Beautiful Days

by Joyce Carol Oates

Out of Mother’s refrigerator, soft, smelly brie. Hard Italian provolone. Snails and garlic, hot butter. They ate greedily. They ate with their fingers. We ran away to hide, we hid our eyes. Nothing so disgusted us as snails like the tiny ridges of flesh between our thin girl-legs we could not bear to touch even in the bath, the sensation came so strong.

  Daddy, you dared not touch us there. In those days when you were a new, young Daddy, and you bathed us. When we were very young girls, scarcely more than toddlers, babies. That long ago, you have (probably) forgotten.

  Daddy, we have not forgotten. How your eyes glistened with knowledge of what lay secret and hidden between our legs that you did not (allow yourself to) touch.

  Master touches us everywhere. Of course, Master touches us there.

  DADDY WHY DID YOU GO AWAY. Why was your life not us.

  Mother never knew how once, we saw her—the girl slipping from your lap, giggling.

  Young enough to be your daughter, Mother had accused, furious. I wanted to protest, I am your daughter!

  It had been an accidental encounter. Jenny and I had been delivered too early to the apartment by your private car, or your friend had stayed too late. Slipping from your lap giggling and blushing, stammering—Oh hey. Don’t think badly of me. I am not a bad person . . .

  She’d been drinking. Both of you drinking. It was surprising to us, she was so tall, and not so thin, not so very pretty really, and not (probably) so young as Mother believed her to be though much younger than Mother of course.

  Her tight, short skirt pulled up from her firm, thick thighs. The front of her shirt pulled open.

  Not a bad person. Please believe me!

  IN THE GREAT MUSEUM quickly I made my way up the grand steps, along the high-ceilinged corridors, to the dimly-lighted gallery that contained Master’s paintings.

  Unerring through the maze of the Museum like a blind child navigating by smell, or touch. And there it was, suddenly before me—Les beaux jours.

  Stunning to me, nothing ever changed in the painting. The girl lying on the green chaise longue with legs askew, the girl gazing at herself in the little hand-mirror. The girl so like myself yet older and wiser than I, and (seemingly) content with that knowledge.

  The girl oblivious of the hot bright fire blazing only a few feet from her.

  For the first time I heard the faint, yearning voice, or voices—Hello! Come to us.

  Or did they cry—Help us . . .

  On weekday afternoons the gallery was often near-deserted. Visitors trooped through the special exhibits but did not make their way to this gallery.

  No one heard the cries. Except me.

  How strange, the Museum guards never heard. As the stupefying dullness of their guard-lives had made them incapable of seeing the wonder of Master’s art though it was hanging before them, triumphant and transgressive.

  Which is why it is so lonely, Daddy. If you do not hear.

  And back in the apartment which was on a floor lower than the twenty-third but still high above the pavement, high enough to stir dread in the pit of my belly, I crawled out onto the dwarf-balcony, I dared to lean over the railing that was encrusted with pigeon droppings, waiting for you to discover me, Daddy, and scold me as (rarely) you’d done—What are you doing! Get back in here, darling!

  Master never scolds. Master (rarely) betrays emotion in our presence for we do not merit emotion only just vexation, disappointment, displeasure.

  Daddy, come soon! I am afraid that if Master is displeased with me, if Master becomes bored with me, that Master will dispose of me as he has disposed of the others.

  So lonely! Yet, I love Master. I love this heavy spell that falls upon me in Master’s studio even when my limbs ache and my neck strains to bear the weight of my head, posed and unmoving for hours.

  If you do not come to bring me home, Daddy. If you abandon me to Master I will sink ever more deeply into the spell, and Master will tire of me, and a collar will be fastened around my neck, and a chain to the collar, to bind me fast in the lowermost dungeon of le chalet.

  COME TO US, help us.

  Help us, come to us.

  As I drew nearer the paintings in the great Museum the spell began to work upon me. Like ether, in the air.

  There was no guard near. No other visitors. Trembling I leaned close to whisper Yes! I will come to you.

  For what I could see of the drawing room of Les beaux jours was very beautiful to me, if strange and sepia-colored, not altogether clear as the details of a dream are not altogether clear and yet seductive, irresistible.

  More and more in the lonely afternoons after school I found myself in that other world. I did not (yet) realize it was Master’s world for you do not see Master in the paintings, you see only yourself painted with such ardor, such yearning, such desire it is like nothing else in the world you have ever known, or could imagine.

  Each of the girls, in each of the paintings: their stillness, their perfection. For even the awkward girls, even the girls whose doll-faces were hidden from view, were cherished, beloved. That, you could feel.

  Without you in my life, Daddy, there was not a promise of such happiness anywhere I knew.

  Come to us, you are one of us—the voices whispered; and my reply was—Yes. I am yours.

  MA CHÈRE, BIENVENUE!—so Master greeted me.

  Ma belle petite fille!—Master exclaimed in delight at the sight of me as if he had never seen anyone so exquisite.

  For I had been discovered by a servant wandering lost and tearful in one of the dim-lighted corridors of the great old house I did not (yet) know was le grand chalet des âmes perdues.

  Master made me blush, and my heart beat so rapidly I could not breathe, covering my face, my hands, my bare arms with his sharp damp stabbing kisses that left me faint.

  How far you have come, ma chère!—across the great ocean, to your Master.

  I could not (yet) know that each of the girl-captives was greeted so lavishly by Master, and made to feel You are the one. Only you.

  IN THAT OTHER LIFE it had come to be, I could not bear to look at myself in a mirror.

  For when you’d left us, Daddy, you took away with you so much—you could not know how much.

  But in Master’s studio, posed by Master on the green chaise longue I am allowed to see that my face is not homely, not despised, but a pretty doll-face. I love gazing into the mirror that Master has given me, at the pretty doll-face.

  It is like sleep, gazing at the doll-face. Very hard to wake up, to look away from the doll-face. My lips scarcely move—Is this me? The wonder of it is hypnotic, like caresses that never cease.

  Though I know—I think—there is someone in this room with me . . . It is heat that I am beginning to feel, an uncomfortable rising heat in this drafty place.

  The heat of a blazing fire. Somewhere close by.

  Master tugs at my tight-fitting sleeve, pulling it off my shoulder to expose my right breast that is small and hard as an unripened apple. The skirt of this (tight) dress which I have been given to wear is very short, and falls back to reveal much of my legs. In other paintings, in other rooms, the stark white of my little-girl panties is revealed as Master has positioned my legs, spread my legs just so. But in this painting you cannot see the narrow band of white cotton between my thighs.

  In Master’s studio time ceases to pass. In Master’s studio we never age. That is the promise of Master’s studio.

  Master laughs at us but not unkindly. You know you have come to me of your own volition, do not be hypocritical, mes chères. Hypocrisy is for les autres.

  Long hours we must pose. Our lives spill out before us heedless as spools of thread rolling across a slanted marble floor. Some of us are new to le grand chalet, some of us have been here entire lifetimes. For long hours we must pose in the drafty studio or we will not be given food. We must not interrupt Master’s concentration for Master will be choked with fury, and Master will punish by withholding his love.

  To que
nch our terrible thirst we are given small sips of water by a servant who crouches at our side. Master is particularly furious if we beg to be “excused” to use a bathroom.

  Water-closet is the word they use here. I am embarrassed at this word. The flushing mechanism is very old-fashioned, pulled by a chain. Old pipes clang and shudder in the great old house like demons.

  You disgust me. You!—Master’s thin nostrils quiver with indignation.

  It is hard to live in a body, we have learned. The body betrays the pretty doll-face and makes of its prettiness a mockery.

  Bitterly Mother told us, as soon as she’d become pregnant for the first time, it was the end of your love for her, Daddy. My belly, she said. My breasts. So big, swollen. No longer a girl, he’d felt betrayed. Poor man was not turned on.

  We did not want to hear this! We were too young to hear of such ugliness.

  Of course, the marriage continued. Your father would not have admitted even to himself the limits of his—of a man’s—desire.

  AND ONE DAY MASTER SELECTS ME for a special scene to which he will give the title, succinct and appalling—La victime.

  I am hoping that you will see this portrait, Daddy. It is the very painting I had seen on the wall in the Museum, without guessing that the girl lying in a limp, lifeless pose does not merely resemble me but is me.

  La victime is not so dreamlike and beautiful as other paintings of Master’s, that are more celebrated. La victime is the blunt, irrefutable image—the girl-victim. Patiently, almost tenderly Master urged me to the floor, to lie on my back on a stone slab; almost lovingly Master molded my bare limbs, turned and positioned my head with his steely-strong fingers.

  In La victime I am not so pretty, I think. I am very pale—as if bloodless. Nor am I provided with a little hand-mirror in which to admire my pretty doll-face. My eyes are shut, the vision has faded from them. Except for thin white cotton stockings and tiny, useless slippers I am nude—naked.

  Slowly as if in a trance Master executes this portrait. After long hours, when Master has finished for the day, and exited the studio in wraithlike silence, I am roused from a comatose state by one of the servants, a dwarf-woman who flings open heavy drapery to let in sunshine like a rude blow—Wake up, you. Don’t play games. You’re not dead—yet.

  WHEN FIRST I ARRIVED at the chalet, I was treated like a princess.

  As, when I was born, and for years when I was your only child, Daddy, I was treated like a princess by you.

  Lilies of the valley in a vase, in my room at the chalet. Beside my bed which was perfectly proportioned for a girl of eleven. Sweet fragrance of lily of the valley which is mesmerizing to me even now, to recall.

  A woman-servant bathing me, washing my hair and brushing it in slow fierce strokes as Master looked on with approval.

  Très belle, la petite enfant!

  And sometimes, at first, in those early beaux jours I’d thought would continue forever, Master took the hairbrush from the woman-servant, and brushed my hair himself.

  And sometimes, vaguely I recall—Master bathed me, and put me to bed.

  I am ashamed to confess, Daddy—I did not really miss you then. I did not think of you. It was only Master of whom I thought.

  In Master’s studio Master wears a smock that is stark-black like a priest’s cassock. By the end of each day Master’s smock becomes stained with paint, and so, each morning, Master must be provided with a fresh clean black smock.

  On his slender feet, black silk slippers in which Master moves silently as something that is upright, a wraith.

  I have never looked fully at Master’s face, Daddy—it is not allowed. And so I have not really seen Master except to know that he is older than you, and very dignified, with a pale austere face like something that has been sculpted, and not mere flesh like other, lesser beings.

  (Has your face grown coarse, Daddy? I don’t want to think so.)

  (I will not think so though Mother tried to poison us against you.)

  Some of us have come to realize that Master does not love us because we are not Master’s children. This was hard to comprehend, and hurtful, and yet it is obvious: none of us, Master’s girl-captives, are the children of Master’s loins. For Master’s own precious seed (it is said) was not spilled carelessly into the world but planted well, and thrived, and Master has a son, a singular being (it is said) whom we will never see, for he lives in Paris and is, like Master, an artiste though not a world-famous artiste like Master.

  Wildly it is said, Master’s son will one day come to le grand chalet to free his father’s girl-captives, for Master’s son does not approve of Master’s way of art.

  Yet the years pass, and Master’s son does not appear.

  Instead, photographers dare to journey to this remote region in eastern Europe, somewhere beyond the Alps. There are reporters, would-be interviewers. Master has instructed his servants to turn away most visitors from the gated entrance of le chalet but from time to time, unpredictably, for it is Master’s way to be unpredictable, Master will allow one or another stranger entry, if he (or less frequently, she) is working for an impressive publication, or is a fellow artiste with impressive credentials.

  These privileged individuals are not allowed beyond the formal rooms of the great old house. Servants observe them carefully at all times and (it is said) Master’s wolf-hounds are stationed at a little distance, charged with watching the strangers’ every move and poised to attack if a signal is given.

  Most visitors see only opulently furnished rooms with heavy furniture, heavy Persian carpets, heavy velvet drapes of the hue of burst grapes, that have faded in swaths of sunshine, unevenly. They are allowed to photograph Master in such settings, which Master prepares in every detail, as in a stage set, for Master takes (occasional) delight in such scenes; in Master’s apprentice years, Master was at the periphery of the Dadaist movement, and was a close friend of Man Ray; visitors are forbidden to photograph begrimed marble floors, cracks and water stains in ceilings, a patina of dust on Master’s antique Greek statuary, the shocking interior of a water-closet. Except on very special occasions when Master’s studio has been scrupulously prepared for such an invasion—a German public television documentary, an American celebrity-interviewer for prime-time American TV—they are not allowed in Master’s studio.

  Very graciously Master answers questions at such times, that have been approved by Master beforehand. For Master is the most eloquent of artistes, whose every remark is carefully shaped, like poetry.

  Art is not the truth. It is art that shapes truth.

  Art is not “beauty”—art is greater than beauty.

  Art is the shadow of life that soars above life, and can never be contained by (mere) life.

  At such times no one hears our cries from the back rooms of the chalet, or the (terrible, unspeakable) dungeons in the cellar.

  MASTER HAS MANY OF US HERE, Daddy. Of our free choice we came to Master, and to Master we surrendered our freedom like children who have no idea what they are doing. You cannot blame the servants for laughing at us—one day ma chérie, the next ma prisonnière.

  In many rooms of the chalet Master has imprisoned us. Some of us are “servants”—that is, slaves. Some of us have collars around our necks, attached to chains. We are made to eat leftovers from bowls on the floor, as Master laughs at our desperate animal hunger.

  Mes chères, you are petits cochons are you? You are not angels! We know this.

  Especially, no one hears our cries from the dungeons. The locked chambers, that servants avoid. Here is a smell of rusted iron, cobweb. No one wishes to hear, invited to a spare but elegant tea with Master in the most opulent of the front rooms, where a Broadwood piano (1813) is displayed, reputedly once owned by Beethoven.

  No one wishes to penetrate the mystery of le grand chalet despite rumors that have circulated for decades in such European capitals as Paris, Berlin, Prague, Rome. No one has the courage to confront Master, to risk Master’s wolf-ho
unds and servants and throw open the locked doors of the house, to release Master’s girl-captives from their misery.

  Help us! Please help us.

  Release us from Master . . .

  In the most notorious of the dungeon rooms girls have died in their chains, their bodies shriveled like the corpses of the elderly. These were once living girls, girls with pretty doll-faces and coppery-colored, wavy hair, withered to the size of four-year-olds.

  We who are still living beg for food which Master’s servants give out grudgingly for Master is very clever, and very cruel, restricting the household food so that the more that is given to the girls, the less the servants will have for themselves.

  Like all tyrants Master knows how to set individuals against one another—It is a finite universe in which we live. The more you give away, the less you will have. Give away too much, and you will starve.

  I am ashamed to say, Daddy—at the very start I was ignorant, and naïve, and had no idea what lay in store. As a new arrival I was treated like a princess, and so I took pity on some of the other girls, who had been here longer, and seemed to be less favored than I was; I gave them food of mine, for each of my meals was a small feast, and I could not finish so many delicacies. You know, we can be generous when our bellies are stuffed, and so I was generous, but this did not last beyond a few months. It would not have seemed possible that Master would so turn against me, after he had so flattered me. This was my error, Daddy. But having come here at all, having lingered so long in front of Les beaux jours until one day I found myself inside the painting, in the drawing room with the blazing-bright fire, giddy with happiness—already that was my error, for I could not so easily crawl back out of Master’s house and into my old, lost life.

  You begin by being adored. In Master’s adoration, you bask in your power. But it is a short-lived power for it is not yours, it is Master’s. That is the error.

  AND THEN ONE DAY, a camera crew arrives at the chalet in a modern-looking vehicle—a minivan. Strangers from London are welcomed into the chalet. There is a silken-voiced interviewer, himself a celebrity of the art world.