The Artist’s Muse. Kerry Postle

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СКАЧАТЬ most elaborate of hand moisturizing rituals is still not finished. I hear another lid removed. An unctuous squelch. Fingers in jam. Not a minute later she has rubbed in and buffed up the jellylike stuff on her nails. She removes the excess with a tissue, which she leaves scrunched up on the side.

      ‘There.’ She holds her hands up once again, walking back into the sunlight. Pink nails. A healthy sheen. Soft, generous, plumped-up skin. The metamorphosis is complete. I have witnessed a miracle.

      She turns her attention to me. It is my turn to be transformed from a pale and blotchy thirteen-year-old girl with messy red hair to an ideal of female perfection.

      ‘You’re tired. Shows in your face.’ Tut. ‘This is going to take me ages.’ Tut, tut! ‘Now if only I could slap on some proper colour …’ Tut, tut, tut! I scan the table, responsive to her words, searching for bright and bold. I am excited and afraid. Will she give me red lips? Strong eyes? Vivid cheeks? Will I look like an actress? Dear God, let her not make me look like a prostitute.

      With brushes and powders and lotions and potions she massages, creams, and daubs me for the next hour.

      She talks me through her materials. Pots of colour. ‘Pinks for the cheeks and lips. Browns and yellows for the eyes.’ Books of papier poudré: ‘face powder for a matt and natural complexion’. Lemon juice: ‘a tonic for the skin. And to lighten it. It can tingle.’ Cream: ‘to both soften and massage in. Gets the blood circulating for a nice, healthy glow. And if it doesn’t then there’s always a stronger rouge. But I will avoid that if I can.’ Petroleum jelly: ‘to make the lips juicy and the nails’, wiggling hers once more to demonstrate the point, ‘lustrous’. Materials spread out on the dressing table, the artist sets to work, her only tools her fingers, one small brush, and some blotting paper.

      She begins with the lemon juice. Fingers sweep deftly across my face. Then cream, her now soft and firm hands massaging upwards and out. ‘Up the neck – two, three. Circle round the nose – two, three. Up the side of the face – two, three. Up the forehead – two, three. ‘Supposed to help a girl’s face defy gravity – not that you need it yet.’

      I look up at her and I smile. It feels heavenly. Not the cream. But to feel the warmth of her hands, to be touched with such care.

      She goes over to the dressing table and looks at the pots of eye colour. My eyes are tight shut. My nose flares involuntarily to keep fine powder dust out as she dabs soft brown on my lids, followed by face powder held between sheets of a pretty little book, on its cover a white silhouette of a woman against a black background.

      I hear her move back. Say ‘Yes.’ No tuts.

      ‘Now for just a tiny pinch of rouge. Tiny, tiny, tiny.’ Her fingers massage peony pink into my cheeks using small circular movements as I breathe with pleasure.

      She picks up the mirror to show me two shiny pink apples. To me they are the prettiest of cheeks in the loveliest of pinks. She sees my joy.

      ‘No, love. No.’ She laughs. ‘Madness perhaps, because you look lovely, but this look says, well, let’s just say, sweetheart, that a look like this can get you into trouble. Attract the wrong sort of attention. This look says danger.’ She looks into my eyes with sadness. She is not smiling. ‘Besides, it’s not the fashion.’ I look at my reflection again. It’s enchanting. But having already received the wrong sort of attention I am in no hurry to court it again. Pink rose blush takes its place, giving the final look a delicate sugar coating.

      I take care not to wrinkle, sneeze, or in any way disturb the work Frau Wittger has created. She is beaming as she holds up the mirror.

      ‘You need just a little something on your lips.’ She fusses, adding peony pink then rubbing it off to leave a delicate stain. ‘Now you can’t get that colour biting them.’ She laughs, her head pulling back and causing her Apfelstrudel neck creases to disappear momentarily.

      ‘Nearly done.’

      With tiny pieces of blotting paper it’s as if she’s wiping away everything she’s done. Yet she’s so gentle, so careful. I’ve not felt so safe for such a long while. Not since before father stopped teaching.

      ‘Now to make this God-given red hair dazzle.’ Her voice is so happy, her touch so enthusiastic, as she plunges her fingers playfully though my lawless hair, that even I start to believe that this is possible. To change the curse that has been my unruly red hair into a blessing. Can that be? I hope that she’ll pin it up, turn me into a Gibson girl. Instead she pulls out two black satin ribbons. I shudder. I hold my tongue and let her tie my hair in childish bunches.

      ‘It’s me who’s the real bloody artist,’ she says proudly.

      She offers me the pretty silver-handled mirror so that I can fully appreciate her finished work before opening the door. All three sisters tumble in. Though there’s no sign of Mama.

      ‘She’s ready,’ Frau Wittger tells them as they gasp in appreciation.

      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. СКАЧАТЬ