Two nights until the window.
One thing I failed to mention yesterday regarding morning routine: every so often Father will teach us a new tableau to add to our repertoire. He moulds us, planting our feet in the correct spots, twisting our torsos, raising or lowering our chins. He will often stand there with his hand on my chest until he cannot detect my breathing. (As he is fond of saying, ‘If you can fool the hand you can fool the eye.’) He also instructs us on the characters of the tableau, the inner feelings we must transmit through our outward appearances. Our characters are not always happy siblings or young lovers. This morning Father taught us one of these more vexed tableaux. It will certainly be the last we learn before the window.
In the new tableau I am a respectable young socialite who has previously rejected Eugen because of his poor prospects, only for us to be reunited once he has made his fortune. Some of the story-telling can be conveyed by wardrobe (fine clothes in the newest fashion for Eugen, respectable gown for me) but for morning routine we pose unencumbered. As Father says, if a bare pose is convincing it can be enhanced by clothes, but nothing can save an unconvincing pose.
The first day of a new pose is always the hardest. It is taxing, both mentally and physically, but after so many years of morning and afternoon routines, we both look forward to the challenge.
It is always humbling (for me at least) to move from a perfected pose to a new one and learn that the stillness you had achieved so completely is not easily transferred. You must interrogate where each body part is positioned, which muscles are required to hold everything in place and where the cheats are: those parts of the body that are idle or obscured in the pose and thus require less attention. With time and much effort, and under Father’s watchful eye, Eugen and I have learnt to subtly rearrange our weight to draw on the untapped strength of these cheats without making any perceptible movements.
In the moments when I could disengage my mind this morning I pondered whether this would be the first tableau we use for the window, or if it was too great a risk to attempt it with only three days’ practice. I thought about the gown I might wear, something plush and feminine like the orange velvet dress Father brought home one night in October.
One positive aspect of the new tableau is that Eugen and I are facing each other. Sometimes, I am turned away (such as when I am the young maiden refusing a diamond ring, though my face must express that my heart will soon melt and I will turn around and accept) or Eugen’s back is to me (when we are farm hand and farmer’s daughter caught in a sunshower and running for the shelter of the barn). I must fix my gaze for the duration of the tableau and I much prefer to look upon Eugen’s face than his shoulder or a knotted rafter. Eugen is not much of a conversationalist in the traditional sense, but I treasure our silent exchanges when posing.
This morning as I looked into Eugen’s eyes his face contorted into a cold and satisfied expression. I was reminded of the scene where Edmond Dantès reappears before Mercédès, although he is now the Count of Monte Cristo and she the Countess de Morcerf. As I recalled the scene in greater detail, Eugen’s face began to resemble the vendetta-driven count’s all the more. If I were to walk up to him now as he plays ‘Fantasia in F minor’ (I can see the heading on the sheet music from here) and ask him about the scene he constructed around this morning’s tableau, I am certain it will match that of Dumas’ novel, though Eugen will not be able to give any of the correct names.
Father has had one of his dark turns. Of all the days. We are to appear in the window tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Eugen and I bathed and limbered up this morning as usual, unaware of Father’s condition. Mother did not wish to say anything over breakfast but it was clear on her face. (When you spend so long standing still and scrutinising one person’s face you suddenly find yourself fluent in the language of all faces.) When he came to the table, he did not look at us and said nothing. He is a kind of ghost at such times, liable to drift away, pass through walls, leave the property, only to reappear and unleash sudden bouts of terror. This morning he left the table less than a minute after taking his seat. He’d touched nothing on his plate, of course.
I am not sure whether it was seeing Father this way, or my own nervousness about the window, but I felt quite queasy myself and couldn’t finish my breakfast. I excused myself from the table and went in search of Father, but he was no longer on the property. Oh, that I could have left to pursue him.
There was nothing to do but take to our pedestals and play Dantès and Mercédès, though it was hard to strip the concern from my expression or keep the dew from the rim of my lower eyelids. The burrowing worm in my gut was no help either.
Eugen, holding his pose perfectly, tried to tell me not to worry. We were ready for the window. Father would be recovered tomorrow.
Where does his confidence come from? He has never been to town, never been in the window. Our experiences have been identical since birth and yet sometimes I feel we are two different species left in the same nest by chance. He is the cuckoo and I am the tiny warbler chick.
It is approaching eight o’clock and Father has still not returned. He has spoken about the window at length, the things we are likely to see (depending on the pose and the direction of our gaze, of course), but my head is awash with practical questions I have never considered. How are we to get to the window? What happens when the curtain is lowered once more? When will we return to the property? Will we ever return? When will we see Mother again?
Our lives are directed toward this one moment, but what next?
Oh Diary, what a lot I have to record.
It has long since passed midnight so technically it is January the first. A new year: 1919, like a pair of twins (though Eugen and I would be better represented by 1616). But I must first return to the evening of the thirtieth (when we were still 1515).
Eugen and I had been in bed for a long time but neither of us was sleeping. For all the time Eugen spends standing still, he is a restless sleeper, turning and turning, even once he has fallen fast asleep. But last night I could not hear anything, not even his shallow breathing. I was listening so intently it is no surprise I heard the scrape of the workshop door being opened. I ran outside in my nightgown and bare feet and saw Father’s face, lit by the candle he held. He looked quite ill.
‘Fetch your brother,’ he said and entered the workshop.
I returned to our room, its darkness more profound after my brief glimpse of candlelight. ‘Eugen,’ I said, ‘aren’t you coming?’
A sigh came from his bed. A moment later I heard it creak as my brother rose.
Outside once more I could hear the gentle growl of the generator and see the electric light shining through the gaps in the workshop walls. The wide glow from the open door stretched out upon the path like a golden tongue.
Inside the workshop, Father was sitting on my pedestal. Two green canvas bags with drawstrings lay empty at his feet.
‘Pack what you will need, each of you,’ he said.
‘How long will we be gone?’ I asked.
‘We are leaving in twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘You might like to say goodbye