by M. J. Rose
“It’s beautiful!”
“Now, tell me, what type of book do you think it’s dressing?” he asked playfully.
I studied the ruby leather, with its black and darkened gold geometric designs. The red made me think of tragedy. The subdued metal suggested high drama. Imposing and inspiring. Striking and remarkable. One author immediately sprang to mind.
“A novel by Victor Hugo?”
“Brava!” he said. “Les Miserables. And once it’s finished, I’ll give it to you.”
“But you’ve already given me my—” I’d almost said Book of Hours. I hadn’t yet told Mathieu that I’d given this turquoise journal a name. “So many beautiful gifts.”
He came around to where I was sitting and took my face in both his magical hands, cupping my cheeks and chin. “I plan to never tire of giving you gifts. Especially ones like this,” he said, and then leaned down and kissed me.
My arms went around his back as he pressed closer to me. The new scents of glue and ink added to his familiar smell.
While still kissing me, he lifted me and carried me as if I were no heavier than a few of his books. He deposited me on a chaise tucked into a corner of the room.
There, in golden sunlight, Mathieu embraced me again. We might never have stopped kissing and touching if the sun had not set and shadows filled the secret aerie, reminding me that I had to get home to my great-grandmother’s house, or they would worry and ask too many questions about why I was late. Pulling myself away was harder than I expected. And not just for me but also for Mathieu.
“I’ve half a mind to kidnap you and keep you here, like the witch kept Rapunzel in the fairy tale.”
“But you can’t be the witch. I am. You have to be the prince and save me,” I teased.
“Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll save you.” And he bent his head to seal his promise with one more kiss and then one more, until a chill breeze from the open window wafted in and cooled our ardor.
Chapter 19
Mougins was surrounded by forests and fields of lavender and roses and jasmine, all farmed for the perfumes of the fabled French houses of Guerlain, Houbigant, Fragonard, and L’Etoile. Rather than settling down to paint, for the next two weeks I found myself spending more time roaming the countryside than inside my studio. I sat in fields and on rocks, leaned against trees and fences, and sketched the flowers, imagining how I might translate them into surrealistic images. Yet they remained simple studies, showing no creativity or verve. And the paints? The palette? Those lush sable brushes? They sat unused on the pretty rosewood taboret.
“You just need more time to recover,” my mother said, one afternoon in mid-June. “Or maybe some help? I could go to work mixing up some soothing teas and inspirational tinctures.”
I’d driven down to Cannes to spend the day with her. Anything to distract myself from the empty canvases.
We’d gone shopping on the Croisette to buy a birthday gift for my great-grandmother and afterward stopped for refreshments on the terrace of the Hotel Carlton, overlooking the perfect azure sea. It was the most popular hotel in town, and before I’d gone to New York, when Sebastian had brought clients down from Paris, they’d always stayed here.
My mother ordered champagne, her drink of choice, and the waiter brought it along with a plate of canapés, including radish roses, savory cheese balls, and deviled eggs.
The breeze was blowing, as it often did by the beach, and we were relaxing and watching the sailboats in the distance and the foot traffic on the avenue as men and women strolled by. The fashion parade of chic costumes and fabulous jewels entertained us as we sipped our drinks.
“You know, there have been a couple of times in my career when I needed to open my grimoire and find remedies.”
“When?” I asked, curious. She’d never referred to barren periods before.
My mother looked out across the terrace to the sea. “When you and your brother were born, I bled too much. If I’d been a normal woman, I might not have made it, but the spirit of La Lune saw to it that I pulled through. Afterward, once I was healed and you and your brother were thriving, I had no drive to paint. It was as if I’d lost it with all that blood. So eventually, I used the book of spells and cured myself.”
“I had no idea. I feel guilty that we were responsible.”
“Which is exactly why I never told you. I know you well enough to know it’s the kind of thing that would have that effect. But you understand now how ridiculous that way of thinking is?”
I did, yet I was still disturbed. “And the other time?”
My mother shook her head. “You and your sisters all have an insatiable curiosity.”
“Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“Because you are too sensitive, and I know it’s going to upset you.”
“I won’t be upset.”
She looked at me for a moment, then took a breath. “When you lost your sight,” she said quietly.
I fought my instincts and tried to keep my voice even. “What happened?”
She sighed. “We’ve talked so little about this, and there’s so much about it that I’ve never explained. In order to get your sight back, I gave you some of mine. That’s how I cured you. I—”
“You mean you see less well because of me?”
“Not now. I regained all the vision I lost within two years.”
“But you did lose some of your vision?”
“It was an ancient, complicated spell.”
“Maman, it took more than a year to give me back my sight.”
She nodded.
“So you couldn’t paint all that time?” I couldn’t imagine her not standing at her easel every day, one paintbrush in her mouth, another in her hand, creating the complex, colorful paintings that were worlds unto themselves.
“I had a much more important job to do.” My mother took my hand. “So I know how you feel now. You want to work, but you can’t. It’s not quite the same. Your inability to paint isn’t physical. Yours springs from fear. I was incapacitated. But the result is identical.”
“Do you think the cure is also identical?”
“It might be. My eyes needed time to heal and regenerate. For you, it’s your spirit. And I can help. You’re already back on the right path. It’s just not a straightforward one. I’ll make up some tinctures that will help. This is going to be a complicated summer and fall for you.”
I laughed sardonically. “My winter and my spring were complicated, Maman. This is going to be easy compared with that.”
“You mean Monty’s death. Because Tommy didn’t break your heart that badly, did he? From your letters and what I saw in the waters, I never sensed that you loved him. Was I wrong?”
She bit her bottom lip, her teeth white against the red lipstick that was part of her signature style. That and the rubies she wore, either in ropes around her neck or in rings on all her fingers. No matter what other jewelry she wore, she was always bedecked in rubies.
The lip biting was her tell that she was nervous about my answer. And I knew why she was. My mother was worried that I had fallen in love with Tommy. That I’d squandered the one chance that daughters of La Lune are given at that game.
“No, you were right. I wasn’t in love with him. But I was content with him, Maman. I liked our life and looked forward to our future but for all the wrong reasons. Because he was safe. Because when I sketched him, he had no secrets. But then he threw me over for his parents, and I felt like such a fool. I never could have guessed anyone would reject me because we’re Jewish. For being a witch, yes. But our religion? We don’t even practice.”
“You’ve been sheltered here and in Paris, where people are much less prejudiced. Or, at least, those you’ve been exposed to. Goodness knows there are provincial people everywhere.” She took a sip of her champagne. “I’m glad you didn’t fall in love. Someday you will, though.”
I’d never told her about Mathieu, and that moment didn’t seem the right time for
it. “And fulfill the curse of La Lune’s descendants.”
“It’s not always a curse. It hasn’t been for me and your papa.”
“No. But you came close to losing him. Wouldn’t it have been the tragedy of your life?”
She nodded.
We all knew the story of how my father had fought a duel for my mother’s honor in 1894 and had almost been killed. My mother had risked her own life to save his and sacrificed her soul in the process.
She drained her glass and caught the waiter’s eye. He was there in a moment to refill her crystal flute.
“Has anyone ever been able to break the curse?” I asked.
“Not that I know of, but if you ever need to, I promise to help. I know it seems bleak …” She waited until the waiter walked off. “With your work, in your life, with love … but if you trust your sight, it will show you the way.”
“Why does everything you say sound so cryptic? I’m not used to it anymore. In America, everyone speaks what is on their mind clearly. With you, there are always shadows between the words.”
My mother examined my face. What was she looking for? What was she thinking?
Sebastian and I used to go for walks after dinner when we were younger and dissect the things my mother had said to us, trying to understand their meaning.
“I’ll attempt to be more specific, if you will. Tell me how you feel when you sit down to paint and can’t. What happens when you pick up a brush?”
I took a sip of the champagne and concentrated on the crisp, dry taste and the bubbles bursting on my tongue. What did happen? I wasn’t even sure I knew.
“When I sit down, I just stare at the canvas. I don’t know what I want to paint anymore. Certainly not what I was doing in New York. Not when I painted the series I showed you. Then I was searching for answers, not so much for me but to understand Clara and Monty and the passions that had destroyed their lives. I wanted to explore that kind of fervor. But my search put me on a circular path. Even though I kept moving, it was always in the same direction, and I kept returning to where I’d started. Now that I’m back in France, I want to step out of that circle. Find a new beginning. I don’t know if I can without putting on my blindfold, yet doing so is too great a risk. That last time was such a disaster.”
“You haven’t put on your blindfold since February? That’s almost five months ago.”
I nodded.
“Not since the night of the party?”
“That’s right.”
“And all you painted after that were a half dozen theater posters and the Beast series?”
“Yes. And since I’ve been back, I’ve haven’t done anything but sketch beach scenes, flowers …”
“No exploratories for paintings?”
I shook my head.
“I’d hoped your move to Mougins might improve things.”
“It’s almost as if I’ve gone blind for the second time.” My eyes filled with tears, but I held them back and choked on a sob. I wasn’t going to cry here on the terrace of the Carlton. I forced a joke. “And if you think this is hard on me, Sebastian is going mad.”
My mother squeezed my hand and laughed along with me. “I bet he is.”
“He keeps begging me to take just one commission for a shadow painting and try …” The tears threatened, but again, I held them back. “But I can’t. Never again.”
“No wonder you are so unhappy.” She reached up and stroked my cheek. “Ma petite belle, it’s what you do. You can stop for a while, but I don’t think you’ll ever really be happy unless you are creating the work you are destined for.”
“Then I won’t ever be—”
“La Lune!” a man called out, and my mother looked up.
I turned and followed her gaze as he approached our table. Extremely short, no taller than I, he had mad, dark, piercing black eyes and jet-black hair parted on the side and falling over his forehead. Despite his lack of height, he was muscular and wore typical fisherman clothes—a striped shirt, espadrilles, and pants rolled up at the ankles. Seeing my mother, his somber face had broken into a smile, and he embraced her warmly, kissing her first on one cheek, then the other.
“You look like you are part of the sky,” he said.
With her cerulean-blue dress and long ropes of blue-white pearls wound around her neck and hanging down her chest like falling bits of clouds, sitting against the powder-blue sky, he was right.
“I’d like to paint you just like this, right now,” he added, as he reached for a sketchbook.
He had his hand on it when my mother laughed that seductive dark laugh of hers that men always responded to. As this man also did. He inched closer, his eyes narrowed a bit, his lips pursed. But instead of looking amorous, there was something clown-like in his actions. “Let me kiss you, then, instead of drawing you.”
“Enough of this, Pablo. Do you know my daughter?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure, no. You’ve been hiding her from me. I wonder why.” The man bowed to me, took my hand, and kissed it with a flourish.
“Because she’s been living in America. Delphine”—she turned to me—“may I present to you the overly bold Pablo Picasso. Beware, part of his charm is that he encourages women to seduce him.”
He was, of course, already famous by 1925. Not with the global, iconoclastic fame that would eventually elevate him above mere mortals. But he was, along with Henri Matisse and Juan Gris, an artist whose work people were collecting in both France and the United States. He, like my mother, had arrived, as they said in New York. They were important. And his star shone even brighter than hers.
Having grown up in the art world and known Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Morisot, and Cassatt from the time I was a child, I was curious about Picasso. But I wasn’t in awe. Nothing those days created a sense of awe in me.
“A pleasure to meet you,” I said, as I peered into his dark yet blazing eyes. Did I see magick there? Or was I just imagining it because of his legend?
I had a bad habit of assuming qualities in someone before giving it full consideration. My mother had explained that as a result of my second sight and impulsiveness, I tended to overread people’s emotions and abilities. This habit, she told me, could prove dangerous if not controlled.
“I’ve seen some of your work in your brother’s gallery,” Picasso said. “I expected you to be good, considering who your mother is, but I didn’t expect you to be as original as you are. Your subject matter surprised me, I must admit.”
He was gazing at me intently, and I didn’t quite understand the nature of the stare. Flirting? Assessing? Searching?
“I’d like to know more about what you’re trying to find in your painting,” he continued. “Such originality must come at quite a price.”
I was flattered that he’d asked me what I was trying to accomplish, and I smiled to myself. Maman was right about him.
“They were dreams … nightmares of beasts. I thought if I put them down on the canvas … I might be able to control them.”
“They were dreams? They’ve stopped coming?”
“For a time,” I said.
“An intriguing response and one that I understand. You must come visit me at my studio. I want to learn more about your strange dreams. They’re similar to the direction my own work is going. Unusual for a woman, even a daughter of La Lune, to be traveling the same path as Picasso.”
“Don’t flirt with her, you old goat. Delphine is recovering from a miserable love affair.”
Like Matisse, Picasso was full of advice. “Yes, yes, I can see that in your eyes. But you can’t let it stop you from painting. This is the best moment to paint. Take all that misery, and turn it into colors and shapes. Paint it, Delphine. And after you do, come show it to me. I might want to buy it … or steal it.”
He was peering into my eyes as he spoke. I felt as if he was looking right inside of me, and there was nothing I could do to keep him away.
Chapter 20
I kept thinking
about what Picasso had said to me as I drove home to Mougins from Cannes, about confronting my time in New York and discovering what it meant to me by putting it on canvas. Did I even know how to do that anymore?
When I reached my little house, I sat down at the table to sketch it out. But my hand refused. The effort overwhelmed my fingers so badly they started to shake. I couldn’t even draw a straight line.
I threw my silver pencil against the wall, where it left a long graphite scratch. Turning my back on my work space, I went upstairs to pour myself a glass of brandy to help dull the pain and lull me to sleep.
That night, I dreamed that I was a portrait. An old Renaissance painting missing pigment, full of craquelure, with a rip down the middle. Picasso was working on my restoration. He cleaned and restretched the canvas and then began the inpainting on the sections with the most damage—my right hand and my eyes.
I was then standing beside him, both of us inspecting the portrait. Looking closely, I could see where the repairs had been done. They had become part of the painting.
“One and whole, together, the loss and repair belonging to each other,” Picasso said. “Over time, all paintings are damaged one way or another. A painting cannot survive a long time unscathed.”
I woke up feeling even more frustrated. Picasso could talk all he wanted about how art exorcises demons, but it was all words. He couldn’t fix me. And if I couldn’t find someone who could, I feared for my sanity. Without painting, I was becoming less than myself.
*
Sebastian was patient as long as he could be. But by the end of June, he was frustrated, too. He arrived at the studio one day with lunch—a cold chicken, a baguette, a wedge of Saint-André cheese, and a bottle of rosé wine.
At first, I thought he was just there to spend time with me, and I was grateful for the company. I hadn’t lived in the south since I was a teenager, and most of my friends had married and had families or had moved away, some to Paris, where there might be more opportunities and more men. And even though Sebastian continued to invite me to openings and dinners with his friends, I declined. The questions they posed disturbed me. I knew that Matisse and the others meant well, but their advice was of no use. I could draw and paint only the most mundane compositions. My creativity slept on. Only with the blindfold would it awaken. And I was too afraid to put the blindfold on.
