"Ladybirdred" by Leida Kibuvitz
[For the first section of the story, visit "Ladybirdred" at the Fortnightly Review.]
Margus kept smiling later on too—when he put the swimming Russian boys on canvas and was himself already a young artist. He smiled often, he was healthy, had a good appetite, and slept a deep sleep. Rotund and rather short—a good and obedient son for his mother. There was something pure and schoolboyish in him, he differed greatly from his contemporaries who flipped their wild hair, wore variegated bows around their necks, and on their hands were ten dirty nails. This was called bohemianism. Margus’s mother was a religious woman with a harsh word and a firm grip who reigned over her husband and son. When Margus was in his final year of art school, his dad died, after which his mother watched over the son with twice the care. She locked the door of the small, low house every evening around 10 o’clock, and during this act of locking, Margus usually remained on the indoors side of the door. Only rarely, when there was a pressing need, did Margus stay on the outdoors side. But on his way home he saw already from afar how his mother waited for him at the door. With a kind and caring impression on her face. And then she asked—always with the exact same sentence, even the order of the words did not change:
“How did it go—I hope there was no trouble?” So that Margus, sometimes getting home in high spirits, shouted from afar:
“It went well—there were no troubles.”
Strange, how clear the memories of the past are on this foggy spring day, Margus cannot help but think now. Right, right, he was still a good and childlike young man when he set out for Paris. Ah, Paris was somehow related to the peat bog! It shimmered from the changing lights, lump next to a lump, pool next to a pool—pitch-black, porphyry-red, golden-green water that slopped, reeked, told stories, tempted and teased.
When he went out at night for the first time, all by himself, he stood wonderstruck—remembered sucking the stems of the marsh Labrador tea1—and absorbed light and colors, sounds and faces, air that was somehow hurrying, fluttering, reeking. And thought—the ones who can convey this image must indeed be great artists: someone who could write a libretto, could find and combine moving, wriggling, living words. Someone, who could create music, could press into sounds all this miraculousness that Margus sensed. And someone who could capture it in art. But they should all create this within a single moment, with just one gesture of a hand, hit with a stroke of a wide brush—the words should flow as a vibrating, liquid glass, the music should rumble and the colorful images should flash, augment and loom in front of the creator’s eyes. This is what Margus thought back then, and wandered onwards. Eyes and mouth wide open of course, even the pores of the skin sucked in the strange surroundings. Such an evening wandering became a sort of bodily pleasure for Margus, the kind that satisfied him as sensuous love. It began already when Margus got hold of the key to his flat. A current went through his body. Really, think—quite his own key! Holding the tiny metal thing in his palm he already felt a faint fleshy happiness, felt that the skin got impatient. Margus Suurul felt himself independent for the first time. He could lock h i s door with h i s key, put it in h i s pocket and then be on h i s way! Come exactly when he wants, no one asks him anymore whether it went well and whether there were troubles.
This is the way he set out in the evenings, as if driven by love to find satisfaction. He wanted to cuddle the big city, yes, that’s what he wanted! He kept walking onwards, from street to street, always onwards, no matter where to. Across squares, along boulevards and avenues, in an utterly unknown environment. A stream of people pulled him along and pushed him from behind, pulled him inside itself. He was only a tiny particle in the rushing of human flesh and blood—it was so pleasurable! And sometimes it humoured him! He was strange and tiny, could even allow himself to joke around with the others: to put his tongue out at this one, and to poke the other one with his elbow, to look at someone arrogantly and at someone critically—what a splendid play of expressions he harvested then! To some strange lady he could say something rather beautiful in his mother tongue and the stupid goose would think he said something indecent! No one knew him nor understood his language. No one said, as was said in his hometown, that look, there goes that Margus Suurul, the son of Jaak and Marie, who lives down by the lake, in a low wooden house, and he is going to be an artist. But his mother locks the door every night at ten—ihihih!
This really was a beautiful time, this gazing at the big city in awe, Margus thinks now. And how clearly he remembers these first Parisian days! But what he ate yesterday, this he cannot remember—funny! Yes, back then Margus’s joy was an innocent child’s joy. A child’s who has chanced into wonderland in dreams and whom no one forbids nor punishes, neither calls nor commands. He is not known, this mischievous boy, he is in fact invisible, woohoo! And afterwards he brushes everything that was visible to the paper, ohoo! He kept going on and on and breathed deeply, gulped everything inside himself: the lukewarm air, the light, the colors and the shadows, the lamplights, the shopping windows, women’s eyes and women’s limbs, hundreds of human faces, thousands of human faces, countless human faces! And their reflection, their devilishly varied reflection!2 Margus was as if drunk. He kept going until he got tired. Stopped then for a moment and moved his aching toes at the top of his shoe. He had no idea in what street or neighbourhood he was at that moment. But he kept going, a hedonistic impression on his face. And how curious it was to get back home—filled with toil, fun, and adventures! He had to ask a complete stranger, communicating with fingers, about where his street was, and it was far-far away. He had to go along an endless boulevard which was rimmed by colorful balls of light that shrank on the horizon, like the heads of colorful push pins. Often he was so tired he spent the night outdoors. Once he slept in the shelter of a garden fence—he was so very tired, the legs would no longer carry the body—until the street sweepers woke him in the early morning. He made a lovely watercolor of them. Another time he spent the night in a secluded street, in the hallway of a quiet house. Snoozed sitting on the stairs and smiling in dreams like a child. In the morning, he set out to his way home, eyes very clear again. Still unknown streets and interesting streetcorners, new buildings and new people, their posture, gait, tilt of a head, how they moved their arms when walking . . . from one of these pilgrimages of joy, Margus remembered two beautiful details clearly. The Green Firewoman,3 as Margus called it, and the poppy blossoms in front of pearls. The Green Firewoman stood in the display window of a lighting suppliers” shop. She was a miniature figure made of porcelain, and held a faded green disc behind her back, a ring of glass from which the light emanated—soft green. In front of the glowing ring of glass stood the porcelain woman, wonderfully gracious, with a splendid figure, a gleaming line across her body—across the delicate neck, across the breasts like buds, across the slightly curved stomach, across the legs. The Firewoman was beautiful and Margus looked at her for a long time. On the same journey, Margus’s gaze met three giant pale red poppy blossoms. These were made of velvet, artificial brooch-flowers with blackish-purple anthers. And right in front of the three blossoms lay a line of pearls, completely colorless globes of glass. But every living being that chanced by, every vehicle, every moving patch of light, lent the glass globes their tints—the sides of cars, the bodies of trams, people’s outerwear, even Margus’s dark green coat. The glass globes lay motionless in front of the three blossoms, but they lived, light and colors moved and changed in them, ever more new lusters and glimmers died out and ignited in them. Once they turned reddish then bluish, then something silvery twinkled in them, then they were bluish again. The glass globes lived on and stayed in Margus’s mind. I too am this kind of a glass globe, he thought back then, only that I move around, and life and people bring countless shades of colors and sparks to me, and I have to return these hues and flashes to them again. Then he hurried home and got to work, with no food, no drink, no rest.
Now many years have passed since this journey. Margus has gotten older, corrupted, bitter. He knows the names of the streets now but cannot feel their intoxicating newness. He knows where this street runs, and where the other one leads. Let them run their course . . . the soles of his feet are no longer tempted. He is known and he knows others, and paths and pathways are all worn in. Only every now and then some patch of light, some blossom, an odd-shaped glass vessel, some human face battered by life captivates Margus’s gaze. Today he was stopped by a three-colored hat. But all of this is not seen with the same clarity by Margus anymore—he is now a faded glass globe, cannot reflect the shades of colors anymore, he cannot be bothered to return the ones he has borrowed.
Now he slowly trails towards home at the corner of rue Richepanse. There he has lived all these years. On the second floor in a studio with two tiny rooms next to it. In fact, the studio and the tiny rooms belong to the business space below, are indeed connected to it via a spiral staircase. The business space below is used by a Georgian woman Belka and her man,4 and they rented the studio and the rooms to Margus.
The Margus that arrived in Paris years ago was a different boy, Margus must admit now. It makes you laugh when you remind yourself how the not-yet-a-man eyed the whole building as if it were a precious present! From the top to the bottom. From Ladovska’s fashion boutique on the bottom to the top floor under the roof! And how he always felt a little festive when he had to stop at the front door to Belka’s business, to then reach his own nest via the spiral staircase. At first, he was a bit shy because Belka often slept with her man on the sofa at the corner of the business space. Belka lived with her Cossack partner—one time her partner was a true Cossack—in the space separated from the business area by a blue curtain.5 There was their desk, piled under colorful pieces of cloth, false hair, glass eyes, pots of starch paste and brushes, scissors, needles, and knitting needles. And next to the table a gas stove. Margus remembers that this room too smelt of wonders and newness years ago. Because here was where Belka and her man made dolls. All kinds of grotesque creatures with faces tight with georgette, and with limbs of the same material. These were sold on the larger side of the business space, in front of the blue curtain. This room once enchanted Margus greatly too. He could spend hours in the shop, with a bright smile on his face, looking at these wonderfully strange human dolls: they displayed the agility of Belka’s fingers, her artistry and sense of humor. There were negro dolls with coral-red lips, some with golden rings in their noses, some in their ears. There were Chinese dolls, their narrow countenances filled with delicate sadness and feigned frigidity, the brow lines disappearing mysteriously into the shadow of their flat headwear. The Apache6 with checkered trousers, cigarettes7 hanging in a corner of his mouth, the sins of all Paris lined up on his face. Old Russian mannequins, breeches hanging over high boots, fur hats on the heads. Dutch girls with their crooked headwear and pink puffy lips—it is as if one could smell the milk. The Spanish, with imperiousness and fire simultaneously in the gaze, and even in the curve of a moustache. Everyone, everyone! And dogs—furry rascals with a clever glance, Danish Danes, stiff as spinsters of noble birth. Really, Galja Belka was a master in her craft and a good businesswoman as well. It was her who succeeded in selling Margus’s first painting in her shop—on the second day after his arrival in the big city. The buyer must have had a golden touch, as they say, because Margus got lucky afterwards too. In return, Margus helped the Belkas with work that needed to be done urgently. When Lindbergh8 came flying across the ocean, the three of them cut out tiny penguins from black velvet and sold them the next morning to Parisiennes who flocked into the shop, rustling, because they wanted to wear the logos of the famous aviator on their lapels. Then the Prince of Wales came to Paris and Margus helped Belka when she cut out countless tiny princes, somehow stretched the georgette into a melancholy and sunken face, while her own face had the same expression. This is how it was with Belka—her expression reflected that of the doll who was being made. Finishing the head of an Apache, she was downright brutal and sinister, let out words that one cannot repeat. Making a noblewoman from Gothic times, her countenance was meek and delicate, eyelids dropped subtly. These were fine times, the neighbours lived together in collective spirit and peace, they had work, and they had money. Margus liked even the smell of the working space: the smell of glue and burnt hair, cotton and fresh starch paste. The faces that were born through thread and needle, cotton and silk, became little illuminations for him. He admired how with a single strand of thread one could make an optimist into a pessimist, and vice versa.
“Little neighbour,” recommended Belka one day, “you are drawn to faces . . . take the brush, it is time you start the portraits. And there are a lot of vain people.”
Thus began Margus’s journey in the world of portraits. Time passed, he had work and success and he laboured with a pure heart, a golden touch—back then. His path crossed the paths of quite important men and beautiful women and each of his portraits told a story. For example, Mabel’s, a beautiful American girl’s, seemed to say: “Aren’t my position and poise telling you that I’m a peach with a delicate and soft skin? A peach kept on a golden plate. I am not too smart nor bad, my moodiness has been enhanced by my father’s checkbook. But when an appropriate man dominates me, I will become a good and obedient wife—if there is a lot of money. I am as I am and cannot be more, don’t mind me! And the sunshine rouges my left cheek and shines red through my earlobe, do you notice? And long after you have forgotten my portrait, you will still remember the patch of sun on my left earlobe. It is so beautiful and warm.”
But General Choiseul’s portrait narrated this: “In the left leg there is old age and tiredness, but in the right one, gout. But neither of my legs have stepped aside from the straightforward and brutal road of a warrior. Yeah, yeah, I can kill, do not come too near! I have not looked at myself in the mirror often. I have even given harsh orders to my wife—but I regret nothing!”
Dutchess Angues, born a gypsy,9 said from the canvas: “Ah, if I could only sit once more on the stone staircase without a corset and crunch roasted almonds! Each carries their own cross…I beat my wing bones against the bars of a golden cage.10 But the prouder I carry this cross and the harder I beat, the more it hurts. It is not worth thinking that my smile is plastered . . . it only seems like this to you.”
Thus spoke the portraits. The models were happy, and even those people who were normally very grumpy, were happy—the buyers, master Margus, and the critics. There was work, and joy alongside it.
“Suurul is a master from the countryside, who, with his healthy and strong appetites, is tempted to b u t t e r u p his subjects”11 wrote hunched and rather evil critic Ratine in one of the evening papers back then.
“Ptooey,” spits Margus now when he gets back from his walk. As if a taste of rancid butter was in the mouth . . . an acid taste of bitter almonds. And the appetite has gone, god damn it! For many weeks he eats like a blackfly. And what should he eat here—stuff yourself with all kinds of crud, the name of which is disgusting to you and the origins unknown, sometimes the mouthful even still moves on the plate! Hmm, people who have come from the northern lands do not fit here, in time they will turn grumpy and spiritless like birds who feather on a foreign perch. There is too much talking in this city . . . especially by the creative people. And art is something that he, Margus, does not want to t a l k about at all . . . he only wants to f e e l the right kind of feeling and then m a k e art of it. Two things should not be discussed—one”s art, and love. But in this place, a lot is discussed, and especially these two topics.
Margus is having a grim day today. When passing her, he looks side-eyed at Belka who pushes a huge stocking needle through a doll’s head, the back of which is still missing. The neighbours are also getting on his nerves . . . how could have he tailored the stupid princes and penguins at the same desk with them? He goes upstairs and feels that it is not him who heaves himself from step to step, bad taste in his mouth. The real him stands somewhere further off and observes how this stranger, how this man with a m u c h p r i n t e d name moves himself on a narrow spiral staircase. Is this half-dream, half-stupified state not ending already then? Right now, he sees things and beings through some threadbare, but foully tinted fabric. And “a breathing in common” has not existed for a long time. Margus calls a breathing in common the pleasant ray that sometimes pierces him. It is something like this: Margus stands in sunshine and feels how everything around him breathes—houses and trees, stones and metal, air, fire, and water. And Margus breathes together with them, deeply, fiercely, inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale! Every such moment brings more joy for work. But Margus hasn’t done a breathing in common in a long time. Perhaps this is where the problem lies, thinks Margus when opening the studio’s door. That now I only see, and no longer f e e l. Back then I f e l t, and could convey it in a way that the viewers not only saw, but f e l t. When did it actually begin? Probably gradually. That much he remembers: he said to himself half-aloud one day in this studio: “Well, make a start, you, fence painter! You do not want these sleazy faces, but you must . . . you are paid in cheques now, you are now a genteel fence painter.” With these thoughts this strange and unfamiliar phase in Margus’s life began. One day he realised that he really tolerates Goya—but until then the latter had, sad to admit, been repulsive to him.
And then Margus started barking at his neighbours and even at other people. Ugh, they got on one’s nerves . . . he physically kicked a beautiful and nearly naked woman out of the studio. At the next autumn exhibition, he surprised everyone, and some of the surprised ones could not decide so suddenly, how exactly. Now fairytales were Margus’s themes. Probably so . . . what else should these weird works that instil sinister feelings be called? And these shades of color can only appear in cruel fairytales, in bad dreams and in the visions of someone tortured by fever: pale-dirty greenish yellow of the skull and bones. The rusted brown of dry blood on maroon sandstone. Some light shade, as if splashes of brain lay on the limestone. Grey-brown like water in which countless unclean human bodies have been rinsed. Death blew open its coat and showed the rusty iron belt around the hipbones. In its bony palm however, there was a cluster of crowbars and crooked keys, disgusting, like wriggling earthworms. On high, steep cliffs squatted some monster who faintly resembled a human being, thin forelegs crossed over to hide the eyes, whining. And next to him, on a leash, lay his heart like an oyster about to dry out. The color of the cliff was that of a viper’s skull bleached by the sun, and leper spots dripped on the monster’s skin. The third painting depicted three heads next to each other: a woman, a tiger, and a male swan, all their eyes filled with large tears, their expressions evoking disgust. Now all Margus Suurul’s women were limp heaps of meat, they sat in immodest positions, and sneered. And above all some disturbing, vividly haunting haze hung—a lousy reminder of the vanished light and air. Many exhibition visitors—the better part of them—did not forget Suurul’s paintings any time soon, they were seen with closed lids, and they decreased the appetite of a good deal of the sensitive ones. Critics—also the better part of them—did not stop for long at Suurul that time. Perhaps they also didn’t know this time exactly what to say. So, it was said that the artist reached a period of searching and experimenting. Hopefully he will find something entirely new. Hopefully. Margus’s exhibition back then was thought to be a passing mood, a deliberate recklessness, the prank of an already known and spoilt bohemian. Margus did not even read the reviews. He got very sombre and was often sick. Lay on his bed day after day, read adventure stories, hummed a song and looked at the ceiling. Took a paint tube between the fingers absent-mindedly and squished it thoroughly empty. Perhaps he slept—head always facing the wall—the whole night, and the day on top of it. When the evening came, he made himself get up, wrung out and blank, go out and returned home only the next mid-morning. The former boyish smile, rounded cheeks, and strong appetite were gone. Then he got acquainted with a raucous and loud crowd: a half-Russian decorator with his Jewish partner; a fellow Estonian woman who trafficked cocaine and herself; a couple of Lithuanian adventurers, the petit rats of the ballet in Paris;12 and a half-insane Spanish person. Eh, what of the fatherland now that he was a cosmopolitan . . . Margus was in high spirits with this crowd. But this happiness was like a tattered, variegated handkerchief behind which an inconsolate hides a tear-swollen face. Margus was now often drunk, picked fights with those who crossed his path, got into arguments with complete strangers. He was seen coming out, pale as a corpse, of the old Ymo-Tao house on Rue de Quatre-Septembre where an old Chinese man opened the heaven’s gates to his visitors for a couple of francs and with the help of an opium pipe . . .
But then the will to work descended on Margus again. To the detriment of his fellow humans, however, it must be said. The first victim was the President of the Banking Union, a good and deferential old gentleman who wished for a portrait of himself. Well, he got what he wished for . . . But when he stood in front of the finished piece, looking at it, his eyes got as wet as those of an offended child. He paid the fee with shaking hands and left. But he left the portrait with Margus—permanently. So to prevent some of his, the president’s, relatives jumping to Seine, knowing they are related to s u c h a p e r s o n! The president was right. In the portrait, he looked as if ready to jump up, like a male lynx arched in heat, lower lip lusciously moist and greedily bloated. Violet, sinister fingers of a rapist shake on his knees. Truly, the portrait was extremely revolting but at the same time extremely like the clean, quiet, lenient, and polite old gentleman—this could not be denied. Really, how was it not noticed before? And the ones who had seen the portrait did not want to see the Banking Union”s president anymore—at least not normal, healthy people . . . But Margus kept working and working. A professional model crossed his path this time, a well-known Madonna. Almost all young art disciples who arrived in Paris had captured this Madonna in some way. No one knew her age. Probably her unusually meek, unworldly beautiful face was made of substance that does not crumple nor crease. When she posed as “the Madonna” for some, then the child who comes with the Madonna was borrowed from some vegetable sellers or from a fisherwoman—for a couple of francs. Once earlier, during the era of happy laboring and the sun’s jubilance,13 Margus had painted this woman with three children under a blossoming, lush chestnut with patches of sun on her clear countenance, and on the parting of the hair and on children’s locks. Now Madonna poses for him for a portrait alone. She is a patient woman. She often awaits Margus throughout the whole morning, throughout the best light to work in. But the master does not appear for a long, long time. The model sits on the stairs in front of the studio’s door and waits. Does this also today and feels already from afar that the one who appears is grumpy and quarrelsome.
“Women taste like cows, I tell you,” says Margus instead of greeting her.
“Yeeees?” drawls Madonna. She speaks very softly and slowly.
“You are like a sour milk,” answers Margus. “Somehow you drag on. Women taste like cows: they put lilac-green-pink variegated hats on the tops of their heads.”
“Yeeees?” mumbles Madonna, and sits in her spot in the studio, hands crossed. Margus thinks:
“She is stupid like a cow, she too is a cow. Perhaps this rare pair of a deer’s eyes fell into her head during the creation by accident. She picks up phrases from Ouchy’s cheap editions and then repeats them.14 I cannot stomach her at all anymore. During his last pipe in old Ymo-Tao’s cellar, a meaty water snake that wriggled on the carpet that hung on the wall, had the exact same face as this woman. Damn it, I am beginning to hate them all, these crooked cosmopolitans, all of them, ptooy!”
Thus thinks Margus. But on her spot, stroking her left leg, Madonna says:
“Don’t you know that glasses need to be exchanged, that they need to be replaced with new ones every couple of years? So to see something new . . . ”
“Huh,” adds Margus impatiently. “What do I have to do with glasses . . . Do you want to start wearing glasses already? Perhaps it is time . . . Do I have to buy you a pair?”
“Glasses need to be exchanged,” repeats Madonna meekly and lazily. “Otherwise, the vision is dulled. And the same happens to a creative person . . . and when they sit indoors surrounded by four walls like a caged eagle . . . cannot cast their gaze into the open . . . slowly they become half-blind. They can no longer see what must be seen. And then there is an ebb. Some say that now the artist has given all he had to give, and one cannot be more than oneself. It is not right. Who has been c r e a t e d as a giver, this one can do it until the end—until the end of one’s life. But they need to exchange the glasses, something needs to shake them to the core, they need to look for something and find it, they need to love something very much or hate . . . but you have become lukewarm.”
“From where and whom does this gibberish come from?” asks Margus.
“From a professor of art history. He also painted, and his vision too had gotten dull. Then he came to Paris to be shaken up here. I don”t know his name, I slept with him for a couple of nights.”
Margus smirks and keeps working. Madonna yawns often, and sometimes remains silent instead. Then looks for a half-finished word and continues:
“You’ve been cast into a wrong form. Geniuses must be visible from afar, from how they look. Lovers of life, insane, temperamental. They have to lack conscience and money; they need to have an unheated attic room, and syphilis. But you are rotund, clean, and decent like a clergyman from Brittany . . . Your soul goes sour inside this polite shell.”
“Sit quietly!” shouts Margus. “Stop this stupid gibberish!”
“Why don’t you go away,” suggests the Madonna. “Go exactly to where you once came to Paris from, years ago. Someone like you must eat well—Brittany’s clergymen also eat well—eat the same food you ate in your boyhood . . . try to find the old spot where you used to play. Go to the homeland.”
“To the homeland,” pouts Margus. “Do you even know where my homeland is! Do you even know how small it is! This size –” and in rage, Margus spreads the fingers of his right hand.
“Well, if you fit in there to be born there once, then you have to fit in there now too—–”
But Margus keeps bellowing:
“There’s only a palmful of it, a palmful! And if some banker, social climber, or factory owner buys a little painting from an exhibition, then all the newspapers write about it under the gossip section. Listen, you get on my nerves! Go to hell with your advice! Do not come again tomorrow, I can finish without you, I can use any other woman instead of you—you all are indeed the same.”
Madonna begins—still calmly and slowly—to gather her things. Outside, on the balcony facing the yard, dries some of her laundry, and she begins to take it down slowly. Margus looks at the other’s peaceful, somnolent movements and his anger grows. Damn disgusting—the rags of such a woman dry on his balcony! And yet here he is supposed to be able to work! Can not, can not, can not!
Madonna leaves—this time. She is accustomed to such moods. But over the same thresholds she’s been invited, lured, and even carried indoors again. On the door she stops:
“Perhaps you still go,” she says to an enraged Margus. “Before you do, tell me something as a farewell. But say it in your mother tongue. Something beautiful and fitting.”
“Madonna,” Margus drags out a reply. Torpidly. And when the woman pouts her mouth disappointedly at this usual nickname, the man adds in an abrupt and raw manner:
“A mare!”15 And shuts the door with a bang. Now working is impossible today. Margus is restless and excited. In the late afternoon a note is brought to him that says that his old mother has died suddenly in his distant homeland. Relatives think that they can delay the funeral until next Sunday, but not longer. Should it be possible, Margus should come.
Margus reads and reads. He looks at the letters and sentences, looks at the full stops. And strangely, he cannot be sad! He cannot believe—the distance is too great for this—that his mother has really died. This damned city doesn’t let him believe! Now he is even mad at his mother. Indeed, did she really have to pass away exactly n o w—exactly now that Margus feels at his lowest and darkest. As if the old one had had a bet with someone about whether her son would return to the homeland at least for her funeral. Of course, then all the relatives gather around the table and peek at him from a corner of their eyes—let’s see whether tears will begin to fall from this famous man! And Margus should then stand there for them to wait and see. No, he will not go!
Margus Suurul is afraid of two things: heights, and standing in front of a big crowd. Especially when people are keeping a weather eye on him, so to say, and attentively wait for his words. Of course, a pastor will give a speech at the funeral where he mentions him, a grieving son—and then they will look at him and his eyes will get wet! He would be embarrassed to cry in front of them all. Sure, he would cry, there he could do it, but here now the tears do not come.
Margus roams the streets until the middle of the night. But then his feet get tired, and his step becomes altogether unsteady. There was a little worn-out spot on his sole when he left home—now he has walked this into a big hole and, through it, feels the pavement beneath his sock. Treads and suddenly realises that the land he feels beneath his foot is foreign. And this strange ground, the city that breathes all around, the air that reeks, everything—everything—is there to further infuriate Margus! I am tired, he thinks. Look, the hands shake just because. I will lie down he decides then, and heads towards home.
He sharpens his gaze—is there not a small and shrunken figure with a striped apron made of Swedish linen, standing at the corner of Rue Richenpanse? Is there someone not shouting from the door to Margus:
“How did it go—I hope there was no trouble?”
Margus’s eyes fill with water, he rushes into his studio, crashes into the sofa with his clothes and dusty shoes on, and weeps. Now he can at least cry—and for the tears to keep falling he simply needs to think of this caring, asking one who waits. But he will not go to his mother’s funeral.
Again, inspiration to work strikes Margus—already two days after the note about his mother’s death. But this inspiration is altogether unique. Margus cleans now. Yes-yes, he gets his overclothes16 cleaned, he scrutinises his underclothes and organises them. He dusts the walls and even the ceiling of the studio—washes the big window with his own hands. He is as diligent as a woman who loves cleanliness, sweeps, scrubs grinds, rubs, rakes. And he is almost happy at the same time. He’s got a Saturday-night feeling when he finishes his tasks and washes his red, hot hands with cold water. For the first time after a while, Margus feels hunger, damn yes—he has not had a warm lunch over the past several days. He needs to go downstairs once again.
Margus used to lunch regularly on the second floor of the same house, at Madame Largue’s. Of course, sometimes a bout of inspiration stopped him, and then the friendly elderly lady brought the food to his studio. Lately Margus had no inspiration for work, but also had no appetite. Old Largue’s widow prepares lunch for around twenty people. She feeds two or three students, a couple of Englishwomen, an old professor, a couple of girls from a dance studio. Margus and an older music teacher. The other faces vary from time to time.
Margus and the spinster music teacher have been lunching at the same table for years. Earlier, Margus had chatted to the elderly lady in a sincere and comrade-like manner, had even touched upon serious topics. The lady was kind-hearted, a bit odd and old fashioned. She came from an old noble family and always wore a seashell necklace and a little crooked smile on her lips. A couple of centuries ago people had the option of being so polite, attentive, and gentle—then they had time to weave together wonderful words, Margus thought often, when listening to the beautiful words of the one who sat opposite him. But then a shadow of misunderstanding fell over them. The lady asked Margus about his work. She asked very gently and sparingly, but Margus responded harshly. But the lady kept speaking. She claimed to sense people well—to read their faces and movements. Oh, she claimed to have seen so many people in their despair and joy! She asked the master to pardon her intrusiveness, as presumably her heart forced her to speak—because she claimed the master always to be such a “charming, darling boy.” Is Mister Suurul in trouble, is he in an absolutely good health, is his stomach fine?
Margus did not respond to her at all, he ate and muttered something crossly. What was he supposed to respond to this half-witted old maid who looks as wrinkled as a dried chili pepper but still searches for beautiful words and throws phrases, queries, teases, and asks? What, damn it, does this old maid exactly want?
But then the elderly lady told quietly listening Margus about crises in genius’s lives and ebbs and flows in their work. A freezing night that falls over talent’s flowers. Margus listened, listened, and got enraged. Is he so lousy then already that even the old maids of Paris critique him? What right has this stranger to speak of his work that should not be spoken about at all?
“I am not inquiring about your strumming techniques, my lady,” replied Margus. “Indeed, in this city even older ladies beguile men with their talk of art and literature.” The timid elderly lady was quite startled, lost her little crooked smile, and was quite close to crying. But Margus got up and left the dining room.
And when the next day the two English girls asked Margus in their high chicken-scratch voices:
“Oh, are you a famous painter? And what are you painting right now?” Margus replied with a polite bow:
“Queen Victoria in her old age, how she passes time by lining up her stomach rolls—you know this story, right, “The Amusing Queen”?”17
Surely, now they will stop cooing around me, thought Margus happily.18
Margus goes to Madame Largue again after the dusting and deep cleaning. The music teacher, with the seashell necklace round her neck, and the little polite smile on her lips, already sits at the table. She gives Margus a fairly kind glance and says:
“Mister Suurul, I prayed for you in the church last Sunday.”
“And?” asks Margus in response, “What should the dear God do about me? Send me to the purgatory and hell, right?”
“Oh no! He needs to send a chaste and magnanimous woman on your way, and lots of love to your heart for her; it would bring peace of mind, a new faith in life, and inspiration.”
Margus laughs quite audibly—isn’t it funny? And then replies:
“My lady—I’ve loved around two hundred women in this city. And now I regret this poignantly. Look here, dear lady, if I had gobbled down a few hundred oysters instead, I would have at least had a pleasant aftertaste on my tongue. But now there is a taste of manure at the tip of my tongue. And how amazingly cheap it would have been. H e r e, you talk of pure love, he-hee! Of a chaste woman! And on the next boulevard you can see how a bearded old stag and a beautiful girl—to put it politely—dance a dance of love at night. At the same place of entertainment, you can see women who rouge their cheeks first, then their lips, and then their bosom. And you are still surprised about my poor appetite! Would you not like to join me at the stated spot—”
But the elderly lady grasps her purse, which is decorated with pearls, and quickly leaves the room, taking her small affable mile with her—in fact she was so shocked that she had lost her smile already at the table.19
I cannot be here anymore—Madonna was right, thinks Margus. I should look for a new studio, a new lunching spot, new shoes, should at least change my neighbourhood, should . . . should . . . But I cannot be bothered to lift a finger. I keep waiting for something to force and push me. Hasn’t it always been like this? My mother, bless her, took me to the art school half forcefully—I myself was afraid to go and be among new people. Then I was sent to Paris—again and again circumstances, people, and fate need to set me off. And I myself stand somewhere further away and see how it goes. How will life treat this Margus Suurul then?
The sun is rather scarce this spring. The rain sprinkles. A thick drizzle, it makes the surroundings desolate and grey, covers the studio’s skylight with countless tears—you look, look, and want to cry yourself. The month of May too, is chilly and windy this year. Margus tries to finish Madonna’s portrait. Again, Madonna sits on her chair as a model, still mellow and agreeable, lazy and slow in her talk. But Margus is often disturbed by his compatriot Muuga, an art historian who lives on the attic floor of the same house, and has a habit of borrowing money from his slightly better-off countryman Suurul every now and then. He always begins with the same sentence:
“Things are getting expensive, things are getting expensive, but what can be done, one needs to make do! I need to get by for at least a year somehow, only then can I go back. Then I will be looked at entirely differently, because I spent a year in Paris after all . . . ”
This time, he doesn’t get any further because he cries out when he sees the portrait of Madonna:
“Oh dear! Hide this picture away in the attic, like the portrait of Dorian Grey—so women won’t stone you to death! Ptooey! But this is a laughing Zuleikha, the wife of Potiphar, Messalina, the most female of all the females . . . ”20
“Ooh, sir,” says Madonna from her seat, and strokes her left thigh. “Some Italian painted me first as a cow, then called me names, then spat. But then as the Madonna—soon afterwards he got married, now he has four children.”
“My stomach shrinks in disgust,” complains Muuga. “Dear friend, you—“
“Friend?” Margus raises his eyebrows. “Aren’t you rather a friend because of these little francs and Suurul’s name—if his work is no longer bought, the milk cow will become barren. Or are you practicing a little criticism here already? So, to set to work with great experience in our homeland. Listen, you two, go away, go away right now—both of you, Madonna you too! Muuga, here’s three hundred francs for you as a souvenir. Go to the door now, quickly—but do not step on that broken glass there! Can you see?—I hurled the bottle against the wall last night and that bottom still lies there now.”
The bottom of the bottle remains there because Margus leaves Paris soon, and goes to the homeland. He doesn’t even stop in the capital, but travels right onwards, right towards his former home. Right to the little town that lies at a shore of an oblong lake. He visits his mother’s grave, looks for an appropriate shelter, sleeps peacefully for a long time.
One morning at the end of May he wanders through the town with no purpose or desire. The air is clear, clean, all is so silent and sunny. Such silence and golden sunshine can really only be seen in dreams. And such unusual feeling frames it all. This trip is like a dream in which all people long dead, all houses long shattered, all flowers long faded, live, stand, and blossom again. The street is and is not familiar. All the low wooden houses that lined her21 have been demolished and replaced by multi-storied stone ones. But the ones demolished now haunt the street—Margus can see them quite clearly—the corner house with a small shop. From this one could be bought paint thinners, pencils, and plant seeds, clay bowls, and knitted things. And in that one was a photographer—there were pictures of ladies with high busts, lace collars, and bouquets of flowers on the windows for many, many years. Margus can even remember their faces. Really, only a dream can thus alter something that is so familiar, and yet, beneath the dream-like alteration, the familiar thing can still be recognised.
The fruit trees blossom in the gardens, stretching far towards the pavement over the fences. When was the last time Margus walked beneath blossoming trees? Now he steps downhill, along a steep, staired street that takes him to the lakeshore. The houses here have colorless, wrinkled, frightened faces. They look as if they were holding tight to the steep slope, side by side pressed next to a neighbour who is just as old as themselves. Like lovely elderly people, thinks Margus. Huddled but homely. On the same street, in that brown crooked house, Margus took painting lessons years ago. As a little kid, and the teacher was an elderly lady of German descent. Mother Suurul then tied t w o aprons on her son before the lessons, one to his front, the other to his back, so that the boy wouldn’t stain himself much. But on his return from the lesson both aprons were variegated with patches of paint. Even the one at the back.
Margus smiles. He remembers with crystal clarity these two variegated little aprons. He also remembers that his mother handed him the money for the lessons wrapped up in white paper each and every time. He then had to “keep his eye on the paper” the whole time. “Ach, der kleine Schmutzmaler kommt!”22 was the German lady’s usual way of greeting him. Then they sat down at an oblong table in a low, dim dining room. The smell of that room and its countless decorations and its little pictures with golden frames are still quite clear in Margus’s memory. They sat together—one young, the other old, at the table, and by using charcoal the younger one had to create an exact replica of a plaster flower that had been taken from the wall for this purpose. It was a very regular, mass-produced plaster flower with five rounded petals and furrowed anthers. Then they argued, the old teacher and the young student, because the student wanted to create something entirely different, something altogether bigger and stranger. He had this new idea last Sunday, and wanted to capture it now—a little piece of the lakeshore. The shore is still covered in patches of snow, but underneath the edge of snow black water is already visible and splashes secretively.23 And it was this s p l a s h i n g that little Suurul wanted to capture. It had been so lovely, he explained to the one who tortured him with the plaster flower. The water had splashed thus: blip-blop, blip-blop, and Margus had f e l t how the water there splattered and blackened. He whined and he pouted and did not want to imitate the plaster flower. The elderly lady got impatient and even angry—but then a thunderstorm covered the town, the lake got dark, and the low dining room too, only the golden frames of the pictures on the wall were glowing. The lightning flashed down the street towards the lake and they, the little boy and the spinster, were both silent because they were afraid of lightning and thunder. They started at every thunderbolt and when the weather cleared up again, Margus was allowed to begin with the picture of the shore . . .
Margus observes the old brown house now and his heart is so wonderfully tender—it is the kind of tenderness that hurts a little. All things and beings long gone are now surrounded by a golden halo like the little golden frames during the thunderstorm once, in darkness. The elderly lady is now long dead. In the wild and overgrown garden that surrounds the house, someone plays a guitar now and pigeons are cooing under the eaves.
Whistling, Margus Suurul walks onwards with a smile on his lips pursed into a pipe. He walks slowly towards the lake, all the gardens along the way are foaming with green, and blossoming, humming, buzzing, rustling, ringing. Berrybushes are vibrating, filled with countless bees.
Margus goes on and sees:
on the high doorstep of an old house sits a little girl, perhaps five or six years old. From the threadbare chintz dress are visible shoulders, arms, and legs, and all are evenly tanned, and glow palely.
“As if the one who moulded her had forgotten to cast a wet rag on the clay in great hurry.” Margus cannot help but think. With a smile on his face, he steps closer, and looks at the child’s face. This one has enormous water-grey eyes, so wide open that the lids are almost not visible. But the most interesting aspect of the entire face is the area closest to the nose and the mouth. The little nose tips steeply upward, pulls the upper lip short, and by doing this the little face gives the impression that its owner is about to sneeze right now. And being in a good mood, the sneeze is awaited with joy, for even the eyes are already narrowed and the nostrils quivering. Across the entire face there is a strange and moving glow that all young and innocent creatures have. Margus has seen this impression before on the faces of lions” cubs, little calves, and tiny dogs; this lovely glow lightens even panthers” and tigers” cubs.
Indeed, looking at the child’s face, Margus must admit that we are not born into this world evil. But life shakes us until we turn evil. And he tells the child:
“Hey, look at your uncle for a little while, your uncle will paint your picture, would you like that?”
He sits on the doorstep next to the child. The girl does not respond, but she smiles briefly. With the little mouth closed, its corners deepen while smiling. Noticing that Margus holds a lead pencil and a sheet of paper, the child asks in a compassionate bird-like voice:
“Do you also not have colors? Don’t even have a blue or a red pencil?”
Margus does not respond. Margus does not have time to respond. He needs to capture this sincere little circle of compassion around the nose and the mouth on paper.
“I don’t have colors either,” sighs the little one. “Now I don’t, but when I grow up I will go and work at the peat bog . . . like my mother. I will earn piles of money, lots of money! And with the first week’s wages I will buy myself a box of paint . . . ”
Margus rushes—now there is longing around the upturned little nose and the soft mouth, they need to be captured! Meanwhile, he thinks: to the peat bog. The peat bog . . . the smell of dried, crumbly peat, how indeed the peat was fragrant in sunshine!
He asks the child:
“Have you already decided which box you want?”
The impression changes again, a pained longing creates a strange contrast in the little face that awaits the sneeze.
“Yes. A wooden box. With beautiful rows. And in every row there is a paint. I go to town every day to see this box on the shop’s window. Sometimes I look at her for a long time . . . ”
The impression changes again. An enormous, pure joy gilds the little nose, the area around the mouth, lights up the eyes. It doesn’t matter that the window separates her from the box. It is a beautiful box, h e r box, she goes and sees it every day! Margus, catch this impression!
“A box with beautiful rows,” continues the little one. “It is clean and there is a paint in every row. And next to the paints there is a brush in a long gap, it has brushes on both ends and a black shaft. It’s nice to stick it in your mouth . . . ”
How everything in this world repeats itself, smiles Margus. He too used to put the brush in his mouth as a little “Schmutzmaler”! Indeed, it was easy and convenient to work like this, the brush was always smooth and moist enough, didn’t need the bothersome glass of water nor the changing of the water. Margus’s heart gets warmer and more tender.
But the little girl keeps speaking—the box is so dear to her that she must describe it:
“And all the colors there are square-shaped. Nicely ordered. There is a white one and dandelion-yellow and pink . . . then blue and then ladybirdred—”
“Ladybirdred,” repeats Margus, who smiles and lifts his head. “Ladybirdred,” he says one more time and looks around, smiling. And suddenly he f e e l s how the water down yonder in the lake splashes and flickers, how the sky high up above the lake is warm blue, and how the sunshine revels between the lake and the sky. He sees the peat bog across the lake and sees the colors of the peat bog. He f e e l s here on the stone steps of the stairs how the warm air shimmers iridescently over the lumps of peat. Even further across the lake the pine trunks are red and Margus f e e l s how the balmy wind rustles the dried and loose chips of the tree bark. He sees that here around him the sand of the unpaved street is golden yellow in the sun, and maroon in the shade. The bottom of a big cobblestone that lies in the middle of the road is bluegrey. Margus f e e l s how the stone breathes coolly on a hot day in the middle of the hot sand on the road—inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale! And next to the fence a brick lies sideways—the side that is turned towards the sun is red, the shaded back is maroon. Margus f e e l s how the apple trees in the gardens breathe, he himself sits on the cool steps, and also breathes. Now the great moment is here again, the “breathing in common.”
“Yes,” says the child. “Ladybirdred, it is as red as the back of a ladybird. Have you not seen her? She wears seven black dots on her back.”
Ladybirdred, ladybirdred . . . As if the child had given Margus a little red key. Ladybirdred, Margus must repeat again. Oh, little ladybird, little ladybird, the little red one with seven black dots—how nice and light it feels! Simple, warm, and beautiful!
The wind comes along the street and rushes downwards to cool the lake, itself alert and dirty like a young sweaty horse. The lake greets him with a big, wet breath, mouth wide open. And Margus breathes too—mouth wide open, deeply, with pleasure.
And then says:
“Let’s go to the town right now, the two of us, to get you this box of paints where the ladybirdcolor is. Then we are free to begin to make these pictures, each one prettier than the next. What do you think?”
Like this, just one little word reconciled Margus Suurul with sunshine.24
1938
Notes
1. Translation of sookail, the common Estonian name for Rhododendron tomentosum. A very common and well-known plant growing in the Estonian wetlands, marsh Labrador tea is both medicinal and poisonous. It’s distinctive strong smell is known to cause headaches in some people, especially when it blossoms. For more information on the plant, see, for example, Dampc and Luczkiewicz (2013). All works cited in these notes are included in the works cited for the introduction.
2. The original text uses the singular noun reflection (peegeldus) with the plural possessive pronoun. Both plural and singular are grammatically correct in Estonian and the formation will be seen at other points in the translation. This translation choice retains the narrator’s observation of a group as a single mass rather than separate individuals.
3. Portmanteau words like firewoman (tulenaine) are common and grammatical in Estonian.
4. As in English, the word man (mees) is a colloquial synonym for husband or partner. It is not clear from the text whether Belka is married; what seems to be important is that Belka is the businesswoman and the main provider for her family, not her man.
5. It is unclear what Kibuvits implies by Belka’s partner having been “a true Cossack one time” (“kord oli ta mees tõeline kasakas olnud”). The original 1938 text says, “There was a wide sofa, which performed the duties of a wedding bed.” Bearing in mind that Cossacks were stereotyped as strong and masculine (see Skinner), and the original reference to a wedding bed, it may be that the pair engaged in sex in Margus’s proximity.
6. The term Apache has several related meanings in this text. Kibuvits most likely used the word Apache because of the translations of popular American adventure stories into Estonian. For example, selected stories of James Fenimore Cooper were translated into Estonian as early as 1880 (available to view in Digar, an online archive database). Further, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Apache also refers to “a street ruffian or thug, originally in Paris.” Kibuvits might have known this appellation from friends who had lived in Paris in the early twentieth century, like Friedebert Tuglas.
7. This word is plural in the text.
8. Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902-August 26, 1974), American aviator and military officer, became an international celebrity after his successful solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris, where crowds of people greeted him. Kibuvits would have read articles about Lindbergh in Estonian newspapers such as Päewaleht and Postimees. The penguin reference remains more obscure; it is not an official logo for Lindbergh, who was nicknamed “Lone Eagle.” However, when Lindbergh was touring the United States in 1927 (the Guggenheim Tour), he stopped in Cincinnati, where “Local Camp Fire Girls had been enlisted to make penguin table decorations for the banquet” (Gampfer). The penguin, a flightless bird, might serve as a symbol for a flightless human who nevertheless flew.
9. I have retained the term gypsy, now recognized as pejorative, both for its currency at the time and because of the romantic and not necessarily negative associations Kibuvits seems to evoke.
10. Translation of tiivakondid, a colloquial phrase for shoulder blades.
11. Translation of “või pool,” or “the butter side,” which translates prosaically into “the better side” in English. Choosing the idiom “to butter up,” which is not exactly analogous, maintains the spirit of the original and aligns with the character of the critic who uses it.
12. The phrase petit rats refers to young exploited girls trying to make a career in the Paris Opera Ballet. See Mainwaring.
13. Word-for-word translation of “päikese pidustused”, an unusual locution in the original as well, which likely also works with the alliteration.
14. Ouchy is a lakeside neighborhood in Lausanne. This reference is possibly to a publisher of the cheap editions popular in the early twentieth century or to a location where tourists might frequently purchase these books.
15. See the introduction for an explanation of how this exclamation varies through published editions of “Ladybirdred.” I have retained the phrasing from the first publication in 1938. A mare (mära) in Estonian is not, at least any longer, a common swearword, but still sounds derogatory when aimed at people, particularly women.
16. Translation of üleriided, still in use commonly in Estonian, especially in the winter. For example, when entering a building, one may ask where to leave could leave one’s overclothes, meaning one’s hat, gloves, and coat.
17. Probably a play on the title of Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse (1832). Rigoletto, an opera by Giuseppe Verdi based on Hugo’s play, was staged in Tallinn in 1922 and in Tartu in 1939. In the play, the protagonist Triboulet refers to the king as “ce gros ventru jaloux” (“that jealous fat pot-belly”) (Hugo).
18. The text from “Margus goes to Madame Largue . . .” to “. . . had lost her smile already at the table” is omitted in the version published in the 1962 collection An Ode to the People, and the text in the 1977 collection is very slightly edited from the original 1938 publication.
19. The end of the 1962 omission.
20. In Estonian, Potiphar’s wife is called Saara, but I have translated the name so the reference is clear in English. Valeria Messalina was the third wife of the Roman emperor Claudius; both women are figures for promiscuity.
21. Kibuvits calls streets by human pronouns, which it not a common practice in Estonian grammar. Below, she also calls the paint box by a human pronoun, emphasising how dear "she" is to the girl. See the introduction for an explanation of pronoun use in Estonian and its significance for “Ladybirdred.”
22. “Oh, here comes the little dirt painter!” (my translation).
23.The tenses change between past and present to further enhance how the past resurfaces in his present moment.
24. This ending changes in some subsequent editions of the text. See the introduction for an explanation.