Luncheon of the Boating Party (34 page)

“You don’t know that. You’re not responsible,” he said louder,

squeezing her arm. “A man needs a host of reasons to take his own life.

Don’t take it on yourself.”

She nodded. Papa had said the same thing.

He rocked her until her breathing slowed. The weight of her curled against his chest and on his thighs was pleasant, one small breast pressing against him. The bullfrog kept up his hoarse, lovelorn moaning.
Sh,
he thought. She might fall asleep. As he felt her relax, he wished better things for her, and for himself, and felt his eyes close.

The frogs and crickets were silent when he opened his eyes some time

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later. The air had cooled. Violet vapor rose over the water and became mauve as dawn neared, and then dove gray. He remembered his wretched painting, her Alexander, his Margot. Moving would awaken her, so he just watched a pale yellow light rise above the rooftops of Rueil and turn the water olive green. His legs tingled with numbness. He shifted to relieve them, and she awoke with a little “Oh!” She looked around, unfolded herself, and darted down the corridor, a disappearing spirit.

His thighs creaked with the memory of hers. He tried to get up, thought better of it, massaged life back into his legs, raised his shoulders in circles hearing the crunching sounds in his neck, grasped the railing, and pulled himself up. He looked at his painting and felt himself wither.

It wasn’t just Circe. Several figures were angled incorrectly
.
The painting was slipping from him.

He hurried into his room, put on a shirt, and grabbed palette, turpentine, rag, and scraping knife. He scraped away Angèle’s hat, her eyes, her chin and its shadow on her neck. He scraped off Alphonse’s hat. He removed the tallest bottle of wine. It needed to be farther to the left so he could show the vertical support in Raoul’s chair back.

The appalling sound went right through her, the raspy scrape ending in a higher ting when the wide blade sprang free. She raced back, buttoning her dress, horrifi ed.
“Sacrebleu!”
He was attacking the canvas.

Raw, shadowy parts defaced it. Wounds. One large one, Circe. Others smaller. Angèle’s face mutilated. Alphonse, the top of his skull gone.

Nightmarish.

She grabbed the wrist of his hand that held the knife. “Stop.”

“I have to see what’s left. Whether there’s enough to salvage.”

He yanked his arm out of her grasp and scraped her jaw and chin and nose off the canvas. The ruination sickened her. “Did I pose wrong?” she cried.

“No. It’s my mistake.”

“But it can be saved.”

“Maybe. I need to have you face Raoul more. That means your hat and hand will have to change too.”

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“What’s wrong with Angèle?”

“The angle of her head was wrong. Her eyes weren’t looking di-

rectly at Gustave but somewhere between him and Antonio. I placed her hat too far on the left side of her head too. If she actually wore it in that position and straightened her head, it would fall off.”

“But you loved her expression.”

“Ellen has to be farther to the right, between Jules and Charles, not just in front of Jules.” He kept scraping. “I may have to rework that in the studio when she’s available again.”

“Then it’s all correctable.” She made sure it didn’t sound like a question.

“There’s a bigger problem, what I feared from the beginning. The thing that made me postpone this painting for so long. It might be cata-strophic.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

He stopped scraping. “Doesn’t it look to you as though the people and the tables are floating out over the landscape without being anchored to a building?”

She tried to see what he saw. “No.”

“Your mind is putting in the context because you know the setting, but others don’t. There’s no space to paint the edge of the building to attach it. No solution that I can see.”

“Now. No solution that you can see right now.”

“And the perception of depth. Gustave and Edgar are masters at it, at judging the sizes. I might have made the rear figures too small compared to those in front.” He leaned forward, his hands and the palette hanging between his legs. “To toss it all might be the answer.”

“You’ll regret it if you do.”

He raised up. “And if I don’t but should have? I’ll be crucifi ed. After twenty years of effort and privation with only a few good years but no dependable assurance from the public, a man has the right to think it might be better to give up.”

“Not when he’s this close.”

“Three weeks is all I have. The light will change. If I only come

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close to creating a masterpiece but fall short, it would prove that my talent has declined after
Moulin de la Galette.
A short career, one botched painting, foolishly ambitious, savaged by the press as a mishmash of styles, an indecipherable magic carpet of people floating in the sky, or on a barge, a thoughtlessly conceived subject between city and country with people of different social classes mixing together, a social threat which the government-sponsored Salon won’t countenance, ridiculed by the caricaturists as a degenerate allusion to the Last Supper, a fl agrant prophecy of doom to one of the models, a darkly ironic party designed by a wicked mind, one colossal failure, and then obscurity.”

“Stop! You’re arguing against yourself.”

His palette clacked against the fl oor.

“Don’t you want to prove Guy and Edgar wrong? Don’t you want

to present your vision of the world? In the end, it just might be your vision that we need most. To neutralize misery.”

“I’m not a philosopher. I’m a painter.”

“How many people are in the painting?”

He glared at her.

“Fourteen,” she said. “You’ll find someone else. For Circe and for Émile too. Besides the models, think of all the people who have contributed. Name some.”

“You.”

“Who else?”

“Your father.”

“My mother too. She made the meals. Who started you?”

“Zola.” He puffed out a breath. “Zola plus gauntlet does not equal masterpiece.”

“That’s seventeen. Where did you get the paints?”

“Père Tanguy. With some help from his wife.”

“How about the doctor who fixed your arm? That’s twenty. Add the people who don’t know but still gave you something. Our grocer, Luc.

The laundress who washes the table linens. The orchardist who grew the pears. The vintner. The butcher’s delivery boy. Twenty-fi ve.”

“This means nothing to me.”

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“The train engineer who brings out the models.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Even Alexander, who rebuilt the bridge, and built the terrace. Now, who taught you to paint?”

“No one. I don’t know how.”

“Be honest.”

“Claude Monet. We taught each other at La Grenouillère.”

“Before him. Start at the beginning.”

“Charles Gleyre, a teacher at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Once he said, ‘No doubt it’s only to amuse yourself that you’re dabbling in painting?’ I told him that if it didn’t amuse me, I wouldn’t be doing it, but right this minute it’s not amusing me one bit.”

She pressed on. “Who else?”

“Courbet urged us to paint outdoors. Delacroix taught me colors.”

“And?”

“Rubens. I couldn’t paint women without Rubens. And Fragonard.

Boucher. Ingres. Watteau gave me the mood. Titian gave me the belief in human beauty. Veronese gave me a setting, and the courage to begin.

So what was that all about?”

“This: To whom much is given, much is required.”

“Are you my conscience?”

“All of us are.
Nous.
All of us are behind you, urging you or giving you direction. Dead or alive, all of us are living through this painting. If you have an ounce of gratitude, you have to go on.”

“I don’t paint out of obligation.”

“No, you paint because you can’t help but paint. Listen to your instinct. You said you’re a cork in the current. All these people doing something for the painting are the current. You can’t help but continue.”

“Not if it’s not salvageable. And not if it doesn’t give me pleasure.”

“What if you found another model? Someone with all the qualities you’re looking for. Someone who would be a dizzy pleasure to paint.

Forget about the stripes. Go to Paris today. Don’t come back until you fi nd someone.”

“It will take too long.”

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“Don’t be stubborn. Think about your friend who died in the war.”

“Bazille.” His voice cracked. “Frédéric.”

“Don’t you think he’s here every day with you, still
living
through you? If you stop, he dies. Of all people, don’t you dare let him down.”

Or Alexander. Don’t let Alexander down, she told herself. She

would not let this marvel die.

She gentled the scraping knife out of his hand.

“Regret is a bitter knife, Auguste. You know all about it. Don’t let it gouge your soul.”

Frédéric. The purity of his generosity. The pleasure they took in painting together. Painting each other. Painting for each other.

All at once he saw what the painting could be. A painting to carry on the work of Watteau, of Rubens and Vermeer and Ingres and Veronese.

To bring them live into this age. He turned from his painting to her.

She knew art was collaboration, and standing on the shoulders of those who came before. He took her face in both his hands, pulled it toward him roughly before she could back away, and kissed her, not tenderly.

Roughly. The kiss to end the drought of kisses. He heard his scraping knife clatter to the fl oor.

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Repairing to Paris

He heard people stirring downstairs. Alphonsine backed away and went down. In his room, he found some letter paper, and wrote:

My dear Monsieur Bérard,

I’m at Chatou working on this cursed painting, the last big picture I will ever undertake. I’m struggling with the figures, the perspective, and other problems. I don’t know if I have the courage to fi nish it.

I suppose I’ll sacrifice one more week on it and if it doesn’t look as though it will ever come right, I’ll pitch the damned thing into the river and go back to Paris to paint portraits.

I have some regrets, not the least of which is the trouble I’ve given them here, perhaps for nothing. It would spur me on to

receive some funds from you. I’m in arrears here for food and rent, to my colorman, and now with the models, so if you can spare a

little money, I’d be much obliged.

He wrote another letter to Deudon, who might be a more likely

source, ending it the same way. Much obliged. He was always saying

“much obliged” to someone. It made him feel like a charity case. He swore that there would come a time when other people, when Bérard and Deudon themselves would feel much obliged for the
chance
to buy a Renoir. On the bottom of his letter to Deudon, he drew a caricature of himself jumping out of bed with his cycling cap on to hug a postman bringing him a sack of coins.

He joined young Alphonse downstairs for a
café.

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“You seemed to have enjoyed your little excursion with Angèle on the steam-cycle.”

Alphonse chuckled. “I did. If you permit me, I’d like to take it across the bridge to some smoother ground.”

“What would it be worth to you to own the thing and take it wherever you please?”

“To buy it from you? You don’t want it?”

“I want to pay my debts more.”

Alphonse tipped his head and raised both eyebrows. “One hundred francs.”

“It’s yours for one hundred. Give fifty to your father and fifty to me.”

Alphonse left and came back with fi fty francs.

“I’m much obliged.”
Zut!
There, he’d said it again. “Tell Alphonsine that I’m off to buy more paint.”

He mailed the letters at Gare Saint-Lazare and stepped out of the cool marble station into the hot sun. If he didn’t do the most diffi cult thing first today, it might not get done, and the loss might be inestimable. But on the way he might find a model.

In front of Au Printemps, he stopped. The big department store

might provide just what he needed. What should he do if he found a woman he liked? Trot after her through the lingerie department? Say,
Excuse me, I think you’re beautiful. Will you model for me?
How would he know if, after one Sunday, she would come back for the next two?

Trusting a stranger was risky.

He walked down the glittering avenue de l’Opéra. Plenty of high-class shops. Plenty of beautiful women buying kid gloves from Argen-tina and silk scarves from Milan, living prosperously off someone. Why would any one of them be enticed to give up the last summer Sundays to a stranger for a mere ten francs a day?

He hurried past the Comédie-Française and crossed the Seine. The dark dome of the Institut on the Left Bank did not give him any comfort. It was the bastion of the Académie, the Salon, the jurists, all that could still decide his fate. All that made him put one foot before the other until he came to Madame Charpentier’s
hôtel particulier.

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He ran through the reasons why he had to lift that lion’s-head

knocker. If his Salon success the year before was in fact due to Madame Charpentier’s maneuvers for a good position for her own portrait, he owed her an apology. After she heard what he had to tell her, she might withdraw her influence. Circe was dead right about that. But if the Salon rejected it, he didn’t want it to be exhibited with the Impressionists even though not exhibiting with them would crack Gustave’s heart. It might be placed next to Degas’ second-rate disciples, and he’d be seen as losing ground. It wasn’t entirely Impressionist anyway. He needed the Salon to authenticate it as a masterpiece, and to prove that his
Madame Charpentier and Her Children
was the precursor of many successes.