Luncheon of the Boating Party (9 page)

“It must have been awful, being in prison,” Aline said. “He’s always nice to us.” She dodged a troop of girls coming out of the school across from Julien Tanguy’s shop.

Auguste said goodbye to her and opened the door. A bell jingled merrily. Tanguy turned toward him, buttons straining, and screwed up his puffy face. “Auguste! Whatever happened to you?”

“I fell off my steam-cycle.” Auguste looked around the walls above the shelves hung with paintings edge to edge all the way to the ceiling.

“I see Cézanne sent you some new paintings.”

Julien pulled him deep into the narrow shop. “Look at this one!

Montagne Sainte-Victoire on a spring morning. Magnifi cent. Cézanne’s a genius.”

“How many of his Sainte-Victoires do you have now?”

“Four. One for each season of the year.” Tanguy spread his arms wide, and the furrows stretching down from his round nostrils curved into a euphoric smile above his stubby yellowish beard. “I have the best job in the world. How else would a poor man be able to live with paintings like these?”

•
51
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

“Seven!” Madame Tanguy said, pushing aside the curtain of the

back room. She yanked her crocheted shawl across her ample fi gure.

“The man’s crazy.”

“Who? Cézanne or Julien?”

“Both of them.
Grâce à Dieu,
I only have to live with one of them.”

“And a very fine man he is,” Auguste added, winking at Julien.

“So there!” Tanguy gave a sharp nod to his wife and turned back to Auguste. “What can I do for you today?”

“I need a roll of fine-weave linen, primed. As wide as you’ve got.”

“One hundred thirty-five centimeters. Widest standard.”

“Give me a hundred ninety centimeters of it. And stretchers.”

“The largest I have is a number one-twenty.”

“For one painting?” Madame asked. “That’s nearly as tall as you are.”

True. He could hardly believe what he’d said. “That’ll be the width.”

“You’ll need cross braces for a painting that size,” Tanguy said. He took off his straw farmer’s hat and scratched his head, motioning to the cast. “How can you paint?”

“I can paint. I’m ambidextrous.”

“Never heard of a painter who could paint with both hands. Show me.” He pushed paper and pencil across the counter where Auguste sat on a tall stool.

“Anyone who writes with his left hand is the devil’s accomplice,”

Madame said. “What’s your hurry? Why don’t you wait until you get that thing off?”

“The light. It’s a painting of
canotiers
on a riverside terrace. In two months the good light on the Seine will be gone by four o’clock.”

The bell jingled and a young woman came in with three girls trailing behind her. Auguste jerked to attention. Blond hair hung loose from her chignon, and her slender neck had a patrician quality. Using his left hand, he drew her in profile as she looked at a display of colored chalk.

Madame Tanguy pursed her lips as he worked.

“It’s amusing to draw left-handed. My strokes go the opposite way.

Hm. This might even be better than what I could do with my right.”

•
52
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

“Sign it,” Madame commanded, tapping the paper with her fi ngernail stained green from grinding pigments. “Someday, when you’re famous and we’re on our deathbeds, we’ll sell it, and get back a fraction of what you owe us.”

He signed it, “The Devil and A. Renoir.”

He held the roll of canvas taut for Julien as the big shears opened and closed, advancing toward him with a rasping noise like a mechanical fish about to bite his fi ngers.

“That’s twenty francs fifteen,” Madame said. “You’re going to need a lot of paint for a canvas that size. I don’t see your pocket bulging.”

“Never mind, Fionie. He’ll die if he doesn’t paint,” Tanguy said as he rolled the canvas around the stretchers and tied it with a cord.

The young woman chose her chalk and a colored pencil for each of the girls, and approached the counter.

“You’re a teacher at the girls’ school, aren’t you? Here, look at this.”

Madame showed her the drawing. “Monsieur Renoir is a very famous painter. Everyone in Paris knows him. Wouldn’t you like this?”

The girls crowded around to look. “Buy it. Buy it,” they chorused.

The young woman couldn’t keep back a modest smile.

“Ten francs,” Madame said.

“Oh.” She shook her head. “Just the chalk and the pencils, please.”

“Five,” Julien said.

The girls hopped up and down.

“Three,” Julien said.

She blushed modestly, looking at her image. “I suppose.”

One girl tugged at her arm and whispered something to her.

“Would Monsieur draw the girls too?” she asked. “One franc each?”

“Yes, he will,” Madame snapped, and laid out three pieces of paper.

Amused, he said, “There’s nothing I’d like better,” and went to work.

“Please, if you would just sign them ‘A. Renoir,’ that would be lovely,” the young lady said.

When he fi nished, the teacher slid the coins across the counter and Madame scooped them up, dropped them in the cash box and slammed the lid. “Come in again, dear. Bring in your other pupils.”

•
53
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

Julien smiled with his wide blue eyes, wide nostrils, and wide lips, a face in harmony with itself, elfish and pleased that he knew enough to set a tube of cobalt blue on the counter. “What other colors do you need?”

“A far sight more than six francs’ worth, I’m afraid.”

“Name them.”

“Flake white, large.”

“That’s six francs fifty already,” Madame said.

“Two tubes?” Tanguy asked.

“One for now. Chrome yellow, vermilion, rose madder, Veronese

green, emerald, cobalt, ultramarine blue large, Prussian blue.”

“No. I will not sell you Prussian blue.”

“Julien, it’s only a name. You don’t have to prove your principles.”

“I spit on anything Prussian. Arrogant brutes, commandeering Pissarro’s house during the war. Walking on his paintings so they wouldn’t muddy their boots.” His face tightened with pain. “Only forty canvases saved of fifteen hundred. And squeezing our national treasury for war reparations. Inhuman.”

“France paid every last franc. Five billion! And ahead of time too!”

Madame said, beady-eyed, her chin thrust in Auguste’s direction.

“How’s that for principles?”

“No Prussian blue,” Tanguy said. “To foreigners, I sell it. To amateurs too. But I will not have Prussian blue in the Louvre!”

Auguste chortled. “You’re sure of where this is going, then, are you?”

“Bien sûr!”
He folded his arms across his chest. “You know what it’s made of? Blood, flesh, bone-black, soot. I won’t have those disgusting things on your French painting! Use
French
ultramarine.”

“I will, for some things, but I also need that inky quality of Prussian blue. The
canotières
will be in dark blue dresses.”

“You never had it in your palette before,” Julien said.

“I never had so many
canotières
in one painting before. You wouldn’t want them undressed, would you?”

“Use cobalt.”

“Too transparent. It has a greenish undertone. I need the fi nest grade of Prussian blue, well washed to keep it from fading.”

•
54
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

“Non!”
He put his hands on his hips.
“C’est final!”

Tanguy picked the other tubes off the shelf, holding them all against his chest. “You don’t need burnt sienna or burnt umber?”

“I can make them with these.”

“These won’t last for a painting that large. Come back when you need more,” Tanguy said.

Madame Tanguy blew out a breath that lifted the lank brown bangs on her forehead. “Don’t glop it on like Claude does and you won’t need so much.”

“What’s the condition of your brushes?” Tanguy asked.

“He likes his old ones,” Madame said, thrusting out her jaw.

The perfect Xantippe, Auguste thought. As commanding as So-

crates’ wife.

“You can’t paint a masterpiece with brushes worn down to the nubs.

You need to start fresh, with no residual color.”

“They won’t feel like mine.”

“You’ll make them your own in no time. Don’t scrimp on this.”

“You remind me of my father’s friend, the assistant of Sanson, the state executioner during the Revolution. When I was a boy the old man and my father liked to say that one of them cut out cloth, the other cut off heads. One needed sharp scissors, the other a sharp guillotine blade.

Their nonchalance shocked me then, but they agreed on the vital importance of a workman’s tools.”

“So, there you have it. What do you need? A fi lbert?”

“Yes, in marten hair, number oh-two, and two hog’s hair, wide and medium.”

“I give you the best, two Isabeys, made with great care by Bretons, my countrymen.”

While Tanguy was getting them, Madame darted behind the cur-

tain a moment and then turned her back to wrap the tubes in newspaper and tie them with string. “If you can’t pay, at least you can bring us a buyer for these Cézannes, another one like Monsieur Chocquet.”

Julien patted her arm. “Don’t worry, Fionie. The amateurs who will disappear in ten years, I make them pay up front.”

•
55
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

Auguste placed two ten-franc coins on the counter, only a fraction of the cost. Fionie slapped her hand on top of them.

“Thanks for trusting me for the rest. You have a big heart.”

“Ah, yes, he does. We’re going to have roast trust for dinner tonight, and
terrine de patience Montmartrois
tomorrow. The next night”—she thrust her chin toward Julien in an exaggerated glare—“brochette of heart à la Communard.” She stuck a brush behind each of Auguste’s ears, the filbert under his cast, and looped the cord of the rolled canvas over his shoulder so he could carry it. “There. Now stay off that silly engine!”

Auguste dropped off the supplies at his studio and walked the half dozen blocks to Gustave’s apartment on boulevard Haussmann. Lined with elegant cafés and smart shops, the boulevard was clearly a different neighborhood than his own. He entered beneath the gilt ironwork, went up two flights, and pulled the bell cord. Piano music stopped.

Gustave’s brother, a composer, let him in.

“He’s painting on the balcony,” Martial said.

“Then I won’t interrupt him.”

Auguste lingered in the foyer to look at Gustave’s painting collection, one reason why he came. There were several by Claude, a luncheon in his garden, a regatta at Argenteuil, and Gare Saint-Lazare.

Both Sisley’s and Pissarro’s versions of the street in Louveciennes showing his mother’s ocher cottage and her prized trumpet vines always moved him. Degas’ pastel of the Café Nouvelle-Athènes with four faded prostitutes made him wonder what one of them meant by that gesture of flicking her thumbnail against her top front tooth. Maybe it meant,
Not even a sou tonight.

None of these were what he’d come to see, the two paintings he

knew would open the wound of remorse. He had a phantom model to consider. Margot. Panic gripped him. She wasn’t in her usual place.

Gustave owned so many that he rotated them. Auguste strode into the drawing room. His own
Bal au Moulin de la Galette
was there, and Margot, dancing. Her gaiety vibrated in the mottled light of the outdoor

•
56
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

dance hall under the acacias. He loved the freshness and innocence of the place, so he didn’t think it hubris to love his painting of it. He studied it. Yes, he could surpass it. He would surpass it. He had to.

But where was
La balançoire?

He checked the dining room. Not there. The study. Ah, there. Margot. She had a place all to herself. Margot in her pink dress with blue bows down the front standing on a swing talking to two men in the leafy garden of the studio he’d rented on the Butte, Montmartre
d’en
haut.
Three people snatching a few hours of pleasure to last them the whole week.

He stepped close and stroked her cheek. She wasn’t a raving beauty.

Her face was a bit too chubby and her hair was thin and lifeless, but oh, her spirit. He remembered the sweltering summer day when she had jumped into the fountain of place Pigalle, fully dressed, and splashed him. Her zest would have been perfect for his new painting. She had done some good things with him,
Cup of Chocolate, Lovers and Confi -

dences,
and
Woman with a Cat.

But the one good thing he could have done for her in return, he hadn’t done. The one thing any responsible lover would have done. Regret made him unable to stand still in front of her now. A year and a half ago. He had allowed the worst to happen.

He searched her eyes for forgiveness, but her gaze was slightly to the side, so it offered him no answers. He didn’t even know whether she had forgiveness in her nature. He’d never asked her the important things. He just used her the way Monet used the Seine and Pissarro used the boulevards, as a pretext to study light flickering through the trees onto her face and dress.

He had painted a study of her from memory, the one time he’d for-saken his rule of working only from the live model. If she were here, she would be in his new painting. She would bring out the best in him, out of his love for her, out of her love for him, and this painting at this critical time in his life had to be his best.

He could ignore his credo once more and put her in. He could study the paintings he still had of her, and ask Gustave to lend him
The Swing.

•
57
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

It could be a means of making amends. The thought lifted him momentarily, but two lost women might tinge the painting with sadness.