Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  So she never ran away with anyone, he thought. As for her despondency, he also had been moody as a boy. Maybe she made up tales to protect herself from such a mother! Likely it was her old fiancé then who had been her first lover and to whom she had written letters. One day they would talk about it; one day it would all be clear. Meanwhile he loved and needed her.

  She will not be there, he thought. Suppose she ran out like she did from the cottage and left the baby alone? Jean walks now! He could be eating my paints or pulling down the knives.

  He raced up the stairs.

  She was there, sleeping in bed with Jean sleeping next to her. He dropped his clothes and slid into the other side of the bed, pressing his naked body against hers, carefully draping his arm around her so that it also touched his son.

  She was awake. “Oh, Claude, I missed you!” she whispered. “I’m so sorry we quarreled. I want only you, even as we are. Once or twice I’ve said things that aren’t true. They aren’t lies, but they aren’t exactly true because when I look back, it seems that things that didn’t happen ought to have, and those that did happen perhaps should never have. You see.”

  “I am trying to,” he whispered. “So your audition …”

  She was sobbing. “I tried to take it, but my voice died away. I was suddenly terribly shy. I don’t know if I could ever be anything really magnificent. I did burn my book. It’s not as good as Zola or George Sand.”

  “But it was good, ma chère!”

  “That’s not enough for me. Only paint! You will do well! I’m sorry I broke down. From now on all is well if only you love me.”

  “Yes, I do,” he replied. “There’s no one I could ever love like you. You are the sun on the grass and the light on the water.” Mon Dieu, he thought as she fell asleep in his arms, let all memories of this night pass away and all ghosts that were before me.

  1870

  I never had a fighter’s temperament and I would have given up many times over had not my good friend Monet, who had a fighter’s temperament, backed me up.

  —RENOIR TO A YOUNG PAINTER

  THAT, HOWEVER, WAS the last time that winter he made love to her successfully. They had laughed when it happened the first time. Of all things he could do, that had never left him before.

  Camille worked in the bookshop every day; it was but a few streets away from their room, so she ran back and forth, sometimes leaving Jean with a neighbor and sometimes taking him with her. She left him only occasionally with Claude because she felt Claude needed his time free to paint. He still hated that she went to work. He scraped down canvases in order to have new ones. He borrowed paint. He knew she had taken money from her family and dared not confront her. They were alone at Christmas with their child; all their friends had scattered and he would not go to her parents’ Christmas Eve réveillon dinner. She had cried herself to sleep.

  Claude’s father wrote in January and Claude put the letter away unopened between books to read later and forgot about it. It was weeks later when he met someone in the street who told him that Claude’s funny, tolerant old aunt had died of heart failure. Tears blurred his eyes. He began to write his father and did not. After a time, his brother, Léon, wrote him an angry letter, to which Claude also did not respond.

  AS THE WINTER progressed, he became ill with one thing after another. For a time he had a thick cough and a fever, and Camille wrote to her grandmère asking for an herbal mix to brew as a tea. Sage tea, was the advice that was sent back. Do you still have any of the holy water? Sprinkle it on his pillow at night.

  The letter was beautifully written by a priest, for the widow Faucher was illiterate.

  The package held dried sage and rosemary in a piece of cloth. Camille bought black currant jelly, and stopped at the chemist with its rosewood cabinets to purchase a small brown bottle of sweet spirits of niter. In their room she mixed the jelly and the spirits with boiling water, sitting by him while he drank a whole cup and keeping the rest in a covered bowl. She bound a kerchief around her hair and walked about in her large apron. And there was darling Jean, his soft, sweet little boy, now a toddler exploring everything; more than once Claude found him trying to get the cap off a tube of oil paint or chewing thoughtfully on a brush.

  Victoire snored at the bed’s end.

  He did not go to see his friends, and they seldom came to see him, for after the postponement of the exhibition to the autumn, they all seemed disgruntled with one another. Everyone was struggling. There was no time or money for meeting in cafés. Frédéric was unhappy but would not say why.

  Claude lay awake most nights at Camille’s side listening to the sound of the city; he was exhausted but could not sleep.

  One bitterly cold day he found a letter in the mail slot from his father and shook it out to read as he mounted the steps, the tin milk container in his hand and bread under the other arm. “My dearest Claude, I think it best not to keep my bad news from you any longer. The doctors believe I have a cancer. I’m too weak to work in the shop anymore. I’m planning to sell it, which saddens me. I’ve not heard from you in over a year. What can you be doing? Write when you can.”

  He had to fumble to get the key in his lock for the tears that filled his eyes. How many times had he composed future triumphant letters in his mind to his father saying, I am doing so well and have a country house and a garden. Come live with us. Come stand beside me in my marriage; know your grandson.

  He could not write home until his plans were realized.

  Claude stood in the middle of their room, letter in his hand, and then sank down onto the tumbled, unmade bed. He lay on his back, covering his face with his arm. His father would not live long enough for the triumphant letters. All sorts of things were ending around him, and his position was just the same … beginning, trying, stumbling. Whatever troubles he had faced before, there had always been painting to run to, but no more.

  He saw the color of snow, winter trees, or sunlight on a path no longer with passion but with indifference. He had stood by the window with his brush poised and could find no reason for it to touch the canvas. Where had his passion to paint gone? It had never left him before. He thought, This thing I loved so has become nothing for me but a canvas worth selling. The parks, the churches, the sea, the fields—all have stopped shimmering for me.

  Lying in bed with his arm over his face, he murmured, Auguste, damn it, what would you do? You see, Frédéric, the situation’s this. My fault, of course, but damn it! He gestured a little as if they were in the room, sitting at the table, nodding. They had all been over the familiar ground before. Why they all had to paint, why they must paint. No one discussed what it was like when they no longer wanted to do it, when the intimacy of it was gone and left you with nothing. Frédéric was getting ready for his marriage, withdrawing into his own proud petit bourgeois world. What did he know? Everything was so easy for him. He had even achieved a great success in last spring’s Salon while everyone else was refused. They were strangers to each other now.

  That was it, then. Claude strode across the room and knocked his small easel and new painting to the floor, sending the colors on the palette chipping and flaking over the floorboards, spilling the linseed oil. He seized every picture on the wall and slammed it to the floor; he hurled his sketchbooks after them. He would have burned them all but there was no coal for the fire. He could slash them with his artist’s razor.

  He stepped over the paintings, losing his balance, falling, the razor cutting into a canvas. He looked down at it. A man could end it all and with it end all the aching. What would death be like? Like the darkness of water at night, perhaps.

  He drew the blade across his wrist. It hurt like hell. Someone had said you were supposed to put the wrist in hot water before cutting. It was not a deep cut, but the blood dripped onto the floor and canvases. This isn’t me, he thought. His heart began to beat so fast he felt he would faint. He had to find a cloth to bind his wrist. Stupid, stupid, he thought. He pressed it ha
rd and cried out with the pain. He found one of Camille’s stockings and bound it. He stumbled to the bed.

  He fainted, perhaps; he knew nothing else, and even in his dreams when he struggled to the surface there was a tremendous pain for everything. Someone was banging on the door. He had no idea what time it was, if night was falling or dawn was coming. He didn’t know for a time what room he was in and how he had got here. He struggled for consciousness and fell away again. He looked with blurred eyes about the room and saw everything on the floor. Camille was at the door banging and shouting, and along with her voice he heard the voices of his friends.

  He had bolted the door; her key would not open it.

  “Go away!” he called, but they did not hear him.

  He made his way across the room. His fingers could hardly grasp and move the bolt. He let them open the door and come into the room. He looked at their shoes and at the bottom of her skirt. “You see how it is,” he managed. “You see things have not been well …”

  Frédéric cried, “What have you done?”

  “Go away!” Claude stumbled toward the bed, but Camille already had her arms around him. He half lay on the bed against her. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I should have cleaned up. It was a mistake. Why don’t you go away? Just go back to your lives … go paint a café or marry an heiress or something, whatever you do. Just … go away …” He would have cried with shame but he could only heave.

  A light shone in his eyes, then moved away. Frédéric was kneeling before him, unwinding the bloody stocking. Renoir cried, “Jesus, you idiot, what did you do?”

  “Frédéric, get off. Go back to your privileged life.”

  Frédéric cried, “You couldn’t have sent for us? You locked yourself in and did this? Let me see that. It might infect; I have to wash it. You had some sense to cut the left wrist at least, not the right. Stay there, damn you.”

  “There are more stockings in the bureau,” Camille gasped. Claude was aware of the beautiful softness of her and wanting to melt into it, and yet he wished he never had to look at her again. She held him fiercely in her terror.

  Frédéric washed and rebound the wrist. “You didn’t tell me,” he said. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “When do you talk to me anymore?”

  “Shut up, you idiot! I always came when you needed me, but you don’t need anyone anymore, do you?”

  Frédéric wiped his face with the back of his hand. Auguste paced the room, swearing under his breath; he picked up a few canvases, and then kicked the wall. “It doesn’t need to come to this!” he said. “It doesn’t need to come to this for any of us if we stand together. We’re together. Damn it, Monet! We’re together! I have dark periods, you have dark periods. I’d stay up the night with you. Haven’t you done it for us?”

  Camille held him against her, clasping his right hand.

  Auguste tried to make a joke. Finally when they had arranged the brushes twice in their cups, he looked at her under his eyebrows and said, “Will you both be all right? Should we leave you? We’ll be here first thing in the morning. Claude, will you sleep?” He put a small blue bottle on the table. Now his voice was tender. “I used this for my aching arm. It helps with pain.”

  Claude nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I’m all right. Camille, are you all right?”

  He sensed she nodded, stricken, from behind him.

  “We could sleep on the floor,” Auguste offered. “Or in the hall. I’ve been so near homeless I don’t mind halls. I’ll just put my head on my paint satchel.”

  “No, you merde. That’s your one good suit.”

  Frédéric stood blinking, the wash basin in his hands. “Claude, you must never … never …”

  “I won’t, I promise. Throw the water out the window.”

  His friends’ footsteps sounded on the stairs and their murmured voices, and then they were gone. Claude lay facedown, right arm folded under his head, left arm with the bandaged wrist dangling to the floor. Camille ran across the room, climbing in beside him. “Claude,” she sobbed. “How could you?”

  His voice was muffled. “I’m sorry, Minou.” She drew the blanket up and tucked it in over his shoulders.

  His face still buried, he asked, “Do you remember my painting of the magpie on a snowy fence in a field? I am that magpie, you see. He’s so alone. I face the canvas and there’s nothing there, because I think it’s all been vanity with me and I’ve never been good enough. And I can’t paint.”

  He turned his head now to face her and touched her cheek with his right hand. “That scared me to say,” he added hoarsely. “That was the hardest thing to say. Maybe I wouldn’t have tried to do that stupid thing if I had been able to say that. I didn’t want to kill myself, I just wanted to say … enough. Enough of so much here, my failures, your exhaustion, my shame. I kept pressing the wrist to stop bleeding. I was scared that I had tried. We can talk about it later. I haven’t any more words now. I’m so sorry. I’m so tired. I feel I haven’t slept in days.”

  “I’ll hold you.”

  “Don’t cry, beloved. It’s all right. I never want to make you cry, Minou.”

  HE ROSE BEFORE dawn and looked at her for a long time as she slept, and then he looked at his sleeping son. Jean’s chubby arms were spread out; his mouth was open and dewy. Theirs was the sort of warm, stuffy, sweet, scattered life some others might paint, shadows of hanging clothes, books leaning against one another on the shelf, Camille’s garters in a small heap on the bureau.

  Claude wrote her the most passionate letter of his life on a sheet left over from her unfinished novel. He would have cried, but he felt so drained he could not, and his wrist hurt so much.

  He left the house in the dark, feeling his way down the stairs without a candle. Once in a cab he slept; he woke to the driver shouting at him that they had reached the train station. Dawn was rising over Paris as he saw the train roar toward him majestically, filling the air with noise and smoke. Hiding his bandaged wrist under his coat, he boarded the third-class car and slumped on the seat as the countryside rolled past him.

  He went home to Le Havre.

  IN A WAY he hoped to go home as if he were seventeen again and just returning from painting with Boudin: to find his mother singing at the piano and his aunt sewing in the corner. Many visitors would be expected, and his cousin might let him kiss her. He wanted it so much he almost thought it would happen.

  It was not that way, of course. Only his father came anxiously from the shadows of the house as if he feared a thief. “Claude,” he said. And Claude saw that his father was sick indeed, his formerly full face haggard, his trousers held up by suspenders.

  Claude said abruptly, “I’ve come to help you. I’m done with painting. I’ll take over the shop.”

  They stood a few feet apart, unwilling to come closer. “You’re done with painting? What do you mean you’re done with painting? What have you done there with your wrist? But what about the young woman and your son?”

  Claude shook his head; he remembered his words in the letter and knew she had read them by now. He looked down the hall to the back garden door. Any moment his younger self would rush in the door, mud on his shoes. Then his father said, “Claude, mon fils—my son!” and he felt he could not bear it.

  IT WAS AS if his father’s ship chandlery on the wharf had waited for him—the nautical lanterns, drying rope, and paint. Sails rolled in the back. Claude sat down clumsily in the swivel chair behind the desk, pulling out old letters and bills.

  The air was musty and cold because the shop had been locked for some weeks since the last assistant had gone away. Seeing the lantern in the window this dull day, a few men came in wanting small items but mostly to talk and warm their hands by the stove. The talk was of fishermen and boats and prices and someone they knew who had gone down with his boat the month before and had not been found.

  He walked to the shop every morning through the winter wind. More old customers stopped by, having heard that Adolph
e Monet’s son had returned. At night he went home to eat what Hannah had cooked. Once or twice his brother came, bringing his wife and their twin girls, who reminded Claude so much of his son.

  Two days after he had come he received her letter.

  I cried and cried at your words. What do you mean you aren’t coming back? You’re my life and I’m yours. All our friends are very kind to me, but I want you. You wrote no one is to visit you. I don’t know what to do. I know you’ll be back. I know you will.

  He missed her so; he went to sleep that night holding the pillow against him and pretending it was her. He kept her letter under the pillow.

  Every day letters came from her and his friends, and sometimes he did not read them. He could feel the compassion and love and disappointment and hope seep from under the envelopes, and he could not bear it. He forbade them to visit. When he wrote to her he hardly remembered what he said. He said he was coming back; he said he would not come back.

  If only I could paint again, he thought. I must try. At least I can try. Then I can think.

  One morning three weeks after he had arrived, he left the house before breakfast, taking his easel and a canvas and some paints from a few years before that he had forgotten in a burlap bag at the bottom of the wardrobe. He walked until he came to the sea, and then he walked over the sand, choosing a place to set his easel. There was the white wild surging of the sea, sometimes darting so close to his shoes it washed over them. It half dared him and half regarded him coolly.

  He raised his hand with the charcoal, but it did not meet the canvas.

  He stared down at his tubes of colors and at his hand.

  He waited for nearly an hour, but the world that had leaned into him like a lover and flowed out again through his brush did not approach him. He cried aloud, hurled the canvas into the high grass, and went home.

  Mon cher Frédéric, This will be sad, so prepare yourself. Drink a little brandy, perhaps. How to begin? I owe you so much. Perhaps you saved my life. Can there be more than that?