The Artist’s Muse. Kerry Postle
to me but she dismisses me now, too easy, and makes her way towards the prize. The real challenge that is the outwardly hostile woman. Grieving. Wronged. Abandoned. Forlorn. Neither Katze nor I know the reason for this woman’s unhappiness but where I have failed to console Katze intends to succeed.
She arches her back on contact, rubbing her fur back and forth on the hemline of the woman’s skirt so that it pushes up to reveal the black leather of her lace-up boots. But the woman has no need to have them polished today. With a brazen kick of her foot, the woman nudges the surprised cat away. Defiant, Katze gives an angry miaow and jumps up on to the back of the woman’s chair. I quickly sweep her up in my arms before she jumps into the woman’s lap. I stroke Katze firmly into submission and today she lets me.
Then I hear the door open, and a woman’s voice, crystal clear German cascading down and tinkling like a mountain stream in spring.
‘Oh, Emilie! What in heaven’s name are you doing in here? Gustav and I have been waiting for you in the living room.’ There is no mistaking the breeding as the voice turns into a body that walks towards the woman sitting in the chair.
‘Come, sister, whatever is the matter?’ With a tug on her hand, Emilie is led out of the studio. I still have no idea who she is. But, with a taunt from her sister about French lessons, I have it. Emilie. Emilie Flöge.
As the sisters walk towards the door, Emilie throws me a withering look. ‘Know me now?’ it hisses. And just for a moment she lets her gaze drop to the hem of my skirt.
I am left standing there, glass of water in hand, spots of blood on my skirt, hair dishevelled, eyes swollen. I sink to the floor. Emilie Flöge has seen me. I feel disgusting. Ashamed.
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.
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