A Muse to Live For

by Katherine Wyvern

  He shakes his head a little dolefully, and I realize that he is truly moved, and a little dashed by my imminent departure.

  I owe Henry so much. He always took care of me, and I never questioned it, or asked myself why, and right now it would be impossible to ask him. I can only hope that there will be a time for it, in the not too distant future.

  While this farewell banquet is being prepared, he makes suggestions, sensible and practical, as I knew he would. I sign a few papers, wash myself, change into a clean shirt. He makes neat bandages on my battered hands, and provides gloves. He produces a coat for me now that Gabriel is wearing mine, and some spare linen for both of us, a bag, a hat (I seem to have lost mine, when?), an umbrella.

  Gabriel sits quietly in a corner all this time, smoking a cigarette he took out of Gabrielle’s japanned case. His fingers shake slightly, and the smoke wavers with their motion. He’s the quietest person in the house, and yet the space, my space, bends around him. He’s sharp and vivid, glittering with live colors, while everything else fades to flat grey, and blurs a little.

  ****

  Gabrielle is born again in Paris. Like any illegitimate birth, by no fault of the newborn, it has to be arranged discreetly, well out of sight, with the connivance of some rather dodgy professionals. The butterfly that emerges from this seedy chrysalis however is more beautiful and glamourous than I have ever seen her.

  I finally paint her, on an armchair, with great folds of fabric at the back. But the painting I had planned in my studio was dark and close, with her dark green wool dress, the walnut and leather chair and dark damask, the foggy light from my bay-window. That has all gone. The pose is the same, but the painting is all infused with light now.

  Gabrielle is dressed in a filmy, gauzy, pale thing, with an almost transparent white organza at her sleeves, so that the creamy rose skin of her arms shows through, like she’s dressed in a wisp of cloud, silky and shimmery skirts of the palest pearl-grey, and a lilac sash around her slim waist. The armchair is a pale grey, elegant, Louis XVI affair, and the drapery behind is a length of Japanese silk, blue-grey, embroidered all over with silver camellias and golden ideograms. All these flamboyantly luxurious things sit incongruously in a sunny corner of a sparse set of rooms with phenomenal light that we leased for a short while.

  We have barely enough furniture to sit, eat and sleep, but I found an old necklace for Gabrielle to wear as she sits, with a great pale stone on a long chain, and a thin bracelet for her wrist. She holds a white rose in her lap with her right hand, but there is nothing, nothing, of the innocent English rose about her. She lounges back in her armchair like a cat in a sunbeam, supple and pleased, her long legs crossed, her left hand abandoned, and her eyes, those eyes, that are the deep aquamarine jewels around which all of this pearly light and gleaming shades turn and turn, are full of something so sultry, so forward, that I pause at my canvas and smile.

  “If I paint that look, this portrait will get us arrested for inciting lewdness, you know?”

  She makes a mock-coquettish pout, fluttering her lashes, and then bursts into laughter, clear, merry, sunny laughter. I think that I have never seen her laughing in London, not like this.

  This shimmering butterfly is a different creature from the dark, worn, velvet moth she was in England.

  Gabrielle’s portrait sells to a banker, Henry’s acquaintance, smitten with her style and beauty, and that, and a bunch of rather different pictures that Henry sold for us, buy us our trip south.

  We have become very good, at those drawings. Whether I sketch Gabrielle or Gabriel, or the divine chimeric creature in between the two that I love most, there is always a buyer for them, and the prices are rising.

  The first two sketches I made were almost an accident. But as it turns out Gabrielle has an effortless natural genius for modeling such pictures, a sharp and rather provocative reminder of the fact that she’s used to selling her body. It should offend my moral sense and probably put me off, but I find that it doesn’t. Rather the contrary. Half of our sitting sessions end up in a passionate embrace and then lovemaking. I am not used to this unrestrained license, and probably never will be, but there is something liberating in her immodesty. She is both more real and gritty than the ladies of London’s polite society and yet more dreamlike, more lyrical, more inspired and inspiring.

  I am just glad that she can put that skill to good use in the safety and sparse comfort of our apartment, rather than using it out there in the streets, under the rain, by night.

  ****

  Gabrielle loves Paris and Paris loves her, but it is not a place where we can live long on our still uncertain finances.

  I think I have found something new, here, however. I have never painted so broadly, so boldly. It seems that my brushes have found an ease and freedom they never had before. I have not forgotten Rossetti’s women’s beautiful hands and sensual lips, the elegance of his lines, the terrific perfection of his colors, but I know I need to paint something more alive, something more immediate and present than those tormented visions of women only half-real.

  I have found my own living muse.

  I know I can do beautiful things with her. I know I can do anything, but it’s not enough, not for Paris, not yet.

  As the train huffs away, I watch her watching the landscape outside, as it turns from city to periphery, from periphery to scattered homesteads, to green countryside to forests and rugged hills.

  “Will you miss it very much?” I ask.

  I won’t. Too much people, too much noise, too much of everything. I want to bring her to Italy and Greece. I want to see this new butterfly basking in the sun, to show her all the things I loved there all those years ago. I don’t know if they will come to life again for me with her, or if everything will fade in the background a little, as it so often does, when she is with me.

  She takes my hand and smiles. “A little,” she says. “But it could not last, could it?”

  “No. Not without bankrupting us. But we will come back, I promise.” We are alone in our carriage by now, and I kiss her forehead, and then her lips.

  “Gabrielle,” I say, and then hesitate.

  “What?” she asks.

  “I wanted you to have this. If you care to have it.” I dip my fingers in the inside pocket of my jacket and bring out a ring, a slender gold band with two tiny hands clasping at the wrists.

  Gabrielle takes a deep breath, quietly cut off.

  “It’s just that people take notice of these things, in small places, you know? So I thought, for your safety … so people will not be impertinent…”

  “That is all there is to it? My safety?”

  I look at her, at those eyes where my world comes to an end and then begins again, changed. Her eyes are hard like blue glass. Until she smiles, softening, and I realize that she has been teasing me, as she always does, even now. I smile back.

  “You know it’s not just that,” I whisper.

  “I do. I would love to wear your ring.” She takes off her fine kid gloves, dove grey and matte, flawless. Her hands are even finer, just as flawless, but pearl white, with a blush of flesh hinted, transparently, and thin blue veins. The ring was my grandmother’s, and I have preserved it through my poverty and even through our precipitate flight from London because I carried it in my wallet for over a decade. It was made for a slender hand. It fits to perfection. Gabrielle gazes at her fingers, wiggles them about a little, and smiles, then frowns.

  “I do not have a ring for you,” she whispers, “leastways not one that you could wear.”

  I smile at her, and kiss her softly. “It matters not. We’ll find one. My precious. My precious, my precious.”

  In Nice a letter from Henry reaches us, and I paint Gabrielle in oils again on a large canvas. The blue portrait was admired, and another is made, a more daring one, for a Dutch buyer, Gabrielle in a scarlet silk kimono, against a glowing turquoise wall, hung with Japanese fans. The scarlet and turquoise drive me to distracti
on. They clash. But they clash magnificently, and between these stark extremes of uncompromising color, like an island of pure silence, floats Gabrielle’s naked shoulder, the right shoulder, lily smooth and luminous, and the enigma of her Mona Lisa smile.

  The kimono painting gets us all the way to Italy, quite comfortably.

  ****

  Garda is a small village on the eastern shore of the Italian lake of the same name. The dark wooded hills behind press close to the water, but the shores are planted with are vineyards, olive groves, and even lemon trees. The lake is vast here, and alive with boats, fishing boats and pleasure boats, of all shapes and sizes. This far south the western shore is just a vague, dark line on the horizon. To the north a tongue of land covered in tall, somber cypresses juts out into the water, Punta San Vigilio, with Siren’s Bay behind it. There is a touch of romance to the place and a seaside feel to the main square, which opens on the lake, inviting the beautiful marina into the porches, galleries, doors, and windows of the yellow, pink, and orange houses.

  The lake is popular with tourists, but they congregate mostly on the western side. Here, a British couple is as exotic as a pair of zebras, and the locals watch us curiously when we step off the carriage that brought us here, and look about for a pony trap to carry us on the last leg of our trip.

  The house we are looking for is not in the village; it is a rambling old mansion, somewhat dilapidated, but still inhabitable, halfway up the hill behind. The pony struggles up the steep climb, and I hop off and hand down Gabrielle. We stroll leisurely up the path while the boy leads the pony with our luggage.

  I remember the smell of this place. I have known the house since my holidays with Henry. We spent a month here, when visiting Verona and Venice, and tired of the crowds we came here to paint, hike, and row on the lake. But I have not been here in almost fifteen years, and I am astonished that everything still feels the same, as if the place had been asleep under a spell, waiting for my return.

  There is a garden behind the house, smaller than I remember but still large enough to have wholly wild places, and dark green caves overgrown with brambles and fragrant honeysuckle. The pine needles and hedges of bay and boxwood also scent the air, and some wandering wild apple-mint, but overall reigns the heavy lemony perfume of the immense magnolia tree. The old fallen leaves crackle like brittle leather under my feet. The flowers rain nectar in the late afternoon air, and the scent, the light, the unceasing song of the cicadas, they all come together in one breathing, living thing, one timeless spell, or atmosphere, where I know I can find my peace.

  The garden is fenced all ‘round by immense laurel hedges and trees and stone walls, and over all dominates the flat-topped, bare-faced, frowning mass of the Rocca, the strange hill that overlooks the lake and the village like a crouching sphinx.

  “Do you like it?” I ask, and Gabrielle leans against me, tossing her straw hat on a rusting garden chair.

  “It is very idyllic.”

  I laugh. “You don’t like it.”

  She laughs also, and weaves her arms about my waist, under my linen jacket. “No, I do like it, for a while.”

  I nod. She’s not a hedge flower, my Gabrielle. I know she’d rather be in a busy town than buried in this barely civilized wilderness. But we need to stop somewhere a while, sell some paintings, make some money, pay back our debt to Henry. The old house on the lake was the best place I could think of. Remote as it seems, Verona is little more than twenty miles away and Venice less than a hundred. We can make it work. She can have her urban escapades, the theatres, the music, the fine clothes, the shops, even the opera. I hold her close, breathing the scent of her, as it mingles with all the other scents in the garden. I could stay here forever, with her.

  Later, much later, in the dead of the night, I wake in our grand bed. The window is open, and the scent of the garden fills the room carried in by a pleasantly cool breeze from the lake. Gabriel, it is Gabriel tonight, is asleep and warm, his body pressed close to mine. In the dark I feel the contour of his side and his hip with my fingertips, and I can see it, as if a brush dipped in faintly luminous stardust had traced that beloved curve in the blackness of the night.

  Chapter Seven

  “…Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start

  Of married flowers to either side outspread

  From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,

  Fawned on each other where they lay apart.”

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The House of Life

  Garda, August, 1886

  Gabrielle

  “Signora,” says Amelia, with that quick bob that she thinks of as a curtsey, “la cena è fatta, dinner … in kitchen. Made. E’ solo da scaldare … just to warm it.”

  “Excellent, bene, benissimo … um.” I never know exactly how to handle this mistress business, now that I am indeed the mistress of the house. Especially in Italian.

  She laughs merrily, as she always does when our halting conversations grind to a halt.

  “E’bellissimo, signora,” she finally says, pointing at the dress in my lap.

  “You think?” I shake out the skirt and spread the bodice over it—it’s really almost finished—and she gives an admiring gasp. I don’t think she’d ever seen much silk or velvet until I came to Garda.

  “Sarà la più bella di tutta Venezia, sa?” she says smiling very fondly. I understand, bella and Venezia, beautiful and Venice. Sounds good enough.

  “Thank you.”

  She smiles and nods towards the door. “Allora vado, eh?”

  “Um, sure, cut along, vai, I’ll see you tomorrow? Domani?”

  “Domani, sì.” She grins, which spoils the effect of her bob, but I like it much better, in fact.

  Amelia Burro is one of the little great blessings of the house at the lake.

  She’s a strapping, black-eyed girl of eighteen, dark-skinned, dark-haired, a true budding Mediterranean beauty. Her housework is as erratic as her English (or my Italian, for that matter), and she has a troubling tendency to disappear suddenly when Vinicio, the sheep boy, passes by with his flock. And surely those sheep are passing our lane more often than is quite normal? No wonder they are each of them as skinny as a rack, given how often they are made to tramp up and down our steep hill. We can hear the sheep bells from half a mile off, even through all the hedges, and that usually means that the dear girl is going to bolt in the next five minutes. But neither Nathaniel nor I have the heart or severity to put a stop to it. We both feel that either of us setting up as a stern moral authority would strain our dramatic abilities a little.

  However, Amelia is a cheerful, comfortable presence around the house, and she is an excellent cook, which is a relief, after our distressing attempts at self-sufficiency in Paris and Nice.

  Amelia does not live here, but walks back to her parents’ in the village each evening. The house has some poky attics where a girl might live in no greater discomfort than I experienced in my garret in London, but we’d rather not have a servant in the house at all hours. Seeing your mistress walking about and smoking early in the morning, unshaved and undressed, is bound to put even a cheerful, spirited girl like Amelia off her breakfast for a while.

  Vinicio, the sheep-boy, leaves me small gifts of pilfered cherries and mulberries, and the occasional peach or lemon. I do not know if he’s genuinely considerate, if he’s smitten with me, or if he is buying my connivance in the tryst.

  I smile as I stitch on the second shoulder strap onto the bodice of the dress, the last touch. I hope Nathaniel is happy with it.

  There was a time, as we were leaving London, oh, in a different world, when I swore I’d never do a stitch of sewing ever again in my life. But I find that after all, now, in this quiet, comfortable home, sewing in the porch with the scents of the sunny garden and the birdsong all around me, on a new dress I love, a dress of my own, is more enjoyable than I ever imagined possible.

  Later, when Nathaniel comes back—he’s painting a complicat
ed marina for il Signor Donato, sitting by the lakeshore most of the day—I am standing in the bedroom, with the dress loosely on.

  “Anybody home?” comes his voice from downstairs.

  “Up here!”

  He pounds up the stairs two steps at a time, as if he hadn’t just walked that infernal climb up the hill in the afternoon sun. He’s unstoppable since we came here.

  “Oh my…” he says, standing in the door. His smile flashes out like a light in the shaded room.

  “Help me cinch it, will you? Don’t just stand there like a beaming lighthouse,” I say, with mock acerbity.

  He grins again, and comes to pull the laces of the bust tight and proper. He’s become my lady’s maid lately. When he’s done tying up the laces as tight as they’ll go, he runs his hands along the silk sides of the bust and then on my bare shoulders and arms, and then he kisses my neck. I shiver with pure bliss at the rough tickling of his whiskers on my skin. Then he finally turns me around and stands back to look at me.

  The dress is heavy black silk from top to toe, clean-cut, unadorned and dramatic, with a low, stiff bust (over a well-padded corset), and no sleeves. The bust is so rigidly constructed that it would not come off if I tried with a crowbar, but I added two thin, golden, bejeweled shoulder straps to give it a dash of brilliance. Nathaniel wanted a black dress, and that’s all right, but I don’t want it to look like a mourning gown. I ain’t mourning. I am all alive. I would not mind wearing it in Venice, when we go, if ever I have a chance, but in fact it’s supposed to be the dress for my next portrait, that Nathaniel has been sketching and poring over for weeks, obsessing about the right colorway and composition like never before.

  “Perfect,” he whispers.

  And just as he says that, one of the damn shoulder straps slips off and flops on my bare arm.