Luncheon of the Boating Party (27 page)

“Le Balafré. The Scarred One. Scarface! I know him!” Angèle said.

“You can’t be serious,” Charles said.

“He’s got a gash from his mouth to the top of his ear. Give me that clipping when we’re finished. He’s blind now, and just sits under the acacia trees in place du Tertre on the Butte telling stories for a sou. I’ll have someone read it to him. It might make a world of difference to both of them.”

“No comments after each one,” Circe said primly. “When we’re fi nished we’ll have a vote for whose observation is the best.” She tapped her chin. “Hm. Whom shall I call on next? Ah, you. Gustave.”

She looked at Gustave a moment. Time enough for only one rushed stroke for her throat.

“Mine is a Left Bank story,” Gustave said. “I found a crowd gath-

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ered in place de la Sorbonne listening to a woman on a makeshift platform. ‘No duties without rights, no rights without duties,’ she was saying. ‘Perfect equality of the sexes before the law and in customs and moral codes. We must not timidly beg for a little more education, a little more bread, a little less humiliation in marriage. No. We must fi rmly declare our natural rights.’ ”

“Hubertine Auclert, most likely. A radical Amazon on crusade,”

Charles said.

“She went on and on about universal suffrage, legal separation of wealth in marriage, the right to run for public offi ce.”

“The right to scrub the floor,” Auguste put in. “If women did that domestic exercise, they’d make better lovers. The generations to come won’t know how to make love worth a damn, and that would be very unfortunate for those who don’t have painting.”

“Don’t be beastly, Auguste. It’s not a scrub job that makes a woman cut capers, and you know it,” Angèle said.

He snickered. “Well, I can’t see myself getting into bed with a lawyer, if there are such female monsters. I like women best when they don’t know how to read, and when they wipe their babies’ bottoms themselves.”

“You can’t mean that,” Ellen said. “Words, language, they’re as important to women as to men.”

“For a man who paints
la vie moderne,
you’re a century behind the times,” Angèle said.

“But why teach women such a boring occupation as law when they

are so perfectly suited to do what men can never dream of attempting—

that is, to make life bearable?”

“Let Gustave finish,” said Circe, turning to face forward.

A will of her own. It was maddening.

“One man in the crowd shouted, ‘Women don’t know how to vote.’

The speaker gestured to the Sorbonne behind her and said, ‘Then open the university to us.’ ” Gustave shook his head. “She had an answer to everything.”

“Because she’s no clod-knocker,” Angèle said. “She’s smart and she’s plucky and she’s right.”

Paul nudged Pierre. “Ho-ho! Angèle’s an Amazon herself.”

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“Who would have known it under that pretty face?” Pierre said.

Alphonsine said to Alphonse, “It looks like Papa is going to take out the steam launch. You’d better go down.”

Alphonse looked over his shoulder.

Circe turned around completely and touched the muscle of his

forearm.

“Circe, hold your pose, please.”

“First Alphonse has to give us his contribution.”

“Just this.” He gestured with his thumb toward the promenade.

“These office clerks in new striped shirts trying to act like oarsmen, strutting around here with an oar on their shoulder—they’re only weekend pretenders. They buy their
canotier
in Paris instead of on the river, wear a cravat by la Coline, and smoke their fancy Chacom pipes from Saint-Claude. Take a look at the ones in frock coats tapping silver-tipped canes on the dirt of the promenade. They steal glances at how other men dress. They’re afraid of getting their white trousers dirty, afraid of sunburn, afraid of blisters, afraid for their liver. They don’t really care about the river. They care about putting on a show.”

“Then you think leisure is turning into a performance?” Jules asked.

“That all the island’s a stage and all the men and women merely posers?”

“Something like that. I’m sorry, Auguste. I have to go,” Alphonse said.

Auguste nodded and Alphonse went downstairs.

Looking right at Circe, Jules said, “People pose in order to make spectacles of themselves. Thanks to Haussmann’s public places, we’ve become a nation of stage players, and the play we’re performing is class.”

She of the articulated wrists flapped and fluttered to make Jules stop.

“It’s not your turn. Right now it’s Antonio’s turn, our foreign correspondent.”

She turned to flirt with Antonio, but Auguste missed his chance.

Damned infuriating.

“Con piacere, signorina,”
Antonio said. “The women of Paris, that’s the subject of my little report. Everyone from laundresses at two francs a day to Mademoiselle Zénobie, star of the Folies-Bergère who had the soles of her dancing shoes paved with diamonds.”

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“Glass,” Ellen said. “Just glass. She’s trying to imitate Cora Pearl in
Orpheus and the Underworld.
Hers were real, but that was during the Second Empire.”

“You didn’t start low enough,” Angèle said. “Two francs a day is too high. You’ve left out the wakers-up. Ragpickers’ daughters in the Maquis who work from midnight to four in the morning making the rounds of the merchants of Les Halles vegetable stalls and the poor devils who fold newspapers. Five centimes a wake-up. Millionaires of the profession have as many as thirty clients. That gives them one measly franc fifty by dawn.”

“How is it that you know so much about the riffraff?” Circe de-

manded.

“Because I was one, princess.” Softly at first, Angèle sang Rosa Bor-das’ rousing song, “La Canaille,” famously sung at the Hôtel de Ville the night that ignited the Commune.

“J’en suis! J’en suis,”
Angèle sang in Rosa’s raspy voice, declaring she was also
canaille,
riffraff.

Pierre joined on the mesmerizing, mounting refrain. Promenaders stopped to listen and the
Palais
sailboat crowd came out from under the arbor. Paul stamped his feet, and Angèle, her arm raised aggressively, belted out the last victorious note. Applause came up from below.

Paul raised his glass.
“Vive le peuple!”

“Bravo, Angèle!” Ellen cried. “You do Rosa proud!”

“You’ll have the stinking
mouchards
reporting us,” Alphonse called out from the dock.

“And the Maison will be shut down!” Alphonsine wailed, which

made everyone laugh, especially Paul with his deep-toned horse laugh.

Circe had lost control of the group. Or Auguste had. Bewilderment flushed her cheeks. Finally some color to them. A few strokes on her face.

“Antonio, are you finished?” Circe asked.

“No. I’ve hardly begun.”

That brought on the laughter again. How could he paint with all this going on?

“I’ve been studying your social classes as they pertain to that oldest

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of female professions. As a foreigner, I find the nuances fascinating. At the bottom, you have the ladies of the pavement, hatless Montmartroises posing as milliners’ delivery girls with the most piercing, desperate eyes that chide you for not buying what they’re selling.” Antonio shuddered, which made Alphonsine snicker.

“The next lowest, I believe, is the dancer of the
chahut
in Montmartre dance halls. Not professional performers, just women who come to be picked from the
promenoirs.
”

“Girls who have an intimate acquaintance with a washtub during

the day,” Jules added, then took a puff on his pipe.

“Unbelievable, their kicks and contortions. We have nothing like it in Italy. Their catcalls advertise wild frenzied sex.”

“Among the French,” Charles said, “it rarely happens that a taste for anything is not carried to such an extent as to become folly. The
chahut
began as an orderly
quadrille des lanciers.
In its extreme, it’s the cancan of the finale at the Folies-Bergère ending in a row of chorus girls falling forward in the splits, like dominoes each knocking the next one down. That too is
la vie moderne,
splintering women’s bodies for entertainment.”

Looking into her wine glass, Ellen said, “You surprise me, Monsieur Ephrussi, that you would attend an entertainment of
le peuple.
”

“As a foreigner myself, I must learn all aspects of my adopted

culture.”

Auguste chortled, and Charles tried to recover himself. “In my opinion, the elasticity of the leg in the
chahut
and cancan leads one to suspect an equal flexibility of morals. So continue, Antonio.”

“Then there’s the shockingly young amateur, the
trottin,
flowers of the rues hiking up their skirts while sizing up their potential customers.”

“Mere buds,” Pierre cut in. “They’re a gamble of inexperience.”

“Take a closer look, Antonio,” Paul said. “There’s a difference between how the women lift their skirts on the Right Bank and the Left.”

“I see I’ll have to continue my study,” Antonio said.

“Use caution in your investigations,” Raoul said. “There are dangers.”

“I understand. A step above, if I’m not mistaken, is what I believe you call the
demi-mondaine,
older than a
trottin,
and more expert.

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Dressed in finery that would admit her to a higher-class café, or a theater loge.”

“Or the Jockey Club or the Hippodrome at Longchamp,” Raoul

put in.

“Or the Château Rouge or the Valentino,” Charles added.

“And finally,” Antonio said, “the courtesans.”

“Deriving their name from serving the royal court,” Charles inter-jected. “They participate in the arts and the fi ner things.”

Amusing how Charles was taking part with such enthusiasm.

“The most exquisitely dressed,” Antonio continued, “the most jeweled, the most intelligent, the most—”

“Expensive,” Pierre said.

Circe raised her chin.
Zut!
A mind of her own. He gave up on her for the time being and mixed darker shades for the shoulders of Raoul, Jules, and Charles, positioning them in relation to one another, breadth and height.

“You’ve certainly been busy this week, Antonio,” Circe said.

“Oh, no, mademoiselle. These are the results of a month of ob servations.”

“Don’t think you have it all wrapped up,” Angèle said. “It takes a keener eye than yours to cut respectable from loose. Take a squint at the size of her bows, dear boy, not her bosoms. See where she places her chignon—high like a crown or low like a bunny’s ass. Watch how she lifts her skirt at a curb, how long she holds it up, whether she lowers it gracefully or drops it with a flump, whether she looks you in the face—

them’s the things will tell you she is or isn’t a
femme de la rue.
Back to the streets you go, and do better, or you’ll make a blunder that will land you in the cells of Rochefort.”

“And your conclusion?” Jules asked. “So far, that is.”

“That Montmartre is indeed the seat of democracy. The poor are

offered the same treats as the rich, only the dressing is different.”

“Caution, my friend,” Jules said. “Dumas
fi ls
said to go to Chevet’s and look at the peaches at twenty sous. Perfect, fresh, juicy. Then look at those for fifteen. Each one has a flaw, hidden until you take a bite.”

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Auguste cast a glance at Gustave. He had said nothing during all of Antonio’s report, the only man not contributing. His expression was in-scrutable, his pose leaning away from the table was exact. He must have shooting pains in his back. They’d been posing for nearly two hours.

“Time for a break,” he said.

“But we haven’t gone around to everyone,” Circe said.

Ellen shook out her arm. “And you haven’t called on any women.”

Pierre gave his beard an energetic scratch and made good on his promise to massage Circe’s neck and shoulders, then moved on to Ellen, and asked her about bringing Émile again. She gave him a guarded answer.

“I thought I was the
quatorzième,
brought in to save the day,” Charles said. “Today we have a dozen. Why make it worse?”

“One woman not here today is already in the painting, which makes thirteen unless Émile comes back to fill his space,” Auguste said.

“Then if I might say so, prevail on him to come, mademoiselle,” Charles said to Ellen. “It is essential, for the sake of the painting’s reception.”

“Otherwise,” Pierre said, “we’re subject to dire consequences. Thirteen gathered in an upper room for the Last Supper. This is an upper terrace.”

“I’ll try.”

“If Émile doesn’t come back, your painting will suggest a different story than you intend, Auguste,” Pierre said.

“I don’t intend any story.” He resolved not to think of it for a while, and just keep on painting. He couldn’t allow one more worry to set in.

Circe patted her bosom. “Don’t all paintings tell a story?”

“Not this one. If I had wanted to tell a story, I would have used a pen. Choose a history painting if you want a story. The important thing here is not
what’s
going on, but how it
conveys
what’s going on.”

“You’re trying to confuse me.”

“Painting, the act of it, that’s what’s important. Let them see paint—

thick, thin, smooth, rugged, one color brushed wet into another, or lying alongside another, distinct. That’s what modernity is to me.”

“This will be famous, won’t it?” she purred.

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Her eyes were alive with light like wet sapphires washed with