Plum Blossoms in Paris (10 page)

“I’m not a Puritan, in spite of what you think of America. This isn’t about my personal squeamishness with violence or sexuality. I’m talking about an artist’s motivation. Why did he paint it? What moved him? Was he after some kind of objective truth? These questions are important to me.”

“But art
is
personal interpretation. Why should I care about the artist’s motivation if I discover something different? I like the sharply executed angles of his composition and how the colors pulse with energy, foreshadowing the impressionists to come. Thepeople in it are myths—they mean nothing to me.” He smiles to blunt the sharpness of his words and falls back on his heels. “And Picasso would be flattered by your comparison. He was a great admirer of Delacroix.”

I see his point of view. But … “Of
course
art is personal. I agree with that. And it’s highly emotional. Which is why the artist must tread carefully. Which of our instincts does he want to inflame? What am I supposed to think about a guy who paints death with such sensuality?”

“But life is sensual. Death should be no different.” He grins. “As for the dead artist? He means as little to me as the dead turtle does to you.”

That sounds clever, but not right.

“But turtle tissue doesn’t lie, Mathieu. You can call this a myth if that makes you feel better, probably because the victim has been pinned between a man’s idea of climax and death. Because I wonder how you’d feel if it were a contemporary painting or photograph of a woman’s murder, so artfully rendered. It might affect you differently.”

Mathieu stares at me, but I cannot read him. Finally, he says, “But that is something, yes? To experience discomfort and revulsion and sympathy, to be reminded of all facets of our humanity, in reaction to a painting by a man who drew his last breaths before we drew our first. Delacroix has achieved the only immortality that is relevant. He has succeeded in—what is the expression—?” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Stirring you up.”

“That he has,” I say, shivering and brushing my ear against my shoulder. The tension broken, we both walk easily into the next room. “Maybe I just don’t want to admit to myself that I can be captivated by such ugliness. It’s like slowing to look at a car wreck, or those women who watch Lifetime movies back home.”

Mathieu lifts an eyebrow.

I laugh and shake my head. “Sorry—Lifetime is a television station that plays movies with titles like”—I pounce upon the first drivel that comes to mind—
“The Black Widow Murders
… or …
A Wife’s Charge to Keep”
He laughs incredulously, but little does he know about the dregs of American cable. “Basically, think of any heinous act someone might commit, and Lifetime will manipulate it into a two-hour melodrama where victimhood is equated with sainthood.”

I halt in front of a charcoal drawing inspired by Delacroix’s trip to Morocco. “Not that it’s a fair comparison to your Delacroix,” I admit. “It’s just that his art reminds me of our baser instinct to turn tragedy into a gaudy entertainment.” I turn my attention to the small portrait before me. “But not this. This is lovely.”

“Yes, this is
Orphan Girl in a Cemetery
. The final painting hangs in the Louvre.” Mathieu pauses for my reaction, his fingers hanging on his chin.

The girl, just shy of womanhood, is captured in profile as she looks across her bared shoulder, the strong, dark features of her face a study of tension and wonderment. Hair swept back into a loose chignon, her eyes latch on to something looming out of frame, the generous, downward curving mouth startled into parting. I misspoke earlier: she is not lovely, but aggressively striking, for there is a peasant’s strength drawn in the shock of eyebrow, the tendons jutting from her neck thickly and unprettily, the sloping brow angled like a shield ready for battle. Her history is written on her face, and it has not been easy. She is exoticism. She is romanticism. She is mystery, my orphan girl.

I look sidelong at Mathieu. “What do you think she’s looking at?”

“I have often wondered.” He clasps his hands behind his back, almost like he is stopping himself from touching her. “This has always been my favorite work of Delacroix’s. My mom brought me to the Louvre when I was a boy, whenever she felt guilty about something. Her restlessness inevitably got the better of her, andshe would leave me in one of the big rooms, with instructions not to move, while she went for a smoke, or a fuck.” He is silent for a beat, staring at the girl, while I swallow my shock.

He picks up the thread, his smile turning black. “But I always drifted toward Delacroix’s
Orphan Girl
. I do not suppose I was aware of the symbolism. But I felt for her abandonment. And I always wanted to know what put that possessed look on her face. I tried to believe that it was something good—my childish form of denial, I imagine. But I could never quite convince myself of it.” Mathieu turns to me. “Now I have you to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Why me?” I ask, lost.

“She is you,” he says, motioning to the portrait.

I look at the painting, baffled by his certainty. The orphan girl and I share a dark boldness and solemnity to our features, but there are countless points of departure. Our noses are nothing alike. She looks short and, to my one credit, has a neck like a tree trunk, whereas mine is slender and long. Her visible eye is enormous, like a Japanese anime figure. Her skin, though rendered in charcoal, achieves luminosity in the movie of my mind, and her expression is haunted. In short, she looks like a tragic heroine about to be swatted by the hand of fate. Whereas I am an American girl-woman who wears my aura of privilege as casually as my Gap jeans. There is really no comparison.

And while I hate to disappoint Mathieu’s sense of destiny, this notion that I am the manifestation of his boyish desire for this girl’s—and his mother’s—understanding, I have no idea what she’s looking at. I doubt Delacroix knew.

“I think you’re mistaken,” is all I say, a little embarrassed for him.

He chuckles to lighten the mood. “I did not mean to makeyou uncomfortable. It was simply an observation. Perhaps it is the seriousness of your expression.” He grabs my hand, and we walk away, orphaning her once more. “I think she may have traveled with supplemental oxygen too.”

I stop and put my hands on my hips, while he keeps walking. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“No,” he tosses back. “Some things are worth remembering.”

“So why
were
you so eager to get away from me on the train?”

Having conquered Delacroix, we are walking at a good click. I feel reckless. The man is falling for me. He likes our little spats, the missteps, and the drawing together again, like any dance of seduction. He walks rapidly, challenging me to keep up with his longer strides. Romance is a game for him: not a brutish tug-of-war, but a grand chess match. He will not suffer boredom.

So I have set upon this strategy of saying whatever springs to mind, partly to engage him, and partly because it is my own game, and a novel one for someone conditioned to playing defense. My fledgling metamorphosis from this morning has not been forgotten; I’m merely stretching my wings, sharing some green space. After all, Paris has plenty to spare. Like her leaves thrilling to their autumn ballet, I, too, am spilling new colors.

“Eager to get away from you?”

“You bolted from that train, without ever looking back. I was so certain you’d at least look back.” I don’t try to suppress a reproach from dimpling my voice. It had hurt me that he hadn’t looked back. I just didn’t know it until now.

“I saw you looking. I knew you were there.” Triumph is carvedinto his profile. He sensed his kingly power over my little pawn, even at that larval stage of our relationship.

“How did you know?”

Slowing, Mathieu turns toward me. We are walking toward the Luxembourg Gardens. I know because it has been my home this past week, and I can see the palace, stationed like a planet in the sky, off to the right. “Because there are mirrors at the front of the car. I saw your eyes watching me while I stepped off.” He smiles with more alacrity than I’d like. “I saw your shoulders slump, and your mouth twist downward, like a disappointed child’s.” He mimes my woebegone look too skillfully.

Looking away, I remark, “And yet you left me there, disappointed.”

Mathieu laughs, swinging my hand with careless bravado. “What was I to do? I had an appointment to attend to, and I knew you were on vacation.” He shrugs. “I had just gotten out of a relationship. I was not eager to jump into something based solely on a pair of lapis blue eyes and an adorable insecurity.”

I rip my hand from his. “There is nothing adorable about my insecurity.” I try to sound haughty, but the spirit of the thing is diluted in equal parts by the description of my eyes as “lapis,” and the fact that I am beyond besotted. “Besides, any insecurity I have only flares up in France. And I pin that directly on the Americans who came before me, for being so stupidly intimidated by the French,
and
on the people in that train, who proved them all right.”

I point at him accusingly. “Especially you, with your superior look of detachment, and your talent for making cryptic pronouncements.” It has not escaped my notice that he mentioned a prior relationship, but I don’t know what to do with the information.
“You are no tourist
. What the hell does that mean? You made me ashamed to even take out my camera. I felt like everything I did after that would only be a disappointment.”

“To me—or yourself?”

I hesitate. “Both, probably,” I decide, and we laugh. I take his hand and wind my fingers through his. “I think that when you step into a foreign land, you no longer feel like yourself, so other people’s interpretations of you end up filling in the gaps. I thought college was my shot at reinvention for the same reason.”

All I wanted in college was for someone to tell me who I should be. But Andy was there to remind me of who I was. I tried to change my name to “Dana” my freshman year, but it’s difficult to be credible when your boyfriend rolls his eyes behind your back.

“I felt like that after our conversation on the train. I thought I would find myself on the trail to enlightenment—that it was some kind of prophecy, and you were its messenger. Instead, I flailed around, hiding out in McDonald’s to nod and smile at other guilty Americans, all of us checking the Rodin Museum off our list.” I hesitate, wondering whether I can embrace that prickly path of honesty. “I hadn’t even been reading
The Razor’s Edge
, you know. I just grabbed it because I was embarrassed by my guidebook. So your interest in me is based on a lie, I guess.”

I can’t look at him, surprised by my level of shame. It’s just a goddamn book.

Yet I had the gall to preach to him, and poor Delacroix, about authenticity.

“Do you think that is why I was interested in you?” he asks, stopping me abruptly. We are at the entrance to the Gardens. His eyes are intense, and I cannot look into them without my own wavering. His grip on me is firm, almost punishing.

“Wasn’t it?” I ask. I remember the disinterest, the quiet amusement, until I pushed my book at him. Oh yes, it was deliberate. I knew what made Mathieu tick. Words, words, the splendor of words, written down and relayed to him through wormholes in time. Words that he can tongue, and swallow, and absorb, makingthem his own. I sized him up within a wink and judged him so presciently that I am not a little proud of myself.

“I was studying you, Daisy. I feigned indifference because your directness disoriented me. I sought my refuge in that calculated detachment. My ego demanded it.” He smiles and touches my cheek. “You know nothing about men. We do not need literature to make us interested. Your manner, a little bewildered, and the angle at which your head tilted upon that graceful neck, was enough to make me think of you all the way home, while I slept, upon my awakening, and through the rest of my day. I wanted to know what put the wounded look in those eyes so that I could release you from it. The book was just kindling to the fire. You seeped into my dreams, Daisy, and when I wrote that night, something of your spirit danced on the page.”

Checkmate
.

Our eyes shine. His mouth is soft and pliant, his words warm and restorative. I knew it: he writes.

“You were a muse that day. My secret. When I saw you again, I had to stop myself from embracing you. I felt like we already owned each other. You had lingered in my imagination until your story grew and wrapped itself around me.”

Am I happy being owned? Do I care?

He kisses me.

No, I don’t care.

Our lips craft poems. My body curving around his arms. His hands tracing the small of my back, awakening the flesh on the right side of my body, like an avalanche released by a bird’s tiptoe. Sinking, sinking. The light pressure of his mouth, so tender it’s almost chaste, upon my parted lips. My fingers doing idle things with his hair. When will I land? If I land.

Our eyes are open, and I am struck by the fierceness of his gaze, the commitment of it, like he’s willing himself to me. Wepart reluctantly, but with the shivery knowledge that this is still prelude. We may take our time. Those arms of anticipation are the softest, and safest, refuge for two injured searchers.