[81] Desires tend toward earthly ends

So a few days later, the Aaronsons commission me to paint their family portrait. What you have to understand, a city like this – if it happened indoors, it never counts. Emil appears at the cottage again with the offer, and with a price in his head and a cash advance if I agree. Emma reminds him it’s her money, and she turns him down for a few days. She wants to make sure that she’s bleeding them for as much as her right. Charlotte knows how to calculate the amount when Emma writes to ask. And they have no choice but to pay when we come back with a price.

I show up in the morning a month after that, once the cottage is fully habitable, with my portfolio and the rest of it, and Mrs Aaronson invites me into the piano room and offers me tea and cookies, and invites me to sit between two rented policemen. Her eyes turn beet red and start to rotate fire. When I first met her, I thought the wine was making me hallucinate that, but no, it turns out they do that, actually.

This is the last family portrait I’ll ever make, except for the ones of Charlotte. It takes the edge off my wonderment, knowing this is going to be one of a kind and that the path will stop direct after. In fact, it’s easy. I wonder how hard to work on it and then find myself working as hard as I ever do. Which doesn’t mean I work slowly. It means that most of the effort is at the front, with the first drawings. Once I pick up the colours, it goes quickly enough. I already know myself that well. I can work mostly from family photographs, which Emma borrows from Emil, and I can pull Emma from stock. But those things can’t take you all the way – you have to see how people move. Even though you’re fixing one instant, you have to see them move or you can’t know what the painting must do. So I visit each of them in turn. One canvas, four subjects, and I know right away, having met them, that they won’t be touching one another. That’s the key, no question.

I get them to pick the frame before I start, knowing how much it will matter to them. I’ll say for Mrs Aaronson that she knows people with taste. She shows me samples when I arrive, three from Moser’s workshop, two from Roller’s. I pick one of the Rollers without any hesitation. Gus uses Moser’s frames, and he wouldn’t have painted this gang.

So I’m there to make sketches of Mrs Aaronson. ‘I’d like you to move the piano to the window,’ I say. ‘Then I want you to sit at the keyboard.’ Meek as a lamb, she is for now. I’m still glad the police are here, though, to protect me from her.

‘Thank you,’ I tell her. ‘The light is excellent for this today.’ I think of a hundred things to say, but I don’t say any of them. Perhaps because Emma isn’t there for me to protect. She freezes my blood with a come-hither smile. She’s wearing one of Emilie’s dresses, scarlet and green like a Romany wagon, and her rouge is like a two cakes. She turns and straddles the piano bench and smiles at some unbearable thought of me.

‘I have this sense that we already understand each other well,’ I tell her.

‘That’s my impression, too,’ she says. ‘So how about it. We’ll get rid of those two guys and you can drag me into her room like you did with her. I do that sometimes – you, know, pull some delivery guy into Emma’s old room and do it on her bed.’

‘I can believe that easily. Look straight at me, please. Look up just a little. You must pay them generously. So tell me, do you know Emma hates you as much as you hate her?’

‘Of course I do, silly boy. The difference is, I can make her suffer terribly, but she can’t make me suffer. She’ll never know how – she has a conscience, you see, and I don’t.’

‘There’s a lot you didn’t teach her that she knows anyway.’

‘I’ve been curious about that. I’m tired of it. What’s she like in bed?’

‘Pretty amazing, and I’d know. She just loves it.’

She doesn’t like that, I tell you.

‘You’re jealous?’ I ask.

‘I just wish I got to you first instead of second.’

‘Maybe when I was still with the Hussars and I got really drunk on a Saturday night, I might have bedded someone like you – just for a bet, you know? On one of those looting and pillaging nights. The honour of the regiment and so on.’

‘I’ve always had every man I want. It’s only fair – my … husband hasn’t gotten it up for years.’

‘I’m not surprised. Castration is your specialty, judging from Emil. Well, it’s too late, Mrs Aaronson. She escaped you.’

‘The only reason I didn’t contest the marriage was that I want you for myself, and it will be easier to get you if I let you hang around with her. I’ll have you one day. Hold on, you’re going to say no I won’t. Well look at it this way – if I don’t, I’ll find a way to destroy her and you both. And really, you know, that would give me as much pleasure as bedding you once. With me, it’s always about power, and she’s never supposed to have any – I’ll never allow it.’

‘She has more power than you’ll ever have. Over me.’

‘Once is all I expect, Paul.’

‘Once would be bad enough. I’d never forget how much I loathed myself for it.’

‘Oh, I know I don’t have much charm. But I’ve got ambition, and experience, and Emma won’t be around forever. She’ll die young or go mad. I’ll always know how to make sure of that. The question is how to time it. You won’t like being in the way of that, Paul.’

‘Mrs Aaronson, tell me, if you ever were to see her in her coffin, what would you tell yourself?’