was immediately convinced of her worth and it was now the third winter of their time together. He had come to a grateful appreciation of her talents for converting his canvases and drawings into ready cash. From May through November she came each afternoon to tend the Morrison Studio Gallery, giving his enterprise an air of quality and distinction. No other studio galleries on the road had a near full-time employee, staff usually consisting of the artist himself or his spouse. If Santa Fe afforded a livelihood for painters, it gave Morrison a better one than most, not ignoring the excellence of his work.
Winters brought commerce to a trickle but not to a complete standstill. In the colder months Morrison often had a few nice sales and he kept Miss Harkness on two afternoons a week just to catch those few. This February day was one of her scheduled days even though good sense said to close until after the storm. Morrison thought it mean-spirited and penurious to deprive her of the opportunity to make her commission because of a natural event, snowfall.
She arrived promptly at one in the afternoon, stooped under the low front door jamb and made the cascade of harness bells hanging on the door come to life.
“Good afternoon, Magnus. What a glorious gale we’re having, a fury from the white heart of the Arctic itself.”
Of an age between old and elderly, Miss Harkness was straight-backed and thin, with a hairdo seldom seen west of the Mississippi in those years, an overstated Marcel of henna red. In this community where personal appearance mattered little to most of the artists, she looked like an exotic crane blown out of her own breeding grounds by global winds. She believed in dressing warmly, for even in summer a chill lurked to diminish her health. Today she was enveloped in great swards of persimmon wool garments and oxford shoes of burgundy leather. Her departure from the Philadelphia department store included a lifetime supply of designer scarves, which she used in stylish variety.
Morrison said, “I thought of calling you to stay in. Not a chance of a sale today, I’m afraid, Miss Harkness, but since you’re here. . . .”
“Nonsense, Magnus, cultured people of means go out in all weather.”
She dusted the snow off her cape, scarf and tam and folded them for the coat cupboard. Adjusting her dress with a few pulls and smoothing her collar, she was ready to take the helm of their little ship.
Morrison was not convinced by her cheerful assessment of the day’s catch. “The only two that struggled by this morning looked unpromising, even though they peered for a long time at my Evening Light on the Sangres scene through the window.”
“I’m sure that an exceptional and moneyed collector or two will find our door and we’ll finish the day with a noteworthy sale. I’ll make a fire to cheer things up.”
“Good idea.”
Morrison turned to leave, but Miss Harkness was not done. “What if I just rearrange a bit, perhaps put a Pueblo maiden in the window?”
“Fine, fine, I’ll just be in the studio.” He went into the back room and closed the door. He had learned never to leave the studio door open, as visitors to the gallery invariably were drawn to invade his workspace. Particularly women wanted to come in and see, and they frequently left an aura that cut right across whatever he was working on. Magnus claimed to be sensitive to an atmosphere left by others in his studio. It could ruin an entire morning of painting.
Miss Harkness busied herself dusting the paintings on the wall as the corner fireplace took hold. She went to the small closet that held the racks of undisplayed paintings and pulled out the next to last painting of a Pueblo maiden. It was a small painting framed with a rococo gold fillet. A young Nambé Pueblo girl lay nude on a striped blanket, baskets and corn clusters filled the outer corners of the composition. Her flat, imperious gaze was as bold as Manet’s Olympia among the savages.
The choice of the Pueblo maiden was an open indication that Miss Harkness, despite her façade of optimism, thought today was going to be difficult. The maidens invariably were well received and would sell out completely if displayed one after another. Miss Harkness devised a scheme to squirrel away the maidens for difficult times, an insurance policy to be rationed out only on the slowest of days. However, the supply was dwindling.
Morrison had never actually seen a Nambé Pueblo maiden. On hot nights one summer the motif kept appearing in his mind, a lithe young woman resting on a red and white striped blanket in diverse poses. His favorite version included the supine maiden with a tablita headdress in her hand, connoting that she had only just a moment before disrobed. Somehow, the impression that she had been loitering there without clothes was not so appealing.
He made no progress in converting his idea into actual paintings, but it took on a nagging intensity in his thoughts. He calculated the girl’s body proportions, making her slightly shorter than art-school guidelines of seven heads tall. Her body weight crept up until he had fixed the vision as an enticing, nubile girl, surrounded by the Indian artifacts he knew from museums and local shops.
Sunlight from the small pueblo window made a line across the canvas in his mind, up and over her body in a golden-white stream. In the final version of his fantasy he included a section of the window itself, with a darkness that caused an indentation in the shadow. Could that suggest that a tribal elder peered in on this unsuspecting youngster? The painting only awaited a model for his work.
Then at lunch one day he saw a young woman sitting alone at an adjoining table who closely matched his mental image. Her body was ripe like a plum, her stove-black hair cut in straight bangs and in a single horizontal line around her neck. She was stocky but not yet fat, her chubby wrists encircled in silver bracelets. He almost saw the marks of the tablita on her dark hair. He could not avert his eyes and after a while he realized his stare had caused her discomfort.
Morrison leaned over and asked her quietly, “You aren’t by any chance from Nambé Pueblo?”
“Of course not. I’m Polish, from Brooklyn.”
“You quite favor the Nambés, you know, your hair and your size,” he said.
“They live north of here?”
“Indeed. I’m a painter, my studio just down the street. If you had the time and the inclination, would you pose as a Nambé Indian for me?”
“Without clothes?”
“Yes.”
“No funny business?”
“No funny business, I assure. I could pay you well.”
“Okay, I’m almost broke.”
That was several summers ago, before Morrison hired Miss Harkness. The woman, named Milla, came afternoons to his studio to pose in the set-up he had arranged by the window. Sunlight streamed in by mid-afternoon and the fixated shapes in his daydream version merged with the real scene in front of him. He was transported to a woman’s chamber in the pueblo for several hours until the light changed.
In a creative passion, he painted canvas after canvas, each a variation on his theme and he scratched out numerous sketches of the scene. He now remembered the time fondly as a sensual feast, not so much of Milla herself but of the pueblo image that she stood for. She was a messenger, an icon to be valued for what she symbolized rather than what she was.
They took their breaks away from the easel in the deep green shade of the orchard. After initial awkward tries at conversation, they both came to an ease sitting in silence under the trees. In
