% The Sculptor and the Swedish Foreign Minister
% Mogrem
% May 2023
*Author's note: This is a stand-alone piece about the sculptor, whose story you can read more of in 'Natalie and Helena' and in the 'Lisa and Polly' series.*
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"Who is that?" asked the prospective client, an elegant, immaculately made up blond. She was cruising past middle age, but taking with her as much youth as her nutritionist, personal trainer and surgeon could parcel up.
She wore a severe black dress that clung in all the right places, but was largely hidden under a designer great-coat that was too warm for the British summer. Her hair was bobbed, her nails were done, her shoes were black heels and rang out as she stepped around.
She was walking around the sculptor's studio with nervous hesitancy, but obvious excitement.
Twice she had stopped by a half finished statue --- figures emerging from oak like Michelangelo's angels being set free from the marble --- and gone to touch the figure, and stopped herself, hand in the air, and looked at him for approval.
He had nodded of course --- they were made to be touched --- and both times she had laid her palm on against the feminine stomach and held it there for a second, as though she could feel its heat through the rough oak.
She had used her real name when contacting him, but she hadn't told him who she was. She didn't need to, it fell into his lap. He found her name in the Swedish Cabinet, as the Foreign Minister, the Utrikesminister. Newly promoted.
Using her real name and not insisting on discretion and secrecy in advance --- he knew how to read that move.
She was here for a thrill. She would ask for something that risked exposure; a small, controlled risk. Controlled by him.
He guessed she would want a miniature of herself, something small enough for a government salary, and small enough to be hidden when she had people around, or from her spouse.
He had a number of powerful women come to him wanting variations on the same. Always they would say it was "for him", a husband or boyfriend. Always the sculptor would know it was very much for her, and the man may never even get to see it.
This client hadn't mentioned a commission yet though. She was putting it off, working up the nerve as she moved through his garden of female forms.
"Who is that?" she had asked, after she'd rounded a monstrous fusion between two women, a man and a bull, hewn with deep violent cuts from red stone, and stopped in front of another altogether softer body.
This figure was just over five feet high, slim to a fault, with flawless youthful skin, arms folded behind her back thrusting her chest forward. Her legs were pressed tightly together from thighs to knees to ankles, and her legs and torso were twisted a little, kinking a kneed and a hip, as though she were struggling against restraints that weren't there.
He black hair fell past her shoulder blades. She had a pretty mouth, slightly open, and that was all that could be seen of her head under a black leather hood, like a falcon's, that covered her eyes and ears.
As they took her in the girl moved the smallest amount, enough to shift weight between feet without breaking the pose.
"Is she a model?"
"No."
The client couldn't take her eyes off the girl. She dragged her gaze up and down, moving her head a little to this side, then that, to gather in as much of her as she could without walking around her. She had a gaze like an artist's; she drank everything in.
Eventually she breathed sharply, like she had been holding it, and said, "Is she... Is she one of your sculptures? The form of a girl, made by the body of a girl?"
She tore her eyes away to meet his. He smiled approvingly, encouraging her.
Perhaps she had come looking for something more than a miniature, but hadn't known what until she had seen it. The question now was whether she wanted the girl, or to be the girl.
"Who is she?" the client asked again. "Please tell me. And can she hear us?"
"No she can't.
"Five months ago another client came to me to pick up his commission. A Romanian. He had wanted a Venus, modelled by his favourite mistress. Life sized, for his bedroom, I gathered.
"An artistically uncomplex piece, but great detail was requested and given. Money, he said, was no object.
"I modelled it in bronze. When he picked it up... well, obviously he had proposed it when he felt flush, whereas by then, I suppose, he felt less so. Perhaps some 'deal' had fallen through.
"In any case he baulked at my price. He haggled and threatened and insulted. It was most tiresome.
"I remember very particularly one thing he said. He said, 'For twenty four k British pounds I could hire a girl to stand in my bedroom for year; in Romania for two year, even three year. My own living statue."
"Eventually I let him have it on installment, to get him and it out of here. He took it and every month now I get two grand by wire, every month for twelve months."
He paused for a moment, to let his guest's mind work. He thought she would see where this was going, at least in outline. When her hand went up to her throat and her eyes widened and snapped back to the girl, he continued.
"This client had a daughter living in London. That was easy to find out. An estranged daughter, you will be unsurprised to know, given his evident qualities as a male authority figure, or indeed as a human.
"She was working zero hours in restaurants, refusing hand-outs from home. I approached her, offered her a salaried position in the workshop."
He went on. "'As a model?', she asked. 'No, not a model, as art'. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'Women are art,' I said, 'you will be mine'.
"I offered her twenty four k British pounds a year, for one year. Two grand a month."
"Herregud..." murmured the client.
"She is here six hours a day, three days a week. This is her fifth month. She has become very good at it. Every day she memorises and recreates poses from works of art that she has studied at home.
"She holds many as ten different poses in a day. I am not a monster, many of them are prone. She holds the pose until touched. When released she moves to the next."
The woman moved closer to the girl. She stopped, hesitant again. She closed the last few feet and was standing directly in front of her.
She put a hand out but paused and looked over her shoulder at him for approval.
He nodded.
She let the palm of her hand come down between the girl's breasts and held it there, feeling the heart beat. The girl twitched but held the pose.
