Thomas and Beal in the Midi

by Christopher Tilghman

  Arthur took his meals at two or three cafés within steps of his building. Another man would have revolted at the gristly, unchewable meat, the greasy broth, the never-ending mealy potatoes and wormy cabbage, but Arthur didn’t mind. He had come over to Paris with $900 in his pockets, every penny of which he had earned, and in his first year he had spent only $395. He figured Thomas Bayly spent that much in a month. Arthur’s father’s business was successful; his father had stored in his bank account probably as much as the families of most of his fellow students, but it was a different kind of money, money that was counted carefully, money colored by its sources, not genteel money. It was not money that would be given to anybody, especially to a son who hadn’t earned it.

  In the late afternoons he’d take his seat at the Badequin, trying, but not always succeeding, to feel superior to his fellow American students, and sooner or later one of these inferior beings might buy him a beer. Here he had apparently first met the boy-husband sometime late in November. Thomas hadn’t made much of an impression, but Arthur did remember Stanley Dean gossiping about them after Thomas left, describing this “Negress” he had just met. This slave girl, this noble savage. Arthur figured it was the first time in Stanley’s life that he’d actually sat at the same, or adjoining, table with a colored person, but then again, as Arthur thought back, he wasn’t sure he ever had either. Even on that first afternoon Stanley had been talking of her sitting for him, announcing that he had her husband’s permission. So he claimed, and later, others backed him up. Stanley asked first, they said, like the obedient little schoolchildren they were, as if the first person in line couldn’t be removed by a good pummeling in the far corner of the playground.

  But Arthur did remember well the second time he saw the husband, because that was the first time he saw her. Oh, he thought, so that’s her. She had at least six inches on him, he figured, but he was not immediately impressed; it was a cold day—only the artists were sitting outside—and her nose was running. There was a slick of mucus on her upper lip. Her eyes, yes, that was an unusual color; where did she get those eyes? Arthur mused. She had pretty good posture. Throughout his childhood, Arthur’s mother had tried to get him not to slouch, as if such a refinement would win them the place their money should have earned on its own. The young gentlemen fell all over themselves to offer their chairs to her. Had anyone, anyone ever made way for him? No. Arthur wondered for a moment what that would feel like; in his mind, most women—like la Bayly—who got this treatment figured they deserved it. As Arthur reflected later, no one was making much fuss over her husband; he got pushed a little to the side, almost onto the street, yet seemed not to mind it so much. Hmmm, thought Arthur, maybe there’s more to the boy-husband than I thought. The funny thing was that the person who ended up closest to her was that Virginian, Shippen, and he looked as if he had been seated next to a cannibal. For twenty minutes they fell all over her; even Shippen got into the act. But okay, by the end of this little episode Arthur was intrigued. But not because he liked her.

  The next time he saw her, she was arriving at the Louvre with Hilary Devereux and Colleen Sullivan; Arthur didn’t mind Hilary too much, but that little fat Irish loudmouth reminded him too much of himself. The girl seemed on friendly terms with many members of the group; Arthur must have missed her introductions. Sometimes he had to take a few days off, to keep away; he had these … spells when talking was hard. Among all these spoiled rich children she seemed perfectly at ease; he kept his eyes on her just to make sure that this impression was correct. Oh, she was trying to be liked, as anyone would. She was eager, but not afraid. They were all milling about, juggling their easels and paint boxes as they waited for the gallery doors to be opened, and she stood in the center of all this with a kind of nerve that surprised and irritated Arthur, who was short, unsure of himself in crowds, always tending to the edges. It came to him in a sudden burst of revelation: this girl had had it easy. That’s what Arthur decided; she’d been pampered and flattered her entire life. She had been spoiled to a unique kind of rottenness. Never beaten. Never overlooked. She’d swum naked and innocent in a pool of adoration. No question about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a Negro: a soul that has been putrefied by kindness doesn’t know it’s black. If he painted her, he’d want that savage piece of ironic truth in it. An innocence out of ignorance. He studied her standing in the crowd and caught a few words; she spoke softly, but her clear voice carried across the mumble of conversation: thank you … Thomas doesn’t think so … yes, I’ve had it since last week. He looked at her in profile, watched her mop her nose with her handkerchief. Found himself thinking that he would not paint her in profile: an okay nose, but no feature, no beak like Madame Gautreau. Africans have lousy noses. But those shoulders!

  The big gallery doors opened, people leaned down to put out their cigarettes and take up their things, and she followed Colleen Sullivan through the portal, a surprisingly short gait for someone with such long legs. Arthur couldn’t see her feet, but he figured they were long and narrow, like her hands. As Maître Rodolphe would have it, her hands would be the key, the absolute first thing the viewer would notice, but not in some fey gesture. No ballerina here. But no fist. And no open, empty palm. This was the palm of someone who had been handed absolutely everything a human needs without even asking for it. Her husband could buy anything he wanted, but he still had to ask for it. No need to pose a model like that, just catch her unobserved, dressed carelessly and heedlessly. A knee exposed? The knee and the hand the first thing the viewer noticed. By the time she had disappeared in the crowd, unaware that he had been scrutinizing her, Arthur decided two things: first, in spite of himself, he was hooked by this pampered little American princess, and second, when the time came, he, and not that squirrelly little Stanley Dean, would paint her portrait.

  He did not approach her, try to win her favor. He just kept an eye on her. Renoir did this in Montmartre, so he had been told, scouting out models, following them to see how they walked, how they gestured. A fairly innocent thing to do, for an artist. One day he followed her home into the swanky Seventh, and when she doubled back unexpectedly to look at a storefront, he did not try to hide. “Oh,” she said, recognizing him.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, Kravitz. Arthur Kravitz.”

  “Yes. Hello Mr. Kravitz. I didn’t know you lived around here.”

  “Around here? Uh, no. Too expensive for me.”

  She was a little defensive, which he liked, and instead of asking what he was doing around here, she said, “We’re not paying so much.”

  Stanley shrugged: 250 a month, easy.

  “We live here because we have a friend in the neighborhood.”

  “One of your nuns?” She was surprised, and it was a mistake to let her know so much, but really, all Arthur knew was that part of her story seemed to involve some nuns. Nuns were not something Arthur cared much or thought much about. Still, he had to answer. “Stanley Dean said you had friends who were nuns.”

  On hearing Stanley’s name, all was explained, and she smiled affectionately; she clearly liked Stanley, which could present a problem. “Oh, Stanley thought it was so amazing that my husband’s family knew these nuns.”

  “Catholics?”

  “Sure. Are there any other kinds of nuns?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m Jewish.”

  She shrugged: she could play that game too. He’d get no points from her for difference. We’re both something, was what she was saying. “Well. Nice to see you.”

  “Yeah.”

  She walked off, assuming that whatever he was doing here, their business was done, and in fact, she was right. He watched her go and was pleased to see her turn back, look over her shoulder when she reached the corner. Yes, he thought, maybe catch her like that, mostly turned away, looking over her shoulder at someone following. Pretty good shoulders after all, but not looking back fearfully. Looking back exactly without fear; for someone like that, being followed is somet
hing she would expect, not fear. Of course, if he posed her like that, he’d lose the knee.

  A few days later he was talking to Makepeace, who had appointed himself one of her palace guards, and Arthur didn’t mind at all that the girl had told Don about this incident, that in some way he was being warned off, when in fact he had done absolutely nothing for anyone to get exercised about. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. They were setting up at the Académie, dozens of them crammed into the atelier. He, like most of the other students, was putting out his last cigarette before getting to work, and the air was hazy with smoke. The wall behind them was nothing but windows, and the smoke would be gone soon enough, replaced by the frigid chill. On either end of the room, paintings le maître had blessed were hung five or six high. Way at the top, at the far right, was one of Arthur’s, something he’d done practically his first week there—and since then, nothing. And since then, two paintings by, of all people, Stanley Dean!

  The model, a malnourished, probably absinthe-addled woman of indeterminate age, stood up and dropped her robe. The appearance of her rib cage made people around him gasp with dismay and revulsion; they paid the Académie good money for instruction, but this was the sort of cheap goods they’d been given to paint. Arthur had no problem; sure, a lousy model, but this was the kind of female body that aroused his desire. This was a woman he’d bear in mind.

  Makepeace broke up Arthur’s very brief erotic fantasy; Don was still on the issue of Mrs. Thomas Bayly. “She wasn’t sure you weren’t following her.”

  Arthur loved the way these people talked, all these negatives dancing around their true intent. Fit right in with the French, all their I would likes rather than I wants. As far as Arthur could tell, the French had invented an entire verb tense just so they could do that. Arthur had been raised in the land of I want. He hadn’t come to Paris because he would like something, he came because he wanted what they had to give him, these techniques, these impulses. “I was following her,” he said. He punctuated that by squeezing out a big bloodred blob of paint on his palette. “Is that such a problem?”

  “Here now, Arthur. Of course it’s a problem.”

  “I don’t think any harm I caused by following her for a few blocks is much compared with all the talking about her all these people do.” He waved his hand around the atelier. The real culprits, he and Makepeace both knew, were the women, but they worked in a separate studio. “Tell her and her husband not to worry. Arthur Kravitz won’t follow her again.”

  * * *

  In her first visits to the Louvre, after Colleen and Hilary had set up their easels and stools and set to work, Beal was left to wander. After a while her eyes would spin a little, and not just because she spent so much time with her head back trying to look at the paintings on the top row. What was this all for? For these weeks in Paris, beginning with their first night with Stanley, she had heard talk about art, about making art and understanding art, that was completely new to her. Why art? That’s what she didn’t quite get. There was nothing like this at home. A pretty picture of a sunset or a scary one of a storm at sea, she’d seen these here and there; her mother, Una, liked to stop in the street of Cookestown in front of stores to look at advertisements or posters. She’d say, Now isn’t that a right peaceful scene, or Well, I declare, I wouldn’t ever want to be seen in that. Her mother took these images for what they were, some sort of fact—a place, a hat, a famous person. But here, with hundreds, thousands of paintings of all sizes hung up like miles and miles of laundry, you were supposed to do more than that; you were supposed to feel something or think something, otherwise why would they all be here together? Why would all these young artists be here copying paintings brushstroke by brushstroke unless there was something in them, wholly contained in them, that couldn’t be found elsewhere? “It’s like those fairy tales where people are under magic spells or something,” she said to Thomas that night. Mme Vigny had prepared them a chicken in wine, which Beal didn’t like, though she found she didn’t mind that Thomas had taken to drinking a glass of wine with his food, that he had begun to take interest in this drink. It made him more talkative, for one thing.

  “I don’t think I really understand it either,” he said. “Half of what Stanley says seems like nonsense to me.”

  Beal laughed and then turned reflective. “But it’s not, is it? The biggest building in Paris is filled with art. That means something.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Colleen is just a normal girl and she’s doing this.”

  “Well,” said Thomas. “I hope you go back. I hope you learn everything in the world you can about it and can explain it to me.”

  “Oh, Thomas. I’m not good at learning.”

  “If your mama or Ruthie could hear you say that…”

  It was supposed to be sort of a joke, she figured, but there was something in the tone that reminded her, well, of Diallo Touré, and really of Colleen and Hilary, of people telling her she should ask more of herself, and when she thought about it, this place—Paris—seemed to be asking her the same thing. It seemed to be offering something to her, not standing in her way as she thought it might. So she went back to the Louvre the next day, found Colleen in tears because Maître Rodolphe had said that her Raphael was affreux, épouvantable, which was clearly not good. Hilary and two other women were consoling her, and Beal could add nothing to this. She set off wandering again, came around a corner, and there was Stanley Dean. “Beal!” he said. “Everyone said you were here yesterday.”

  “I’m not sure why anyone would talk about me.”

  “Oh,” said Stanley, blushing a little. “I’ve said I hope to do an oil of you.”

  “Fully dressed, I hope,” she said. She’d been surprised about all this nakedness on the walls—bare breasts, round abdomens, fleshy thighs, all this white flesh; it seemed pretty overdone. So what, she thought.

  Stanley blushed so deeply she felt he might get light-headed. She reached out and steadied him by the arm. “Oh, Stanley. It was a joke.”

  Stanley regained his composure. “You’d be sensational dressed just the way you are now. Your broad shoulders. Your coloring. Look at your hands,” he said, holding out his own rather stubby fingers and square palm. As ordered, she held out hers, smaller than Stanley’s but longer. Her fingers were slender, and there was a hint of coral in her palm. “See?” he said. He took her hand into his, ran the tips of his fingers on her flesh. “Hands are everything in a portrait. They’re the hardest part. You can’t make them up.”

  At home, white people talked about whether you were colored, not about your “coloring.” If they said anything about your body, they’d talk about your strong back, not your broad shoulders; your brawn and not your slender neck and fine hands. And then there were those who said Step over here out of the sun and close the door after you, but Stanley wasn’t saying that either. He wasn’t talking about her beauty, but about what made her beautiful, at least in his eye.

  “Promise me,” he said.

  “Promise you what?”

  “That if you let anyone paint you, it’ll be me.”

  “Who else would want to?”

  “Hilary. Arthur Kravitz. Believe me. Others. Believe me.”

  How interesting: Arthur Kravitz. Maybe that was why he had been following her that day. “I’ll have to talk to Thomas,” she answered.

  “Sure. Sure. But promise me that if it’s up to you, you’ll let me.”

  So she promised, and for the next few days, as she met more and more of these young American students, people would say, “Oh yeah, Stanley says you’ll sit for him,” or just “Yes, I know, Stanley’s model.” The only person who warned her that she might be getting into something more complex than she realized was Alvin Tower, the black student from Hartford. “They all want to own you,” he said. She’d had no idea that agreeing to be painted by someone meant that he owned you, but she was beginning to understand all these painters and their l
ittle competitive world; she liked them and didn’t take Alvin’s warning all that seriously. People called these students lazy, but she saw no laziness. They seemed to work from first light to dusk. Beal knew about long hours of toil, and she was also acquainted with laziness. She remembered those men—almost all of them were men—on the Retreat and in Tuckertown who suddenly sprang to action whenever the boss drew near, but no one was ever fooled. Toil is toil, and these students, painters and sculptors, they did it. None of them questioned for a moment that this thing they were after in Paris mattered, that they could find it only in Paris, and that they had a duty to bring this life-changing thing back with them to America. She liked the idea that she might have a tiny bit to do with it.

  One night Thomas gave her a package wrapped in the paper of Le Bon Marché, and when she opened it, she found a student notebook—CAHIER, it said on the front—and a fountain pen. “What’s this for?”