The Velvet Hours

by Alyson Richman

She could mark the change in her life from the moment that Odette left them. Her mother broke the only mirror in their apartment and never replaced it. For who wanted to see their own face etched in sorrow? A complexion dull as a tin cup. Even Marthe began to look away from her mother’s watery gaze.

  But while her mother seemed to shrink into the shadows, Marthe’s radiance began to emerge more and more with each passing day.

  She grew from a thin, almost strange-looking child into a beautiful young girl. Her long, coltish limbs began to soften, and her once-concave chest grew full.

  She took to adjusting her clothes to accommodate these changes in her body. She learned to taper her blouses to accentuate her waist, and to adjust the buttons to ensure they lay flat.

  Every part of Marthe, every contour, every pad of muscle and every stretch of bone, filled with exuberance; an unrestrainable sense of life.

  She needed no makeup. Her rouge was the clap of her hands against her cheeks. Her lipstick was the nibble of her teeth against her delicate mouth. She grew her strawberry red hair so long that when she unplaited it, it fell to the small cleft just above her lower back.

  When she grew older, she would still recall that winter when she was thirteen, that afternoon when the cold had not stung her cheeks, but rather sent a thrill through her whole body. She thought of the boy who walked her home from school and told her she was beautiful when she flushed. He had offered her his hat and his red wool mittens, but she had refused him shyly. She later wished it were that boy who had been the first to touch her, to cup his hand between her legs. Not the one whose face she couldn’t bear to look at. The one whose eyes burned not brightly with youth, but from the shine of alcohol. The one who offered her five sous to touch her in the dark corner of the alley, but who ended up taking far more from Marthe than a caress.

  It had been so cold that night. She had returned home that evening and dropped the coins numbly into her mother’s hand to pay for a few shovels of coal.

  But although the fire stoked brightly that evening—for once—she found herself shivering, unable to find any warmth.

  * * *

  She now kept her apartment as warm as she possibly could. She had white birch delivered to the fireplaces twice a week, the bark crackling and sizzling in the hearth.

  It was a delicacy to walk around with little clothing and not feel the cold breath of air. Her bathwater was sometimes so hot that she had to lower herself slowly and carefully—knees first with her arms propped on the sides—until her body was completely submerged.

  The tub was porcelain with a sloped back on which she reclined. It was nothing like the barrel she bathed in when she had lived at home with her mother.

  Afterward, when her hair was tucked underneath a cloth turban, she would sit down at her vanity and gaze at herself in disbelief at how much her life had changed since she joined the theater and met Charles. Looking at her reflection, she saw the face, the familiar blue eyes, the sharp nose, and pink mouth. These features had all remained the same. But around her there were comforts and luxuries that she still had to blink twice to believe were now hers to savor.

  She saw herself in the many gilded mirrors in her new home. Her new narrative cast in glass, a beautiful girl that floated through the light and dark of her own memory, and the chiaroscuro of the floating world.

  3.

  Marthe

  Paris 1888

  She named her canary Fauchon. She took a housemaid, an able and bright-eyed girl named Giselle.

  Her mornings were spent in a succession of baths. One in milk, then one in lime blossom, and a third in scented water using either almond oil or rose petals.

  The linens, too, were washed in aromatic water. So that not only were her tangles with Charles accompanied by the perfume of flowers, her subsequent dreams were as well.

  She considered preparing herself for this new lifestyle to be her full-time job. She lined her vanity table with face creams made from orchid petals and dusting powder made of crushed pearls, investing part of her monthly allowance from Charles for her own beautification and care.

  As a child she had scrubbed her face with a lump of soap and a rag that was twisted and torn. But now she paid attention to every advertisement and searched the shelves at the apothecaries for salves and elixirs that would one day help her defy the passage of time.

  But aside from her beauty regimen, Marthe allowed a few hours a day just to daydream. To imagine different ways of pleasing Charles. She had enough experience in life to realize that she would always have to keep things fresh for him. For the same reason women had come into the Gouget Brothers’ store looking for a new dress, Marthe believed if she were to continue to keep Charles’s interest, she would have to maintain a repertoire of skills, the more creative the better, for giving him pleasure.

  She looked for inspiration in the places she knew the best. With Giselle, she searched the fabric stalls of the bustling market of the Carreau du Temple for materials she could use to create a special architecture for their bed. She caressed the fabric between her fingers, imagining how it felt against bare skin. It was one thing to lie against a downy white pillow, but quite another to arch one’s back over a velvet bolster piped in satin ribbon. Marthe imagined every detail. Colors and textures became yet another sensual language in which one could communicate in the theater of pleasure. And, still, she continued to expand her knowledge and skills.

  She learned not only to secure her hair with combs, but also how to use her mane when it came undone. To sweep it against his bare chest or to use it when she kissed him, a decadent and playful veil.

  But, most importantly, she learned that curiosity was never to be harnessed; it was hers to lead. She might feel uncomfortable sitting at a formal dinner, but in her butterfly bed, she was free to touch anything. To caress him with the softness of her thighs. To spread open her wings.

  * * *

  Marthe’s own curiosity grew, like a thirst or a hunger that needed to be fed. She became fascinated with the objets d’art that were flooding Paris from the Far East. The delicate ceramics with their semitransparent glazes held a mysterious allure. She soon began to collect them.

  The rooms that at first held one or two Asian porcelains, soon had ten or twelve on the shelves. She found a small shop near the Rue de Seine where the owner pulled out the long, slender vases from wooden crates lined in tea paper and straw.

  Just walking into the shop brought her into a small frenzy. The air smelled of jasmine, and the interior walls were dark teak. The owner, a small, wizened man who was quiet as a crane, would cup each piece in his hands, then lift them gently for Marthe to admire, showing her how they shifted and changed in the light.

  She began to collect the Kangxi blue and white porcelains that soothed her and reminded her of water and sky. She loved their inky landscapes of bamboo and pagodas. She admired the soft feathering of the artist’s brush. The glazes in celestial colors like celadon and moonlight blue.

  She was attracted to the contrast, the way the porcelains appeared one way in the light and another in the shadow, for it mirrored the half-world she occupied, captured in her very hands.

  She purchased with increasing frequency so that Ichiro-san, the owner of the store, soon sensed Marthe’s tastes and preferences. One afternoon, after he had shown her a precious vessel in the shape of a calabash gourd, its sensual hourglass shape meant to hold the liquor of immortality, he asked Marthe if she’d be interested in seeing something he reserved for only his best customers.

  “Would I?” A smile flashed across her face. “What have you been keeping from me?”

  “A collection of secret prints meant to inspire,” he whispered. “To delight.”

  Her eyes grew wide as he fed her the smallest bits of information.

  “Come this way, Madame de Florian,” Ichiro said, gesturing for her to follow him behind the cu
rtain that separated the storefront to his personal quarters. As she passed through the curtain, she found herself in a small room with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Already, she could recognize most of the shapes and periods of the pottery. The Edo-period Imari, the yellow-glazed Tang horses, and the decorative Kangxi enamels that she so loved. But he did not reach for anything on the shelves. Instead he pulled out a portfolio and began to unwrap ties of silken cord.

  What he revealed enthralled her.

  “These are our images of the floating world,” he told her. “The art of shunga.” His eyes floated downward. “Literally, the pictures of spring.”

  There on rice paper were images of men and women in half-open kimonos, engaged in the many different acts of love.

  Marthe could not look away. She saw couples with their sashes undone, their bodies entwined, their rapture caught by the woodblock artist’s delicate hand.

  “These prints are a window into the secret world of lovers.”

  Marthe grew warm as Ichiro put forth a series of prints. Each one displayed elaborate positions for lovemaking, intimate scenes of arousal and gestures of pleasure that unfolded like a dance. The prints were so different from the daguerreotypes in Europe of showgirls in corsets, with their breasts exposed and their legs slightly apart. Those images were produced only for the delight of men, but these prints appealed to her secret feminine side as well.

  “Are these for purchase?” Marthe asked as her finger touched the corner of the paper. It felt like a secret, breathing scroll.

  “But of course,” Ichiro replied.

  “I’d like these four,” she said, selecting the ones that she found particularly alluring.

  “Whatever you wish, Madame de Florian.”

  She had been so enraptured by the prints that she had forgotten to even inquire about the price.

  “And how much?” she asked.

  Ichiro scribbled a number on a piece of paper and turned it toward Marthe’s direction.

  “But that’s exorbitant,” she cried.

  “The price for such secrets is always high,” he replied.

  But she wanted them desperately, and knew she would have paid any price he asked.

  * * *

  She carried her package home, each print carefully wrapped in several layers of rice paper and slipped into a stiff portfolio tied with a purple silk cord.

  That afternoon, when she was in the privacy of her bedroom, she withdrew them and gazed at the images for clues of giving Charles pleasure that she might not otherwise have known.

  She looked at the women with their broad faces, their black hair plaited with tortoiseshell combs, their robes open and their bodies welcoming their lovers’ touch. As if studying a dance, she scrutinized the way their bodies entwined, their fingers grasped, discerning what they revealed and what they kept hidden.

  She also noticed the sparseness of the rooms depicted in the prints. Paper screens and sliding doors. There was no evidence of a bed, just a floor with the sculpture of interlaced limbs. But it was the unabashed rapture in the lovers’ expressions that fascinated her. Another world had opened for Marthe, and she was curious for more.

  * * *

  Every week thereafter, she would pay Ichiro a visit, never once asking to be taken to the back room.

  She would instead merely admire the ceramics he displayed up front, her gloved finger caressing the pieces on the shelves. Ichiro, however, would remain firmly in place, his hands clasped in front, his eyes firmly weighted on her. He could sense her anticipation, her yearning to be invited behind the curtain. But still he waited, holding her off in order to increase her anticipation, before he finally relinquished and motioned for her to follow him inside.

  Her eyes would come alive in the darkness of his storeroom as he withdrew a few more of the prints she had come to secretly enjoy.

  “I have a rare print from The Poem of the Pillow series,” he told her. The name itself was so evocative, Marthe felt a tingle run through her spine.

  When Ichiro revealed the images, she was immediately struck by the calligraphic lines, the soft rendering of color added to the folds of the lover’s robe, pulled up to reveal the soft contour of her thigh. The intimacy of the scene thrilled her. The woman’s exposed neck, her slender fingers threading those of her lover’s, the pressure of her hands revealing her delight.

  “And I have something else to show you,” he whispered. He removed the print he had just shown her and placed it back in a portfolio, returning it to a drawer in his desk.

  He then reached for a small wooden and paper scroll on the shelf beside him and placed it on the desktop between them.

  “This is from the seventeenth century. It belonged to a Samurai family for many generations . . .” Ichiro’s hands grasped the ends of small wooden handles and began to carefully unroll the scroll.

  The images were hand painted on the rice paper, the artist’s sweeping black lines enhanced with dabs of brightly colored paint. The figures had their eyelids closed, their mouths joined in a kiss.

  “Lovers in a bamboo grove,” Ichiro told her. His finger pointed to the man and woman embracing in a garden of stiff bamboo and lush green leaves.

  The scenes continued to unfurl in front of her. The rapture and joy discovered in the lovers’ various poses made her flush.

  When they had finished gazing at the scroll, Ichiro rolled it closed and tied it with a string. “A hand scroll like this was once kept in the sleeve of a robe, to be pulled out and looked upon when one needed a little viewing of pleasure during the day.”

  “How perfectly civilized,” Marthe said, clearly amused.

  “I’ll take both the print and the scroll.” She pulled down the cuffs of her sleeve. She smiled at Ichiro. “It’s too bad, it can’t fit.”

  * * *

  She wondered if Charles could sense a change in her, for she was aware of how her secret prints were beginning to stretch her mind.

  She began to dress in ways that mirrored her fantasies. Embroidered silk robes with images of exotic birds and flowers. Combs for her hair, made not of silver or gemstones, but rather of tortoiseshell or wood.

  She would emerge from behind her dressing screen sometimes in a silk kimono, her body soon revealed as her loosely tied sash came undone. She closed her eyes as he embraced her and pulled up her robe, her mind transporting her from the tangled linen of her butterfly bed to the aromatic garden of a bamboo grove.

  * * *

  Afterward, when his body was spent and he reached for his pipe to relax in the tangles of their bed, she would bring up the need for money.

  “I might need a little more this month,” she said as she threw a leg over him, caressing him with the inner softness of her thigh.

  She could feel his body stiffen at the suggestion of money, and he let out a sigh.

  “Darling, I think you’ve managed to decorate every corner of the apartment. There won’t be room for me if you spend any more.”

  “There will always be room for you . . .” Marthe adjusted her leg to wrap herself even more tightly against him.

  Charles’s long, slender body stretched the length of the bed. She opened her hand and placed it on his chest, feeling the rhythm of his breathing as he took small puffs from his pipe.

  “And the extra money certainly wouldn’t be for knickknacks.”

  “What then?” He took a finger and caressed the line of her neck, before circling it just above her breasts.

  “It’s for my education . . . ,” she insisted. “I need the money for books.”

  Her words had taken him by surprise. As naturally curious as he found her, he had never seen her show the slightest interest in books.

  “Well, pages of books, actually . . . but I promise you, the investment will pay off.” She lifted his fingers from her skin and placed his palm on her cheek. “Why, you w
ouldn’t want me to become a bore, now would you? I need to feed my mind so I can inspire you.”

  He grunted and stubbed out his pipe and reached to find her within the covers.

  “Inspiration, hmm.” He kissed her. “I suppose that’s always worth a little something extra.”

  4.

  Solange

  November 1938

  My visits to my grandmother increased. Now instead of visiting her once a week, I was going two or three times. I was addicted to her stories; like opium, I wanted more and more.

  When I was in her company, everything that appeared bleak or mundane melted away. I could have walked for several minutes in the rain to her house, and by the time Giselle had taken my coat, umbrella, and hat, I would have forgotten all about the clouds or the puddles that had ruined my boots. I had entered a place where there would always be comfort and beauty.

  After I left, I carried her voice inside my head. At night, I could see her sitting in her velvet chair, her mantel filled with vases of fresh flowers, her shelves lined with porcelains. The image of her ignited my imagination and soothed me.

  I began writing down nearly everything that she told me. My father had been right in believing she was the perfect muse. A woman, born in the dark corners of Paris, who elevated herself through her own cleverness and charm to carve out a better life for herself.

  Her memory was as sharp as glass. She could recall everything with vivid detail, and nothing from her past embarrassed her. She believed me to be old enough to hear the truth. And it pleased me that she spoke so freely.

  My journal became filled with every detail she relayed. I could imagine her Charles. Tall and slender. His stiff top hat. His pipe and its rings of blue smoke. I could see Ichiro’s antique shop with its dark walls and its storefront filled with beautiful ceramics. I could close my eyes and envision the more alluring treasures he concealed behind the curtain.

  We would sit in her living room, a tray with two porcelain cups of tea between us, nibbling a small plate of chocolates that Giselle had arranged with care. On sunny days, the shutters would be ajar, so that the daylight cast a beautiful glow over the room. Materials that I had always believed to be gray now appeared almost opalescent. And Marthe’s face, too, seemed to change with the sunlight. Illuminated from the shadows, it was easier to see the faint lines by her eyes, and the softness of her skin no longer tight against her cheekbones. But, still, like a well-seasoned actress, she knew her best angles and she used them to her full advantage.