MYTHIC THINGS
“Pose for me.”
Maria shifts on the chair where she sits, cloth artfully draped around nothing. No, she’s getting it wrong again. She’s wearing nothing but the cloth. The cloth has her inside it; she is not nothing.
Nevertheless, Maria changes position in accordance with Pedro’s words. Never mind that she was posing before–she knows what he means, a firmer form, a stronger gaze, a more present presence. For him to create art, she has to be art. She only ever struggles lightly with the principles of aesthetic, knowing on principle what to present, what to tuck away.
He paints her, and the strokes on the canvas miss nothing, reducing her to her most minute parts without missing the larger ones. He paints her and sees all, sees nothing. She becomes someone else at the touch of his brush, but she doesn’t mind it. It is a privilege to be painted, a privilege to be a muse. A privilege to be chosen as the spark for inspiration. It is a long way from the English major she had been, but also not so far.
When she had first met Pedro that night at the party, she had thought he was attracted to her, had noticed more and more the way his eyes would meet with hers. But she was twenty-five and drinking with her friends; she knew better than to come because she’d been called. That was why he had come himself.
“Don’t you tire of this godforsaken place?” He has said, in lieu of a proper introduction. He only got away with it because one of Maria’s friends had left, and the other two were playing beer pong distractedly, nearby. Maria pretended not to notice he had spoken, and he sighed.
“Good evening.”
“Better,” she had said, turning around. But this man with the dark eyes and brows wasn’t ready to abandon his previous train of thought.
“There is something of the ancients in you, I know. This scene is too pedestrian for you.”
“How do you know?” She had said, barely asking. She had forgotten that alcohol gave her headaches, was feeling the din of the party in her bones now. She was suddenly too irritated to humour him, but he looked at her steadily and did not mind.
“I saw your beauty in the moonlight and was overthrown.”
Maria had raised a single eyebrow. “Isn’t that a Hallelujah lyric?”
“Almost. Borrowed words are better than any I could create.”
“A pity. I would have thought you were a poet.”
“‘All men owe honour to the poets,’” he had quoted, something of a test.
“Homer,” she had replied dispassionately, her words almost slurring. “The Odyssey, Fitzgerald translation. Try again.”
But he was no longer listening. Instead he looked at her like he was slicing her to pieces, and holding each one up to the light. An undressing kind of look, yet purely aesthetic. She could not begin to fathom what he was seeing, but then he straightened, cleared his throat.
“You can see I was right. You do have something of the ancients in you.” “Like you do?”
“No,” he said. “I am the camera. I picture, but do not pose.”
“You could just have said you were an artist.” Maria was sober enough to hold this conversation, drunk enough to want it to end so she could just go home.
“Does art interest you?”
“Do I interest you?”
“Yes,” he says, unwavering. “I want to paint you. You are what I have been searching for all night.”
Straight and to the point, he had been, and Maria barely remembered what came next. Agreeing on a whim, giving him her number, showing up to the basement of a brownstone that somehow managed to let in light.
That had been a year ago, when she’d stopped being Maria and started being Muse. It had not ended how she had thought it would, had furrowed into different channels. The art galleries, the money, the success that Pedro now has. She is locked away from the world and still it sees her. People look at the paintings and assume that she and Pedro are in love, and though her boyfriend is a recent addition, she has never wanted Pedro, never thought him capable of such a feeling. He looks at her and sees a painting he can reproduce a million ways, and she has learned to be at peace with that. It makes her removed from reality, untouchable, oracular. Maria has always known that she is beautiful; knows her jet black curls and chocolate brown eyes and soft red mouth give her a sweetness. She had modelled for artists before, but this is different. Before Pedro, she hadn’t known she could be a god.
At first, she had bucked against the recasting of herself. Had wondered why he painted her as not-her, every time, clothes on and off. But those had been “her salad days...green in judgement, cold in blood.” She now knows better than to want to be herself.
Today, Maria is Aphrodite. In Pedro’s gallery, there are many Marias and none. Dido. Cleopatra. A fiery Agrippina that she likes best. Now Eve, mouth red and young around an apple.
Women often painted, and she has been them all. This is how she experiences devotion; borrowed power earned by proxy, by modelling someone else worth looking at. To be a muse is to go missing, to be found in someone else.
“Turn to the left a bit,” Pedro says. Maria obliges, always does.
Her curls are starting to wilt, black and damp against her skin. They’ve been at this for about an hour now. Pedro’s studio is nice, light wood and an open concept, but somehow it has never managed to be airy. If heat gets in, it stays in; only the coldest cold leaks through. Here, she rarely shivers, mostly sweats. She has never noticed discomfort in Pedro, only the steady expression on his face, dark brows knit as he paints her for hours. He never even gets hungry, although he lets her pose with grapes and now an apple. Artists are mythic things, but so is she.
“Is this fine?” Maria asks. She has learned a peculiar way of speaking, a kind of ventriloquism; she talks out of her lips without moving them. It is made harder by the apple, but she manages.
Pedro doesn’t respond, which she takes as a yes. She settles into her position more comfortably, straightens again when he casts her a warning glance. Like all well-oiled machines, they operate silently.
“Pose for me.”
Maria shifts on the chair where she sits, artfully holding the cloth to cover nothing. No, he’s getting it wrong again. She’s covering, but he knows her in and out. She has been posing for a while, but he means the words differently. Pose, for me. Maria appropriately becomes less detached.
Painting her is less like looking at her and more like learning not to. Seeing only the goddess, only the queen, only the parts that make the whole. When he gets into the state when Maria is not- Maria, he can sit and paint her for hours. It is a privilege to be a painter, a privilege to be an artist. He is given the exquisite honour of capturing everything he sees. It is a long way from being the poet he had once wanted to be, but also not so far.
The party hadn’t been the first time that he’d seen her, although he is sure that she doesn’t remember that. She had modelled for his art-class once before, appearing in the likeness of a naiad, and he had felt himself drowning in the potential of making her art.
He had only looked at her again at the party. Seeing all the possibilities, seeing nothing of the present, not guessing at the nature of the future. He had never guessed that he would become so dependent. He had once painted other things; still-life fruit bowls, bucolic visions of the country-side. All had been cast aside for her. For her and not-her.
“Turn to the left a bit,” he says. Maria obliges, always does.
Her curls are damper now, rougher, more natural. He’s not sure how long he has been painting, but he can guess that they have been here for a while. She is eyeing a bowl of grapes that sits on a table beside him, but she doesn’t reach for it once. There is the faintest bit of sweat pooling on her upper lip, and he paints it before he really notices why. Is it hot? He doesn’t know; he feels neither cold nor heat these days. Muses are mythic things, but so is he.
“Is this fine?”
He doesn’t respond, because he knows she knows it is. He also does not want to overthink the question, or think about the ethics of their arrangement.
They have never been a couple, never been a pair. Their existences depend upon each other, but they are singular. He hasn’t met her boyfriend, and imagines doing so would be like holding a science fair in the middle of the Vatican. He won’t Frankenstein her two worlds into one.
When she leaves, goes to visit her boyfriend, she takes a side-street. Pedro watches her go away. It is cooler outside, but still she is warm, beads of sweat no doubt pooling at the base of her neck. He is able to imagine her with an ease now, the convenience of knowing intimately even the minutiae of her form. No lover can learn her like he has; the thought is errant and disobedient. The desperation makes him like a young poet again, keening, always wanting, always sad.
He looks at the painting. Her softness makes for a vulnerable Eve, her beauty makes her a tempting one. He wondered why he had never seen a dark-haired Eve, and had decided to create one. His original sin had been choosing someone he could not do without.
He is greedy, wanting a dozen women in one, a shifting display of who-will-she-be-next. He chooses. That is the only thing he chooses.
Even now, as Pedro leaves his studio, heads for the house he shares with no one, his mind wanders. Pedro is twenty-seven and now knows what it is like to be a slave to someone that does not see you. To be an acolyte serving a god who is utterly removed from your existence. To be somebody’s blessing is to curse someone else. Maria will never know how desperately he needs her, will never know how she has ruined him—for art, for life, for love.
She is his Eve, his Agrippina, his Cleo. “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety”—was that how the Bard had put it? Their alliance had been the only one to make sense; he had wanted someone to embody the women that he reimagined. Someone to give them breath and blood and beauty. That was his Maria. That was his Maria. Was he a painter, or was he possessed? Either way, he knew better than to think of wanting something else.
If he tells her how he feels, she will give him a warning glance. So he is quiet, always quiet, when he paints and when she leaves. Like all well-oiled machines, they operate silently.
Anisa Daniel-Oniko, 17, Dubai - UAE ✯ IG: @anisathescribe ✯ anisathescribe@gmail.com
“Anisa Daniel Oniko is a Nigerian author, aspiring editor, and VoFG ambassador currently based in the UAE. Her debut and sophomore books, Double ‘A’ For Adventure and Further in Florien, were self-published in 2018 and 2021 respectively. In 2019, Double ‘A’ was long-listed for the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, which is most likely her most impressive achievement. Anisa’s third novel is a stellar-punk sci-fantasy scheduled for a 2024 release, and she can be found trying to make a living out of words from the comfort of her living room. Yes, she made the word stellar-punk up. No, you shouldn’t mind. Instead, you should find her on Instagram and Tiktok, or summon her with cookies and a book deal.”