The Swedish Foreign Minister

% The Sculptor and the Swedish Foreign Minister

% Mogrem

% May 2023

*Author's note: This is a stand-alone piece about the sculptor, whose story you can read more of in 'Natalie and Helena' and in the 'Lisa and Polly' series.*

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"Who is that?" asked the prospective client, an elegant, immaculately made up blond. She was cruising past middle age, but taking with her as much youth as her nutritionist, personal trainer and surgeon could parcel up.

She wore a severe black dress that clung in all the right places, but was largely hidden under a designer great-coat that was too warm for the British summer. Her hair was bobbed, her nails were done, her shoes were black heels and rang out as she stepped around.

She was walking around the sculptor's studio with nervous hesitancy, but obvious excitement.

Twice she had stopped by a half finished statue --- figures emerging from oak like Michelangelo's angels being set free from the marble --- and gone to touch the figure, and stopped herself, hand in the air, and looked at him for approval.

He had nodded of course --- they were made to be touched --- and both times she had laid her palm on against the feminine stomach and held it there for a second, as though she could feel its heat through the rough oak.

She had used her real name when contacting him, but she hadn't told him who she was. She didn't need to, it fell into his lap. He found her name in the Swedish Cabinet, as the Foreign Minister, the Utrikesminister. Newly promoted.

Using her real name and not insisting on discretion and secrecy in advance --- he knew how to read that move.

She was here for a thrill. She would ask for something that risked exposure; a small, controlled risk. Controlled by him.

He guessed she would want a miniature of herself, something small enough for a government salary, and small enough to be hidden when she had people around, or from her spouse.

He had a number of powerful women come to him wanting variations on the same. Always they would say it was "for him", a husband or boyfriend. Always the sculptor would know it was very much for her, and the man may never even get to see it.

This client hadn't mentioned a commission yet though. She was putting it off, working up the nerve as she moved through his garden of female forms.

"Who is that?" she had asked, after she'd rounded a monstrous fusion between two women, a man and a bull, hewn with deep violent cuts from red stone, and stopped in front of another altogether softer body.

This figure was just over five feet high, slim to a fault, with flawless youthful skin, arms folded behind her back thrusting her chest forward. Her legs were pressed tightly together from thighs to knees to ankles, and her legs and torso were twisted a little, kinking a kneed and a hip, as though she were struggling against restraints that weren't there.

He black hair fell past her shoulder blades. She had a pretty mouth, slightly open, and that was all that could be seen of her head under a black leather hood, like a falcon's, that covered her eyes and ears.

As they took her in the girl moved the smallest amount, enough to shift weight between feet without breaking the pose.

"Is she a model?"

"No."

The client couldn't take her eyes off the girl. She dragged her gaze up and down, moving her head a little to this side, then that, to gather in as much of her as she could without walking around her. She had a gaze like an artist's; she drank everything in.

Eventually she breathed sharply, like she had been holding it, and said, "Is she... Is she one of your sculptures? The form of a girl, made by the body of a girl?"

She tore her eyes away to meet his. He smiled approvingly, encouraging her.

Perhaps she had come looking for something more than a miniature, but hadn't known what until she had seen it. The question now was whether she wanted the girl, or to be the girl.

"Who is she?" the client asked again. "Please tell me. And can she hear us?"

"No she can't.

"Five months ago another client came to me to pick up his commission. A Romanian. He had wanted a Venus, modelled by his favourite mistress. Life sized, for his bedroom, I gathered.

"An artistically uncomplex piece, but great detail was requested and given. Money, he said, was no object.

"I modelled it in bronze. When he picked it up... well, obviously he had proposed it when he felt flush, whereas by then, I suppose, he felt less so. Perhaps some 'deal' had fallen through.

"In any case he baulked at my price. He haggled and threatened and insulted. It was most tiresome.

"I remember very particularly one thing he said. He said, 'For twenty four k British pounds I could hire a girl to stand in my bedroom for year; in Romania for two year, even three year. My own living statue."

"Eventually I let him have it on installment, to get him and it out of here. He took it and every month now I get two grand by wire, every month for twelve months."

He paused for a moment, to let his guest's mind work. He thought she would see where this was going, at least in outline. When her hand went up to her throat and her eyes widened and snapped back to the girl, he continued.

"This client had a daughter living in London. That was easy to find out. An estranged daughter, you will be unsurprised to know, given his evident qualities as a male authority figure, or indeed as a human.

"She was working zero hours in restaurants, refusing hand-outs from home. I approached her, offered her a salaried position in the workshop."

He went on. "'As a model?', she asked. 'No, not a model, as art'. 'I don't understand,' she said. 'Women are art,' I said, 'you will be mine'.

"I offered her twenty four k British pounds a year, for one year. Two grand a month."

"Herregud..." murmured the client.

"She is here six hours a day, three days a week. This is her fifth month. She has become very good at it. Every day she memorises and recreates poses from works of art that she has studied at home.

"She holds many as ten different poses in a day. I am not a monster, many of them are prone. She holds the pose until touched. When released she moves to the next."

The woman moved closer to the girl. She stopped, hesitant again. She closed the last few feet and was standing directly in front of her.

She put a hand out but paused and looked over her shoulder at him for approval.

He nodded.

She let the palm of her hand come down between the girl's breasts and held it there, feeling the heart beat. The girl twitched but held the pose.

The client let her hand drift down the girl's side, across her ribs, resting on her hip.

"How old is she?"

"Nineteen."

"Does the father know?"

"No."

"Does she know why you chose her? Does she know what money you're buying her body with every month?"

"No."

"Will you tell them? Ever?"

"No. Its for my personal satisfaction."

Her hand moved again, across now, to rest on the girl's swollen belly.

"Is she... Is she pregnant?"

"Of course."

"Herregud," she said again, and dropped to her knees, now with a hand on either hip, holding her. She leant in and kissed the stomach tenderly.

"Its perfect," she said softly. She kissed the stomach again, lower. "Do you... Show her to people? On display?"

"Only those who come around the studio, they all see her, naturally. Models, friends, girlfriends. Clients."

The client kissed again, this time to the left, just above the thigh. She sighed deeply and drew back, still on her knees.

She looked over her shoulder at the sculptor again. "I know what I wish to commission now."

"Yes, I imagine you do."

"I need this. My life, my job, its so, so... To give up all control like this..."

"You need it."

"Please."

"But your husband can never find out."

"That's right."

"And neither can anyone else, especially not the party."

"No."

"It would ruin you."

"Yes. But---"

"But?"

"But--- I must not be hidden away."

"A gallery opening," he said.

She wavered only for a second. "A gallery opening."

"In central London," he continued. "A collection of my stone and bronze and oak pieces. And you, on a plinth."

"No. On the floor."

It was his turn to hesitate, impressed. "The floor then. With your job, though, we will not have time to prepare you and practice like this girl. So you will be tied. On your knees, your legs tied, your arms bound above your head by a rope from the ceiling."

"Oh yes, please," she said, leaning in again to kiss the top of the cleft between the girl's legs. The girl gasped and opened her legs a little, inviting more.

"I will arrange it for the next time you are in London. You will arrive at the gallery an hour before it starts. I will prepare you. You will be naked and hooded. I might take you before, I might wait until after, but I'll have you.

"Good."

"And everyone will see you."

The client put her face between the girl's legs and licked, slowly, so slowly, the length of her slit, making her groan, and as she did she said indistinctly into that sweet flesh, "Thank you."

"One more thing," she added, breathing on the girl's clitoris from an inch away, making her shiver.

"With a hood like this one I could be anyone. That's not enough."

She blew lightly, the girl arched herself forward, desperate for release.

"We need to narrow it down," she carried on. "Call the piece, 'The Government Minister'."

She took the girl's clitoris between her lips and sucked. The girl screamed and shook in climax.

The client stood up and stepped back they both watched as the living statue --- now released --- slowly, fitfully ans still shaking moved into her next pose, her head to one side, her arms clutched to her bosom like the Madonna.

They left her like that, in the corner of the workshop, surrounded by other statues.

When the sculptor and his new client got to the entrance they left without looking back, turning off the lights and shutting the doors behind them, plunging the workshop into total darkness and almost total silence, except for the very slightest sound of laboured breathing.