Luncheon of the Boating Party (32 page)

“Madame Samary,” she corrected. “I honor you in all other matters, but it shall stay as Jeanne Samary. For sake of the stage.”

Her parents had retired by the time she came in carrying a dozen of the roses. She opened the door to her room, and on her bed lay a fl at package wrapped in brown paper with a delivery label. A wedding present?

Did he dare send one before he told his father? She ripped off the paper and sank onto the bed holding Auguste’s small portrait of her, his remembrance of times past.

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Circe’s Stripes

Auguste noticed that she of the ramrod back wore a haughty ex-

pression today sitting on the terrace as stiff as a figure in a wax museum, but he had a plan. He would flatter her vain self until she melted like Brie into something pliant.

Paul brought some peppermint liqueur of a gorgeous emerald green. It would be a good substitute for one of the bottles of wine in the painting.

“It’s to mark the halfway point,” Paul said.

That shocked him. He’d be far from half finished by the end of

the day.

Angèle arrived with a note from Ellen. He opened it and read:

Dear Auguste,

I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t come today. I’m forced to do the matinee because my substitute who has been doing them has gotten herself in trouble and went to one of those awful women in the

Batignolles. Now she’s abed. I’m sick with worry and feel awful for you. I don’t know when I can come back on a Sunday. I’ll try to come on a weekday although I have acting lessons in the mornings and rehearsals for a horrible new pantomime in the afternoons.

Ta bien dévouée,

Ellen

“Did you know about this?” he asked Angèle.

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“I guessed as much. I knew she’s had to pay her substitute to take her place every Sunday.”

“I had no idea. I should have been paying.”

He asked Alphonsine to take Ellen’s chair and eat with them. “Let Anne serve from now on.”

Louise came upstairs carrying a platter, one step behind Charles, the last to arrive. “Sit. Just taste this, monsieur.
Aubergines à la Russe.
Aren’t they as fine as any eggplants in Russia?”

Charles tasted, his nose in the air, his eyes closed. “Hm! Nothing finer from Odessa to Moscow, madame.”

“You ought to ask that fellow to paint eggplants for you,” Louise said. “A companion to the asparagus painting. A thousand francs for three purple eggplants.
C’est ridicule!
”

Circe fluttered her filmy sleeve. “I agree, madame.”

Auguste launched his plan. “That ruffle will be a delight to paint.

See how pliant it is? That’s how I want you to be.”

Maybe her corset was the problem. He leaned toward her. “Circe, I’m wondering if you’d consider stepping into Alphonsine’s room and removing your corset. That might make it easier for you to pose naturally.”

She gave him a look a lady would give a street urchin who had just stepped on her hem, and turned to Antonio. “I understand you are a journalist?”

“I write for
Le Triboulet,
mademoiselle.”

“That means you must be very funny.”

“Not so. I am too limited in your language to produce the witticisms people expect in
Le Triboulet,
so I must write about the absurd.”

“For example?”

“Oh, how to teach your pet frog to flirt, how to dress your poodle
à
la mode,
how to express yourself by the manner in which you open your umbrella, how to piss on the street with style. Essential things.”

“Disgusting.” She made a face at Auguste as though that word was her answer to his request.

He had the rest of the meal to think of a different approach. Louise’s fried fish was a big success, but he hardly tasted it.

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“Perfect for a boating party by the river,” Gustave told her.

“Why, thank you. Leave room for the dessert. Alphonsine made it.”

“And what might that be?” Gustave asked.

“They’re shaped like sails,” Alphonsine said. “They’re for boating champions, so you and the baron had better prove yourself worthy three weeks from today.”

Did she have to remind him of the passage of time?

When Anne brought up the apple pastries, Alphonsine served Gus-

tave a particularly large one. She went around the tables with a globe-shaped bottle banded in brass, drizzling the Chambord Royale on each person’s sail, starting and ending with Gustave’s, giving him a second pour while resting her hand on his shoulder. Gustave would be blind if he didn’t recognize that something was happening. Auguste was worried, for her sake.

He was itching to get started. It seemed forever before Anne came up to clear the plates. He and Paul rolled out the easel, Pierre rolled back the awning, people took their poses. Then he just sat.

“We’re breaking our bodies here. What are you waiting for?” Circe asked.

“The light, mademoiselle.”

After a cloud blew by, he mixed a burnt sienna and added a touch of rose madder for Raoul’s jacket, making it more ocher for some areas, and close to burnt umber for the shadows. He mixed in a touch of violet tint where the light landed on Raoul’s shoulders and the wooden rail. With other brushes, he touched all parts of the canvas, bringing everyone out a little more, except for the vague spot in the middle, Ellen and Émile.

He laid in more of the folds on Circe’s skirt and applied washes of pale pink and blue to the white stripes as he would do on the tablecloth, napkins, and Alphonse’s shirt. Circe shifted in her chair and the stripes changed. He set down his brush and bent down to try to get them back the way they were.

“Don’t touch my dress!” she cried. “Your hands have paint on them.”

He looked at his fingers. Not a bit of paint that he could see. Alphonsine circled around the table and adjusted the stripes according to his instructions.

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Circe faced straight ahead. “Turn to Gustave, please,” he said. She moved her chin an inch to the left. “Ah, now your cheek is lit like a pear blossom at this angle.” It was a strategy, yes, but it was also true.

“As round and white as an angel’s arse is how he’s painting it,”

Angèle said, baiting her.

“Turn a little more.” Her frozen posture was a refusal. “As beautiful a profile as I’ve ever seen.”

“What about my eyes?”

“Like the midnight sky studded with a star.”

Alphonsine blew air out of her mouth.

“Then why don’t I have eyes in the painting?” Circe demanded.

“You will, when you face Gustave and stay that way. Every time you move, your stripes change. Look. There he is, smiling at you. Talk to her, Gustave.”

“You’ve posed for other artists, haven’t you?” Gustave asked.

She turned to answer. “Yes.”

Auguste hurried to paint her cheek.

“Then you know what he needs. Stillness and compliance. Did you ever pose for Henri Gervex in Café Nouvelle-Athènes?” Gustave asked.

“Yes.” Her mouth tightened and she turned back to face forward.

Gustave glanced at him, as though trying to convey something.

Auguste remembered Gervex painting in the café once. The motif

was three men at a table and one overdressed woman in pink silk and lace. My God! It must have been Circe. If he remembered rightly, she was painted from the back, with the nape of her neck, an ear, and a shapeless cheek visible, but not her whole face. The men were reading the paper, smoking, ignoring her. It was a café scene of people not connecting, like Manet’s, suggesting the separateness of modern life. There was something pathetic about her in all her finery. Three men, and none with an admiring look for her. None like Maggiolo gazing at Angèle. She must have felt misused.

“Turn toward Gustave, please. See how he’s adoring you?”

“Je t’adore,”
Gustave said, but his voice cracked. He was trying.

“I insist on looking directly out. I insist on posing like Victorine

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Meurent did in
Déjeuner sur l’herbe.
And in
Olympia
too. Manet let her face the people looking at the painting.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,”
muttered Jules.

Auguste set down his brush and palette. An annoying rivulet of sweat trickled down his chest. He rubbed the heel of his hand against it.

“I’ve been to Manet’s salon,” Circe went on. “I met Victorine there.

She’s famous now.”

“Famous for being called a female gorilla by the press,” Charles remarked.

Auguste took her hand in his. “
Chérie,
this is a different sort of painting. I want it to be a natural moment of friends enjoying each other at lunch. This isn’t a portrait.”

“So was Manet’s painting a moment of friends enjoying each other at lunch, only it was on the grass. A picnic,” she said petulantly.

“Then why don’t you take your clothes off, like Manet’s model did?”

Pierre taunted. “Then you’d be sure to be the center of attention.”

Paul cheered,
“Youpi!”
and Alphonse exploded in a belly laugh.

“Go ahead and help her, Alphonse. You’re closest,” Pierre said.

“No,” Circe cried. “I don’t mean that. I just mean her face.”

“Circe, you are a beautiful woman,” Auguste said. “As lovely from the side as from the front.” His voice had a tone of pleading. He was reduced to that.

“I’m going to leave right now if you don’t let me pose facing

forward.”

Auguste pressed her hot hand so she would think about what she

just said. A pain shot up his middle finger. He peeled away his fi ngers slowly and held her by a look. Her eyes were glossy with moisture. Cautiously, he stepped back and pointed with his index finger to Gustave.

She rose halfway, wavered, her fi ngertips trembling against the tablecloth, then stood up completely and drew her shoulders back. “You know I can get you well hung at the Salon. Madame Charpentier can speak to—”

“He’s already well hung, dolly,” Angèle said.

Pierre and Raoul snickered. Paul and Alphonse were silent this time.

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“Or I can get her to denounce you.”

Their snickering stopped. Angèle and Gustave turned their heads toward him. Alphonsine raised up, looking grave. He avoided her eyes and studied Circe to see how determined she was. Her chin quivered, but her back was rigid. She picked up her parasol. Any second her porcelain face would crack, out of frustrated disappointment or bewilderment that it would come to this.

Jules lowered his pipe. Charles and Raoul turned to look. Antonio straightened up and scowled. Paul and Pierre glanced at each other.

Deliberately, Auguste wagged his index fi nger. “Look—at—

Gustave.”

The air was charged with her indecision. She opened her mouth.

Only a high-pitched croak came out. She raised her chin and took one step. Then another, giving him a chance. He only had to lower his fi nger to keep her. He kept it pointing at Gustave. She crossed the terrace, in a melodramatic imitation of a queen in a procession. The sharp, slow tap of her heels on the stairs receded.

There would never be another striped dress so beautiful. He could have made that ruffle luminous, could have created a highlight on the jewel, a clear, hot crystal between her clavicles.

He picked up his scraping knife. The sooner he scraped, the cleaner he could get it.

“Wait!” Alphonsine cried. “Look there.”

Circe was standing on the bridge facing the terrace.

“Do you want I should slap some sense into her?” Angèle asked.

“The Fêtes Nautiques is only three weeks away,” Gustave mur-

mured. “The sailing regatta four.”

His knuckles cramped into position on the scraping knife. “Damn prima donna!”

“Go to her, Renoir,” Charles urged.

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” Pierre said. “I brought it on. Shall I apologize to her and try to bring her back?”

“No. It was leading to this anyway.”

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Alphonse darted downstairs.

With one slow, deliberate stroke, he scraped a stripe from the top of her head to the bottom of his painting. Fionie Tanguy’s purloined Prussian blue, eight francs a tube, now marbled with white in a mess on his scraping knife. Thirty francs for Circe’s posing fees. A four-week setback.

“Look again,” Jules said.

Alphonse was talking to Circe on the bridge, gesticulating broadly.

She turned from him and strode stiffly to Rueil.

“She’s a poor player who struts and frets her hour upon the stage and then
is heard no more.”
Jules’s quiet voice roared with contempt.

Auguste continued scraping. An ugly, raspy sound accompanied every swath. He scrubbed with turpentine, but the stripes remained a ghost image of what could have been exquisite. He noticed Alphonsine’s cheeks glistening in the sunlight in wet crystal streaks. The sight left him short of breath.

Émile, Jeanne, Ellen, and now Circe. Who would be next to leave?

Gustave and Angèle resumed their poses. Jules and Pierre took their cue and did the same. Paul angled his head toward a missing Jeanne.

Alphonsine leaned forward on the railing. Charles and Raoul turned their backs to him. They were telling him to go right on. He picked up his brush. Where to work? On Jules and Charles, Pierre and Paul, safe subjects high up on the painting, so he wouldn’t have to look at the sickening vacancy.

Alphonse came upstairs. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t convince her.”

“You might as well go back to the boats. I can’t work on you

without—”

Alphonse cut him off with the flat of his hand, rested it on Auguste’s shoulder a moment, and went back down.