Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  THE STRETCHED CANVAS was so large he needed two boys to help him dig a ditch lined with oilcloth so that he could lower it a little when he needed to paint the top. He ran about gathering a huge bunch of flowers and placed them in Camille’s arms. He painted her that day and on the many that followed. She stood in a loose garment smelling another bouquet; she passed behind the tree, retreating. The four of her moved and blended into one. He would change the one dress into several in the final painting. That dress was now dingy at the hem.

  “Can I see it, Claude?” she called.

  “Later. Don’t move your mouth or I’ll kiss it.”

  “Then I’ll talk away so you’ll kiss me!” She raised the flowers so that only her large eyes could be seen, following him as he worked. He smiled, slightly sweaty under his shirt. The sun was exquisite.

  At night when they undressed he sometimes remembered that he was not the first man to make love to her. Who was your first lover? he wanted to ask. Surely not that old man, your fiancé? And were there others before him? To whom did you write letters from the bookshop, and who wrote them to you? As she lay on the sheets before him, naked but for her last petticoat and arms open to him, he bit his lip. His inquiry would come out strident and jealous. He would say nothing now but keep the question inside of him.

  The painting was done; he had captured the last small white flower.

  “Well,” he said a few nights later with a sigh when they returned to their room, “we must go home tomorrow. My money’s gone. How sad to leave this place. You belong in a garden.” He stood at the window, looking out at the dark night, and they fell asleep later without touching. In the morning he took his now dry canvas from the stretchers and laid large sheets of paper on top of the painted surface, rolling it loosely so that the paper was outside and tying it with rope. My love is inside there now, he thought sadly; my love is rolled away in darkness.

  Slowly they walked away from the farmhouse and the garden to the station to catch the train back to Paris.

  Her sister, Annette, was waiting for them at the Gare Saint-Lazare.

  THAT TALL YOUNG matron in her ornately decorated hat who looked so like Camille came rapidly toward them through the crowds under the huge glass domes of the station, calling over the shouting porters and screaming newsboys.

  Claude whispered, “Merde! What’s she doing here?”

  Camille gave him a quick, tragic look and stammered, “It’s my fault. I wrote her the day before yesterday that we were coming back this morning around eleven because I just knew how she’d worry. But … I told her to tell no one.”

  Annette was within a few feet of them now, clutching her pink parasol so tightly that he felt she would hit him with it. “Are you out of your mind, Minou?” she exclaimed above the noise of the crowds. “To go off a whole month with no word? We finally traced you to this man’s studio and his peculiar friends. One of them told us you were with him. You’re fortunate we didn’t know exactly where until last night when your letter came!”

  Claude opened his mouth to speak. “Madame,” he began, but Annette Lebois’ words rose over his. The sisters were now not a foot apart.

  Annette’s slightly freckled face was pale with outrage. “What about your engagement, Minou? My husband wanted to go to the police but Father dissuaded him to avoid scandal. We have kept it from your fiancé; we told him you were away outside Lyon with our poor grandmère and likely too distraught to write. And how will he marry you after you have simply run off with some painter? Yes, monsieur, that is what you are indeed. Minou, you swore you’d never do this again!”

  Camille stamped her foot. “This time has nothing to do with that!” she cried passionately. “You said you’d never mention it again; you broke your promise! I went away with Claude because that’s what I wanted to do.”

  A porter with a trolley piled with luggage was trying to make his way around them, bumping against the standing rolled canvas, but neither sister paid him any attention. “Yes, you always do what you want!” Annette replied. “You always have! Are you planning on staying with this man? What proper home can he give you? What sort of income does monsieur have? Where does he live? In a studio with half a dozen other painters! And what sort of a man is he to take you away and cause you to lose your good name?”

  Annette began to pull her sister’s arm. “You must come now and talk to Maman and Papa! And your dress is dirty! How could you be seen in public with such a dirty dress!”

  Camille was crying now, tearing at her gloves and stamping her feet. “Leave me alone! I’ll go to them without you. I know what I’m doing. Go away, go away!”

  “Madame,” Claude said, raising his voice. Several people had now stopped to stare at them. “I beg you, madame …”

  Annette Lebois turned away from him; she was also crying now. “Your good name is lost unless we can conceal everything.”

  CLAUDE COULD FIND no seats for them on the crowded omnibus. He kept one arm around Camille, while the other balanced the rolled painting, which was taller than he was by a few feet. A bit of the protective paper had ripped and showed a riot of painted white flowers. People climbed over them to descend. The stopping and starting of the horses in the heavy traffic threw them against each other and once nearly knocked him into an elderly man’s lap. He tried to find his handkerchief as the tears still ran down her face.

  As the omnibus crept over the crowded bridge to the Left Bank, he whispered, “Did you really run off with someone before me?”

  “I did, and it was a stupid thing,” she replied sadly. “I was sixteen, an innocent girl, and he lied to me.”

  “Will you tell me about it sometime?”

  “One day when I get the courage.”

  “You can always tell me the truth.”

  Her warm eyes looked at him as gratefully as they had many times before, but now it was more poignant because she had been weeping. She pressed his hand and whispered, “Oh, thank you! I know that and I will!”

  More passengers squeezed on board and glanced angrily at the huge, rolled painting. He stared at the dirty floorboards and black shoes of the woman sitting in front of them. “Well, we’re back in Paris. Does this mean good-bye, Minou? If that’s the pet name your sister calls you, I’ll use it too. Do you intend to keep your engagement and marry that man?”

  She stared at him, her long Grecian face indignant. “What? What do you think of me? Don’t you understand? I’m in love with you; I’m so much in love with you!”

  They descended at their stop on the rue Jacob, where he took her face in his hands and kissed her. “I love you too,” he said. “I don’t want you to go away.”

  She stepped back. “I’m going now to settle things with my mother and father,” she said quietly. And then she was gone, hurrying down the street.

  HE BALANCED THE heavy canvas on his shoulder like an itinerant peddler to mount the stairs to the studio. His good friend the painter Sisley ran down to help him as he approached the top, but Claude shook his head. When he maneuvered his way into the room, he saw Frédéric standing by a new painting of a nude girl; he wore his old painting suit as if he had never left. “Claude!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t write. I see you got everything I sent you.”

  Claude stared at Frédéric’s face and managed to catch his breath. “And I thought you all were my friends!” he shouted. “Which one of you or the other idiots told Camille’s family she was with me? Was it you, Bazille, when I wrote you for my paints and easels? You have a blissful time at home with your Lily and now you want to ruin things for me.”

  “What? Let me help you with that!”

  Claude shook his head, but together they brought the canvas to rest on the floor. “You’re wrong,” Frédéric said bluntly. “It wasn’t any of us on purpose. Pissarro saw your letter lying about and forgot he was supposed to be quiet about it. He was carrying his portfolio and his son the other day when someone stopped him in the street and asked him if he knew you. He said you
were away with your pretty model and gave them the studio address because they said they wanted to commission a painting. He didn’t think; he’s so honest. Now he says he’d rather return to the West Indies than face you. Yesterday her family walked in our door, which we hadn’t locked. Auguste’s Lise was modeling naked on the stand. What a mess.”

  Claude grunted. “Sorry,” he said. He walked back and forth, gently touching the bristles of the brushes in the jars, turning over a tube of paint to study the color label as if he had never seen it before, fingers drumming on the dresser and the table. “I mean it, I’m sorry. Come on, help me unroll this and put it on the stretchers again. Thanks for sending the paint.”

  They unrolled the canvas on the floor and placed bricks carefully on the edges to keep it from curling. Claude stood between his friends, who were studying it. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s the best thing you’ve done,” Frédéric said after a time. “It’s far better than the portrait of her in the green dress. I don’t think anyone’s done anything like that, the movement of the women, the sun. So you went away with her, you lucky bastard. Of course I’d never betray your secret. So she’s ‘in all ways lovely,’ eh? But I’ve met her irate parents now and gotten an even clearer idea of her situation.”

  Claude grunted. “So what idea do you have?” he asked.

  Frédéric knelt to admire the painting. “It’s just girls like this. Good, upper-class girls. They’re raised like precious flowers to take their place in society, to live the lives of their mothers in paying calls, hiring carriages, eating dinner off fine china. You don’t know what trouble she’ll be in for climbing into your bed these weeks.”

  Claude placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder and thought of Camille now with her family telling them the news. “It’s not for weeks, Bazille,” he said seriously, “it’s for always. We love each other. We want a life together. As for the things she’ll miss, I’ll make them up and more. I’m on the edge of doing very well. We all are. I’ll take care of her. I’ll find someplace to live. It would be too crowded here.” He nodded, suddenly filled with calm: he envisioned the world he would have with her eventually, the elegant city rooms and the house in the country with a garden.

  “So you’re leaving here?” Sisley asked, looking up from the painting.

  Claude looked around the studio at all the hanging paintings. “I bet I’ll be missed,” he said.

  Frédéric shook his head, making a wry face. “I won’t miss your snoring,” he exclaimed. “Auguste is looking for a room and he can have yours. Besides, nothing much will change. You’ll be here every day to paint.”

  “Yes, every damn day! Can you clean up the dirty socks if she comes too? What can you do? Friends fall in love and move on. Speaking of love, how’s your Lily these four months you’ve been home?”

  Frédéric stood up. “She was sad when I left. She asked me when I’d come back to live. I said three years. So I have a little time to learn to be the artist I’d like to be with all of you before I become I don’t know what. I have a little more time.”

  Interlude

  GIVERNY

  August 1908

  The old artist put aside thoughts of Camille’s unforgiving sister. Something so large and extraordinary was happening in his painting; it was the most extraordinary work he had ever done. For four years steadily he had been painting the lily pond and little else; he felt that at the age of sixty-eight, the greatest challenge of his work was yet before him. He could not quite conceive when he would exhibit this work, which was so very personal.

  And yet sometimes at the end of the day he also thought of the lacquered Japanese box and all its mysteries. One night after supper he put his pride aside and went to his room to write her once more.

  My dear madame,

  I must tell you what a great hurt it was to me that after all these years you still hold me responsible for your sister’s death. I was also very angry and resolved never to try to contact you again as you wished, but that is impossible for me, so I am writing once more in hope of beginning a communication between us.

  I realize you did not even know I had moved to Giverny. It’s a small hamlet forty miles from Paris in farm country. You may remember I loved to garden, and over the years I have made a large and beautiful one. In varying seasons it is full of poppies, marigolds, sunflowers. I also have a lower garden with a pond and many paintings of this, which today I have understood I may not have the courage to exhibit next spring, though many people are urging me to do so. To show my heart, as my old mentor once told me to. Today I do not have that courage, but still I must write this letter.

  I did not even know you were in Paris until a friend mentioned that you had returned there a while ago and owned a successful millinery shop on the Champs-Élysées. It has been nearly thirty years since our last meeting. I am older than my years, paunchy and white-bearded, my just rewards from tramping long hours out in inclement weather to paint. My vision has also begun to trouble me.

  I cannot say how many memories opened to me when I first wrote you. All I have now of your sister are my many paintings and the contents of a box. It seemed impossible that all that is left of her can be crammed into two drawers. There are things I do not understand, and I believe you can explain them to me. Of all those who knew her well and loved her, we alone remain, but for my friend Auguste, who is now far from me and not well.

  Can we meet somewhere after all these years? Would you do me that kindness? For suddenly I must search for your sister again. Perhaps it is my age—one knows one is not immortal and it is time to think back on all we loved.

  Yours sincerely, C. Monet

  He enclosed a sprig of lavender before posting it.

  Part Three

  1867

  Don’t work bit by bit, but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere.

  —CAMILLE PISSARRO

  THE ROOM HE AND CAMILLE MOVED TO A FEW DAYS LATER was long and dark with only one small window. It was located in a workmen’s neighborhood of Pigalle above a laundry. She brought her beautiful dresses and her fluffy white dog, Victoire, who was getting on in years and peed wearily in corners. “Come, Victoire! Viens, vite!” she called and the hysterical little creature leapt after her, tongue out. The smell of hot water and heating irons rose up from dawn to dusk with the chatter of the laundry girls.

  Claude received another check from his aunt. He wrote a gracious letter thanking her but decided not to tell her yet that he was living with Camille. To pay for immediate expenses, he drew portraits in red chalk of neighbors, and Camille contributed money she had accumulated from family gifts over the years, which she kept in a little black-beaded purse.

  They were both astonished to have found each other. You are not a dream, they whispered to each other in the middle of the night. Still at times he woke and thought he was in the studio again, and he listened for his friends’ low voices in the other room.

  They had been living together only a few weeks when her father showed up at the door. Monsieur Doncieux was a weary-looking and not large man of perhaps sixty years. He knocked very politely and Camille rose from mopping up after Victoire, crying, “Papa!”

  “So this is where you …”

  Claude put out his hand, but Monsieur Doncieux ignored it. Claude felt a rising anger but decided to say nothing for Camille’s sake. Hastily he cleared laundry and books from their chairs, saying, “Will you sit, monsieur?” They all sat, and Claude took Camille’s fingers, which were suddenly cold.

  Monsieur looked about the room at the canvases and his daughter’s many dresses hung from hooks as they had no wardrobe. He glanced at the murals of the bucolic countryside on the cracking plaster walls that Claude and Auguste had painted together one night until four in the morning.

  Her father began clumsily. “Minou, your mother’s desperate. We can only hope you’ll return soon. At least you’ve not married yet. You may have thought we preferred it, but
we feel that step would be more irrevocable.” He added sadly, “I only hope you have enough to eat.”

  She reached out her other hand for her dog to come and said uncomfortably, “Claude is a very good cook!”

  “Your mother and I want you to know that we will receive you back home anytime and that though we have sent back the ring as you asked us, your fiancé says that he will excuse you this for your youth, and that he still loves you.”

  “But I don’t love him,” Camille replied intensely. “And I love Claude and I love his work. I’m proud to stand beside him as he paints. You must not insult Claude. I won’t have it.”

  Claude cleared his throat. “I shall take good care of her, monsieur,” he said. “And I shall do well.” He listened to more of the arguing back and forth, his body aching from withheld anger. When her father rose to leave, he did not offer his hand again, but when he and Camille were alone the blood rushed to his face and he hurled the pile of laundry to the floor, shouting, “Merde! Merde!” The terrified dog crept whimpering under the bed.

  “Oh, Claude!” she said, her long face tragic. “He barely kissed me good-bye! I’ve hurt him and that poor dull man they wanted me to marry. I never wanted to hurt anyone, and yet I have, but I can’t live their lives. I can’t. And yet …” She covered her face with both hands.

  He took her in his arms. For hours he seemed to hear her father’s footsteps descending the stairs.

  THEY THOUGHT THAT evening that they could not soon forget the visit, but within a few days they again plunged happily into their busy lives.

  At first his friends mostly left them alone, but after a time they visited regularly. They came up the stairs bearing food and wine, and soon she was throwing her arms about them, kissing them, welcoming them. They treated her like something precious. If there had been any shyness between her and them, it had left. Only Paul Cézanne did she find odd.

  Sometimes Claude took her with him over the bridge to the Right Bank and the café in the Batignolles district. She wore her blue and white striped dress and a little cloth hat with a feather. The artists all sat together at the same marble table in the back. She ordered cake and Auguste finished it; she drank from their glasses, putting her pretty lips to the rim. In her exquisite dresses she sat among them like the lady she was.