Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  Other times he wished he had had finer friends to introduce her to: not the shabby, genial Pissarro, who looked like a farmer with his old boots and untrimmed beard, nor even Auguste. But she loved them. She learned to cook two dishes and invited them to dinner with their women: Pissarro’s outspoken Julie, who had been his mother’s maid and who gazed about her, saw what had to be done, and quietly accomplished it; and impulsive, idealistic, and volatile Lise, whom Auguste was falling more in love with every day. She was the eighteen-year-old daughter of a philosophy teacher who did not mind that his beautiful daughter had taken a thin, intense painter as her lover. Her mother had run off years before.

  One bright, clear winter afternoon they all met in the studio to celebrate a portrait commission Auguste had just completed of a little girl. Several painters had work stored here or hung on the walls, and others had brought new paintings. They were discussing to whom they might market them and what they should submit to the Salon, now several months away in the spring.

  Camille knelt to gaze at the new work; she studied the canvases of fields in flower, country paths, and Auguste’s portrait of the child, which he was to deliver the next day.

  “It’s difficult, mademoiselle,” Pissarro said from his chair across the room. “We sell something and then nothing. Most people say what we do is a sketch and against all the rules of classical art. I can count on one hand those who really believe in us.”

  “This is yours, monsieur, I think! Where did you paint it?”

  “Louveciennes, where I live. It’s the village road.”

  Still on her knees with her skirts flowing about her, Camille let the edge of her hand hover over the painting and then looked at all of the painters. She asked, “Don’t you all understand what you are doing, all of you? You can smell the earth and the moisture in the air; it’s all here. And oh, Monsieur Renoir, your pictures of young women! They’re so fresh and happy. Someday people will pay a fortune for all of your work, but only if you allow nothing to come between you; you must remain together. Do you remember the three Musketeers, who lived un pour tous, tous pour un—one for all, all for one?”

  Auguste gave her his hand to help her rise. “Yes, that is the way, of course! How generous and kind you are, mademoiselle!” he said. “What can we do for you? Claude tells me you love theater. Would you like some tickets? Lise adores theater. I can get some free for the Théâtre de l’Odéon through an actress I know.”

  She turned brightly to Claude. “I would love to go!” she said. “I love it more than anything.”

  “I know you do!”

  “It’s not exactly the expensive box seats,” Auguste added, reflecting, but she declared, “Will we be high up? I always wondered what it was like!”

  A small group of them made their way into the theater the next evening, exclaiming over the ornate lobby with statuary and glistening chandeliers, then mounting to the highest gallery, where they squeezed into their seats. Frédéric had nowhere to put his long legs. Camille said, “I feel like a bird looking down on everyone, that this is a secret place.”

  Auguste bought nuts to eat and trod on their feet during the interval trying to climb back to his seat. “Pig!” Lise cried, kissing him. They had a playful, sharp relationship.

  The friends went again that week to Le malade imaginaire by Molière; the great actress Sarah Bernhardt played Angélique. Camille and Lise wept over the translation of Shakespeare’s Le roi Lear and of the tribulations of the king’s faithful daughter Cordelia. They were fascinated by Passant, in which Bernhardt appeared as a boy Florentine singer, her shapely legs in close-fitting leggings.

  “Women should wear leggings,” Auguste whispered. “Down with skirts. I mean that in every sense of the word.”

  After the play, they all walked to a cheap restaurant, where they were served bread and some meat that claimed to be pork. The rooms were full of poor writers and poets; the actors who had smaller parts came in as well and talked loudly about what roles they hoped to have. The gaslight was so scant that they could hardly see what they ate.

  “I think it’s tree bark,” Lise said, poking with her fork.

  Auguste shook his head. “No, likely a corpse, and not too fresh.”

  Camille put down her spoon. “I’ll just have the bread,” she said and Claude cried out imperiously, raising his hand, “Garçon! Bring your best cheese for madame!”

  They climbed back to the room above the laundry, where they lit lamps and Camille found a copy of a Molière comedy, which she persuaded others to read with her. “I want to study acting,” she cried breathlessly to Claude when everyone had left. “Lise and I discussed it when we were walking together. We’ll share lessons. My family never let me. Would you be proud of me?”

  “I’m proud of you in all you do,” he said. “I know this is what you want.” He saw a paper under the table and retrieved Auguste’s sketch of the two young women bending their heads together over one play script. He kept it carefully among his things.

  Camille and Lise began to study elocution and dramatic movement privately with an elderly retired actor. They went twice a week at five francs a lesson, and Claude sometimes came back from doing his chalk portraits or painting around the city to find the furniture pushed back and Camille and Lise reciting scenes with each other, one of the two dishes Camille could cook simmering on the stove.

  One evening he found Camille crying out the last words of the tragic Phèdre, expiring in her dressing gown at the foot of the table set for dinner. Lise sat cross-legged on the floor prompting her and reading all the other roles. He leaned on the door, arms folded, portfolio at his feet, smiling at them. “Monsieur! Monsieur!” they called to him, laughing and giggling. They utterly charmed him. How happy I am, he thought.

  SNOW FELL OVER the city one night in November until the steps and horse posts and signs were covered; it surrounded the chimneys on the roofs and piled outside windows slowly, sealing them inside. They fell asleep wrapped in blankets before the fire.

  Claude woke to scratching noises, and in the shadows he saw Victoire worrying a paper that had been slipped under the door. He rubbed his eyes and crawled over to rescue it, knocking down a small pile of playbooks on the floor that rested on the large purple theatrical cape Camille had acquired somewhere to wear while practicing tragic queens. He leaned near the last of the firelight to open the paper. A flush of heat shot through him. “Merde!” he muttered.

  Camille stirred from sleep. “What is it?” she asked in the more resonant voice of her training.

  He rose, pushed aside the lethargic Victoire, who was settling in to sleep in their one armchair, and dropped heavily into it. He would have given anything not to tell her, but he could think of no way around it. “It’s about the damn rent,” he said. “We have to pay it all or be out by the morning.”

  “But I never heard of such a thing.” She came across the room barefoot, wrapped in her blanket, and looked gravely down at him. “People don’t do things like that. It’s not civilized. Don’t we have the money to pay them? Oh, Claude! Is it because I bought that hat? It is my fault, isn’t it?”

  “But that hat belonged to you,” he said. “It was wrong that any other woman should have it. Hats! I’ll buy you twenty of them, just wait!”

  “I’ll hurry over in the morning and ask my father for a loan.” She had visited her family a few times since her father had come to them.

  Claude cried, “Never! And it may be too late by then.” He jumped up, pulling the carpetbag from under the bed. “I’m sending you to your sister’s now,” he said over his shoulder. “Get dressed quickly. Get your hairbrushes and your good dresses. Now, dear, now. I’ll come later.” He threw a few of her dresses into wicker trunks and bundled her into her coat. She picked up Victoire.

  “I want to stay!” she said steadily.

  He shook his head. “I’ll leave as quickly as I can. I know these people.”

  “What do you know?” she asked him fixedly
.

  He fell silent, thinking of friends tossed from their houses, two painters he had met. One was thrown out without his clothes. One had been beaten. He remembered a story told in art school of the sound of old copper pots hitting the courtyard as some sculptor’s wife threw them from the window to save them. “Come on!” he cried more harshly than he wished.

  She looked a little frightened at his tone and distractedly picked up the playbooks and the cape. He came forward swiftly and kissed her. “It’s all right,” he whispered.

  Outside, the snow fell on her coat and hat and on his suit jacket. At last a carriage appeared, the driver huddled on the top seat. Claude settled her in with the paintings and boxes. “Ask your sister to pay for the cab,” he whispered. “I’ll be there shortly. I need to take some things to the studio.”

  He stood for a moment watching the carriage turn the corner and then hurried inside again up the steps. There was such stillness about everything; the whole house was sleeping. He heard snoring from behind one door.

  In his room, he stood looking at all his things, the murals on the wall, his clothes and dozens of paintings. Women in the Garden was already stored at the studio. He could not take everything at once; he had to choose what was most important and take it there tonight. He felt in the pocket of his overcoat, which hung by the door; he had a few francs for a wagon or carriage if he could find one.

  Somewhere a clock struck one.

  He wrapped several of his best paintings in oilcloth and packed a large valise. He would empty it at Frédéric’s, borrow money for another cab or two, and come back for more of his things. He could get back by half past two in the morning if he could find some transport now and the vehicle did not get stuck in a snowdrift.

  As he shoved his mother’s picture into the valise, he heard the opening of the door far below, the sleepy murmur of the concierge, and then footsteps ascending. They mounted until they stopped on his landing. Someone knocked hard on his door. “Monsieur!” someone shouted. “Open up, monsieur. We know you’re in there!”

  He sprang for the bolt, but someone had fitted a key to the lock. Claude threw his weight against the door to hold it closed. Someone pushed, and the door burst open, sending him sprawling back. Three strangers stood in his room, men in wet coats who looked as if they could get no better work to do.

  One growled, “Was monsieur thinking of slipping out with something? Nothing belongs to monsieur anymore. Monsieur can redeem his things when the rent’s paid.”

  Claude seized the tied canvases and pushed past them to the dark stairs, where he slipped. He got to his feet, cursing the sharp pain in his ankle, and half hopped down the remaining steps with the canvases. When he got to the bottom he realized no one had followed. I should have beaten them, he thought, his heart pounding. For a moment he was so appalled he had not that he could not move.

  They might follow, he thought grimly. He had best go on.

  The concierge had closed her door.

  The snow was worse than before, swirling all around, obscuring the doors of the dirty brick buildings and the alleys. It was a while before the rage left him enough that he could think at all and remember that his hat and overcoat were upstairs, the few francs he had in the coat pocket.

  He put up his collar and limped to the alley. An overhanging roof sheltered a cart, and he squeezed toward it to get out of the snow and stumbled against a bulky form under a blanket. It moved and cursed him.

  Claude felt his way, trying to protect his paintings under his jacket, and took shelter in a church doorway to feel his ankle. A bad twist, likely not a sprain, and nothing broken. Still, it hurt like hell. I need to figure out what I can do, he thought. I can’t walk very much, but I’ll go as far as I can toward the Right Bank and try to make it across the river to the studio. It will take me a few hours to reach Frédéric’s in the snow. Suppose he and Auguste are not there and they have taken away the concierge’s key?

  Claude limped on, staying as close to the buildings as he could, sheltering his paintings. Now and then a carriage passed him and drove on. What was worth noticing about a man limping somewhere at night without a coat?

  He was heading toward the river when a solitary cart moving down the avenue slowed its old horse and the driver called out, “All right there, young fellow? Had too much to drink?”

  Claude sheltered his eyes to look at the cloaked shape and the horse’s snowy back. “Not drunk, monsieur,” he called, his voice sounding lonely in the snow. “I’m trying to reach the rue de Furstenberg, across the river.”

  “I’ll go as far as the Seine and turn west then. Come on.”

  He parted from the man at the river and painfully made his way down under the bridge, where he saw the light of a crude fire and a number of men gathered around it. They moved to make a place for him, and he sat down on the stone. After a time, he broke the stretchers from his paintings and fed the wood to the flame. It was easier to carry the canvases rolled under his coat anyway.

  He reached the rue de Furstenberg as dawn was breaking. The concierge came grumbling, awakened from her warm bed. “What a night!” she said crossly. “You’ll catch your death, young man! Imagine leaving this lovely neighborhood for Pigalle! Take the key. No one’s there, I think.”

  There were the familiar steep stairs, and the same chamber pot someone always left out. In the studio, Claude crossed the darkness to his former bedroom, which Auguste Renoir now rented. He stripped off his suit and crawled under the covers.

  He woke to the fragrant smell of coffee and pulled himself from bed.

  The studio was filled with white light, which reflected from the snowy roofs. Pissarro and Auguste were at the table drinking black coffee and breaking off pieces of fresh bread.

  Auguste reached over and slid out a chair. “I heard you snoring!” he said. “Lucky I didn’t come in drunk and fall on top of you. I spent the night with Lise, and Pissarro just arrived. Here’s a cup for you! Where’s Camille? What happened? You look like merde.”

  Claude wrapped his hands around the warm cup. “She’s at her sister’s; we were thrown out. The rent, you know.”

  Pissarro shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell us there was a problem?”

  “It happened very fast. It was … putain!”

  “Why are you limping?”

  “Damn foot; it’s better now. A bruise, I think. Where’s our good Doctor Bazille?”

  “Some relatives are in town and he’s taking them to a concert. Pissarro and I had better go over to your room and see what can be done.”

  IT WAS AFTERNOON before Claude gathered the courage to fetch Camille. The omnibus moved slowly through the snowy streets, and he turned from the window, wincing. He did not want to remember how he had walked last night.

  The omnibus left him near the Parc Monceau. He walked past the black and gold iron gates and crossed the slushy street, marked with horse droppings and carriage wheels. The apartment building rose with its mansard roofs high above him. He passed through the wide oak doors; the young, sharp-nosed concierge studied him doubtfully but motioned him up the polished wood stairs. He looked back at her critical face and the marks of his wet shoes.

  Camille’s sister cautiously opened the door.

  He glimpsed the parlor, the mauve-velvet-upholstered furniture, the silver coffeepot and porcelain cups set before a fire just before she closed the door behind her. She was not going to ask him in.

  “What are these goings-on, monsieur!” she whispered. “Minou arrived half frozen past midnight. How could you take a girl from a good home to endure such an experience! My mother’s inside. We think it best, monsieur, if my sister never sees you again. Please send back her dresses if indeed you still have them.”

  He said, “It was a misunderstanding; it was an oversight.”

  “In fact, she doesn’t want to see you.”

  “That’s a lie!” he shouted as he glanced down to see the concierge mounting the stairs toward him with a heav
y stick in her hand. At that moment the apartment door opened and Camille ran out. She wore only her dress and held her corset, hose, and barking dog under one arm. She seemed like something wild and tangled. “I was looking from the window!” she cried. “I saw you crossing the street! I couldn’t sleep for worry! Did they come? Did they hurt you? I would kill them if they hurt you!” She threw her arms around him so hard he almost lost his balance. He could feel the wild beating of her heart.

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN when they reached the studio. Their many boxes and wet bags and canvases and paintings were heaped in the hall and against the studio walls. Pissarro and Auguste and Sisley had rescued some things from the landlord of the Pigalle room, who promised to deliver the rest tomorrow when the remainder of the money was raised. “Les putains!” Pissarro said angrily. “The whores. Landlords should be exiled. Rent should be free.” He kicked the wall.

  Frédéric said, “I’m so sorry, Claude. Are you both all right? She’s not!” Camille was sneezing and feverish. Lise took her into the other room to help her out of her wet clothes and into a dressing gown and then tucked her onto the sofa and covered her with blankets.

  They pushed the table to the sofa and Claude coaxed her to eat a little chicken. They opened a new small keg of wine sent by Frédéric’s family. The room was made warm by the puffing stove.

  Auguste said between mouthfuls, “You both take the bedroom again. I’ll sleep on the cot until you find another place.”

  Frédéric was too angry to sit down; he walked back and forth between the easels. “We’ve got to prevent this from happening again,” he said. “It kills me when I think how gifted you all are. Claude couldn’t even sell The Green Dress after all the praise it got. And we never know if the Salon will deign to take us, and then if they do, most people can’t find our work amid all the other work.”