Free Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal

than compensate for the little wood-framed mirror she had given him the night before. He put a brush in her hand and wrapped her fingers around the handle in a way she considered awkward.
    â€œBut I have never painted,” she said, staring down at it. “
Ellers
, I’ve painted only fences and the goose pen, all in white—er, white—”
    â€œWhitewash,” he said, pushing her up the ladder. “So then you can paint ice . . . Mind your skirt, darling, we don’t want you to trip; perhaps you should take off the nightdress . . . Here, you may start with this corner. Only try—remember, many English ladies paint.”
    â€œI am not a lady,” she said, but she let herself be pushed.
    â€œLadies paint in watercolor anyway,” he said, and his argument was so nearly logical that she capitulated and put a tiny, all but invisible dot of pale blue in the farthest reach of the left-hand corner.
    Behind her on the ladder, he praised the dot extravagantly. “That’s splendid, that’s really wonderful! Such sensitivity, such finesse—you are a born artist. In that little spot you have captured an eternal truth about the nature of ice, about its essence and symbolic weight in human and natural history . . .”
    â€œStop!” She laughed as his hands reached up, caressing first her bottom, then her waist, then dipping into that controversial thatch of hair. “I must concentrate on my art!”
    That day she made two dots more before Albert pulled her off the ladder he’d so insistently pushed her up. He took her to bed, where both were very happy.
    Over the next days, Famke discovered that she liked painting. Albert seemed genuinely grateful for her help with the dreary ice, especially as she was willing to lay the base of blue-white and mottle it over while he walked the streets in search of breakfast or inspiration. She was careful to keep her brushstrokes as smooth and flat as the white gesso, and enjoyed squeezing the clean-smelling paint from its metal tubes—rather like milking a cow, she thought at first; then, when more practiced, like holding a girl’s breast so long that a drop emerged. The very thought made Famke retire for a moment to bed.
This is a cottager coming home to warm himself . . . This is a fish . . . This is a paintbrush grinding a pearl
.
    When Albert came home, he did the finer work, adding nuance to the ice, a bubble or a flower here, a crack or a worm there, more of the reddish glow that signified not only Nimue’s magic but her virginal anger as well. Soon the canvas was finished.
    Albert bought wide strips of gilded walnut for a frame, then proceededto bury the gilding under a thick layer of more painted flowers and butterflies. He could hardly wait till the paint was dry before he fit the frame around the canvas—up into the very peak of the roof—and laid a thick coat of varnish over the whole.
    â€œWhile
Nimue
dries,” he proposed, “I should do some smaller pictures. Maybe the Amazon Queen Calafia. Or perhaps Flora, goddess of springtime, as we still have those silk flowers; or Salome, if we can borrow Mrs. Strand’s brass platter. What do you think, darling—are you prepared to surrender the brush and pose for me again?”
    Famke dared a sly suggestion: “Perhaps,” she said, “you could paint John Ruskin on his wedding night, seeing the whole truth of a woman.”
    Albert smiled at that but said, “We have no one to pose for the male figure. No, I think we shall try Salome.”
    So she stood before Albert again, draped in filmy veils torn from Nimue’s nightdress, with the brass platter reflecting back her own face instead of John the Baptist’s. She smiled and smiled, gazing at that honeyed image.

Kapitel 6
    If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be