“But don’t you work at all?”
“Work?” Eva looked at her open-mouthed. “D’you think pictures paint themselves or something? Of course I work! And it’s not exactly an eight-hour day, either, I can tell you. Work follows me to bed at night. You never get any peace. You want to get up and start making alterations all the time.”
Maja smiled wryly. “Forgive my silly question. I just wondered if you had a little job on the side, with a regular wage.”
“Then I wouldn’t have time to paint,” Eva said sullenly.
“No, I can see that. It probably takes a fair time, painting a picture.”
“About six months.”
“What? Are they that big?”
Eva sighed and lit her cigarette. Maja had blood-red nail varnish and well-manicured hands, her own were a sorry sight. “People don’t understand how difficult it is,” she said despairingly. “They think it just goes on to the canvas ready-formed from some secret muse.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Maja said softly. “It just amazes me that people choose a life like that if it’s so difficult. And when you’ve got a child and everything.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“Surely you did?”
“No, not really. You become an artist because you have to. Because there aren’t any alternatives.”
“I don’t understand that either. Hasn’t everyone got alternatives?”
Eva gave up trying to explain. She’d eaten both cakes just to please Maja, and now she was feeling queasy. “Tell me what you do instead. Whatever it is, you earn more than me.”
Maja lit her roll-up. “I almost certainly do. I’m self-employed just like you. I run a small one-woman firm. I work hard and single-mindedly to save up some money, and I’m actually contemplating hanging up my hat in the New Year. Then I’ll head off to northern France and open a small hotel. Perhaps in Normandy. It’s an old dream of mine.”
“Wow!” Eva smoked and waited for more.
“It’s hard work and it needs quite a lot of self-discipline, but it’s worth it. It’s simply a means to an end, and I won’t give up until I’ve got what I want.”
“No, I can well believe that.”
“If you were a different type of person, Eva, I’d have offered you a partnership.” She leaned across the table. “No capital. Full training. And you’d have made a fortune in record time. You really would. Then you could have saved for your own small gallery. You would have been able to do that in, let’s say a couple of years. Every other route is just the long way around, if you ask me.”
“But — what exactly do you do?” Eva stared in wonder at her friend.
Maja had folded her napkin into a hard lump while she talked, now she looked right at Eva. “Let’s call it customer service of a sort. People ring and make an appointment, and I receive them. There are so many needs out there, you know, and this niche in the market is really deep. About as deep as the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, I should think. But in plain terms I’m a call girl. Or, if you prefer, a good, old-fashioned whore.”
Eva turned bright red. She must have misheard. Or was Maja simply teasing her, she’d always been a terrible tease. “What?”
Maja gave a sardonic smile and flicked the ash off her roll-up.
And Eva couldn’t help staring, she looked with quite different eyes now at the gold jewelry, the costly clothes, the wristwatch, and the wallet that bulged opulently on the table by the side of her coffee cup. And up at her face again, as if she were seeing it for the first time.
“You’ve always been easy to shock,” said Maja dryly.
“Yes, it’s true, you’ll have to forgive me, but you did rather catch me off guard.” She tried to compose herself. The conversation was moving toward an unknown hinterland, and she was trying to get her bearings. “Well, you don’t exactly walk the streets do you, I mean, you don’t look like it.” She felt inept.
“No, Eva Marie, I don’t. I’m not on drugs, either. I work hard, like other people. Apart from the fact I don’t pay income tax.”
“Have you — do many people know about it?”
“Only my clients, and there are lots of them. But most are regulars. It’s really pretty good, the jungle telegraph does its work and business flourishes. I’m not bursting with pride, but I’m not ashamed either.” She stopped for a moment. “Well, what do you think, Eva,” she said, pulling at her cigarette, “do you think I should be ashamed?”
Eva shook her head. But the mere thought, the first dim flickering pictures that came when she thought of Maja and her occupation, or when she thought of herself in the same situation, made her stomach turn.
“No, goodness, I don’t know. It’s just so — unexpected. I can’t see why you need to.”
“I don’t need to. I’ve chosen to.”
“But how can you choose something like that?”
“It was simple. Loads of money as fast as possible. Tax free.”
“Well, but your health! I mean, what does it do to your self-respect? When you go giving yourself away to just anyone?”
“I don’t give anything away at all, I sell it. In any case, we all have to make a distinction between professional and private life, and I don’t find that at all difficult.” She smiled, and Eva saw that her dimples had got deeper with the years.
“But what would a man say if he found out about it?”
“He’d have to accept it or walk away,” she said curtly.
“But isn’t it a heavy burden to carry year after year? Surely, there must be lots of people you can’t tell?”
“Haven’t you got secrets? Everyone has. This is so like you, isn’t it,” she added, “you make everything so difficult, you ask too many questions. I’d like a little bed-and-breakfast place, on the coast if possible, maybe Normandy. An old house preferably, one I could do up myself. I need a couple million kroner. By New Year I’ll have it, and then I’m off.”
“A couple million?” Eva felt quite weak.
“And besides, I’ve learnt a lot.”
“What can you learn from that?”
“Oh, lots of things. If you only knew. Much more than you learn when you’re painting, I’ll bet. And if you do learn anything, it’ll probably only be about yourself. I think being a painter’s a bit egoistic. You’re really exploring yourself. Instead of the people around you.”
“You sound just like my father.”
“How’s he keeping?”
“Not all that well. He’s on his own now.”
“Oh? I didn’t know. What happened to your mother?”
“I’ll tell you about it another time.”
They fell silent a while and let their thoughts roam. To a stranger they didn’t seem to belong together at all, it needed a sharp eye to perceive the bonds that existed.
“In work terms we’re both outsiders,” Maja said, “but at least I’m making money, and that’s why we work, after all, isn’t it? If I didn’t have enough for a slice of cake in a café I couldn’t survive. I mean, what does it do to your self-respect?”
Eva had to smile at her own line being thrown back at her. “It makes me feel lousy,” she said suddenly. She couldn’t be bothered to pretend any more. “I’ve got 140 kroner in my wallet and unpaid bills amounting to ten thousand in the drawer at home. They’re cutting off the phone today, and I haven’t paid the house insurance. But I’m expecting some money, any day now. I get a grant,” she said proudly, “from the Arts Council.”
“So you’re on handouts?”
“No! Good God, of course I’m not!” Eva’s composure evaporated. “It’s money I get because my work is considered to be important and promising! It gives me the chance to carry on and develop so that sooner or later I’ll be able to stand on my own artistic legs!”