‘Consuela! Consuela-a-a!’ Herr Klimt is looking for her, and as she puts her sketchbook back into her bag, she asks if she can draw me some time soon. Of course she can. ‘Consuela-a-a!’ He’s calling out again.
With another flick of her hair and a right hand placed on her hip, she’s off: it’s ‘show time!’
From that time on I am rarely required to pose for Herr Klimt. Instead I am sent on errands for him, delivering messages, bills, receipts, buying more paints, pencils, paper, preparing refreshments, cleaning the studio, tidying up his materials cupboard. I hope that he doesn’t think that I’m the one who’s been stealing his pencils.
He even gets me to feed Katze. And so I’m kept busy. Busier in fact now that I’m moving for my money. Though I do feel, if not sad, then possibly uneasy that I’m not modelling for my living. And I wonder how long it will be before I will have to tell my mother the bad news that must surely be coming before too long.
I watch Consuela to learn from her as she learns from Herr Klimt: my dream is still to be a good model, as hers is to be a good artist. Though watching her brings me to an uncomfortable conclusion. She and Herr Klimt work well together in every way.
Yet recently I’ve observed a change in Consuela and Herr Klimt’s voracious appetite for her is making her look decidedly off colour. Her great artist with great appetites needs to vary his diet a little, feast elsewhere, although she’s careful to guide him away from me.
‘Go!’ ‘Fetch some coffee!’ ‘Buy some paint!’ and I am thankful that she pushes me as far away as she can from the artist’s tools.
‘You’re just a child, Wally dear!’ she whispers to me, as I pass her on my way out. Every night when I say my prayers I thank God for putting Consuela between me and my cloven-footed artist.
Then one day, Consuela’s performance fails to convince. No, that’s not strictly true.
Consuela fails to perform.
Over the next few weeks I notice a definite change in her. She is eating less though looking fuller, and has recently taken to turning up to the studio late in the morning with attractive young women she’s picked up on the way. Prospective models all.
Initially I imagine that she must be spending too much time creating her own art and worry that she’s running perilously close to the edge. But her light is dim, her enthusiasm flat. She no longer helps herself to the materials in the art cupboard. It can’t be that.
Then there are the women she brings in with her. Fresh, flighty, flirty. ‘Now what would your favourite old master do with these lovely creatures, Gustav?’ she asks him and seems delighted that the very suggestion of Giorgione has Herr Klimt strutting and rutting like a cock in a henhouse.
‘I can’t take too much pleasure at the moment,’ she confides.
Then, one morning, as I pass the bathroom, I hear her being sick. I ask her if there’s anything I can do. She begs me not to tell anyone.
No need as everyone knows.
When Herr Klimt discovers that Consuela is pregnant he is attentive, stroking her hair and rubbing her feet. He declares that he will fast but his giorgionesque appetite soon gets the better of him and Consuela begs that I attend her in his place. She still tries to protect me.
But just as she has failed to perform, so soon will she fail to protect. As I attend on the sleeping Consuela, her ankles swelling in the summer heat, I hear Herr Klimt’s voice calling, ‘Wally. Come here. I need a glass of water. Now.’ He has a thirst that needs to be quenched.
I walk into the studio and place the glass of water, half-full, down on the table so that it doesn’t get kicked over.
It’s all over very quickly. Not even ten minutes.
When he’s done, I pick up the glass; my hands shake, spilling tears that my eyes are too afraid to shed. Gustav, now studying his canvas with fresh eyes, turns for a moment and sees the wet floor. ‘Clean that up before you go, Wally,’ he tells me calmly, no trace of remorse or guilt in his voice. As though he’s done nothing wrong. No hint of intimacy either.
I put the glass back down on the table, my head bowed to hide my shame as I stoop to mop up the water with the skirt of my dress. Then I see it. Blood. Along the hem. I throw myself towards the door and hobble to the end of the dark and dusty corridor where I hide myself. And weep.
A tear-filled lake threatens to drown me, its waves of despair overwhelming me so that I am gasping for air in that dim and windowless space. My soul flails. What am I to do? Is this my life? My version of normal? Who am I to tell?
Instinctively I walk towards the light.
As I stand at the sink splashing water on my face and washing away the damage, I watch a wasp trying to burrow its way outside. It moves rapidly around the edges of the window in front of me, pushes itself into the corners, the tiny pinholes in the wooden frame, trying to get out. It feels then flies its way around, wings erect above its deep yellow and black striped body, ever ready. I’m so transfixed by it that I don’t notice Gustav come up behind me.
Whack! He slaps the window with a cloth and the wasp falls, drops onto the windowsill. It’s curled up, on its side, its wings bent by the impact between cloth and glass. No way out any more.
‘There’s a glass still in the studio that needs clearing up, Wally. I’ll be in the living room for a while if anyone calls.’ I rush back as quickly as I’m able to retrieve it.
When I get there I find, sitting by the table and lost in thought, a slim, dark-haired woman. From my young girl’s eyes she seems old. I know that she is respectable from the way she is dressed, covered as she is from neck to toe. And that she is wealthy I guess from the beautiful heart-shaped pendant that she wears around her neck. I have never seen such an unusual piece of jewellery and even in my distracted state I cannot help but notice it. Though the opals in the chain remind me of my tears.
This woman must be here for a portrait. I must keep myself under control.
When I tumble in she barely registers my presence but I feel compelled to acknowledge hers in some way, particularly as my half-empty glass is just to the left of the elbow upon which she rests with her chin on her hand. Facets of mirrored glass catch my eye as her necklace dangles and turns in the light.
‘Hello. Excuse me. Sorry. I left a glass in here. I’ve just come to clear it away.’ I smile sympathetically at her, relieved to show kindness to another. Her body language suggests that she has all the woes of the world on her shoulders. I do too. She looks straight through me, unsmiling. Yet I see myself reflected in her watery eyes. She has a crumpled handkerchief clutched in a hand.
Perhaps she’s not here for a portrait. She has fallen on hard times. Her husband has died. She has children to support. She’s from Slovakia. Or Galicia. She can’t understand the language. Perhaps.
‘Hello,’ I say again. Though it pains me, I smile still. ‘I could get you something to drink, if you’d like.’ I hold up the glass and mime my meaning. ‘Or find you a fresh handkerchief?’ I point to the one she holds crumpled in her hands. She frowns, sniffs, and raises her eyes heavenwards.
‘No.’
Her accent is crisp and Austrian.
I smile again. The sharpness unleashed by a word of one syllable is blunted by my blindness to see what is before me. I remain determined, entrenched in the erroneous belief that this truculent though unhappy woman could be my mother. Or me.
I should have picked up the glass and fled.
Instead I talk. To push out the silence. Decorate the cold, unwelcoming space with kind, warm words. If not for her then for me. I need to run away from what’s been done. Focus on the nice weather. The size of the glass. The prettiness