Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet (16 page)

Interlude

GIVERNY
December 1908

Now that winter had come, the water lilies were long gone, but he continued to work on his paintings of them from memory in his studio. More requests had come for him to settle on a date to show them, and more than ever he deferred his promise. In his last major exhibition he had shown the Japanese bridge and the trees and pond surrounding it, and endured criticism for his shallow subject matter. Why paint only a bridge, a pond below, a willow tree? the critics had asked.

What would they say now to an exhibition of nothing but lilies, water, and reflections? How great would be their contempt! And why did one ever give us the need to be understood? When was anyone ever indifferent to the opinions of others or the feeling that one should be better at work and with those one loved?

When his work did not please him and he thought of all the things that irritated him in his life, he sometimes remembered that Camille’s sister had not responded to his second letter, sent months before. Then it would not leave his mind. Finally he put down his brush and took up a pen, sitting at the table in the midst of his pictures.

My dear madame
,

I am hurt and angered by your silence, and though I may be foolish to interrupt my work to write you again, I must do so. I still hope we may have some communication about some of your sister’s things that I have found. In particular, when I looked in the box again, I realized some papers were missing, a handful of love letters she wrote before I knew her and which she never sent. They may have been destroyed by her or perhaps are still in your possession. I would like to have them. It is odd for me to be jealous so many years after her death, but, as I said, discovering the Japanese box has awakened many old feelings
.

Yours, C. Monet

He hesitated as he put the letter out to be mailed by his chauffeur. He had not told Annette the whole truth in his previous letter, for he had known very well that she had returned to Paris not recently but many years before.

Part Four

1869

I’m chasing the merest sliver of color. It’s my own fault, I want to grasp the intangible. It’s terrible how the light runs out, taking color with it
.

—C
LAUDE
M
ONET

A
S THE OPENING OF THE FIRST EXHIBITION OF
T
HE
S
OCIETY
of Anonymous Artists approached that autumn, the artists themselves were so excited they could talk of nothing else. Claude and Auguste met at a new framing shop near the École des Beaux-Arts to decide how to frame their work. Each painter could contribute six or eight paintings, and Claude had decided on two of his redeemed seascapes from Le Havre, which were already framed. The others needed framing, including some he had made the past summer while staying with Camille and Jean in a small village near a little bathing spot on the Seine called La Grenouillère. Auguste, whose parents lived nearby, had painted with him.

The two artists stood together under the hanging forest of frames hung on ropes from the ceiling: they were of every sort of wood and weight, painted or gilded, or carved with flowers. Each seemed to whisper, “Within me might live the work of a great artist.”

Auguste asked, “Do you remember how we met in art class? You spoke to no one.”

“I didn’t feel very confident.”

They reached up to take down samples of one frame or another. They touched them gently and set them swinging like chimes, clinking into one another and moving away again. They knelt and tried the samples around the paintings.

After several hours they chose, deliberating between beauty and cost, compromising.

“Monsieur,” Auguste told the framer. “You will accept a small deposit from us, the rest payable in three months?”

“Bien sûr,”
replied the man. “Come back in a week and all will be ready for you.”

O
N THAT BRIGHT
autumn day they went whistling up the street to their old café in the Batignolles district, leaping up like boys to touch branches of trees, knocking into a baby carriage and raising their hats, saying,
“Pardon
, madame!” Claude looked around the streets of Paris, at the churches, the shops, the chairs on terraces of cafés that would offer outdoor seating for a short time more. Glasses glittered on the tables, and the trees hung gravely in their late September fullness.

The painters were waiting at their table with its cracked marble top, their hats hung on hooks above them. They shook hands and sat down and ordered. “Well, we’ve chosen our frames,” Auguste said, beginning to eat someone else’s bread.

“What did you choose?”

“Second-best for me, best for Claude. The dandy!”

“I’m not worried. I’ll sell the ones we did over the summer for six hundred francs each. You’ll do the same. Have you seen the two rooms where we’ll exhibit? They’re right on the Champs-Élysées. I saw the first few posters for the show this morning, and the first newspaper announcement. But where are Sisley and Frédéric? We did say two o’clock.” They peered through the dirty window at the street and the tables and chairs outside.

They had been there an hour or more when they spotted Sisley walking gravely past the inside tables toward them. He bit his lip, looked at them all, and took off his hat. Slowly he took a chair. “The exhibition is postponed,” he said. “I’ve just come from the studio. Frédéric was running out when I arrived. All he said was that his family’s gone back on their word about sponsoring our exhibition now. Something happened; he was terribly upset and said he was returning to Montpellier at once to talk with them.”

Claude jumped up. “They’ve gone back on their word? Why didn’t he come to tell us? How he must feel! I’m going to find him.”

“It’s too late. His train’s gone by now.”

T
HE PAINTERS STAYED
in the café talking for a time after they heard the news. “Well,” Pissarro said, “we are more of an anonymous society than I suspected. In all honesty, we are completely anonymous. In fact, we don’t exist. The newspaper announced what will not be.”

Everyone began talking at once, but Claude took a deep breath and sank back on the worn velvet banquette. Now he understood that no one would see the exquisite paintings made in La Grenouillére that summer. All they had planned for this autumn was suddenly gone: the exhibition, the crowds, the celebrations, the contract with an art dealer, the sales. Most bewilderingly, he had no idea why. And what on earth had happened between Frédéric and his family now? He had no way of knowing.

“The cost of framing,” Auguste said sadly, eating the last crumbs of the bread.

Claude stood up. “I’d better tell Camille,” he said and set out walking back to the river. The very streets he had passed before seemed different, as if all the shape and color were gone. He saw no light or shadow anywhere as he crossed the bridge to the Left Bank and the Quartier Latin.

On their return to Paris after the summer, he and Camille had moved into a medieval building near her uncle’s bookshop. Claude slowly mounted the stairs, but no one was home. He remembered then that she had gone with little Jean to her parents’.

He walked about the two narrow rooms, looking at all their things, mostly still stacked against the walls in boxes. Camille’s little statue of the Virgin lay on its side on the bureau. He righted the lady, remembering the burning candle in the cottage and the shopkeeper demanding money it had brought. Would there be more such visitors? He cleared the second volume of
Les Misérables
from a chair and sat down with his head in his hands.

He could not bear to be with his friends or to be alone. Perhaps he would go and have a glass of wine to calm himself. He remembered that Camille sometimes hid her money in the portfolio with her novel in progress. He found it under the bed and opened it. Several francs were there, but only a few pages of the novel that she had been writing all spring and summer. He wondered what she had done with the rest of it. He would go fetch her. Still dazed, he set out toward the river.

With all his heart he did not want to enter her parents’ beautiful rooms on the Île Saint-Louis today; indeed, he had been there for dinner only a few times since the birth of his son. Now he walked heavily into the salon with its chairs and divans upholstered in pale rose silk. The Doncieuxs’ only concession to his relationship with their daughter was a painting he had given them of a sumptuous gathering of flowers in a vase.

Madame and monsieur were sitting on the sofa before the silver coffee service and the delicate cups. “Monet,” Monsieur Doncieux said, rising and shaking Claude’s hand heartily. “Just the man we were speaking of! You had a good summer, I hear?” His words did not add “living over a shoemaker’s shop,” but his eyes added them.

He said, “Sit down and join us, Monet. So tell us: Is all ready to proceed with your venturous exhibition?”

“Nearly,” Claude murmured, sitting. Was it this they spoke of?

“We’ll come, of course.”

“Yes, of course.”

Madame and monsieur looked at each other and monsieur sat down again, patting his mustache. He said, “So you both are perfectly happy and all your troubles will be over soon. Yes, we were speaking of you and our daughter. Minou’s gone out just now with the boy to buy him an ice and see a friend.” He nodded more seriously, like a doctor over a patient who is not well.

That half hour was one of the longest Claude could remember. The Doncieuxs rambled on and on, contradicting each other, while he looked at the blowing window curtains and thought about painting them. He did not believe a word they said. It was just another incomprehensible thing in this incomprehensible day. To go away and paint would be easier, but where could he go? He must post a letter to Frédéric today. And where was his love? How could he get out of this room?

The china clock struck three in its tedious way as if counting off another hour of life with some relief, and Claude jumped up, upsetting his coffee on the rug. As madame rushed to mop it with her tiny handkerchief and cried for the maid, he heard Victoire’s bark on the steps and his son’s voice. They tell ridiculous stories, Claude muttered angrily under his breath. He wanted to slam his fist into the glass cabinet of curiosities and gazed from the apartment door to the trembling maid who had brought a cloth and bowl of water. “Let me help you,” he said, kneeling. The tall doors opened and Camille came in.

She was there, so pretty in her straw summer hat with flowing, pale blue ribbons, carrying Jean, whose face was smeared with white ice cream. Victoire scampered about in his usual excess, careening from his mistress to the bowl of coffee-tinted water, splashing it further. Claude gazed hungrily at Camille, who was the one reasonable, lovely thing in this room. “Claude!” she exclaimed happily. “Why, what are you doing here?”

“Change of plans, must go back now,” he muttered. He thrust his hands into his pockets and then remembered and held his right hand out for monsieur to shake. “So sorry to leave you,” he said rapidly. “Wanted back at the gallery.” He could not wait to leave this room; if he never came back it would be too soon.

As he and Camille walked down the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, he hoisted his son to his shoulders. Taking her hand, he felt the tales he had heard dissolve in his head though he was too weary to consider why they had been told. Would they never leave the poor girl alone?

She said tenderly, “You look terrible. What is it?”

His voice broke a little as he told her about the cancellation of the exhibition.

Camille at once ceased to walk. “I can’t bear that you’ve had another disappointment, all of you!” she exclaimed. “It’s not right! And poor Frédéric! What could have happened? Didn’t he send you word? All your plans! But it will happen somehow; you’ll find out more when he returns. We’ll just manage until then.”

He looked at the women’s hats for sale in a shop window and said in a hollow voice, “I’m not sure how. Your father offered me a job working with him. As a sales representative.”

“Is that what they talked to you about? No wonder you looked like you wanted to bolt when I came in, to have that upon the other loss. Let them find out about the exhibition in their own time. Claude, you can’t work in silks! I have a better idea! Let me work for my uncle in the bookshop every day and have him send his assistant away; his heart’s bad and he needs more help. He can pay proper wages and we’ll manage until you can earn something.”

“What, you can’t work!”

“I can.”

“Poor man! He’s the best of your family. And your novel?”

“It’s nearly finished! I don’t mind waiting.”

Their voices had dropped very low over Jean’s murmuring as he played with Claude’s hat. As they slowly walked on, Claude said, “Well, work a little if it amuses you, but I assure you we don’t need the money. I’ll see us through. You’ll have a house and garden soon, I promise.”

W
ITHIN A FEW
days, the Doncieux family and everyone else he knew had learned about the canceled exhibition and his head began to clear a little. Only then did he remember what he owed the framer, but by that day he was able to cancel only some of his order. His letter to Frédéric received only a few words of reply on folded stationery, “Don’t worry, back soon. So sorry.” Several days later, he heard Frédéric had returned, and he ran over to the studio, climbing the stairs two steps at a time.

His friend was in his old painting suit, standing by his easel, but Claude could see that something of consequence had happened to him in Montpellier.

Frédéric barely looked up. “There you are,” he said.

It was an abrupt greeting. Claude nodded and replied as casually as he could, “What on earth happened?”

“Nothing much. The main thing is they wanted to make sure I marry first because they’re afraid I won’t go through with it. They damn well know I don’t particularly want to go through with it but I will. Lily will still move here. And we’ll have our exhibition next fall, after I’m married.” Frédéric raised his brush to paint the edge of a flower with maddening care. He’s half here, Claude thought. Everything about him seemed to say, “Don’t touch me.”

He thought, my friend is hiding something.

He said, “You’re painting that flower too tightly.”

“I’m painting it the way I want to paint it.”

“D’accord
. Very well, then do so.”

Frédéric hardly spoke that day as they painted side by side. Only when Claude put on his hat to go did he reach in his pocket to give Claude some money toward the purchase of the painting. Their eyes met for one moment and Frédéric looked away. Given so coldly, the money felt dirty in Claude’s pocket. It’s nothing I did, he thought as he went home. It’s something with him and he’ll tell me eventually.

But weeks passed and Frédéric remained withdrawn.

T
HOUGH
C
AMILLE BEGAN
working for her uncle, leaving Jean with the Sicilian woman next door, it took Claude some time to gather himself together to figure out what he would do next. In October he tried to place the paintings with an art gallery and met with the same lack of success he had had before.