The Masterpiece

by Émile Zola

  ‘You! Of course you don’t. I came here to work, didn’t I? So just you wait till tomorrow, you’ll see what I can do.’

  The following morning they would be out boating again. She would look at him with an uneasy smile when she saw him starting out with neither paints nor canvas; then she would kiss him and laugh at the thought of the power she had over him, touched by the perpetual sacrifice he was making for her. Then there would be more tender reproaches, and she would swear that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow she would tie him in front of his easel.

  Claude did eventually make the odd attempt to work. He started a study of Jeufosse, with the Seine in the foreground, but when he went and set up his easel on one of the islands Christine would go with him. She would lie in the grass at his feet, her lips slightly parted, gazing into the blue, and there, amidst the greenery, in the wilderness where only the murmur of the river broke the silence, she appeared so desirable that he continually left his painting to lie down beside her and let the sweetness of the earth lull them both into oblivion. Another time it was an old farm above Bennecourt that took his fancy, in the shade of some ancient apple-trees that had grown to the size of oaks. Two days running he went there, but on the third Christine carried him off to Bonnières market to buy hens; the next day, too, was wasted, for the canvas had dried; he lost his patience over setting to work on it again, and in the end gave it up. Throughout the entire summer all he did was work in fits and starts, sketching in part of a picture, leaving it on the slightest pretext, without any attempt at perseverance. His feverish passion for work which once used to get him out of his bed at dawn to wrestle with his recalcitrant paint, seemed to have departed and given way to indifference and idleness. So, like a man recovering from a serious illness, he allowed himself to vegetate and revelled in it, for the sheer joy of living through his physical functions alone.

  Christine was all that mattered to him now. It was she who enveloped him in a searing flame that caused his artistic ambitions to shrivel up to nothing. Ever since she had so heedlessly placed that first burning kiss upon his mouth the girl had given way to the woman, the lover had sprung to life in the virgin, pursing her lips above her fine, firm chin. Now she was showing herself as she was meant to be, in spite of her long integrity, one of those physically, sensually passionate beings who are so profoundly disturbing once they are aroused from their dormant state of modesty. Immediately, and without any teaching, she knew what love should be, and brought to it all the fervour of her innocence, while the pair of them, she who until now had had no experience, and he who had had next to none, discovered ecstasy together and were carried away by the rapture of their mutual initiation. Claude now blamed himself for his previous disdain. He had been a fool, he said, and very childish, to spurn delights he had never experienced. Henceforth, all his fondness for female beauty, all the desires he used to work out in his painting, were concentrated in the one warm, living, supple body he had made his own. He used to think that what he loved was the light as it skimmed over satin-smooth breasts, the downy contours and the fine pale amber tones that gilded shapely loins. What idle fantasy! Now at last his dream, the dream that his painter’s fingers had been powerless to grasp, had come to life, now it was his to clasp in both his arms. Christine gave herself up to him entirely, and he possessed her entirely, from her throat to the tips of her toes, holding her in an embrace so close as to make her flesh melt into his own. Having killed off his painting, and delighted to have rid herself of her rival, she determined to prolong their nuptials. It was her plump arms and her smooth legs that made him linger in bed in the mornings, binding him as with chains in happiness and lassitude. When they were out boating and Christine plied the oars, he simply let himself be carried along, helpless, intoxicated by the movements of her hips. On the islands he would lie on the grass all day, his eyes gazing into hers, absorbed by her completely, drained of both strength and feeling. Anywhere, and at any time, they would take each other, so insatiable was their desire to possess and be possessed.

  One thing that surprised Claude was to see Christine blush whenever he let slip a coarse word. Once she had adjusted her skirts, she would smile uncomfortably and look away if he made any jocular allusion to their love-making. She did not like such talk, and one day it almost led to a quarrel.

  They were in the little oak wood at the back of the house where they often used to go in memory of the kisses they exchanged there on their first visit to Bennecourt. Out of sheer curiosity he was questioning her about her convent days. With his arm round her waist, and tickling her behind the ear with his breath, he was trying to confess her, asking her what she knew about men in those days, how she used to discuss them with her friends, what she had thought it would be like to be with a man.

  ‘Surely you can tell me something, my pussy-cat! … Had you any idea what it might be like?’

  She laughed rather irritably and tried to break away.

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she said, ‘and leave me alone! … Why are you so interested, anyway?’

  ‘But it amuses me. … Come on, now, say how much you knew.’

  ‘Oh … as much as the others, I suppose,’ she answered, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Then, suddenly burying her face on his shoulder, she added:

  ‘But it’s a bit of a surprise all the same!’

  He roared with laughter as he hugged her madly to him and showered her with kisses. Then, when he thought he had won her round and was hoping she would confide in him, like a friend who has nothing more to hide, she eluded him by giving empty answers and ended up by sulking and refusing to say another word. She never did tell him more than that, even though she adored him. The first awakening of sex even the most outspoken women keep to themselves, buried deep within them and somehow sacred, and Christine was very much a woman; she retained just that much reserve even though otherwise she abandoned herself completely.

  For the first time, that day, Claude felt that they were still strangers to each other. He felt chilled by the cold from another body. Could it be impossible, he wondered, for each to become part and parcel of the other when they lay breathless in each other’s arms, each clinging tighter and tighter to the other in their burning desire to attain something beyond mere possession?

  The days drifted by, and solitude was never irksome to them. The desire for a change, to pay a call or receive a visit, had still not come between them. The time she did not spend with Claude, in his arms, Christine spent in a whirl of domestic occupations, turning the place upside-down, forcing Mélie into great bouts of house-cleaning, and even, in her thirst for activity, joining in herself and marshalling their few pots and pans in the kitchen. It was gardening, however, that kept her really busy. Armed with a pair of pruning-shears, scratching her hands on the thorns, she reaped bumper harvests from the giant rosebushes. On one occasion, when she had made herself ache all over by picking them, she sold the entire crop of apricots for two hundred francs to the English buyers who scour the countryside for them every season. She was inordinately proud of her achievement, for her dream was to make a living out of their garden produce. Claude was less keen on gardening. He had put his divan in the big room they had made into a studio and would often stretch out on it in front of the wide-open window, watching Christine busy sowing and planting out seedlings. Their peace was absolute, they were sure that no one would call, that the door bell would never disturb them from one end of the day to the other. Claude, in his fear of the outside world, went so far as to avoid passing the Faucheurs’ inn, as he was always afraid he might come up against a party of his friends come out from Paris. But the whole summer passed and not a soul appeared, and every night as he went up to bed Claude murmured to himself that they had been damned lucky.

  There was just one secret wound bleeding quietly away under all their happiness. After their flight from Paris Sandoz had discovered their address and wrote asking if he might come and see Claude, but Claude had never replied. In the consequent m
isunderstanding their old friendship seemed to have died. Christine was sorry for what had happened, as she felt that Claude had broken with his friends on her account, and she talked about it continually. She had no wish to set him at loggerheads with his friends and insisted on his making contact with them again. Claude promised to set matters right, but in fact did nothing. All that was finished now; what was the use, he said, of going back to the past?

  Towards the end of July, as money was getting scarce, he had to go to Paris to sell half a dozen old sketches to Malgras, and, as she accompanied him to the station, Christine made him swear to go and see Sandoz. When he came back in the evening, there she was at Bonnières station, waiting for him.

  ‘Well,’ she cried, ‘did you see him? Have you made up?’

  For a moment he could say nothing, and then, as they walked along side by side, he mumbled:

  ‘No. I’d no time.’

  Two big tears welled into her eyes.

  ‘You’re being very unkind,’ she said.

  As they were under the trees he kissed her cheeks and even wept as he asked her not to make him sadder than he was. Such was life, and he could do nothing to alter it. Was it not enough that they should both be happy together?

  Only once in those first few months did they meet any strangers, and that was up above Bennecourt as they were coming up from La Roche-Guyon. They were going along a quiet, leafy lane when, at a sudden bend, they came upon three townsfolk, father, mother and daughter, taking an airing. At that very moment, thinking they were alone, they had their arms round each other’s waist and, heedless like any pair of lovers behind a hedge, Christine was just offering her lips to be kissed and Claude was laughingly bending over to meet them. They were so surprised that they simply behaved as if the others were not there, and walked straight by them, at the same slow pace, without interrupting their embrace. Dumbfounded, the other three stood back jammed against the bank, the father gross and apoplectic, the mother thin as a rake, the daughter a mere slip of a girl, skinny as a sickly bird, and all three of them ugly, mean examples of a thoroughly vitiated stock. They were a blot on the landscape, teeming as it was with freshness and vigour in the blaze of the sunshine. Suddenly, the wretched child, wide-eyed with amazement at the sight of love passing by, found herself bundled along by her father, dragged along by her mother, both beside themselves at the sight of such an embrace, asking why there were no police patrolling the countryside these days. The lovers, meanwhile, moved along undaunted, triumphant in their glory.

  Claude was busy racking his brains, however, wondering where on earth he had seen those people before, decadent bourgeois types with their mean, squat features, and dripping with ill-gotten wealth. It had certainly been at some crucial moment in his career, he thought; and then he remembered and recognized the Margaillans. Margaillan was the building contractor whom Dubuche had shown round the ‘Salon des Refusés’, and who had laughed his raucous, imbecile laugh in front of his picture. A little farther along, when he and Christine came out of the lane, opposite a big white house with vast, beautifully wooded grounds, they asked an old peasant woman what it was. It was known as ‘La Richaudière’, she told them, and had belonged to the Margaillans for the last three years; they had paid fifteen hundred thousand francs for it, and they had just spent over a million on improvements.

  ‘We shan’t be round that way again in a hurry,’ said Claude as they were going back down to Bennecourt. ‘They quite spoil the countryside, monsters like that!’

  The middle of August brought an important change in their lives. Christine was pregnant, and, since she was in love and consequently heedless, she had not noticed her condition until the third month. Both she and Claude were rather taken aback at first; the idea of such a thing happening had never crossed their minds. Then, at length, they resigned themselves to the situation; rather reluctantly, however, for Claude was worried by the thought of the complications a child would make in their way of living, and Christine was overcome by a strange inexplicable anxiety, as if she felt that this unforeseen event would mean the end of their love-affair. She wept for a long, long time with her head on his shoulder and he tried in vain to console her, though he himself was choking with the same indefinable sorrow. Later, when they had grown used to the idea, their hearts softened towards the little being they had created on that tragic day she gave herself to him as he wept by her side in the mournful twilight of the studio. The dates fitted; their child would be the child of suffering and pity, scorned from conception by the brainless mockery of the crowd. So, as they were both kind-hearted, they began to look forward to it and to busy themselves with preparations for its coming.

  The winter was bitterly cold and a serious chill kept Christine indoors for a long time, though the house was incredibly draughty and almost impossible to warm. She was often sick, too, and spent long periods huddled over the fire; and she had even to lose her temper occasionally to make Claude go out without her and take long walks on the hard, ringing frost-bound roads. And Claude, when he did go out walking, alone after months of sharing all his activities with Christine, was surprised at the turn his life had taken, almost of its own accord. He had never wanted to set up house like this, even with Christine; he would have been horrified at the idea if anyone had suggested it to him; but now it was done and could clearly not be undone, for, apart from the fact that a child was on the way, he was not the kind who has courage to break away. Obviously this was the fate that was meant for him, so he might as well stick to the first woman who would not be ashamed of him. The frozen earth resounded under his heavy boots and the icy wind froze his random thoughts at the point where he realized how lucky he had been to come across a decent girl, and how much suffering and disgust he would have had to face if he had taken up with a model who had had her share of the hectic life of the studios. That made him take a kinder view of his new life, and he hastened back home to take Christine in his arms and hold her close, as if he felt he had been going to lose her. Her cry of pain: ‘Not so tight! You’re hurting me!’ rather disconcerted him as she freed herself from his embrace and clutched her swollen body which filled him still with anxiety and surprise.

  The child was born in the middle of February. A midwife came in from Vernon and all went well. Christine was up and about again at the end of three weeks. The child, a sturdy boy, was so greedy for his mother’s milk that she often had to get up five times in the night to keep him from crying and rousing his father. From the moment of his arrival the little fellow turned the whole household upside-down. Christine, though a keen housekeeper, was not so good a nurse. Motherhood did not come naturally to her, in spite of her kind heart and her ready sympathy with childish discomforts. She was soon tired and easily discouraged and too ready to call in Mélie, whose gawping stupidity only made things even more difficult, so that Claude in the end had to come and give a hand, though he was even more inexpert than either of the women. Her morbid dislike for sewing and her general aversion from all such feminine activities came out again when the child required attention. He was not well looked after and grew up more or less casually, scrambling about the garden or the house, where tidiness had been abandoned in despair and the floors were a clutter of napkins, broken toys, and the general dirt and mess so easily made by a young gentleman who is cutting his teeth. When things got completely out of hand, all she could do was to fling herself into her dear love’s arms and take refuge on the bosom of the man she loved, the only place where she could forget and be happy. She was a lover still, not a mother, still twenty times fonder of the father than of his child. All her old ardour had returned once the child was born and her body had regained its slimness and her beauty bloomed afresh, renewing her love like the rising sap in spring, and making her physical passion more intense and her desire keener than ever before.

  It was about this time, however, that Claude began to paint a little again. The winter was coming to an end and he did not know what to do with the bright sunny
mornings, since Christine was unable to go out before noon on account of Jacques. They called the boy after his maternal grandfather, but did not trouble to have him baptized. For lack of something better to do Claude started painting in the garden; he dashed off a sketch of the apricot-trees, started on one of the rosebushes and did some still-lifes of four apples, a bottle, and an earthenware pot standing on a table-napkin. He did it to keep himself occupied; then, as he gradually warmed to his work, he began to be obsessed by the idea of painting a figure, fully clothed, in the sunshine. From that moment Christine was his victim, and a willing one, since she wanted to make him happy and was as yet unaware of the terrible rival she was creating for herself. He started a score of pictures of her, in a white dress, in a red dress against a background of greenery, standing still, walking, reclining on the grass, wearing a big straw hat, bare-headed under a sunshade, her face all pink with the light shining through the cherry-coloured silk. As he was never completely satisfied he scraped his canvases after two or three sittings and set to work again at once on the same subject. A handful of studies, unfinished but full of engaging vigour, were saved from the palette knife and hung on the dining-room walls.

  After Christmas Jacques had to pose. They stripped him naked as a cherub and, when it was warm enough, laid him on a blanket and tried to make him keep still. But it was well-nigh impossible. Tickled and excited by the sunshine, he laughed and wriggled and waved his little pink feet in the air and rolled about and nearly turned head over heels. His father laughed, but ended by losing his temper and cursed the ‘damned brat who couldn’t be sensible for a single minute’, and wondered how anybody could think of painting as a laughing matter! Thereupon Christine would put on a severe look too, and hold the child so that his father could hastily sketch in an arm or a leg. He clung doggedly to the subject for weeks on end, captivated by the delicacy of the baby’s colouring. It was a feast for his artist’s eye, a motif for the masterpiece he had at the back of his mind every time he looked at it through half-closed lids. He tried again and again, gazing at the child for hours on end, exasperated because the young rascal would not even go to sleep just when it would have been the best time to paint him.