Paris Red: A Novel, page 15
He looks up from the canvas then but I do not tell him anything else. I don’t say that was the story Nise told me. That when she found out she was pregnant, she thought she would have the child and leave it. That she walked by La Maternité, practicing what to do.
“So I’m not telling you anything you don’t know,” he says.
“You were telling me a story.”
But the story he tells is like a fable: at seventeen he falls in love with a woman, a piano teacher with a white throat. When he gets her pregnant, he feels bound to her and his infant son. Nise’s story was not like that at all. No one felt bound to her. And the day that I bled into my boots, the day that Nise helped me, she was the only one bound to me.
I know one thing. I do not really like any of the stories.
He does not say anything else then, not about the woman who is so different from him, or about his son, or about lockets with scraps of baby hair.
All that is still working in me when I walk home that day along Rue de Londres and Berlin and Clichy and Pigalle, when I buy carrot fritters for my dinner, when I stand washing at the basin in my room on La Bruyère, where he shows up often enough that people think he is, if not my boyfriend at least my protector. It is still in me when I lie down to sleep, but it is only when I lie down to sleep that I let myself think of it.
The mother of his son holds a place in his life, and it is a surer one than mine. I understand that. But if he loved her still, I doubt he would talk to me about her. I think it is why I do not feel jealous. In some odd way I feel safe with her. She gets some of his time and I get the rest. I envy her place in his life, the space she takes up in it, but she paid something to get it. She had his son, which is a price I am not willing to pay.
Suzanne. That is her name. He said it once without meaning to and then never said it again. She has her role and I have mine. We are our own family. Suzanne and the son and him and me. Because I am sure she is not stupid. She has to know about me, too. Maybe he has said my name to her, or maybe she just wonders where he is many evenings. A person cannot paint all of the time.
What I do not let myself think about until I am lying down in bed, until I have thought about all the other pieces of this puzzle, is the question I do not yet have the answer to.
What price will I have to pay to stay in his life? And what will I pay it with? The only things I have of any value are one good dress and the locket he gave me.
But as soon as I think that I know it is not true.
The night I ran to catch him at La Maube, the night I made him kiss me, he told me I did not know what it meant. To be wanted like that, he said. Which is the way I have always been. I want and want, and I never stop for caution. Never could stop. Not when I stayed out all night when I was fifteen, not when I walked with my soldier until I liked him well enough to sit on the cushion of his thighs, not when I ran to La Maube to catch up to him. It is the only real thing I have to give. When he looks into my face, he must see it there. All hunger, all ache.
Yet it is not just for him. Whatever my body wants, I give her. Bitter things as well as sweet.
At the studio the next day, after I take off my clothes, I go to the table where he stands, preparing paint. I do not wait for him to turn but slip my arms around him from behind and press my cheek to his back.
“What’s this, what’s this?” he says as he turns, as he takes my arms from his waist.
For a second I think he will stop me. But of course he does not. He just turns and starts to kiss me. That is how easy it is. When I see that, I wonder why I did not try it sooner.
At the divan I push him a little so he is the one to lie down first, so I can climb on top of him. I wear the black ribbon I always wear now, and that is what he reaches up and touches. The knot at my throat and then the ends that trail down between my breasts. I feel so much from him that I think I will be able to do it, I think I will be able to tell him what I feel for him. I lean over him, hide my face beside his so I can whisper. Because if he does not love the mother of his son, who does he love? And I think that if I say it, maybe he will, too.
But I do not tell him I love him.
Instead I say, “J’aime ça, j’aime ça.”
He takes me by my shoulders and lifts me a litte so he can see my face. So I can see his.
“I love it, too,” he says.
And we stay like that for a while, just watching each other. I feel as if he knows what I almost said, and I feel as if he said it, too.
I reach down then and take him in my hand. I wait a second, and then I’m guiding him. Right into me. Right up into me.
After that, he paints.
The two of us naked except for my ribbon and bracelet. His cock in its sheath.
Ma chère Mademoiselle Meurent—that is how he introduces me to his friend Stevens, who comes the next day when we are done working.
“So this is why you’ve been hiding,” Stevens says.
“Not hiding,” he says. “Just working.”
“What about you, mademoiselle?” Stevens says. “Do you like working with him?”
“It suits me,” I say. “He suits me.”
Stevens looks from me to him. He looks down for a second and then returns Stevens’s gaze. Smiles.
“She cuts to the chase,” he says.
“She’s original,” Stevens says, watching me. “I can see that.”
“I only paint what’s true,” he says. “You should know that, Stevens.”
“Is it too much to ask what you’re working on?”
“Nothing much.”
“Yes, I know,” Stevens says. “You monkey about with colors. Quelle connerie.” He turns to me then and says, “Does he let you see it?”
“When it’s done I get to look.”
“You must trust him,” Stevens says.
“It’s not about trust,” he tells Stevens. “There’s nothing to see before it’s done.”
“All right, all right,” Stevens says. “No one will look at your work. Now let’s go to dinner. And I’m buying, mademoiselle. Not him.”
Over dinner they try to include me in the conversation for a while, but soon enough the talk turns to what they really have to say, which is all about painting and a salon and judges. That is what I pick up on. But it is a relief when they leave me out of the conversation because I can just sit there and listen. It is not like when he invited me to the Guerbois and no matter which way I turned, someone was watching me. There are only two of them and they are absorbed in what they say, so this time I am the watcher.
Stevens is older. Dark hair with just a few threads of white at the temples. Big nose. Not handsome but handsome enough. When he listens to a person, he always seems to wait a moment before replying, which is nice. It is calming somehow.
“I don’t regret what I said,” Stevens tells him now. “I didn’t at the time and I don’t now.”
“You shouldn’t. With one hand they give you a medal and with the other they insult you.”
“Only Fleury. Only he has the nerve,” Stevens says.
“The stupidity. He wants to see you paint classical themes. Empty myths and dusty costumes,” he says.
“The jury is not interested in ‘La vie moderne,’ ” Stevens says.
“No, they want what they already know. But I’d rather paint what I see. The here and now.”
“I stand behind you,” Stevens says. “But it will be a long road, you know.”
He only nods. Takes my hand, which he has been holding under the table, and moves it over his thigh, up close to his cock. I do not think he cares if Stevens can see or not—I think it somehow makes him feel better to do that in front of his friend. Or maybe he just wants to be sure of me, I cannot tell. We sit like that, all three of us together, until the food comes.
After dinner the three of us walk along the boulevard together, he and Stevens and I. Of course I am on his arm, but he gestures to me to take Stevens’s arm as well.
So I do. I reach with my free hand into the crook of Stevens’s arm. I slip my hand between his arm and his side, and just like that I’m holding him, too. I can tell from Stevens’s face that it pleases him. It pleases him to have me touch him, and it pleases him to be walking like that, the three of us, to be joined.
It is curious to be the one in the middle. Of the two men, Stevens is taller, so it feels different walking next to him. I feel sheltered in a different way. But mostly I think that this is what it must have felt like when he went promenading with Nise and me. He had his arms full of us.
I do not hold Stevens as close as I hold him, but I still feel his warmth against my side.
It is like being engulfed. But also like swimming above.
When we get close to Stevens’s place on Rue de Laval, he says goodnight to the two of us.
“Maybe one day Mademoiselle Meurent can pose for me,” Stevens says as he holds my hand, as he says goodnight.
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“It’s a possibility,” he tells Stevens. “If you think you’re equal to it.”
“I might be.”
“It’s up to her, then,” he says.
So I say, “Maybe. Maybe that would be nice.”
He gives me a card. It only says his name, Alfred Stevens, but he has handwritten 18 Rue Taitbout on the card, too.
“My studio address,” Stevens says. After I take the card from him, he kisses my hand.
“Surely you can do better than that, Stevens,” he says. “Surely her company is worth a kiss on the cheek.”
I look at Stevens then, but he does not look embarrassed. He just waits, the way he does when someone says something.
“I don’t mind,” I say, and step closer to him.
He kisses me very lightly on the cheek, but it is long enough for me to feel his soft mustache. To be close to him for a moment.
Then the three of us really are saying goodnight, there on the street corner. He calls out a final farewell to Stevens after we begin to part.
When we walk away, just he and I, my one arm feels a little lonely. So I say, “How did you ever stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“Losing Nise.”
“I gained you,” he says.
The words are sweet, I can hear that. But in that moment I realize he does not think of Nise the way I do. He cannot. Because no matter what fantasies he had about the three of us together, no matter how many times he kissed her or had her on his arm or touched her breasts through her dress—he never knew her the way I did. He never shared a bed with her or a basin. He never went hungry with her, was never poor with her, never dreamed beside her. I was the one who did those things. I was not a lover but I was like a lover.
So I was the one who gave her up. It was my loss, not his.
When I realize that, I hold his arm tighter. I hold his arm tighter against the cage of my chest. Which he thinks is romance and desire, which it is in a way, but it is something much plainer, too.
It is need.
I need him.
Not just as a lover but in the ways I used to need Nise. For closeness. So I do not feel lost.
And yet maybe those things are closer than I think. Desire and need. And not just for me. I know what his face looks like sometimes when he is above me, moving into me. If that is not need then I do not know what is.
I think all that with his arm hard against my side. With the bone of his arm against the bone of my arm.
He stays with me that night in the room on La Bruyère and the next morning, I say, “So what are his paintings like?”
“Whose paintings?”
“Your friend. Stevens.”
“They’re like him. Kind. Romantic.”
“It sounds as though you don’t like him.”
“I like him very much. He’s a true person. And a true friend.”
“But you don’t like his paintings.”
“He pleases people,” he says. “It’s a trick I can’t learn.”
“I don’t think it’s so bad to please people,” I say.
“If it happens, it’s fine. If you set out to do it, it becomes another thing.”
“Does he try to make people like his work?”
“Not always. But his paintings have a preciousness. I can’t fathom it. The painting they gave the medal to last year was of a dewy-eyed mother and son.”
“Now I want to see for myself,” I say.
“You have his card. Go and see him.”
“I will sometime.”
“You’re entirely free.”
“Aren’t you jealous at all?”
“Why should I be?” he says. “I’m the one who had your hair over my thighs last night. Not him.”
He pulls me to him then, and I must be just as crude as he is because whatever he says, I say it back.
Le joujou, le chat, d’un côté.
Le vit, la lance, de l’autre.
I am in my room the next day, putting up my hair, when someone knocks on my door. It is a boy I don’t know but feel as though I should.
“Monsieur asked me to bring this to you,” he says, and he hands me a letter.
Of course it is from him—he is the only one who knows I am here, the only one who would send a boy, the only one who would write a letter.
It is just a short note, and in it he tells me that his father died, that he may be some time dealing with family business, that he will send for me when he can. An apology for his haste. There is no real signature, just an E and a squiggle.
“Thank Monsieur for me,” I tell the boy. “Please give him my condolences.”
“He’s already gone,” the boy says. “He left as I was leaving.”
“When you see him,” I say.
After the boy goes and I hear his footsteps disappear down the stairs, I wonder about what it all means for him. I do not know much about his family, but from what he has said about his father, I know whatever relationship existed was strained. But it is still his father, and it is still a loss.
I think about writing a note myself, but I do not know where to send it. Then I think about taking it to the studio, but I doubt he would be there to get it. I also know that part of his reason for sending me word is so that I do not come to the studio.
So that I do not intrude on the other portion of his life.
Any sympathy I have to express will have to wait, it is clear, and as I sit there mulling it all over, feeling for him and feeling at a loss to do anything, a tiny part of my mind goes to one particular detail. One I hate even admitting.
He would have paid me tomorrow for the past week, and while I have money for this week, that is all I have.
I tell myself I have lived on less. I tell myself the room is paid through the end of the month so there is not that fear.
Still. It makes me understand how unsure it all is, and how everything my life now rests on depends on him. And now I have the whole day to think about it. To fret about it.
So I tuck his note back in its envelope and finish doing my hair. I know I have to go out, even if it is just to go walking. Just to get out of the room and away from the envelope addressed to Mlle Meurent. His handwriting.
Because a walk is free.
It does not take me long to get there—out the door, up Rue de La Rochefoucauld and Rue Pigalle, and then into the square. Everyone mills around and from a distance, it looks as if it were some kind of street party. Except it is not a party but a market. Instead of flowers or birds or horses, artists can take their pick of women.
He told me about the place that first day he hired me. Told me he would be just as glad to hire me as to come here.
I see whores, but I also see girls like the ones I worked with at Baudon. Would-be brunisseuses, paper flower makers, laundresses, waitresses, servants, assistants to hairdressers, clerks and seamstresses. At times the crowd sounds just as rowdy as the workroom at Baudon sounded, but other times everyone seems to go quiet. Waiting. Wanting to be chosen.
I stand not too far from the café Nouvelle Athènes but not so close to it as to be mistaken for a customer at one of the outside tables. Even though I am away from the throng, I can still overhear bits of conversation. I hear one woman tell another that if she does not get a job today, she will run the streets.
I walk away as quickly as I can without drawing attention. I try to walk as if I am just a person on the sidewalk, someone walking to a destination. I try to make my face look as if I have a place in mind and a time to be there.
And though I do not mean to do it, I head up in the direction of his studio. Not to Rue Guyot directly—I know better than to go there. Instead I walk up by Parc de Monceau. It is not until I get there that I understand where I have been coming.
To the cedar tree he likes.
He and I walk this way sometimes, up from the old boulevard Malesherbes, into the new district they are carving. They have taken out old buildings, garden walls, and rises in the land in order to make streets with no houses on them. But for whatever reason they keep the cedar.
“It was in the middle of a ruined garden when I first saw it,” he told me the first time he brought me here. “The branches reached out among the ruined flowers and made purple shadows.”
The tree is part of what will be a city block, but nothing is built yet. So I just stand there on the dirt for a long while, looking at its blue-green needles.
I think, I still have money in my pocket.
I think, I still have my bloodstone burnisher.
I think, I am not adrift.
And I let myself think of him. Of his grief. Because whatever his father was to him, it is still a death.
And then I go on walking.
This time when I go to Baudon, I do not wait down the block and across the street, past where the soup seller stands. I wait directly opposite the side courtyard, the one where the door to the workshop slides open on a pulley. When all the workers start to flow out of the courtyard and into the street, it takes me only a moment to spot Nise. It takes her a longer time to see me, and in that bit of time I wonder how her face will change when she sees me, whether in anger or something softer and sadder, like when we said goodbye.
