The Painting (6 page)

In the stifling storage room, he rises from the table, dispensing with the pain in his stump. Damn his leg to hell, he thinks, and yanks open another box, this one stamped
AMERICA
. He slides his knife through reluctant tape, and inside, shiny tin cans of meat. He pulls out a can. The tin feels cool to his fingertips. It fits neatly in his palm. He closes his fingers around it and watches it disappear. For the first time since he arrived at this stinking boardinghouse, Jorgen feels a brightening, a moment of lightness. Grabbing another can from the box, he slips them into a cloth bag and hides it behind a box. Not to eat, but to sell to a Frenchman. From each box, a little bit, nothing noticeable, just an understandable error on the part of the shipper. He’ll take the money from the things he sells, and with the small pittance of a salary, he’ll buy a leg and reenlist. Yes, that’s what he’ll do. He rips opens another box, feeling a wave of excitement at his new plan. There he finds blue bottles of perfume, and he stuffs a handful into the bag and is about to reach for another handful when the front door opens and closes. The woman calls out. Natalia is her name. Next to his cot in the hospital, her older brother lay dying. The doctors stopped attending to him; only the nurses came by, fluffing his pillow, arranging his thin blanket, and bringing him thin broth, when they remembered. Jorgen watched Natalia come visit her older brother every day. What was his name? Edgar? Edward?

Hello, hello, Natalia calls out from the bottom of the stairs.

Hello, Jorgen says, without thinking.

Come down for lunch when you are ready. I brought you some things.

Jorgen doesn’t answer, wishing he hadn’t said anything; if he’d been quiet, she never would have guessed he is here. And now he is overcome with a strange feeling, foreign to him, a preference, no, a consuming need for solitude. For no one to stir him up or ask questions or demand anything of him. He’ll make this money, get his new leg, and leave here as soon as possible. This job has its advantages, its solitude and the extra money he’s going to make from pilfering.

He hears the
tap tap
of her heels walking along the wood-paneled floor downstairs. In the past, he would have gone downstairs, flirted with her, made her blush by pointing to the freckle on the side of her neck, asking if it was a beauty mark. He knows women like that kind of attention, and he knows if he helped her unload a box or scrub the dirty dishes, she’d be so pleased, so delighted by his assistance, she’d do nearly anything for him. In the past, he would have done these things, even though he does not find this woman attractive. Her brow is too intellectual, her mouth too large for beauty, her hair dull brown, her eyes piercing, too full of expression. And that’s no beauty mark, but an ugly mole. Despite this, there was a time he would have at least made her smile.

She is humming now. Plunging his hands into the packing material of scrunched up newspapers, he hears her melody through the floorboards. Now she is singing. Singing with a full voice. She is too cheery, he thinks, and he feels irritated by her noise, for the world is not the way she sees it. Not at all. He coils into himself, wishing again he hadn’t answered her. He remembers with shame that night in the hospital. Natalia set her chair in between her brother’s cot and Jorgen’s. In his sleep, he reached for her hand and pressed it to his chest. He remembers the weight of her hand made him fall into a deeper, more peaceful sleep. He woke when she slowly removed it. At first he was uncertain what had happened, but then, as he realized what he’d done, he told himself it was unintentional. It meant nothing. He could have grabbed anyone’s hand; by chance it happened to be hers. In the morning, she said her younger brother ran a boardinghouse not far from the hospital. A room had become available. She said her brother might need help in his shop. She told him her brother used to own a fine art gallery, but with the war, he turned it into a general merchandise shop. He sells anything and everything, she said. A businessman. Are you good with numbers? And he told her he was, though he wasn’t at all.

She asked his name.

After a strange, elongated pause, he said he couldn’t remember.

But you’re not French, she said, smiling, sitting upright in her chair.

No.

Well, we’ll think of a name for you.

He hadn’t forgotten his name, but there were many things he was working hard not to remember, and he knew he had to be particularly careful around this woman because she reminded him of someone, not by the way she looked, but by her very being, the goodness that radiated from her. He felt it when he first met her, the way she seemed to glow. He barely spoke with her in the hospital because it terrified him, the resemblance; he wanted to be close to her and at the same time stay far away.

He tosses the newspapers on the storage room floor, and as he listens to her singing, he feels his eyelids twitch with grim apprehension.

S
HE PLUCKS OFF HER
large-rimmed hat and surveys the room, the shelves stocked with canned foods, water stored in beautiful midnight-blue glass bottles, fancy boxes of chocolates wrapped in dark-red cellophane. There is probably more food here than in five Parisian kitchens, perhaps even more, she thinks, trying to push away the disdain at her younger brother’s plenitude. Such lavishness, such decadence, and she feels ashamed for herself, for her young brother, Pierre, then angry at his extravagance. She dismisses these thoughts quickly, reminding herself not to think badly of him. A plain biscuit, only, and coffee, no sugar, that will be her lunch.

Hello? she calls out to the back office, where she usually finds Pierre. The room answers with silence, and she is relieved. He is probably courting some customer; too in love with the war for the money it pours into his coffers, he is blind to everything else, as if someone swept his insides with a broom, removing the things that make a man noble, honorable, and virtuous. She is about to lament his poor moral condition again, but catches herself. I must do better at loving him, she chides. Not snap at him for his stinginess or when he complains that I should marry or that I am more manly than womanly. He generously gives me money or food or other provisions when needed, yet he does it with an air of superiority.

She makes herself some coffee and sinks into a chair, tired from her work. A month ago, she repaired her first rifle and the head boss watched over her
shoulder, his face full of skepticism. Today, he told her she was his best worker and paid her an extra franc. All she wants is to do good, to live in goodness. When she’s had too many bad thoughts in a day, she imagines a string of pearls running through her front side, down her body, looping around and coming up her spine to her skull. Over and over she runs this string, a ritual of cleansing. Lately, the pearls have stayed packed away in their box. She is so busy with her war efforts, she has so little time to think.

She stands, stretches, and pours herself more coffee. Outside, a tree stripped of its leaves; its long, thin branches scrape against the window. So beautiful, she thinks, the tree baring its essence. And this is what she looks for in people, hunts for in their eyes. In adults, there is usually only a flash, if that, and then the dullness. But in newborns, it is always there—an honest knowingness that exists beyond words. Sometimes she thinks she sees it in her eyes, a certain unmistakable glow, and she imagines her insides illuminated. But when she mentioned this light to Father Bertrand, his rheumy eyes dropped to his scuffed shoes, and he warned her she had much to learn before God came to her in such ways. He must have seen her face fall in shame because he took her lightly by the elbow and said she was a good child of God.

She hears a loud thump upstairs. She glances up and smiles. The Dane, she thinks. What name should she give him? Maybe Case, she thinks, and if he looks at her puzzled, she will say, In French, it means chest. But he probably won’t recall that night, and even thinking about it now, his hand reaching for hers across the darkness, she, startled out of her sleep, the rising and falling of his warm chest, she feels embarrassed and still unsure whether it really happened.

The Dane’s eyes do not burn with anything, and she has come to think he does not see or feel much at all. Locked away into himself, he seems a confusion of impatience, and there is a constant disquiet about his dark sullen eyes and perpetual frown. But there must have been a flicker of something. That one night she didn’t come by the hospital, too exhausted from work. When she arrived the next morning, Edmond told her that in the middle of the night he felt overcome with thirst and called and called, but no one would
come. The Dane finally sat up in his bed and grabbed a nurse by the wrist. Get him some water, he hissed. Do it now. The frightened woman quickly brought him a jug. Even now, thinking about it, she’s still surprised the Dane did such a thing. He does not seem like a generous man. In the hospital, he barely spoke a word to her or her brother. They had, for the most part, left him alone.

Perhaps his name should be Donatien, she thinks, and she will say, French, my dear friend, for gift. A gift to my brother, she thinks, hopefully both brothers. She prays this arrangement works out, prayed in church this morning, but knows Pierre is not a patient or kind man. It was just luck that Pierre’s assistant quit the week before to join the army. She boasted to Pierre that the Dane was a good worker, educated, and she exaggerated only slightly when she told him the Dane was fluent in five languages and excellent with numbers.

She steps into the kitchen, and as she cleans Pierre’s pile of dirty dishes and her cup, she hums a tune they sang this morning at church. A lovely song, she thinks, looking out the window. “May We Rise to the Lord in the Heavens.” The words flow as she scrubs the grime from Pierre’s good china plate. A quick visit with the Dane, with Donatien, she corrects herself, smiling, and then she must hurry to the hospital before returning to work.

From the kitchen window, she sees a group of Parisians walk by, waving open champagne bottles and singing
La Marseillaise
. She’s never heard the French national anthem sung in public. Napoléon III banned it years ago, afraid of its revolutionary associations.
Let us go, children of the fatherland, our day of glory has arrived
. Ever since the French declared war on the Prussians, Paris has felt perversely festive. She forgets herself sometimes, forgets that this mood is about war. Seeing the celebratory people, the excited mood, she feels compelled to join in.
To arms, citizens! Form up your battalions. Let us march! Let us march! That their impure blood should water our fields
. She imagines herself thrusting a French flag high in the air, leading a parade around the city. Shouts envelop her and her followers, who number in the hundreds; they sing and chant and the city becomes enlivened again, believing that God is on their side. She carries a bundle of her favorite flowers in her arms, dark red
roses, white lilies, and blue peonies, and tosses them to people in the crowds that line the thoroughfares.

She watches the celebrators pass by, her head tilted to the right, her face soft, a dreamy glaze over her eyes.

T
HE DAMN
P
ARISIANS ACT
as if they’re on holiday, thinks Jorgen, as he shambles on crutches over to the window. Someone opens a champagne bottle and white foam shoots into the air. The crowd screams with delight. An open carriage rolls by and the men inside wear goatees and red carnations. They wave a big French flag, bright green wine bottles gripped in their hands, and lying across their knees, a drunken woman, her bosom half exposed for the men to fondle. Jorgen slumps against the wall, feeling nothing as he stares at the woman’s breasts, only a dullness in his senses.

Beyond the people parading down the street, the great trees that lined the Bois de Boulogne lie on the ground like fallen giants. Scrawny cats dig their claws into the flaking bark, and children with dirty faces and fingers saw off limbs for the fireplace. Next to the scavengers, men and women sit on the cement drinking champagne from a bottle. Jorgen dabs the sweat from his forehead.

Last week, when he was walking down the Bois de Boulogne from the hospital to the boardinghouse, he overheard two women discuss how the paintings in the Louvre will be saved after all. The officials removed the paintings from their frames, rolled them up, and sent them to the prison at Brest.

They are packed in boxes and marked with the word
FRAGILE
, said one woman, her voice excited and shrill.

Thank God. We can’t lose our national treasures, says the other, aghast.

Can you imagine if we lost the
Mona Lisa?
Or if Fragonard’s
The Bathers
was scratched?

The French and their obsession with beauty, he thought then, and he thinks again now, watching them celebrate. Why did he join the French army? An incompetent, ill-equipped army, disillusioned by their earlier conquests, and look at them, their frivolity, and the way the man publicly touches that woman’s breast. What other country allows their rich young
men to pay another, a foreigner at that, to take his place in a war? Perfectly legal, this so-called blood tax or substitution. He thinks now of the wealthy Frenchman, dressed in fox furs and a shiny black top hat, a cane for affectation, who paid him handsomely, handed him his draft notice, and told him to go as his replacement to his brigade. Jorgen couldn’t believe it was legal. Quite legal, said the Frenchman. As long as I provide someone in my place, the French army does not care. He told Jorgen he was heading for the Mediterranean to sun himself until the war was over, then he would return, but only if Paris wasn’t in shambles. Adieu, my friend, adieu, adieu. Appalling, thinks Jorgen, but what choice did he have? He could never fight on behalf of Prussia. The Germans killed his great-uncle in the Danish-German War. When he joined, he was certain, as everyone was, that France’s superior military prowess would end the war swiftly. When he saw how unorganized, how chaotic the French army officials were, he envisioned himself soon placed in charge of a unit, in recognition of his abilities, and he’d be covered in medals, hoisted up above the shoulders of his men in a cushion of hoorays. But none of that happened, and who would have guessed he’d be standing here without a leg?