“Mademoiselle, allow me! This day is a celebration of many years of effort, and the only person to truly share it with is you.”
She hesitated, looking down at the polished parquet floor. A small smile passed her lips. “Well, then,” she said. “I will come with you. For shortly after this, I don’t know … my whole life will be different. There will be fewer adventures. Isn’t that what proper life is?”
“I don’t know,” he replied passionately. “I’m certain I wouldn’t want it. Let’s go to the park, the Bois de Boulogne. We’ll walk and talk and rent a boat. There’s a little Swiss restaurant on a tiny island in the middle of the lake. And I’ll have you back by the time it’s dark.” All the time he was urging her from the room through the other Salon visitors, some of whom turned to stare at them.
He breathed more steadily once they were seated in the omnibus, bumping along the rough streets. She was not going to rise, ring the bell, and descend suddenly. She would stay by his side. All the thrilling energy of the Salon still poured through him. He wanted to seize her against him so that her hairpins fell down and her hair tumbled free. Did she like him? Did she see him? Was he so far from her class? Not by birth, but by circumstance—this little convent virgin who had come from one cell door and would soon enter another.
He thought, I’ve succeeded because of her kindness. I must take this day as it is and be glad for it and ask no more.
They entered the park via a huge avenue of trees and wandered arm in arm until they came to the edge of the lake. He said gallantly, “Here’s where we rent a boat.”
A little water on the boat’s bottom darkened her hem. He saw the edge of her lavender shoe and wondered if her mother was now impatiently looking out a window somewhere, waiting for her daughter to come. He wondered if Camille noticed how strong he was and how easily he rowed.
In the Swiss restaurant, they were seated at a little table and discussed the menu board. A pot of melted cheese came with bread and salad, and he found he was starving. He poured her wine and they both drank. The terrace band played.
“Will you explain Baudelaire’s poems to me?” she asked suddenly. “I heard you talk about them with your friend at the inn. I must confess a lot of them confuse me. For instance, ‘Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom.’ The part at the end where the poet cries to the accursed ghost.”
She wants to discuss poetry? But why not, he thought, when I feel I want to say so much to her and not one word will come? “Ah, yes,” he said, folding his hands on the table. “It has many meanings. I mean, it’s the way you interpret it. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what it means. He writes most of his work on opium, friends tell me. A strange dark poet for a young woman!”
“I don’t understand him either, but still his words frighten and thrill me. They’re filled with experiences, even if dark ones. And because I don’t understand doesn’t mean I don’t want to. Even if I may have few experiences in my life, at least I can read about them.”
“Mademoiselle, surely you don’t want experiences like that!”
“No, if I could choose my experiences I wouldn’t choose those. It’s just that to be free to choose seems so wonderful.”
Camille’s eyes were very bright, her hand was half open on the table, and her lips were parted. He drew in his breath. “I wish I knew more about you!” he said. “Please tell me something. I looked at you so long when I was painting you and sometimes I thought, What’s she like? Now I want even more to know.”
She sat back, breathing a little deeper, carefully arranging the fork and the now empty wineglass before her. “Myself?” she said in a low voice. “There’s so little to know! My sister and I are the only children. She’s four years older. I loved the convent school. I love to learn things. Sometimes I wanted to be good the way girls are, to be approved of, to be loved—and sometimes I didn’t.”
She lowered her eyes, again moving the glass as if the exact distance of it from the plate was important. “My mother takes me into society, where we all talk politely of things that don’t matter. It bores me. Mostly I love working in the bookshop. My uncle who owns it has been somewhat estranged from our family since he and my father were young; he was the first to move to Paris and turn his back on bourgeois life. He’s led a secret life, we suspect; no, we don’t suspect. We know.”
She looked at her empty wineglass and he refilled it. She said firmly, “If I had my way, I’d be an actress and go on the stage, but the idea of it scandalizes my mother! Nothing but amateur theatricals for me, and only in the parlors of our good friends, of our own class, comme il faut!”
Camille stumbled a bit over her words now with eagerness and she leaned a little forward, her full breasts pressing against the blue and white striped dress. “I’ve many plans for the future. I began a novel this past year but haven’t shown it to anyone. My family hopes all these yearnings will settle when I marry.” She looked down at the floral tablecloth, blinking gently as if trying to read her future in the pattern of violets.
“Do you want to be married?”
“I’d like to have my own home. My sister and mother say I’m not practical, and it’s true. I wish I had a great passion as you have, something to dedicate my life to.” She wound her fingers together, stammering a little. “I don’t want life to simply pass me by without my having any of it! I’d like to suffer for some great cause, to give all of myself!”
Claude crumbled a bit of bread. “Well, as to suffering, I’d prefer not to suffer for any reason. I find one needn’t look for it; it comes for you!”
“Then you think I’m silly?”
“Oh no, not at all,” he replied as the waiter swept away the bread and brought little plum cakes. “You’re wise. I think your imagination is very great indeed and you couldn’t be satisfied with a dull life.”
“No, truly! I never could. And yet I’ve been raised to …”
The side of his laced shoe touched hers under her full skirt beneath the table. He thought to withdraw it but instead let it remain. She looked harder now at the cake and the wineglass and he suspected that she also debated moving her own little lavender shoe and yet did not. What did this mean? He was too confused and thrilled to know.
He reached in his pocket for his briar pipe and began the careful process of lighting it, narrowing his eyes. He said, “Mademoiselle Camille, I must confess I’ve thought about you. I sensed a hidden passion in you when I rediscovered you in the bookshop. That’s why I wanted you for my model.”
“Did you really think of me for nearly four years after seeing me once?”
“Yes. Your spirit and your beauty.”
“Am I beautiful? I’d like to be; I have moments. It’s truly more important to be educated and wise.” She leaned forward, almost touching his hand, which lay a few inches from hers on the table between the coffee cups. She straightened then, her palm patting her hair, a gesture of women that he always felt meant that they were deliberating their next words. Her foot under the table moved away from his.
“Well, it’s late.” She sighed. “My poor mother! What excuses will I make now? She thinks I’m forgetful, which I’m not. I don’t forget things ever, ever.”
“Don’t you?” he asked sadly. The joy of the day was leaving him, and he felt tired.
Dusk was falling as they rowed back in silence. In the park again, he walked on by her side without a word, his hat low on his forehead. Every way he looked the paths turned under the heavy, hanging trees, and small clumps of flowers seemed to cup and hold the last of the day. Now a lamplighter had climbed his ladder to ignite a flame, which shone down on the empty bandstand.
She took his arm. “May I tell you something?” she said softly. “I think I can tell you things! I’ve always felt in my sister’s shadow; she always tells me what to do. Everyone at home thinks I’m not fit to make my own decisions about my life, but I’m perfectly fit. They worry about me; they say I’m moody. Women have such a short time to bloom, yo
u know. Your portrait of me is the way I am inside: mysterious. You saw me inside. Do you think I’m silly?”
“No,” he said.
She spoke on, almost to herself. “They want to keep me in a little box, but it’s really so unnecessary. I don’t miss Lyon at all except for my widowed grandmère. I love it here. You’re from Normandy, right? From Le Havre? Do you miss it?”
“I do, so much! I miss the boats and the smell of the sea; I miss the country, and yet if I want to make a name for myself I must do it in Paris. I’d like to return to the country one day when I make my fortune. I’d like to live outside Paris in one of the little villages. I want desperately to have a garden.”
Claude felt the day slipping from him. It had been such a lovely adventure, but it would be put away and forgotten until a moment years later when he was old and something would remind him: the smell of the air, a lamplighter, the darkening trees above on a long walk. She would drift away, and the Salon would continue for a time and then be taken down and he would hear of the marriage of this lovely girl who wanted and would have beautiful things.
He said abruptly, “It’s late. I’ll take you home.”
The horses wearily pulled the omnibus through the city until Claude descended with her near the bridge, walking toward the seventeenth-century houses of the Île Saint-Louis. It’s almost done now, he thought. A minute more and she’ll disappear down the street into one of those formidable dwellings and be gone.
He took her arm and, as they leaned on the bridge railing over the Seine, suddenly demanded, “Camille, how much do you really like your old fiancé?”
“He’s not old. He’s very nice. He’s kind, a true gentleman.”
“Is he? Well …”
Claude drew her toward him and kissed her mouth. To his amazement she did not pull away but pulled him against her, her arms about him, returning his kiss. I am dreaming this, he thought. I am dreaming it.
She whispered against his lips, “I don’t want to go home to my family. I want to go home with you.”
He felt the shock of her words and his sudden, intensely rising desire. He thought, Is she willing? Can she be truly willing? He slipped his fingers through an opening in her dress buttons and felt the silk and whalebone of her corset. He undid another button and a corset hook. Now she will push me over the bridge rail into the river, he thought, but she did not. As his fingers moved down to her hardened nipple, she kissed him more deeply, pressing against him. At any moment all we are wearing will fall away, he thought, and be carried down the river to the sea: her cloth buttons, my vest …
He said, “Are you sure, dear?”
“I’m sure, I’m sure,” she whispered.
He took her hand and they ran across the bridge. Several times he turned to her and they kissed again. They hailed a carriage and clasped each other tightly on the leather cushions that smelled of cigars and other lovers. Mon Dieu, he thought, don’t let this moment melt away!
In his building on the rue de Furstenberg he almost pulled her up the stairs, fumbling with his studio key in the lock. Who the hell is here? he thought. I’ll kill them! To his joy no one was there, though the nude pictures looked down thoughtfully from the walls, observing them. She’ll go soon, she’ll go, he thought. She’ll come to her senses or I to mine. This is a good girl, a convent-bred girl, and I am a wretch of desire and know only that.
Oh, such desire.
He pulled her into his bedroom and felt for her dress hooks as she coaxed eagerly at his buttons, pulling down his shirt so that it tangled in one arm, leaving his chest bare. A few pins fell from her hair, which tumbled down her naked back. Such hair! Way down to her round bottom, dangling against the bare flesh. When he pushed her to the bed, he had to knock away the open novel he had left there.
“Camille, Camille,” he repeated.
Thought left him. His breath came faster and she flung her head back and forth, reaching up for him as he entered her. She was warm, warm. He pushed harder, stopping her gasps with his mouth so that her feeling should remain within her and grow warmer there. He cupped her full breast in his hand and thrust faster still. I’m dreaming this, he thought, before all thought left him. Still he held her and felt her own mounting joy. She rose up against him, melding with him, shuddered and cried out, and fell away again.
He held her, kissing her shoulder, and then felt something warm and wet on his cheek. “What, are you crying?” he asked. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, never.”
“Why then, ma très chère fille?”
“Nothing, just the loveliness of it, the amazing loveliness! Oh, I thought … Claude.”
“What?”
“Rien—nothing worth speaking of!”
She flung her arm across his stomach. In a moment she was asleep, and he also slept, unable to help himself, keeping her warm body in his arms. He dreamt they were rowing, not over the tiny lake of the park as they had that day, but on the vast sea. He rowed steadily while she kept her hand on his knee; before them was nothing but more churning waters as far as they looked.
He awoke suddenly at the sound of loud cracking and pulled her over to his side of the bed, sheltering her body with his own just seconds before something crashed to the floor. “Merde!” he shouted, leaping up naked. “Merde, the ceiling! I knew it! Are you all right? Let me light the lamp.”
“What?” she asked. “Has the ceiling fallen? How could the ceiling fall?”
“Water leaks from the roof. Look.”
Holding his shoulder, she gazed down at the large pieces of ceiling and rotten wood on the floor. Plaster dust hung in the air, making her cough. Looking up she saw the beams that separated the floors and a new hole several feet wide. She stood, just before he shouted, “Watch out, you’ll cut your foot!”
“I think I stepped on something.”
He swept the broken plaster from the sheets, urged her back on the bed, and held up the lamp. “Merde, there’s a splinter in your heel. I used to get them all the time climbing around the shore. There was broken wood from old boats. Quel bordel! I make love to you and then my damned room falls on top of you.”
“Stop! It hurts!”
“Just one moment and I’ll have it. I’d never hurt you, you lovely girl! There! Come here, come close! Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I will be once it stops hurting.”
“Let me kiss it.”
He kissed the bottom of her foot and playfully licked it and she took hold of his hair and cried, “Now it tickles. Your tongue tickles.” Still he continued until he realized she was laughing. She shook her head and her long hair whipped around and her shoulder shook. She laughed so hard she gasped. He was shouting with laughter then, saying, “And this is what you did not expect …”
“Really, it’s quite marvelous! Such a thing has never happened to me before, truly, truly, Claude!” She pushed him away and then dropped back on the pillows, holding out her arms to him.
HE WOKE EARLY to gaze down at her as she slept. Swept into a corner were the ceiling pieces; he had found the broom in the studio last night after they carefully removed and shook out the sheets and then slept, exhausted, curled together once more.
Outside the window, he heard a few neighbors crossing the courtyard below on their way to work.
Watching her, breathing softly so as not to disturb her, his mind returned to the events of last evening. He could have expected none of it, least of all that in spite of his concerns, this lovely girl was not a virgin when he took her in his arms. All girls of her class were delivered untouched to their weddings. It was none of his business, but he did wonder.
Claude rose quietly, sweeping any further pieces away. A plaster flake was caught in her glimmering hair, and when he touched it Camille opened her eyes and smiled at him.
He sat down on the bed. “I thought I dreamt you. All the time I painted you I felt such tenderness inside me for you, and there you were on the model’s platform, so far away, w
ith the easel between us.”
“I thought of you sometimes too,” she replied. “I didn’t know you saw me as more than a painting.”
“When we were away at the inn, I saw you from the window.”
She lowered her eyes; her eyelashes were like silk and her cheek faintly red where it had pressed against the pillow in sleep. “Did you?”
“So you walked about on the path alone at night?”
“Yes. You’ve no idea how often I’ve been alone in my life, Claude. Sometimes I think always.”
She moved away now; she felt for the sheet to cover her. He tried to tug it down but she shook her head. The languid look turned to a frown. Her voice changed and she looked past him toward the bureau, saying, “Let me up. I must go now. What will my family think? I never came home; I stayed away all night. I stayed all night with you!”
He pulled her against him. “What? You’re going?”
“Of course I’m going!” she said, looking at him sorrowfully. “I’ll have to lie to them. How could I have come with you last night? I’m getting married in two months.” She rose from the bed and looked desperately for her stockings. Her dress was draped over the chair where she had thrown it last night.
He cried, “Then it’s settled? Your life’s settled?”
“I won’t forget this night, Claude. I promise. Never. I’m crying now, you see. Don’t look at me like that. You have the most beautiful, haunted eyes. In my heart, years from now, this night will be safe there.”
He shouted, “But you mustn’t …”
She was sobbing as she dressed and kissed him again many times. She tore herself away from him and he heard her little heeled shoes quickly descending the stairs to the courtyard as she fled away.
The room was so quiet after she was gone.
He stumbled through his day. I must forget her, he thought that evening. It is all too complicated. He stood at the edge of his door, imagining her tangled in his sheets as he watched her sleeping.
Claude & Camille Page 8
