shots he had taken previously. The walls of the room were painted dark and there was a stained sheet hanging in one corner, as a backdrop. In front of the sheet was a white umbrella on a stand and Claude’s camera on a tripod.
The photos were innocent enough: soft-focus shots of a woman with too much lipstick on her mouth, a couple of black-and-whites taken at a railway station, and a shot of a boy a bit older than Mikhail, sitting on a stool and smiling at the camera. The boy was wearing old-fashioned-looking clothes: a cream-coloured nylon shirt and the sort of jumper Mikhail had worn to school as a kid, but he looked pleased enough.
Claude had gone into the kitchen to cook breakfast and the smell of the bacon made Mikhail’s stomach start to complain. He mooched around the studio. There was a cupboard with the door half open. Inside the cupboard was a pile of cardboard boxes. He pulled the top one open and there were shots in there of the same boy, only this time he didn’t have his cheap shirt and jumper on. This time he didn’t have anything on.
Claude was whistling in a dreary style. Mikhail replaced the box and crept out of the studio and along the corridor to the old man’s room.
Claude was still whistling. Mikhail listened at the door for a second before pushing it open. He wasn’t scared of making a noise; he had developed a talent for moving about silently. The room was dark, apart from a dull light that seeped through the holes in the brown lace curtains. There was a warm smell of sickness and urine and disinfectant.
The old man lay on a large wood-framed bed, his head lolling back onto a couple of white pillows. It was a moment before Mikhail realized his watery eyes were open and looking directly at him. A spasm of fear ran through his gut, even though he knew the old man could do nothing to harm him.
‘Fuck off.’ The old man’s voice wheezed out of a thousand bellows.
Mikhail shut the door quickly and crept back into the studio. Claude arrived a few minutes later with a jug of fresh coffee.
‘Did you like the photos?’ he asked. ‘What do you think?’
Mikhail shrugged, ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t know good from bad. They look nice enough.’
Claude took the photos from him.
‘Do you think you could do better? I could pay you to model for me.’
The coffee was too sweet on an empty stomach. Mikhail took the bacon sandwich Claude offered him and grease ran down his chin as he bit into it. Claude had fed his father first – he still smelt of the sickroom. No wonder he wore such expensive colognes; the stench of illness clung like wet fog. It reminded Mikhail of the mortuary.
‘Did you pay that other boy?’ he asked. Claude looked down at the shot.
‘That one? No. He is a relative. My nephew.’
‘How much?’ Mikhail asked.
‘What?’ Claude looked surprised.
‘How much will you pay me? For artistic shots?’
Claude pulled a face. ‘Twenty forint? You have a roof over your head too now, you know.’
‘Twenty-five, or I tell your father.’ Mikhail looked him straight in the eye.
Claude looked disappointed. OK,’ he said, ‘if you like.’
Cape Cod
Miss Clayburg tried her best and so did Evangeline. They painted rainbows and they painted castles and they even painted the sea, but nothing Evangeline created showed any flair whatsoever.
They went down to the beach together to collect driftwood and then returned to the studio to draw it.
‘Your grandmother said you brought driftwood home before,’ Miss Clayburg said. ‘She told me it was something your stepfather used to do when he was young. Would you like to draw it, Evangeline? Find a nice big stick of charcoal and see what you can do.’
But Evangeline did not use the charcoal because she had found it made the paper messy. She picked a pencil out instead and spent a long time sharpening it. Then she made a few small marks on the paper but proceeded to rub them out. Miss Clayburg smiled but her eyes went narrow.
‘I thought I told you not to use the eraser, Evangeline,’ she said. ‘What is that you are drawing?’
Evangeline turned the page round. It was a tiny detail of a piece of bark.
‘What about the shape of the whole thing?’ Miss Clayburg asked.
‘I’ll get to it,’ Evangeline told her, leaning over the paper again before she caught the look of exasperation in the tutor’s eye. It was no good. They both knew it was no good. Only Grandma Klippel wouldn’t be told, and so Miss Clayburg stayed on – for her sake as much as anybody else’s. Evangeline looked down. Her sleeve had dipped into some paint and the paint had made a crimson smear across her clean white paper. The smear would never clean off. She began to cry silent tears.
Mikhail stood self-consciously on the backdrop, staring at his fingernails. The nails were dirty. The rest of him, on the other hand, was scrupulously clean. Claude had suggested he go for a scrub before the session and he’d spent an hour in the tub, wasting time, trying to delay things.
Claude was whistling again, busying himself behind the camera and pottering excitedly. He’d put Mikhail in a black kimono. Then he’d covered some wooden crates with a sheet and told him to drape himself over them. Draping yourself was more difficult than Mikhail had thought. He felt awkward and stupid, like an upturned insect that can’t right itself again.
‘What is that song?’ he asked Claude. Claude stopped pottering and looked up, surprised.
‘What song?’ he asked.
‘The one you are whistling.’ It was getting on Mikhail’s nerves. He felt anxious and he hated himself for it. Claude had insisted on having a three-bar electric fire in the small room and Mikhail could feel the sweat running down his back. The lead from the fire was plugged into a lamp socket in the hall and he kept wishing Claude would forget and trip over it.
Suddenly Claude seemed ready. He pushed his glasses to the top of his head and beamed at Mikhail.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked. Mikhail nodded. Twenty-five forint. It was all he allowed himself to think of. Living in the apartment meant he could save some of the money, too. How long would it be before he had enough to get away from Budapest? A flash went off and he jumped, squinting.
‘Try to relax,’ Claude crooned. He waited until Mikhail was still again and then took another picture.
‘Why are you nervous?’ Claude asked.
‘I feel stupid,’ Mikhail replied.
Claude
