A Fair Maiden (15 page)

"I saw the book. The book in the library you'd dedicated to her. The picture book about the little skunk's first day at school, which I've been reading to Tricia Engelhardt. It's a wonderful story, Mr. Kidder. I saw the dedication—'To my lost Naomi.'"

Now Mr. Kidder drew back from Katya. His smile faded.

"'To my lost Naomi'—I'd forgotten."

"Was Naomi your soul mate, too? How could you forget your soul mate?"

The dark, feral wine beat through Katya's veins, urging her to utter such words. For in that moment Katya was meanly jealous of the other girl, the rich blond girl with the sweet vacant gaze.

A shrill sort of sex banter, this was. Katya could hear the crudeness of her south Jersey speech, yet could not seem to overcome it.

Carefully Mr. Kidder was saying, "Naomi belongs to my private life, Katya. My life before you. She was in fact the daughter of Bayhead Harbor friends, and she died young of a wasting disease similar to but not identical with multiple sclerosis. She resides in my memory, but she does not live now as you do, dear Katya. So please drop the subject."

Still Katya persisted. Her mouth twisted in bitterness, which was also a kind of mockery she'd seen in Essie Spivak.

"And what about the other girls? The women? That woman with the red, wavy hair"—Katya was pointing at one of the portraits, prominent on the wall—"who was she?"

"Enough, Katya! It is always risky when a model chooses to speak."

Mr. Kidder was on his feet. Brisk now, and matter-of-fact. Perhaps he was amused by his young friend's childishness. Perhaps he was dismayed, disgusted. He gave no sign but began to work, switching on brighter lights, bringing over his easel to set in front of the sofa. Katya was feeling remorseful now. Draining her glass and coughing. How crude she was! She knew this. How stupid, to reveal her jealousy. It was a mistake to provoke Marcus Kidder. She'd come to his studio to pose for him, after all, and to be paid. She'd dressed with more than usual care, and she'd even put on lipstick.
Slut. Slut! Pay me.

"Come, Katya. We haven't much time."

Nearly midnight! Katya felt a swoon of anxiety and remorse.

Briskly Mr. Kidder adjusted the sofa, took away the small pillows, smoothed out the black velvet backdrop. From a nearby table he took up a small white blanket, or shawl, which Katya had been noticing: was this the very beautiful, very special present he'd promised her if she returned to him? It did look beautiful, crocheted and decorated with small white satin ribbons. Casually Mr. Kidder said, "Tonight, Katya, you will remove your clothes."

Katya wasn't sure she'd heard correctly. Remove her clothes?

"Your clothes, Katya. You can't seriously think that I would paint you in your summer play-clothes, do you? You can take off your clothes in the bathroom and wrap yourself in this shawl, which is for you. Cashmere and silk, hand-crocheted, from Portugal. For you."

Seeing how Katya continued to stare at him, so taken by surprise that she wasn't yet upset, Mr. Kidder said patiently, "Don't be a child, Katya. A model models—the human body is the subject, and in serious art the human body is usually nude. Nude, not naked. There is a distinction."

Slowly Katya shook her head.
No.

"Katya,
yes.
Go into the other room, remove your silly sport clothes, wrap yourself in this lovely shawl, and come out here like a professional model. You know that I will pay you, dear? Yes?"

Mr. Kidder was holding out to Katya the white cashmere-and-silk shawl, quite a large shawl, with a delicate fringe, feathery light. It was true, the shawl was beautiful. Casually it might be revealed to Lorraine Engelhardt, drawn over Katya's shoulders on the next windy boat ride on the ocean.

"I d-don't think so, Mr. Kidder. I guess—I don't want to pose ... nude." Almost Katya choked on the very word:
nude.

Mr. Kidder objected: "Katya, your wants are irrelevant here. We are seeking something beyond mere wants—moods. Think of your soul revealed by way of your body, and the artist is the instrument to make it luminous, as art."

Yet Katya said, numbly, "I—I don't know what that means, Mr. Kidder. But I don't want to do it. I'm not really a ... model. I'm not even very pretty. I don't have any talent for art." Words tumbled from Katya's mouth; she had scarcely any idea what she was saying. "The sketchpad you gave me, the pencils—I tried to use them, in Harbor Park, drawing geese, but—"

"Katya, stop! You're being ridiculous. I will not allow you to denigrate yourself—your beauty, and your talent. I'm sure that if you work hard and use your imagination, you can one day write and illustrate children's books just as well as Marcus Cullen Kidder did in his time. How will you know, until you try? All that lies ahead, dear. Within the scope of my wishes for you. But that is the future, and tonight is now. You will disrobe in the bathroom and wrap yourself in this shawl. Now."

Katya took the shawl from Mr. Kidder. Light as gossamer in her hands, the most beautiful shawl she had ever held.

Yet still, with childlike stubbornness, Katya shook her head. No. She could not do this. She wasn't beautiful, as Mr. Kidder said, but ordinary, ugly. Anyone who saw her naked—nude—would laugh at her.

Exasperated, Mr. Kidder drew down from a bookshelf a hefty book titled
The Female Nude,
to show Katya. Here were glossy color plates of female nudes by such artists as Titian, Botticelli, Giorgione, Raphael, Ingres, Rubens, Renoir, Manet, Matisse ... Katya stared at the color plates with mounting impatience as Mr. Kidder paged through them, pausing to speak of them. You could see that Marcus Kidder was not a man to be contradicted; his gentlemanly good nature was possible only when he was obeyed in all things. When he encountered opposition, he became infuriated. And this was so, Katya thought, for all the men she'd known, including her father.
You do not contradict a man. If you want him to love you, you do not.

Katya saw that as Mr. Kidder loomed above her, oily moisture gleamed on his high, bony forehead, and he was pressing the heel of his hand against his chest, where you'd expect his heart to be. The expression on his face was both stricken and indignant, as if pain itself were an insult to him. In dismay, Katya thought,
Mr. Kidder is not a well man! That is his secret.

"We're wasting time. For me, a man of my age, precious time. Disrobe, Katya, and wrap yourself in this shawl. Come back out here, and if lying on the sofa you don't feel that you can remove the shawl, or allow me to remove it, that will be all right. It won't be ideal, but I can proceed." Mr. Kidder took up Katya's wineglass, replenished it with a half-glass of wine and a half-glass of sparkling water, and handed it to her, and poured himself another full glass and drank. He was not so agitated now; the pressure in his chest must have faded.

Katya thought,
He wants to get me drunk. That's a good idea.
She drank; she hiccupped and laughed and wiped her mouth on the edge of her hand. She said, "You must know what a naked—nude—female looks like, Mr. Kidder. Why d'you need me?" and Mr. Kidder said, "Because you are you, Katya," and Katya said, "My body could be any girl's body, Mr. Kidder. It's just something I was born into," and Mr. Kidder said, "Well, yes—as I was born into the body of Marcus Cullen Kidder. This is so. You are quite the Platonist, Katya! Yet Plato would argue that your body is but a vessel for your soul: your perfect body is the vessel for your perfect soul. And it is your soul, Katya, that I wish to portray. You come to me at a crucial hour of my life, as it is a late hour of my life—you are my soul mate, and I will never give you up."

Katya was moved by this speech, and made uneasy by it. She drank from the wineglass, not sipping but frankly drinking as if thirsty. The dark, feral wine taste seemed delicious to her now. Like Roy Mraz's open-mouthed kisses, sucking and gnawing kisses, like Roy Mraz's rough hands on her body—you wanted to scream for Roy to stop what he was doing and then you screamed because Roy might be about to stop. Helplessly she thought,
I won't do this
—
I will walk out of here.
More reasonably she thought,
He will pay me more than he has paid me yet. He loves me.

As if something had been decided, and in his favor, Marcus Kidder began whistling. Shoved his arms into a paint-splattered smock to wear over his gentleman's clothes, and prepared his brushes. Chiding Katya, he said, "We must use the ever-diminishing time that remains to us, Katya! Time is the enemy of lovers. Worse even than the frank light of day."

Katya laughed and set down her emptied wineglass, clumsily, so that it toppled over onto the floor. On unsteady legs she went into the whitely gleaming bathroom to remove her clothes. The beautiful white cashmere-and-silk shawl she took with her, to wrap about her nude body.

He is the only one who loves me. And I love him.
He's a dirty old man, a pervert. You must know.
Marcus Kidder! Not ever.
A gentleman-pervert. A rich-old-man pervert.
He adores me. He adores Katya, he believes in her.
He gave me money for Momma when no one else would. He pays me, and he loves me. And I love him.
For his money, bitch. We know.

When Katya reappeared, moving awkwardly—drunkenly?—in the shawl wrapped about her, which fortunately was the size of a child's blanket, Mr. Kidder behind his easel no more than glanced at her with seeming casualness. He instructed her to lie down on the sofa, as she'd done before, and this time to lift and cross her arms behind her head—"In the most natural pose you can manage. And relax." He seemed not to care whether Katya fastidiously covered herself with the shawl or not. Stiffly she tried to obey him while keeping the shawl over her breasts and keeping her knees pressed tightly together; she had a horror of the sharp-eyed artist seeing the ugly little black spade tattoo on her inner thigh and guessing at once what it was.

The claim of another. A crude sex-claim.

Or had it been one of Roy Mraz's jokes? He'd been high, and Katya had been so dazed she'd barely remembered afterward the stinging pain of the tattoo artist's needle...

"Katya, eyes here! Please don't lapse into your mysterious melancholy. We are here, it is now. All else
verboten.
" After this, Mr. Kidder fell silent. Katya could hear just the comforting sound of his brush against the canvas and in the background the rippling harp music. In a kind of floating dream she was aware of the cozily lit studio, Mr. Kidder's beautiful, tasteful things: wicker furniture, hardwood floor, elegant venetian blinds shut tight against lattice windows, the tick of the mantel clock. Glittering clusters of fossil flowers, so lifelike you might mistake them for living flowers encased in glass, their beauty suffocated and preserved.

And, from outside, the
slap-slap-slap
of the surf.

The dark-tasting wine had made Katya sleepy. Her thoughts came slow and silent and remote as high cumulus clouds. By degrees the white shawl slipped open, exposing her hard, rounded, creamy-pale little breasts with their nipples like mashed strawberries ... In the bathroom earlier Katya had removed her clothes with fumbling fingers, avoiding her reflection in the mirror, her flushed face, her shamed eyes; quickly she'd wrapped herself in the shawl to hide her nakedness. For there is no fear more primitive than the fear of being naked in a strange place. But now, so relaxed, her eyelids drooping, Katya was thinking that Mr. Kidder was right, as usual: the human body was a subject for art. In
The Female Nude
there were dazzling works of art, centuries-old paintings of surpassing beauty; the female nude was a revered subject for the greatest artists, and Marcus Kidder was of this lineage. For this was true art and nothing like the lewd, lurid billboards looming above the Garden State Parkway featuring exotic dancers at the Atlantic City casinos...

No shame to it, if you are paid. Models are paid.

The higher the payment, the less shame.

What time was it? Katya tried to make out the clock face, which was obscured by shadow. Tried to see through her eyelids, which appeared to be shut, her eyelids so heavy she could not lift them. And her arms, and her legs, leaden, impossible to move. Her knees had fallen open; the black spade tattoo must have been exposed. The shawl had slipped from her entirely, or had been drawn away by invisible hands. The black velvet cloth crinkled beneath her, chafed the sensitive skin of her back and buttocks. Her breath had grown husky and labored, as if she were sleeping, though—Katya was sure!—she was not sleeping but alert and awake. And now someone was leaning over her, and a man's lips lightly touched hers. And she felt a yearning to be kissed, to be held and to be kissed, to be loved, protected. For there is no fear so primitive as the fear of being not-loved, and not-protected. The
slap-slap-slap
of the waves was hypnotic, and yet: the fact of the ocean is that it is harsh and inhuman, and wading out into the surf, you can be overcome by an abrupt crashing wave, picked up, thrown down, your mouth filled with salty water and sand; within seconds you can drown if you are not-loved, and not-protected.
My darling! My beautiful girl!
—as she lay unable to move, unable to open her eyes, sinking further into darkness which was both suffocating and comforting. She felt her nipples lose their childish softness and become taut like hard little berries, sensitive when touched. A man's wet lips were on her breasts, he was sucking her breasts; Katya could not see his face, she squirmed in protest, tried to speak but could not speak, she was laughing because it tickled so, there was a sudden sensation in her belly, between her legs, a kind of tickling yet quivering tight; the man's breath was warm against her belly, his breath was warm against the crinkly hairs that sprouted between her legs, of which she was embarrassed, the fuzzy little bush at which Roy Mraz laughed.
Don't, no, please no I don't want this,
Katya was pleading, for he'd seen the little black spade tattoo on the inside of her thigh and this too he was kissing, licking with his tongue, between her legs he was licking with his tongue and sucking and Katya tried to push him away but could not, and could not raise her voice, could not protest for she was so very tired, her arms, her legs were so heavy, unresponsive to her will. Her thoughts came too slowly now to be grasped, like clouds passing so slowly overhead you can't discern their movement, and still there was, in the distance, the teasing
slap-slap-slap
of the waves. A sudden piercing sensation gripped Katya, a concentration of nerve endings like charged wires; she began to whimper, like a young child whimpering, helpless and thrashing from side to side, as if impaled, yet slowly, for she could not wake herself fully—the soft black muck of the Pine Barrens held her fast.