Paint the Wind, page 20
The front of the apartment encompassed a kitchen, parlor, bedroom, and bath. To the rear, a spacious room with a wall of windows had clearly become Andreas’s studio.
“It’s impressive.”
I wondered who his benefactor was to have enabled such an extraordinary change in Andreas’s living accommodations. The single room that had been our quarters before would fit twice inside the studio alone. My eyes wandered around the space. A stack of medium-sized canvases leaned against one of the walls, their faces hidden. Two easels situated by the windows held canvases, but muslin covered them and I could not see what they contained. The only light came in from the street below, as Andreas hadn’t turned on any lamps and seemed disinterested in remaining in the studio.
In fact, he took my elbow and turned me back to the living quarters.
“Let’s have a drink. I think there’s a tin of cake if you’re hungry.”
I wasn’t. We’d eaten on the train. My curiosity postponed, I followed Andreas down the hall to the parlor. He had been so eager to show off the apartment that neither of us had removed our coat. I unpinned my hat and strolled around the room while Andreas poured us drinks.
“It’s all quite elegant.”
“You seem surprised.”
“I didn’t know you were unhappy in the old studio.”
“It wasn’t big enough for the size of work I’m doing now.”
“I noticed one of the canvases on the easel was definitely bigger than what you had been using. When you’re ready, I’d like to see it.”
“Not tonight.”
I smiled. “No, not tonight. We have better ways to spend our time. Let’s take our drinks to the bedroom.”
That calmed him. I knew from comments he’d made during the trip from Skiathos that he’d been frustrated in his work. There would be time enough in the coming days to see the painting and also to make space for myself.
When I woke in the morning, Andreas was still deep in sleep. On the table by his bedside, I saw the bottle of whiskey we had we had filled our cups with the night before, its contents much depleted from what I remembered. He must have awakened during the night and poured himself another glass—or two. It was no wonder he still slept.
I eased myself from the bed, wrapped myself in a dressing gown, and rummaged in the kitchen. Of course, because he’d been away for at least a month, I found precious little to eat, except for a tin of coffee. I made a pot and drank a cup in the parlor, standing at the window, observing our new neighborhood. The street was coming to life with the bustle of deliveries and men hurrying to the trolley at the end of the street. Directly across the road, beyond an iron fence, a park hosted a chorus of birds and early walkers with small dogs on leads.
Andreas had apparently done very well in order to afford an apartment of this size in a neighborhood such as this. I could imagine hosting a salon here, attracting the sort of clients who could afford an Andreas Brenner painting.
While Andreas continued to sleep, I left my post at the window and trod in my bare feet down the hall to the studio. I eased the door open, feeling like an interloper. Andreas had rushed me out the night before, which had only heightened my curiosity. What was he hiding? Another model? I was curiously indifferent to the idea, considering the fears that had plagued me on Skiathos. But I was here now. He had wanted and needed me enough to come for me. I had achieved what I had so desperately longed for. Not Andreas, I admitted, but freedom.
As I stepped into the studio, I acknowledged there was a price for that freedom, but I would consider it more fully another time. Right now, I was more interested in the unfinished painting.
I moved swiftly to the two canvases that had been draped in muslin to protect them from the sun and dust.
I whipped off the cloth on the first easel and studied the face staring back at me. It was not that of another model, but my own. He had attempted to paint me from memory. I say attempted because he had failed. Oh, the bone structure and shape of my eyes were a precise rendition of my own, but the coloring was off. He had painted the Maya of a Vienna winter, not the woman who’d been out-of-doors for months on a Greek island. But that was not the only difference between this painting and the series he had created for the Secession. The eyes, though accurate in their shape, lacked the spark of life. The portraits Andreas had made of me before had shimmered with vitality, as if the woman on the canvas was about to step into the room, pulled by a filament into the arms of the artist—or the viewer. This painting was flat, not only in the brushwork but in the impassivity and indifference of the subject. I felt no connection, even though the face in the image was mine.
I moved on to the second canvas and lifted the cloth with less energy, already expecting to be disappointed. Instead, I was shocked.
It was the portrait Andreas had painted of me when I was fifteen. Why was it here? And then I answered my own question: My father, in his rage, must have pulled it from its place of honor and sent it back to Andreas. I stood motionless before my image, remembering the profound impact the painting had had on my perception of myself. But I also contemplated the meaning of its removal from my parents’ home. Not only had they banished me in the flesh, but they had refused even to look at my portrait.
My decision to flee Skiathos was never in doubt, but still I had recognized that doing so would rend the fabric of my life with my family. That understanding now loomed before me as prescient.
I had cried only once during my banishment, when I walked into the sea the night before I left my grandparents’ house for good. Then, I had contemplated the consequences of defying my father’s wishes by marrying Andreas. Now, I was confronted with the reality of those consequences. I was clearly dead to my parents if they could not even bear to look at my face.
I sat on the floor, my back to the windows and my knees drawn up, and wept before the two very different portraits of me.
I didn’t hear Andreas stirring in the other part of the apartment, and was startled by the sound of the door to the studio being flung open so forcefully that it slammed against the wall.
“What are you doing in here?”
I lifted my head from my knees and wiped my damp cheeks with the sleeve of my dressing gown. His vehemence stunned me. I had detected his reluctance to have me examine the studio closely the night before, but hadn’t expected him to be outraged.
I rose from the floor and addressed him in a calm and confident voice that belied my own anger.
“I have missed your work as well as your touch, Andreas. I’ve been hungry for the sights and smells of your studio.” I didn’t say what I thought: I have a right to be here. I have a role here.
“You should have waited for me to explain.”
“You’re here now. Tell me.”
“I have tried to recreate the magic you conjured up when you modeled for me—how you moved, how you looked at me, how you spoke to me—but it was impossible without you here. Look at this.” He flung his hand at the first painting. “It’s barely recognizable, not just your face but the immediacy of your being, how you offered yourself to me and ultimately to the viewer. I thought if I placed your adolescent portrait next to the new canvas as I worked, I could absorb some of its energy.”
“Why do you even have this painting?”
“Do you remember when I told you I went to your parents’ house after your father took you away, hoping to see you? I arrived early in the morning, and outside the gate, piled with the weekly trash, was your portrait. It had been cast away but thankfully hadn’t been damaged. I took it.”
What my father had done and my mother had agreed to was worse than I had imagined. I had assumed that my parents had sent the portrait back to Andreas, not that they had discarded it like a broken vase. All I could eke out in my shock was “Thank you for rescuing it.”
“It wasn’t enough to inspire me, but it was consoling to have it here, a fragment of you.”
“But now you have all of me.” I wasn’t being completely truthful, but it wasn’t the moment to reveal to him that I was no longer entirely his. Admittedly, however, given his fragility and its tendency to manifest itself in anger, I wasn’t sure when the right moment would come.
“Let’s get dressed and find some food. Is there a decent café in this neighborhood? I’m also going to make an assumption that you haven’t hired a housekeeper yet, and we need to do the marketing.”
“Are you missing your dear Gertraud already? How many servants did your grandparents have?”
“Only farmhands for the vineyards and orchards. Managing the household was my grandmother’s domain, with my help. I’m perfectly capable of caring for our domestic needs. Getting some food in the house seems to me to be a priority. If you’d rather not accompany me after breakfast, you can point me in the right direction and provide me with some shillings.”
His reference to the life I’d left to be with him still rankled. I retrieved the market basket from the kitchen and we left.
He at least knew where the green grocer, the butcher, and the baker could be found.
I smoothed my expression as I pushed open the door to the butcher’s shop and made an attempt to be both knowledgeable and pleasant.
“You are new to the neighborhood,” observed the young girl behind the counter, who, I soon learned, was the daughter of the butcher.
“I am indeed. What do you recommend today?”
After the usual exchange between customer and shopkeeper, she handed me the wrapped package of chops and sausages.
“Thank you for your business, Frau . . . ?”
I almost gave my name as Sircos before realizing that wasn’t who I was anymore.
“Frau Brenner. Good day to you.”
I had certainly been addressed as Frau Brenner aboard the ship, but that had been an experience out of time, outside of the lives both Andreas and I had been living. Now, in the midst of a butcher shop in Josefstadt, I came to realize what being Frau Brenner meant. I added the package of meat to my basket and moved down the street to the green grocer.
When I returned home, I could hear music coming from the studio. I unpacked the groceries, acquainting myself with the kitchen, and then made my way down the hall. Andreas was sprawled across the divan in the studio, eyes closed and a cigarette in hand. The music emanated from the brass horn of a gramophone, another new element that had been added in my absence.
I watched Andreas, not sure if he was sleeping and not wishing to disturb him if he was in a state of contemplation. Perhaps the music was an inspiration, a preparation before he took up his brush. I felt a sense of disorientation. Had I been away so long that nothing was familiar to me? Or had Andreas changed his methods as well as his environment?
When I saw the end of Andreas’s cigarette approaching his fingers, I moved instinctively toward him. But the heat from the glowing tobacco reached him first and he bolted upright, quashing the cigarette into an empty saucer on the floor.
“You’re finally home,” he greeted me, with a combination of relief and irritation.
“I am, and ready to work if you are.”
In the few moments I had observed him, I feared that Andreas had lost the drive and obsession that fueled his extraordinary talent. I remembered my own paralysis when I first arrived on Skiathos and wondered if he had faced the same lassitude and collapse of desire. My encounter with Elise had rescued me. I grasped with certainty that Andreas would not rescue himself.
“Do you want to resume the portrait of me that you found so unsatisfactory, or do you wish to begin anew?”
As I spoke, I moved toward the canvas, unbuttoning my blouse as I walked, and rummaging in my brain for the most effective means of restoring Andreas to his former brilliance. Rather than using words to encourage him to pick up his brush, I counted on my nakedness to ignite the spark.
It felt starkly unfamiliar to appear unclothed. The months of modesty on Skiathos had left their imprint on my psyche. Even in the shepherd’s hut with Oscar, I hadn’t stood naked before him. When we had lain together, it had been through the communion of touch rather than gaze. I wasn’t feeling shame as I faced Andreas, but for the first time, I questioned what it required of me to provoke him to create.
He joined me at the canvas and rubbed his face, wiping away whatever he had seen in his mind while I was away and preparing himself to see what now appeared before him.
“You look different.”
I am different, I thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
“Shall I move around? Try a few poses before we settle on one?”
“Be my guest. I’m going to start fresh.” He removed the old canvas and replaced it with a new one.
“Do you have anything in mind for a new series? A theme?”
I may have pushed too quickly, for I saw a flicker of hesitation cloud his face before turning to resentment. I surmised that he hadn’t given any thought to what he wanted to achieve with this next iteration of his vision. Surely he hadn’t planned to repeat an exploration of sexual awakening?
The music on the gramophone had stopped, and I took the opportunity to busy myself in restarting the recording to give both of us time to gather ourselves. We were not only in a new studio, we were each in a new state—emotionally, mentally, artistically. I felt resistance from him after months alone. Despite claiming to desperately need the inspiration he knew I would bring to him, Andreas was chafing at any attempt of mine to lead the way. I could sense he heard my questions as provocation, not encouragement.
For my own part, I was finding the task of managing his creative direction exhausting. My God, it was our first day of collaboration, and already things were going awry. The connection between us that had before seemed so effortless now felt onerous.
I stretched and shook out my arms and fingers, trying to loosen my mental constraints through a physical release. Then I returned to him and moved behind him, rather than posing in front of him.
I placed my hands on his shoulder blades and began to massage the tight muscles. His entire body was coiled, a panther about to pounce on his prey. This is good, I thought. He needed to attack the canvas, to approach it with conviction, not doubt.
“This is the Andreas I remember, the one I longed for, the one whose strength of purpose and brilliance awed me,” I whispered into his ear as he bent his neck to my touch.
Only then did I move around him, positioning myself half in shadow and fixing a look of defiance on my face. I presented him with a warrior. As the idea started to take form, I reached for the cobalt blue pigment pooled on his palette and smeared two lines on my cheek. The antithesis of the blood on my thigh.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We worked through the afternoon with only short pauses for me to break the pose while Andreas had a cigarette. When the natural light began to dim, he was willing to stop. I knew better than to approach the canvas and ask him what he thought. It was enough that he had painted all afternoon with vigor and purpose. I didn’t want to disrupt the energy by studying the canvas. I was glad because I was afraid of what I might see and of my potential inability to disguise my reaction.
He seemed equally reluctant to ask for my opinion.
I gathered up my clothing and retreated while he cleaned his brushes. There was still dinner to be cooked.
Because he had not yet furnished our elegant rooms, we ate by candlelight, sitting on the floor in the parlor. The cooking skills I had honed in YiaYia’s kitchen seemed to meet with his satisfaction. Although he said nothing, I knew he was surprised. Before I’d left Vienna, my repertoire had consisted of omelets and sausages in our makeshift kitchen, merely a corner of the studio. I had cooked then on the top of the tiled stove, kept our bread and eggs in a tin box to protect them from the mice, and stored cheese wrapped in cloth on the windowsill. Now I had at my disposal not only a cast-iron stove with an oven but also an icebox. The kitchen rivaled that in my parents’ home, minus the attentive skills of Gertraud.
I gathered up our plates to carry them back to my well-equipped kitchen while Andreas stretched out on the rug. He flexed his fingers and studied them, still flecked with paint.
“Thank you for today. It was a good beginning.”
I nodded. “I thought so, too.”
By the time I finished washing up, he had abandoned his recumbent position and begun pacing in the hallway. He hesitated at the door to the studio and then abruptly turned away.
“Let’s go out. I haven’t been to the coffeehouse since I left for Greece. We can catch up on the news.”
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll change.”
We took the stairs, and he nearly danced down the steps. My husband was a happy man as we ventured out to meet his friends. He’d had a productive day painting and a warm meal in his belly. Why shouldn’t he be happy?
We were greeted at the coffeehouse by quite a ruckus, mostly for me.
“You’re back! Thank God! We no longer have to listen to Andreas bemoan your absence.”
I teased back. “What? You’re not happy to see me because of my sparkling conversation?”
Andreas eased back into the circle of his comrades. He had lost the tension of the morning and laughed with a lightheartedness that had been missing since his arrival on Skiathos. Had one productive afternoon with me been enough to effect such a pronounced change of mood?
I sat opposite him at the long end of the table and marveled at his contentment as he regaled the group with tales of his travels.
Max leaned over to whisper in my ear. “You’re quieter than I remember,” he said, and then, “We’ve missed you, and not just because you manage to keep Andreas steady. Where have you been?”
“Visiting family in Greece.”
“We thought you’d escaped to the anonymity of the country after all that commotion at the Secession last January. You certainly cast a spell on Andreas. He’d never produced anything as profound as that series before you. Would you consider modeling for me?”
I nearly spit out my drink. He meant more than modeling; of that, I was sure.
