The model will be here soon, and you have to sketch her before nightfall. Artificial light always spoils everything... I move my body, get up. I return to the self-portrait and do not see myself in the mirror. The body becomes sticky. I raise the mirror, look into it, but in the reflection - an empty workshop. I am not in this workshop. I don't see it.
So, it seems, for today it will be enough. I go to bed, I write a note to the model: it is necessary to wake up! I practically close my eyes, but I have a feeling that eyelids do not close completely, and the dream comes out through my eyes into the workshop space. The sun shines out the window. A white, furry cat walks along the wooden frames, and sunlight fills its wool with yellow chicken shade.
The man lies on the bed, struggling to sleep, but the appearance of a cat makes him uncomfortable. A cat is a predator. But the predator does not pay attention to the person. A moustache stretches with glowing antennas, and a rainbow tail stands as a pole. Valyazhno cat wanders through the workshop, along the window, around the sunny square on the floor. He walks on a man, but he can't even raise his hand and defend himself. Only a dotted touch of the steps of soft clawed feet.
3...2...1...The cat jumps into the sunlight and disappears.
- You asked me to wake you up. My name is Katya.
A model. I wake up, look at Katya, and the attention is focused on her hands: long, thin fingers, a pronounced pea-shaped bone, bracelets with bells on a thin wrist ... I want to portray her hands, and then act on the circumstances. It seems that I am getting deeper and deeper into the world of miniature.
I look around in the studio - no animals. Only two people. I suggest that you share your lunch with her, but she politely refuses. Then, holding a brush and a spoon in one hand, I invite her to sit across the hall with the other.
- Let's start with the hands," I say.
It's like a manicure room.
The modeless is used to the odd behavior of artists. Begins to take off her bracelets, and there is a barely audible, pitiful ringing of bells. I stop it:
- No! Don't take it off. Today we will work on the sound.
I curse myself for the sharpness.
- Leave everything as it is, please.
There is a burr sticking out on her thumb and a blood stain underneath it, and an island of inflamed skin around it. Like an insect bite. The hand is small, not very well-groomed, the boy's hand. The index finger is slightly worn, and as if even a little curved, as if Katya often holds an uncomfortable ballpoint pen. The middle finger is the most amazing one. Ideally shaped, with a small swollen wreath of a bluish shade and a point of birth. Katya has a wedding ring on her unnamed finger that is slightly lowered. Above it is a barely noticeable trace, as if the ring moves from time to time, but it is pulled back. On a little finger a white spot, as if a cloud, and a nail on it tiny, rounded, almost transparent. All the fingertips are slightly pink. On the phalanges barely noticeable hairs, which seem to be illuminated, and thin strips of white overgrown cuticle. Nails themselves are elongated, but excessively short, and one of them, on the thumb, Katya chews especially intensively.
And then, looking up from his wrist, he gets higher and higher - bracelets and five small bells.
I am writing. As time passes or does not pass, I am involved in the work and time stops. It's a pity that only for me one thing.
- I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have woken you up. Maybe you should get some sleep, but I will come tomorrow? - Katya looks at me with big blue eyes, and the arrow on her right eyelid is thicker than on her left one.
- You come anyway, and the sooner the better. What, do I look so bad? - I involuntarily wrinkle my forehead, as if waiting for her sympathy.
- You look very tired.
- Well, it's okay. But time is freed up. Plots are created at night, and I write only in daylight.
- So it's already seven p.m...
Awkward pause. I put the brush aside, look somewhere aside and ask a question that looks like an awkward desire to translate the topic:
- Have you seen a white cat anywhere near here?
- Didn't see it. Why?
- Nothing...
Now we have to find an excuse. Do not say that I doubt my mind.
- Yes, he walks around here from time to time... Apparently, one of his neighbors is feeding him.
I smile, and Katya in return smiles one half of her mouth, how polite she is. This half smile adds some juggle and charm to her.
- You look just like Leonora Carrington.
Why did I say that? I don't know. But it does look like it, doesn't it?
- Who's this? I'm sorry, I haven't heard of it.
- Surrealist artist. Aristocrat, and very beautiful.
Now Katya smiles widely and even seems more relaxed and soft to me. Her cheeks begin to pink, and then the color moves to the earlobes. I keep going:
- And curious. You know, she went to church school. And one day, in front of a Catholic priest, she pulled up her skirt and asked him, "What do you think about it?
- It was a strange story. And why did she do it? What does this have to do with curiosity? - Katya is angry: how could an aristocrat, who looked like her, do such a thing? - More like a desire to draw attention to herself.
- Well, it seems to me that it is such a manifestation of her interest in chaos, in the other side of life. She caught the moment, and then used it as her material. This, you know, is how to slow down the hive... Let's work a little more, shall we?
- A little bit.
To be continued on the next part