The Model Read online

  THE MODEL

  by Robert Aickman

  THE MODEL

  All history is fiction, just as all fiction is history

  —Benedetto Croce

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Elena sprawled on the hard chair

  Aflame, despite the weather, with conviction

  Elena stole upstairs

  After only a few more days the opera house gleamed like granite

  That same afternoon Elena’s mother asked to see her

  Elena tapped at the study door

  So there was little alternative to Elena setting out

  Tatiana had been asked by Elena

  So winter seemed nearer than ever

  Above the gates were the usual ghastly heads on spikes

  The first person she met was Irash himself

  Fortunately there was a golden fleece or coverlet

  Irash was on his knees again

  After divers further causeries and rallies

  There was no boundary wall

  A peasant and his wife took them in

  “How long were we in the carriage?”

  About an hour later

  Lexi simply took it for granted

  The bright sunshine outside Smorevsk

  They reached the small town

  They entered the large back room

  “Half the pain in the world is caused on purpose”

  All through the evening meal

  “You must share my room”

  And, in the morning

  Such was the breakdown and disorder

  Farewells again!

  The next morning

  The coach was calling very early the next day

  Copyright

  Elena sprawled on the hard chair with her legs as far apart as her skirt would stretch. She had abandoned even that simplest of tasks, the pulling the stalks off cherries which were about to be plunged into the strongest of spirit in order to sustain the family and their friends through the winter, now only a week or two ahead at the best. Elena gazed almost perpendicularly at the freckled ceiling. There were times when she positively wished she were a boy, though not a boy like her brothers, Gregori and Boris.

  Gregori and Boris, with hardly a year between them, were enormously older than Elena: as good as grown up ever since she had known them, or as bad. Her dear friend Mikhail, the son of the priest, though only a little younger than Boris, was not grown up: he wrote epic poems, he painted mysterious pictures, as small as the poems were large, he played the balalaika, and, when out of earshot, he sang. He sang holy songs, of course, but sometimes, when out with Elena in the woods and meadows, songs that were more personal, and personal to her, as Elena knew quite well. She found it hard to imagine Mikhail being grown up ever, even though various horrid transformations in trusted people had already come her way.

  Boris, the younger of her brothers, was so much older than she was that she wondered how she had come to be born at all, and many others wondered also, including some who had been intimately concerned in the matter. Since Gregori and Boris, there had been many miscarriages, and several sad stillbirths.

  Elena’s best friend, Tatiana Ivanovna, suggested that Elena might be a changeling: the offspring of gypsies, or of the nobility, or of fairies, or of spirits.

  “Happy spirits,” said Tatiana, who was always cheerful and kind.

  “I don’t think I look like a gypsy,” said Elena gravely, who was blond almost to whiteness. But the other possibilities remained, and there were many more also. Children who were uncertain of their parentage abounded. Elena knew that it was the kind of thing to be expected. No one had told her so. She knew.

  One might have supposed that as the youngest and coming so late, Elena would have been fussed and pampered, perhaps to spoliation. Such was not the case. Her mother was worn out and dispirited, virtually an invalid. Her father, the best lawyer in the small town, was much preoccupied with trying to collect his fees, in order that the family could survive. With almost all his clients almost always in default, he was in a position to allow himself few pleasures, or his family either. He had once been a great sportsman. In that way he had won patronage, and had added to the number and importance of his clients, backsliders though they were.

  By now Gregori was in the army and doing very well at a great distance; and Boris was in a seminary, reporting very little. All the priests Elena had met, including Mikhail’s father, had been stalwart, muscular men, visibly akin to Boris; as ready to tackle a miscreant in the material world as to combat the demons of sloth and pride in the spiritual.

  In the empty house Elena might for long periods have been totally forgotten and even unfed had it not been for Bábaba. Bábaba was nursemaid and nanny, governess and preceptor, mother and grandmother and guardian angel; and so many other things also that Elena had lost count. It was Bábaba who had set Elena now to stalking the cherries.

  One difficult matter was that, contrary to first appearances, the stalks simply would not come away without drawing half the cherry with them, so that the basic task soon seemed to Elena pointless. Elena was one who reached decisions of that kind quite rapidly (only, of course, when the circumstances justified). In the present case, however, as so often in life, there was a simple and factual explanation: the cherries set aside for submerging in strong spirit were those deemed too tough, hard, and generally inferior for presentation at the Timorasiev table.

  It was Cook who had separated the goats from the sheep; Cook who had no other name than Cook, and never had had, or could have had. Cook had hurled the bullety fruit at Bábaba, indicating that she would want it back by that evening for the distillation or the predistillation, or for some vital preliminary even to that. Cook’s hands were too full for the stalking of fruit, and the kitchen girl, Asmara, was coughing so badly these days as to be unable to work at all. Asmara squatted all the time in the corner, simply coughing and retching. She would probably have been provided with consolatory texts if she had been able to read. Elena, who was sorry for her, sometimes secreted her a bonbon, emanating ultimately from the priest’s sister, Tosha, who made bonbons all day, summer and winter, selling them where she could, giving them away where she felt fond, melting them down again where she had to.

  Cook’s hands would, therefore, have been sufficiently full in any case, but as things were, work had been unceasing for days because guests were expected, and foreign guests, though old friends.

  Elena never forgot that it was precisely at that moment, without meaning, when her eyes were looking upwards and seeing nothing, and the bucket of mangled cherries was between her open legs, that Herr and Frau Barger von Meyrendorff entered the house through the door used by tradesmen, children, and hens. They had arrived a whole day and three-quarters early, owing to the new railroad, in every way superlative! Papa had either overlooked its existence or gravely miscalculated its functioning. In order to keep down the number of problems and demands, the Timorasiev family made no use of the railroad themselves.

  “Ma petite!” cried Frau Barger von Meyrendorff, and threw her arms tightly round Elena, lifting her feet many inches from the floor. “Chérie!” she gasped, covering Elena with kisses all over her face and childishly bare neck.

  “We failed to obtain entry through the front door,” said Herr Barger von Meyrendorff, beaming.

  “But we regard you, Elena, as nearly the head of the family now,” said Frau von Meyrendorff jocularly, at last setting her more or less upon her feet; “with your brothers all those thousands of leagues distant, and possibly never to return, or not for a very long time.”

  “We have brought gifts to the little Elena,” cried Herr von Meyrendorff, radiant with sentiment. “She is an important pe
rson now.”

  He was holding out a colored object, which previously he had been concealing behind his frock coat.

  “Merci beaucoup,” said Elena politely, though still gasping slightly. “What is it?” She hesitated to lay hands upon it without first finding out, though Tatiana, her friend, would have seized it at once, with no questions asked.

  “You have three chances to find out,” cried Herr von Meyrendorff, superfluously elevating the object beyond Elena’s immediate reach.

  “It’s a fairy lantern,” said Elena, less gravely than when she spoke to Tatiana or even to Mikhail; more in the carefree manner that grown-up people liked and used among themselves, when not in tears or in a rage.

  “No.”

  “It’s a funny game to play.”

  “No. Wrong again. It’s not a game at all.” Herr von Meyrendorff was almost bursting with suffocated mirth.

  “It’s a fruit. Like a popomack.”

  “Very nearly right, little lady. But it’s not a popomack. It’s an ananas.”

  Elena had never seen a pineapple, or even a picture of one, nor even heard of such a thing’s existence.

  “What’s that?” she inquired doubtfully.

  “It’s a very big, very choice fruit, chérie,” explained Frau von Meyrendorff, tenderly. “You slice it up with a silver knife, and you eat all of it, every bit of it, and it will bring you luck.”

  Of course, grown-ups always used those last words when they were wanting to be nice and to make the impression they intended; and so far the words had meant nothing very much.

  “Yes, you eat all of it,” said Herr von Meyrendorff with enormous double emphasis, and perhaps double meaning too. “You don’t give away any of it to anyone.”

  “Except tiny bits to us,” put in Frau von Meyrendorff merrily.

  “But secretly,” said Herr von Meyrendorff with the same gigantic emphasis. “You must keep the whole thing secret, or bits of ananas will find their way into the wrong hands.”

  “I shall give bits to Tatiana and Ismene and Clémence and Mikhail,” said Elena.

  “Yes, to them,” said Frau von Meyrendorff, defining by omission.

  “I won’t cry catch, as it’s rather spiny and spiky,” said Herr von Meyrendorff. “If you’ll hold out both your hands, I’ll put it in them.”

  Doubtfully, Elena did as she had been told.

  “Ouch,” she cried. “It’s like a porcupine.”

  “How often have your hands held a porcupine?” inquired Frau von Meyrendorff.

  “Only once,” replied Elena truthfully. “But for two whole minutes. Then it jumped down and ran away.”

  “Dommage,” said Frau von Meyrendorff. “But never mind. I have a present for you too. Put down the porcupine, and accept a present from me. My present is wrapped in silver paper, and tied with scarlet ribbon, and you are to promise not to open it until you are in your little bedroom, and entirely alone.”

  In point of fact, Elena’s bedroom was far from being little, and immediately above it was a whole floor of empty attics; many of them. Elena was far from sure how many there were. On the other hand she was perfectly sure about being alone in her bedroom. She was almost always alone there. Not even Bábaba had ever once been permitted to sleep with her. Elena’s mother was obsessed with the need for hygiene, and always had been.

  Once more, Elena silently stretched out her white hands.

  “You have the hands and wrists of an artist, my little child,” said Herr von Meyrendorff, rather seriously.

  Elena stared at her hands, dazed and spellbound for a second, but confused. Mikhail had tried to teach her to paint and draw, to write poetry, and to sing, all with little success, and had sadly concluded that she would never be an artist at all. He had told her so in the nicest way, and wept.

  “Don’t forget, you must promise,” said Frau von Meyrendorff gently.

  Elena looked up. “I promise,” she said, without much thought.

  And then Frau von Meyrendorff’s present was in her arms. Somehow, somewhere, it had been successfully concealed until that moment. It was less heavy than she expected, but the silver paper gleamed and glinted in the fading light, the glow of autumn, as everyone everywhere called it, and all the time.

  “Elena Andreievna Timorasieva!” cried out a clear voice from the deeper gloom within the house. “Donnez-moi cet objet là, immédiatement!”

  But, by the mercy of the Holy Ones, it was at the hideous, hairy pineapple that Bábaba was so relentlessly pointing, not at the silvery mystery, held tight to Elena’s bosom.

  “That is no food for a child,” proclaimed Bábaba, the compassionate.

  “It is the most healthy food a child could eat, or a grown-up person either,” said Herr Barger von Meyrendorff, his cheeks mantling as far as one could see through the dusk. “Life is far too short for abstinence of any kind.”

  “I am not speaking of grown-up persons,” said Bábaba. “The little ones have to be protected and defended against novelties and impurities of all kinds, and specially little girls.” Bábaba was courageously clutching the pineapple to her chest, spines and all, exactly as Elena was holding the silvery mystery.

  “Impurities! How dare you employ such a word?” rejoined Herr von Meyrendorff, now, almost certainly, more black in the face than red. “Have I not seven daughters of my own, six grown to maidenhood?”

  “Yes, it is so,” confirmed Frau von Meyrendorff.

  “Madame decides what is to be eaten in this house, what is to be done, what is to be thought and felt. I am only a servant, but I am closer to Madame than a shadow, and closer than a shadow to Elena Andreievna too.”

  “Return me that fruit at once!” demanded Herr von Meyrendorff, advancing upon Bábaba, through the gloaming, presumably in order to take possession.

  “Amadeus, be controlled,” recommended Frau von Meyrendorff.

  But the apparition of Herr von Meyrendorff was already so alarming that Bábaba temporized, mighty fortress though she was.

  “I shall take the object to Madame, when Madame has finished resting. Hers will be the final word upon the subject.”

  “No,” said Herr von Meyrendorff. “Return the fruit to me at this moment, and, if I and my wife think fit, it is we who shall address Madame Timorasieva in our own persons.”

  But by then Elena had crept away in the darkness. Clinging to the silvery package, she climbed flight after flight of stairs, cast open the door of her huge bedroom, carefully shut the door behind her as Frau von Meyrendorff had directed, and threw herself on the big bed. There had never been any intermediate condition for Elena between cramped cot and this dimly painted bed that would have held twelve Elenas, three at the head, and three at the foot, and three on each side, as in the picture.

  Elena slowly and carefully untied the silk ribbon and dismantled the silver paper, the finest and the most she had ever seen. Within was another wrapping paper, dark in the darkness. There was no knowing what hue it was. And at the heart of it all was simply a book.

  Elena had expected something entirely new and unknown, either fanciful or instructive, for she was often a serious little girl. She was exceedingly disappointed. She feared that the book might even be in German, of which she thought she knew but a single word, which she had lately learned and which was Kirschwasser. But no: at least the book seemed to be in French. Mamma had always insisted that all possible domestic and social communication be in French and upon all visitors speaking in French, wherever they might have come from. By the very last of the daylight Elena could just make out the book’s title: it was Les coryphées de la petite cave. Elena was but little the wiser.

  She laid the book on the bedside chest of drawers and applied herself to folding the silver paper into the neatest possible package, and then the other paper also. In almost total darkness she deposited the paper and the book in a useful cavity she had found and enlarged in the wall paneling behind the icon. It was not a completely secret hiding place but, to r
each it, a grown-up person would probably have to move the icon, which would have been sacrilegious.

  In the end Bábaba would be coming after her with a lamp, but Elena knew that in the meanwhile Bábaba would attend upon Madame, to whom her first duty lay, and the duration of whose needs and commands was unpredictable, even when she was asleep. The tiny flame before the icon was insufficient even for reading French, and there was nothing for Elena to do but straighten her hair and her dress and to think. She was already a practiced thinker. She sometimes decided that she thought more than all the rest of the household put together. She passed the fine foreign ribbon through her fingers again and again, and round and back, taking care, however, not to crease, crumple, or spoil it. A length of fine scarlet ribbon might in the end come in useful for almost anything.

  It was not Bábaba who appeared, but Frau von Meyrendorff. She came steaming in like a locomotive which had ascended a long and notorious incline. She was carrying a lamp, though guests seldom succeeded in taking lamps from the rooms without authority. The lamplight beautifully illumined Frau von Meyrendorff’s red-and-gold hair, large brown eyes, large but soft-looking nose, and large mouth.

  The first thing she did was set the lamp on the bedside chest of drawers where, had she but known, her present had lately lain, and the next thing was once more to gather up Elena into her arms, so that Elena would again have to straighten her hair and dress, those things at least.

  “My little love!” gurgled Frau von Meyrendorff. “My darling! My perfect, silky doll!”

  Elena recollected that all but one of Frau von Meyrendorff’s own daughters were now grown up, and therefore likely to be found at arm’s length.

  “Thank you for the book, Frau von Meyrendorff,” said Elena, as soon as she was able to speak at all.

  “Where is the book?” asked Frau von Meyrendorff, looking eagerly round the room, but not again picking up the lamp, which was hissing slightly and smelling so that one noticed.

  “I have put it away,” said Elena judiciously. “It lies with my treasures.”