Katherine Keenum (8 page)

Jeanette began to feel strangely trapped, unable to move without disturbing the man sitting next to her, ignorant of exactly where they were. An hour past Rouen, well aware that her mother did not approve of eating in public, she surreptitiously felt inside her handbag. The stiff tissue paper of her bakery packet rustled. No one seemed to notice. Fumbling, she broke off a pinch of fragrant tart and brought it to her mouth. It was rich, delicious. She stole another bite, and another, then slowly and carefully drew out the packet to offer Cousin Effie her tart. Effie fluttered her hands, no, then snatched the whole packet quickly and tucked it away. Jeanette leaned back in her seat, exasperated.

She began to feel a creeping fear. In New York, she had had to put all her energy into making this happen. In Dieppe, the astonishment of actually being in France had sent her spirits soaring. Now, as the train clacked on into the fading dusk, the enormity of attempting to shape a future in so strange a place overwhelmed her.

The railroad bed cut straight into a hill and, after passing under a fortified wall, continued in a deep cutting on the steep sides of which were pasted one giant advertising hoarding after another—
Biscuits Olibet; Domaine de St. Gabriel something, something
—just legible by ambient light from streetlamps high above. The train slowed until, with a squealing whistle, it plunged into new darkness marked only by a line of lantern dots. As it reemerged into the open air, the other passengers began to pull down luggage and adjust their hats and coats. Jeanette sat paralyzed. The tracks, having diverged into many lines, ended under a vast zigzag of pitched roofs. Everywhere, there were workmen, signal posts, and sheds. Locomotives were being switched on turntables; crowds of outward-bound passengers milled on platforms; billows of smoke and steam rose. They had arrived at the vast Gare Saint-Lazare.

*   *   *

On the platform, while the other passengers from their compartment disappeared into the crowd pushing toward the station building, Jeanette and Effie waited, as instructed, until their Thomas Cook agent turned up and guided them down a few car lengths to where an amassing throng of porters, baggage carts, and fellow passengers from the ferry were herded together. “Next, it’s the sheep pens,” remarked one of the men. He shifted aside to acknowledge Jeanette and Effie’s inclusion in the group. At a signal, they all began to move, lengthening out into what became a line for the customs enclosure.

“Now, ladies,” said the agent, coming back to Jeanette and Effie, “if you’ll take my advice, you’ll let me engage you a cab right now ahead of time. It will cost a bit more, paying the driver to wait, but you’ll be set when you’re through customs and find yourself standing on the Rue d’Amsterdam with your life’s belongings heaped around you on the pavement. Agreed? Right you are, never made a wiser decision in your life. Keep moving with the line, and I’ll be back in a tick.”

He returned with a sheaf of cards with numbers, which he distributed to the passengers under his care. “Now there’s a cab out there with this number, see. Just give it to the driver and off you go.

“Not at all, miss, all part of the job,” he said, when Effie tried to offer him a tip. “But the porter on the other side, he’ll be expecting his fifteen centimes and deserves it, don’t he, a man has to earn his living. But don’t give more than twenty, whatever you do. No need to support highway robbery and raise expectations. Just show him your number, and he’ll take you to the cab.”

In the claims area, Frenchmen and incoming foreigners were sorted, questioned, stamped, and reunited with their trunks, then questioned, examined, and stamped again. Jeanette and Effie had nothing taxable to declare and roused no suspicions in the minds of the customs officials; the search of their luggage was perfunctory. The next thing they knew, they had been disgorged into Paris.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Getting Started

F
or their first week, Jeanette and Effie had reservations at the Pavillon des Dames, a hotel on the Left Bank recommended by Miss Whitmore. As soon as their porter found their four-wheeled fiacre, Effie handed him his tip and read off their address to the driver. Her accent was bad, but her delivery had the ring of authority. In dealing with city cabdrivers, she was back in her element.

Jeanette was not. The cab ride through a phantasmagoria of smooth, light-smeared boulevards and dark, cobbled side streets; arrival at an impossibly narrow hotel wedged in the middle of a block; its threadbare lobby and their spartan room—everything conspired to lower her spirits even more than the train station had. At a restaurant across the street, where the receptionist sent them for supper, they did not know how to order. She went to bed in despair at having made such a mistake.

The next morning, she overslept. They were in Paris and could have found something to eat within a block’s walk in any direction; but breakfast was included in the price of the room, and Cousin Effie would not hear of paying twice. She hurried them downstairs. In a basement room, where a number of tables were laid with white tablecloths, cutlery, and china, a few guests lingered over broken crumbs and last cups of coffee or tea. Effie returned their curious glances so frankly that the ladies looked away. Jeanette slunk into a chair at the one table still laid with rolls, butter, and marmalade; she almost apologized when a sulky waitress brought them pots of hot milk and coffee.

“Where shall we go first?” asked Effie, later, as she complacently buttered the flaking remains of a second croissant. “I suppose the bank, and then we’d better look for a place to live.”

Jeanette shook her head. Her spirits had risen in response to caffeine. “First, the Louvre.”

They went on foot. With the map in a guidebook given them by Uncle Matthew, they could find their way, whereas the omnibus system was confusing and a cab cost money. On the Pont des Arts, a wide, wooden-planked bridge opposite the Louvre, Jeanette could feel the pounding surge of the Seine beneath them. A damp wind caused most pedestrians to bow heads and hunch shoulders, but she let it blow against her face while she watched black-headed gulls bank and swoop among the barges and boats below. A couple of fishermen leaned over the iron rails ahead, poles extended; a loose dog trotted as confidently as if he owned Paris—as confidently as she hoped someday she would. And all the while, on the farther shore for whole city blocks stretched the limestone Palace of the Louvre.

They entered its precincts at the Place du Carrousel. Despite its festively promising name, it was a dull expanse of paving stone where dingy flocks of pigeons halfheartedly rose and fell back with a flackering of wings. The only spot of color seemed to be the red pantaloons of some Zouaves in the distance, but to their left, overlooking the courtyard, stood a monumental arch topped by a statue of a splendid woman driving a chariot drawn by four horses. That was better.

“There’s been a fire in that part of the palace!” exclaimed Jeanette, looking past the arch to scorch marks, broken walls, and empty windows.

“Of course,” said Effie. “That’s the Palace of the Tuileries. Don’t you remember? It was set on fire by the mob during the dreadful Commune. Oh, dear me, first ours and then the Franco-Prussian War. So many dead. Eighteen seventy-one.” Effie clucked her tongue.

“In 1871, I was only eleven,” said Jeanette. She turned her back on the eyesore.

Inside the museum, Effie would have dutifully taken the galleries in the order prescribed by their guidebook, but not Jeanette. “Look at all those people heading straight upstairs to the main picture galleries,” she said, and set off, knowing that Effie would hurry after her.

At the top of the main staircase, they came to the long, barrel-vaulted Galerie d’Apollon. Effie, like most sightseers, wanted to bend over glass cases containing enamels, vases, and precious stones, but Jeanette would not stop until they had reached the Salon Carré, which housed a selection of the museum’s most famous paintings. At its black-framed doors, she paused briefly to draw a self-conscious breath before stepping into what she had been planning to be one of the supreme moments of her life: She who was going to be an
artist
was about to behold
Art
(at the back of her mind, a classically draped allegorical figure flung forth a triumphant arm). Then a sob really did catch at Jeanette’s throat. At Vassar, painting had been stacked upon painting; here it was masterpiece upon masterpiece. Hung on somber walls of a plummy chocolate, guarded and kept at a reverential distance by a barrier railing, the pictures climbed one on top of another toward a skylit ceiling, not thirty feet, but fifty feet high, the smaller canvases below, the larger ones above, each demanding the viewer’s full devotion.

As Jeanette moved slowly through the room, the more she looked, the more she was overwhelmed. Many of the paintings were familiar from engravings, but black lines on white paper were as unlike the tactile beauty of pigment as printed notes were different from music. In the face of these miracles of composition and effect, of imagination, insight, and technical accomplishment, she wondered how she had ever had the temerity to think she could learn to do the same. Yet the gallery was crowded, not only by visitors, but by copyists, some of them obviously students and many of them women. Jeanette resolved to look only at the original paintings, yet she could not stop her eye from straying to the copies.

As she and Effie moved on to other, less crowded galleries, copyists became fewer in number and seemed more intent on study than on reproducing the most famous pictures. One darkly handsome man, well dressed and well equipped, was making an astonishing copy of a Rubens—not a copy, a recomposition. He painted with distinctive brushwork that reflected Rubens’ curves, the glow of Rubens’ flesh tones, and an exploratory, vigorous life of its own. It was something Jeanette would never have thought of doing, and it excited her. From a distance, she paused to watch. “I wonder who that was,” she whispered to Effie when they were out of earshot.

*   *   *

As the days passed, they began to learn the omnibus routes and rode outside on upper decks when the weather was fine. They justified sightseeing as learning the lay of the land, but they also began to answer notices and look at rooms. When everything seemed either too expensive or too dismal, they drank a cup of chocolate in a tearoom and made a pilgrimage to the nearest point of interest. The Vanns had advised them to look for housing only in the new neighborhoods around the Gare Saint-Lazare, where the plumbing was good. Tall north-facing windows showed that artists congregated there, it was true; but they both preferred the Left Bank, Jeanette for the ambiance, Effie for the lower prices. Toward the end of the week, just when it seemed they would have to pay hotel rates a while longer, they heard through Effie’s willingness to talk to strangers at breakfast about a room in a
pension
around the corner on the Rue Jacob.

“It was cheap, yes, and had a flush toilet on the floor, but no heat and no bathroom,” said the middle-aged lady who was detailing her own search for long-term lodgings. “No sitting room, no privacy. I can’t think why the agent sent us there.”

“For contrast, dear,” said her companion. “He wanted us to take a more expensive suite—which we did.”

“Well,” said Effie to Jeanette, when the two ladies were gone, “it’s close by.”

They set out afraid that if the room was just what they wanted, it would already be taken. When they presented themselves to the concierge, he acted so uncomprehending that they doubted for a moment whether any room had ever been available at that address in the history of the
quartier
. Even pointing from themselves to a placard in his chamber window,
Chambre à louer
, did no good until they began to back away in defeat. Then he relented and turned them over to his wife, who led them up the stairs to the third floor, where she rapped on a door with a key before turning it in the lock. To their consternation, she led them through what seemed to be the foyer of someone else’s apartment (behind a bead curtain was a sitting room) to reach a further staircase to the next floor. On the landing above, another rap at a door and the turn of a second key.

“
Bonjour, madame!
” barked the
portière
, as she opened the door for Jeanette and Effie.

A pregnant, sleepy-eyed woman in a housedress pushed herself up from a battered sofa. The
portière
curtly asked to be allowed to show the room. The occupant swept her arm around in a resigned gesture. At the back, a large bed was unmade; an open trunk at its foot was half filled; clothes—a man’s as well as a woman’s—were strewn around the room. The furniture didn’t match; the figured wallpaper on uneven walls was water-stained and faded to the color of parchment. Besides being cold, the place smelled too much lived in.

Yet where two windows across the front of the building overlooked the street, the room was as light as a gray day allowed, and a geranium on the deep windowsill blossomed among healthy leaves. Another window on the side wall between the sofa and the bed gave out onto the roof next door, and with the corner of her eye, Jeanette was aware of light to her left. It came from a small window in an alcove tucked into a gable beside the stairwell. There on an easel was a canvas painted in loose brushstrokes, which depicted the woman on the sofa.

“Oh, your husband is an artist,
madame
,” she said, in French.

A shy complacency warmed the wife’s face. Yes, a student at the École des Beaux-Arts. That canvas was a mere
esquisse
, a sketch for a larger composition that had just been accepted for this year’s Salon. He hoped to sell it and win some commissions. The room was convenient to the school, but, thank God, they were moving to a real apartment with a proper studio.

“I could work here,” said Jeanette, softly.

“A kitten!” said Effie, coming into the room. “Oh, look, kittens!”

Jeanette burst out laughing. A gray-streaked kitten, which had fallen out of a basket under a table, was rolling on its tiny wire cage of a back, trying to grab and bite the scrap of tail sticking out through its fluff. Three more of the litter were absorbed in watching it from the basket. What was the word for kitten? “
Les petits chats
,” she said, in explanation.

“
Ah, oui
,” said the renter, mournfully, as she looked down at them with a hand placed on her own belly. They needed homes; she hated to drop them in the river.

The kitten on the floor gave up on its tail and twisted around upright with a jerk to bat a tiny white paw at one of its siblings. Effie bent forward eagerly. “Oh, tell her to leave one here!” she said, even though Jeanette had not translated the part about the river.

“Pouvons-nous . . . peut-il . . . ?”

While Jeanette struggled to frame the request, Effie turned a beaming face to the
portière
, who drew in a breath through constricted nostrils but shrugged as she exhaled. Why not? Cats kept the mice down—but it must go in and out the window, never down the stairs.
Madame
did not care for cats.
Madame
was Mme. Granet, the proprietress; but it seemed that Mme. LeConte, the
portière
, was the real power in the establishment, at least when it came to rentals. The present tenants would vacate on Friday morning, after which the room would be given a good cleaning to be ready for occupancy on Saturday, rent in advance and a deposit.

Back out on the street, Jeanette and Effie’s jubilation turned to jitters. The room offered less comfort and less space than they had hoped for (what would the family say if any of them ever saw it?), and they realized that they had no idea how good or bad the food might be.

“All the same, it’s a franc a day less than we had expected to pay, and that’s thirty francs a month saved,” said Jeanette. “Let’s put a coin a day in a jar to make it real.”

“That lovely ginger jar that Matthew gave me for the trip! What a good idea—ready cash against an emergency.”

“Or a monthly treat, Cousin Effie! Rewards for living virtuously.”

*   *   *

On Saturday, they were given two keys, one to the third-floor apartment with instructions always to knock, never to linger, and a separate key to their own room on the floor above. Mme. LeConte promised to send the carter up with their luggage when he arrived, but she left them to find their way alone this time. At the third-floor door, they took a deep breath and looked at each other. Effie took it upon herself to rap politely with her ear to the door. No response. Inside, they tiptoed to the shadowy staircase with a nervous eye on the beads, then scuttled. They whispered until the door to their own room was open. Then they breathed easier. The room was light. The too-much-lived-in look was gone, along with the odor of unwashed laundry, replaced by a welcome bareness and the smell of carbolic soap. From inside a covered basket beside a bottle of cream on the table came mewing.