The Velvet Hours (5 page)

Paris 1892

I
nstead of bringing flowers or boxes of chocolates as small gifts of appreciation, Charles now started giving Marthe books about the history of art and other subjects he thought might inspire her. It bemused him that she wanted to educate herself beyond her toilette of expensive face creams and perfumes, closets of silk dresses, and drawers of delicate lingerie.

“You might find this of interest,” he would tell her as he left her a book on the history of English furniture or one on the evolution of French landscape painting. She admitted freely to him that she had many blank pages in her education, and it delighted him to help fill them.

One afternoon, he arrived particularly pleased. He handed her a dark leather volume with gilded edges.

“What's this, my love?” she asked coyly.

She took the book in her hand, looking at the cover embossed with the title:
Fables
by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian
.

“Ah, the name.” She smiled and reached over to his cheek and kissed him. “Might I claim him as a relative?”

“It is not only the similarity of the name, my dove. Although it might add to your glamour to say you descended from an eighteenth-century writer . . .”

“Indeed.” She ran her fingers again over the cover, smiling at Charles's most recent gift.

“What I found most remarkable was the last line of Florian's eighth fable.”

She sat down on the sofa and began leafing through the pages until she found the one of which he spoke. It was entitled
“
True Happiness
.”

“I believe you will find yourself captured within the lines.” He reached for his pipe and struck a match. Blue plumes of smoke filled the air.

“
A poor little cricket
,” she began, “
observes a butterfly fluttering in the meadow . . .
”

The fable continued to describe how the butterfly is chased by a group of children who race to catch the fragile insect. The butterfly tries in vain to escape them as they eventually seize the butterfly and tear off a wing from its fragile body, then its head.

The cricket seeing the cruelty of the world remarks:

“It costs too dear to shine in this world.

How much I am going to love my deep retreat!

To live happily, remain hidden.”

She paused as if unsure she truly understood the words.

“Don't you see, little dove . . . I saw you at that dance hall, where all the unsavories threatened to tear at your lovely wings. But I have enabled you to live quietly and safely in your own elegant retreat.”

He took the book from her hands.

“My dove is hidden safely. Her wings are only for me.”

“Yes,” she whispered into his ear as his arm now tightened around her waist.

“To remain hidden, to be protected.” She softened in his embrace. “To be yours alone.”

*   *   *

The gift of the Florian book had touched her. Now she set out to give Charles a gift that would remind him of her during those long stretches when they were apart.

One afternoon, on her way back from visiting Ichiro, Marthe came across a small secondhand jewelry shop on one of the side streets not far from her apartment. As she stepped closer to the window, she admired the display: a jet-beaded necklace, an enameled brooch, and a cocktail ring with an aquamarine stone the size of a robin's egg. But it was the gold pocket watch that caught her eye.

Marthe moved closer to the glass pane. The watch was open, displaying the guilloche dial and its dark roman numerals. But its interior casing was what intrigued her most. For inside, was the engraving of a dove.

Her heart fluttered. The watch would make the perfect gift for Charles. Like a secret between them, he could open the case in private and see the image of his
nom d'amour
for her—the beautiful wings spread in flight.

Marthe walked inside the store and asked the sales clerk to see the watch.

“I'm afraid this is a purely decorative piece, mademoiselle,” the sales clerk informed her. “There is a defect with the escape wheel, and it has defied several attempts of repair.”

Marthe removed her glove and took a finger to the edge of the case. The bird was etched in a beautiful fluid silhouette. Its wings a sensual V shape.

“So the only person who should own such a watch, is one not interested in keeping the time . . .”

“Yes, I suppose so, mademoiselle. That would be correct.”

She smiled.

“The watch is very well priced, mademoiselle. The store owner established its value based solely on the weight of the gold.”

He took a pen and wrote the price on a piece of paper.

“Well priced, indeed.” She reached to open her silk purse strings and pulled out a check. “It will make the perfect gift. I'm so very pleased.”

*   *   *

The next time she saw Charles, she waited until he was untangling himself from the bedsheets and reaching for his clothes.

“When will I see you again?”

“Ah, my dove, you know I can't tell you that now. I never know my schedule from one week until the next.”

Her smile was coy as she pushed herself up against the silken headboard. Around her shoulders, coils of red hair draped languidly.

“Before you go, I have a gift for you, Charles.”

Her long leg emerged from the linens, and she pulled the sheets around her as she walked toward her dresser drawer.

“A gift? Oh now, I do hope you haven't spent a lot of your allowance on me, my sweet girl. Because if you have, I'll be quite cross.”

“No, in fact, I believe I bought it for a rather splendid price considering the craftsmanship involved.”

From her dresser, she pulled out a blue velvet box.

“I believe you'll understand why this was meant for you.”

His shirt buttoned, he slipped his coat over his arms as he began to walk toward her.

She opened the box and revealed the gold pocket watch with its solid gold casing. She took it out and handed it to him.

When he lifted the watch's cover, and saw the engraving inside, she sensed he had grasped its significance.

“How perfect.” He beamed, kissing her on the cheek. “It will remind me of my favorite little bird . . .”

“It no longer works,” Marthe said, taking the watch from his hand. She glanced at the bronze clock on her fireplace noting the current time. “At least not in the traditional sense . . .”

She rolled the small dial on the side of the watch so that its hands matched those of her own clock. “I'm setting the watch for this exact hour and minute. It will remain set at this time until I see you next.” She handed it back to him and closed his fingers over the smooth, round casing.

“This way time will stand still until I see you again.”

He took the watch and placed it inside the breast pocket of his coat.

“Then I will keep it close to my heart until we can move the hands of the dial once more.”

*   *   *

Marthe no longer simply wanted to collect just shunga prints and Oriental porcelains, she sought to expand her mind during Charles's absence. She now began to take excursions to Paris's most fashionable art galleries and museums. As a child, she'd always been intimidated by the Louvre, an imperial stone vault that she imagined was filled with immeasurable treasures. She had felt at odds with the sumptuous surroundings, as if admittance was not possible for a girl of such low social standing. But now, dressed in her finery, she felt she could pass through its doors and wander through its chambers.

For hours, she walked through the museum's many portrait galleries. She studied the detailed, fine brushwork of the Dutch masters and the celestial-like faces painted by Da Vinci and Botticelli. She marveled at the way the Greeks captured both the contours and the
sensuality of a woman's limbs. The glow of the marble. The use of light and shadow. She saw that it was as relevant in painting and sculpture, as it was in life.

But it was the large canvases filled with life-size re-creations of women through the different centuries that she loved the most. She would stand beneath their ornate, gilded frames and study their faces, looking for clues that might reveal something hidden or locked away. She wondered about their passions, what they were like after their corsets were untied and their gowns fell to the ground.

She did not look nearly as long at the portraits of the Venuses in their nude splendor, or the nymphs who frolicked in meadows of pale green grass. She knew what a beautiful woman's body looked like. But it was what existed behind the white flesh and flinty blue eyes that captivated her interest. She wondered where they hid their fire and heat.

*   *   *

The rooms of her apartment began to grow in complexity. Now it wasn't just an apartment created for whispers and caresses, it became an extension of Marthe herself. Her collection of Asian ceramics lined the shelves of her parlor, and her secret shunga prints were hidden in the drawers of her bedroom. She was already into her second year of living as a kept woman with Charles when she purchased her first oil painting—a young girl, no older than twelve, dressed all in white.

She did not tell Charles or Giselle, the only two others who ever entered the apartment, why she had chosen this painting above all the ones she had seen for sale. It was because the girl had the same face as Odette. And her dress was almost identical to the one she had watched her mother wash through her tears.

There was no hardship in the girl's face. And no wisdom either.
It was the face of a child, as pure and peaceful as a blanket of freshly fallen snow.

When she had saved enough of her allowance from Charles, she added another piece of artwork for her collection. This time, a small pastel of a dancer. Her body lithe and stretched as tightly as ribbon.

*   *   *

“You are becoming a connoisseur,” Charles remarked one day as he settled into the sofa. Marthe had opened the tall shutters to the room, and she could see a small constellation of dust floating in the sunlight, like stardust illuminated in midair.

She pulled up her skirt and settled down beside him. On the side table he had left his gold pocket watch for her to turn the hands once more. How she loved this ritual between them, how they kept their own sense of time.

“It's interesting to see what you're drawn to . . . Most people gravitate to one style or period exclusively. But you're like a piece of cut crystal. A thousand prisms cast through a single set of eyes.”

She smiled and reached for his hand. “I'm glad you think it's money well spent.”

“Indeed, I do,” he said, squeezing her fingers.

“I have this memory of you, Marthe, when we were in Venice. I took you to the church of San Giorgio dei Greci
 
. . . Do you remember? It was pitch dark when we first entered. The place smelled so damp, like an old bank vault.” He closed his eyes, lost briefly in the memory. “But then, suddenly from the shadows the paintings by Carpaccio emerged like a beacon of light. I heard this little gasp escape from your lips . . . and as I turned to face you, I witnessed your face transform. It was a revelation.

“You brought me so much joy at that moment. Just like the paintings of San Giorgio before us, you illuminated the whole room.”

She was so taken by his words. It wasn't just the affectionate way Charles had remembered her that afternoon, it was also that he had recalled an intimate moment between them that had occurred beyond the bedroom. And that moved her even more.

For several seconds, both of them remained silent.

“Charles . . .” She was so touched to hear him speak so sweetly about her, she felt her voice tremble slightly.

“I remember that afternoon perfectly.”

“And the evening, too.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “That night when you took down your hair in that splendid bed. I wouldn't be much of a man if I failed to mention that, too.”

*   *   *

She soon owned five paintings. The wood-paneled dining room, rarely used, now became an extended gallery in which she could display her burgeoning art collection. She placed a painting of a young woman holding a parasol rendered in soft, chalky hues over the oak mantelpiece and flanked it with two rhinoceros horns that Ichiro had somehow convinced her to buy.

She still visited Ichiro weekly. Their relationship had developed beyond client and dealer; she considered him a friend.

They were both outsiders. He a foreigner in Paris, she a woman of the demimonde. Ichiro understood, without her needing to explain, the paradox of her existence—that her life was as cloistered as it was independent. That she lived very much like the women in his scrolls, cultivated for the pleasure of others: an artist of the body, a connoisseur of its peaks and valleys, a lover of its acquired tastes. She belonged to a world as elusive as a poem. A plume of incense, as fleeting as the moonlight. And to those who understood it, a world exquisitely pure.