by JH Fletcher
Mrs Loretta Gladwyn was exactly that woman. She had a voice of honey, an eye — and heart — of steel. She showed Martha an upstairs room, its window overlooking the street, from which came the occasional clop of hooves and rumble of wheels. The district was quiet, Mrs Gladwyn assured, and certainly respectable. Even the dust had status, here.
‘Other tenants?’ Martha ventured, while Marie hoped for comradeship, kindred spirits with whom laughter might prove possible.
‘Of course …’
It seemed the other tenants were also most respectable: an old lady who would have loved a cat, had one been permitted, and a retired gentleman, single, who wore a waistcoat.
‘Somewhere to paint?’ Marie asked. ‘In my room, perhaps?’
‘Out of the question, I’m afraid.’ Mrs Gladwyn smiled to conceal horror; she would permit no such frivolity in her establishment. ‘Mrs Smyth is a martyr to migraine. The smell of paint … Impossible. Mr Perks would not like it, either. A shame, but I am obliged to respect their wishes.’ Mrs Gladwyn considered it her right to terrorise the tenants, but they had their uses.
Marie’s nostrils flared rebelliously. ‘I must have somewhere.’
Mrs Gladwyn saw that business might be lost. ‘There is a shed,’ she suggested. ‘In the garden. It is a little small, but it has a window. Perhaps there …?’
They inspected it. A pokey hole was what Marie would have called it, but there was light, certainly. It would do. Until I find somewhere better, she told herself defiantly. Although how she would pay for that, with Horace certain to disapprove, she could not say.
‘Do you think you will be happy here?’ Martha asked. She knew very well what Marie thought but, in the long years of marriage, had learned obedience to authority.
Like her mother before her, Marie knew when a lie was necessary. ‘It’ll be fine.’
She moved in the following weekend, went to see Katie as soon as she’d dropped off her bag. With her, she laughed at the enormities of Mrs Loretta Gladwyn and her establishment.
‘Why do you stay there?’
‘Horace will cut off my allowance if I don’t.’
‘But to paint in a shed …’
It didn’t matter. Marie realised what her subconscious had known all along, that what mattered was neither Mrs Gladwyn nor the rules by which she, and Horace, hoped to confine her, but the fact that she had moved out at all. Because the fact of having done so represented freedom, from which all things would flow.
‘Time I introduced you to life,’ Katie said. ‘What life in this city is really like.’
And did so. They plunged into a maze of back streets, grossly littered, where the buildings leaned so close they threatened to pincer out the sky. Within minutes Marie was hopelessly lost, but Katie walked confidently, picking her way past carts and cats, filth in piles, heavy-armed women in sacking aprons leaning against the greasy walls of hovels, screaming babies, ragged men standing in the doorways of squint-eyed betting shops. From somewhere close-by came the shriek of a factory whistle while, between the buildings, Marie caught an occasional blink of sunlit water, a sky spiked by the soaring masts of moored vessels. There was the reek of tanning, of booze from street corner grog shops, the pervasive odour of hopelessness and want.
Marie walked wide-eyed and Katie, seeing her expression, laughed.
‘Life, as I told you. As you have never seen it. Different from your grand house, eh?’
With the white facade gleaming within the hills. With the bush graceful and silent, amid the smell, not of poverty, but of blossom and heat and dust. The roses … Out of place in this country yet gentle, snagged in her memory, not by thorns, but scent.
Yet Katie was right. This, too, was life: a part, perhaps even a major part, of the whole.
A man lay prostrate in the gutter. Marie watched him cautiously. Drunk? Sleeping? Dead? There was no way to tell and Marie scurried past, sticking close to Katie, who strode ahead without concern.
Marie hurried to catch up. Breathlessly, she managed, ‘That man …’
Again the knowing look. ‘First rule. In this part of the world, never interfere. Never. You come across a man like that, walk on. You see someone beating his wife, take no notice. Interfere and the chances are he will attack you, too.’
She turned down an even narrower alley of close-set walls, black with grime. Marie felt eyes watching them from the shadows. Water lay in stagnant puddles. At intervals, the walls opened to reveal courtyards surrounded by the stone threat of buildings, their doors open to the street.
I shall have nightmares about this, Marie thought. I had no idea … And was grateful to Katie, despite her fear, for having widened her awareness of what was.
Once more Katie was a few yards ahead. Now she spoke over her shoulder. ‘Wait a sec.’ She turned into another, even smaller alley. Not more than five seconds behind, Marie hurried to catch up. She reached the corner and looked. Saw only the beckoning throat of walls, drawing away. Katie had vanished.
Her heart stopped; she felt it distinctly. Her breath stopped; she felt that, too. She was alone in a district that every instinct told her was dangerous, without the slightest idea where to go or how to get out of it again.
Wait a sec …
Wait here?
That was what Katie had said. Very well. Marie forced herself to begin breathing again. If that was what Katie wanted, she would do it. She would wait here until Katie came back.
What if she didn’t come? What if something had happened to her? What if that same something was focussing on her next? What if …?
Stop it! Stop it!
And again she made herself breathe, nerve ends screaming — which she would ignore, until Katie came. Or did not come.
11
Marie set her feet firmly upon the ground, as though nailing herself in place, defiant of herself and the terrifying streets. She heard footsteps behind her. Would not turn. The footsteps closed, dragged past. She watched a youth, club-footed, limping his way along. While her heart beat.
More footsteps, lighter this time. Again she would not turn her head.
‘Still here,’ Katie said.
Fury burst: red and black, like flame. ‘How could you do that to me?’
She was trembling, her eyes full of tears that spilled down her cheeks, despite her efforts to contain them. Her hand itched to strike this woman, whom she had thought her friend.
‘I wanted you to feel what it’s like to be a part of this place. To understand what it’s like to live here, in poverty, without hope.’
‘Someone could have attacked me.’
Katie denied nothing. ‘That’s part of it.’ She seized Marie, shaking her. ‘Don’t you understand? Fear is part of what it means to be alive. To be a true artist you have to see that, taste it on your tongue, be aware of it without needing to think about it, even. To know it in your heart, your soul. Because this is life, just as death is life.’ Still she shook her. ‘Don’t you understand?’
Marie would not admit that Katie might be right. ‘Take me back,’ she said.
Still Katie did not move. ‘Millions upon millions of people live like this. Far worse than this.’
‘Worse?’ Marie could not believe that.
Katie’s voice and piercing eyes were contemptuous. ‘I left you here for five minutes. What happened to you? Nothing. People live in these places. In Africa, Asia, Europe, America, as well as here. In Russia. If I were to tell you of conditions in Russia,’ she proclaimed, eyes flashing, ‘you would have reason to weep. If you are to become a real artist, these are the people you must paint. The people that Goya painted. Breugel … Not your rich friends in their palaces in the mountains. The squatters who would make all of us serfs, if they could.’
‘They are people, too.’
‘If they had the hearts of real people, they would not permit these things,’ Katie said. Her lips were ferocious, shiny with spit. Marie watched her, thinking that the dank walls would have applaud
ed her, if they could. ‘It is here you must find your subjects,’ Katie told her. ‘Here! It is your duty: to humanity and yourself. But if you wish to turn your back …’
She turned her own back and walked away, shoulders outraged, passionate.
‘Wait,’ Marie said.
Katie stopped, but did not turn. ‘Well?’
‘You know the people here?’
‘Some of them.’
‘Could I meet them?’
Now Katie, who had urged her so fiercely, was stubborn. ‘So you can tell your rich friends about them? That rich man who permits you to live in his house?’
‘Why did you bring me here, if not for that?’
Katie turned. ‘You wish it? Truly?’
Enough, Marie thought. She was not prepared to let this woman go on treating her like a thing. ‘If I didn’t want to meet them, I wouldn’t say I did.’
Katie examined her as though for the first time. ‘Then meet them you will.’
She had anticipated the ragged clothes, the tightly-drawn features of want, but not the smell. Poverty, she discovered, had that, too: not of dirt, although that was part of it, nor of drains and unwashed clothes and cheap food and cheaper booze, although all these things were part of it, too, but its own miasma, hanging like an invisible mist over the alleyways and courts, the huddled buildings, the people who inhabited them.
Many of them, Marie discovered, spoke no English, so that even in this they were cut off from hope in a city where English was the only tongue accepted by those who had the power to offer or deny work.
A sibilance of vowels as a woman spat words into Marie’s uncomprehending face.
‘Russian,’ Katie explained. ‘She cannot read or write. She speaks no English.’
‘Does she not have a husband?’
‘He is the same. Occasionally he gets work at the docks; otherwise they have nothing. When he has money, he drinks. He comes home and beats her.’
‘Why does she put up with it?’
‘What else can she do? Look at her: she is too old, too ugly, to be a whore like me.’
‘You are not a whore.’
Katie’s mouth sneered at this woman who found it so hard to accept reality. ‘I take off my clothes so that men can paint me. So that other men can hang my picture on the wall and stare at me. What is that, if not being a whore? But this woman … She cannot do that. She can do nothing. There is no hope for her.’
‘How do they survive?’
‘Their son helps them, when he can.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He is a thief.’
Marie took care to conceal her thoughts from this woman who, she feared, was willing to despise her.
‘What does he steal?’
‘Anything.’ Katie smiled unpleasantly. ‘That bag of yours, given half a chance.’
‘Even though I am your friend?’
‘When you are poor, you cannot afford too many friends.’
‘Why did they come to Australia?’
‘The factory where he worked, back in Russia, closed down. There was no other work, and winter was coming. He took part in a street march, hoping that the authorities would help them if they knew about it.’ Her lips flared contemptuously. ‘He was a very innocent man to hope for such a thing.’
‘What happened?’
‘The Cossacks came. They charged the marchers, killed a few with their sabres. Then the Tsar’s police came looking for the ringleaders. Her husband was nobody, but he was frightened of the police and what they might do to him, so the pair of them stowed away on a boat that brought them here. To this.’
‘It must be a disappointment to her.’
‘She accepts how things are. That is the trouble with my people,’ Katie cried passionately. ‘Too many of them are willing to accept things, to believe that God has laid these burdens on them.’
‘And what do you feel?’
‘I accept nothing,’ she said. ‘Nor do I believe in God. Priests and Tsar and police and poverty: the day is coming when we shall do away with all of them.’
‘And you want me to paint this woman? And others like her?’
‘You think I brought you here to do me a favour? No! I want you to do a favour to yourself. Because you are an artist, a good artist. Art that is not rooted in the sufferings of the people means nothing. By painting them, you may become a true artist, and save yourself, at the same time.’
‘Save myself?’
‘Those not with us are against us. When the time comes and the people rise up against the oppressors, they will perish.’
Katie sounded like the priests, with their threats of hell. Marie had not known that such passion existed anywhere in the world. She knew nothing about politics, but looked again at the face of this woman whom Katie had brought her to see. She was not really old, but poverty had set lines in her face. Unlike Katie, this woman was filled with resignation, not at all the sort to rise up against her oppressors, yet the experiences she had undergone and that Marie could read so clearly in her face might inspire other people to do so. Whether that was a good or bad thing she was unsure, knew only that to turn her back upon this woman would be to turn her back on life. Katie was right. She owed it to herself and to her art to paint these things.
‘What is her name?’
‘Sophia Petrovna Kalganova. Why do you ask?’
‘Will you ask her if she will permit me to paint her portrait?’
It was so hard. The expression she had seen in the woman’s face had been only fleeting; when the time came to begin the painting, she could see no sign of it. A catastrophe: without it, the portrait would mean nothing. Slowly, as sketch followed sketch, the preliminary work progressed, yet there were still times when she despaired. ‘It is so hard,’ she informed the uncomprehending face of the Russian woman. ‘How can I get it right, when I cannot touch you? When you cannot touch me, with your life, your heart, all the things that have made you what you are?’
One evening she cornered Katie. ‘Tell me about Russia.’
‘You would need a lifetime to understand it,’ Katie said. ‘A series of lifetimes.’
‘I want to know.’
So tell her Katie did. The steppe, unending, featureless. The gorgeous and bejewelled rituals of the church, the heavily-bearded priests in their golden robes, male voices chanting amid a cloud of incense and the devout prayers of believers.
Superstition, Katie said.
The ferocious cold, the glitter of frost, the brightly-clad skaters moving upon the ice. Brawny-armed peasants, ruddy in the summer sun, bringing in the harvest.
The palaces of the rich, the poverty in city and country, the tight fist of ignorance and despair. The oppressive police, the mounted regiments of Cossacks, the Tsar, hidden from his people, at the head of a corrupt and tottering edifice.
Which we shall tear down, Katie said.
The land that, to her and all the other exiles, would always be home.
Marie was troubled, not sure that she understood Katie’s ferocious determination to destroy so much of the country that she claimed to love. ‘If you get rid of the past, how can you be sure what the future will be like?’
‘There will be justice. Freedom from church and aristocrat, from want. A true brotherhood of man — that is what the future will be.’
‘In Russia?’
‘Everywhere in the world.’
‘That won’t happen for a long time.’ Never, she thought. Human nature and the brotherhood of man will never see eye to eye.
‘You will see it in your lifetime,’ Katie said defiantly.
Back to her painting Marie went, but the problems remained. Katie had told her about Russia and nothing about it. The spiritual essence of the land continued to elude her. Perhaps, Marie thought, no-one could capture in words or paint the soul of a land or its people, yet this was what she wanted: to express the underlying spirit of Russia in the features of the Russian woman. She tried, and failed; trie
d again, and still failed.
It is beyond me. I cannot do it. I should give up, accept the limits of what I can do.
But would not, although there were days when she came close to destroying all she had done.
‘There is no point in doing any more sketches,’ she told herself. ‘It will come out or it won’t. Either way, let’s do it.’
She began, slashing pigment upon the canvas against a sombre background of grey and white. Grey and white, to depict not only the icy wastes from which Sophia Petrovna had come, but something of the Russian spirit that, despite everything, she hoped her instinct was beginning to identify within the woman’s features.
She threw down her brush. She walked over to the woman, smiling to put her at ease, and placed the tips of her fingers gently upon her worn face. Very lightly her fingers traced the path of the lines, as though the contact would help her define the spirit of the land. It was madness; there was no possible way it could help. Yet for a full minute she continued to run her fingers lightly over Sophia’s face, until she thought that the contact had indeed heightened her awareness of what she was seeking. For the first time she permitted herself to hope that she might succeed, after all.
After that it still went slowly, but better. The pigments combined to create an image, not only of Sophia’s features and character, but of the land from which she had come.
Marie stopped, started again, stopped again. She was attempting something new, the portrayal of the spirit of greater importance than the figure itself. She was not sure she could manage it, but knew that she had to go on, see how far it was possible for her to go.
At last it was finished. For the first time she permitted Katie to look at it. The skin around Katie’s mouth went white.
‘How dare you?’ she cried. ‘How dare you?’
Whatever Marie had expected, it had not been that. ‘What do you mean?’