A Paris Apartment (3 page)

“I don’t remember this one,” April said. “Portrait of Madame Juilliard, Lady Colin Campbell, the Duchess of Marlborough, several of Donna Franca Florio. But not her.”

April’s heart was racing now. She liked Boldini. She liked him fine. One could not dispute his mastery of portraiture. But although she’d seen a dozen or more of his paintings in person, April had never felt like this. The woman was beautiful, yes. But she was more than that. She was a presence.

“I cannot believe this,” April whispered.

“As far as I know, this is not in his repertoire,” Olivier said. “Could it be a fake?”

No. Not a fake. April understood this already.

“A damn good one if that’s the case,” she said. “On the other hand—” April paused for a moment and pretended to contemplate the possibility. “Who’d lock a Boldini up all these years? He didn’t have to die to become famous. He was already known. Who would do this? Why?”

“Who’s Boldini?” Luc asked as he lit another cigarette.

“Can you put that out?” April snapped. “I don’t want the odor attached to everything in the place.”

Luc cackled something to Olivier. April opened her mouth to remind them she was fluent enough to understand the French equivalent of “uptight.” That’s when she noticed, pushed up against the wall, the mauve daybed from the picture. April’s breath caught. All at once she could see this woman sitting on that piece of furniture. She could see her at the dressing table, writing letters on the bureau plat, gazing at herself in any one of a hundred looking glasses. A room that was dead ten minutes ago suddenly felt very much alive.

Chapitre IV

April had overseen hundreds of auctions in her career. The spoils usually came from different versions of the same place: grandmother’s manse or father’s country house or a penthouse having just gone on the market. Unlike the contemporary-art world, where pieces now traded like stocks, for sport and for gain, April still procured her assets from three D’s: debt, divorce, or death. The pieces before her were from a dead woman’s apartment, yes, but more than that, they were from the past. Countless museum-quality objects, untouched, curated only by spiders and ghosts.

April slipped on her gloves and approached the daybed.

“Madame Vogt?” Olivier said. “Madame Vogt, are you listening?”

“Oh, what? Sorry, I was just…”

She’d nearly forgotten her colleagues were still present.

“We’re going to step outside for chat and a smoke. For your benefit, bien sûr.”

“Merci.”

“I’d invite you along but presume you’re disinterested in such an arrangement.”

“Please, go ahead. I’ll stay behind and begin a plan for the sorting and inventorying of the items. So much to do!”

April tried to contain her glee. Yes,
bons messieurs,
please leave. She wanted to be alone with this woman and her things.

“Ah. The famous American work ethic on full display,” Luc said. “Très bien!”

“Well, I’m here to do a job.”

Together the men, inexplicably, laughed.

“Don’t start calculating the premiums without us!” Olivier called before the three slipped out of the flat.

April nodded and forced a smile. The door clicked. She shot across the room to the bookcase near the doorway.

It was the bookcase she had almost knocked over on her way in. She did not care for the piece. Though old, it felt more late-century college-dorm room than upscale bordello, and would not fetch much at auction. But its shelves were crammed with papers, which she’d spied during her labyrinthine walk over. On every conceivable surface sat a stack, on every stack, five more stacks. The resident of the apartment was either a prolific writer or the nemesis of every bill collector in Paris.

It was not snooping, April told herself. Not really. It was provenance. The documents would aid with provenance. Maybe they’d mention the painting. Unlikely, but a good-enough excuse.

April picked up one stack, and then another, and then a third, releasing each from its seventy-year slumber. The documents were bound with faded ribbons: green and pink and light blue. The papers themselves were yellowed, worn down to the weight of the cobwebs around her. The writing was faint, at times illegible, but as April leafed through the pages, the words seemed to brighten, the sentences perked up.

Papers in hand, April crept toward the window. She looked down to the street, where Olivier, Marc, and Luc were yukking it up on the curb, the lead glass no match for their voices. She had some time. April knew from experience that once Olivier got going he was difficult to shut up.

She sat down on the very chair she’d previously shooed Luc away from. With the first stack on her lap, April cautiously untied the celery-colored ribbon. As she separated each sheet from its neighbor, April flipped through the documents. Bills. Letters. Diary entries. Her heart galloped.

The numbers did not seem right. Madame Quatremer sealed the apartment in 1940. Boldini, if the painting
was
a Boldini, died in 1931. But these dates? They could not be correct.

Then again, if they were—if on the off chance these dates were valid and not falsified by Madame Quatremer or her shifty solicitor, Luc—then the story was not an amazing 1940 plus seventy years. The tale was older than that.

The page April held read in tight, neat script: “2 July 1898.” It was not from the last century but the one before it. She glanced at the bookcase. How far back did this go?

April scanned the letters, biting back a smile. This woman, the writer, she was brave, unfettered, and damn funny. Her penmanship was impeccable, even when writing words like “flatulist,” “manhood,” and “nipples.” If these letters were real—and of course April knew they were—if these entries were real, the author had guts. She was unafraid. Then again, she was also unaware. Never could she have envisioned an American pawing through her belongings a century in arrears.

Guilt creeping in, April retied the stacks. The documents weren’t part of the Quatremer estate, at least not as it related to the auction house. Exposed skin and gastrointestinal problems would not establish provenance no matter how much April wished it so.

As she looped the ribbon around itself, a single sentence caught April’s eye. Her first thought was, thank god, I’m not completely invading someone’s privacy.

Her second was: holy crap. We were right. That painting is a Boldini.

Chapitre V

Paris, 20 July 1898

I sat for Boldini today. Again.

Only a few more sketches and all will be right, he promises. A few more sketches? That man and his incessant scribbling will drive me straight into an idiot’s asylum! Truth be told, it would prove welcome relief. At last I would finally be done with this godforsaken portrait. A veritable fool’s errand it is. He has yet to pick up a brush! Let this be a warning to all women: A celebrated, handsome artist intent on re-creating your likeness is not so romantic a scenario.

Turn this way, turn that way, he says. Frowns, furrowed brows, salty language, and much crumpled paper. Then we start the whole thing over. Did I mention it is hot? Murderously hot? Between the heat and the fumes I expected to keel over at any second. I would be offended if the rigmarole was not so very Giovanni. He has done this before.

“You are meant to be a painter,” I said to him. “Not a cartoonist!”

He did not appreciate the inference, but, truly, there is perfectionism and there is dementia, and he is teetering dangerously close to the latter. “Master of Swish,” indeed. It would behoove him to swish a little less.

Marguérite came with me the last time. She told me I do not make it easy on him, at which I had to laugh. Has she ever known me to make it easy on any man? No, in fact mostly I aim to do the opposite. Either way M. Boldini absolutely deserves it. I do tease him. I do warn him against repeating his forebear’s succès de scandale. God help me if a strap falls off my shoulder and I become the next Madame Gautreau.

But it is all in good fun. He knows this and, further, would never repeat Sargent’s artistic miscalculations no matter how many (many, many) times I say he is in danger of doing exactly that. Unlike Sargent, Giovanni will take caution. He values commerce as much as art and has no desire for
la vie de bohème
. In that way we are quite the same.

I suppose I could let up a little, but what I did not tell Marguérite—nay, what I did not tell Giovanni himself—is that it is not merely my impatience driving me to niggle. There is a certain deadline we are working against. If Madame Gautreau’s errant strap threatened to destroy multiple reputations, I cannot fathom what would happen at next year’s salon if Boldini displayed a painting of a woman ripe with pregnancy. An unmarried woman, no less! Mon Dieu!

It is easy enough to hide, but a time will come when I must confess to Giovanni, to Marguérite, to all of Paris! For now, I will delay the inevitable as long as possible. I have not yet decided what to tell Boldini. Will I say the baby is his? Will I say it is someone else’s? Lying to this man does not sit well with me, especially with all the lies and secrets kept about my own lineage. However, a woman cannot live on good intentions alone. Sometimes you have to tell a lie to live the truth.

Chapitre VI

Paris, 1 August 1898

Boldini, the bastard! His latest sketch is beyond unacceptable. And he intends to use it! The situation is disastrous. He is such a
merde
!

The sketch was only practice, he said. I should have known better, and in fact the minute he picked up a pencil I objected. I was in no form for immortalization, having just been
très horizontale
with him on my purple lounging chair.

“You look sublime,” he said, when in fact I did not. I had only just sat up. My eyes were slits, my hair tousled and out of its form. I had lost a bracelet in the sheets, and my whitening powder was almost completely rubbed off.

And my dress! I can hardly stand to discuss the state of my gown. Dear God: crunched-up sleeves, wrinkled bodice, and not even laced all the way closed! It is a dress I hate, no less. One I never meant to buy! I will have to write about the dress. I should have known the blasted pink frock would prove my downfall. Now if Boldini has his way the wretched gown will outlive me!

“Unless you want me to break your sketching hand,” I warned when he did not stop his scribbling. “Please release the writing implement.”

“I told you, it is simply practice,” he promised. “You look so beautiful I must capture it.”

“You are quite the snake charmer. But I am no snake, thus not to be charmed.”

“Not to worry,” he said, the hint of smile dancing on his lips. “It is just for me, for my private use. Trust me, my sweet, you have never looked so exquisite. I want to remember this.”

How could I possibly object to the sentiment? My shoulders relaxed. I no longer glanced around trying to locate a pistol.

Stupid, stupid woman am I.

For a moment the process was not untenable. It was enjoyable, even, a wonder to see Giovanni actually
smile
when he worked instead of grimace and shriek and act like the petulant child he is. He called me beautiful and perfect, and as anyone familiar with Giovanni knows, these are weighty words for that man.

Eventually he finished. As I rose to my feet, he continued to sit at his drawing table, grinning like a madman, pencil clenched in his fist. I said the only thing I could: “Merde.”

Laughing maniacally, Giovanni threw his pencil to the ground, clapped his hands together, and deemed this the portrait he would paint! Not the one we’d been working on for the devil knows how many weeks. Not the one of the carefully selected frock, proper jewels, and head tilted just so. Donna Franca Florio herself (spit, hack) could never look so good. No, he wanted this, sketched in haste, painted in cruelty!

“Off to Monte Carlo!” he then said.

Monte Carlo! For a month! I wanted to lock him in a stranglehold, but even that seemed too generous a treatment.

“Mon Dieu!” I said.

He laughed.

“Never speak to me again!” I said.

He laughed.

Stupid, awful, deplorable man. You can’t pry a blasted smile from beneath his mustache for months on end, and suddenly he was giddy as a loon.

“I hope your genitals rot and fall off!”

And then I told him.

Of course I had to tell him. I planned to all along, but his indecorous behavior hastened the news. As it turned out he had recognized the changes in me. He took note of the extra roundness in my stomach and bosom. It was easy enough to hide on the street and in company, but one cannot wear a corset at all times. Well,
some
people are fond of such arrangements, but not M. Boldini.

“I did wonder,” he said once all was done, once the confession fell from my mouth and we both said things we already regretted. “That you could not get back into that dress.”

The nerve!

I wanted to scream, remind him there were certain considerate gentlemen in this city who employed coiffeurs and chambermaids during the four-to-five for any ladies who might find themselves a touch unkempt after a visit. A tightening here, a bustle there, hair fixed, shipshape back to one’s rightful state! What M. Boldini failed to comprehend was that not everyone suffered the indignity of sneaking back home with a whalebone corset sequestered beneath her cloak!

“You are not exempted from aiding me in these matters,” I told him. “This gown will not lace itself.”

“Not unless,” he said, “it has very big hands.”

The gown! The dratted gown! I hated it the minute I laid eyes on it! And now it was to be immortalized in a picture, by the very hand of the Master of Swish.

Alas. I must write about the gown.

Earlier in the week Doucet, my preferred atelier, sent over a woman and three dresses. The model was instantly familiar. She put on the first dress. I said no. She put on the second. Again I said no. All the while my brain tried to place her. When she put on the third, a translucent pink gown with deep décolletage and sleeves the size of tents, the recollection hit. I stifled a giggle because at our last meeting the young lady was in a most indelicate position indeed!