The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [97]
“That’s perfect!” said Manuel, and then his hand was off like Omorose fleeing over the glacier, a blur on the plank, and Awa stared at him, her miserable smile losing its wild edge, and she struggled to keep in another of those damn giggling fits. She had rarely suffered them before making his acquaintance. He was some friend, she thought, as Manuel drew the seemingly lecherous king skeleton copping a feel. “Yes, keep looking at me, keep that smile. Perfect. I used to tell old Tiziano, have the girls look out of the painting, really confront the viewer, but I didn’t take my own advice, except with the smut commissions I’d do for the boys, and Tiziano, the master I had in Venetia, he’d berate me, said it was scandalous, the dirty old dog, though secretly I think he rather liked it, wouldn’t be surprised if he started doing—”
“I fucked a dead girl,” Awa blurted out. Manuel did not say anything, but he did not stop drawing, either. She tried to keep her pursed smile but the choking wind was coming out of her lungs, catching in her throat, tearing up her eyes. “My friend, my mistress. Omorose. I dug her up and I raped her, and I didn’t ask, and her spirit, when I put it back in, wants to kill me, and—”
She was crying too hard to see he had put his panel down, and then he gently unhooked her arm from the king and held her as she sobbed and blathered, holding her stiffly but firmly. Manuel wondered if it surprised him, this lonely, half-mad witch who had come from nowhere confessing to such a deed. This is what happens, he thought, when you consort with witches, you find yourself in cemeteries hoping the monks don’t catch you and—Fuck you, and fuck them, he thought, and held her tighter. She pulled herself together quickly, and pushed him away, wiping her cheeks.
“It’s alright,” said Manuel, “we all—”
“It’s not,” said Awa firmly. “It. Is. Not.”
“Well, I think—”
“Get a plank, Manuel, get a plank and I’ll pose, and you draw what I show you, and it will be, what did you say, less vivid, than what I, what I really did, and then tomorrow, when you’re not drunk and graverobbing and excited, then you take your little picture and you look at in the light of day, and you tell yourself then that it’s alright. You show it to your wife, and ask her if it’s alright, or anyone else. I’m a beast, Manuel, a filthy beast, and I raped her, I made her, I did, I—”
“Shut up,” Manuel said sternly, his tone harder than she had ever heard it. “People will hear, people we don’t want hearing us. I’m getting my plank, so pick your partner and we’ll sort this out right now.”
“What?” Awa had not been thinking, and now he was really going to make her, which was what she deserved, but—
“Quickly, Awa.” Manuel had a new plank up. “We’re losing the moon.”
What she deserved. Awa glanced at the corpses and had the foulest, wettest mold-swaddled carcass walk to her, and knowing it incapable of deception, asked if its spirit would mind her attentions. It would not, and so, glancing at Manuel, Awa dragged it to her and kissed it full on the mouth. Her hands groped its body, grabbed the rancid penis that mashed between her fingers, vomit competing with the sob to breach her mouth, and then Manuel pulled her away from it.
“Awa,” said Manuel, his face in shadow, his eyes dark as ink. “That’s not what happened. That’s not you. I know you better than that, and if I require one thing from my models, be they whores or ladies, children or crones, it’s honesty. You can’t fool me. Now show me what happened, and don’t be afraid.”
Walking back to his plank, the artist heard her retching behind him. The internal voices that sometimes had things to say, things to ask, were all silent now, as if frightened into silence by the strange, mechanical change that had come over him. His mind was as blank as the pine panel before him, and taking a deep breath, he looked up. Awa