Wild Talent (19 page)

“I am advised,” remarked Alexandra, “that M'sieu Huysmans, or his protagonist, says a great deal more than that, and none of it suitable for the ears of a respectable
jeune femme
. . . You will forgive our haste, M'sieu d'Artois, but we were on our way to see some paintings.”

“I have seen them,” said M. d'Artois. “A waste of time! Photographic realism, stale outdated salon art . . . scarcely so much as
un impressionniste
. Where are the Moreaus, where is Odilon Redon? These philistines have chosen to represent the dead past of art, not its future. But listen . . . ” He dug into a trouser pocket and produced a hand-written card. “Next week in Montmartre there is to be a private showing of
Les
Decadents
. Here is the address. There you may discover what true artistic vision, true genius, may aspire to.”

“Perhaps we shall.” Alexandra tucked the slip of her paper into her bag. “Au ‘voir, M'sieu d'Artois.”

“Let us stay till after dark,” said Alexandra, “and see the lights come on.” And so we had dinner in an outdoor restaurant, where we ordered cheese soufflés and a bottle of white wine, and were serenaded by a string quartet.

“And what did you make of Monsieur d'Artois?” Alexandra inquired, as she spooned up the last morsel of her baba à rhum.

I was not sure how I should reply. In truth, M. d'Artois's manner, and his strange talk, had made me quite uncomfortable. But Alexandra was a woman of the world; perhaps she did not find him so disturbing.

“He seems very . . . sophisticated,” I ventured. “I suppose in that way he is a typical Parisian.”

Alexandra burst out laughing. “
Au contraire
, Jeanne! He is not at all Parisian! That too is artifice. His real name is Albert Henslow. He is the son of a factory owner in Leeds. He is quite depraved, and a terrible poseur, and reads too many of the wrong sorts of books. He is not a person you would wish to know.”

And yet I noticed that she did not throw away the slip of paper he had given her.

While we dined the summer twilight had deepened, and now all at once thousands of twinkling, glimmering electric lamps lit up the bridges and gardens and pavilions and the tower itself, transforming the exposition grounds into a festival of light.

It was nearly midnight, and both of us a little tipsy from the wine and baba à rhum, when at last we went in search of a cab to take us home. Said Alexandra, as we turned to gaze back at the tallest building in the world, enveloped in magical, otherworldly light, “Perhaps there is some place for artifice after all.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

July 22

T
oday Alexandra seems oddly quiet, even a little melancholy, whereas only a short time ago she was filled with tireless energy. I am just now discovering that she can be a creature of shifting moods. What excites her enthusiasm one week, she is apt to find dull and tedious the next. There is a restlessness in Alexandra that is not I think in my own nature. Experience has taught me it is best to be content with the present — or at least resigned to it — because the future may hold something even less to one's liking. But for Alexandra there is always the tantalizing possibility of new adventure around the next curve of the road.

In this fine summer weather we are much out of doors, walking in the Luxembourg Gardens and wandering along the Seine. We have visited Notre Dame Cathedral, and I am promised, soon, a whole day at the Louvre. At dinner hour we eat cheap restaurant meals of
omelettes
and beans and crusty bread, and then as a rule spend the rest of the evening quietly at home. We record the day's events in our journals, and Alexandra writes long letters as well, to friends in London and Belgium.

I have had a letter of my own from Lansdowne Road, to say that Madame Blavatsky, on holiday at Fontainebleau, is still enjoying her remarkable return to health. Pleased as I am to hear the Countess's news, there is another letter that I look for, still, with a faint and foolish hope, when the time is long past to set that hope aside. Still, every day in Paris is filled with new experiences that leave little time for such vain regrets.

July 24

Last night Alexandra declared that she was weary of staying in, and so we went out to the nearby Café du Luxembourg to meet some of her friends. We sat down at a round marble table in a large dim room smelling of coffee and cigarettes and beer. I looked around. At other tables, and on long green sofas along the wall, stubbly-chinned young men in the student uniform of slouch hats and threadbare jackets talked and smoked and played at dominoes. I felt a little uncomfortable at first, seeing that for the moment we were the only women in the place, but Alexandra seemed very much at home. Almost at once, we were joined by three of the young men, who brought with them their tankards of beer and drew up chairs without an invitation.

Alexandra introduced me round the table. Two of the young men, Pierre and Gabriel, were students at the Sorbonne. The third, called Edouard, was older than the others — a heavy-set, shaggy-bearded man of thirty or so, wearing a shabby black jacket, heavy boots and workman's cap.

“Edouard writes for
Le Révolté
,” said Alexandra, and I could tell from Edouard's expression that I was meant to be impressed.

But what was
Le Révolté
? I had no notion of how I should reply. Alexandra came to my rescue.

“That is the famous revolutionary newspaper in rue Mouffetard, owned by my father's good friend Elisée Reclus.”

“Famous, yes,” said Edouard. “The very nerve centre of Parisian anarchy — at least, according to the police. And our editor, Jean Grave, is the coordinator of all the Paris groups.”

This mention of the police was discomforting, to say the least. Alexandra had written of visiting “almost respectable” anarchist salons. But how respectable can these anarchists be, if they are so well known to the police?

But Edouard was eager to tell me more about his newspaper. “We have some of the best writers in Paris contributing articles, and some of the best-known artists illustrating our pages. What we must do now, is to engage the interest and involvement of the workers.”

“Mlle Guthrie has been a worker,” said Alexandra.

Edouard regarded me with greater interest. “Indeed? A factory worker, mademoiselle?”

I shook my head. “I worked on a farm. In the Scottish Borders,”

“Ah, so . . . then you of all people will be sympathetic to our cause.”

“And what cause is that?”

“But of course, to bring together the workers, the artists and the intelligentsia in collective action, to destroy the established order.”

“The established order?”

“The people in power, mademoiselle. The propertied classes. The bourgeoisie. Tell me, for whom did you work, on your Scottish farm?”

“I worked for the steward.”

“And who did the steward work for? Who was it owned the land?”

“Why, Mr. Murdoch.”

“And labouring in those Scottish fields, did you and your fellow workers not dream of overthrowing this Mr.

Murdoch, of seizing the land and sharing it for the common good?”

This struck me as a very odd idea. Why would we wish to overthrow Mr. Murdoch, who seemed a decent, God-fearing man, and a fair employer? He paid our wages on time, sent for the doctor when we took ill, and allowed us whatever holidays were due to us. And as for his eldest son and heir — though we women might amuse ourselves with idle dreams of marrying the handsome Robin Murdoch, overthrowing him was the last thing in our minds.

Edouard, warming to his subject, signalled for more beer. “This is what we at
Révolté
are working towards, mademoiselle — the cause to which we have dedicated our lives. To make the workers conscious of their position, and their power, to help them to rise up and throw off their chains.”

The smoke from his cigarette, billowing across the table, made me cough, and I was getting a headache. Then one of the students, Pierre, I think, decided to take issue with Edouard's revolutionary ideas, and the two of them began to argue in such rapid and impassioned Parisian French that I could not possibly keep up.

Alexandra, with a tankard in one hand and a cigarette in the other, said little but seemed to be enjoying the debate. Finally, to my great relief, she announced that it was time for us to say goodnight.

I did not sleep well last night. I kept turning over in my mind the remark that Edouard had made about his employer being known to the police. I realize now that Alexandra is far more familiar with these people than her letters had suggested.

Is it possible that Alexandra is also known to the police?

July 26

Alexandra is restored to her enthusiastic, inexhaustible self, though a little too much so, perhaps, for we have stayed up every one of these past nights till well after midnight. I have woken in the small hours to find her still at her desk, writing in her journal by candlelight. She seems quite untroubled by lack of sleep, though our late hours leave me feeling out of sorts.

I know that I should be seeking employment — it should not be difficult to find work as an English tutor, as do many other young English people living in France. I fear that if I do not soon find respectable work, I might have to exploit my other talents, as I did in London; and that is something I wish to avoid at all costs.

But Alexandra makes light of these worries, saying that she has plenty of money and little on which to spend it.

“Time enough to seek work,” she says, “when this glorious summer is ended, and we are kept indoors by cold and rain.”

July 28

It's three am by Alexandra's little clock, and I am still awake, so rather than continue to toss and turn, I have taken out my new journal to write of this night's expedition. (Alexandra has given me a very handsome one with a dark red cover and a pattern of lilies on the front.)

“If you have not been to the cabaret Le Chat Noir,” said Alexandra, “you have not seen Paris.” And so we set out this past afternoon for Montmartre, meaning only to stay until the supper hour. But Alexandra's eagerness for adventure has carried us into a place where I would never have ventured on my own, and where I saw and heard things that have left me sleepless and overwrought.

The afternoon began pleasantly enough as we climbed the steep streets and stairs of Montmartre in late afternoon sunshine. Le Chat Noir is as much art salon and theatre as it is cabaret. The ground floor is decorated in a sort of mediaeval theme, with a stained glass bay window and a lot of imitation tapestries. The walls are entirely covered with paintings and drawings by Montmartre artists who have been refused by the academic galleries, and so display their work in the cabarets instead.

Along with the artists, well-known writers like M. Emile Zola and M. Alphonse Daudet frequent Le Chat Noir, as well as composers of music like M. Claude Debussy, and poets “both famous and infamous”, as Alexandra says. The owner, M'sieu Salis, has introduced a piano, in defiance of the peculiar law prohibiting music in cabarets; and this flavour of disreputability has greatly added to the Chat Noir's popularity. (Especially, says Alexandra, among the fashionable and well-to-do who like to imagine themselves a little wicked.)

We had arrived, it seemed, at ‘
l'heure verte
”, which is two hours, really, from five to seven pm. As we looked for a quiet corner table not too close to the illicit piano, Alexandra explained why this was known as the green hour: it was the time of day when the poets and artists of Montmartre were fond of sipping absinthe. As for Alexandra and me, we were content for the moment to order coffee and madeleines.

On the floor above is a famous shadow theatre (according to the menu, which I confess to have stolen, “admission is included in the price of beer”) and so we went upstairs to see a play called
Carnaval de Venise
, with gondolas and Venetian palazzos lit up by lamps behind a screen.

Downstairs, later, there were performances by the
poet-chansonniers
— the poets both famous and infamous. The owner, M. Salis, very much the showman, introduced each one of them by saying, “Silence, listen to him (or her), a genius is in your midst!” Gabriel Montoya and Yvette Guilbert, who are famous all over Paris, sang tonight to much applause; but lesser known poet-singers also had their chance to take the stage. Most of the songs were very down to earth, about life in present day Paris; but one pale, gaunt young man dressed all in black sang a strange lament in the manner, Alexandra says, of M. Baudelaire.

Here,
en anglais
, are some of the words as well as I can remember them, translated with Alexandra's help:

You come to me at twilight

under the broken walls of the Old City,

where the Aubergine's dark waters

sigh like tattered silk.

You come to me from the shadows

under a bruised sky, heavy

with unshed rain,

Your small feet make no sound

on the lichened stones.

I feel on my throat

your insubstantial touch,

your chill sweet breath.

Our days apart

are a fever-dream, a torment,

each meeting

a small exquisite death.

The song reminded me a little of Alexandra's acquaintance Etienne Henslowe d'Artois. It was, I thought, just the sort of thing he would appreciate. I was also thinking that the hour was growing late for two young women who must travel home through the dark Paris streets — especially in a district with Montmartre's unsavoury reputation.

But then: “Mademoiselle David! Mademoiselle Guthrie! How very pleasant to find you here!”

I looked up and there, quite as though I had conjured him up, was M. Etienne d'Artois himself, resplendent in an evening suit of claret coloured velvet. And now he was settling in at our table, clearly inclined to chat.