The Science of Appearances

by Jacinta Halloran

  Donald stops and calls the class to attention. She stops, too, but he touches her shoulder and points to the daybed that sits to one corner on a small platform.

  ‘Do not begin without the fundamentals,’ Donald begins. ‘Spend some time observing the figure in its entirety. Understand it as a whole before working on its parts.’ He is talking about her, she realises with a flutter. ‘Imitation is irrelevant. What you must work towards is the significant form. Look at the axis of the body, the line of movement. First discover the direction of the form. Then look for the tensions between the main directions. Does a hand follow the natural curve of the arm, or does it take a different direction? What does this say about the figure? Don’t forget that you are working to communicate some emotional response.’

  She sits on the edge of the daybed and studies her feet. This is for art, she tells herself, while the blood pounds in her ears. I’m doing this for art.

  ‘Next you must seek the drive from the centre to the contour,’ Donald says. ‘You must establish the relations of the planes. And remember, the outline is the most deceptive feature of an object, and the furthest from the eye. It should be done last. Madeleine, if you will …’ Donald gestures to her.

  She stands with her back to the class and shrugs the robe from her shoulders. It slides to the floor, rippling, folding in on itself, pooling at her feet. For a moment she’s immobile, one hand still at her shoulder, her fingers grazing her collarbone, as if already in pose. Then she turns slowly, head first, resting her gaze on the stained-glass window at the back of the room. Her body follows, so that she feels herself uncoiling like a snake, ready to strike. She’s facing them now, one hand still lifted, her other arm placed across her belly so that her pubic hair is in shadow. Her breasts are exposed. She has nice breasts, Robbie’s told her, before taking her nipple in his mouth, but here on her platform, the green robe at her feet, she’s something more than Robbie’s girl.

  Don’t look, Donald said, but she must. She needs to know what she’s done, for it’s something. She’s undressed before for Robbie, but her nakedness has been a hurried, piecemeal thing. Here, among these men, and women too — she smiles down at them from her little stage — she’s peeled back the layers to find that her body isn’t simply what remains. She’d thought the art would come later, as the students worked at their drawing, but in her moment of revelation she’s made something too. This, too, is art. She lies upon the couch and lets her body teach them.

  The class is over, the students have gone home, and Mary puts on the clothes of her old life. ‘You did very well,’ Donald says when she returns to the studio. ‘Not self-conscious at all.’

  He gives her an envelope, labelled Madeleine. It’s light in her hands: notes instead of coins, then. ‘You’re able to pose again?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Of course.’

  The walls are crammed with paintings, rows upon row, up to the picture rail. ‘Did you paint some of these?’ she asks.

  ‘A few are mine. The rest belong to my students. You’re welcome to look around while I clean up.’

  There are still lifes and landscapes, bright and distorted, but tonight she’s interested in the figures. Can she find in these paintings what Donald spoke of: the axis of the form, the tensions and planes? Imitation is nothing; she’s always known that. She stops in front of a line drawing of a woman, naked above the waist, a wicker basket over her arm, a washing line behind her pegged with billowing clothes — a white petticoat, a blue silk blouse. ‘Did a woman paint this?’ she asks.

  Donald puts down the brushes and comes to stand beside her. ‘Yes. How can you tell?’

  ‘I worked in a laundry for six months.’ She smiles at him. ‘I know about washing. This is painted by someone who knows it too.’

  She looks and lingers until Donald’s ready to leave. ‘How much do your classes cost?’ she asks on the stairs.

  ‘It depends. Are you interested?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sometimes I let students model in exchange for tuition.’

  ‘You’d let me do that?’

  He leads her out into Collins Street. ‘Maybe. You have the makings of a good model. There’s an honesty about you. A presence, an energy … Let’s say one class equals one modelling session. How does that sound?’

  ‘Delightful,’ says Mary.

  When, the next morning, she tells Tom she’ll be out two nights a week at art school, he says, ‘You never cease to amaze me,’ and, ‘It sounds very posh, Mares, all those arty types.’

  She doesn’t tell him that for one of those nights she’ll be lying naked in front of them. Poor, dear Tom: he’d never understand. ‘They’re all right. There are two women who have young kids at home, and an old man in a wheelchair.’ She hasn’t seen such people but she imagines them for Tom’s sake. ‘It’s a real mixture.’

  ‘And young men too?’

  ‘A few.’

  After her second class — her second real class, where she holds a pencil and a brush instead of a pose — Madeleine-Mary joins her fellow students in the bar of the Victoria Hotel. She’s the youngest among them, but age doesn’t matter: they’re joined in their quest for the significant form. They talk about outlines and colour, shadow and tone, conversations crossing and weaving but always carrying them forward. Sam, the one she most likes to listen to, speaks like a poet. He has the bluest eyes, and a mass of straw-blond hair that he doesn’t smother with Brylcreem. He traces the shape of things as he talks so that she sees his drawings right there on the table. She likes to watch his hands shape the rock, the tree, the pear, the thigh, the breast.

  She’s surprised to hear that Sam knows Lucien and Clarissa. ‘Went to Scotch with Luce. We were at the National Gallery School together for a bit, but I ditched it for Donald’s classes. Introduced the two of them, actually.’

  The Tuesday class is all male, save for a tall, sandy-haired girl she’s heard Donald address as Joyce, who favours trousers and a buttoned vest and often chews the end of her brush. Mary doesn’t go out for a drink with the students she models for. She’s made the distinction from the start, and it stands clear in her mind. Sam takes the Thursday class with her, but one Tuesday night, as she enters the studio in her dragon robe, she sees him behind an easel. Throughout the sitting she’s careful not to catch his eye, and hurries away when Donald’s done with her. At the pub the following Thursday she keeps her distance, but there’s no escaping the feeling on her skin each time Sam raises his hand. It’s as if he is drawing on her.

  Pleading a headache, she’s the first to leave. Sam catches her at the door. ‘Can I walk you somewhere?’

  In the dark of Collins Street she tells him, ‘It felt strange to see you in the Tuesday class.’

  ‘It didn’t seem strange to me.’

  He’s saying it to reassure her, she can tell. ‘I keep the two classes separate in my head. You confused me.’

  He lights a cigarette, and looks at her over the flare of the match. ‘Are you modelling to pay for tuition? There’s nothing wrong with that. Men do it too.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘You don’t know Wolfie Galanis? He’s a painter and a dancer. Costume designer, too. He models for Donald on occasions.’ Sam gazes upwards. ‘All artists should model, once in a while. It would give us a deeper connection with form.’

  She can’t help but think of him lying naked on the couch. She smothers a smile: he wouldn’t last a minute. ‘How do you find the money?’ she asks.

  ‘My father pays. He’s living vicariously.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘He’s an accountant with an artist’s heart. He takes pleasure in thinking I’m exploring more creative options.’

  Mary sighs. ‘He sounds nice.’

  He walks her to the tram stop, where he lights another cigarette. ‘Can I have one, too?’ Mary as
ks. Without a moment’s hesitation he takes the lit cigarette from between his lips and hands it to her. His spontaneity delights her. They smoke together, and she’s not surprised to find his arm against hers.

  ‘I’m changing to Tuesday classes on a permanent basis,’ he says, throwing his butt to the gutter. ‘Donald’s suggested it. The standard of work is higher on Tuesdays. You must have noticed.’

  ‘I never look at their work. Not when I model.’

  ‘I thought I should explain.’

  ‘Why?’

  He stands to leave. ‘I think you already know.’

  ‘Could I change to Tuesday-night classes, and model on Thursday nights instead?’ she asks Donald.

  ‘Tuesday nights are overbooked. And the Tuesday class is comfortable with you now. They’re making progress with your edges. I’d rather leave things as they stand.’

  What’s wrong with this picture? When Sam asks Mary on Tuesday night if she’s coming out with them, she doesn’t hesitate to say yes. He catches her just outside the studio door while she’s still in her robe. If he’d waited until she’d got dressed, she might have answered differently.

  At the pub, Sam slides into the booth next to Mary. He’s bought her a glass of red wine.

  What’s wrong with this picture? She isn’t Sam’s girl. On Thursdays she was his peer, now she’s his model. He’s confusing her, yet she feels a brittle victory every time his hands cut the air, curving in space. She’s the rock, the tree, the body of which he now speaks.

  ‘I have a boyfriend,’ she tells him under the soft glow of a streetlamp. Two glasses of wine, and she drank every drop. ‘Just so you know.’

  ‘I don’t need to know.’

  He touches her face, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. An image comes to mind: Mrs Corrigan twisting Joan’s curls around her finger, over and over; the longing she felt, right down to her toes. The longing she feels.

  ‘I’m not forcing you into anything,’ Sam says.

  She kisses him.

  Painting is like leaving one’s old self behind.

  ~

  In the Union courtyard Dom sits alone with his cafeteria rissoles and mash. Two girls — one dark, one fair — talk at the next table. While he doesn’t make eye contact with either, he registers many things about them: the colour of their jumpers (pale yellow, pale blue), the conspiratorial lean of their bodies towards each other, their floral perfume. It’s information of a particular nature, more easily absorbed than the stuff he learns in lectures, but what exactly is he supposed to do with it?

  ‘But I find it hard to swallow all that symbolism,’ one of the girls says. ‘Why can’t a dream about a jewellery box be just that? Especially if you’re dreaming about your mother’s jewellery.’

  ‘Of course a dream object can stand simply for itself, but in the context of the rest of the dream and the events of Dora’s life, it might also stand for something else.’ Dom lifts his eyes from his plate. It’s the dark-haired one speaking — pale yellow jumper, small breasts, a string of green beads. ‘Think about your own dreams, Ruth. Can you always make sense of them?’

  ‘Not usually.’

  ‘So if someone were to go carefully through every detail with you, to give you an explanation for why this particular person, this particular setting —’

  The other girl laughs. ‘Oh no, I don’t think I’d want to know.’ She pauses. ‘That’s Freud’s repression in action, I suppose.’

  ‘Exactly. Our dreams give us clues to what it is that we are hiding from ourselves. But to understand the hidden, we must be open to the symbolic.’

  Dominic chews slowly, eyes downcast, waiting for the dark-haired girl to speak again. She’s from far away, he’s sure of it. It’s not only the slight accentuation she gives to the end of her words or the richness of her rs, but also something about the way she commands attention — her friend’s, and his, too, although he hasn’t understood all she’s said, not properly. She speaks with the confidence of someone much older, not afraid to be heard. It’s a quality that’s uncommon in a woman, now he comes to think about it. He’s grown used to the confidence of the young men around him, the Newman and Trinity crew who wisecrack in lectures and horse around with a football on the South Lawn, their bright college scarves swinging from their necks as they play. Yes, she must be European. No Australian-born girl he’s ever met would speak that way.

  He risks another glance. She has turned away from him in her chair and sits upright, her spine straight as a sapling. He takes in the square of her narrow shoulders. Her black hair, pinned high upon her head, is looped in a sleek, smooth mound. He lowers his eyes again, reluctantly, and sees Mary, at the dressing table in their old bedroom, brushing her hair. It’s as if he were there, standing behind her, watching the sweep of her hands from the nape of her neck to the crown as she lassoes her clutch of hair with a band. She loops the band again and again, stretching it between her fingers, and pulls at her hair so that the band rides up to sit snug against her scalp. He blinks and looks away across the courtyard, surprised that he remembers so clearly something that seemed of such little importance at the time. And why think of it now? This girl doesn’t at all resemble his sister. She’s thinner, and her movements are quick, decisive. Mary moved slowly. A dawdler, a dreamer, except when she drew: she was always frenzied with a pencil in her hand.

  The girl turns and meets his eye. In his haste to return to eating he knocks his knife to the ground, where it clatters against the paving stones. He bends to retrieve it, glad of an excuse to hide his face. When he sits up again, the girl is still watching him.

  She tilts her head, as if asking, Do I know you?

  Despite himself he smiles and shrugs, suddenly, deliriously bold. I think you do.

  Her name is Hanna.

  An hour later Ruth’s left them, and they’re sitting on the South Lawn in a patch of precious sunlight, warm and still. The grass is almost empty because classes are in progress. He finds himself speaking about Mary. ‘Every year on our birthday she made me a card, always with a drawing of something I cared about.’ One year it was Mr Welsh’s bicycle, leaning against the schoolhouse wall; another, it was him in his football jumper, holding the district pennant flag. ‘She was always drawing, or making something from paper or things from the garden. Flowers, stones, feathers — whatever she could find. It was just the way she was. I never thought about it at the time, but I can see it now. She had to do it.’ He’s surprised to hear himself talk like this, yet how quickly and easily the words come.

  Hanna nods as he talks, as if to say, Go on, I’m listening. Mary’s so close he can almost believe that if he were to turn his head he would see her creeping towards him across the grass, her hand on her mouth to stop herself from laughing and spoiling the surprise. To talk about Mary is to summon her back from the underworld of memory, where she has lain, grey and shadowy, so unlike the girl she was. He hasn’t talked about her enough. His letters to his mother only speak of his failure to find her. He writes nothing of who she was, who she might have become.

  ‘Maybe she’s not lost,’ Hanna says when he’s finished. She stretches out on the grass and rolls onto her stomach, quickly, lightly, as if turning in water. She rests her chin in her hands. ‘Maybe she just doesn’t want to be found. Not at the moment, anyway.’

  Her words don’t make any sense. Surely if you’re not found then you’re lost? Yet, surprisingly, he feels comforted. He wants to stretch out beside her but can’t find the courage. Hanna kicks off her shoes and rubs one stockinged foot against the instep of the other. She points her toes, and her feet curve like a bow. Dominic looks away.

  ‘If you were Mary, where would you go?’ Hanna asks. ‘Where would you want to be?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.’

  ‘You’re her twin, Dom.’ There, she has said his name for the first time.
‘You know her best. You can get inside her mind. Anyone can sift through the facts — you know, the last place she was seen, what she was wearing. Let the police deal with those. But you must try to be her, to think as she does … Who knows? That might be the way to find her.’

  Hanna’s studying second-year psychology with Professor Oscar Oeser. ‘You know of him,’ she says. ‘No? But he’s famous for working with the Allies in code-breaking during the war. And after the war he worked in Berlin, in the Allied Control Commission, screening German officials.’

  ‘Screening?’

  ‘Testing them psychologically, to find out if they were still Nazi sympathisers.’

  Dominic considers this. ‘But if they were they’d try to keep it hidden, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Hanna says. She rolls on her side and pushes up to a sitting position. He sees the small bulge of her biceps against her jumper. ‘That’s what good psychological testing does,’ she says. ‘It brings out your true character, your true beliefs, without you realising what you’ve revealed.’

  ‘It sounds like a magic trick.’

  Hanna laughs. ‘There are some parallels, I suppose.’

  He was right: she’s clever. Is she even now learning things about him that he, too, has unknowingly revealed? He shifts his weight and fixes his eyes on the ground. ‘Why has your professor come out here, when he was doing such important work in Germany?’

  ‘Why does anyone come here? For new opportunities. For a better life.’ Hanna looks across the lawn, shading her eyes with her hand. ‘This place,’ she begins. Her voice trails away. She turns to him again. ‘It’s so nice to be able to lie on the grass like this. In many places in the world there are signs to keep off the grass, and people must sit on wooden benches, or not sit at all. In some places there isn’t even any grass.’

  She speaks as if she knows something he doesn’t. The war in Europe: that’s what she means. He can tell by the look on her face. Danny O’Sullivan had it too, after he came home to work in Forrest’s garage. If Danny was out the front, having a smoke or polishing a fender, Dom would always say hello, as cheerfully as he could, hoping that Danny understood. Gratitude, admiration, sympathy — that was what he wanted to convey. He hoped sympathy didn’t overwhelm the others. Danny had lost an eye, and half his face was burned away.