing my back. Warming. Reassuring. And she places her lips on my ear, kissing me softly as she whispers, ‘Breathe. Breathe beauty.’

When Herr Klimt starts work, I breathe beauty for what seems like an eternity, and then, when I think I can breathe beauty no more, I start thinking of my loved ones. But not for long. My mother’s face makes me want to cover myself up for fear of her seeing me like this. When I’ve finished I pull my clothes on, hopping and tripping in my haste.

Herr Klimt shows me what he has drawn. I am newly crestfallen. He has rendered my naked body with such anatomical correctness that when he points at the turn of my shoulder, or shallow curve of my breast it is as if he is touching me. My breathing becomes shallow as I hear his low, menacing growl. I sense danger in the presence of this bear with a paintbrush.

Hilde congratulates me with a kiss. ‘I’m here,’ she says softly before appeasing the beast. My relief to see that she’s placed her beautifully soft, pale hands around his rough bull-like neck is greater than my indignation that it is wrong to see youth and age in such an embrace. The growl turns into a low hum of contentment and I am overjoyed that I am not the cause.

She leads him by the hand to the adjoining room, flattering as she goes, closes the door, only to pop her head round a few moments later. ‘Tidy up and get Herr Klimt’s pencils and sketchbooks marked ‘Flöge Sisters’ ready for ten minutes from now,’ she tells me.

I collapse as soon as she disappears, my silent sobbing soon giving way to whimpering so loud that at first I don’t hear the ugly animal sounds coming through the wall. But then I do. Oh, Hilde. What you have done for me. I do what she has asked.

Hilde and Klimt reappear, as Hilde promised they would, exactly ten minutes later. ‘You could set your watch by him.’ She laughs. He looks drained. Flushed. Sweaty. He beckons me over to him. A shudder of relief surges through my body when Herr Klimt announces that he’s going to spend the next ten minutes working on his sketches for Emilie. He holds out his hands for the sketchbooks and pencils and doesn’t notice the tears of relief that have newly sprung from my eyes.

Hilde has. She drags me into the garden, finding for us a secluded spot where the sunlight plays on our faces through the twinkling leaves of a tree. She says nothing to explain herself other than: ‘I know,’ letting me rest my now throbbing head in her lap, while the leaves above make oval shadows on my hair. Shape. Line. Colour. Shimmering in the dappled sunlight.

‘Now I would paint this,’ she says looking down at me. Katze jumps up and nestles into the well I make as I lie there on my side, my knees bent up. I stroke her fur, feel the beating of her heart. Hilde strokes me. She moves her hand down my arm, glides it over the mound made by the outside curve of my thigh then brings her delicate fingers up to trace my eyelids, outline my cheeks in beautiful, sweeping movements before plunging her fingers into my sun-warmed hair.

I lie there and close my puffy eyes, kissed by the warmth of the sun, soothed by an animal with a beating heart and consoled by the kindness of a woman. We sit like this, possibly for ten minutes, and not one of us makes a sound.

Chapter 6

What’s right and wrong never really changes. But I’m learning that the colours often run between the two in an all too imperfect world. A man-made world with its man-made language where to be pleasured turns out to be an unpleasant affair.

‘To pleasure.’ There’s a misnomer if ever I heard one. Hilde’s had the dubious honour of having Herr Klimt pleasure her – his words not mine – every time I’ve posed for him naked over the past year. That he has not laid a single calloused, paint-covered finger on me, at least not in a pleasuring way, I owe to her.

But I can tell from what she says that she’s finding it increasingly difficult to keep him away, from spreading joy to one who has yet to experience the evident delights he has to offer. And the worry of this gives her humour a vulgar edge.

‘He thinks we all love a bit.’ She clucks mockingly, nudging my side. ‘Says he likes to give his models a bit of his “Giorgione”. Know what I mean?’

We roll around laughing hysterically for a while. And then I cry and Hilde consoles me as what she is telling me really isn’t very funny. It really isn’t very funny at all. Hilde has kept me safe up until now but we both know that she can’t protect me for ever.

Though Consuela Camilla Huber, the latest model to join the studio, possibly could.

The first time I saw Consuela was a few days ago and she made an impression. Darker, older, more experienced, even than Hilde, she made an entrance to remember, wafting confidently around the studio in a green silk robe that did not belong to her. And she wore it as I’d never seen it worn before – deliberately loose at the front and clinging to her ample curves, with her long, dark, wavy hair worn loose and arranged artfully over her right breast. She breathed confidence. And she’s made an entrance every day since.

No one seems to know where she’s come from although she makes it clear what she has come for: Herr Klimt.

She has seen his work – his portraits of Frida Riedler, of Adele Bloch-Bauer – and she likes it. It’s bold. Obvious. Shiny. Golden. And she wants a piece of it. A big great fat nugget.

Consuela Camilla Huber is the original gold-digger.

And she knows how to dig. Well-versed in Herr Klimt’s work, she is sympathetic to his argument with the university, expresses an interest in his design work for the Flöge sisters. Indeed she has an opinion relating to everything Herr Klimt and a technical knowledge of painting seemingly equal to Herr Klimt’s own.

I learn a great deal about the silent Herr Klimt from the talkative Consuela Camilla Huber. She is a thing of wonder to me. And confusion. She will be Herr Klimt’s muse. And it is clear that she wants to be his mistress.

My fourteen-year-old mind cannot understand why such a glorious woman would deliberately seek out such a role. Yet the two, muse and mistress, are inextricably linked in her mind.

She makes rapid inroads in her quest to secure her role as the latter. She sustains her performance before, during, and after her ten minutes with Herr Klimt. Where Hilde looks sheepish when her time is up, unable to hide her own distaste the moment she comes back in the studio, Consuela makes a regal entrance, standing in the doorway as if straddling two worlds, triumphant.

I am surprised to see that she is more hunter than hunted. I love to observe her from the sleepy shadows of the studio, her strong, shapely body taunting that of her slow, squat victim. She stalks her grizzled, stocky prey, plays with him cruelly, sending paint pots crashing, stained water splashing, across the floor of the studio. And then she pounces. Within six months she is guiding Herr Klimt by the nose.