by M. J. Rose
At the front, things go badly for Alan, who is blinded and captured by the Germans. When Alan is reported dead, his friend, Captain Gerald Shannon, discreetly woos Kitty, seeking to soothe her grief with his gentle love.
After the war, however, Gerald discovers that Alan is still alive, in a remote corner of England, writing children’s stories for a living. Loyal to his former comrade in arms, Gerald informs Kitty of Alan’s reappearance. She goes to Alan, who conceals his blindness and tells Kitty that he no longer cares for her. She sees through his deception, however, and they are reunited.
The plot had eerie similarities to my own life. A blind hero and a lover willing to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of his beloved. I cried reading it.
The job required that I deliver concepts first. Over the next two days and nights, with great effort and fortified by a few too many glasses of wine, I managed to sketch out some ideas. If I hadn’t needed to pay my rent, I would have given up in the first hour. My concentration was off. My imagination was impaired. Even my lines were less assured than usual.
I showed Clifford my work. Inspecting my drawings, he suggested which two ideas were worth submitting.
I knew how lackluster my work was compared with what I usually did, but as it turned out, it was still better than what the theater manager usually got for the price.
In the background, I’d drawn a battlefield. In the foreground, Gerald held a wounded Alan in his arms. Looking down on both of them, like an angel above, was Kitty’s lovely face.
In the second sketch, against the same background, Alan holds Kitty in his arms, saying good-bye to her before he goes off to war, and Gerald watches them. That second one was accepted, and I was commissioned to create the final poster.
I’d never struggled harder to accomplish anything. My fingers revolted at holding brushes. I could only stand at the easel for a half hour at a time without feeling fatigued. I didn’t have a fever, a cold or cough, or a stomach problem, but I was ill. My soul was sick.
The first day yielded nothing worthwhile. Neither did the second. By the end of the week, I thought about resigning. But that would have meant disappointing Clifford, who’d gotten me the job. And I needed the money. My only alternative was wiring home to borrow some, which would worry my brother and bring up questions I wasn’t prepared to answer. No one in my family knew of my broken engagement, and I wasn’t ready to discuss that, either. It was all tied to my shame.
“Your visibility is an important part of your success, Delphine,” my brother had explained more than once. “There’s a cachet to your work. People whisper about it and about you. Who is she? How does she do it? We need to always keep them wondering about your mystique. Like Houdini, like Mina Crandon, hold them in awe.”
No, I couldn’t alert Sebastian. I needed not only to finish the illustration but also to do a good enough job to get more poster work. Enough, at least, for rent. Even if I couldn’t assuage my guilt, I had to function.
After a lost third day, I hired a model. Maybe that would inspire me. Gordon Belling was about my age, with long mahogany hair and high cheekbones. I had him pose first as Alan and then as Gerald, and while I sipped brandy, I filled pages with quick sketches of his form in various postures and attitudes. But when it came to the romantic stance, I was at a loss.
“Do you mind posing without your outer clothes?” I asked.
“No problem at all,” Gordon said, as he took off his jacket and then his shirt and stood bare-chested, with just his slacks on. He smiled at me. “Is this all right?”
Was he flirting?
“Yes, better,” I said, in what I hoped was a neutral tone.
As I drew him, I thought again about the instincts that drove us, our urges and yearnings and our passions. Where did they stem from? What was the purpose of our coming together? In school, they had taught us that sexual needs were nature’s way of ensuring procreation. But was that all there was to men and women sharing one another’s bodies? Was the pleasure simply there to tempt us so that we would continue to breed? If the story of La Lune had taught me anything, surely it was that sex wasn’t just about procreation. But what was it about, exactly?
The following morning, I spread all my sketches out on the floor and chose the ones that best fit the characters. Then I blocked out the scene. I had the poses I needed for both men but not for Kitty. I had two choices: spend more money I couldn’t afford on a female model or use myself. It would mean hours of looking into the mirror. But did I really have any choice?
That evening, I removed the chiffon from the entryway mirror, turned on the foyer light, took my sketchbook in hand, and looked.
It was just as I’d dreaded. The room was dimly lit behind me, and in the shadows were frightening shapes, swimming by, caught in a vortex. I felt nauseated but had no other choice than to bear it and work quickly, getting the angles right and then covering up the mirror again as quickly as I could. Within minutes, I was enveloped in freezing-cold air, causing my teeth to chatter and my fingers to tremble.
Once I finished the sketch, I drank more brandy, choking on it in my haste to warm up.
Later that night, I’d painted myself into the poster, in the handsome model’s arms. It wasn’t up to my usual quality. The painting lacked a certain clarity and crispness. If only I could have called on magick to improve this undistinguished work. But it didn’t work that way. It was the same with my mother. Whatever magick we possessed was finite. Like everyone else, we relied on hard work. But this painting looked average. Would it do? It was certainly competent. And better than what most would produce. But that didn’t mean I had to be satisfied with it.
I turned the easel to the wall so I wouldn’t have to look at the painting. Then I poured myself a glass of wine and settled down with a book. I read only a few pages but was distracted and nervous. Not even a second glass of wine helped.
Sometimes drawing soothed me. I gathered some pencils and a pad and began to sketch a man, similar in form to Gordon but in a very different pose. Lying down, naked, he had a tiger’s head instead of his handsome face, and beneath him, crushed by his body, I drew myself with the head of a swan.
Searching for answers in the lines and shading, I drew us over and over. On each page, exploring different positions—most I’d never known myself but could imagine. My hunger to learn more about the impulses I’d drawn in that horrible sketch of Clara and Monty consumed me.
What kind of animals were we that our sexual dances led to such tragedy? What was the point of so much passion? Mathieu was the only person I’d shared my body with. He was all I knew of that kind of fervor. When I was with him, it was silk and fire, wild colors, intensity and tenderness all at the same time. Transcendent and glorious, it felt anything but animalistic. Rather, it seemed as if our souls were meeting and joining. And yet our attraction to each other was dangerous, too, fated to end. The choice of just how tragically was left up to me.
During my explorations, I drew men with powerful bear, jaguar, or leopard heads and women with the faces of wise owls and sly foxes. Turning people into members of the animal kingdom, I searched for the perfect metaphors.
The following week, I received a second theatrical commission and hired Gary again. After I captured the pose I needed for the poster, I positioned him in more suggestive positions, always holding an imaginary woman, his arms embracing air. After he left, I drew myself in, trying, always trying, to understand the ephemeral meaning that lay tantalizingly just beyond reach—the reason for all of this.
Once I completed the drawing, I threw myself onto my bed and touched my body, appalled but curious about how the act of painting these dreams made me so hungry for sex. Tommy and I had been only moderately physical with each other. He’d pushed for more, but I had resisted. Not because I didn’t enjoy his kisses and caresses, but something always held me back. So many women didn’t resist after the war. Tommy said he admired my strong sense of morals. And I let him think that; it was easier
than trying to explain something I couldn’t talk about. I’d only been with one man, and he was still very much in my heart.
So it was ironic that February, for me, a twenty-five-year-old artist and self-imposed celibate, to be alone and finally aroused after ending the two-year relationship I’d had with a man I thought I was going to wed.
A wildness I didn’t know I possessed took me over during those winter weeks in New York. I cut my hair and enhanced the red with henna. I drew darker lines around my eyes. I didn’t eat as much as I drank. When I glimpsed myself in the mirror, I saw the wantonness that I felt. Almost desperately, I tried to stop making the drawings I indulged in. Tried to prevent the debauched fantasies that filled my mind. And when I couldn’t, I attempted to convince myself that this was an artistic quest, an aesthetic search for a carnal truth. Wasn’t there merit in looking for answers? Wasn’t it an artist’s job to find a metaphor and use it to explain the human condition? After the war, didn’t each of us need to find out what it was that had driven humans to act with such inhumanity? Wasn’t I just searching for the fence that kept us on one side of the animal kingdom and the beasts on the other? Or were we really just beasts ourselves?
And every night, before I went to sleep, I tortured myself by reading another entry in my Book of Hours. Wallowing in the magnificent pain of remembering what I’d had and what I’d given up.
Chapter 10
Book of Hours
May 30, 1920
Today began with rain, but by the time I met Mathieu at the florist around the corner from Maison de la Lune, the sun was peeking out of the clouds. He was waiting in a hansom cab and told the driver to proceed to an address in the tenth arrondissement.
“Today,” he said, “is the beginning of your secret tour of Paris. Every spot chosen for your enjoyment and delight.”
Once we arrived at our destination, after he paid, Mathieu helped me out. A few steps off the boulevard de Strasbourg, we came to an arch leading to a small alley. Taking my arm, Mathieu led me into a passageway lined with shops. We stopped at no. 34 Passage du Désir, a chocolatier. He purchased one small sack of chocolate-covered orange peel. Back outside, he opened it and pulled out a piece.
“Open your mouth, and close your eyes. Don’t bite on it at first, just let it start to melt. There’s an art to eating fine chocolate.”
I did as I was told, and he fed me. My body reacted to the delectable citrus and cocoa flavor and also to the intimacy of the act. Once the chocolate covering had melted, I chewed the candied peel.
Before I could open my eyes, Mathieu leaned forward and kissed me. My entire being reacted to this small act. Two lips pressing two lips. His tongue explored just a bit. It was shocking. But not unwelcome. Suddenly, I was unsteady. My mind reeled. I tried—but failed—to absorb and understand what was happening. A unique feeling. One kiss, a hundred sensations. I smelled the chocolate and the oranges and his burnt-vanilla, honey, and amber cologne, and the scents mixed and merged and, along with the pressure from his lips, went right to my head.
In the midst of the explosion, a voice inside me whispered, Pay attention to all this, Delphine. Savor this. It is extraordinary. Make the memory of it even as it happens. Delight in it … don’t squander it.
After a few more moments, Mathieu pulled back. He looked down at me and smiled his secret smile. An invitation to a new world of touch, taste, and smell, so tempting and powerful, sensational and special.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“What?”
“That it would be all right to kiss me?”
He laughed. And then became concerned. “Wasn’t it?”
“It felt as if …” I struggled for the words.
“It felt, dear heart, as if we had both been moving toward that kiss for lifetimes. Is that what you wanted to say?”
I nodded. Surprised he’d understood exactly what I hadn’t even begun to express.
“One of the great mysteries,” he said, running his finger down my cheek, “is what makes two people right for each other.” He touched his finger to my lips and then outlined them as if he were drawing them. “Sometimes I think we spend too much time trying to figure out the how of things—the war, man’s inhumanity, destiny, genius … one simple kiss that the whole world fits into. All that matters is that we try to live the best things and turn our backs on the worst.”
And then he held up the bag of chocolates.
“Now, which would you like? Another of these? Or another of these?” And he touched the center of my lips with his fingers, which set off a new avalanche of sensations.
After our second kiss, he steered me out of the passage and down one street and then one more until we reached our next destination. The short street looked fairly ordinary. Apartment houses lined both sides. A Gothic church stood at its end.
Mathieu pointed to the street sign: rue de la Fidélité.
I read it. Thought for a moment. Then smiled. “Rue de la Fidélité. We were just in Passage du Désir,” I said.
“You catch on quickly.”
“And where are we going now?”
“You’ll see.”
As we walked toward the Saint-Laurent church, he told me that it had been built in the sixth century as a monastery and then rebuilt in 1180 and rebuilt yet again in the fifteenth century. Mathieu peppered his history lesson with the story of a parishioner, a young widow, who in 1633, with the help of her confessor, Vincent de Paul, created the Daughters of Charity order to help the poor and care for the sick. The community, he told me, spread to all corners of the world and was still active in areas as far afield as Israel, the Americas, and Australia.
“They say her body is incorruptible,” Mathieu whispered in a forced dramatic sotto voce. “She’s been nominated for sainthood.”
“How do you know all these details?”
“My uncle started the bookshop with the idea of specializing in what fascinated him: all things unexplained—magic, the occult, mysteries and miracles, ancient wonders, spells, curses, hidden treasure. Growing up around him and in the shop, I’ve become just as fascinated with the arcane and esoteric.”
He stopped and pointed to the street sign. “Here we are. From desire to fidelity, and now we’re on rue de Paradis.”
Every store on the street was dedicated to the arts de la table. Every window display of crystal or china tempted. The buildings were a combination of styles from the last fifty years; the passage of time was visible in the tile work, the stained glass, and other architectural details.
Mathieu led me to Baccarat’s store. As we walked through the elegant lobby, its giant glittering chandelier cast tiny rainbows on the floor, the walls, even our faces and hands.
Inside a large, high-ceilinged room were cases of historical objects all produced by the glass manufacturer, dating back to the late 1700s.
“These,” he said, pointing at a set of goblets, “were made by Count Thierry for his mistress in 1826.”
I looked at the wine and water goblets. Five sizes, each a watery shade of pale blue, highly faceted and with ornate silver filigree work on the stem.
“The count had the glass matched to his lover’s eyes and ordered more than one thousand of them in the years they were together. Only these six still exist. All the others were smashed.”
“Why?”
“The count was so jealous he didn’t want anyone to drink from a glass touched by her lips. Each goblet she drank from was destroyed after she used it.”
Mathieu took my hand.
“Always love to the point of madness,” he said, “or else what is the point of love?”
Chapter 11
The calls requesting my attendance at parties continued. Monty’s death had actually increased my notoriety, and the more I stayed away, the greater the demand. But I couldn’t return to the circuit. Clifford traveled a lot that late February, and I was lonely by myself. I could have done a party every night, but until the first week of March, I res
isted, stayed to myself, and explored the strange series that had seized my imagination, filling page after page with ideas, never satisfied with any of them. Not willing even to try to commit one to canvas. Without putting my blindfold on to sketch, nothing was turning out right. But I couldn’t … wouldn’t ever again. Even if I was alone. Even just to explore my imagination.
“You can’t just disappear, Delphine,” Muffy Van Buren insisted. Born into one of New York’s wealthiest families, she had married into an even wealthier one. Both she and her husband were great patrons of the arts, and while he favored Renaissance masterpieces, she focused on discovering new and fresh talent. Once Clifford had introduced us, she became fascinated with my shadow portraits and was now my biggest supporter and a good friend. “And I want you at this party. Consider it your reentry into society.”
Muffy was only six years older than I, but she’d been raised in a more conventional way, befitting women in high society. She hadn’t bobbed her hair or raised her hems. Although publicly she professed to be scandalized by my lifestyle, in private she whispered that she envied my freedom. Visiting my studio that afternoon, she’d been both shocked and titillated by my current canvases. After viewing them, she picked two that she wanted to purchase when they were completed and then decided I needed some sustenance.
“So will you come?” she asked.
We were sitting at a marble-topped table in the dimly lit Caffe Reggio on MacDougal Street. Owned by Domenico Parisi, an Italian immigrant, it had an atmosphere that was both exotic and artistic. The walls were filled with paintings, one supposedly from the school of Caravaggio, although I doubted its provenance. I was equally suspicious about the marble bench that Parisi claimed came from a Medici family estate in Florence. But there was nothing dubious about the elaborate chrome-and-bronze espresso machine, topped with an angel, its base surrounded by dragons, that sat in the position of honor and brewed the most heavenly coffee. Since the place had opened in 1902, it had become a favorite gathering spot for so many artists who lived and worked in Greenwich Village. That afternoon, I noticed two other painters, Arthur Davies and John Sloan, both from the Ashcan school and quite well known, seated across from us in the tiny restaurant.
