Abigail

by Malcolm Macdonald

  Of necessity then they ate out in the cafés. And when the rains drove down and they had to send for meals to be brought in a pail, they also had to hire scaldini from the artisan’s wife and sit with their feet ensconced in the warmth of them, huddled under blankets, and praying for just a touch of the heat they had cursed in summer and would curse again not six months hence.

  January was worst. They said it was the hardest cold in memory. The breath froze one night in César’s beard. When they arrived home he twirled the ice in fairy sherds onto their doormat. Abigail lay in bed and wondered if she could survive the night. Nothing seemed to warm her.

  A voice said, “This is madness.” César’s.

  It was all the excuse he offered for climbing beneath the sheets with her. He had brought his own blankets. He was huddled up to her while she was still deciding whether to object or not.

  “Don’t try anything,” she warned.

  “Try what, for heaven’s sake!” he said.

  When they were just a little warmer she asked, “Why didn’t you go to Celia? She’s nearer to you.”

  “I…” he began. But then he was silent.

  How might he have completed the sentence, she wondered? “I respect her too much? I prefer you? I have already seen you naked, so you no longer frighten me? I do not love you, so you don’t tempt me?”

  It was strange, she thought, a token of the mystery of César, that she had no idea what he might have said.

  When they were warmer still, warm enough for her to begin to feel guilty, she asked, “Will Celia be all right?”

  Only by the change in his breathing did she know that the question stirred him. “People die of hypothermia,” he said. Then he chuckled. “Or, to put it into medical language—they croak of the cold. I’ll get her. It’s better anyway. You smell too beautiful.”

  He was soon back with Celia. “D’you think it’s all right, Abbie?” she asked. But she was already between them, shivering gratefully in the warmth they had created.

  After the intensity of the cold they had endured separately, the warmth was all the argument needed to quell their moral doubts. In any case, having fretted awake for so long, they were soon blissfully asleep.

  Their awakening was a little sheepish. The sun had taken off some of the chill, removing also the direct justification for being together—the justification their flesh could feel.

  “I’ll go,” César said, drawing the sheets up over his head. His muffled voice added: “Soon.”

  Abigail laughed but Celia took action; she began to tickle him. He fled soon enough then.

  “It wasn’t wrong,” Celia said when they were alone together. “I really thought I’d die of cold.”

  “It wasn’t wrong—as it turned out. But it mustn’t happen again.”

  The cold did not relent. By three that afternoon it had clamped around them once more, driving them out to the Posta, the Falcone, the Greco, the Café de Venise, the Best Society, armed with sketchbooks and constitutions that could take a dozen coffees without a flutter. On the way back they stopped in at the Osteria della Campana in the shadow of the Teatro. They had often passed it, never ventured inside.

  César was delighted to find there a plaque, erected by a proud king of Bavaria, boasting the fact that there “in the years 1776, 1777, and 1778 Wolfgang Goethe had amorous intercourse with Faustina, a beauteous country girl.”

  “The quintessence of romance and Germanic thoroughness in one sentence!” he said. “Not ’seventy-six to ’seventy-eight, as you or I would gloss it, but all three years!”

  When they crossed their own threshold and sensed that especial cold which seemed to drift uniquely through the top floor of the Teatro, they did not even question that they would pass another night together. This time César slept between them, for they had discovered last night that he was the warmest-blooded of the three.

  “You know,” he asked as soon as the candle was snubbed, “of the German professor of aesthetics who was invited to dinner by Venus herself?”

  They did not.

  “Well, after the dinner, which was, of course, ambrosia and nectar, Venus dismissed her servants and, divesting herself of her raiment (which was, in any case, little more than woven air), lay back on her silken cushions and said to the German professor of aesthetics, ‘You may have your will of me.’ Of course, the German professor of aesthetics’ eyes popped out. ‘You mean it?’ he gasped. ‘Indeed and indeed,’ replied the goddess. ‘Anything?’ asked the German professor of aesthetics. ‘Anything, anything,’ Venus said, all of a flutter. ‘Only be quick!’ Whereupon the German professor of aesthetics whipped out a tape measure and, approaching the goddess with trembling hands, said reverently, ‘My colleagues and I have been disputing this for a lo-o-o-ng time!’”

  Abigail was certain that, under the cover of darkness, César held an imaginary tape measure to some decidedly nonimaginary points of Celia’s anatomy. It annoyed Abigail.

  Next morning there was some sun; and they found that by leaving the bedroom and studio doors open, enough of its heat filtered through to make the studio bearable, even though the frost persisted. But Celia came up from her room dressed for the street. She began to gather together all her watercolours from the summer and from Normandy. “I found a dealer a couple of days ago,” she said. “He wants to buy. When I come back we shall be rich and I’m going to take us to the Quirinal for dinner.”

  When she had gone César said, “He will cheat her, this dealer.”

  “Why don’t you go with her then?” Abigail asked.

  “She must learn. It’s only one season’s work. She has many years to go.”

  “You’re cool!”

  “You think so?”

  Abigail wondered if César was right. There was a hard streak in Celia—look how she had treated Henry after she left him. “What would you call ‘cheat?’” she asked. “What ought she to get?”

  “Let’s say seventy-five lire per painting. She won’t get it, though.”

  When they broke for lunch she returned obliquely to what had happened—or what she thought had happened—last night.

  “Celia had a rotten marriage,” she said. “Has she ever talked about it?”

  He said no, but his eyes hinted at some kind of knowledge.

  “Her husband was not a normal man.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  She drew a deep breath and framed herself to it. “Because of what I think is going to happen.”

  “Which is?”

  “I think you want to become her lover.”

  He did not betray himself by the slightest gesture, but his eyes still had not lost their omniscience.

  “I would like that, César, but only if you are sincere. I know that men are promiscuous in their desires. You can separate it from love as we cannot. Celia does not need—of all people, Celia doesn’t need—another man who would use her like that. You may desire her…?” She looked at him questioningly.

  “I do,” he said evenly.

  “Then I beg you—do nothing about it unless you also love her. Don’t make her love you, then use her, then leave her. It’d be so easy for you to do that. But it would be the end of her.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said casually.

  “It would! It’d be the end of her chances of finding love and happiness.”

  “Those chances end only with our death.”

  “Please don’t, César, please? I beg you!”

  “What if I tell you I can’t. That I desire her so much I must have her.”

  Horrified, she stared at him. “That’s not like you,” she said.

  He reached across the table and took her hand. Hers was trembling but his was calm. “What’s like me? You don’t know. You don’t care. You don’t know inside me, what goes on.”

  Her
eyes fell. “Do you want me, too, César?”

  “Of course. You are beautiful, you’re kind, you’re intelligent, you are sympathetic. Also, most important, you are: Abigail!”

  Wishing she could control her shaking hand and voice, she said, “Then have me, César. Leave Celia alone until you also love her. If it’s only that pleasure you want, let me try to give it you. Nothing much can harm me now.”

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it as if each finger were due some special reverence, forcing her to look at him again. Now she saw that the look in his eyes was not the remote glint of secrets, withheld from her, but compassion. “Dear Abbie,” he said. “You think it’s Celia who needs such tenderness, but really it’s you. Because you have a mind—because you can think about things and make a grand philosophy—you think you’re no longer vulnerable. But you are. I tremble for you, not Celia. Celia can come back from hell and next day she’ll be painting watercolours to show you what it was like. No man will ever harm Celia now. She never had any great passion in her. Celia will be a nice, warm, comfortable wife. But you! Why haven’t I painted your portrait as I promised? Because of all I would see if I looked into your soul for three, four weeks; because of what I would put on canvas; because of what you would then discover.”

  “Are you trying to say you love me?” she asked, alarmed now.

  “Yes. And Celia, too.” He let go her hand and held up his own fingers to count upon. “First I love: painting. Second I love: painting. Third I love: painting! Fourth-equal I love: you-and-Celia…Celia-and-you.” He snorted. “How unkind of Nature—to give me desire as big as a mountain but to leave my capacity for love down in the foothills. It would not harm Celia. But you—I don’t know.”

  She was embarrassed enough to try to make a joke of it. “Poor César. You’ll have me yielding out of pity next!”

  Whether or not he knew she was joking, he took her at her word. “Ah! That’d be good. That’ll do you no harm. Pity is a cul-de-sac of love. You will be safe for a while there.”

  She punched him playfully and laughed.

  He stood and walked to the door. “Come on,” he said without looking back.

  ***

  It was an extraordinary experience. With Pepe she had never separated her physical from her emotional pleasure—it had never occurred to her that they could be separate. They went so completely hand in hand; when she had been emotionally out of sorts with Pepe, she had been physically unresponsive, too.

  But with César there was no question of such a coalescence. Her senses and emotions, though both involved, stood a little apart. Her mind could oversee them both. Physically her senses found it as shattering as anything she had ever known. It was the same brush with intimations of death. Emotionally it was…comforting…satisfying. Her painting that afternoon went well.

  Celia was late home but her face was triumphant. “Good news all the way!” she called out. “Henry is dead and I’ve sold all my paintings.”

  “Celia!” Abigail’s shocked cry was simultaneous with César’s “How much?”

  “For the bigger ones, a hundred and fifty lire. The smaller ones a hundred. And there were three he wouldn’t go above seventy-five for—but that was just to salvage the last remnants of his pride. His first offer was fifty apiece for the lot! Hoo!” She sat down, feigning an exhaustion that her face and voice belied.

  “Celia, did you say Henry was dead?”

  “Yes, the solicitors wrote poste restante. The letter’s been there a week. Oh, it took me all day but I slowly beat him up and up. Fifty lire! He won’t try that again.”

  “But how did he die? Do they say?”

  “Yes.” She stood up. “He hanged himself. Well, I’m going to dress for dinner. Tonight at the Quirinal we shall be la crème de la crème. So clean fingernails please!”

  When she had gone, Abigail turned and stared at César.

  With a sardonic smile he said, “What price, I wonder, for a watercolour of Hell?”

  ***

  Next day he hired a porter with a barrow, loaded a dozen canvases on it, and sent Celia out to sell them, offering her ten percent of whatever she got. Abigail wondered if this was an elaborate ruse to get Celia out of the way again; but he made no move all afternoon. They painted on in contented silence.

  Celia returned with all the paintings still on the barrow. César was aghast until she told him she’d found a dealer with a gallery, willing to offer him an exhibition in the spring. Then, of course, he was overjoyed.

  That night was the last they all slept together. The cold loosed its grip on the city the following day and they resumed their solitary beds with relief, for the novelty had worn thin and only the biting cold had made Abigail’s bed large enough for three. A week later, after they had retired for the night, she heard a scratching at her door. It was César.

  “Obviously, you’re never going to ask,” he said.

  “Ask what?” She felt foolish standing at the half-open door.

  “So I’ll just have to offer my desperation and hope the wells of pity are still yielding sweet water.”

  “Come in, then.”

  At once he took her in his arms. Each could feel the other’s excitement. “You do enjoy it, don’t you?” he asked. “You don’t regret it after?”

  “It’s fine. Come on.”

  When they were in the warmth of her sheets, he said, “Then why didn’t you ask?”

  Instinctively she turned her face away, though it was so dark neither of them could see the other. “I never would.”

  “Why not?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t.”

  For her it was as pleasurable, and as unengaged, as the time before. Afterwards he lingered a little too long and held her a little too dearly for her liking. “Don’t fall in love with me, César,” she warned. “Don’t start to think it can ever be more than this.”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” he said.

  “And forget what I said the other day. Love Celia too, if you wish.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Why else would I say it?”

  “Women sometimes say things to test men.”

  “I am not ‘women.’ And you should know it by now. I would prefer you to love Celia, even if it meant we would have to stop enjoying each other like this.”

  There’s always Massimo, she thought. But a moment later her soul cringed at the very notion and she had to tell herself hastily that it was just a joke. A “test,” in César’s phrase, to see if her vision of herself was still chaste at heart.

  “Shouldn’t one of us take precautions?” she asked as he rose to go.

  He was silent for some time. “Surely Annie told you?” he said at last. “She said I wasn’t to tell you. She said she’d break it to you at the right time.”

  Abigail froze. Time slipped.

  “Don’t tell me she didn’t.”

  “Oh…yes. She did. But I didn’t realize it was so absolute.”

  “I’m sorry. It was the only time in my life when I have regretted being a painter instead of the best obstetrician in the world. Even then, I think, there could not have been much chance.”

  When she was alone once more, she tried to feel the sadness of this news. But she felt nothing. It seemed not even to relate to her, except in the way that a person with amnesia might relate himself to the written record of his forgotten life. It was even comforting that such a phenomenon as amnesia was abroad in the world. She remembered how Annie had once said she wasn’t fit to love any more. Now Abigail said it softly, aloud, in Annie’s voice. “I dunno, Abbie—I don’t seem fit to love no one no more, some’ow.”

  For a second it was like having Annie back with her, but even that memory, sharp as a pang, melted nothing within.

  Chapter 36

  From then on her private life ceased. And a large p
art of her rejoiced at it—the painter, the lover of conversation and crowds, the letter writer, the playgoer, the opera enthusiast—the public and professional Abigail, who had almost vanished from sight since the Villa Corot. Now they reoccupied her, and her time. They carried her out in triumph into Rome.

  She still painted assiduously, for work was the habit of a lifetime. And César did not spare his help; everything he knew he tried to pass along to her. More than that, the very act of teaching changed him, too. As her confidence grew, she revealed a surer sense of colour than his. He was not too proud to notice it and to learn from her. And because he was a genius and she was not, he could seize on this new learning and quickly develop it to a point she could never have reached unaided. For instance, it was she who first saw how to introduce strong, even violent, colours into a painting without wrecking its unity. But it was he who turned the skill to more positive ends—he made it enhance the painting’s unity.

  That was the beginning of the style which was later to take him, if not to the forefront, at least to the second rank of French art (which would have outstripped the first rank in any other country). It was the style in which strong, clear colour was beautifully controlled to give light, airy canvases that looked as if they had arrived quite effortlessly.

  Those were the months when he painted her incessantly—the paintings he never parted with: “Self-portrait by a Third Party,” which was, in fact, his portrait of her at her easel; “A. Reading” (she was always plain A. in his titles), in which the light came at her from all sides—white from the page of her book, gold from the sun, green from the apple she was eating, ochre from the dry earth; “A. Asleep,” where she lay in a high-backed wicker chair, dappled with the radiance of the Roman springtime; “Box at the Opera,” where she sat with Celia and himself, lit from beneath with the cold limelight off the stage but engulfed in a dark, warm, fiery shadow…and many others.

  The two best paintings of her were never exhibited—two nude studies drawn from life but painted from memory because he could not ask her to pose for the weeks they took him to finish. One showed her standing in a small footbath near an open window with the sunlight streaming in and falling over her like a caress. In the other, where she lay back upon a bed, apparently exhausted by the heat, he had painted himself, also nude, slightly intruding into the upper left corner of the picture. On the back of the first he had written, “The nakedness of woman is the work of God.”