Luncheon of the Boating Party (36 page)

“Who are you?” the concierge asked through a bushy white mus-

tache stained from tobacco.

“One of your teachers is my niece.”

“Who?”

“Marie.”

“No one works here by that name.”

“I meant Madeleine. We sometimes call her Marie.”

The concierge drew his mouth to one side.

“You know, Marie Madeleine, from the Bible. Her middle name is

Hélène.”

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The concierge flung out his arm. “Move along. I’m not paid to admit any stray voyeur to ogle our girls.”

Auguste walked away, but at the corner he turned back. “Look,” he said to the concierge, “I’m sorry I tried that ruse. I’m a painter, and once a pretty young teacher came into Tanguy’s shop across the street, and I drew a sketch of her. Medium height, dark blond hair, slim. I’d like to ask her to model. My intentions are honorable. You can ask Julien. I’ll go get him.”

He made a move to cross the street.

“No, no. Don’t bother him.” The man came to the gate with a key.

“Main entrance, then turn left. The school’s still closed for the summer, but you’ll find the director in his office. Monsieur Lepage. I don’t know which teacher you mean. Go directly, and know that I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“Merci.”

It was stuffy inside. That girl would appreciate a few days on the river. He’d prefer to roam and see if he could find her, but he thought better of it and stepped into the offi ce.

“Bonjour,”
he said to a lady at a desk. “
S’il vous plaît,
might I have a word with
Monsieur le directeur?

“Your name?”

“Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He doesn’t know me.”

She poked her head through an open doorway, murmured a few

words, and came back. “You may go in.”

“Merci.”
He felt hopeful for the first time today.

Kindly-faced with deeply wrinkled cheeks, Lepage winced as he

straightened up from his desk. Auguste delivered as polite a request as he could, explaining how he had met the woman at Tanguy’s, how he’d drawn her, and how he would be much obliged if he could ask her to consider posing in a group painting.

“Absolutely not. Our teachers are ladies of honor and seriousness. It is not allowed.” The old man flicked his hand at him and bent to his work.

Auguste left, ignoring the concierge on the way out. He was losing time. He was tired and hungry and frustrated with himself for not having someone he could call upon in a pinch. No one could help him do

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this. He had to do it himself. It felt cheap and unwholesome to be on the prowl like this. He wanted a wholesome girl, not some rummy who looked as though the ten-franc model’s fee would keep her from needing a
hôtel de passe.
He didn’t want to eat at Nouvelle-Athènes because he might find Degas or Manet there and they’d ask how he was doing and that would make him more miserable.

He went up rue des Martyrs and bought a paper cone of roasted beef from a cart in front of Cirque Fernando, an apple and two horse carrots at a greengrocer’s, bread at a
boulangerie,
and went to his studio where there might be a bottle of wine. At the concierge’s wicket, Victor handed him a letter.

Jeanne’s handwriting.

He climbed the stairs and a dark question reared up in his mind.

What if he had already had the perfect model in Jeanne, and would never find another as good? What would that do to his future? His life would shrink, like a balloon leaking air.

He laid out the food on a plate and the envelope on the table. He poured a glass of wine and stared at the precise, upright way she made the
R
in his name. The obligatory thank-you, or something more? He ate a little, to prolong the possibility, and then ripped it open.

To my most ardent painter,

Thank you for my remembrance of times past, both what will hang on my wall and what will ever lodge in my heart. I must tell you that I cannot come to finish posing. Joseph-Paul won’t permit it.

And, as we have been married privately, I must make concessions. I wanted you to hear it from me.

You are brave in following your heart. I am trying to follow mine.

Ever your little quail,

Jeanne

He eased himself onto his bed, wanting only to surrender to sleep.

A commotion in the street below awakened him. Nine-twenty. Time enough to make the rounds of a few cafés and cabarets. He started at Le

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Rat Mort. But after listening to Alphonsine talk about the Siege, the pictures of rats in frying pans and on plates with garnish sickened him.

He tried Chez Père Laplace, thinking that the palettes on the wall might attract a woman interested in painting. One brunette sitting alone was a possibility, though her hair looked like a weeping willow.

In the flame of the small oil lamp on her table, her skin shone nicely, but would it in the sun? He invested a little time chatting her up. She seemed pleasant enough. He laid out the question and the rate.

“I’m not that kind of girl,” she muttered through her teeth.

“It’s a group painting. I assure you that my intentions are honorable.”

“Ten francs!” she cried. “Get away from me, you disgusting

old man!”

He couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Looking for Angèle with Paul a month ago had been a lark. This

was desperation. He didn’t want to search the shabby cafés and cabarets. He’d only fi nd shabby women there. That cut out half the establishments in Montmartre. He’d try Cabaret des Assassins. Maybe

Angèle was there. She might know of someone. Then he remembered.

She’d said she would do a boulevard for him. God in heaven, he didn’t want to find her in action.

He trudged up the Butte on the long stairway from rue Gabrielle to place du Tertre, the square atop Montmartre
d’en haut,
to check in Maison Catherine first. A respectable place. The moonlight lay in patches where it shone through the feathery leaves of the acacias. The warm air carried a mournful melody played on an accordion.

A couple was lying on the sparse grass under a tree. The blanket over them moved rhythmically, which made the patches of moonlight dance. He stood transfixed. How unfortunate that they had no other place, but how beautiful too. How absolutely necessary their loving was to them. It was bigger than that. How necessary, love.

Necessary to his painting too. How low he’d sunk, scouring the cabarets in a last-ditch effort to plug in a stranger to save his painting when he knew his best work was produced only when he loved his models as much as Cézanne loved his apples, when every brushstroke was a caress

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moving by the guidance of love from Alphonsine to Ellen to Angèle to Jeanne. Four reasons to finish it, but there were others, not the least of which was momentum.

He empathized with the couple under the blanket. They would suffer if they weren’t together tonight, though probably not as badly as Alexander had suffered. He felt he had stolen the kiss from Alphonsine that rightly belonged to that Russian.

He sensed some movement behind him. A blow on the back of his

neck stunned him. Shards of light fl ashed before his eyes. A few steps and a second man delivered a punch to his jaw. His stomach. He doubled over and sank to the ground. A kick in the ribs, another to his groin. He curled onto his side. His clothes rifled. His wallet leaving his pocket.

A voice. “Hold it, Jemmy! He’s Angèle’s painter friend.”

The wallet falling on his thigh. Men running. Letting the pain subside, his breath jagged, the patches of moonlight dancing over the blanket.

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Peaches at Camille’s
Crémerie

Nine bells from Notre Dame de Lorette awakened him. His body

remembered before his mind did. Gingerly, he rolled onto his

side to find a position in which his neck, jaw, ribs, stomach didn’t hurt.

He wanted to stay that way all day, in oblivion. He dozed until eleven relentless bells clanged in his head. He opened his eyes to his dear old basket of paint rags on the floor. Safety. He was in his studio. He couldn’t remember how he’d staggered home, what streets he’d taken. Down and down, every step jarring his ribs, leaning on the building, hand to his face, waiting for the concierge to come, dragging himself up six flights of stairs, opening his wallet, fi nding nothing.

He wished he’d given Fionie Tanguy all he had, but he’d thought he should hold out some for a new model. Now what? It was deceitful to ask a woman to pose when he knew he couldn’t pay her.

Hunger forced him to rouse himself. Slowly, he swiveled to sit on the edge of the bed. He found a bruise on his ribs in the shape of a boot.

He stared at it with a cold fascination. One Prussian blue boot. Nine francs forty remained in the jar. Not even one person’s modeling fee.

He took it and looked for his bicycle cap. Gone. The ultimate injury.

He’d spent a good deal of time getting acquainted with that cap. If he ever saw it on a head in Montmartre, he would . . . he didn’t know what he’d do. Montmartre was brash, raw, anarchic, and licentious. A young person’s quarter. It was also charming, tender, and forgiving. He was on the cusp of being too old for it either way.

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He crept down the stairs, holding his ribs, and crossed the street to Camille’s
crémerie.
Opening the door required excruciating effort. Two girls from the quarter and three blue-smocked workmen with plaster dust on their sleeves were eating lunch. With just three tables, the only seat left was with Annette, Camille’s daughter, who was turning the pages of
La Mode du Jour,
a fashion magazine. Carefully, he sat down opposite her.

“I’m much obliged to you for selling that painting. It helped me out when I was pinched.” He was surprised his voice still worked.

“I was happy to do it,” Annette said. “Maybe I have a future as a dealer,
oui?
” The look on her face was just a bit fl irtatious.

He hated to disillusion the poor girl. “Who knows?”

Camille took a closer look at him and said, “You need an omelette.”

He heard her crack three eggs and whip them for a long time, the same furious rhythm as his mother’s, whipping in the same clockwise direction that was
de rigueur
in his mother’s kitchen. Neither Camille nor his mother could be hurried in this sacred task. Another crack and more whipping delayed it further. That was like his mother too, always slipping him an extra wedge of cheese or spoonful of sauce or cream for his
café,
to try to put meat on his bones, even these days on his weekly visits. God love them both.

“Everything all right with you otherwise?” Camille asked, her back to him. “What’s lurking beneath your beard? It looks swollen. So does your ear.”

“Eh, good and bad. Like life.”

“Another cycle accident?” She dropped butter into a pan. The homey sound of it frizzling comforted him.

“No. You’ll be happy to know I sold it.”

“Ah, you finally came to your senses.”

“Don’t say that, Maman,” Annette said. “I was hoping for a ride.”

“Too late,” he said.

Something was slightly wrong with the proportions of Annette’s

face. Her eyes were too high. It made her chin pronounced, and that meant stubbornness. He couldn’t risk another stubborn model.

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He didn’t remember if the other daughter had this defect. Camille would push one of them on him if he told her what was on his mind. At least they’d be reliable, but they weren’t beautiful. He could make one beautiful, he supposed, lower her eyes, paint what he wanted to see rather than what he saw. It would be doing Camille a big favor, and she had always been good to him. But that would be painting from obligation again, not adoration.

It amused him in a distant sort of way, that he was just going ahead, flat broke, aching all over, his painting on the brink of disaster, four models short, without considering abandoning it. Alphonsine would be pleased.

He glanced at the two
lorettes.
One had a face that could stop a clock.

Nose like a pear, lips like sausages. Hardly any lips at all on the other.

Thin lips gave a suspicious look to a woman. Hair too dark anyway.

Camille served him the omelette with bread and butter, a volup-

tuous, rose-gold peach, and a
café crème.
“Tell me what happened.”

He took three bites fi rst.

“Two thugs worked me over on place du Tertre. The bastards

cleaned out my wallet and left me half conscious in the gutter.”

“Now you see,” she whispered, tapping his forearm with her fi nger.

“If you were married, you’d have been home with your wife and not out catting around all night.” She tipped her head ever so slightly toward Annette.

“Maman, behave yourself.” Annette lifted the magazine in front of her face.

He patted Camille on the cheek. “You’re absolutely right.”

The eggs slid down easily and he didn’t have to chew much. She had chopped the mushrooms and ham and shallots in small pieces and the cheese had melted perfectly. He felt his shoulders beginning to relax.

Soon he’d be able to think. He supposed he had Angèle to thank that they hadn’t done permanent damage to his vital parts, all for a measly thirty-some francs. It served them right that it wasn’t more.

With his knife, he peeled the peach methodically, watching the skin pull away from the succulent flesh, thinking of Cézanne. His peaches,

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and his dedication. Expensive vermilion mixed with chrome yellow. He wanted to rip the color out of nature and drink it, chew it, inhale it, make it part of his being, feel it in his viscera right under the Prussian blue boot, so he could take it out and use it whenever it pleased him. He ate the peach reverently, closing his eyes a moment, then fi nished his
café crème.