Luncheon of the Boating Party (41 page)

The music was too spirited for her to contain herself. Angèle pirouetted and pranced, fi rst with low kicks, then raising her knee and letting go a half kick, not high enough to show the bandeau at the top of her white stockings, but enough to make her chignon come undone.

“
Dansez,
milord!” she urged in a throaty voice. “Let yourself go!”

Marcel cavorted too, looking astonished and letting out one
“Mon
Dieu!”
after another as the music mounted faster and faster, until the wild whoops of the crashing fi nish.

“Bravo, milord!”

He held on to her waist with both hands as they wobbled back to the table, hot and out of breath. “I’ve surprised myself,” he said.

“One must dance the cancan when one can,” she said.

He signaled the waiter for more champagne. They touched hands

and drank and watched the mazurka, the
galop,
the
grandpère,
and they joined on the sedate Boston. She liked its free, sliding movements which made her feel graceful, and its advance and retreat which was fl irtatious. What couldn’t be said could be sung, and what couldn’t be sung could be danced.

On the table, his hand covered hers. “When I saw you alone in the
promenoir,
I thought you looked sad,” he said. “How wrong I was!”

“No, you’re a smart one. During the barcarole, I ran up against a face that reminded me of someone. Near to shook the stuffing out of me.”

“A tragedy?”

“For many people.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She tapped her glass with her fingernail, considering. Telling it might get him to digging in his pocket, but it was cheap to use Père l’Epingle for a coin.

“It’s not the type of story you’re likely to hear in your circles.”

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“I am a republican. I ride the omnibuses. If it’s about a human being, I’d like to hear.” He slid another gold louis across the table. “Tell me.”

Mon Dieu!
Forty-six francs altogether. Now she had to tell him. It might sound fake, it was so woeful, and he’d think she made it up. Put a tarnish on the evening, that would. She had to treat it with pussy gloves.

“It’s about Père l’Epingle, a ragpicker I used to know in the ragpickers’ colony of the Maquis.” She looked at him, taking his measure.

“Where I grew up.”

He didn’t bat an eye.

“Father of the fatherless, he was. A clean, gentlemanly old man.”

She took a quick gulp of champagne. “They called him Père l’Epingle out of respect. He could pick a silver pin out of a heap of rubbish.”

“An enviable talent, in his line of work.” He tilted his head. “And in life, I suppose.”

“True as tears.” She took another drink. “When I was a little girl, he moved into the quarter and began to help the ragpickers. He organized their picking territories and settled their quarrels. He set up areas for burning garbage and for latrines. He brought medicine when there was cholera. Everybody in the Maquis called him the Governor. When he was sickly, the whole ragpicking colony surrounded his shanty, wailing up a racket until he came out and told them he would live. He gave me the very hare skins I slept on.”

She finished her drink and looked off to the pretty couples spinning around the pavilion under the colored lanterns. All that pleasure and prettiness. Who was she, really, to be here when she carried the Maquis in her veins? Its piles of filth. The refuse of Paris, stench, mud, damp-ness, ugliness.

Marcel took her hand in both of his. “Finish the story,” he murmured.

“Last Sunday, when I was having a pretty time posing, he hanged himself from a tree.”

His hand grasped hers tighter.

“He had kicked over his basket beneath him and had used the cord that strapped it to him as his noose.” Her voice cracked. “In his coat they found a photograph of a beautiful woman in jewels and fi nery.”

“Even ragpickers are capable of noble love.”

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“That’s right good of you to say.”

He drew her head onto his shoulder, and what she’d been holding in all week gave way and she dropped a tear or two until she remembered her part in it. She raised up.

“They buried him the day before yesterday. A fi ne coffi n they pinched from the morgue of Montmartre. I did the flowers. The usual white chrysanthemums weren’t good enough. I threw in my week’s

wage and added white roses, white carnations, white fl eurs-de-lis. Père l’Epingle deserved everything clean at last.”

“I’m sure they were beautiful.”

“I was all to bits over it the whole week. Lost my rudder, I guess you could say.”

“Perhaps I can make you forget for a while.”

“That you have, milord.” Milord, not Marcel. To keep it business.

“Shall we take a walk?” he asked.

They strolled along a gravel path. She darted to a swing hanging from a tree, stood on it, and he made it go. At every swing toward him, she lightened up a little. He tried to kiss her on each pass, but she teased him by turning her face away at the last instant.

“Smile at me, milord. Better than that.
Voilà,
like that.” He caught her and lifted her off the swing and took his pleasure with a kiss that sucked the sadness out of her.

They sat on a bench overhung with vines. “I came tonight,” he said,

“thinking I would just watch how other people lived. You’ve taken me quite by surprise. Is your name really Angèle?”

“Yes.”

“It’s too perfect. May I ask your surname?”

“Montmartre. Surnames mean you belong to a family or a man. All I belong to is Montmartre.”

She let him kiss and touch, and she’d be a liar if she said she wasn’t enjoying it.

They went out onto the avenue. Here was the moment. By the code of Mabille, he could just drop her a coin and disappear. That would be fine with her, but maybe she could mine a little deeper. Such a sweet cuss he was. She could give him another quarter of an hour. His elbow pressed

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her hand against his side to keep her walking—down avenue Montaigne past the dark boutiques, to stand above the Seine on Pont d’Alma. It was a signal, a turn in the evening. He was not going to hustle off with her to a
hôtel de passe,
which made her breathe more easily.

The gas lanterns along the four arches of Pont des Invalides upriver cast golden lights in the water like sea creatures wiggling with life. Music from a floating café concert rolled softly toward them. Below them, the stone head of a Zouave on the bridge pier honored their role in the Crimean War. She thought of the Zouave at Mabille. Mighty glad she was that she didn’t have to endure that bounder to earn her trap money for Auguste.

A crowded pleasure boat, a side-wheeler, tipped down its steam pipe and slid under the bridge in the darkness. Murmurings from below came up to them.

“Do you think the people on that boat are slipping through their lives without noticing how excruciatingly beautiful everything is?” he asked.

“My, you are a sentimental one.”

He lifted her chin.
“Au plaisir de vous revoir,”
he said, a wish to see her again.

Now, that was something else again.

“Will you come to the Mabille next Saturday?” he asked.

“I can’t say.”

“Is it too much to ask that a fine evening be repeated?”

“Yes. A body can’t do things over again.”

“In your words, I’ve been ‘all to bits’ for too long. Tonight was the first night I attempted to find my rudder.” His hand petted her cheek as if she were a cat. “A thing is never cherished so much as when a man lacks it.”

“Or a woman.”

“I know you’re probably expecting me to take you somewhere. Is it so terrible that a man tired of grief steps slowly into life again?”

Now she understood what the black border on his white handker-

chief meant. A brave fellow, to enter the stream of life again. He pressed

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another coin into her palm. She didn’t look, but it was bigger in her hand than the others. It had to be a Napoléon III fifty-franc piece. He’d come prepared. Not conscience money. Sadness money. The story must have twanged his strings.

“To keep you off the streets until Saturday, just in case.”

She’d made no promise, but she wouldn’t mind it.

He kissed her forehead. “It’s nice to think I’m of some use.”

“For me too. A tit for a tat.”

He hailed a horse cab and paid the driver to take her home.

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Allons!
To Work!

Under the maple tree, Auguste watched Angèle’s eyes fl ash with zest.

“Close your eyes and open your hand,” she said.

“But then I can’t see you.” Or Aline as soon as she was on the bridge, he thought, but he obeyed and Angèle dropped into his hand two three-franc écus, then a louis.

“If this came from where I think it did, it won’t make me happy.”

“Never no matter, that.” She dropped another louis.

“I don’t like to think—”

“Shush up. Give me a clean hand.” He clenched his fist and she

forced it open and dropped the Napoléon III.

He opened his eyes. “Angèle! No! I can’t accept this.” He tried to give it back but she put her arms behind her and backed up against a tree.

“It’s my painting too.”

He wasn’t so bourgeois yet that he couldn’t appreciate Angèle’s brand of lusty nobility. And she wasn’t so loose that she would do this for anyone else. She probably reveled in doing it for him.

“Slice it however you like, it wasn’t earned the way you think. It was
given
fair and square at Jardin Mabille without having to use a
hôtel de
passe.
Such a good sort, he was. So don’t take the shine off the apple. It’s good for a woman to know what she’s worth once in a while. It perks me right up to think I’m of some use.”

He felt his resistance melt into gratitude. “You’ve given me something no one else could do.”

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“Pocket it quick. Antonio’s coming.”

Antonio leapt down the steps from the footbridge. “Did you get a new model or is
l’enfante terrible
coming back?”

Auguste grinned. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

“Aha! That means there’s someone new.”

In a few minutes Pierre and Paul arrived. Pierre held up a bottle of anisette. “A peace offering,” he said.

“No need, but we’ll enjoy it.”

They sat on the lower terrace and drank the anisette until Charles and Jules came. Still no Aline. No Ellen, and without Ellen, he had no hope to see Émile again. When Gustave and Raoul arrived in their boats, Auguste sent everyone off for a sail. He paced the bank and crossed the bridge and came back to help out on the dock—something enjoyable to keep himself occupied. Couples and families rented yoles, young men rented
triplettes, périssoires,
or monotypes with one sail.
Cou-cou, Lutin, Mouche, Sans Souci
—one after another the boats went out, about twenty of them. Still no Aline.

Père Fournaise brought the steam excursion launch out of the boat garage and sounded the whistle. He’d mounted a banner prow to stern:
Fêtes Nautiques, le 5 septembre.
Auguste helped the ladies and children board and Alphonse managed the lines. Fournaise rang out a tune as the launch pulled away.

“You’re providing an important service here,” Auguste said.

In the channel, two jousting barques with eight rowers each bore down on each other, the jousters standing on their platforms with lances in position. One jouster was sent flying into the water.

“That’s Hugo who knocked him off,” Alphonse said. “We call him

The Bull. He’ll be my strongest competitor.”

Auguste squeezed Alphonse’s biceps. “Then what do they call you?

The Elephant?”

“Hippopotamus. My first name is really Hippolyte.”

“I’ll put my money on you, so you’d better get out and practice, but not today. I need you for positioning the new model in front of you.”

“Next week. I’ll practice next week.”

“There are only two weeks left.”

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And still holes in his painting. Still the problem of the fl ying terrace and the thirteen figures. He rolled and lit a cigarette and took a few puffs.

Alphonsine was chatting with the group under the arbor, the friends of the sailboat
Le Palais.
When their meal was served, she came over to him.

“I felt sure she’d come,” he said.

“Go upstairs. Paint something. I’ll watch.”

“You don’t know what she looks like.” He snuffed out his cigarette.

“Oh yes I do. I know a Renoir girl when I see one.”

“You’re a Renoir girl, top to toe.”

“What’s her name?”

“Aline Charigot. She may have a little dog with her.”

Upstairs he rolled the easel out onto the terrace. He had repainted Alphonsine’s face and Alphonse’s hat during the week which made him feel a little better. Light. Ah, light. Pure radiance. It made the river lavender and pale ocher and aqua and white. It made the sailboats shimmer. It made the grassy hillock on the opposite bank glow a yellow-green. It softened the lines of the railroad bridge and made everything vibrate with life. With this brilliance of heaven come down to earth, how could he have thought to abandon this painting?

The
Nana
and the
Iris
returned and everyone came upstairs.

“Eek! What happened to my face?” Angèle said in mock horror.

“And my hat! After all my bargaining at the Marché du Temple!”

“You’ll get it back,” he said. “I need you to turn more toward

Gustave.”

“If I looked at him any closer, I might devour him.”

“I’ll give you your eyes and mouth back today too. Don’t worry.”