Luncheon of the Boating Party

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

  “It could lead me down several paths at once, false starts all of them. That’s the way I feel with my painting styles—a little of this, a little of that. Experimentation is all right for a painter when he’s twenty, even thirty, but I’m almost forty.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  A brief, wry smile came across his face. “Forty and still merely setting down what I see.”

  “Is that an issue of faith?”

  “One might see it that way. You can say it’s an issue of responsiveness and appreciation. The world is ravishing, Alphonsine. Just look. The distinct colors of the water quivering like moiré silk, the lattice of shadows made by branches shifting, that mallard with the iridescent head, posing for me so the light catches his white neck ring. You with your hair peeking out from your hat. Life. Ravishing life! If I were to paint what I see right now, it wouldn’t be my invention. It’s just what has been given me—by God, if you will, or by the current of life. Why not think it was made so gorgeous for me?”

  She rowed slowly, relishing the moment. He was different than other painters. Claude spoke of the beauties of nature, but Auguste included her in them.

  “Other times, I wonder what I’m missing. Not in the visual world, but with people. What I don’t think to ask. So much slips away. Just drifting can lead a person to a dead end, and he’s stuck going around and around endlessly. How long am I going to keep on not knowing something important?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like finding my way as a painter.”

  He was honest. She appreciated that.

  “Or as a human being,” she said, wondering how long that would take her.

  He gazed across the water. “That too.”

  “I believe you’re less of a cork than you realize,” she said. “Don’t you see that you make decisions every day? Small ones, practically imperceptible, but plaited together they make a cord running through your life?”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any more anchored. I think I’ll still be unsure of myself on my deathbed.”

  “Only zealots aren’t.”

  She had nearly passed the row of willows trailing their green curtain of branches in the water. Behind them was the bed of grasses and sweet alyssum.

  “Turn in,” she said. “This is it. Do you remember the flood of ’74? The water overflowed these banks. When it retreated, Alphonse and I were out in the steam launch towing runaway boats back to their owners. On that slope we saw two bodies tangled together with a rope, all purple and bloated, a man and a woman. Alphonse thought they’d been using the rope to haul something from the flood and had gotten swept away. I thought they were lovers who were denied each other and had twined themselves together and leapt off Pont Saint-Louis, the suicide bridge, and the flood had brought them here. They lay with their heads turned toward one another, as if they’d gone down with a kiss.”

  “You have a big imagination.”

  “Do you think their kiss could have been a kind of blessing?”

  “It could have been. Kisses can be blessings. Should we find out?”

  She hadn’t expected that. Really she hadn’t.

  “When was the last time you were kissed?” he asked.

  She hesitated and looked down at the oars. “Ten years.”

  “Too long,” he whispered.

  He leaned toward her, and if she did too, they would touch. He had that same sweet look now that he’d had when she picked out the grit from his face.

  The old knot of restraint squeezed. He didn’t know the one thing about her that defined her. She couldn’t let him kiss her without him knowing that. He’d been honest with her. She wanted to be honest with him, but if he knew the truth, he might condemn her, and then there would be two months of the painting to live through with him at the Maison every day.

  He came closer, awkwardly, kneeling in the boat, wobbling it. She wobbled too, between wanting and waiting, present and past, knowing that she was repeating her calamitous hesitation. Heat rose up her throat to the top of her head. Slowly she raised the heavy oars in front of her, crossing them, a barricade. His expression darkened. The boat drifted back downstream. She let the moment float away like the cork in the river.

  He sat back, and she turned the boat around by rowing each oar in opposite directions. A bird trilled in the trees. “That’s a wood thrush,” she said. “I love their song. They sing even when they’re hungry.”

  “How about when they’re sad?”

  “Maybe then too.”

  It was important to let him know that a kiss might be possible someday.

  “The word I was saying when you came up the stairs was nous. Everyone in the painting. My little salmon pink smear on the canvas means I am one of Us. That’s something, for now.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cycle of Pleasure

  On Wednesday, Auguste drank his morning café on the lower terrace with Alphonsine and Alphonse. The sun heated the top of his head right through his cycling cap. “It’s going to be a scorcher today and I’ve got models coming.”

  “I’ll make some lemonade, then. Who’s coming?”

  “Antonio, the Italian, and Angèle, the cheeky one who speaks in argot.”

  “Carmen,” Alphonse murmured.

  “She only speaks her own slang for play,” Alphonsine said. “She can speak properly when she wants to.”

  “Do you have a saw in the boathouse?” he asked Alphonse.

  Alphonse gave him an incredulous look. “What’s a boatyard without a saw?”

  Auguste held up his right arm. “This thing’s got to come off.”

  Alphonse’s look turned wary. “No. I don’t want to be responsible.” He finished his café and went off toward the floating boat garage.

  When he was out of earshot Alphonsine asked, “Why haven’t you gone to the doctor if it’s ready?”

  Auguste studied the color of his café. “He’s in Paris.”

  “So? You don’t have the money to pay him, do you?”

  He turned away from her.

  “You don’t need to be ashamed. It’s only me. I’ll saw it off, if you want me to.”

  “I believe you would.”

  The Iris sailed by. Auguste enjoyed Alphonsine’s little intake of breath. When the boat came about and headed for the dock, she tucked some loose strands into her chignon. “You didn’t say he was coming.”

  “Since when do I need to get Mademoiselle’s permission?”

  She ran to the dock to receive the bowline. Her skirt billowed behind her and showed her ankles. Gustave’s dog, Mame, nearly knocked her over.

  “Mame, mind,” Gustave commanded.

  “It’s all right. I love dogs.”

  Gustave swaggered onto the bank swinging his arms. “I bought a painting yesterday. It’s not even dry. Crysanthèmes rouges, by Claude. I went out to Vétheuil to convince him to commit to the next group show.”

  “Unusual for you, a still life,” Auguste said.

  He sat down. “Not really. I love flowers as much as Monet does. A flower is an idea.”

  “What a nice thought,” Alphonsine said, petting his dog.

  “Someday I’m going to own a greenhouse.” Gustave sat down.

  “So you can raise ideas?” Alphonsine quipped. “Where will it be?”

  “I’m looking at a house upriver in Petit Gennevilliers.”

  “C’est merveilleux! That’s not far at all.”

  “Depends on the wind. And I’m going to buy another painting today.”

  “Whose?” Auguste asked.

  “Yours. Sunset at Montmartre. Will you let me have it for two hundred fifty francs?”

  Alphonsine cleared her throat to get Auguste’s attention, and bent her right arm back and forth, grinning.

  “That’s overgenerous of you. It’s not worth that, but yes.”

  Gustave stacked a tower of two napoléons and seven louis and a ten on the tab
le. “I want it to be in the Louvre someday.”

  Auguste puffed out a loud breath. “I’d be content for it to hang anyplace where Delacroix once hung.”

  “You mean Durand-Ruel’s gallery. It’ll hang in a better place than that. The Louvre can’t turn down the collection I’m building. It’s too important.”

  “Why all this sudden buying?” Auguste asked.

  “Because the work of the group has to be shown together as a solid movement long enough to outlast the ridicule heaped on it. Long enough so Impressionism won’t be a blink of an eye in the history of art. That means everyone has to cooperate, and someone with the best interests of the group has to build a collection that will never be sold off piecemeal.”

  “You mean you,” Auguste said.

  “Of course I mean me.”

  Auguste looked up. “Well, now, look at the happy couple.”

  Stepping off the bridge, Angèle plucked a white wildflower from the bank and twirled it. “There was a young maiden as I have heard tell…” she began singing, tilting her head toward Antonio.

  “And the language of flowers she knew passing well,” Auguste sang back.

  Together they finished the ditty,

  “She would finger and fondle her sweet Shepherd’s Purse—

  “You can all take my meaning for better or worse.”

  Angèle laughed in an earthy way at Antonio’s slack-jawed surprise.

  Auguste stood to go up to the terrace. “Shall we begin?”

  “Do you want Alphonse and me too?” Alphonsine asked.

  “You definitely, and Alphonse if he’s free.”

  She hurried away to tell her brother and reappeared a few minutes later in her boating costume and canotier hat.

  “Mame could be in the painting too,” Alphonsine said.

  “You won’t catch me painting another dog after I suffered through a society lady’s snoring bitch.”

  With them in position now, he wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to do on the painting today because he couldn’t harmonize the edges of these five figures against the others. He’d have to keep his paint thin in case he would have to make changes later, and paint only the relation of their figures to one another.

  Holding her pose facing Gustave, Angèle asked, “What is Hercules staring at behind me?”

  Alphonse was caught off guard. He’d been staring right at her. “Trees. I—I’m going to have to trim them soon.”

  A slow smile of satisfaction crept over Angèle’s face. She knew it was a lie.

  Auguste picked up chrome yellow from his palette for Gustave’s hat. Light falling on Gustave’s forehead made it reflective. Fine. Sweat would convey summer. One wide stroke of a paler yellow there and on the sunward edge of his shoulder and upper arm.

  “And what am I staring at?” Antonio said, looking down over Angèle. “A beautiful woman. That makes my pose the best.”

  Angèle leaned toward Gustave, ignoring Antonio. “You must be special to have the front position in the painting. What’s your secret?”

  “I’m just a friend,” Gustave said.

  “A fine friend,” Auguste said. “All of us in the group owe much to Gustave.”

  “You mean he’s a souteneur?” she asked with mock shock. “One of those nasty pimpersnappers hounding the femmes publiques on the boulevards for his share? Auguste! You pay him to sell your wares?”

  “Bien au contraire. He keeps us solvent. And on top of that, he’s a fine painter.”

  “Aha.” Her eyes gleamed. “In case you ever need a model of my type, come to eight rue Gabrielle in Montmartre.”

  “I rarely paint women. Auguste here beats the lot of us in that regard.”

  “That’s true as gold. I’ve posed for him myself. Remember, Auguste?”

  He remembered, all right. Their one and only wild night together a few years ago. In the morning she had fallen asleep in his armchair with the neighbor’s cat on her lap, a happy accident suggesting the reason for her dishevelment.

  “I remember your blue-and-white-striped stockings which you wore when I painted you asleep. Where in the world did you get such outlandish things?” He pictured her going without lunch for a week in order to buy them. That they had been so clearly for her own delight made that painting all the more delectable. “Do you have them on today? I’m sure Antonio would give a tooth to see them.”

  “What would I want with a rotten old tooth? I have enough of my own already.”

  “Well, are you wearing them? The stockings?” Antonio asked.

  She blatantly lifted her skirt to check, far more than she needed to, flutter-kicked her legs back and forth, and quickly covered them up. “No. I guess I’m not. Only pinks,” she chirped.

  Always the opportunist, Auguste thought. He wiped his narrow brush clean, whitened some Naples yellow and licked up a dab of ocher already mixed, then blotted it on a rag. The sun reflected off Antonio’s cream-colored jacket in pale yellow highlights. He dry-brushed them in on his shoulder, his collar, down his arm. The same color warmed Alphonsine’s back. He made long, gentle strokes, imagining that he was stroking her bare back. Ingres loved to paint women’s backs. He understood why.

  “Will it be a long session today? I had another performance last night.” Angèle winked at Auguste.

  “Where?” Antonio asked. “I would have liked to see it.”

  “Not exactly in a theater. My mother says I mustn’t tire myself out.”

  He remembered her telling him about the pleasure she took in making love to a virgin. She had claimed she was actually doing the chap a favor by guiding him through that perilous passage to manhood. “’Pon my soul, what a frisky colt that one was,” were the words she’d said. “Don’t pretend you’re shocked, Auguste.” And he’d replied, “I’m only shocked that you found one!” They’d had a good laugh.

  “I thought you were an orphan,” Antonio said.

  “Oh, no! I have a mother, legitimate enough, only she ran off to Provence with a sergeant after the war and left me with her cousin, but she couldn’t stand the mistral, so she came back after some years only I didn’t know it. One day, as I was going in to pose for some cheapjack dabbler in his studio on rue Foyatier, the street that’s all steps, I recognized her coming out dressed up like a peacock, oozing fla-fla in feathers and bows. She had to own up it was me again. She was his full-time mott, I was just his modèle d’occasion, so we ended up living together, the three of us, in a one-room studio where only a curtain separated me from them taking their pleasure.”

  Auguste noticed Alphonsine listening with every nerve.

  “That devil’s stoker came on to me with a hankering hot as fire one night when she was out parading, but I brushed him off with a whack across his familiars. ‘If you’re hungry, eat your fist,’ I said. After that he was a proper gentleman to me, but when it happened the second time, I knew I had to get a place of my own. Pity that my own mère had gone to the bad. Now, we’ve got to be quiet awhile or we’ll be here till doomsday.”

  “I don’t mind you talking,” Auguste said. “Bend forward a bit more, Antonio. I want the brim of Gustave’s hat to rest at the edge of your cravat.”

  He loved the way Angèle kept Antonio engaged and admiring her. All the impulses of her being were aware of it even though he stood behind her and she was looking at Gustave. He wouldn’t be surprised if Antonio and Angèle asked to use his room right after this session. She was like an insect sensing heat, buzzing in anticipation, in complete complicity with Antonio while engaged with Gustave, aware of Alphonse looking at her too. Flirtatious command, that attitude, just that instant.

  “Angèle, don’t move a muscle. Don’t blink. Hold it. That look on your face belongs to me.”

  He worked quickly, coloring her cheeks with a flush of sensuality, positioning her blue-black eyes for a pinpoint highlight of creamy white later. Everyone was silent until he said, “All right. I’ve got it.”

  Angèle sent Gustave a kiss throug
h the air.

  “Where do Frenchwomen learn such coquetry? Do they take lessons?” Antonio asked.

  “We suck it from our mothers’ tits as babes,” Angèle said. “All of Paris is a lesson in love, even the puppet shows of medieval knights and ladies on the Champs-Élysées.”

  “Just from watching them you learned it?” Antonio asked.

  “Not just that. When I was no taller than a man’s cock-a-doodle, I was an orange-girl selling fruit among the tables at the Jardin Mabille, a dancing and pleasure garden. I watched how the ladies got the men to buy them oranges.”

  “You probably watched how women danced too,” Alphonsine said.

  “Bien sûr! A woman’s body is as fine an instrument as our Heavenly Father ever created.”

  “I agree to that,” Antonio was quick to say. “Auguste, isn’t that why you dedicate yourself to painting it?”

  “Just so.”

  “Will you tell me your theory of painting?” Antonio asked. “Maybe I’ll do an article on you next.”

  “I have no theory. Painting is a craft. If you come to nature with a theory, she’ll knock it flat.”

  “Hm,” Antonio murmured. In a few moments he asked, “Are you religious about nature?”

  “Religion’s everywhere.” He painted a few strokes. “In the mind.” He loaded his brush. “The heart.” A few more strokes, and then he stopped. “And in the love you put into what you do.”

  What was to the left and above Angèle’s hat? He needed to know because the color of her hat would be affected. He couldn’t remember and his marks on the canvas didn’t tell him. Frustration seized him. Even if he knew whatever shoulder or face or sleeve was above her hat, he would need what was beyond that, and beyond that too. And how high was Circe’s head against Alphonse’s chest? He couldn’t paint his singlet too far down. Working only from brushstrokes, it was impossible to keep all the relations in his mind.

  “Surely you have some techniques, some aesthetic principles.”

  “I see something beautiful, I paint it. Just like a child does.”

  Like Alphonsine’s short, solid arms, which he was painting now, pale peach with a dusting of pale yellow where the light fell, warming them. He imagined them sawing off his cast. She had none of the practiced flirtations of Angèle, just her genuinely helpful actions. Sometimes, while she was posing, or when he caught her alone a moment lost in her thoughts, her face had an air of gravity. It had come over her in the boat the other day, unexpectedly, and made her unreachable. He shouldn’t have asked when she’d been kissed last. He should have just kissed her.