old von bredow and his widow in apparent years sufficient but too meticulous in their pleasures to ever be grandparents, somber-slim and softly rich as becketts, are again in the market for a girl to cook, polish, launder, drive, pose for his sketches and comply without kvetching with the importunities enticed by ripening youth. evidence of a recent bloodtest, a signed declaration of boyfriendlessness, sweet breath and high breasts to be presented in that order at the interview. the list of alumnae tallies a

fine-arts-in-berlin who’s who: the tooth-sculptress, the pain artist’s muse, the longterm girlfriend of two married antiquities dealers and the wife of a brewery-inheriting collector of restoration erections, plus the headmistress of a faux-french trompe l’oeil atelier of ill-repute. all have done well for art students. the first in the series, the

widow herself in 1962, 18 to von Bredow’s 30: blackplumed, supple, striking as a horsehair whip (father a) (cinematographer at Łódź) (one of the chosen) (few aryans slain by a) (jew in that era in a) (duel over a pupil’s) (paramour) she’d mix von b’s patented lacquers, gesso/sand/re-gesso/re-sand his grander canvasses; photograph, crate-up, ship-out each piece of his gigantic oneiric maps from the studio overlooking the Lietzensee and its petit bourgeois paths. later she even came to finish certain works and worse paint others ab ovo usque ad mala whilst the maestro napped. her man can live for what feels like years

without urges regarding the pinkerparts of the people. it’s the widow herself, blackwings turned to pearly bob, cupped breasts white as dresden pots in timebrowned hands who relishes the entering of that room kept sternly lockless, its unblocked view of three steeples, not even knocking. an applicant/supplicant buzzes

breathless down at front, the widow sips her salted coffee, walks the atrium with numbered steps, stops to stoop to pocket a foilship of gumwrap off the cloud-reflecting koi pond feeling

deathless

.