Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet (9 page)

He said, “Are you sure, dear?”

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” she whispered.

He took her hand and they ran across the bridge. Several times he turned to her and they kissed again. They hailed a carriage and clasped each other tightly on the leather cushions that smelled of cigars and other lovers.
Mon Dieu
, he thought, don’t let this moment melt away!

In his building on the rue de Furstenberg he almost pulled her up the stairs, fumbling with his studio key in the lock. Who the hell is here? he thought. I’ll kill them! To his joy no one was there, though the nude pictures looked down thoughtfully from the walls, observing them. She’ll go soon, she’ll go, he thought. She’ll come to her senses or I to mine. This is a good girl, a convent-bred girl, and I am a wretch of desire and know only that.

Oh, such desire.

He pulled her into his bedroom and felt for her dress hooks as she coaxed eagerly at his buttons, pulling down his shirt so that it tangled in one arm, leaving his chest bare. A few pins fell from her hair, which tumbled down her naked back. Such hair! Way down to her round bottom, dangling against the bare flesh. When he pushed her to the bed, he had to knock away the open novel he had left there.

“Camille, Camille,” he repeated.

Thought left him. His breath came faster and she flung her head back and forth, reaching up for him as he entered her. She was warm, warm. He pushed harder, stopping her gasps with his mouth so that her feeling should remain within her and grow warmer there. He cupped her full breast in his hand and thrust faster still. I’m dreaming this, he thought, before all thought left him. Still he held her and felt her own mounting joy. She rose up against him, melding with him, shuddered and cried out, and fell away again.

He held her, kissing her shoulder, and then felt something warm and wet on his cheek. “What, are you crying?” he asked. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, never.”

“Why then,
ma très chère fille?”

“Nothing, just the loveliness of it, the amazing loveliness! Oh, I thought … Claude.”

“What?”

“Rien
—nothing worth speaking of!”

She flung her arm across his stomach. In a moment she was asleep, and he also slept, unable to help himself, keeping her warm body in his arms. He dreamt they were rowing, not over the tiny lake of the park as they had that day, but on the vast sea. He rowed steadily while she kept her hand on his knee; before them was nothing but more churning waters as far as they looked.

He awoke suddenly at the sound of loud cracking and pulled her over to his side of the bed, sheltering her body with his own just seconds before something crashed to the floor.
“Merde!”
he shouted, leaping up naked.
“Merde
, the ceiling! I knew it! Are you all right? Let me light the lamp.”

“What?” she asked. “Has the ceiling fallen? How could the ceiling fall?”

“Water leaks from the roof. Look.”

Holding his shoulder, she gazed down at the large pieces of ceiling and rotten wood on the floor. Plaster dust hung in the air, making her cough. Looking up she saw the beams that separated the floors and a new hole several feet wide. She stood, just before he shouted, “Watch out, you’ll cut your foot!”

“I think I stepped on something.”

He swept the broken plaster from the sheets, urged her back on the bed, and held up the lamp.
“Merde
, there’s a splinter in your heel. I used to get them all the time climbing around the shore. There was broken wood from old boats.
Quel bordel!
I make love to you and then my damned room falls on top of you.”

“Stop! It hurts!”

“Just one moment and I’ll have it. I’d never hurt you, you lovely girl! There! Come here, come close! Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I will be once it stops hurting.”

“Let me kiss it.”

He kissed the bottom of her foot and playfully licked it and she took hold of his hair and cried, “Now it tickles. Your tongue tickles.” Still he continued until he realized she was laughing. She shook her head and her long hair whipped around and her shoulder shook. She laughed so hard she gasped. He was shouting with laughter then, saying, “And this is what you did not expect …”

“Really, it’s quite marvelous! Such a thing has never happened to me before, truly, truly, Claude!” She pushed him away and then dropped back on the pillows, holding out her arms to him.

H
E WOKE EARLY
to gaze down at her as she slept. Swept into a corner were the ceiling pieces; he had found the broom in the studio last night after they carefully removed and shook out the sheets and then slept, exhausted, curled together once more.

Outside the window, he heard a few neighbors crossing the courtyard below on their way to work.

Watching her, breathing softly so as not to disturb her, his mind returned to the events of last evening. He could have expected none of it, least of all that in spite of his concerns, this lovely girl was not a virgin when he took her in his arms. All girls of her class were delivered untouched to their weddings. It was none of his business, but he did wonder.

Claude rose quietly, sweeping any further pieces away. A plaster flake was caught in her glimmering hair, and when he touched it Camille opened her eyes and smiled at him.

He sat down on the bed. “I thought I dreamt you. All the time I painted you I felt such tenderness inside me for you, and there you were on the model’s platform, so far away, with the easel between us.”

“I thought of you sometimes too,” she replied. “I didn’t know you saw me as more than a painting.”

“When we were away at the inn, I saw you from the window.”

She lowered her eyes; her eyelashes were like silk and her cheek faintly red where it had pressed against the pillow in sleep. “Did you?”

“So you walked about on the path alone at night?”

“Yes. You’ve no idea how often I’ve been alone in my life, Claude. Sometimes I think always.”

She moved away now; she felt for the sheet to cover her. He tried to tug it down but she shook her head. The languid look turned to a frown. Her voice changed and she looked past him toward the bureau, saying, “Let me up. I must go now. What will my family think? I never came home; I stayed away all night. I stayed all night with you!”

He pulled her against him. “What? You’re going?”

“Of course I’m going!” she said, looking at him sorrowfully. “I’ll have to lie to them. How could I have come with you last night? I’m getting married in two months.” She rose from the bed and looked desperately for her stockings. Her dress was draped over the chair where she had thrown it last night.

He cried, “Then it’s settled? Your life’s settled?”

“I won’t forget this night, Claude. I promise. Never. I’m crying now, you see. Don’t look at me like that. You have the most beautiful, haunted eyes. In my heart, years from now, this night will be safe there.”

He shouted, “But you mustn’t …”

She was sobbing as she dressed and kissed him again many times. She tore herself away from him and he heard her little heeled shoes quickly descending the stairs to the courtyard as she fled away.

The room was so quiet after she was gone.

He stumbled through his day. I must forget her, he thought that evening. It is all too complicated. He stood at the edge of his door, imagining her tangled in his sheets as he watched her sleeping.

Then with a cry he pounced on something that had fallen beneath the bed. In leaving quickly, Camille had forgotten her little bag. He spread the contents on the covers. Powder, lip rouge, a little mirror, a handkerchief, the studio address, a few chocolate sweets, which were partially unwrapped and had smudged the calling cards. He arranged these things, trying to make some sense of them. One of the calling cards was her mother’s and bore her address; a small shopping list for hose and a parasol was scribbled on the back. Powder and chocolate smeared his fingers and nearly obscured the house number.

H
E WOULD HAVE
liked to have gone at dawn, for as soon as he made up his mind to do something, he wanted to have it done. However, he felt it best to be mannerly. Milkmen came before sunrise, not gentlemen. Dressed carefully in his new suit and the shirt with the lace cuffs he had worn the day before, he did not present himself at the third-floor apartment in the house on the Île Saint-Louis until the church clock struck the hour of ten.

A maid peered around the door and, perhaps impressed by his cool manner, admitted him while she went to call madame. Claude looked about the salon with its chairs and divans carved with lyres and urns reflecting the classical style of the deposed monarchy. All were upholstered in fine pale silk, reminding him of the family business. There was not a single painting of any merit on the wall, only mediocre work from the last century, which the family likely had brought from Lyon. It was all very formal, as if royalty was expected. All in all he could not imagine the bright girl who had cried out in his arms walking impetuously through these rooms.

Madame Doncieux approached him in her dark dress. He assessed her quickly: her thick hair was neatly piled on her head, her lace collar starched. She looked as if she had never eagerly pulled the shirt off a man in her life. Still, something of her nose and mouth confirmed that she was her younger daughter’s mother.

“Monsieur,” Madame Doncieux said. “My maid told me you wished to see me. I do not believe we know each other.”

He inclined his head; he was not sure if he should kiss her hand. “I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting you, madame,” he replied. “I am the man who painted the picture of your daughter that hangs in the current Salon.”

Her back stiffened as her eyes swept from his newly washed hair to his polished shoes. “So you’re the
artist,”
she said. “My daughter finally confessed that she had modeled twice for you. It was indiscreet on her part, to say the least, and unwise. What can it say of her good name? A girl who received holy pictures while at school for her piety!” Madame Doncieux blew the last words out as if she wished to blow him away. “I am amazed you come here.”

If Camille was convent bred, it was one with wide windows, he thought wryly. Well, if he had expected any welcome, he had been wrong. Even his fine clothes did not excuse his questionable profession.

Claude glanced at the door that madame had closed behind her and that likely led to the bedrooms. Perhaps Camille was in there, listening. He wanted to rush through that door to find her, but madame would cry for help. And then—
Merde!
—suppose Camille herself did not want him there, that she had taken pleasure in him for one night the way he had a few times with women, and now returned to her own world? He imagined her room with a wardrobe full of dresses, floral curtains, a dressing table with a large oval mirror, and books. What kind? Baudelaire? She had said she read the novels of Balzac but preferred George Sand. Did she have theater programs autographed by actors? When you saw someone’s room, you knew her. He would have liked to see it even if he could not see her.

He held out the bag. “But I have stopped by for a very ordinary reason, madame—to return this to her.”

“This was the bag my daughter had with her two days ago. How did you come by it?”

“She went to see her picture at the Palais. I happened to be there, as I might be. When she left, I found it beneath the chair where she’d been sitting. She was hurrying off to meet you to pay a call on friends.”

“What? We were to make no call that day!” Madame Doncieux shook her head as she accepted the bag. “She left here two days ago to go straight to her sister’s and has been there since. I hope your picture is a good likeness; she told me you’re very drawn to painting trees and air.”

His artist’s pride intervened. “True, madame, but I believe I drew her well.”

She smiled a little. “Now, I know nothing about you, monsieur,” she said, “but that you take good girls from their family homes without permission. Let this be an end of communication between you both. If you attempt to see my daughter again, my husband will be forced to have words with you. I trust this warning is all you need as I see that, in spite of your profession, you are a gentleman.”

A
S
C
LAUDE WALKED
away from the Île Saint-Louis, he said to himself: But Camille will write to me. Yes, for I miss her with a strange ache that was not there before, and she must feel the same. She cried when she left me. He could still feel her kisses on his mouth. What did it matter if she told him she was to meet her mother when it was her sister who expected her? She had only said it to avoid spending the day with him, knowing perhaps in advance that it might end in such intimate passion on his narrow bed.

Days passed, though, and there was no word; the situation was made worse by the presence of other women in the studio. Auguste brought a plump, dark-haired beauty called Lise home and slept with her on his cot near the easels, both breathing gently under the blankets. Once someone stayed behind Frédéric’s closed door all night.

Perhaps it is true, then, Claude thought, as I suspected when I stood amid her mother’s silky classical chairs: she had her fun with me and now has hurried off to her proper marriage. One day our paths will cross on one of the great boulevards or perhaps at the annual Salon. I will be famous then and she will arrive on the arm of her husband and lower her eyes when she sees me. She will flush and murmur and I will keep my hands behind my back and nod coldly and say, “Madame.”

Claude imagined her years from now approaching him across a parlor as her mother had done, saying, “My maid told me you wished to see me. I do not believe we know each other.” She would be near fifty then as her mother was now, all her heedless charm gone, turned into the proper matron, upholding the values of the empire and French petite bourgeoisie, not ever remembering she had thrown off her clothes to the last petticoat for him.

To escape her memory he began a painting in a park, yet every woman walking down the path reminded him of her. He could do nothing well. That’s it, then! he thought, putting down his brushes. He would have no peace until he found her again.