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.
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