The Artist’s Muse. Kerry Postle

Chapter 1

      The wind is cutting and the trees bare. It will not be easy. But I am twelve years old. We are at number 12 Favoritenstrasse. And I take this as a sign. It is time for me to stand tall, grow up, and look after the people I love. Mama knocks on the door. I stand behind her, holding myself as upright as I can after dragging two deadweight bags – mine and Olga’s – all the way from where we got off the tram.

      It’s difficult to even stand (and as I glance round at Olga, whose head is against my skirt, Frieda who’s sitting on her own bag, and Katya who’s standing protectively behind the two of them, I see that I am not the only one of us having trouble), yet I grit my teeth knowing that I will be able to remove my boots with gaping holes in their soles very soon. And I will be strong. No one has come to answer the door to us yet. As I lean past Mama I wonder whether I have grown or she has shrunk since we caught the train from Tattendorf. Either way, one of us has changed. I knock on the door with more force.

      As I wait for it to be answered, Mama fidgets and turns the scrap of paper over and over in her hand. She reads it again, just to make sure we’re at the right address and when Frieda asks, ‘Is this it?’ Mama looks to the heavens. I just think: twelve and 12. How could it not be?

      Then the door collapses inwards. It’s pulled back with a force so fierce I expect to see cracks in the white plaster of the walls that surround it.

      An elderly man, once he’s picked himself back up, stands in the doorway, stopping momentarily to draw a flask to his thirsty lips. He’s so close to us that I can’t fail to see that he has an oversized red nose from which veins trace across his cheeks like tributaries on a map; the whites of his eyes are yellow. He looks the worse for wear, no doubt due to the liquid contents of his flask, which he attempts to drain by holding it upside down until he’s drunk every last precious drop within. He is an intriguingly strange and disturbing sight on this cold and wintry day.

      ‘… but they’ll be here in a minute,’ a woman’s voice pipes up. ‘You’ve got to go.’

      A small, elderly woman with messy grey hair – despite its being pinned back in a bun – now stands at the open door, pushing the man with the flask over the threshold. An evil old crone pops into my mind. Will she lure us in? Pop me, Katya, Olga, and Frieda in the oven? Cook us? Eat us? But I push this wicked witch on through before she sets up permanent residence in my imagination. I never did like the stories she was in.

      ‘Frau Wittger?’ my mother asks, her voice rising with trepidation: worried that she is, worried that she isn’t.

      ‘Oh, Oh!’ She pushes the old man with the flask out into the street and we part like the Red Sea as she shoos him on his way. He leaves a sour smell and goes without a struggle, more intent on checking the contents of his flask every other second. He’s forgotten he’s just emptied it down his throat. Sway, swig, puzzled expression. Sway, swig, what? There’s none left?

      ‘Same time next week, Wittgi?’ he shouts behind him, not hanging round for a reply.

      ‘Oh!’ The old woman puts one hand to her hair then brushes the front of her skirt with the other, just like Mama used to do when we had visitors. Before father died. ‘Frau Wittger,’ the woman says, ‘that’s me.’ And then, with hushed embarrassment, she leans closer to Mama and whispers, ‘You won’t be seeing him again.’

      At this I notice my mother sway a little. I put out my arm to steady her. I fear she’s growing weaker and I have visions of my sisters floating away untethered for want of a mother to hold them in place. Twelve and 12. It’s my time. I can do this. I push them in front of me, Katya included, as I am the eldest, extending my arms around the shoulders of the two younger ones to give strength to their sapling limbs.

      Katya copies me, which I don’t begrudge on a day like this. Together we cross and link limbs in an intricate, delicate way. We will be strong together, my sisters and I.

      A broad smile stretches out the wrinkles of Frau Wittger’s face, which softens at the sight of us. ‘Oh, such little ones. Such lovely, lovely little ones. Come in, my dears. Look at you all. Oh, my dear girls. Come in. Come in.’

      She nods a welcome to me, then Katya, before bending down and taking Olga and Frieda by the hand. I first think her overly clucky, like a broody hen, but as I see my little sisters relax, catch the relief sweeping across Mama’s face, I am soon grateful for the gentleness this stranger brings, and for the excess of warmth with which she tries to thaw us. ‘Oh, you poor dear mites, you’re frozen,’ she cries, as she beckons us inside.

      She leads us to our room at the top of the house. We follow in silence, pulling on heavy bags while I clutch tired hands. ‘If you need anything …’; ‘if you get any trouble …’ She bombards us with kindness and offers of help we’ll never remember.

      And as we make our way up creaking stairs, and along dark corridors lined with closed doors, she lights up this new and shadowy world with the exuberance of her voice, wraps us in the warmth of her words so that we feel protected from the harsh shouts and coarse laughter that come from the rooms along the way. Though Mother asks, ‘Are we your only guests?’

      ‘A key, look here, you’ve got a key,’ she pants when she gets to our room at the top of the house. There is a lock, and with a rattle and twist of the key we are in. A sharp blast of icy air hits us. I look at Mama.

      Frau Wittger looks to heaven. ‘Oh, it’ll soon be warm, once you makes yourselves all comfortable up here!’ she wheezes, more in hope than belief, and with that she abandons us, taking her optimism with her.

      The room is miserable, with a bare wooden floor, its discoloured curtains drawn, drawn to conceal a broken windowpane I discover when I go to open them. Cold air comes in through the cracked glass, causing the curtains to flap around.

      Katya tells Mama what she should do: leave, move, go back, say to Frau Wittger … But I know that’s the wrong thing to do. I know that Mama has no choice. Not one of us has any choice other than to stay here, and we’re lucky Frau Wittger’s such a good, kind soul.

      I look at the bed and I’m about to suggest to Mama that she go and have a rest in it when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Frau Wittger, now quite flushed, perspiration around her nose and across her forehead. She’s made her way back up the stairs. It hasn’t been easy for her. And there, tucked under one arm, she has the prettiest white bedcover, embroidered with the daintiest of pink rosebuds. Dangling from the other arm is a basket so heavy she puts it down the minute I open the door.

      ‘For you and your mam,’ she says, offering the bedcover to me. As soon as I take it, she holds her side, clearly in physical discomfort, before bending down to pick up the basket. Once inside, she closes the door and sets the basket down. She hugs Mama before leading her to the bed and helping her to remove her boots.

      ‘Lie down and rest, dear,’ she says soothingly, though Mama casts a look of anguish over her daughters in protest. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she assures her softly. ‘Now cover your dear mam up with that cover, why don’t you, girl,’ she tells me. ‘Then you little ones can bring that basket over and we can see what’s inside.’ By the time Olga lifts the cake out, Mama is asleep.

Chapter 2

      The first nine months are tough. To set the tone, Mama does not get out of bed for three weeks, and when she does she looks as though a noose has been placed around her neck. Exhausted, that’s what Frau Wittger tells us is the matter with her, but Mama’s not done a day’s work yet.

      The elderly woman we’ve only just met cooks, cleans, and cares for us as if we’re her own.

      Her rooms are on the same floor as ours and she opens them up to us with a joy that doesn’t blind us to Mama’s suffering but helps us see there’s something more. That Olga and Frieda play ‘searching’ in her drawers full of broken costume