Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  She thought they were heading toward the Seine, but then she wasn't sure. She couldn't see the tip of the Eiffel Tower to orient herself. Her footsteps echoed, so she took off her shoes. The cobblestones were slick and cold. She didn't care. Once, Scott stopped to look over his shoulder. She ducked under an arch and covered her mouth. She was laughing into her hand with her eyes pressed shut. If Robert could only see her now. What was she doing? Why was she following this young man? She'd never chased after anyone, she thought. She found herself staring at a set of blue initials someone had spray-painted on the limestone wall. She stepped into the street. Scott was gone.

  She rushed around the corner and discovered the Seine: a flood of space, the exhilarating roar of motorists, and a host of budding trees. She was just in time to see Scott's head disappearing down a flight of stone stairs. She ran partway into the street. A car honked and swerved. Another refused to stop. She froze and it careened by, the driver's face twisted and scornful. No one would let her go. She was stuck between lanes, traffic flashing past on either side. Finally, an opening; she dashed for the curb, pressed herself to the thick wall, gasping, and leaned over to see if she'd lost him.

  He stood at the edge of the quai like a man looking out to sea. He set his box down, paced off several steps to his left, and stopped and looked across the water again. Then he came back for the box and paced off the same number of steps and settled. He took off his jacket and folded it into a crumpled square and laid it beside the box. He swung his legs over the edge and sat motionless. She wanted him to point, to indicate what held his attention. A large green and blue boat approached. Passengers waved. Scott's head didn't move. She thought he might be asleep, but then his hand crept out for the box. He took it by the handle and set it on his lap, each movement unrushed. He cupped his hands to his mouth, breathed out, and rubbed them; then he unfastened the latch. He gripped the box lid delicately at the corners with his thumbs and lifted.

  Scott's head was in the way so she could only see the edges of his canvas. Parts were still white. He propped it against the lid and removed a piece of cellophane from a small square palette. It fluttered and stuck to itself and he peeled it apart, folded it exactly, and tucked it under the corner of his coat. He blew into his hands again and unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled them back. Then he produced a rag and a brush and hunched, hugging the box close, shielding the canvas from the world.

  He stayed like that, his body compressed. Only his right elbow moved. He set his brush down and took out a thinner one, so small she couldn't see the bristle, just his fingers caressing it, coaxing it as though drawing a thread through a needle, molding the shape to his liking. The wind gathered, and he put a hand on the canvas to steady it. The brush he'd set down rolled up against his leg, dabbing paint. Again he hunched over his work, curling into a tight ball, a single spot on the desolate quai. Beyond him to the left, the Louvre stretched endlessly.

  On the opposite bank, there was so much for Scott to paint: black-shuttered buildings blue without the sun, peeking above the green, windows between the trees, the tops of cars slipping from trunk to trunk through this quiet landscape. Perhaps he was painting it all, or perhaps he was focused on a single image, a single stone or floating branch or bit of foam. Or what if he were not painting the panorama before him but rather some image he carried in his mind, and he'd settled here not for the view but for a feeling, for the solace, to find himself away from people but in the middle of things, alone but not so alone that he wasn't still immersed in this precious world? In that setting, finding peace, he could truly turn into himself, fold into a more private untapped place that he was careful to shelter, closing his body around the canvas, protecting it from all intrusion, focusing, focusing like the heart of a flower clothed in petals.

  Suddenly he stretched. His spine straightened and he seemed to grow, holding his arms out like wings, rising, standing—taller than she'd remembered, imposing himself into the overall picture. He touched the sky and stooped to his toes and rolled his head like a runner loosening up for a race. Then he sat again, head bent, shoulders slack, receding once more into himself until there was no evidence of any disturbance, no clear sign of passion. It was contained so eloquently in stillness, in the surroundings he seemed again to be absent from.

  Kim climbed onto the stone ledge and crossed her legs. She watched him as if in a dream, car engines doppling behind her. She didn't mind that her pants were wet from sitting. It felt good to rest. Minutes drifted by. She thought of the uniform she'd bought. She pictured her father in it, walking these same quais after the war. He too had sought peace here in Paris, reconciliation with a changed world. Whatever he'd found, whatever bit of truth he'd salvaged on these aged stones, though, surely he'd lost again in the fighting that so soon followed. But at that time he could not have known what lay ahead, what wars were left to be waged, and possibly there had been hope. And this boy, Scott: were his battles behind him? Was it hope he saw there on the far bank, in the trembling reflections of the trees, the windows of dry between the rains guiding his hand? It was there. She could feel it too. She wondered if the uniform she'd bought would fit Scott and how he'd look wearing it; if he stood straight and kept his shoulders back. She imagined him with short hair, but she liked his long hair, how it fell freely.

  She watched him put the cellophane back over the palette and wipe the brushes with the rag and close them inside the box without its even occurring to her that he was finished, that he was leaving. And then it struck her. He had his jacket on and was walking. She snapped to attention.

  She slipped on her shoes and hastened to the stairs. The steps were worn smooth and she trailed a hand along the wall to keep from slipping, fighting the urge to leap the steps two–three at a time. She hit the bottom and tried to run. Her shoes clattered against the uneven stones. Just before she reached him, he turned.

  "You walk too quickly," she said, putting her hand to her chest. "I'm not here with friends. I lied. I'm alone. Do you think I'm crazy?"

  He stared at her. "Because you're alone or because you followed me?"

  He smiled wider than when he'd left her at the café, and not to himself. He touched his cheek, smearing paint.

  "Join me for dinner," she said.

  "I can't."

  "Perhaps tomorrow?"

  He shifted his box from one hand to the other.

  "Do you go to that café every day?" she said.

  "I only go for coffee."

  "I'll see you there," she said.

  He looked away and then back, smiling. "You really followed me?"

  "Until tomorrow, then," she said.

  She put out a hand and he stared at his own. He wiped his palm on his pant leg and they shook. He turned after he'd gone several steps.

  "It's just that I'm busy," he said.

  She waved, then savored the blue-green smudge on her hand.

  The next morning, she woke early to the squeaky wheel of a maid's cart in the hall. Undefined shadows crowded the room. Not the slightest light showed at the edges of the curtains. The flowers seemed remarkably still, as though in anticipation of a sudden happening, a change perhaps, for she felt close to something new, as though she were traveling toward a strange, formerly distant place only now within reach.

  She dressed hastily and descended to the lobby.

  "You look much rested," said the man at the desk. There were messages from Robert. She stuffed them in her coat pocket and dashed out into the damp cold.

  She bought a warm baguette from the patisserie at the corner to take away the chill. The woman at the register greeted her with a singsong "Bonjour," two happy notes, a tune Kim carried with her as she left. She stuck the baguette under her arm with her umbrella and broke off pieces, scooping out the hot insides, savoring the bites on her tongue and tossing away the crust.

  "Bonjour," Kim sang. "Bonjour!" She hopped over a thin stream of water that hugged the curb.

  At a café outside the Louvre
she took a seat on a wooden banquette. She cradled a cup of coffee and then warmed her ears with her hands and looked out over the drenched stones of the square. She'd seen the pyramid in pictures but never in person, not even from a car in passing. She remembered Robert was asked once at a party whether he approved of its construction, and he answered that it was too modern and demeaned the history of the setting. Later he confided that he'd only said that to avoid a fight with the woman. Robert loved art, but he abhorred museums.

  The pyramid rose up from the center, interlocking triangular windows, and she tried to picture what it must look like on a sunny day: blinding light beaming off a thousand facets, shining on the carved exterior of the museum. Without light, it was like the thousands of standing puddles, all mirroring nothing except the smoky gray sky that was itself like glass.

  Then a bus let out and there were people piling toward the pyramid. A line formed, extending past the velvet ropes away from the entrance, yellow slickers and olive flannel, tweed hats, shiny dashes of red and blue windbreakers like the scales of a great snake, slithering from the curb, bending in an arc. Colors bled into the flat stone. Puddles lapped at the browns and blacks of shoes. The sky seemed not as empty somehow, as though it were absorbing and reflecting the palette of these welcome tourists. However improbable, she would swear it was true; she imagined tiny brush strokes, color so subtle that it could only be felt, caressed into the heavens by passionate hands and a desire to see. She paid her check and headed for the line.

  She wandered halls the size of ballrooms. She sat on a green velvet bench and stared at a ten-foot-tall painting of Christ on the cross. His ribs seemed about to burst, as though there were no muscle in the chest to brace them, only a veil of pasty flesh. In the same way, the stomach seemed an afterthought, too thin to contain organs, a lacerated strip from which the jutting hipbones hung. A group of tourists passed, blocking her view. Smiles, muffled conversations on the verge of becoming loud, backpacks and swinging cameras, and half-folded maps streamed past her bench on both sides, following a tiny red pennant on a stick.

  She looked at the crucifix again but it seemed different: as though an intimacy had been lost, and whatever it had been on the verge of showing before the interruption, suddenly now was withheld. The eyes gazed upward through a tangle of thorns, avoiding her stare. But wasn't that the point? Frozen there, the face contorted in agony and turned with such extreme longing, oceans of empathy painted into the eyes to the extent that it hurt to look at because they were fixed and could not meet her own, could not recognize the sadness that filled her eyes at seeing his torment.

  The Mona Lisa was marked on the guide, but she didn't want to consult a map. She asked people and they pointed down an endless telescoping hall.

  "I just came from there," she said.

  "The crowd, the crowd."

  She turned into a side chamber and stood listening to the sounds of the main hall behind her: floorboards cracking like sticks on a forest floor, the whir of air through a metal grate. At the far end of the room a man was painting. From a distance he seemed small, tucked away in the corner with his easel. There were more pictures of Christ; scenes from his life hung one above the other as on some vast rectory wall. There was a John the Baptist waist deep in water, muscles like red rock, straining to raise a dripping Jesus. Throngs of people stood watching from the sandy bank, one man's forehead notched with disbelief, his mouth round and wide, a dark hole the color of the river. Kim began to cross the room. She wanted to approach quietly, but each step sounded her presence. She stopped a short distance behind the man.

  He was sweating in brown corduroy, a spare brush clenched between his teeth. He was copying a Madonna and Child, leaning a hand against a thin wooden stick that he propped against the canvas.

  She looked long at the original, the whiteness of Mary's skin and the blue of her robes like snow at midnight, shadows of bowing drifts humbled beneath stars. How could one paint grace? she wondered. And yet, each soft fold of the robe, the hands cradling the child, the extreme and gentle calm, somehow seemed right. She thought of her own mother's eyes, the masquerade of emotions contained in them, permanently shrouded by her death. The Christ child had dimpled knees and bulging sides, cheeks like melons, and eyes that probed as though aware of the trials ahead. They seemed less cool than the mother's, more reciprocating. Mary's eyes could not be disturbed from their peace.

  The man squeezed paint from a tube, smeared it on his palette, and mixed it with a knife. She imagined Scott's hands performing the same tasks, the details hidden from her by his back that afternoon on the quai. The man dabbed his brush into a small tin and mixed the paint more, then lifted it to the painting and took one last look at his subject, hand poised. Kim breathed in the overripe smell of the oils. The man's brush touched the canvas, then pulled away. He seemed satisfied not to have drawn a line or changed a shape, but simply to have added red to the red of Mary's veil. She thought she did see a glimmer of knowing in the baby's eyes.

  "Do you speak English?" she said.

  The man nodded.

  "Do you know Scott McKay?"

  He took the brush from his mouth. "Scott?" His accent was Irish. "Not here this morning."

  "I'm seeing him later," she said.

  "Are ya now?"

  He wiped his brush and touched it to a caterpillar gob of blue on the palette. It was darker than the blue of Mary's robe.

  "Why this painting?" she said.

  "Raphael?"

  When he raised his brush, he touched it to the red part of the veil, then took it away. Did the veil look any different?

  "You've really got his eyes down," she said. "Do you try to make it exact?"

  She looked at the original again and then at the man's copy. Something about Mary's eyes was off. The aloofness was missing. She didn't want to offend him.

  "Her eyes seem happy," she said.

  "Aye."

  Kim looked at the original again. No, he'd missed it.

  "Her mouth is hard," he said. "I still don't have it."

  "It's almost flat."

  "How did he do it? It's a lying smile."

  "You think she was pretending to be happy?"

  "It's about Raphael, not her."

  "Did he have a sad life?"

  He tapped Mary's mouth with the handle of his brush.

  "When I have this," he said, "the eyes will be right."

  "I saw a friend of yours at the Louvre today," said Kim. "It was my first time inside. Isn't that absurd?"

  "Who'd you see?" said Scott.

  "I didn't ask. You must think I'm crazy. I was going to ask him to say hello, but then I was afraid you'd think I was stalking you again. We talked about his painting."

  He motioned for a waiter.

  "What did he say?"

  "He was copying a Raphael."

  "Ian. He's been working on it for three weeks."

  "I didn't tell him, but I thought he'd gotten Mary's eyes wrong. Then out of the blue he said it was the mouth, not the eyes. Have you seen the painting?"

  "It's good."

  "He insisted he could change the eyes by redoing the lips. I was so focused on the one thing, you know, it never occurred to me to look that way. And then why stop with the lips? What about the fingers? They would have an effect, too. Suddenly I was searching the painting for anything that might make the eyes more sad. Is life that way? Do you change by looking in the less obvious places?"

  "You wanted the eyes to be sad?"

  "Like a mother's. Like the original. So there I am hanging on poor Ian's shoulder while he's trying to work. . . . I'm rambling."

  "He probably enjoyed the attention. Do you want wine?"

  A waiter stood over the table.

  "Deux," said Scott.

  The man turned without nodding. Kim gazed after him.

  "Sometimes this waiter gives me a free coffee."

  "He has a nice mustache," Kim said. "Tell me about your painting."

&n
bsp; Scott shrugged. It had begun to sprinkle.

  "We can talk about something else."

  "Tell me why you've come to Paris alone."

  The waiter brought the wine.

  "I'm not alone now," she said, picking up her glass and sipping. "Mmmm."

  "It's steady," he said.

  "Steady?"

  "My own term. So why Paris?"

  "My father came here after the war."

  Scott sipped without looking into his drink.

  "I thought everything would be wonderful," she said. "Look, you can see the church steeple in the carafe."

  He leaned over to see, and she pulled the feathered collar of her coat snug around her neck, shivering.

  "It's cold," he said.

  "Would you like to walk a bit? You're not dressed warmly either."

  He regarded her shoes: black satin heels. The soles were lipstick red.

  "We'll stop if they hurt," she said.

  She opened her purse, but he made her close it. His pocket was filled with coins and he counted out the amount and a little bit more.

  They walked past the doors of the church and he asked if she'd ever gone in. She thought he might suggest a look, but he continued to walk, folding the lapels of his jacket up to shield his neck from the wind.

  "This way," he said, pointing down a narrow street. It opened onto a shady square. The surrounding buildings had settled inward, their facades slanting deferentially toward the trees that grew in the center. There was a wooden bench and a tall iron lamppost.

  "The middle used to be grass," he said, "but the homeowners got tired of all the artists and musicians. So they put in cement, and the artists stopped coming. It's still a beautiful square."