Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  As he and Camille walked down the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, he hoisted his son to his shoulders. Taking her hand, he felt the tales he had heard dissolve in his head though he was too weary to consider why they had been told. Would they never leave the poor girl alone?

  She said tenderly, “You look terrible. What is it?”

  His voice broke a little as he told her about the cancellation of the exhibition.

  Camille at once ceased to walk. “I can’t bear that you’ve had another disappointment, all of you!” she exclaimed. “It’s not right! And poor Frédéric! What could have happened? Didn’t he send you word? All your plans! But it will happen somehow; you’ll find out more when he returns. We’ll just manage until then.”

  He looked at the women’s hats for sale in a shop window and said in a hollow voice, “I’m not sure how. Your father offered me a job working with him. As a sales representative.”

  “Is that what they talked to you about? No wonder you looked like you wanted to bolt when I came in, to have that upon the other loss. Let them find out about the exhibition in their own time. Claude, you can’t work in silks! I have a better idea! Let me work for my uncle in the bookshop every day and have him send his assistant away; his heart’s bad and he needs more help. He can pay proper wages and we’ll manage until you can earn something.”

  “What, you can’t work!”

  “I can.”

  “Poor man! He’s the best of your family. And your novel?”

  “It’s nearly finished! I don’t mind waiting.”

  Their voices had dropped very low over Jean’s murmuring as he played with Claude’s hat. As they slowly walked on, Claude said, “Well, work a little if it amuses you, but I assure you we don’t need the money. I’ll see us through. You’ll have a house and garden soon, I promise.”

  WITHIN A FEW days, the Doncieux family and everyone else he knew had learned about the canceled exhibition and his head began to clear a little. Only then did he remember what he owed the framer, but by that day he was able to cancel only some of his order. His letter to Frédéric received only a few words of reply on folded stationery, “Don’t worry, back soon. So sorry.” Several days later, he heard Frédéric had returned, and he ran over to the studio, climbing the stairs two steps at a time.

  His friend was in his old painting suit, standing by his easel, but Claude could see that something of consequence had happened to him in Montpellier.

  Frédéric barely looked up. “There you are,” he said.

  It was an abrupt greeting. Claude nodded and replied as casually as he could, “What on earth happened?”

  “Nothing much. The main thing is they wanted to make sure I marry first because they’re afraid I won’t go through with it. They damn well know I don’t particularly want to go through with it but I will. Lily will still move here. And we’ll have our exhibition next fall, after I’m married.” Frédéric raised his brush to paint the edge of a flower with maddening care. He’s half here, Claude thought. Everything about him seemed to say, “Don’t touch me.”

  He thought, my friend is hiding something.

  He said, “You’re painting that flower too tightly.”

  “I’m painting it the way I want to paint it.”

  “D’accord. Very well, then do so.”

  Frédéric hardly spoke that day as they painted side by side. Only when Claude put on his hat to go did he reach in his pocket to give Claude some money toward the purchase of the painting. Their eyes met for one moment and Frédéric looked away. Given so coldly, the money felt dirty in Claude’s pocket. It’s nothing I did, he thought as he went home. It’s something with him and he’ll tell me eventually.

  But weeks passed and Frédéric remained withdrawn.

  THOUGH CAMILLE BEGAN working for her uncle, leaving Jean with the Sicilian woman next door, it took Claude some time to gather himself together to figure out what he would do next. In October he tried to place the paintings with an art gallery and met with the same lack of success he had had before.

  It was only a year more until their independent exhibition would really happen; he could manage somehow until then. Everyone was trying to manage, and none of them was quite sure how. He felt Frédéric also had something to struggle with, though it had nothing to do with money. The tall artist withdrew, and the others slowly went their own ways.

  Through the autumn, Claude walked about the neighborhood asking if people wanted a chalk portrait. He applied for work in several colorists’ shops and with his old framer, but they did not need anyone. Another framer said he would display a painting of Claude’s in the window. Over the next week Claude painted a church in winter, using up all his oils in the process, and though the work was displayed as promised, it did not sell. He had no more money, he owed everywhere, and the rent was coming due. There was no way Camille could pay it on her small salary.

  November blew in, and Jean caught cold. Camille set off for the bookstore each day wearing Claude’s much-mended little grass ring, though Claude could see how the work tired her. He hated that she worked. No woman in his family ever had. She should not have had to do it; she was a lady. He knew her uncle was irritable and that she found working for a living much less pleasant than minding the shop now and then on a whim as she had done when he first met her.

  What shall I do? he thought. Where shall I turn?

  As he was walking down the rue Jacob one windy day he peered through the window of a café under renovation and made out Auguste in his blue smock standing on a chair painting a wall. “Good to see you,” Claude exclaimed. “I haven’t seen anyone. No one goes out for wine anymore; no one comes to us. Frédéric hardly talks when I see him.”

  “I know. He’s withdrawing from all of us. He stands and smiles but he’s not quite there.”

  “And you go on making your beautiful world.” Claude looked at the wall with the lovely rosy-cheeked girls dancing and the handsome men.

  “It is my answer to sorrow.”

  Auguste carefully painted the lips on another girl. He said suddenly, “You need work, c’est vrai? Do you want to join me and take those other walls? They just said this morning they’d pay for another painter if I could recommend one.” He wiped his forehead with the crook of his arm. “They want a lot of people in the murals, you know, pretty girls having a good time, dancing, laughing.”

  They worked for the next three days with the tables and chairs piled in the center of the room, and on the third afternoon the manager stopped by to see the progress. When he looked at Claude’s wall, he frowned. “Monsieur, what are you doing? What is it?” he asked. “My customers will not buy more wine with only dabs to look at.”

  “I told you,” Auguste said under his breath.

  “Il peut se faire foutre et sa mère aussi! He can fuck himself and his mother too,” Claude replied, not too softly.

  He strode away through the Paris streets with his shoulders hunched and his face burning. I am meant to do one thing only, he thought angrily, and that is to make real paintings. The only thing was to paint the Paris streets again and try to sell them to his old patrons.

  He poured cold coffee from that morning, and began to write to his patrons. Time passed quickly, his pen hesitating as he searched for the right words. He did not realize the late hour until he heard Camille on the steps. He glanced about. He had not taken their clothes to the laundress. He stumbled over his son’s small wooden wagon as he hurried to the door. Camille was so tired these days he could not bear it. Merde! he said under his breath.

  She stood in the door in her hat and coat, frowning a little. She said, “I thought you’d be at the café working.”

  “I lost that job. I thought I’d try selling work to galleries again. I’d lower my prices, though they’re already to the floor. I’m sorry about the laundry. I can’t think of a single cheerful thing to say.”

  She stared at him, stunned. “You’ve lost the job? How can we pay the rent?”

 
; “I’ll try the galleries again,” he said, looking at the dishes piled on the counter.

  “But we must pay it by tomorrow. Will we lose this place too? I’m trying to keep our situation from my family. I didn’t know you’d go more than two months without earning anything. If we’re thrown out, everyone will know. The woman downstairs knows my uncle, and he’ll tell my parents. Oh, Claude.”

  The breathless fury he had felt at his dismissal from the café job huddled in his throat. He scraped the floor with his shoe. “‘Oh, Claude!’ you say,” he repeated. “As if I didn’t try.”

  “But it’s not just a matter of trying!” she cried. He dared not look at her, but he could see her lovely face was splotched with emotion. “You do try. You try very hard.”

  She came close to him and put a tentative hand on his arm. “Claude,” she said. “Listen to me. I can’t bear it. We can’t live this way anymore. When the private exhibition opens next autumn, everything will be fine. Until then … my father stopped by the bookshop. Remember how he offered you a job with his silk concern? He mentioned it again. It pays fairly well. I think you should take it for a time.”

  Claude stared at her. “I can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. He began to pace the room.

  She followed him. “Then we must borrow again from my father or your aunt. You’d work for him for only a little while, Claude, before your painting begins to sell more. My sister came by yesterday in a new pale gray wool dress and hat on her way to a concert and told me she wished I could come. My father said it breaks his heart to see my life go so badly.”

  “So your life goes badly, does it?” he managed. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  Victoire, who had been snoring in a corner, awoke and began to growl at his feet. He shouted, “Your wretched dog! You had to bring your wretched dog with us!”

  “Did you want me to give up everything I valued for you?”

  “Who asked you? You came for me!”

  She snatched the dog in her arms. “I think it’s time we faced the truth, Claude. You must find some regular employment. Perhaps for a bank …”

  “A bank!” he cried. “I can’t, I can’t!”

  “Why can’t you?”

  Suddenly he recalled all the strange things her parents had told him that afternoon when he had spilled the coffee; suddenly he believed them. His words flew out. “Why do you tell lies? Why didn’t you tell me you ran to your grandmère instead of away with an actor? And came back to your family as innocent as you were born? Why didn’t you tell me the truth about the audition, that you sent me outside and then decided not to take it? You told your sister and she told your mother. I wouldn’t have minded the truth, but I don’t know what’s true with you. You don’t trust me. I think about you all the time; I try so hard.”

  She backed away a little, stunned. He could not stop his words. “Whom did you write letters to when I first met you? This actor whom you told me you wrote to who I learned had died of consumption the year before, the actor you never ran away with? And who wrote you? Your fiancé, I suppose. And where’s the novel you were writing? I don’t care if you don’t sell it—I’ll support us—but where is it?”

  She stammered, “My parents were wrong. I never tell lies.”

  “For God’s sake, Camille!” He was shouting.

  “I didn’t write my fiancé. Sometimes students from the Sorbonne wrote me because they liked me; they thought I was pretty and fascinating. I kept most of the letters I wrote; I never sent them. I think they got left in our room when we had to leave that night in the snow. I liked to be fascinating. It wasn’t good. I’m not clever. Now you know it.” She was gasping now, but she was angry as well. She stepped forward. “If I’ve told any untruths, they didn’t concern you. Have you told me everything, Claude? You know you haven’t! And until you are successful you must swallow your pride and do some sort of ordinary work. Tell me you will!”

  “A few months ago you wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Everyone says you must. Let’s go live with my grandmère.”

  “Do you mean to make a farmer out of me? ‘Here is my poor Claude, who can’t earn his way as other men can.’ Shall I press walnuts and milk goats? Or will you? You live in a fantasy.”

  “I have absolutely had all of this life I can take!” she cried. “You’ve got to make things better for us. I trusted you!”

  He walked back and forth, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other cutting the air, not looking at her. “The thing is …,” he said to his book on the table and the dimly burning light. He swallowed hard. “I think the time has come that we both face this, Minou. I want you and I love you, but I can’t manage. We should never have begun, you and I!”

  She cried, “What are you saying? That you don’t want me? That you don’t want our child?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t know,” he muttered, looking at the unmade bed with the dirty laundry piled on it. “Of course I love you; of course I do. I don’t know anything. I seem to have no power to make my life as I’d want it, no matter how hard I try.”

  His voice grew more bitter. “You don’t really believe I can have such a house and a garden. You expect me to go on when you don’t believe in me! Before you came I had given up on women! You were so sweet, so loving, so beautiful, I couldn’t help thinking of you all the time. I tried to avoid you, though. I knew you’d be disappointed in the end.”

  Camille rushed at him, turning him, but he did not want to meet her eyes. He was so angry he was afraid he would shove her away. “You tried to avoid me?” she cried. “You wanted me. So it’s my fault that we began? There, take your ridiculous grass ring!” She held it out on her open palm, mended and fragile as it was.

  “No, I won’t take that,” he said stubbornly, shaking his head. Now he did not know how to wipe away all the words that had suddenly poured out between them. How can you scrape words away as you do paint from a canvas? The air was thick with them.

  She still held out her hand. “Je vous déteste!—I detest you! Take back your … this.”

  “No.”

  He heard her footsteps on the floorboards and the opening and closing of the stove door before he understood what had happened. Then he shouted, “Did you burn it? Did you burn your ring?”

  She was sobbing through her anger. “It’s not a ring, it’s grass!” she cried. “It never was more than grass! Other women have real rings, real marriages.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “it was only grass. And no, it’s not your fault. We’re both at fault. You shouldn’t have gone home with me that night I took you to dinner. We shouldn’t have had a child.”

  His voice rose. “Go away then, both of you! Leave me alone! Take our son and go live with your sister and her officious husband, the man who is so successful at everything, the man who can tell me what I ought to do, the man who is the way you’d like me to be! And then your mother and father, whom you fled from, will visit you! Why didn’t you marry your rich fiancé? Minou, all the things you thought about me, all the bright, wonderful things, are wrong.”

  He gave her a last bitter look and without taking his coat, stormed out into the night.

  ALONE HE SET out across Paris. He walked so fast the air parted before him as if afraid to hold him back. But where am I going? he thought bitterly. Away from her, away from them, away from my romantic foolishness, the idiot I’ve become. Taking on a family!

  So we have ended it! he continued as he strode past cafés and theaters, their placards stained with rain. I mustn’t be soft and let any longing lead me back. For without them I can go on as I was meant to do. I can make my bed in the corner of Frédéric’s studio. He’ll marry and have his town house and studio and I will live there humbly with nothing but my art. We’ll find that caricature I made of us with our names that we hung on our first studio door and tack it up again. Below in his parlor with his wife he’ll pretend to be happily married, whereas above I will have the pleasure of not pretendi
ng anything at all.

  He walked for hours. Normally he felt such a part of this city, but now he felt all alone. How bitterly he regretted the words he had spoken! Well, it was her fault. There was a way he could end it completely.

  He walked steadily toward the Right Bank and one of the houses that overlooked the river. He had gone there so often his feet knew the way. He would go there as he had the year before he met Camille, up the stairway and into the bedroom with its pale yellow satin drapes. His relationship with the woman who lived there had lasted a time. Winter mornings he would wake to the soft crackling of the fire and sit up barechested in bed for the breakfast tray with its pot of coffee, its warm milk, its buttery rolls. This wealthy widow who had bought a few of his paintings really wanted only one thing from him and, as he had confided in Auguste, that at least he did well.

  She had given him presents: paints, canvases, silk nightshirts. And one day she had said lightly, tousling his hair, “Without me you’d have nothing. You’re only a painter with a lot of extravagant dreams, but you are a beautiful one, Monet.” He had not returned.

  Claude stood by a lamppost looking up at the house. The lights were on in her bedroom, and as he watched through her curtains he saw the shape of a man. He watched even when the lights were dimmed, and he heard laughter. Then he thought, ah connard! What am I thinking? What did I almost do in my anger? Minou is the one with the right to be angry; I’m the one who has failed.

  Hours later, he walked home through the empty streets, over the bridge. Sometimes he was aware of where he was going and sometimes he was aware only of where he had been. He wanted to scrub away what he had almost done and all the words he and Camille had spoken. He wanted to forget her parents’ words, which had haunted him from autumn until now: “Minou makes up things sometimes and doesn’t remember what she said and then says something else. She likely never auditioned. She had periods of deep despondency as a girl when she would fall silent or cry and not get out of bed. Often we didn’t know why.”