Kerry Postle - The Artist’s Muse

‘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.

Chapter 6

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 one. Hilde’s had the dubious honour of having Herr Klimt pleasure her – his words not mine – every time I’ve posed for him naked over the past year. That he has not laid a single calloused, paint-covered finger on me, at least not in a pleasuring way, I owe to her.

But I can tell from what she says that she’s finding it increasingly difficult to keep him away, from spreading joy to one who has yet to experience the evident delights he has to offer. And the worry of this gives her humour a vulgar edge.

‘He thinks we all love a bit.’ She clucks mockingly, nudging my side. ‘Says he likes to give his models a bit of his “Giorgione”. Know what I mean?’

We roll around laughing hysterically for a while. And then I cry and Hilde consoles me as what she is telling me really isn’t very funny. It really isn’t very funny at all. Hilde has kept me safe up until now but we both know that she can’t protect me for ever.

Though Consuela Camilla Huber, the latest model to join the studio, possibly could.

The first time I saw Consuela was a few days ago and she made an impression. Darker, older, more experienced, even than Hilde, she made an entrance to remember, wafting confidently around the studio in a green silk robe that did not belong to her. And she wore it as I’d never seen it worn before – deliberately loose at the front and clinging to her ample curves, with her long, dark, wavy hair worn loose and arranged artfully over her right breast. She breathed confidence. And she’s made an entrance every day since.

No one seems to know where she’s come from although she makes it clear what she has come for: Herr Klimt.

She has seen his work – his portraits of Frida Riedler, of Adele Bloch-Bauer – and she likes it. It’s bold. Obvious. Shiny. Golden. And she wants a piece of it. A big great fat nugget.

Consuela Camilla Huber is the original gold-digger.

And she knows how to dig. Well-versed in Herr Klimt’s work, she is sympathetic to his argument with the university, expresses an interest in his design work for the Flöge sisters. Indeed she has an opinion relating to everything Herr Klimt and a technical knowledge of painting seemingly equal to Herr Klimt’s own.

I learn a great deal about the silent Herr Klimt from the talkative Consuela Camilla Huber. She is a thing of wonder to me. And confusion. She will be Herr Klimt’s muse. And it is clear that she wants to be his mistress.

My fourteen-year-old mind cannot understand why such a glorious woman would deliberately seek out such a role. Yet the two, muse and mistress, are inextricably linked in her mind.

She makes rapid inroads in her quest to secure her role as the latter. She sustains her performance before, during, and after her ten minutes with Herr Klimt. Where Hilde looks sheepish when her time is up, unable to hide her own distaste the moment she comes back in the studio, Consuela makes a regal entrance, standing in the doorway as if straddling two worlds, triumphant.

I am surprised to see that she is more hunter than hunted. I love to observe her from the sleepy shadows of the studio, her strong, shapely body taunting that of her slow, squat victim. She stalks her grizzled, stocky prey, plays with him cruelly, sending paint pots crashing, stained water splashing, across the floor of the studio. And then she pounces. Within six months she is guiding Herr Klimt by the nose.

I shall always be indebted to Consuela.

***

‘Where’s Hilde? She should have set up my paints by now.’ Herr Klimt’s ready to work on another version of his water serpents and there’s no Mizzi, no Devla, and no Hilde. Even Consuela is nowhere to be seen. His serpents have slithered away, upset because Herr Klimt shouted at them two days ago for not getting a pose right (though Herr Klimt has been so busy with Consuela that he hasn’t noticed). My suspicion is that they’re writhing round in the grass in the Schönbrunn woods somewhere.

As for Hilde, I know that she went to sing in the chorus at the Burgtheater last night, though I’m not going to tell Herr Klimt that. Even she’s looking for another job. Especially after Herr Klimt spent the whole morning pleasuring Consuela last Friday. Putting paid to Hilde’s ten-minute theory as well as tingeing her relief at no longer having to endure Herr Klimt’s attentions with a shameful sense of loss.

‘I’ll just have to sketch you,’ he grumbles.

As I get ready, I wonder at how much I’ve changed. I slip my clothes off and hang them up neatly. Though I still hold my petticoat to hide my nakedness I no longer cling to it. ‘Shall I do Mizzi or Devla, Herr Klimt?’ I ask.

‘Mizzi,’ comes the reply and my heart sinks.

Mizzi’s made a lot of noise about how uncomfortable her pose is. Her oft wailed ‘It’s not fair,’ is ringing in my ears as I try to arrange my body as it needs to be.

Herr Klimt walks in a semicircle around the bed. From top to bottom. I can’t get it right and Hilde is not here to help me. I wince and close my eyes. Herr Klimt has to touch me. Yet the sexual threat I anticipate is pure physical pain. I am taken aback at the roughness of his touch as he tugs and pulls at me as though I am modelling clay. ‘Oh! It’s no use,’ he exclaims, exasperated. If he could throw me out for the dogs to run after and chew on he would. But then he thinks again.

Without explaining what he’s doing, he places a pillow under me so that the curve of my bottom rises and falls. I know that he wants the undulating line. I’ve seen Mizzi hold the shape so many times and he pushes me this way and that to get it. I close my eyes to pretend it’s not happening and imagine myself less water serpent more golden mermaid, shiny, and softly gliding through warm comforting waters, moving my tail up and down, rhythmically, keeping time with my heartbeat, warm blood pulsating within. Swimming away, far away from this humiliation.

‘Practice over! I will be your water serpent.’ It’s Consuela. To hear her voice is a joy and as I open my eyes she sees the depths of my misery. I want to cry but her eyes flash a warning at me. ‘Not now,’ they say. And I swallow back the tears, every one. Yet as I falter, the pins and needles causing me to bend and buckle like a newborn faun, so the pain of my failure wraps around my heart like a vice.

Consuela says something to Herr Klimt and within minutes I am free, walking to the art shop to stock up on pencils and sketchbooks. And the paints that were missing from the cupboard earlier on.

Materials keep going missing all the time at the moment. Hilde’s told me that she thinks it’s probably down to Consuela (‘Takes a lot of lead to get all of her in a picture!’ she quips), and indeed it is, but not in the way that she imagines.