The Sculptress V.S. Alexander (ebooks that read to you .txt) 📖

they were dim shadows; but, when night drew close, or she tossed in muddled sleep, they cut into her like a scissor sliced against a finger.

A chilly breeze ruffled the newspaper covering her worktable and a desiccated edge flapped onto the brown clay. She flicked the newspaper away, then looked up, and watched the dull clouds drift over the courtyard. How long would it be until a spring downpour interrupted her work? Her first day working outside since the cerulean days of October had been frustrating—the exhilarating promise of May dashed by a gloomy afternoon. She put aside her anticipation of light and warmth even as bleak New England winter faded.

She swiped a finger through clay and softly molded the brown blob against the faun’s right cheek, drawing a furrow with her nail, then smoothing it with the mound of her index finger. For her effort, the cheekbone rippled like a creased sheet of paper. Now the faun, its youth destroyed, appeared old and ugly. She blotted the face with a towel, bits of clay sticking to the white cloth. She raked her fingers over the scalp and the faun’s wavy hair shifted like beach sand battling the tide.

No, it’s wrong. All wrong. Perhaps Bela Pratt’s warning was correct. I should spend my time in pursuits more suited to a woman. No, that’s madness! What do critics know? How can they understand what I’ve felt, what I’ve experienced?

Tom appeared before her, pleasing in his soft smile, his manner gentle, his words encouraging her from thousands of miles away. He wanted her to succeed! Just as quickly as she gauged his support it faded under her apprehension. He only wanted to keep her busy; thus, her little avocation would root her to home, pleasantly occupied, while he remained at the Front, doing the job he needed to do.

Lazarus padded past the open French doors into the courtyard, his tail slapping her leg. As she reached down to pet him, a spit of rain splashed her hand.

The faun stood naked, unprotected, under the gray, iron sky.

“Come, inside!” she yelled at Lazarus as he circled the courtyard before following her across the threshold. She closed the doors against the wind and stood in front of the logs sizzling in the sitting room fireplace. Her young Irish housekeeper, Anne, had stoked it earlier that afternoon in anticipation of a dreary day. The cheery light and warmth of the room buoyed her somewhat as the dog settled at her feet. Yet, she couldn’t help but stare through the wavy glass panes at her work sitting forlornly on the table.

“I feel sorry for the faun,” she said to Lazarus.

The small fir in the courtyard thrashed in a sudden burst of wind, and rain pattered upon the walls in increasing veils. Rivulets of muddy clay coursed down the faun, onto the table, soaking the newspaper, before splashing in brown streams upon the stones. The face she had fretted over for weeks was dissolving in the downpour. She turned to the fire and called for Anne.

The faun’s face was never right. Never.

Agitated, she swiped her hand across her husband’s photograph on the mantel. An oily film of soot and smoke coated the glass. Tom, in a contemplative mood, stared out at her. Anne needed to be more thorough in her cleaning. Tom’s picture should never be allowed to get dirty—but the thought arose more from irritation with her husband’s absence than with the housekeeper’s duties.

She stared at the photograph and was transported to the privacy of their bed in their first years of marriage. Trying to fire his emotions, she had touched his cheek, run a finger over the stubble of his chin, and down through the light matting of blond chest hair. Often when they had made love, even when she was thinking of Kurt, she studied the muscle and sinew of his body, the bone and cords that formed him. In a clinical way, he was a model for her. He had the gift of a surgeon; but, in the silence and the darkness, she was the artist, the sculptress who saw beyond the body, into the soul, capturing that essence for later transformation into bronze or marble.

But the early days with Tom had become long ago and Emma struggled to recreate in her mind any touch from a man, the way it had been before such tactile senses had diminished.

Anne broke the silence with her soft query, “Ma’am?”

“I’ll have supper upstairs, in the studio,” Emma said.

Anne nodded and then cried out.

“For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong?”

“Your statue, ma’am. It’s melting.”

The faun dripped in the murky light, the face transformed by the rain into a shapeless mass. Emma took some pleasure in watching the transfiguration, as if she were a Greek goddess mocking the folly of men.

“It’s all right,” she replied after some time, “the faun was a failure.”

“I thought it was beautiful,” Anne said.

“If only you were a critic.” She pointed to Tom’s photograph. “The glass is dirty. Please clean it the next time you do the room. I’d like his picture—”

“I understand, ma’am. I know how you must miss him.” Anne smiled.

“I don’t want things to get . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence because she didn’t know how to reply. Yes, she missed him dearly at times, but her instruction was more a matter of keeping a household together.

Anne departed and Emma settled into her favorite chair across from the fire. Lazarus, needing no prodding, curled at her feet. With her every glance into the courtyard the faun’s form changed—metamorphosing—the eyes washing away, the nose disintegrating to a smooth lump. The brown water pooled on the stones.

An image jolted her.

Narcissus.

After supper, she would look at her art books for depictions of the youth obsessed with his image. He was the perfect metaphor for the nations, all vainglorious, thrust into war. Why had she not considered the subject before?

Her mind drifted from her work to Tom. From a basket next to her chair, she