Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  “Steadfast!” Claude thought wistfully. It’s kind of him to think of me that way when sometimes I wonder if I’m more than chaff in the wind.

  He continued to read closely.

  I have not been left peacefully to paint amid all of this. I was working on a picture of the Seine when along came the Commune guards thinking I was a spy! And many others have suffered. Cézanne’s in the south of France; Manet had a breakdown from the strain of the siege, as did pretty Mademoiselle Morisot, whose family paintings you so much admire. Pissarro returned to Louveciennes and found that his house had been used by the Prussians and that most of his paintings and yours had been destroyed.

  But now, back to beautiful Camille, you poor, jealous man. She and Jean are once more living above the shop with her sister and her sister’s child; the sister had left her husband, who turned traitor and had to flee. Camille keeps the shop exquisitely, as if it were peacetime, slipping books in place to keep her world sane while outside people bleed to death on the street. I know she would not come with you but she was wrong. Your son is charming. Do you want to sell him? Seriously, I envy you a son. I am an old bachelor and will never marry. The theaters have closed and Lise is working as a nursemaid, which she hates. She has pretty muchgiven up on me. I am wise enough, unlike you, to know that a passion for painting and an erratic income would not keep a wife content. But if I had a love like yours, I would not throw it over.

  Claude hardly knew where he was for a few moments as he tried to see the scenes described in his beloved city.

  He wrote her that day, underlining much. “My love, I am enclosing money for tickets. I beg you, close up the shop and join me here. I will come and fetch you. Only say you won’t turn me away.”

  No reply came. But why won’t she come? he thought. Does she still love my friend? Did she ever? Will I ever know? With all that he was he wanted to go to her and drag her away, but he could not bear the thought that she would refuse him. He wrote more letters to the shop. Then finally she began to answer. Her letters were maddeningly vague. The bookshop cat wasn’t well, and Jean was talking a lot. Nothing about the riots and the deaths and the fires set here and there, as if the bookshop on rue Dante were in another world than the rest of the city. He wrote her desperately: Why won’t you come? I have reasons, she said vaguely, and he became depressed. She is impossible, he thought.

  Only underneath these things did he think that he had lost many beautiful paintings in the Prussian occupation of the house in Louveciennes.

  It was a Parisian man, stopping by the tavern in early June, who told him that the Paris Commune had been overthrown and hundreds of insurgents shot in Père-Lachaise cemetery. The riots in the city had ended.

  Auguste wrote sadly:

  Some say we have peace again after these horrible few months. What peace can we have with the Hôtel de Ville and the Palais des Tuileries burned to the ground? With men I knew rounded up and shot? And yet in this sadness, what can we do? We must be able to do something. Now, damn it, will people see what we have been trying to show them in our paintings for so long—the ordinary daily beauty of our country—which they took for granted and almost lost? Did we have to nearly lose it forever to appreciate it?

  Claude packed his things then and thanked his landlady. On a late June day he set out for France by train. We must build our world again, he thought. I will have my love, for love between a man and a woman can also heal what has been destroyed. Neither we nor our art nor our world will ever blow away like chaff in the wind.

  1871—1873

  Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

  —CLAUDE MONET

  IT WAS EARLY JULY WHEN CLAUDE RETURNED TO PARIS by train through the Netherlands and France. Nearing the city, he stared out the window at the burned farms and houses. The destruction hit him as hard as if someone had punched him. He was gasping with rage. Come back, he said. He saw jagged ruins against the sky from places that had been burned by the angry Commune.

  He left his luggage and paintings at the Gare Saint-Lazare. There were no taxis to be had and the omnibuses came erratically, so he walked toward the river. Empty barges were moored there, and even the number of homeless had decreased. Notre-Dame rose like a huge, comforting bulk. I am still here, it said. He walked steadily, staring at the cobbles, not wanting to see the water this late afternoon or anything that might touch his heart.

  He made his way into the Quartier Latin. The boulangerie across the street had opened its doors again and people came and went, buying bread. Shell marks scarred the walls of houses, and one house lacked part of its roof. And there in the middle of it was the bookshop. Not untouched at all, he thought, his heart beating a little faster, for the windows had been partially smashed and were boarded up. Who boarded them up? he wondered. Annette’s errant husband? One of my friends? I would have replaced the glass with the air of the man who easily mends things, he thought. But perhaps there was no glass then or it was futile.

  He opened the door.

  Camille was sitting on a chair inside with the ancient shop cat at her feet, sewing, her head bent, intent on the stitches as if each one marked her future. There was something so peaceful about her, as if indeed fires had occurred over the past months and neighbors had been shot and she had sat in the midst of it unknowing as a nun at her prayers. But when she turned her head, he saw how thin her face was and that she had dark circles around her eyes as if she had been ill. “You foolish …,” he wanted to cry, but he did not.

  She stood tentatively, and he put the sewing aside and tentatively drew her against him. “Claude,” she said. “I knew you’d come. The past few days I’ve sensed it. Maybe Julie saw it in her tea leaves. Oh, Claude.”

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “Yes, you appear again after having been away!”

  “I’m not going away from you ever again.” He thought, How much space is there between us? I’ll never manage it this time, never. But he said confidently, “I’m here; I’m here. I love you. I did write. I wrote and wrote … it was you who said little this time. Oh, Minou!”

  He drew up a chair and she dropped into her own again, her face a little averted. She looked up at the half-empty shelves. “I know I look dreadful,” she murmured. “I can’t eat even now that the city’s at peace. I keep thinking of things I saw. My supply of books is decimated, and I haven’t the strength to try to buy more. I sold them cheaply; I almost gave them away. The price of everything went up again during the Commune as the farmers didn’t want to come in. It was horrible, horrible!”

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “Oh, we quarrel if we’re together too much! She’s found a place of her own and has decided to open a millinery shop. My parents are still in Lyon. Nothing much changed at all for my grandmère but for some village boys going to war. She writes that by the priest.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “You know … things between us, what happened. My fault, really, or perhaps not. I keep deciding one thing and then another and then this place seemed a sort of sanctuary. Auguste was almost shot. I haven’t been out much, lately not at all. A neighbor shops for me. I missed you terribly.”

  She looked at him, her large eyes sad. “And there you were! I saw the sketches on the letters; I have the little painting you sent me. Holland seems a paradise, not like here. Why is paradise always someplace else?”

  “I could wipe all bad dreams away,” he said tenderly. “I could give you a nice life. The one we always planned for. It’s so odd that out of such chaos a possibility of something beautiful comes. I thought this wasn’t so, but now I believe it. We must make the losses into the beauty, somehow. Will you let me?”

  She nodded, and even though she looked down, he could see that she was smiling. “Yes,” she said. “All I ever wanted was a life with you. I knew it, but I was safe here. Will you make me safe again, Claude
?”

  He felt his rising strength, not desire so much as a blinding tenderness. Softly she began to tell him some of the things that had happened while he was away, about her sister’s devastation, that Édouard Manet had come by to look in on her, that some friends had remained in the city and come to visit. He felt as she spoke that she was like a little girl walking in careful circles; she danced around any memories of how the window was shattered and what she must have seen when she ran out.

  But the memories came anyway and she began to sob terribly, covering her mouth with her hands and pulling away from him when he tried to hold her.

  “People died,” she stammered. “I ran out when the city was burning. And it all seemed to burn. A boy died before me, shot down. I’ve not been very good in my life. The nuns raised me to be good, but I’ve not been. That bullet was perhaps meant for me, not him. I ran back here and waited for it. And it was all ashes from the burning, coming through the window, huge black things that settled everywhere.”

  She pressed his hand very hard, trying to cry more softly. “I have to ask you. I have to. What do you think it was like for Frédéric to die? Did he have time to be scared or was it all too quick?”

  “I … don’t know,” he said. “I thought of it so many times. And other things, what he wanted to tell me. What you wouldn’t tell me. I understood a little when I was away, because I was alone so much. I think you’d better tell me. Would you tell me, Minou?”

  She waited until she could stop crying before she spoke, looking down at her empty hand open on her skirt. She said, “Yes, we understand many things when we’re alone. He had slept with a few women besides the little we had together, but it wasn’t only women. For a short time he took a young man as his lover, and his family found out and canceled their support of the art exhibition. It was the summer when you and Auguste painted at Le Grenouillère. Frédéric’s family behaved wretchedly. I think he wanted to paint like you, to be like you. He loved who you loved and loved you through me. We both cared for you more than each other … so even if I had gone away with him, it wouldn’t have lasted. Did you know these things, Claude?”

  Claude nodded slowly. “I thought it was that. A friend mentioned it once that they thought so and I said no. He never said anything to me. He was tender to me, but we were all pretty tender with each other …” He blinked and his throat filled with tears. “Life isn’t simple. I want it to be. And then we lose the chance to go back and do things better.” He forced his voice into a rougher tone, defensively folding his arms across his chest. “He should have told me.”

  “He thought you mightn’t forgive him; that’s why he never told you.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” Claude blurted. “We were very close. He should have said it.”

  “He was going to tell you. I think he also went away to leave us together.”

  “I wish I could have stopped him.”

  “No one could have stopped him, Claude. His family was so angry about the young man. Frédéric wanted to be a hero in their eyes and then he’d come back and paint here. I think he wouldn’t have married Lily. I think he would have grown old here in his studio with all of you around him.”

  Just then Jean came down the stairs, sleepy from his nap, hair tousled, crying, “Papa!” Claude wondered where this sturdy boy had been when the city burned and the windows shattered. All he knew was he ached for his son and for Camille with every limb of his body and would protect them with his life.

  HE WANTED TO rent a house for his family at once. He had sold many of his Dutch paintings to Durand-Ruel and was confident he could afford it.

  There was a house he had long admired in Argenteuil, a short train ride from the city, but he had no idea if it was occupied. When the three of them went there a few days later, he saw it was empty; the garden was choked with weeds, and old leaves littered the path. “Yes,” a neighbor said when they asked him. “The man who owned it fell in the war and his widow’s moved away. It’s for rent.” Claude thought, Then our love will heal it and we ourselves will heal here.

  He and Camille walked hand in hand through the empty house exploring the dining room and the parlor and the kitchen while Jean went upstairs and called back in an excited, echoing voice to tell them what he had found: a great spiderweb, and a view of the river from a window that he saw by standing on his toes. They heard his running footsteps upstairs on the bare floors.

  Camille considered it carefully and he could see she liked what she saw. “It’s such a short way to the city,” she said. “I could go in a lot, but I might not. I think I’d like to make a new life here, a whole new life with you. I’ll write my uncle to sell the shop. He’s been made an offer for it. Only we must take the cat. I’d miss him so.”

  They sat on the floor those next warm days and drew plans for furnishings on large pages torn out of an old sketchbook. Everything he had brought back from Holland, his clothes and paintings, was stacked against the walls. The widow had left only one bed, which the three of them needed to share until they could order another one. They bought cheese and wine and bread in the little shop near the train station and ate sitting on the floor.

  They talked as if they could not bear to stop. They sat on the floor holding hands and laughed and spoke of so many things. It was like turning over earth in the garden. And yet there were always a few words he felt he withheld or she did, and sometimes he tried to tickle them from her, crying playfully, “Tell me! Tell me!” and she giggled and fought him; she was surprisingly strong. And by that time they had forgotten that there was anything left unsaid: something sweet or shy or lonely or perhaps something of regret. Something perhaps even more than she had told him about what she had seen in the war.

  THAT WAS THE first perfect winter and spring. They found each other again in the light rooms of this house; he had his studio and would make the garden beautiful. For the first time in their life together they had enough money. Claude’s pictures were selling regularly, if not for huge sums, and then his father died and left him ten thousand francs. “May it give you the security you so badly need,” his brother had said when Claude and Camille had traveled to the funeral. Later Léon added privately, “I must say this now, though. He missed you so all those times you didn’t come or write. Sometimes on his birthday he’d sit by the window most of the day looking for you.” And Claude had felt the words deep within him and was silent most of the train ride back, holding her hand in his.

  He and Camille furnished the house together, traveling into Paris to rent or buy furniture and draperies, plates, sheets, lamps, all the things they had ever pressed their noses against windows wanting and some of the things he knew she had had at her parents’ home. He bought and framed Japanese prints, and she chose a bronze mantelpiece clock with a silver bell that struck on the half hour. They hired a maid, a nursemaid, and a cook. Jean played in the garden.

  The summer after they had moved in he wrote effusive letters to his friends, lovingly demanding they come. “We accept and will bring easels,” they replied. Claude stood in the garden waiting for them that morning amid the roses, lilies, dahlias, carnations. He wore loose trousers, an old shirt, and his comfortable wood sabots. Gently he swung the swing from the tree branch. He heard the train whistle over the birdsong, opened the white gate, and looked down the dirt road in the direction of the station. Édouard Manet and Auguste, easels over their shoulders and arguing over something as always, came toward him past the dry stone wall.

  As the three of them sat down to breakfast on the table under the tree, Camille joined them in a white flowing dress with Jean following her. “What news of the theater and of Lise?” she asked, kissing them and taking her place between them. “Now we’re here we simply are too lazy to go in to Paris much! I haven’t seen a play in months.”

  “Yes, we read and make love,” Claude added comfortably from his chair, looking at her tenderly and biting the edge of his finger.

  “Both worthy occupations,
” Auguste exclaimed. “But neither of which may occupy you today! I’m painting both of you. Look at that sun, just right! Madame will sit under the tree there, please, and the charming little one will lay his dear head in her lap. We’ll both paint you! For once I won’t paint you reading as I do most of the time.” He rose and dusted his hands of crumbs.

  “I don’t want to lie there; I’m not sleepy,” Jean protested, but Auguste squatted down and whispered in his ear, “Do! I’ll tell you stories and sing you songs.”

  “I shall neither sing nor recite,” Manet said with his dry humor as he rose to set up his easel. The men prepared their palettes, and Camille settled herself on the ground against a tree. Jean rose and ran about and came back briefly. Claude began to water his flowers. A red chicken escaped from the henhouse and strutted around Camille’s dress.

  Manet exclaimed, “There the boy goes again! Jean, go to your mother!”

  “No, monsieur, I’m bored!” cried the little boy. He ran around in circles.

  “Jean!” Camille cried, holding out her arms. “Come here! Something magical will happen,” and the little boy came, laughing, careening into her, tumbling. She tickled him and he shrieked and then lay down again, contemplating the leaves above him.

  Claude moved among the flower beds. He called, “He always comes for her! Are you going to paint me fat? I’m getting fat.”

  “We are painting the family and you moved, Monet! Bend over again to water the flowers!”

  “Ah, my back hurts. So this is what it’s like to model!”

  Auguste began to sing an old children’s song. The fascinated boy stared at the thin painter and again lay down with his head in his mother’s lap. In two minutes, Claude thought, he will leap up to ride his hobbyhorse.