Portrait of a Young Woman Vaite Goupil

Not finished yet?

A quick glance tells the story. There are two countries here; the border running through a high ridge, like a river through mountain passes, like a novice’s wayward scissors cutting across crumpled cloth, it tears rough edges into the rock’s fabric. You are talking about this young woman’s shoulders? One country primitive and plain, it is a wildness under strict control, a tribe domesticated by missionaries… I see the gaucheries of a girl. Above the ridge there is sophistication and strangeness; a modern metropolis entered at midnight. I was thinking of a mind emerging into the difficulties of maturity.

There is the stiffness of growth.

The dress is a nun’s habit. A style of thought. A cruel eye magnetising all faults and blind to its own beauty; a magnifying glass to the body’s awkwardness. I see a painter picking on innocence. The eye is a servant; the gothic manor house its workplace and home. The mistress is a mind; hard, severe, it clothes these limbs in plain costumes, a protection against the seductions lying ahead. I was thinking of a young lady growing into respectability. This eye, like a young child, schooled by a strict teacher, is seeing the world through strange concepts, heightening a sensibility already prickly with the pangs of liberty. This adolescent fears mirrors. What ugly thoughts she sees in them. They are irresistible! She looks and is looking and looking again… Vaite! Vaite! Please relax that ever-watchful your so suspicious stare. Can’t you see she is disturbed. Talking about the gaze! What… Erase, throw away, destroy that idea, that cuckoo you mistake for a friend. Relax. You must relax. And calm down. And come out! Leave that anchorite’s cell; throw away those clothes; come. Come now, we can… What! You really trust this artist?

She feels the hardness of the chair; is annoyed at Gauguin’s look.

A life posed in fragile imbalance. This delicate equilibrium cannot last long; a young life’s gaiety, the vital sap of womanhood, will not be suppressed; already it is bursting through; the bright colours; the blossoms dangling from carefully folded arms; a bag’s lightness pulling, straining…each new day that vital sap thrusts, pushes, is forcing…hour by hour, obstinately, incessantly, it is rising her up, taking her in to a new landscape.

It is dark in the new country. Strange flowers are growing here.

Vaite is reserved: she will not be touched by this alien atmosphere. To protect herself from its surprises she hides behind a face sculptured into stone. You have become an idol, dear one. Each day you will be painted afresh by the inhabitants of this place; already your lips are a lively scarlet; they reveal, you know, you must must know, they show… Yes! Paul. I do know. It is so exciting here! Should we be listening, agreeing to all of this? Can’t you see she’s intoxicated by this man’s attention; that he… Here is the blood of fresh thought; engendering new images it carries her away; to a cave; to the sun, rising up, transforming the dull stone into warm flesh, the sky’s entrance to a red furnace, firing wild beasts, who flame across walls; while a sylph, slithering upwards, slides down into a bacchanalia, a fiery crowd, a burning orgiastic… Stop now, she is not ready for this.

The hard chair calls her back to the old country.

Trying to sit still. This chair is too hard, too small, too uncomfortable to contain her growing body, its fresh wishes, the strange desires, the new visions that it sees, wants to grasp is curious to explore. You are forgetting Gauguin, a shifty looking fellow. The darkness of this place confuses the mind. I am excited, she says. I am terrified, she later admits. Now is the time to stop… Such intoxicating pressures! My dear, you are feeling the weight of this new country, its heavy colours, the deep dark blues, are pressing, squashing, pushing you down, pushing you off this hard seat, and…and you…you are helping them! the future a burden that you want to embrace. Yet she holds back. Maturity still too heavy for this child to hold. Each day the chair grows smaller; too small now, too narrow to… Yes. It is time for you to leave those years behind. Vaite, are you ready, are you strong enough for what lies ahead? She will not talk to us. The beautiful uncertainties are terrible, and silence her.

This is a checkpoint. She waits for the guards to wave her through.