Last Lovers

by William Wharton

  ‘Now I understand the walls have all been painted white and yellow and light colors of brown. It must be beautiful, but it is not what I have in my mind.

  ‘It seemed then, as a child, that the street down to the rue Jacob was very long. We would roller-skate down that street, our skates strapped to our shoes, and we would roll hoops. There were very few automobiles and many horses. Only part of the street was smooth, the rest was stones. The rue Cardinale was only dirt. The windows were mostly open and will always be open in my mind, with flowers at the windows and clothing hanging on little lines, like butterflies against the green of the trees.

  ‘Also, at certain times, the trees would have purple flowers, the flowers would then fall, and we would gather them in our skirts and throw the petals at each other. It was a wonderful time.’

  She stops. She still has her eyes closed. She’s brought such a freshness, a dreamlike vision to what I’m seeing, I find I’m integrating some of her feelings into my painting. I have alternatives for almost any decision I make in the painting now. There’s what my eyes see, there’s what my mind is seeing, the selective vision of the painter; and then there’s the vision of Mirabelle’s mind. It’s the same as it was with the pigeons against the sky over Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I’m flying in her dream, painting her desires.

  She keeps on talking, resurrecting the memories she’s stored, cherished, all these years, speaking of the way it was, and it seems so much more real than what I’m seeing before me.

  I begin to think I’m going blind myself, then realize it’s only getting dark. I have no idea what time it is, but the painting is almost finished. I never believed I could get so far along on a painting in a single day. And what I’ve done is good, it holds together; more than that, it sings out the feelings I have, about Paris, about Mirabelle, and in many ways her feelings about Paris as a young girl, and now as a blind old woman.

  I pack up the box. Mirabelle has some grains with her for the pigeons. Many from the flock at Saint-Germain-des-Prés come here to this Place and pick up bits of food tourists or others leave on the ground. When my box is packed, I lean against the wall beside where Mirabelle is sitting. It’s a great little folding stool she has, I wish I had one for myself, sometimes my back gets tired standing. She turns to me.

  ‘I feel it growing cooler. Is it really becoming dark? Is that why you have packed up your paints?’

  ‘That’s right, Mirabelle. It was getting so dark I was beginning to think I might be going blind myself.’

  ‘No, Jacques, that is not the way one goes blind.’

  She still sits there. The pigeons are all around her. It is evening and I guess that’s when pigeon mating instincts come to the fore, because two or three cocks are doing the old courtship routine, puffed out, head bobbing, flight feathers dragging, rattling, on the ground, going round in tight circles.

  ‘Are they dancing their love dance, Jacques?’

  ‘That’s right, Mirabelle. I guess pigeons spend more time courting than any other creature I know.’

  ‘But you know pigeons are mated for life. They do their dance around almost any hen, but they are mated for life.’

  ‘Somebody told me that once, but it’s hard to believe. It certainly would be nice if it were true. I like the idea.’

  ‘Honestly. Have you ever seen pigeons mating in the streets, in public, as cats, dogs, even other birds do?’

  ‘No, now you mention it, I never have. Maybe you’ve got something there, Mirabelle, about pigeons teaching humans how to live.’

  ‘They are only flirting with the hens, showing how they care for, admire, value them. I think it is most beautiful. I thrill to hear their cooing song, hear their feet pounding on the ground, listen to their feathers bristle. It is such a dance of meaningful, purposeless passion.’

  She looks up at me in the blueing dusk.

  ‘You know, Jacques, there is not enough love in this world. Sometimes I think the pigeons are the last lovers in Paris. There seems to be much of sex in these times, but very little of true love, of love that makes all creatures come closer together, that allows one creature to express an inner feeling toward another creature so they know they are important and valuable to them.’

  She stands and I help fold her chair. I throw it over the top of my box. I offer her my arm and she takes it.

  ‘Jacques, would you be my guest at La Palette on the rue de Seine? We can have a cup of coffee or something there. It is a place where artists have long gone. I have not been there for more than ten years, since before Rolande’s death. Please, take me there. It would be such a pleasure for me to hear and feel the excitement of that place.’

  I’ve passed the café tens of times but never gone in. Café sitting just doesn’t fit into my budget. I hope I’m not spending Mirabelle’s savings. It doesn’t seem fair or right.

  ‘If that’s what you want, Mirabelle, let’s go. But I must pay. I’m a rich man. I have a thousand francs in my pocket right now.’

  I smile down at her, knowing the smile means nothing, is invisible, she cannot see it, but it makes me feel good. I’m smiling for myself.

  She holds tighter on to my arm, not clutching, only tucking herself in closer. It’s a lovely evening and we must make quite a pair walking into La Palette. We find a table in the back and both order a Cointreau. It seems the perfect thing to finish off a good day’s work. It’s going to cost more than a week’s living but it’ll be worth it.

  Mirabelle has all her antennae out. I can tell by the almost ecstatic look on her face, the smile, the inner concentration. She’s probably ‘perceiving’ more of this ambience than I am, by far. I close my eyes and try to experience the way she does. While I have my eyes closed, the Cointreau arrives. I can tell it’s there even without opening them. The smell of oranges surrounds us. I wonder if I would have smelled it if I’d been sitting there with my eyes open.

  ‘Is it not wonderful, Jacques?’

  She is fingering the round ballon of Cointreau, spinning it around in her small, pointed, thin-skinned, dainty fingers.

  ‘I feel everything so strongly it’s almost like seeing.’

  We clink glasses, she makes the first move, of course. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Cointreau, and this isn’t the best but it tastes good, not as good as that Poire William, but good on an early spring evening.

  We sit sipping and listening. I’m also watching the coming and going, the flirting, the general horsing around of the young people. Why do artists always feel they need to make such a scene all the time? Probably it’s what makes them artists, or makes them want to be artists in the first place. They want, need, to be seen. For some reason, they aren’t sure they are. I wonder how much of that is in me. Probably anyone who has all the love, acceptance they need would never actually create, do, anything. They’d be complete within themselves. That would be the end of writers, poets, painters, singers, musicians, politicians, most of the people who help make the world go around, at least who strive for human communication.

  It’s dark when I escort Mirabelle home. She invites me up but I don’t feel like sitting in a dark room while she wouldn’t even know it. I’ll have to buy a few light bulbs and slip them in around her place if I’m ever going to spend any time there.

  I have a great walk home, I use the gate code number I learned by watching others punch it in, sneak up the stairs quietly, and settle in. I watch my painting for a long time in the candlelight as I eat a light supper. With all the lunches, I’m not eating up my stew for this week.

  Blind Reverie

  I feel so brazen. I wonder if he feels it, too, but he means so much to me. He must have some idea of my feelings. even if he can see.

  I am confused. Knowing how my pigeons look has taken so much away. I thought my love for them would be more, but it is somehow less. I should have known. I think he is convinced I am childish, calling them by name, but they have been my only companions for so long. I hope he doesn’t mind my c
alling him Jacques. He cannot know it was the name of my father.

  I felt something negative when he came into the apartment. Can it be so dirty, unkempt? I must ask him. But I must go slowly. It was much, asking him to paint me. Now I am glad I did it. I wanted something we could share, a way to keep him near.

  I think he likes my food. I could tell by the sounds as he ate. I am so happy to have found him. It is wonderful to have someone with whom I can share my pear in the bottle.

  3

  The next morning I’m finishing the painting of the Place Furstenberg. I feel in control. The strong movements I established yesterday are holding up as I move into the more descriptive elements. The light is coming through the trees and I’m using a tremendous variety of color to capture the sense of light on the paving of the Place. The painting is somewhere between Impressionism and something different, a new kind of vision for me, a highly personal vision such as Vincent van Gogh had, a conviction that the way I see is valid.

  I work all morning and then I feel Mirabelle beside and behind me.

  ‘I can tell you are happy with your work, Jacques. The bells are ringing, will you déjeuner with me, and then perhaps we can start the portrait.’

  How can she possibly know I’m just about finished? Do I give off some kind of ‘satisfaction vibrations’? I scratch my signature in the lower right-hand corner. I pull the canvas off the easel and print in the title, Place Furstenberg, date and sign it on the back. I’m almost tempted to sign it ‘Jacques.’

  ‘Yes, I’m very happy with the painting. But I don’t think I can start with your portrait because I have no other canvas here with me. I didn’t realize I’d finish this one so quickly. I wish you could see it. It’s the best painting I’ve done and you helped very much.’

  ‘Thank you. It means much to me to feel I could help. Can you understand what this must mean to someone blind such as I?’

  Her face is very serious, then it breaks into a smile and she ‘looks’ down at her feet briefly. She finds my eyes again.

  ‘Could you not buy a canvas near here? I do not think the shops are closed as yet.’

  ‘It is very expensive to buy a canvas, Mirabelle. A canvas stretched, of the size I would need, could cost over a hundred and fifty francs.’

  She reaches into her purse. She pulls out two hundred francs.

  ‘Here, please, Jacques, buy it. We do not know how long I shall be around to be painted and every day I am getting older. I should like to be painted as soon as possible, while I am still young.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll give it back to you this afternoon from the thousand francs when I have it changed. That’s only fair. All right?’

  ‘Yes, if that is what you want. But you must hurry now to find a shop open before they close. I shall go home and prepare our food. It is mostly ready, but there are some last little things to do. I shall meet you there.’

  She turns away. The art store is just around the corner, not far from La Palette, where we had our Cointreau. I decide to leave the box standing in the Place. I put the painting back on the easel. I take off right away. Nobody will steal it in the few minutes I’ll be gone. I start running, holding the two hundred francs bunched in my hand.

  The bells are still ringing when I get there and they’re open. The canvas, real linen on a good stretcher, 20F, with portrait linen, is a hundred and ninety francs. I feel like a rich man. But at this rate I’d be a candidate for the poorhouse in no time.

  I dash back to my box and everything is fine. There are two people looking at the painting, a well-dressed French couple. The man asks me if I want to sell the painting.

  I do and I don’t. He’s pretty insistent and I’m busy cracking down the box, putting things away. At the sound of my crappy French, he switches into good-quality, heavily accented English-English.

  ‘But you must be in business, monsieur. Do you have a gallery where I may see your work?’

  ‘No, I have no gallery.’

  ‘But you are a professional, yes. The painting is of very high quality.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I don’t answer the first question. I guess I am a professional but I don’t think of myself that way. It sounds like a prizefighter or a whore. The French word amateur means ‘lover.’ I think I’m more an amateur, at least when it comes to painting.

  ‘How much money would you take for your painting, monsieur? My wife and I like it very much.’

  I figure I’ll name a big price to shut him up. I’m sure he thinks it’s like Montmartre, where paintings are knocked out for nothing.

  ‘The painting would cost fifteen hundred francs, monsieur. I must live.’

  He reaches into his inside jacket pocket, slides out a dark, shining leather billfold, and separates three five-hundred-franc notes. He hands them to me.

  I could kick myself. I haven’t had enough time to enjoy this painting. But, God, fifteen hundred francs, I can get through the entire summer with that. But I’m going to be very professional about all this.

  I lift the painting from the place where I’ve leaned it against the wall and hold it at arm’s length for a last long look at it. I feel I’m selling part of Mirabelle at the same time. I hand it to him.

  ‘Be careful, monsieur. It is still wet. It will be a week or more before it is dry.’

  ‘That is quite all right. We live near here. We love this Place and thank you again for selling us your work. You are very talented.’

  With that, the two of them walk away carrying our painting. She’s wearing a white fur coat and white stockings with clocks in them, slightly off-white shoes. Her hair is perfectly coiffed. He looks as if he could be the Prime Minister of France. Hell, I wouldn’t know the Prime Minister if I fell over him.

  Inside myself, I’m really torn. I need to tell Mirabelle. I’ve sold our painting. How will she feel about that? I put my paint box on my back, empty, and start the walk to her place. I’m carrying the new canvas in my free hand. Now I’m late.

  I put the box outside and her door is open. I knock and go in. She’s in the kitchen.

  ‘I began to think you were not coming. Please, let us sit down. I have little crêpes with mushrooms and a cheese sauce. I have just finished making them.’

  I go in to take a leak. I use the same ‘knee-locking’ system as before. Then I go over and wash my hands, leaving the door open for light again. I’ve taken several sheets of toilet paper from the toilet room and I wet them. I try to wipe off some of the grime and specks from the mirror. The dirt’s really ground in. I manage to clear a circle in the center of the mirror, enough to see myself. I haven’t actually looked at myself in a mirror, up close, in a long time. I don’t look as bad as I thought I would. I definitely look younger than I did two years ago. If it weren’t for the gray in my beard I could maybe even pass for forty.

  I sit down. Mirabelle puts three beautiful crêpes on each of our plates. They smell delicious. Again I close my eyes and let the smell come into me. It’s getting to be a habit. Before I know it, I’ll probably go blind myself.

  ‘Mirabelle. I have something to tell you.’

  ‘The art shop was closed and you could not buy the canvas.’

  ‘Worse than that.’

  There’s no way around it. I must tell her, I owe her that, at least.

  ‘I sold our painting, the painting of the Place Furstenberg.’

  She’s quiet on her chair, looking at me. She hands me a bottle of white wine, a Pouilly-Fumé, to open. I start turning the corkscrew.

  ‘But that is very good, Jacques. You said you must sell paintings to live. We can always paint the Place Furstenberg again. It is in my mind, all of it. It makes me feel happy to think we have shared our vision with someone else.’

  And I suddenly feel released. Mirabelle’s right. I can paint it again. I’ll paint it better than last time. I just didn’t have enough confidence in myself. And I really do have over twenty-five hundred francs in my pocket, the thousand from Mirabelle and
now the fifteen hundred. I reach in my pocket. I hold out the thousand francs.

  ‘Here, Mirabelle, take this. I don’t need it now. All you need pay is the money for the canvas, and you’ve already done that. We’re even.’

  She pulls away from the money as if it were a snake.

  ‘Do not do this, Jacques. You have a commission from me. I could never feel right if you do not take this money. Please, take it away. I can smell it in front of my face. It smells sour, a blend of dirt, cheap perfume, the inside of pocketbooks, and perspiration, as does all money. Please, take it away, or I cannot eat.’

  I put it on the table beside me.

  ‘Well, we can discuss that later. For now, I want to eat these beautiful crêpes and drink this wonderful wine.’

  I hold out my glass and there’s just the slightest delay until she realizes what I’m doing. No one would probably have picked up the slight pause, but I’m getting more closely tuned to her now.

  ‘Yes, Jacques, we drink to the sale of your beautiful painting. I knew you were a very good painter. You should sell your paintings for much more money, you sell them too cheaply.’

  ‘I have more money than I can use now, Mirabelle. I know that doing things to make money can pollute life faster than anything else. I’m happy to have this money, but it must not become the reason why I paint. This is something I’ve learned.’

  ‘You will never paint for money alone, Jacques, only when you are hungry and desperate. Before that, you can come live with me.’

  We drink. The wine is dry and cooled just properly. It has a deep raisin taste, yet is light and almost effervescent. It’s time to change the subject.

  ‘Where do you get these wines, Mirabelle? This kind of wine costs almost as much as that painting.’

  ‘They are not mine. These are the wines of Rolande. Where she worked with the Ministère des Finances at the Louvre, she would always receive cases of wine at Christmas. We hardly ever drank them, so there are many cases stored in the cave. I am glad I can share them with you. I think Rolande would be happy, too. At least, I hope she would.’