“You’re right. But there’s one more thing. You’re in the painting.”
Gustave sputtered out a breath.
“A painting of the pleasure of a Sunday afternoon on the Seine. A boating party. See? You belong there.”
“Which me? Dressed as…?
“A canotier, of course.”
Gustave grinned at that.
Auguste patted his shoulder. “Buck up and get back to work now. Come to my studio when you can tomorrow. I need help getting my easel there.”
CHAPTER SIX
Looking for Mademoiselle Angèle
In his studio Auguste had scraped and sanded his palette and was rubbing linseed oil into it when Paul Lhôte knocked twice and came in, his custom around five o’clock.
He jerked to his feet. “You didn’t tell anyone else I’m here, did you?”
“No. I didn’t see anyone. What’s the matter?”
“I just don’t want to talk about the painting to anyone not in it.” He slipped out of his mules and put on street shoes. “Let’s go.”
It was the green hour at the Café Nouvelle-Athènes, and the anise fragrance of absinthe permeated the room. Glasses of the beautiful green liqueur decorated many of the tables. They ordered mutton ragout for two francs twenty each, and a bock. The beer was thirty centimes.
“Has Angèle been in?” Auguste asked the waiter.
“If she’s the model with the raspy laugh, no.”
“A model for your new painting?” Paul asked. “Can’t you go to her flat?”
“I don’t know where she lives these days. Neither does she half the time, street-bred as she is.”
“Then why don’t you just go to the model market?” Paul motioned with his thumb toward the gravel rond point in the middle of place Pigalle where hopeful young laundresses, dressmakers’ apprentices, and grisettes in gray muslin dresses living off students in the Latin quarter lined up around the circular fountain, hoping to be picked by painters looking them over.
“That cattle auction? It’s where academicians choose their Venuses. Nobody I want would be there.”
“Models hang around Le Rat Mort in the mornings.”
“Trash. I don’t want some chippy I don’t even know and don’t care about. Imagine, two months saddled with some Jezebel. I do have some standards. No cowface with dirty armpits is going to inspire me.”
“Why are you so set on Angèle?”
Because she’s the only one who could take the place of Margot, he thought.
“Because I only want to paint women I love, or imagine I could love.”
“That leaves a wide field, then, doesn’t it?”
“I never experience anything joyfully unless I can touch it. Even with commissioned portraits, if I don’t feel something for the woman, it comes out stiff and lifeless. I can touch Angèle all I want.”
“Hm.”
“She revels in it. I need her joie de vivre. She’s entertaining. She’ll loosen up the group so they’ll enjoy each other right away. They need a reason to keep coming back every Sunday. Nobody else can do that like she can. Angèle is Angèle.”
“Then why have you been hiding her?”
“I haven’t. She drifts. She’s the type for your story too. A pretty girl who uses her charms to her advantage, monetary and otherwise. How’s this for a line? The painter set up his easel under a windmill to watch the women spin in a fast mazurka. Their simple muslin skirts whirled out behind them. A saucy one with teasing in her eyes laughed in sweet abandon knowing she’d go back to her one-room flat flushed and satisfied. See? She’s the perfect emblem of la vie moderne.”
“Then you write it,” Paul muttered. “I have a commission to do, a fait divers for Le Petit Journal.”
“On what?”
Paul took off his glasses, narrow rimless lenses on thin metal bows, and rubbed his temples. “Any diverse event that shows Montmartre as the envy of lesser capitals of culture.” Hunched over his plate, Paul forked boiled potato wedges into his mouth one after another. “Montmartre, where men made windmills and women make hats and waiters make art and grocers make poems and junk dealers make songs. But I need a premise.”
“And somewhere, the elusive model, Angèle, is making eyes at a man in a café or cabaret as distinct and full of character as any on the grand boulevards.” Auguste found himself eating as fast as Paul. “You need a story. I need a model. So. Two problems, one solution. A fait divers about searching for a particular model. Call it ‘Looking for Mademoiselle Angèle.’”
Paul lifted his head in interest. “The diversity will be the spectacles in the cabarets of Montmartre which we, the flâneurs, observe with a purpose.”
“We tell the doormen that you’re going to write about their cabaret for Le Petit Journal and they’ll let us in free.”
Paul gobbled the rest of his meal and stood up. “Where first?”
“Across the square. Le Rat Mort. But only to look for Angèle.”
Place Pigalle on a summer night sizzled like rancid butter in a hot pan. He loved the yellow gaslight, the blare of a trumpet spilling out of a cabaret, the piano tripping up the scale, the jugglers entertaining at the fountain. The odor of grease and whores spewed out as they entered the café.
Inside, the dead rat was still hanging from the ceiling, reminding patrons that this was one of the oldest cafés in Montmartre, and caricatures of the adventures of Le Rat were plastered on the walls to satisfy the Montmartrois’ taste for the bizarre. A ragged intellectual was haranguing a group at Gambetta’s table about the bourgeois imitating the aristocracy. Manet reigned politely at table eight as usual, overdressed in his top hat. Models lounged on benches to attract painters. They spotted Auguste and backed him against the wall. His shoulder knocked down a picture of Rat painting at an easel.
“I posed for Degas,” a stringy-haired blonde said. “We can start early. Morning light.” As if she knew something about art.
“Puh! I modeled for Balzac,” another one bragged.
Paul stifled a guffaw.
A third one spat on the floor. “I slept with Baudelaire!”
“Ah, nice. Very nice.” Auguste peeled her fingers off his cast while Paul just stood there and laughed. Auguste surveyed the room, didn’t see Angèle, and tipped his head toward the door.
Outside, Paul wrote feverishly in his notebook. “Oh, isn’t that rich. Modeled for Balzac.”
“And the other one. She must have been twelve.”
He steered Paul inside the Brasserie des Martyrs. Under gas lamps multiplied in the gilt-edged mirrors, the impresario blew on a trumpet. “Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies of the night and ladies of the day, ladies of the washtub and ladies of the satin drawing room. Gentlemen of the boulevards and gentlemen of the Butte, gentlemen of the stock exchange and gentlemen of the junk exchange, you are welcome all, true heirs of Gallic culture.”
“Blowing smoke in their faces, those top hats who deigned to come to a common man’s entertainment,” Paul murmured.
The impresario sang out the first line of “La Marseillaise,” urging on the children of the fatherland for whom the day of glory had arrived. At this the small orchestra fired off a salvo of the anthem.
“Welcome to what?” The impresario pranced across the stage in patent leather shoes. “To our little hill of ragpickers? No!” He flung his red scarf over his shoulder. “To the seat of culture, the glory of the city, Montmartre! Welcome to what our honored statesmen Léon Gambetta so nobly named our salon of democracy, where, tonight, our native sons will delight you with poetry and our native daughters with song.”
“He’s too full of himself,” Auguste said. “Let’s go. She isn’t here.”
“Charming women of various prices,” Paul muttered as he wrote.
At Chez Père Laplace, a rustic cabaret-gallery, used palettes smeared with paint hung on the wooden paneling.
“Whose are they?” Paul asked.
“Were they. Every hopeful in the quarter. It
started when Manet gave Laplace the palette he’d used for Olympia, and when Pissarro heard of it, he painted a couple of peasants on a palette and offered to sell it to Laplace. They bickered over the price until Laplace grudgingly paid him fifty francs. Then Claude Monet needed rent money and did the same. Now every two-bit amateur about to be kicked out of his garret has been hitting up Laplace for money. It makes Madame Tanguy happy, my colorman’s wife, this constant need for new palettes.”
“Are you tempted to offer yours?”
“And be labeled a tinhorn?”
While they were walking the periphery looking for Angèle, Thérèsa, still popular after fifteen years on the cabaret circuit, took the stage with a flourish and opened her large red mouth to sing, “J’ai tué mon capitaine,” accompanied by lewd gestures. Out poured the coarsest female voice he had ever heard, but after the refrain, her voice slid into something as delicate and tender as a choir of wood nymphs.
“Just when I think I’m getting too old for Montmartre, she sweetens a middle-aged man’s fancy,” Auguste said.
“Then why not her instead of Angèle?”
“That old cockroach?”
Paul guffawed. “Is Angèle here?”
“No luck. Onward.”
“I want a drink,” Paul said.
“Outside the octroi.”
They headed toward boulevard Rochechouart, which marked the old city walls and tax district. Beyond it, establishments were permitted to charge less for wine. These days the octroi was taken over by streetwalkers and hôtels de passe where cheap rooms were rented by the hour. One in flounced violet sidled up to them, but they ducked into the closest doorway, La Roche, a shabby café where La Macarona, a belly dancer from Algiers, was jiggling everything that would jiggle. An odd foursome was playing dominoes within spitting distance of her. Père Léonard, a violinist; Dupray, the military painter; the editor Lemoine; and a knacker from a slaughterhouse in La Villette, a notoriously clever man, hunched over their games, oblivious to the dancing.
“Perverse powers of concentration, those fellows,” Paul said, taking down some notes, his face close to the page.
“She’s not here.” He thumped Paul on the chest. “You got an eyeful?”
“Aw.” Paul put on an exaggerated pout.
In front of Auberge d’Audace, Paul said, “You go in. I’ll stay out here.” He moved away from the light of the gas lamp.
“Why?”
“Someone I don’t want to see might be in there.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s a habitué. You go in, but come back quickly.”
It was Paul’s own business, but Auguste was concerned. Inside, a shadow theater was being performed. He had to wait until the lamps flickered and brightened. When he didn’t find her, he hurried out.
Near Cirque Fernando, Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne poured out of Cabaret Elysée-Montmartre. The chorus line of dancers onstage was doing a wild cancan, hopping, knees up to their chins, kicking, flinging up their skirts to show white ruffles and black stockings.
“How about one of them?” Paul asked.
“I told you. I don’t want anyone I can’t imagine loving.”
Shouts from the audience urged the dancers to kick higher and show more skin. The dancers shouted back, working up to a frenzy of kicking, pivoting in one-legged hops while holding their ankles above their shoulders, impossibly straight-legged, falling in exact formation into the splits, to a thunderous roar from the audience.
“‘Bread! Bread!’ they demanded a century ago. ‘Spectacles and hussies’ is what they cry today,” Paul said in an overloud voice. Heads turned.
The police inspector Père la Pudeur leapt onto the low stage and fined two dancers for revealing too much underwear. The crowd jeered.
“Père le Prude,” Auguste said.
“A fine job you have, Monsieur le Prude,” Paul shouted, “being forced to look at that indecency.”
Everyone laughed, including the chorus line. One of the dancers who was fined tossed the inspector a ten-franc coin that had been heating up between her breasts. “Let that burn your pocket,” she bellowed.
The other protested that she had no money. “Please let it pass this time, monsieur. I’ll be more careful.”
“You should have been more careful this time,” the inspector barked.
Paul dug into his pocket and smacked a ten-franc coin into the inspector’s hand. “Now lay off the poor girl. She busted her corset stays on that one and now she has to go out and buy more.”
Laughter exploded from the audience again.
“Bravo, Paul!” shouted a blond at a front table. “Aren’t you a prince!”
Paul squinted to see who she was and a burly man sitting next to her sprang up and climbed over other people to grab Paul by the lapels. He fought to free himself, but the man got him in an armlock behind his back and pushed him out the door. Auguste followed, shouting, “Lay off him!”
The man slammed Paul against the building, nose first. “Stay out of my sight, you bastard.”
Auguste tried to pull him away, but the man shook him off, and said, “Butt out. This isn’t your affair.”
Paul turned to get away and the man grabbed him by his coat and slammed him against the wall again. “Stay away from Gabrielle, or something worse will happen.” He stormed back inside.
“Jesus Christ, Paul. What was that about?”
“Don’t take a step! Do you see my glasses?”
Auguste picked them up and they hurried away. “A wonder they’re not broken. Are you going to tell me, or do I have to fight you to find out?
Paul rubbed the back of his neck. “He thinks I’m after his tart.”
“Are you?”
“No. She just uses me to make him jealous. Let’s get out of here.”
“So he roughs you up whenever he sees you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Where are we going next?”
They walked to the corner before Auguste said, “There’s one more place Angèle might be, but it’s a climb. Cabaret des Assassins.”
Paul groaned. It was nearly on top of the Butte. “Nice name.”
Before leaving Montmartre d’en bas, Paul wanted to stop for a brandy at Brasserie Liberté, one of the cafés that had ignited the Commune. The place reeked of cigarette smoke and sauerkraut. Only steady, sodden, near-silent tippling here, elbows on black-lacquered tables, waitresses sitting and drinking with the clientele. It was little more than a dramshop selling petits verres of brandy and rum.
“How about that one?” Paul tipped his head sideways to a woman alone.
“Good God, no. She looks like she’s thinking.”
He was glad Angèle wasn’t here. He had found Margot drunk here with some rogues when he had gone looking for her because she didn’t show up on time to model. He didn’t want to relive that with Angèle.
Paul was absorbed in his own thoughts while they climbed to Montmartre d’en haut, and Auguste was too, wondering why Margot had drunk herself into a stupor so many times when she’d known he was waiting for her with a half-finished canvas. Why had she purposely disappeared whenever he needed her most? The complexities of love baffled him. He had known she wasn’t dependable, but he’d kept asking her to pose anyway.
So many things about her he didn’t know, yet they had been lovers for three years. He hadn’t thought to ask why she was attracted to disreputable men, or whether her family was still living, or what was on her mind when she was posing. He hadn’t asked her if her soul was at ease with God, but wouldn’t asking that have been selfish? He would have wanted a yes answer so he could be at ease. Maybe that was the highest form of love, one soul easing another. But it wasn’t him. He wasn’t sure if it ever could be him. Yet even now he wanted that from her.
He knew even less about Lise, his first love, so shy he’d had to coax her to model nude. He remembered less about her too, though he should remember more. Seven years with her, and a child
, maybe his, maybe not, probably ten years old by now. Then she married well and stopped modeling, and he’d lost track of her. After Lise, there had been Nini and Henriette and Anna. And the earlier Jeanne and her sister Isabelle, both of whom he’d used in Moulin. Where were they all now?
A painter of women was what he wanted to be known as, but that meant having a steady stream of models to inspire him, to make his pulse pound with the urgency to paint what he saw, what he felt in his body, what he wanted to touch. Madame Charpentier’s comment had stung. Couldn’t she see that it wasn’t philandery? It was compulsion. To adore what he painted. To do brilliant work not out of technique but out of desire, and to feel that desire, hot and full in his loins, not just his fingertips. He cared for each one in his own way because they had helped him to make beautiful paintings. But people were slippery in Montmartre, and he’d lost touch with them.
Too much of life was vanishing. Having the paintings helped him to remember, but when he was lucky the paintings were sold, and all that was left was fleeting sensation. He may have achieved the Impressionist ideal, to record sensation, but it always kept him hungry for more.
Climbing rue Lepic beyond the plaster quarries near the top of the Butte, they both stopped at the same instant. Building stones and girders had been laid out for walls, a floor, and a roof over Moulin de la Galette, the dance hall under the windmills.
“Enclosed?” Auguste sputtered. “The whole place will be enclosed, not just the mill shed?”
“I suppose to stay open in winter. To compete with the cabarets on the boulevards,” Paul said.
Auguste shook his head. “People don’t care a bean if the place has a roof. They should leave it be, its innocent self. We can dance just fine on the bricks and stamped-down dirt. We like it. Everyone feels welcome, even children. Even dogs. People can come in their artisan’s smocks. It’s all right with me for the bourgeois to dress down and come up here to mingle with the people of Montmartre, but enclosing it turns it into something commercial. Not ours anymore. A spectacle for somebody else.”
“Would that they’d come to your benefit for Le Pouponnat,” Paul said.