The Matisse Stories - Antonia S. Byatt [26]
Anyway he came—kindly—to my studio to see my Work. I could see immediately he did not like it, indeed was repeled by it which I súpose was not a surprise. It does not try to be agreable or seductive. He tried to put a good face on it and admired one or two minor pieces and went so far as to say there was a great power of feeling in the room. I tried to explain my project of revising or reviewing or rearranging Matisse. I have a three-dimensional piece in wire and plaster-of-paris and plasticine called The Resistance of Madame Matisse which shows her and her daughter being tortured as they were by the Gestapo in the War whilst he sits like a Buddha cutting up pretty paper with scissors. They wouldn’t tell him they were being tortured in case it disturbed his work. I felt sick when I found out that. The torturers have got identical scissors.
Then the DVP got personal. He put his arm about me and hugged me and said I had got too many clothes on. He said they were a depressing colour and he thought I ought to take them all off and let the air get to me. He said he would like to see me in bright colours and that I was really a very pretty girl if I would let myself go. I said my clothes were a statement about myself, and he said they were a sad statement and then he grabed me and began kissing me and fondling me and stroking intimate parts of me—it was disgusting—I will not write it down, but I can describe it clearly, believe me Dr Himmelblau, if it becomes necesary, I can give chapter and verse of every detail, I am still shaking with shock. The more I strugled the more he insisted and pushed at me with his body until I said I would get the police the moment he let go of me, and then he came to his senses and said that in the good old days painters and models felt a bit of human warmth and sensuality towards each other in the studio, and I said, not in my studio, and he said, clearly not, and went off, saying it seemed to him quite likely that I should fail both parts of my Degree.
Gerda Himmelblau folds the photocopy again and puts it back into her handbag. She then reads the personal letter which came with it.
Dear Dr Himmelblau,
I am sending you a complaint about a horible experience I have had. Please take it seriously and please help me. I am so unhapy, I have so little confidence in myself, I spend days and days just lying in bed wondering what is the point of geting up. I try to live for my work but I am very easily discouraged and sometimes everything seems so black and pointless it is almost hystericaly funny to think of twisting up bits of wire or modeling plasticine. Why bother I say to myself and realy there isn’t any answer. I realy think I might be better off dead and after such an experience as I have just had I do slip back towards that way of thinking of thinking of puting an end to it all. The doctor at the Health Centre said just try to snap out of it what does he know? He ought to listen to people he can’t realy know what individual people might do if they did snap as he puts it out of it, anyway out of what does he mean, snap out of what? The dead are snaped into black plastic sacks I have seen it on television body bags they are called. I realy think a lot about being a body in a black bag that is what I am good for. Please help me Dr Himmelblau. I frighten myself and the contempt of others is the last straw snap snap snap snap.
Yours sort of hopefully,
Peggi Nollett.
Dr Himmelblau sees Peregrine Diss walk past the window with the cheese-plants. He is very tall and very erect—columnar, thinks Gerda Himmelblau—and has a great deal of well-brushed white hair remaining. He is wearing an olive-green cashmere coat with a black velvet collar.