“That’s snobbish of you,” Circe said. “You think we’re not clever enough to understand. It’s easier to say ‘mystery’ than to explain.”
“Well then, I’ll explain as well as I can. It has to do with a concrete thing suggesting an abstract idea to the writer personally. Think of x equals y and y equals z. Mallarmé only writes x and leaves us to discover the z. He said that to name something outright takes away much of the enjoyment of the poem, which comes from guessing the mystery.”
“Give us an example,” said Alphonsine.
“Suppose I’m writing a poem about us here today. Instead of Parisians out in the country, I might speak of animals of various stripes let out of cages, gorging themselves on meat and drink and then licking their paws in the mutual comfort of the pack.”
“That’s not very complimentary,” Circe said.
“There’s nothing wrong with it. Licking their paws suggests the mood of hunger satisfied. The poem would actually be about pleasure.”
“Excuse me,” Alphonsine said. “Can it be this? Those Sunday strollers on the promenade down there with their top hats, x, make me think of a hat shop, y, and that hat shop puts me in the mood of sadness, z?”
“Yes, even though for others it might suggest a happy occasion, buying a new hat. That’s what makes Symboliste poets so difficult to follow in their personal associations, but the words and images you use to describe that hat shop will convey the feeling.”
“Then a thing can suggest an idea.” Alphonsine looked at Gustave. “A rose, brevity.”
Circe let out a noisy breath. “I don’t know where you’re going. X, y, paws, roses. It’s all gibberish.”
Her throat tightened in panic, her muscles springing out like wires under her blanched skin. “Circe, turn your head toward Gustave.”
She did for a few moments, and then turned back to face forward. Every time she did, the folds in her skirt moved, and that changed the stripes. It was driving him mad. “Circe, you must hold still!”
“It’s the ladies’ turn now,” Circe said. “Ellen, what did you observe?”
“Auguste, may I lower my arm so I don’t have to speak into the glass?”
“Yes. I won’t paint you while you’re talking.”
“Since I work at the Folies, my story comes from there,” Ellen said. “The impresario, Léon Sari, is trying out a new trapeze artist, a young Russian with inventive new tricks. Novelty is everything, and the regular act had become stale. Marcel and Marcelline just swing from two trapezes over the audience horseshoe, and Marcelline flies into Marcel’s outstretched arms. To enliven it for the summer revue, they added a rubber baby. Marcelline swings it by its feet, Marcel by its arms. They’re so high up it looks real, even from the balcony, and they fling that baby back and forth when their trapezes swing them toward each other.
“Last night they couldn’t find the rubber baby. Accusations flew down the corridor that the Russian stole it to cripple their act. They searched his dressing room and the prop room. The prop master was frantic. The impresario said they couldn’t go on without it. He’d advertised their act, The Flying Family. Their picture with their real baby was on the posters. The audience expected it. They’d be booed without it. He threatened to put the Russian in their place.
“Their real baby is nearly two. Last night Marcel grabbed him and ran down the hallway when the caller came for him. Marcelline ran after him, shouting, ‘No, No!’ All the performers crammed the wings to see. Marcel mounted the hanging ladder carrying that babe just like the rubber one, and the show went on. They flung their child in the air like he was stuffed with straw, his squeals silencing the audience, and at the end of the act, Marcel swung himself onto a rope and lowered himself down onto the stage, carrying the baby. When the child touched the boards, he toddled in circles, dazed, to thunderous applause. People whistled, stamped their feet, stood up and cheered. Monsieur Sari was wild with excitement. Now he demands that they forget the rubber baby and use the child from now on. Petit Marcel. ‘Step right up. Two francs for the chance to see catastrophe. An extraordinary pleasure.’ That’s la vie moderne for you.”
He had stopped painting. Everyone was silent, even Circe. Her game had fallen apart. Their lively expressions changed to sullen staring.
Circe said in a flat voice, “Angèle, it’s your turn. I’m sure you have something to tell.”
“Next week. I’ll tell it next week.”
Some meditative minutes went by before Jules said, “It seems to me that each of you is a prism through which the light of city life has passed.”
“You mean we’re dead?” Circe shot back.
“Quite the contrary,” Jules said. “The mark of the true flâneur or flâneuse is detachment, the observer who disdains emotional involvement in reporting the shallowness and anonymity of city life. Ellen has given names and faces and feeling to her observations. That’s different than being a flâneuse. It’s being a poet.”
That didn’t make them any more animated. He couldn’t paint a lifeless scene. “Enough for today,” he said, rubbing the knuckle on his index finger.
He drew Ellen aside and paid her first. “You have a good heart,” he said. She left immediately. He paid the others and they went downstairs.
Circe swiveled her hips getting out of the chair and stood before the painting. “I don’t look like that,” she shrieked. “I’m not a smudge!”
Auguste ground his teeth. “If you held your pose like all the other models for more than a few seconds at a time, I could get more done, and then you’d see yourself, which I know is all you care about.”
Her eyes aimed daggers at him. “What are we on? A barge or a ship? Is that why Alphonsine is leaning over the railing? She’s seasick?”
She was stretching his nerves like piano wire. “It—is—a—terrace. If you spoke less, you wouldn’t show your ignorance.”
He paid her but left her there and went downstairs to find Fournaise. At the base of the stairs, Jules was waiting for him. “Trust her as you would adders fang’d,” Jules whispered.
Auguste nodded.
The lower terrace was filled with people, but he found Fournaise on the bank.
“How is it going?” Fournaise asked.
“Never again, this many people. My next painting will be one person I love, in my studio, alone. Or a vase of flowers. They don’t talk back.”
He took out his wallet.
“Put that away. It’s been taken care of.”
“By whom?”
“The new fellow in the top hat.”
“Hm. That’s a surprise. I owe you for my room, and my own meals. I’m hoping for an advance from a collector, Paul Bérard, the man in Normandy—”
“Pay me with a painting.”
“Again? It may never be worth anything.”
“That makes no difference to me. Paint a pretty one of Alphonsine. She’s the reason many people come here. I’ll hang it in the dining room.”
Auguste thanked him and noticed Circe taking Charles’s arm to step onto the bridge. Now, didn’t that beat all.
He went upstairs and looked at the painting. Merde! Even Circe could see the anchoring problem. He wrestled the thing into his room and flopped on the bed, exhausted. Zola equals gauntlet equals masterpiece. Merde! He had a long way to go.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In the Time of Cherries
Auguste took his empty coffee cup into the kitchen, thinking of the relief and pleasure of painting a compliant model today. Alphonsine.
“You didn’t have to bring that in here,” Louise said. “Do you want something else?”
“No.”
“You know, the one who calls herself Circe? She came flouncing in here on Sunday right when I was cooking for a full restaurant, asking for a bowl of ice water. Ice water! As though we have ice to spare.”
“What for?”
Louise wiggled her fingers. “To dip her hands in to make them white.”
He gro
aned. “Don’t let her have any flour. She’ll be flouring her face next. She’ll see, though, when my painting is finished, how lovely she’d be with a little sun on her cheeks.”
“Like Alphonsine’s?” Louise’s eyebrows lifted.
“Yes, like Alphonsine’s.”
Louise gave him a quizzical look. “Have you noticed? Alphonsine has been a different woman since you started this painting. So much happier. She sings in her bedroom in the morning.”
“She’s been a delight.”
“She gives more than she takes. That’s her way. A pure soul, she is.”
“Yes.”
She wiped her wet hands on her apron and stepped toward him, lowering her voice. “Can’t you find someone for her, Auguste? One of your fine friends? The only men she meets out here are those looking for a lusty afternoon with an easy grenouille. She’ll have none of that. She hangs on to the memory of Louis. It’s honorable, yes, but so sad for her to be alone. She has to let go.”
“True.”
She folded down his shirt collar like his own mother often did.
“Have you ever thought of her tenderly? It seems at times you do. She’s a faithful woman, Auguste, and she adores you. Can’t you tell?”
He nodded, looking at the floor.
“She’d be furious if she knew I was talking like this. I shouldn’t have said a word.” She flicked her hands at him. “Go on about your business.”
“My business today is to paint her.”
Louise’s eyes widened. “Oh! Then go, right this minute.”
“May I have a table setting and a white linen napkin?”
“So that’s what you came in here for.” She gave him what he needed and hustled him out.
On the terrace, Alphonsine was having a café with her father. A bowl of cherries sat on the table. Perfect.
“Where do you want me?” she asked.
“Sitting next to the railing, facing me but showing some of the chair.” Auguste set out a plate and tableware and handed her the napkin. “Will you fold this to make it stand up like a sail?”
She took great care and set it on the plate, adjusting it until she was satisfied. He positioned her with her left elbow bent and resting on the table, her left hand at her cheek.
“This won’t hold you up on the big painting, will it?” Alphonse asked.
“No. I’d go mad if I didn’t have something to do between Sundays.”
“You’ll finish it on time, won’t you?”
“Close enough.” He hoped Fournaise didn’t detect doubt in his voice.
Auguste put a cherry in his mouth, licked its smooth skin, and bit down, the juice exploding, the sweetness. He placed the bowl closer to Alphonsine. “Eat one.”
She lifted two by the joined stems and tried to catch one in her mouth. Her little mauve tongue curled like a cat’s in search for it. She giggled, caught one, and pulled off the stem. He loved watching her roll it around in her mouth, and bite it to taste its succulence. He cupped his hand under her chin. She hesitated, making a soft purring sound as she chewed, then squeezed the pit out of her mouth and it dropped into his palm. Its wetness, where her tongue had been, an intimate thing.
“Keep that smile. Slightly openmouthed. Good. I’ll call this Alphonsine au temps des cerises.” The time of cherries, so brief.
He tugged on the red-orange bow at the back of her canotier so the streamers would show at the side and lifted her right arm to rest on the railing. Its weight in his hands told him she was relaxed and willing.
“A good model, non?” Fournaise said, patting her cheek. “We’ll hang it in the dining room next to the one you did of me.”
“I’ve got to paint the thing first.”
“Then paint. Don’t let me disturb you. Finish the cherries,” he said on his way downstairs. “They’re the last of the season.”
She was quiet, letting him work, and very still. Her stillness issued from within as a deep contentment, at one with her river world.
A thin layer of high stratus clouds diffused the sunlight. The myriad of minute gradations of hues he saw in her dress he also saw in the river—her form in accord with the background.
“The sky is giving me a gift today,” he murmured. “It’s making lovely color harmonies, you against the river, the trees, alongside the tablecloth.”
He laid in those delicate harmonies—pale lavender-blue for her dress, white for the tablecloth which he would overlay with tints of blue from her dress and yellow-gold from the sun shining softly through the clouds. Light brown for the wooden railing, lavender for the ironwork below it, olive and ocher foliage, deep ocher for her chair, pale ocher for her hat, paler still for the braid on her sleeve, near white where the sunlight lay over her outstretched arm. Every hue surrounding her was reflected in her image. Every shape softened by light. Feathering one shape into the other with small distinct touches would make the painting’s harmony one of stroke and not just of color.
How much farther could he go using separate feathery strokes to diffuse edges? As far as to blur the figure into the background? Would that be so bad, having a female form emerge from a riverscape—the two things he loved? Or from a landscape? The idea excited him, but there was a danger in going too far. He wouldn’t risk it for this painting of Alphonsine. He didn’t want her to dissolve into a swirl of color.
“There’s a sailboat near the railroad bridge the same shape as the napkin, and the curve of your chair back is in harmony with the curve of the bridge support. The bridge is nearly on the same diagonal as the railing.”
“It will mean something to Papa to have the bridge and the railing in the painting. The same man worked on both of them.” Her face lost its peace and her hand tightened its hold on the railing. “And to me.”
A bird trilled a song in the trees. Her eyes moved, looking for it, but she kept her head still. “What would the river be without its sounds?” she said. “And smells too. Wet grass, mud, wild honeysuckle.” Her hand relaxed and peace returned to her face.
“You are a river creature, aren’t you? Maybe I’ll call this The River Goddess Sequana.”
“When you paint a portrait, do you try to see into the person’s soul?”
“This isn’t a portrait. It’s a full genre scene with background. When I paint portraits I have to paint tighter. The men with the bankrolls have to recognize their daughters and wives. But your father understands Impressionism, so this will be softer.”
“Still, do you? Try to see into a person’s soul?”
“I leave that for lovers and priests. I just show that your face is an egg shape, your chin slightly narrower than your forehead.”
“Oh, wonderful. You’re going to paint me like an egghead. A person is more than color and shape, don’t you think?”
“It’s not my job to think. It’s to feel and to see.” He gave her a hint of a smile. “I paint women as I’d paint carrots.”
“And I suppose Madame Morisot paints men like green beans? You’re being obstinate and doltish.”
“Ah, yes, that’s what I’m after. A little fire in your eyes.”
He worked on her face while that expression lasted.
“A person can love carrots, you know,” he murmured.
He accented her narrow waist with a blue sash and lightened the pale blue of her bodice where sunlight rested on her breasts. He had the feeling, like a warm breeze coming from nowhere in the still air, that someday, seeing this painting in the dining room, he would be overcome.
“When I suggested that you paint up here, I didn’t have in mind the kind of big painting you’re making, with all those people,” she said. “I was just thinking of the view.”
“You don’t like what I’m doing?”
“I love what you’re doing! All your friends, all the talking and singing.”
“How’s that different from any other Sunday crowd?”
“We’re doing something together. Nous.”
Ah, yes, that quain
t concept of hers.
“Do you want to know what I think of them? The models?” she asked.
“If you wish to tell me.”
“Antonio is his mother’s precious darling. He doesn’t walk. He glides. He’s so far gone on Angèle that I’m worried for him.”
“Ah. Our Carmen who sings of bohemian love. What do you think of our Monsieur Ephrussi?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he never sat down out of fear of mussing himself. His accent reminds me of someone I knew.”
“Who?”
She tapped the railing. “Alexander. The man who designed the ironwork under the terrace. He was Russian.”
“So is Charles, but his wife is French.”
“Why didn’t he bring her?”
“Propriety. What about Paul Lhôte? He’s my closest friend,” Auguste said.
“He laughs like a barge hooting.”
“At everything, even danger. On a bet he went down into the Paris sewers, claiming there were street signs down there and that he could find his way from Pigalle to the Hôtel de Ville in two hours. Pierre waited there four hours in a panic, but he finally climbed out, stinking and filthy. ‘Like a walk in the park,’ he said.”
“Ugh! I think Pierre is funnier, the way he tries to get his hands on Circe.”
“And Raoul?”
“I like the faces he makes. And I like him. His spirit. His leg makes him lurch, but he dances anyway.”
Louise came up the stairs talking. “Auguste, what would you prefer on Sunday, côtelettes d’agneau à la forestière or fritures de la Seine?”
“Hmm. Lamb or fried fish. I’m sure that they’d both be delicious. Whatever you’d like to prepare. Both of them, one this week, one the next.”
“Which one first?”
“The fried fish, I suppose, in keeping with the setting of the painting. I didn’t think there were any fish left in the Seine.”
“I order from Le Havre.”
“We won’t tell anyone, will we?”
Louise raised her shoulders and covered her mouth. “A secret. Will pâté de canard and aubergines à la Russe be all right for the entrées this Sunday? I’ll bet that Russian fellow would like eggplant.”