Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet (33 page)

He exclaimed heartily, “You mustn’t worry at all. He’ll arrange everything. We must schedule surgery.”

She pushed him away, her breathy voice rising. “No, I won’t allow anyone to cut me!” she cried. “I know how it can be made better. I must be happy and get more exercise. I’ll go to church with Alice. She’s always asking me. I’ll burn candles. It’s nothing, really. If we need another doctor, we’ll send for one. It’s the cold. Truly, I’m quite all right, but tired. Hold me until I sleep. I’m a little shocked, but I’m not scared, for it’s not true. You can’t be scared of things that aren’t true.”

Claude held her tightly until she slept. De Bellio knocked on the door, but Claude whispered that he would be down shortly. By the time he had covered her tenderly and put more wood on the fire, he heard his friend’s footsteps on the path toward the coach stop by the church.

He knew everyone was waiting for him, and still on each step of the stairs he hesitated. Through the kitchen door he saw them at the table, chairs crowded together. Empty coffee cups, half a loaf of bread, and a pot of jam sat in front of them. The two smallest boys were sitting on the floor on a blanket with their blocks and bits of bread, looking as messy as young children can.

Claude pressed Jean’s thin shoulder. He tried to smile at everyone, but he sat down suddenly, covering his face with his hands. “He told you, I suppose,” he said. “She’s really sick, and when I look at her I see all the things I couldn’t do for her.” He began to cry wrenchingly and felt the girls gather about him, their arms around his shoulders, their hair falling down his shirtsleeves.

“Oh, please don’t cry, monsieur!” Blanche said. “She’ll get well. We’ll burn candles, won’t we, Maman?”

He raised his face and saw Jean’s terrified look as he sat with his napkin crumpled in his hand. “She’ll be fine,” he said to the boy. “Don’t worry, my love.”

“God will watch over her,” Alice said.

S
PRING CAME, THOUGH
for the first time in his life, Claude felt indifferent toward the season. He cared nothing for the wild fields of daffodils and poppies or the flowering apple trees. Letters went unanswered; he submitted paintings to the new independent exhibition and forgot he had done it. He would not go to Paris.

There was only one thing he wanted, and that was Camille’s health.

He read eagerly the encouraging stories sent to him by friends of women with the same symptoms who had recovered perfectly. Julie sent a bottle of holy water. Hoschedé came and went, saying they must have heart and he had no faith in doctors. Every moment of the day centered on how Camille felt, how she looked, whether she was happy or sad or frightened.

Lise wrote weekly and came once, distracted from the long journey, worrying about her rehearsals. “But you must get better quickly and come stay with me in Paris!” she exclaimed. She held Camille’s fingers tenderly. “Don’t you miss the theater? Yes, come soon! Next season I have one very wonderful role.”

Camille was well enough to sit in a chair by the bedroom fire; she preferred it because she was always cold, and often at least two of the girls came to sit with her. When he carried up some food on a tray on an April day as he did every evening at dinnertime, he saw her at her embroidery frame, stitching with concentration, as he had once painted her under an arbor. Suzanne Hoschedé stood by her shoulder, watching her, and Blanche sat at her feet, reading a novel aloud.

Was she better or worse? He asked himself that so many times a day, but today he had turned over an idea he felt he must share with her. “I think we should write to your parents,” he said.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “There’s no need to alarm them. You know they’d come from Lyon with great fuss, and my father has those heart pains. And they’d write my sister in Rome at once, and you know her new marriage is in difficulties.”

Claude picked up a spool of blue thread from the carpet and said casually, “De Bellio feels you should be seen by a few doctors.”

“But why? I feel better! I was just telling the girls I plan to come down to sit in the garden tomorrow. Claude, you look at loose ends! When you’re like that, I’m afraid you’re not painting!”

“You know I can’t paint when I’m worried about you!” he answered.

“Promise me you will.”

“There, I promise,” he said, kissing her forehead. As he tramped down the stairs, he swore he would. He needed the money, anyway; they were borrowing from everyone, including all of his friends but Pissarro, who had nothing. He had sent off every small thing of value to Paris to be pawned.

Still, we’ll manage, he thought. I’ll sell many things at the private exhibition. Then we’ll move away from here; she loves Paris. When she’s better I’ll move her back in time for the theater season. I’ll encourage her to take her audition. She can write another novel on a desk by a window overlooking a boulevard. Her sister’s coming back from Rome in the autumn and they’ll shop together.

She did come down to the garden the following morning, holding on to him. After that she came down every day. It’s all right, he told himself. He studied her carefully; she was thin but he could feed her.

He walked back from painting on an early July morning and hurried to the bedroom, calling, “Come, we’ll have late breakfast outside! The girls have baked. Minou!”

From under the covers she whispered, “Oh, Claude, the pain’s bad and I feel dreadful.” She began to cry in gasps. “I started to feel it again a few weeks ago and thought it would go away.”

She turned on the pillow to look at him.

Her lips were dry, her face and neck very thin, and her hand on the pillow almost translucent. In that moment he knew. He cried, “That’s it. Get up, get dressed. You’re going to have the consultation for surgery. I’m taking you to Paris!”

She clung to the iron bed, shaking her head; her thinning hair flew about her. When had her hair thinned like that? Why hadn’t he noticed? He tried to pry her hands from the bed and she would not let go. “It’s your fault!” he shouted. “Now you listen to me.” The coach would take her to the train, and somehow within the next few hours she would be at the hospital, drugged with laudanum; a skilled surgeon would remove the tumor from her, and within weeks color would come into her cheeks again. She would run up and down the steps laughing.

He got her hand away from the headboard and lifted her in her nightgown. She weighed nothing: her breasts and thighs were so thin. She managed to cover her face with one hand. “I won’t; I’m scared,” she cried. “God’s going to take me.”

The door opened and Alice came toward them, throwing down the clean sheets she held. “Put her down, Claude!” she shouted, seizing his arm. He had never heard her shout before. Looking directly at him she mouthed, “It’s too late.”

Camille had collapsed onto the bed, half falling over, and he knelt before her and touched her knees and whispered, “Minou, Minou! The worst thing is for you to overly excite yourself, Minou!”

H
E WATCHED HER
body melt away all summer, until it seemed she could not get any thinner and the pains increased, and she would start with wide eyes and a gasp and press her hand against her abdomen. He dreaded those gasps, after which he went to her and held her, and Alice held her too.

Georges de Bellio came once more from Paris, thoughtful in his long coat, hands behind his back. “There, my dear,” he said, sitting by Camille’s bed and patting her hand. “Years before I met you, Madame Monet, I saw the picture of you in the green dress and fell a little in love. You mustn’t tell your husband; he would be jealous. He was a mere painter and you were divine. I am even now a little in love with you, Madame Monet.”

“Are you, doctor?” she said, smiling.

De Bellio came downstairs more heavily, with Claude at his side. “A few weeks more at most, I think,” he said. “Give her laudanum for the pain if she can keep it down. She keeps nothing down now, does she, poor beauty? You must resign yourself, my friend.”

Claude ran from the house and sat on the steps between the large pots of sunflowers that lined them. When he looked up Jean was sitting beside him. “What is it, lad?” Claude asked. “You’re not playing with Jacques Hoschedé anymore. What about your tree house? Go make up with him.”

The twelve-year-old boy shook his head fiercely. “I don’t want to make up with him! It’s all his fault.”

“How can it be his fault, eh?”

“It is,” Jean shouted, his voice breaking. “It’s all the fault of them coming here.” He ran down into the garden, setting the swing crashing back and forth.

O
N THOSE WARM
, lovely days with breezes from the river and haystacks being made on the farms, everyone waited. The laundress came; the farm girl cleaned the stove. Bread was baked; coffee was ground and brewed. His easel was empty. He walked a few minutes away and came back terrified, racing up the steps. She dozed a lot now, the curtains drawn in her room, Alice or one of the girls sewing by the bedside or reading to her.

He did not sit with her all the time; he stayed away downstairs, but at a creak he ran up, listening to her breathing. He forgot there had been any other life with her. Then the pain worsened. Even with the laudanum and the brandy, it overwhelmed her and she would start up, her back curved, crying and sobbing. He was there in seconds then, but he could not hold her tightly enough to make the pain go away.

She finally slept at midnight.

He walked down the stairs, not knowing where to go.

Alice was mending one of his shirts in the kitchen. He sank into a chair, took her hand, and kissed it. She flushed. “I’ve something to tell you, Claude,” she whispered. “It’s important, and you mustn’t scoff. Camille told me today she’s afraid she won’t be allowed in heaven because she never married you properly in church.”

“Can she believe such a thing?”

“She does, and she would like to have a priest come for the sacrament as soon as possible if you consent.”

Tears filled his eyes. Alice put down his shirt, took his hand, and led him to her bedroom. He was aware of her lumpy bed in the corner more than anything in the world. He watched her, motionless, as she made to unfasten her top dress button. She whispered, “Would it make you feel better?”

“Yes, very much,” he whispered. “But afterward I’d feel like jumping from that window, and you’d be wretched. Dear Alice, you’re healthy and strong as she was; you’re like what she was. I want to bury myself in you, but I can’t. I can’t.”

H
E DRESSED IN
his best suit two mornings later, standing in his son’s room. The girls and Alice had suggested he leave his bedroom to let them dress the bride. The bride, he thought. His collar stud broke. He swore. The suit hung on him; he had not been able to eat. He walked down to the garden and picked some flowers.

Toward ten he saw the tall priest walking solemnly from the village.

Claude shook his hand. The bedroom window opened and Blanche called down that the bride was ready.

The room was full of flowers that the girls had gathered, and he gave his small bunch to Camille. Her hair had been arranged under a pretty lace-edged cap, and she wore her wedding and engagement rings on a ribbon around her neck as they long ago had slipped off her fingers. She had on a pretty bed jacket he had bought for her when they first moved to Argenteuil. Claude wished for the splendor of a church and boys singing and an organ for her sake, but there was only the bedroom, quite crowded with the Hoschedé girls, two holding the babies; the boys; Alice; and the priest.

The priest kissed and donned a stole. “Monsieur,” he said formally, “are you ready to marry this woman before God?”

“Yes,” Claude said.

“Take her hand, then.”

Camille made her vows seriously as he held her hand.

Jean stood by his mother gently rubbing her shoulder, staring out the window. He looked as if he was waiting for her to rise and dress and go for a walk with him, as if he believed all this sickness and the priest would leave them and she would be the beautifully dressed woman on a hilltop in his father’s painting with him sprawling impetuously in the grass, flowers rising about them.

Jacques threw his arm around Jean’s shoulder.

The girls served cake and wine around the bed, though Camille could take no solids and gagged on a sip of wine. Claude wanted only to escape to his attic studio and sit there with his arms clasped about him.

Toward two in the morning he woke to her cries of pain and he jumped up and ran to the river at the end of his garden, crashing through the high summer grass. I can’t bear it, he thought. I can’t. The cries echoed through the night. If only I could paint, he thought. As far as he ran he could hear her cry: “Make it stop, Claude!” and he cried out by the river, “I can’t do anything for you! I can’t do anything for you!”

F
OR TWO DAYS
she shouted and cried, and threw up what medicine they gave her. On the third day, when he was downstairs writing her mother, Alice called him to fetch the children and come. Camille lay on the pillow, blinking a little to concentrate on the faces bending above her. She looked at Claude as if she did not know him and then tried to focus. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something.