Pardon My French

by Allen Johnson

  The class was held in the arts and crafts room above the police station in Pérols. The room was well lit by virtue of generous windows on both ends of the room. Pressed against one wall were stacks of padded chairs and wooden easels. When I arrived, several students—mostly middle-aged women—were already encircling a still life of a teapot, a bowl, a bottle of J&B, and a half loaf of French bread. They were all setting up easels and twenty-four by thirty-inch canvases. I, on the other hand—thinking it would be less expensive than acrylics or oils (it was not)—had purchased watercolors and a seven- by ten-inch pad of watercolor paper. I found two lightweight sawhorses and a plywood plank and erected a makeshift table for myself.

  To my right was a statuesque woman with short hair and a beautiful smile.

  “This is your first time here,” she said.

  “Yes, my name is Allen.”

  “My name is Armelle.”

  When I was in France, I worked at memorizing names. I learned that if I did not register the name the first time, I was likely to fumble it for weeks to come. And the French (not unlike Americans) always seemed politely miffed when I asked for their names a second time. I wasn’t sure that I had Armelle’s name right, so I asked her to repeat it.

  “Armelle,” she said, smiling.

  I leaned my ear into her. “Ar …”

  “Armelle. It’s difficult, isn’t it?” she said. (It wasn’t, really, but she was sweet to let me off the hook.) “Here.” Armelle took a pencil from her paint box and jotted down her name on the corner of her canvas.

  That was my introduction to Armelle. We became friends instantly and have remained friends to this day.

  By this time about a dozen students were settled in and working. The instructor, Pierre, a lanky but graceful man, walked over to where I was sitting.

  “So you are working with watercolors,” Pierre said.

  “I thought I would give it a try.”

  “Good, good.”

  I had already penciled in the teapot and bottle of J&B.

  “Don’t you think the format is a little small?” Pierre asked gently but with a raised eyebrow, signifying that the correct answer in this situation was an unqualified “yes.”

  “Maybe a little,” I said timidly. “I have a second pad of paper that is a little bigger, but since I don’t know what I’m doing, I thought I’d start small.”

  “Yes, but if you work small, you will not see your mistakes.”

  “In that case, perhaps I should work on the back of a postage stamp.”

  Pierre laughed. “Ah non. You see, if you work with a small canvas and blow it up, you will see all the mistakes. If you work with a large canvas and reduce it, you will see only a perfect painting. You do want a perfect painting?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “That’s what I’m going for. The perfect painting.”

  Pierre started making his rounds to other students while I continued working on my diminutive drawing. When I was satisfied with my sketch, I broke the cellophane seal on my box of watercolors. Inside were twelve tiny bricks of pigment, ranging from yellow to black. I had no idea what I was doing, but I dipped my brush in water, sloshed it across a brick of color, smeared the loaded brush on a piece of scratch paper, added a little of this and little of that, and then made my first stroke of color on the drawing.

  A moment later, Pierre was looking over my shoulder. I really don’t like the feeling of someone—even a teacher, especially a teacher—scrutinizing a piece of unfinished work. I’m sure that uneasiness has to do with ego—the anxiety of being seen as anything short of perfect. (Humility has never been one of my strong points.) But I sat back from my work so that Pierre could see what I had done and waited for his critique.

  “Pas mal—not bad,” Pierre said, which my brain registered as “not good.” Pierre took a second look. “The shading on your teapot is not right. It should be more gradual.”

  “Oui, I see that.”

  “And your bowl is sad.”

  “That’s no good,” I said with a laugh, perhaps trying a little too hard to compensate for my insecurity as a painter. “We can’t be having a sad bowl. No sad bowls in this league.”

  A number of students chuckled. Pierre fell into the spirit of things. “Well, I’m not talking about the morale of the bowl.”

  “Oh, you were just speaking metaphorically.”

  The class oohed and aahed, astonished that I would have the word “métaphore” in my French vocabulary.

  “It’s not any big thing,” I said to Armelle. “The word ‘métaphore’ is the same in English.”

  “Yes,” Pierre said, “it is a metaphor. Your bowl should be a happy bowl.”

  With that Pierre moved to the next student, and I returned to my work. The shading on my teapot remained a little ragged and my breakfast bowl a little sad, but next time …

  I think that Armelle could sense my discomfort in being on the pointed end of criticism. “I like your teapot,” Armelle said with a smile that proclaimed “You can do it; I have faith in you.”

  “It’s not a bad teapot,” I said. Then, emulating French humility, added, “Although the handle on the lid is a little off-centered.”

  “Sometimes it’s fun to be a little off-centered,” Armelle said with just enough affection in her voice to make me think she knew me already.

  At the end of the class, Pierre announced that we would have a nude model at the following session. Oh my. I immediately thought of Renoir and his Nude in the Sun—the magic of the sunlight laced across the soft, sinuous torso of a woman at ease, the pink and blue tint of her skin, the shimmer of the leaves, the sanguine bloom in her cheeks. A symphonic orchestra was beginning to swell in my head.

  “We will be sketching,” Pierre said, and suddenly someone pulled the plug on my orchestra. EEEeeaahhoow.

  Sketching? You must be joking. How am I going to match Renoir with a sketch? I needed color and a billboard canvas, and, most of all, I needed the sun.

  “Will we be working outside?” I asked.

  The class laughed, as I knew they would.

  “Where did you have in mind,” Pierre asked with humor in his voice, “the church square?”

  “It was just an idea,” I said meekly. “I’m not married to it.”

  After class, Armelle and I walked side by side down the stairs and into the fresh air. The sun was low in the sky, which lengthened the shadows on the cobbled street.

  “Have you ever sketched a nude before?” Armelle asked.

  “Well, not exactly. I did sketch a naked vase once. Does that count?”

  “I don’t think that counts.”

  “How is it done?”

  “How is what done?”

  “I mean … well, that is … how does the model set up?”

  “Set up?” Armelle said as a half question, half statement.

  “Yeah, does she just drop her clothes right there in front of God and everyone?”

  “Oh, Allen, you’re really not that naïve are you?”

  “No, of course not,” I said straightening my backbone. “Are you kidding? Hey, I’ve been around. Maybe not all the way around, but still …” When I find myself in trouble, especially when I’m coming across as unsophisticated or, worse, incompetent, I resort to humor to save face. So I added, “You know, Armelle, I was born at night but not last night. What I’m trying to say is … that is what I was wondering was … you know …”

  Armelle came to my rescue, bless her heart. “Allen, there is nothing to worry about. It’s handled very discreetly. Usually the model will go into another room, remove her clothes, wrap a sheet around herself, and then step into the studio. She will sit on a stool and then allow the sheet to slip off her shoulders. It’s all very mesuré.”

  “I see. Measured, huh?”

  “Oui, mesuré. Not everyone is able to do it. The last model we had looked very pale sitting on the stool in the middle of the room. Suddenly she fainted.”

  “Oh my.”
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  “It was just too stressful for her.”

  “I’m afraid that I may be the one who faints this time,” I said, only half-jokingly.

  “You’ll do fine,” Armelle said, patting me on the shoulder.

  The next week when I walked into the studio, the room was full of student artists. I soon learned that a nude model was a big draw.

  The windows were closed, and with all the extra bodies, the room was stuffy with the scent of a wet dog.

  “May I open a window?” I asked of no one in particular.

  “Mais non,” Pierre said. “We have a nude model today, and we must think of her.”

  “Ah oui, bien sûr,” I said. “Of course, I knew that. That makes sense.”

  It was then that I saw the model standing in a corner of the room, her back to a window that overlooked the main street of Pérols. She was wearing a pair of black cotton pants and a ribbed coffee-brown turtleneck sweater. I could see by her form against the window that she was not wearing a bra, a piece of information that suddenly, curiously carried less intrigue than usual.

  She was a tall, full-bodied young woman with dark brown eyes and a tousled crop of auburn hair. She was not fat, but, as one student later described her, somewhat masculine. When I had asked about opening the window, her eyes met mine. I did not know if I should look into the eyes of a woman who in a moment would be posing naked. What is the rule on that anyway? I smiled weakly, apologetically, and she looked away.

  I found a chair and, imagining where the model would sit, placed it at an angle that I thought would replicate the point of view in Nude in the Sun—in other words, full-body center.

  I glanced at the model again, and she at me. I wondered if she thought I was positioning myself to take full advantage of her nakedness, to be a sanctioned voyeur. I’m sure I flushed; I felt the heat on my face.

  When all the students had set up and it was time to begin, the model did not go into another room to change, nor did she have a sheet to cover her body. While other students were talking to me, asking me about my health and the week before, and while I tried to respond in a voice as routine as saying “how ya doin’,” the young woman pulled the brown turtleneck over her head and tossed the sweater like dirty laundry into the corner of the room. She then slipped out of her shoes by holding down the heel with the toe of the opposing foot. She unzipped her pants and let them drop to her feet. She then stepped out of one leg and then the other and deftly kicked the trousers into the corner alongside the abandoned sweater. I could see all that peripherally, dimly as if veiled in the shadow of Renoir.

  When she hooked a thumb under the waistband of her white panties (Is there another word more difficult for a man to say?), I looked away, deciding that my pencil desperately needed sharpening.

  The model walked to the center of the room and leaned against a three-foot stool that was draped with a white sheet. Pierre instructed the model to place her foot here, her hand there, giving her a small oriental fan that she held unopened in her right hand. It suddenly occurred to me that, with the exception of my wife, this was the first time I was in the same room with a woman who was entirely naked.

  “Respect the angles of the model,” Pierre said to the class. “Use the full length of your pencil to gauge the proportional relationship of her head to her shoulders to her breasts to her hips.”

  My God, he was talking about her like she was an assortment of building blocks. I looked at the woman, at the blank page of my sketchbook, and at the woman again. I did not know how to start. I felt that putting my pencil to paper would somehow violate her.

  The room was feeling warmer. I took in a breath and began to sketch her face—slowly, carefully. As I was drawing I could see how perfectly lovely she was—perhaps not in a classical sense, but still beautiful, as are all women with a story to tell and dreams to realize. I began to explore her face—to caress it really—with each tentative stroke of my pencil. Gradually, I worked down her body: her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, her waist.

  Pierre moved to where I was sitting and examined my drawing. “Not bad,” he said, “but your proportions are not accurate. Look where you have placed her navel. That is not right.”

  Now that he mentioned it, the navel on my sketchbook did look a little high. If the model were Route 66 from Chicago to LA, I had her bellybutton in Oklahoma City—and not Amarillo, Texas, where any schoolboy knows it belongs.

  “Draw in her pubic hair,” he said, sounding curiously nettled. “That will help orient you.”

  I had been avoiding the pubic hair; it just seemed so … private, so intimate. I made a few squiggles where her legs came together—feeling certain that the model was glowering at me (she was not). I sighed so deeply that Armelle, who was sitting next to me, asked if I was all right.

  To hear a woman’s voice disturb that sequestered moment felt like a stern sanction—as though my fourth grade teacher, Miss Chess, had just caught me in a hiding place during recess with a Playboy magazine opened to the centerfold. “Huh? Yeah, I’m all right.”

  Of course, I was not all right. I was not all right at all.

  I began drawing the legs and feet of the model where I felt considerably safer. That brief respite allowed the blood to drain from my face. It was then that Pierre called for a break. The model straightened her back and rolled her head this way and that. She walked calmly to the corner of the room where she had heaped her clothing and quietly slipped into her pants and sweater.

  Most of the students were gathered around a table, pouring doses of coffee and munching on chocolate-covered wafers. I sat immobile in my chair, staring blankly at my drawing, only to be awakened by the voice of the model, who was now standing beside me. She was carefully studying my sketch.

  “I like it,” she said. Her voice was soft and airy—just short of a whisper.

  I did not know what to say. How do you talk to the model of a nude sketch, a stranger at that, who is standing there beside you with one hand on her hip and the other holding a cup of coffee as if she were waiting for her nails to dry? What do you say? I think I captured your thighs all right, but your left breast is a little off? No way. It made me wince just thinking about it.

  “Uh, thank you,” I finally muttered. And then, regaining a small semblance of sophistication, I asked, “What does it feel like to see your likeness on paper?” (I was using the formal “you” all the way here.)

  “Sometimes I see myself in the drawings,” the model said. “Sometimes I see someone I don’t recognize at all.”

  Did I dare ask? “What do you see in my drawing?”

  “I see myself,” she said smiling.

  “You are too kind,” I said.

  “Yes, I see myself although I think you made my face prettier than it really is.”

  I looked at her—her smooth caramel-colored skin and perfectly shaped nose—and then at my crude drawing. “Oh no,” I said, “I don’t think I have done you justice.” For heaven’s sake, was I flirting with the girl who only moments ago was standing ten feet from me cloaked in a blanket of … air? What’s the rule on that?

  Pierre called for work to begin again. The model returned to the corner of the room and, just as before, stripped her clothes and tossed them in a pile. She took her place on the stand. This was harder yet. However short the conversation, I had established a relationship with the model. She was a person. And now she was once again a drawing lesson. I decided to change my position and start a new sketch. I walked around the room, stopping at an angle that caught her back and the side of her face. I found a chair and settled in to draw.

  I finished the second sketch and then a third. The minutes passed, and the class came to an end. The model stretched, got dressed, and in the next moment was gone. She had been paid thirty-three euros for her time. My contribution, like everyone else, was three euros. For just under four dollars, I had entered the private domain of another human being.

  After the model had gone, most of the students
lingered. Armelle, two other students, and I stood in a circle at one end of the room.

  “What did you think about that experience?” Armelle asked.

  “I did not feel adequate,” I said, using the French word “adéquat.”

  “No,” Armelle said, correcting my grammar, “we only use the word adéquat to describe things, not people. You want to say that you did not feel à la hauteur, equal to the task.”

  “Yes, that is what I mean,” I said. “I did not feel à la hauteur.”

  “But was this your first time?” another student asked.

  “Yes, it was my first time, but that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “The point is that we were sketching a person.”

  “Of course.”

  “She was not a chair,” I said. “She was a person. She is important. She has feelings and dreams and a whole life ahead of her. And I, with my awkward hand, could not do her justice.”

  “But you are just beginning,” someone argued.

  I was feeling frustrated that I could not explain my feelings. “I know I am just beginning. That’s not it. You see, if I am drawing a still life, it is not a problem. The apple doesn’t know that my drawing is crude. The bowl doesn’t care if my proportions are not correct. But a person is different. She is real. She is beautiful and intelligent. And, more than anything else, I wanted to capture that beauty and intelligence. What right do I have to scrawl a few ugly lines? Don’t you see? It’s just not right.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t feel that way,” one of the students said.

  I heaved a sigh, as people do when, despite everything, they are not comprehended.

  “Yes, he should feel that way,” Armelle said. “He should feel exactly how he feels—whatever that might be.”

  I could have kissed Armelle.