THERE WAS NO ONE in the world Jozef expected to see less than Anna Oderfeldt at his door. He had received a message cancelling his invitation to the Bernardyńska apartment that evening, and looked forward to the blank peace of time alone with his thoughts and work. Anna stood in the grey evening light, her dress bright against the stone of his building, flashing him a smile. He was in a half-buttoned shirt, unshaven, holding a paintbrush. He’d been working on Alicia’s piece, from the sketches, worried he’d lose the thread of it. He looked down at himself, lost for words.
Anna laughed in her awful affected way. ‘I’m sorry, I’m disturbing you.’ When he still didn’t invite her in, she took out and lit a cigarette. He glanced behind him at the chaos of his damp-smelling room, wondering what would be more insulting to his patron’s wife: to send her away, take her to a bar, or let her in, make her sit among his laundry and piles of canvas and the stink of turpentine.
Anna laughed again, but she had turned red. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I appear to have shocked you.’
‘I – please, come in. Was I supposed to – I had a message from Robert, from your – I’m sorry if I misunderstood,’ he said, backing into his room, casting about for detritus to pick up and throw into a corner, clearing a place for her to sit. Anna glanced at his bed, the crumpled sheets, unmade, as she sat on his one chair next to the small kitchen table. Seeing this, it was his turn to blush, and stammer, ‘I wasn’t expecting company. I’m a slob when I’m working, you see.’ This was better: take refuge in the artistic excuse, part of his narrative with the Oderfeldts.
Anna rested her chin on one hand, passing her cigarette to the other. She gestured with the cigarette, a question in her eyes, and Jozef took one, if only to have something to do with his hands.
‘I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. Would you like something to drink? I have some vodka, but it isn’t very good.’
She nodded, and he busied himself pouring some out. He swallowed his swiftly at the sink, feeling his annoyance rise. He wanted to work, she had pushed in here but seemed to have nothing to say, she was bringing all of the awkwardness of his visits to Bernardyńska here, to his own home, and he didn’t have Karolina or Alicia, or even Adam, to cushion his distress. When he turned to hand Anna the vodka, he saw she was looking around the room in a kind of dream.
‘I grew up in a room like this,’ she said.
He laughed in surprise. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s true. I just met a woman who knew my mother. She was chastising me for not paying my respects at her grave. She’s buried a few blocks away.’
Anna drained her glass.
‘What are you working on?’
‘Your husband’s commission, of course.’
‘But everything is at our apartment.’
‘I have lots of versions and sketches coming. That’s how I work. We have the shape now, and I’m starting to think about the colour in the composition …’ He stopped as her eyes slid past him and around the room again, clearly bored.
‘Even the colour of the walls is the same,’ she said. She put her chin in her hand again, drummed her red nails against her cheek, meeting his eye. ‘My daughters enjoy your company, I think.’
‘They’re a credit to you.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘How polite you always are.’ She held out her glass, and he refilled it. ‘Go on.’
‘Mrs Oderfeldt?’
‘Anna, for God’s sake. Go on, ask me what on earth I’m doing here.’
He took a sip. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ he asked, using the old-fashioned greeting. She laughed, and he made her laugh blossom by adding a little bow with a flourish of his hand.
‘Adam has left.’
This shocked him. ‘Left? He’s left you?’ The red lipstick, the evening visit started to make some sense. He felt a twitch of lust, but it was quickly taken over by a twinge of regret over his painting, which would now never be finished, and, strangely, by the end of his visits to the apartment across the river, the long hours in the dining room, Alicia’s attentive face. Karolina’s calm presence. He sighed, put out his cigarette in the sink. Would Adam still pay him? Anna was laughing. Was she already drunk?
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she finally said. ‘He’s gone to France for a while. On business,’ she added.
‘And that’s why you’re here?’
‘So it’s fallen to me to talk to you about my daughter.’
Anna was watching him. He kept his face very still as his heart sped up. He had done nothing, nothing to disgrace himself. He admired her, the quiet space she built around herself, and yes, the supple grace of her body, the kind warmth of her brown eyes, the way she became lost in her own world, as he could. But he had never spoken of it, never touched her. He hadn’t even drawn her, except in his head.
‘She’s …’ Anna frowned. ‘I’ve never seen her so obsessed by something before. She’s never seemed all that interested in anything, to be honest. If you ask Adam she’s fascinating but I’ve always found her rather bland.’ Anna lit another cigarette. ‘She’s driving me to distraction hunting for this dress you asked her to find, and talking about colours.’
Jozef breathed in and out, his relief making him break into a rare smile. ‘She’s clever. She’s got a natural understanding of—’
‘Well, stop … involving her. I’ll just tell her what dress to wear. She only needs to stand there, just let her stand there.’
‘Yes, Mrs Oderfeldt.’
‘Anna. Don’t be angry.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Can I have another drink?’
He poured her one, as distant thunder sounded.
‘Shall we go to bed?’ she said.
‘You’re very beautiful, but—’ he said, too quickly.
‘Yes,’ she said. She smiled and stood up, putting her cigarette out in the vodka glass. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you have lots of lovers. Models, other artists, that sort of thing. Don’t you all live hedonistic lives, like Parisians?’ She laughed.
He blushed. ‘Yes,’ she answered herself. He felt she was laughing at him, and his little life in his little room. He crossed to the door, opened it just as more thunder rang out, sounding closer. He lost his nerve at this. ‘Perhaps you should stay until the storm—’
‘I have my reputation to think of,’ she whispered in mock-scandalised tones. ‘Perhaps I could borrow an umbrella?’
‘I don’t have one,’ he admitted. ‘Well, I did, but it’s broken,’ he added lamely.
‘What a pity. My mink will get ruined. Goodnight!’ she trilled, and walked out into the night. In a shop window in the fading light, the electricity of the gathering storm pressing on her, Anna touched her face, straining in the dark to see her features more clearly. She knew there were small lines around her eyes and mouth. She looked at her hands, still young-looking enough, and small. Adam loved her small hands, liked to lace her delicate fingers through his own, elegant long ones. She looked into the window again, but the night was too dark to see, and anyway her tears would be swelling and reddening her pale skin. She glanced up at the sky where thick drops had begun to fall. She wanted to be curled up in a clean bed, chaste in silk nightclothes, listening to the storm. She sent a tendril of thought to Adam in his other life, then withdrew it as she set off across the cobbles, slippery in the rain.