After the wine, we have a wonderful soufflé. To think of all I’ve heard about how hard it is to make a soufflé properly and here this elderly blind woman has pulled off one to match any I’ve ever had in my life. Mirabelle is a constant wonder. I find myself sneaking glances at her. In my mind I’m already starting to paint her portrait.
We finish off with our usual Poire William. We’re coming close to the bottom of the bottle. I wonder what Mirabelle will want to do with the pear when it’s all that’s left.
She clears the table and pours two cups of coffee. Again, she makes some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Perhaps this is partly because I have the chance to drink coffee so infrequently. I’ve heard it said that the best way to ensure yourself compliments as a cook is to keep your guests waiting until they’re practically starved, and I’m sure in my past I’ve been victim to this theory, but with Mirabelle, everything seems to arrive just at the appropriate moment.
I watch as she so efficiently, gracefully, removes the dishes from our table, slides them into soapy water, rinses them, stacks them in a rack. It’s like music, calming, just to watch her. I know I could never dance to her dance, so I stay seated, talk to her about the people who came up to me and bought the painting. I tell it with the kind of detached elation I felt, and it comes out as so funny, we’re both laughing. Mirabelle comes over from the kitchen, drying her hands.
‘Now, Jacques, are you ready to paint my portrait?’
‘Yes. First I’ll bring in my box and the new canvas from the palier. I think I’ll paint you by the windows so I have enough light on the canvas.’
I move toward the door. I struggle the canvas and box inside, closing the door behind me. There are only two windows in the room, both opening onto the court, so there isn’t much light. But worst of all are the raggedy drapes, three-quarters drawn across the windows. They block just about any light that might come in.
‘Mirabelle, would it be all right if I take down the drapes on the windows, or pull them back? I need more light to see.’
‘Oh yes, please do. I had completely forgotten they were there. You must have been sitting here with me in the dark. Why did you not say something?’
For the first time, including when she’d bumped into me and fallen, she seems generally nonplussed, embarrassed.
‘Oh, I could see enough to eat. But if I’m going to paint you, I must have more light.’
‘Please take them down. There is no one to peer in at me and I would like it if they did, at least somebody would be seeing me. We had those drapes up for Rolande.’
I use the stool she’s been using to reach up into the cupboard. I stand on it and find that the mechanism for moving the drapes is completely jammed. I lift the entire contraption off its hooks, lower the curtain, and step down onto the floor again. The drapes are coated with dust and so fragile they tear in my hand.
‘I think these drapes are finished, Mirabelle. Do you want me to save them?’
‘No. Please throw them away. The smell of the dust makes me feel as if I am dead already. Put them out on the palier. Later, I shall take them down to the poubelle.’
I climb to lift down the other set of drapes. Same thing: jammed, rusty, dusty drapes, faded, falling apart. I lower them as I come down from the stool, wrap them around the valence. I take both of them to the door and shove them out onto the landing, the palier, where my paint box had been.
‘I’ll take them downstairs when I go home, Mirabelle.’
Now I look at the windows. They’re as filthy as the mirror had been. But I’m not going to clean them now. The weather is mild, maybe I can open them.
‘Do you mind if I open the windows, Mirabelle? It will clear the air. If you feel cold you can wear another sweater, perhaps.’
‘Oh yes. That will be fine. What would you like me to wear for this portrait?’
‘I think just what you are wearing now, your dark blue sweater with the collar.’
‘Is my hair in order?’
She feels over her head, shifting bobby pins and maybe hairpins over and around her head.
‘You look wonderful.’
I move one of the chairs from the table and place it so I have a three-quarter light falling on her face. It gives enough penumbra, but not too much. I can pick up the features on the shaded section, even in this limited light.
‘Shall I sit in the chair now?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps you can finish cleaning the pots and pans from our wonderful meal, if you want, while I open my box and prepare myself.’
I’d noticed that in her cleanup she’d left some pans soaking in the sink.
I wedge the long back leg of my box under the window. I want to have enough light on the canvas and still not have the canvas block my view of Mirabelle. I want the eye level of the portrait at my eye level and at just about the same eye level as Mirabelle. I’m going to paint her one and a half times life size. Painting on the vertical dimension, this should fill a 20F just fine.
I’m all settled in when Mirabelle sits in the chair. I need her head turned more to the light with her sightless eyes seeming to look at me. I want the dynamic of the two directions. I wonder if when I paint her, her eyes will seem empty, they don’t seem that way to me at all. I have the other chair set up in front of my paint box. I stand and go over to where she’s sitting. I put my hands on each side of her face and turn it so the light is just right. I think it’s the first time I touch her face.
Usually, from the little experience I’ve had with painting portraiture, one asks models, after they’ve been posed, to pick something and fix their eyes on it. But this is obviously impossible in this case. She does the mind-reading trick on me again.
‘I can hold my head still like this because I know where you are and I can feel the open window.’
I start my pencil sketch with a 3B pencil. I’ll move up to 6B later on when I’m more sure. I really don’t like working the drawing with charcoal and then blowing fixative on it the way they taught me those long years ago at school. I draw with the pencil and correct with a soft eraser. I begin drawing and concentrate for at least fifteen minutes, getting her placed on the canvas, having the right relationship between head, body, and negative space. I want her placed up high on the canvas but not too dominant. I make quite a few erasures before I get the proportions and angles I want.
‘Please tell me, Jacques, how I look. No one seems to look at me, or, if they do, they have never told me. Many times I would ask Rolande how I looked but she would only say I was quite presentable, or sometimes when she was cross, that I was too pretty for my own good. But that was a long time ago.
‘I can feel with my fingers that I am getting older. There seems nothing one can do to stop that. It is only natural, is it not?’
She pauses. I’m trying to concentrate, get it right, what’s she talking about now?
‘Do I have gray hair, Jacques?’
This is going to be hard but I want to be truthful. I look away from the painting, up at her.
‘White, Mirabelle, you have white hair. There are some dark hairs in your eyebrows, but the hair on your head is practically white.’
‘Oh dear! I have begun to think so. At first, twenty years ago, I could tell some of the hairs were stiffer and were hard to manage. I imagine they were the white ones. They were not like the kind of hair usually growing on my head. Now they are all the same, all stiff and straight. You know, it is hard for me to think of myself with white hair. Is that not silly? Here I am, seventy-one years old, and I actually almost did not believe I had even gray hair. I feel like such a fool.’
‘None of us ever really look at ourselves, Mirabelle, even if we can see. Perhaps it is best, it helps us sustain our illusions.’
She’s quiet for a while. I’m working on the relationship between her eyes and nose. She has a lovely, thin aquiline nose with visible, slightly flaring nostrils. Her eyes, her non-seeing eyes, are set wide and are large. It’s so hard to believe
she sees nothing.
‘Yes, you are right; perhaps that is why I do not allow myself to see. But tell me, do I have wrinkles in my face? Of course I do. Would you please tell me about them? I want to know, I really do.’
It’s hard to concentrate because that’s not the part of her face I’m working on yet. I can see this is going to be quite a problem painting her. I lean back and look.
‘Yes, Mirabelle, you have wrinkles. So do I. I’m forty-nine years old, so naturally I have wrinkles. Without wrinkles nobody’s face would be very interesting.
‘You have a wonderful line of concentration, slightly to the left, between your eyes, and a smaller one just beside it. Then across your forehead you have four questioning lines, unevenly spaced, going all the way across. Two of them intersect on the left side. There are lines coming out of your eyes on each side, mostly smiling lines, lines from avoiding the glare of the sun. No, that can’t be, the glare of the sun would mean nothing to you. They must only be smiling lines. You do smile often, you know, Mirabelle.
‘There are lines down the sides of your mouth from your nose. These are the deepest lines in your face. They come right down past your mouth to your chin. Those are the main lines on your face, the most visible, but not the most important.’
She’s quiet some more. I get back to work with my drawing. Again, by having explained to her, I’m seeing better. The spacing between the eyes and the mouth is better related to the length of the nose. This can always be a problem in doing a portrait.
‘And what other lines are there?’
I don’t stop drawing this time.
‘Well, there are all the lines that come with aging, with the gradual loss of skin tone, small crosshatch lines, the lines from the pull of gravity on the skin. These are the usual lines which don’t really tell much about a person, what they are, the way they’ve thought. They’re only the lines that come naturally as anybody gets older, lines of normal skin aging.’
I don’t mention the lines I’m drawing in now, those lines that run down into the upper lip, the lines of a shrinking face, the most prominent aging marks on almost any face. I hope she doesn’t question me anymore.
‘Am I ugly, Jacques?’
This is asked in a very low voice.
‘No, Mirabelle, you are quite a handsome, mature woman. I’m sure you must have been a very pretty girl and a lovely young woman, as well. I’m quite proud and happy to be painting your portrait.’
I can say this and really mean it. There’s something mystical, almost childlike in her face, her voice, and all her moves, which denies her age. Maybe blindness helps people not get old too fast. Perhaps she’s been protected from so much of the distraction, the impact, the stress of ordinary city life, she’s been preserved in some way. There’s a strange quality, so fresh, new, clean, about her.
‘Do you think anybody could ever love me, Jacques? Be honest now, please.’
What a question! I finish up with the curvature of her cheek before I answer.
‘I love you, Mirabelle. You’re one of the finest, most intelligent, sensitive, and interesting people I’ve ever met. I enjoy your company. I feel like a better person when I’m with you. Does that answer your question?’
And I’m not lying.
‘Thank you, Jacques.’
I hope that’s the end of it.
‘But I mean, really love me; want to make love, faire l’amour with me. Do you think it is at all possible for some man to feel that way?’
Well, this stops me. Maybe I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear her. But I can’t, the intensity of her question demands an answer.
I sit back, look at her, look at the drawing. Actually, it’s coming along pretty well, considering everything. I’m beginning to realize there’s a young girl locked up in this old woman’s body. It seems sad. It’s like the pear.
‘It’s not impossible, Mirabelle. You are really a most attractive older woman. It is only because you are blind you do not have enough opportunity to make contact with enough men, and Rolande was so protective of you. I’m sure some intelligent man your age would want to have an intimate relationship with you.’
I lean forward to work again. How much more does she want? I’m surprised at how embarrassed I am. Then she comes straight out with it.
‘When I was younger, when I was thirty years old, I wanted very much to have a baby, to be a mother. I thought if I had my own child, maybe I would want to see it so much I could let myself see. I was sure that, given a chance, I could find a man who would make one with me, even though I was blind. He would not have to marry me, or even see me again, I didn’t care. I just wanted my own baby.
‘Oh, how I wish I knew you then, Jacques. But you would only have been a young boy in America. Ah, it can be difficult, these things, time is strange.
‘Rolande was so shocked, so angry. She said it was immoral and where did I get such ideas? She said I could not take care of a child, that I could not even take care of myself. She said all the responsibility would be hers. So I stopped talking about it, but I did not stop thinking about it.’
She stops, smiles, ‘looks’ at me, slightly turning her head in my direction.
‘And now it is too late. I am a virgin, Jacques, and I do not want to die a virgin. I feel I have great capacity for giving and receiving passionate love but I have never had a chance. It does not seem fair.’
There are tears rolling out those wrinkles from the sides of her eyes, and down the outside of her face. This is more than I can handle. I’m feeling sorry for her, at the same time I’m feeling boxed in. I try to keep my hand steady as I develop the line of her jaw.
I’ve stopped working. We’re staring into each other’s eyes. She, of course, can’t see me, and I’m not seeing her as a subject for a portrait. I guess I’m seeing her as a woman for the first time.
‘I know you are a good and kind man, Jacques, someone I can trust, or I could not talk to you like this. I am surprised at myself. Please forgive me.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive, Mirabelle. It must be terrible for you to be so alone. I must tell you, I’m a married man. I have a family, I love my wife, my children. Even though I am separated from them now, I feel responsible to them.’
There’s a long time while she’s quiet. She’s stopped crying. I lean back into the canvas, my drawing starts coming alive again. I wouldn’t think I could keep drawing with all the emotional stress I’m feeling.
‘I am sorry, Jacques. I did not know. We know so little of each other. While you are drawing me I should like to tell you something about myself. You deserve to know.’
Blind Reverie
It was so exciting for me when he called the Place Furstenberg ‘our’ painting. It is the way I felt myself, it was something we did together.
I do not think he particularly noticed when I suggested he could live with me, perhaps he did not believe what I was saying. I almost did not myself.
It is so strange being painted. I can almost sense myself being seen, I have a sensation of his eyes upon me. It made me feel very real. I could not help myself. I wanted so to know what he was actually seeing. And then, more, what I looked like to him, as a man, not only as an artist. Am I truly a woman, yet, still? I hope I did not scare him by almost offering myself, but I have known from the first moment we came together, this was a man I could love with all my body and soul, give of myself and feel gifted.
I must be more careful or he will be frightened away. I did not think he was married, at the same time, I could not think of a man like him being alone. He feels, seems, the way my father was, a true family man, a man a woman could love deeply.
I hope I am right in telling him about myself.
4
‘We were a very happy family in this house, Jacques. Perhaps it is only because my memories are so old, so worn down by wishes, by tears, that it seems so. Still, I remember many wonderful things.
‘My father worked in reliure, book binding. He had a
beautiful reliure on the rue des Canettes. It had been the place of his father and his grandfather before him. He loved his work. Sometimes he would bring it home with him to share with us. It was wonderful to feel the smooth leather and rub our fingers over the mounds of string bindings and etching of titles on the spines of books.
‘He was kind to us. Always on Sundays and Mondays he took us to the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Parc Zoologique at Vincennes. He loved life, he loved us, and he loved our mother. I do not think it is only time which makes it seem this way. I remember so clearly. It is one of the things about being blind, there is not so much to cloud the vision one has of the past.
‘Our mother was a nervous woman, she was afraid of many things, but when my father was there, she was never afraid. We would row in the wooden boats in the Bois de Vincennes or in the Bois de Boulogne. We had picnics and played games. It was a very calm, beautiful life.
‘Then, when I was only ten years old, came the Great War. My father had to leave immediately. My mother cried for days. When she stopped crying, I never remember her smiling again, except when she received letters from my father, or on the two times he came home to us on leave.
‘My sister and I went to school at the Alsacienne on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Rolande was three classes ahead of me. We were happy students.
‘It was October eleventh and I was released from school three hours before Rolande, because she had piano lessons on that day. Each of us had our own key around our neck, under our uniforms. I had my books in my arms. All this I remember very well.
‘I came into the house, calling for Maman. It was the time when she always had a goûter for us. In the kitchen there was nothing. I could not imagine Mother not being home. She rarely went out, especially after Father was gone. I looked into each of our bedrooms and there was nothing. The door to the WC was open. I carefully knocked on the door to the room of my parents, then pushed the door open. There was nothing. I was beginning to be frightened. The only room left was the bathroom, la salle d’eau. I knocked and no one answered. I pushed open the door, it was not locked.