Rushkin had crossed the room to stand by one of the studio’s two easels. Northern light spilled through the large window to the left of his work area and from the skylight above him, bathing the room with its remarkable glow. He had a window open to air the room, but the smell of turpentine still permeated every corner. In front of his easel was a battered recamier upholstered in a faded burgundy brocade. The wall behind it was covered with a cascade of deep blue drapery, and to one side stood an Oriental screen.
“Have you ever posed before?” Rushkin asked as he began to squeeze paint onto his palette.
Izzy still stood by the door. The recamier, with the light falling upon it and the drapes behind it, was too much like a stage. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting in coming here this morning, but posing for Rushkin hadn’t even remotely entered into her imagining.
Rushkin looked up at her. “Well?” he demanded.
Izzy’s throat felt as though it was coated with fine particles of sand. She swallowed dryly and slowly closed the door behind her.
“Not really,” she said. “I mean, not, you know, without any clothes on.”
She’d often wanted to augment her meager finances with modeling fees, but somehow she’d never found the courage to do so in front of her own classmates the way some of the other students did. Her friend Jilly didn’t have that problem, but then Jilly was beautiful and didn’t seem to know the meaning of self-consciousness.
“Nudity bothers you?” Rushkin asked, plainly surprised.
“No. Well, not in life drawing class. It’s just that I’m …” She took a deep breath. “I feel kind of embarrassed.”
Rushkin’s pale gaze studied her until she began to shift uncomfortably under its intensity.
“You think I’m trying to humiliate you,” he said.
“Oh, no.” Izzy quickly shook her head. “It’s not that at all.”
Rushkin waved a short arm in a grand gesture, encompassing all the various paintings and drawings in the room. “Do the subjects in these paintings appear humiliated?”
“No. Of course not.”
“If we are going to spend any amount of time together,” he said, “if I’m to teach you anything, I have to know who you are.”
Izzy wanted to disagree, to argue that you got to know someone through conversation, but instead found herself nodding in agreement to what he was saying. She hated the way she so often let anyone with what she perceived as authority or a stronger will have their way in an argument. It was a fault she just couldn’t seem to overcome. By the time she did stand up for herself it was usually so long after the fact that the source of her anger had no idea what it was that had set her off.
“And what better way to get to know you,” Rushkin asked, “than to paint you?”
He fixed her with the intensity of his pale blue eyes until she nodded again. “I … I understand,” Izzy said.
Rushkin spoke no more. He merely regarded her until she finally placed her knapsack on the floor by the door. Blushing furiously, she made her way behind the screen with its colorful designs of Oriental dragons and flowers and began to undress.
IV
Fifteen minutes into the pose Rushkin had finally decided upon, Izzy developed a whole new respect for the models in her life drawing classes. She lay on the recamier in what she’d been sure would be a relaxed position, but her every muscle seemed to be knotting and cramping. The arm she was leaning on had fallen asleep. She had a distracting itch that traveled from one part of her body to another. No sooner did she manage to ignore it in one place than it moved elsewhere. It was cold, too. And no matter how easily the people in the paintings that regarded her from every part of the room bore their nudity, she couldn’t help but still feel humiliated. Although that was perhaps too strong a word. Humbled was more like it. Which was probably Rushkin’s whole intention, she thought in a moment of cynicism.
Remembering their brief meeting yesterday, and considering how she’d been treated so far today, she realized that Rushkin was one of those people who always had to be in control.
She watched him as he drew. Getting to know her, she thought. Right. He was entirely ignoring her as a person; she’d become no more than a collection of shape and form to him, areas of light and shadow. The only sound in the room was the faint skritch of his vine charcoal on the canvas as he worked on his understudy. At length she couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“How come you live like this?” she asked. “I mean, you’re so famous, I can’t understand why you don’t have, you know, a more posh sort of a studio.”
Rushkin stopped working and glared at her. With him looking the way he did, it was hard to imagine him capable of getting any uglier than he already was, but the glower in his features would have put to shame any one of the gargoyles that peered down from the heights of so many of Newford’s older buildings.
“Can you remember that pose?” he said, his voice cold.
Izzy didn’t think she’d ever forget, but she gave a small nervous nod. “Then take a break.”
Moments ago, Izzy would have given anything to hear those words, but now all she wanted to do was to reel back time until just before she’d opened her mouth. Better yet, she’d like to reel it back to before she’d ever decided to come here. Rushkin looked as though he wanted to hit her and she felt terribly vulnerable. She sat up slowly and wrapped herself in the crocheted shawl she’d brought with her when she’d first come out from behind the screen. Rushkin snagged a stool with the toe of his boot and pushed it over the floor until it stood near the recamier. Then he sat down and leaned forward.
“Is that what art means to you?” he growled. “A ‘posh studio,’ fame and fortune at your beck and call?”
“No. It’s just, you’re so famous and all, I just thought …”
“We’re going to have a rule when you’re in this studio with me,” he told her. “You don’t ask questions. I don’t ever want to hear the word ‘why’ coming out from between your lips. Is that possible?”
Izzy drew the shawl more tightly around herself and nodded.
“If I feel you should know the reason behind something, if I think it necessary to whatever we happen to be working upon at the time, I will tell you.”
“I … I understand.”
“Good. Now, since you weren’t aware of the rules we follow in this studio, I will allow you your one question.”
He sat back slightly on the stool, and it was as though a great weight had been lifted from Izzy’s chest. His pale gaze was no less intensely upon her, his glower hadn’t eased in the slightest, but that small bit of space he gave her suddenly allowed her to breathe again.
“You want to know,” he said, “why I live the way I do, why I dress like a beggar and work in a small rented studio, so I will tell you: I abhor success. Success means one is popular and I can think of nothing worse than popular appeal. It means your vision has been bowdlerized, lowered to meet the vague expectations of the lowest common denominator to be found in your audience.
“It’s my belief that elitism is healthy in an artist – no, required. Not because he uses it to put himself above others, but because it means that his work will always remain challenging. To himself. To his audience. To Art itself.
“I can’t help the success of my work, but I can ignore it and I do. I also insist on utter privacy. Who I am, what I do, how I live my life, has nothing to do with the one facet of myself of which I allow the world a view: my art. The art speaks for itself; anything else is irrelevant and an intrusion. To allow a view of any other part of myself relegates the art to secondary importance. Then my work only becomes considered in terms of how I live my life, what hangs on my own walls, what I eat for breakfast, how often a day I have to relieve myself.
“People want to know those details – I’ll grant you that. They think it gives them greater insight into a piece of art, but when they approach a painting in such a manner, they are belittling both the artist’s work
and their own ability to experience it. Each painting I do says everything I want to say on its subject and in terms of that painting, and not all the trivia in the world concerning my private life will give the viewer more insight into it than what hangs there before their eyes. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, even titling a work is an unnecessary concession.
“So,” he concluded. “Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“And do you agree?” he asked. What passed for a smile stole across his grotesque features.
Izzy hesitated for a moment, then had to admit, “Not … not really.”
“Good. It’s refreshing to see that you have your own ideas, though you will keep them to yourself so long as you are in my studio. Understood?”
Izzy nodded.
At that Rushkin stood up and kicked the stool out of the way. It went clattering along the floor until it banged up against a canvas. Izzy shuddered at the thought of the damage it might have done to the piece.
“Now,” Rushkin said, “if you will reassume the pose, perhaps we can salvage what remains of the morning light and actually get some work done today.”
V
Izzy had plans to meet Kathy at Feeney’s Kitchen for tea later that same afternoon. When she finally arrived at the café after her session with Rushkin, she found her roommate sharing a table with Jilly Coppercorn and Alan Grant, who were also students at the university.
Jilly always reminded Izzy of one of Cicely Barker’s flower fairies, with her diminutive but perfectly proportioned form, the sapphire flash of her eyes and the wild tangle of her nut-brown hair. They were in most of the same classes at Butler U. Jilly was a few years older than the other students, but all she ever said by way of explanation was that she’d been late finishing high school. Like Kathy, she never spoke of the past, but she was willing to hold forth on just about any other topic at great and entertaining length.
Alan, on the other hand, was quiet – a gangly, solemn young man who was an English major like Kathy. Unlike Kathy, though, he had no aspirations of becoming a writer. His dream was to have his own small literary press – “Because someone’s got to publish you people,” he’d told them once – which frustrated Kathy to no end, since she thought he was one of the better writers among their fellow students. For proof positive, she’d point to The Crowsea Review, a little photocopied journal he’d produced over the summer and managed to place in the university bookshop on commission. “His editorial’s the best thing in it,” she’d say to anyone who cared to listen, an opinion bolstered by her own modesty since she herself had a story in the magazine.
Izzy waved acknowledgment to their chorus of hellos and went to the counter to get herself some tea and a muffin before joining them at their table by the window.
“So?” Kathy asked as soon as Izzy drew near. “Was it him?”
Izzy nodded. She set her tea mug and muffin down on the table and took the free seat between Jilly and Alan.
“Was it him who?” Jilly asked, then laughed at the way her question sounded.
“Izzy met Vincent Rushkin on the steps of St. Paul’s yesterday,” Kathy said with the sort of pride in her voice that Izzy had always wanted to hear coming from her parents. “And he invited her to his studio this morning.”
Jilly’s eyes went wide. “You’re kidding.”
“Not to mention,” Kathy went on, “that he wants her to study under him.”
“You’ve got to be putting us on.”
“Nope,” Kathy said. “Choira might be giving her a hard time, but her talent’s not going unappreciated where it counts.”
Izzy was embarrassed to be in the spotlight. She also felt she had to defend Professor Choira, who taught both Jilly and herself life drawing.
“Professor Choira just thinks I’m spending too much time on detail,” she said. “And he’s right. I’m never going to learn how to do a proper gesture drawing until I loosen up.”
“Yeah, Choira’s not so bad,” Jilly added. “At least he knows what he’s talking about.”
Kathy gave a disdainful sniff.
“Enough with Choira already,” Alan said. “Tell us about Rushkin. I don’t know the first thing about him except that his work is brilliant.”
Izzy felt her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish as she tried to slip a word into the flurry of Jilly’s questions. But she knew exactly how Jilly was feeling. If their roles had been reversed, she would have been pressing Jilly for as many details, if not more.
“Well, he’s overbearing,” she said. “A bit of a bully, really, but he …”
Her voice trailed off as her memory called up what Rushkin had said to her about his desire for privacy concerning his private life: The art speaks for itself … to allow a view of any other part of myself relegates the art to secondary importance. Looking up, she found three gazes fixed expectantly upon her, waiting for her to continue.
“Actually, he’s a pretty private person,” she said, knowing how lame this sounded. “I don’t really feel right, you know, gossiping about him.” Jilly rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
“I got the feeling that he doesn’t want me to,” Izzy added. “It’s as though, if I do talk about him, or what goes on in his studio, he won’t ask me to come back.”
“You sound like you took a vow of silence,” Kathy said.
“Well, not in so many words. It was more implied …”
“This has all the makings of a fairy tale,” Alan said with a smile. “You know, how there’s always one thing you’re not supposed to do, or one place you’re not allowed to go.”
Jilly nodded, getting into the spirit of it. “Like Bluebeard’s secret room.”
“God, nothing like that, I hope,” Izzy said.
But thinking of the story Jilly had been referring to reminded her of how she’d basically spent the morning in a state of barely-controlled fear, not just because of who Rushkin was and how much she respected his work, but because he could look so terribly fierce, as though any moment he might come out from behind his easel and hit her. She gave a nervous laugh and then managed to change the subject.
No one seemed to mind. But she had cause to remember that conversation later.
VI
So what made you clam up about your morning with Rushkin?” Kathy asked as the two of them walked back to their dorm together. “I thought that if it really did turn out to be him, you’d be so excited that none of us would have been able to get a word in edgewise.”
“I was embarrassed.”
“About what?”
Izzy shrugged. “Well, for one thing, I didn’t learn anything – no, that’s not right. I did learn a couple of things by watching him work, but he didn’t teach me anything. He just had me posing for him. That’s all I got to do.”
“He’s doing a painting of you?”
Izzy nodded.
“Well, that’s a real compliment, isn’t it? Immortalized by Rushkin and all that.”
“I suppose. But it doesn’t say a damn thing about my art.” Izzy glanced at her friend. “I just felt so awkward. I mean, I knocked on his door and he didn’t even say hello or anything, he just told me to take my clothes off and start posing.”
Kathy’s eyebrows went up.
“Don’t even say it,” Izzy told her. “It was strictly business.” She pulled a face at the thought of Rushkin touching her. “But it felt, I don’t know. Demeaning.”
“Why? You don’t think the models in your life drawing class are being demeaned because of what they’re doing, do you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“So what was the problem?” Kathy asked.
“I don’t know how to explain it exactly,” Izzy said. “It’s just that I got the feeling that he wasn’t painting me in the nude because he was inspired to paint me so much as that he wanted to humble me. He was establishing his control.”
“Power tripping.”
Izzy nodded. “But it wasn’t a man-woman
thing. It went deeper than that. He talked a bit about elitism – in terms of art – but I think it’s something that touches all aspects of his life. You know he never even asked me my name?”
“Sounds like a bona fide creep,” Kathy said.
“No,” Izzy said. She took a moment to think about it before she went on.
“It’s more as though so far as he’s concerned, he’s the only thing that’s of any importance; everything else is only considered in how it relates to him.”
“Lovely. You’ve just given me the classic description of a psychopath.”
“Or a child.”
“So do you think he’s dangerous?”
Izzy considered the fear she’d had to deal with the whole time she’d been in his studio. In retrospect, Rushkin’s attitude had presented her with more of an affront to her own sense of self-worth than any real sense of danger.
“No,” she said. “It’s just disappointing.”
Kathy gave her a rueful smile. “Well, I can see why you’d be disappointed, especially considering how much you love his work. That’s the trouble when you meet famous people sometimes – they’re all wrong. They turn out to be everything their work would never lead you to expect.”
“But maybe we’re at fault as well,” Izzy said. “Because we’re the ones with the expectations.”
Kathy nodded. “Still, you don’t have to like him to learn from him, do you?”
“Well, it would sure make things easier.”
“Nothing worthwhile is easy,” Kathy said; then she grimaced. “Who thinks up those sayings, anyway?”