“Don’t move. Don’t move an inch. Just sit still—” He was rising. Everything was shifting, he felt: room, sunlight—everything in precarious balance. He had to get her just right, this moment, before it all changed forever. One canvas was prepared for painting. He grabbed it and began to sketch her face. She stared at him, filled with awe. He was like one possessed, she thought. Not daring to move, she sat until her muscles ached.

“No, no. Don’t move,” he said.

“I’ve got to rest,” she protested.

“Not now. You can’t.” But he saw then that she was losing the pose, the muscles were quivering like shadows underneath the skin. “All right, all right,” he said. “Take a rest, and then return to the same pose.”

“But I can’t just sit like a statue so you can paint me.”

“Why not? Of course you can. Think about something else.”

“Let me see what you’ve done.” She sprang up.

“No. No. Not now. Later.”

At his insistence she sat back down and they resumed. They went through the same routine three times when Josef finally put his brush down. “The light’s no good now. Come back tomorrow at the same time.”

“What? Besides, Mama may not—”

“Tell her I said to send you, dammit!” he thundered.

She backed away, and he realized with amazement that he’d frightened her. “Bianka, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that my work is important. You’re a good model, a great model. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before.”

“Could I see what you’ve done, then?” she asked.

“Yes, yes. Anything to mollify you,” he said.

She stood in front of the easel. The canvas was barely covered, yet the face seemed to be appearing from within the canvas, peeking out, emerging from some hidden dimension. “It’s spooky, looking at my face, unfinished like that,” she said.

“You think it’s spooky, do you?” he said, laughing now, in great good spirits.

Bianka stared at the painting and then at Josef. Then she made one of the shrewdest moves of her life. If he saw her like that, she thought, then she had no worries. “Mama’s resting,” she said. “Papa and my brothers are in the fields. If you want, you can leave. I won’t tell or give warning. If you go west from the house, no one will see you. I don’t want you to feel trapped. I thought I wanted you any way I could get you. Now do what you want.”