Cook stood at a table slicing carrots, a large pot simmering behind her. Isabeau made a face at the mound of vegetables awaiting the chop. The woman mopped her forehead and waved the girl and her dog from the kitchen.
In the lounge Isabeau flopped on a chaise, her feet dangling off the edge. She stared at the ceiling, attempted to wiggle her ears, picked at her nose. She rose from the chaise and skated around the room, her stockings sliding on the gleaming wood.
She pulled a fashion magazine from an arranged display on a side table. Lying on the floor, knocking her heels behind her, she pushed the dog away and propped herself on her elbows. She flipped through the pages to an illustration of a young woman, her head veiled in a cascade of lace falling from the brim of her hat. The dog padded across the magazine and licked at Isabeau’s nose. Isabeau pushed the dog off the magazine.
Zouzou! You mustn’t walk on Maman’s women!
The animal persisted, nipping at her sleeve, tearing a seam and leaving a flap of fabric hanging loose.
Isabeau jumped to her feet. Beast! Now look what you’ve done. Maman will be very angry!
The dog crouched in anticipation. Isabeau darted around the chaise, made for the door, pretended a turn for the study, slid to a stop. The dog’s head followed her every move around the room. Isabeau ran from the lounge and headed for the kitchen.
Through the swinging door, Isabeau skipped around the table, waving her arms above her head. The dog tried to follow, legs churning, claws clicking on the tiles. Cook scraped a mound of celery into her boiling pot and returned to the cutting board. The pot handle hovered over the edge of the stove, a snag waiting for a torn sleeve.
The dog cocked its head at the shrill noise suddenly coming from its playmate. Isabeau stood frozen, her fingers as locked as talons, reaching to tear at her face. Cook dropped the knife, shouting to be heard over the girl’s howls.
The spilt water went cool in an instant on the floor. Curls of onion lay scattered under the table. Zouzou lapped at the puddle as Isabeau was led screaming from the kitchen.
The scald became a scar, an embossed stroke melting down the forehead, looping around an eye still the richest brown, forming an irregular pool on the cheek, dribbling away at the line of the jaw. As though an artist both gifted and unkind had set to work, dabbing varnish on what might best catch the light, beginning a delicate line of white where the scar met the hairline, weaving that thin stroke through long, dark strands.
The scar in turn became a reflex, turning young Isabeau’s head down and away, allowing locks of hair to fall over the marred side of her face. She learned how to train the errant strands behind her ear, leaving enough slack in the length to distract curious eyes.
On sunnier days she might be found in the apartment’s entry hall, a corridor of mirrors, each in a grand frame, their bevelled edges throwing a rainbow around whatever passed in their reflections. When the low light of afternoon bounced through the hall, Isabeau would select a picture from one of her mother’s magazines.
The model’s head would fill the page, turning to the viewer with a demure lift to her chin and a graceful arc of the neck. Isabeau would fold the page lengthwise, then stand in front of the mirrors. She would bring the magazine to her face, sliding the folded page until the bridge of the model’s nose met the bridge of her own. A new face looked back, reflected in the mirrors on the opposite wall, repeating itself into a chorus of half-smiles.
The fire brigade arrives. A dozen men merge into a single mass of action. They prepare in silence, absorbed in their work, as the captain repeats his Stand Aside Madames, Mind Yourself Little Ones, Make Way Monsieurs. Faced with such resolve, the crowd in front of the cake-slice jostles to clear a path to the bakery’s front step.
To reach the fire on the top floors, the brigade pries open the blue doors and rushes through the shop. They take no notice of the empty display case, the wicker baskets awaiting another day’s assortments, the vignettes painted on the walls’ yellowing tiles. Heavy boots leave black streaks on the polished marble floors.
Following his men, the captain is momentarily distracted. A portrait sketched in pencil—a young woman—hangs in a simple frame above the door to the cellar. Half the portrait is obscured. A thick curve of hair, streaked with a wisp of white, casts a shadow across the face. Only the subject’s visible eye, glistening and dark, with its brow arched, looks back at him.
Reminding his men to keep their fool heads on their shoulders and their eyes out front, the captain lingers as the brigade stampedes past him. He watches them disappear to the rear of the building, then pulls off his heavy gloves. Kissing the tips of his fingers, he touches them to the portrait.
Wish us luck, mademoiselle.
The brigade climbs the stairwell to the top landing, wrestling hose and axe and each other into what remains of the baker’s apartment. By now roofless and gutted to black wooden bones, venting smoke into the July air and snowing books on the crowd below.
The masters suggested he try working in the open air. A decidedly rougher approach, they said, and certainly not how we did things in our day, but a windy afternoon on the quayside or an evening in the parks picking insects off one’s canvas might focus Monsieur Kalb’s rather vague abilities.
Fog hung over the Pont des Arts. Jacob removed a bundle of sticks from his tattered carpetbag. He loosened the leather straps around the bundle, the masters droning in his ears.
Have it in your mind’s eye, Monsieur Kalb.
Jacob hitched his sagging trousers, opened a few hinges and spread the stick ends. He ignored the stiffness in his joints, the grime under his long fingernails, the evening’s chill. Finally he stood a rickety easel by the railing.
See the truth, Monsieur Kalb.
Jacob pulled a small canvas from the bag—
Art is truth, Monsieur Kalb.
—then placed it on the easel’s shelf.
Square and level, Monsieur Kalb. If your work is to be more than scribble.
Jacob stepped back from the easel, his eyes following the river as it slid into the mist. Buildings, soft blocks of blue-grey, merged with the sky. In the flat light, trees along the quayside became swaths of a darker grey. Staring at the blank canvas, Jacob struggled to summon a finished landscape.
See it, Monsieur Kalb. As though it were finished and put aside to dry.
So here I find my Señor Kalb, hard at work.
Jacob spun around. The one they called el Bárbaro, a classmate from the Academy, stood looking at Jacob’s blank canvas.
And so I am sad for it. My Kalb has found no truth today.
Jacob felt his throat tighten, his hands go clammy. The urge to reach out and touch his friend shuddered through him. The Barbarian smiled.
You are too anxious, mi amigo. That is why tonight we will ignore your worries. We will eat like the monkeys we are, drink to our organ grinders and curse them from the other side of our greasy mouths. They tell us that art is truth as we dance at the end of our leashes. So we will howl that it is life that is true and they will stop cranking their little music boxes and we will do some living. Agreed?
Jacob turned out his pockets.
The weather was miserable today, he said. The gardens were deserted, no one was sitting. I sold nothing.
The Barbarian pulled his mouth into a clown’s pout, his eyes smiling.
But then I am not sad, mi amigo. I hear rumours of a tableau this evening. Free of charge, drinks on the house. Everyone will be there.
There had been other evenings: a week earlier, a month or more perhaps, or in those first days of the Academy. For all Jacob could remember, they may as well have been dreams.
A sticky floor spinning under his feet. Deafening shouts and manic laughter fill his ears. Out of nothing a painting rushes at him. Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe: its every detail as sharp as broken glass. Slices of picnic and bodies float before his eyes. In the foreground, the artist’s pale-skinned nude shifts her pose, her wide black eye
s looking directly at Jacob.
Do you enjoy what you see, monsieur?
In the corner of a cellar bar, Jacob’s arm snakes around someone’s waist. They are weaving drunk, taking turns imitating their teachers. The reek of stale bodies and spilt beer makes the air almost solid. A makeshift stage stands empty in the centre of the room. Behind the bar a poster: ANOTHER LUNCHEON! ONE SITTING ONLY!
Two young men solemnly step on stage. Dressed in ragged suits, they arrange themselves in front of a stained bedsheet hung from the rafters, the impression of a forest glade painted across it. Scrounged baskets appear, their contents—rotten fruit, spent corks, stale ends of bread—are scattered around the two men. The audience, crushed into the dim room, whistles and stamps their feet and bellows for more.
A boy, no more than fifteen, shuffles into the scene. He wears a threadbare curtain for a toga. Blinking in the haze of cigarette smoke, the boy poses as if picking a flower from the glade. As he bends forward he fumbles to keep his costume from falling open.
An older man, dimpled plump and naked, jumps into the scene. Covered in white powder, he tiptoes to the centre of the group. He curtsies and takes his place, reclining in front of his picnic companions. He places one elbow on an upturned knee, rests his chin in his hand and turns to the crowd. He becomes Manet’s nude, if only for an instant, his lips slick with rouge and widening into a theatrical smile.
Do you enjoy what you see, my friends?
The cellar explodes in applause.
Jacob stumbles from an alleyway, pulling up his trousers. It is minutes or hours later. The sound of the Barbarian calling his name echoes off the walls behind him.
Jacob was asked to leave the Academy later that term, the masters explaining that, while your portraiture shows promise, Monsieur Kalb, your landscapes lack even a basic vision. They said his prospects for improvement appeared equally dim. He was wished well in finding another occupation, perhaps drawing posters for the theatre marquees or cartoons for the newspapers. In these pursuits the masters expressed confidence that he could apply their lessons regarding the art of the face. It is the eyes, they reminded him, where all would be revealed.
Jacob said nothing throughout the meeting. None of the masters looked directly at him.
On the landing outside the attic room of a traveller’s hotel, the manager’s wife stood with her hands buried in the pouch of her apron, silently cursing her husband for not having the backbone to deliver eviction notices himself.
She watched Jacob Kalb pack his tools: a paintbox, three brushes, a few pencils, one stick of charcoal, a dulled penknife, the folding easel, a small square of rolled canvas, his sketching book.
It is a black day, monsieur. But the rent, you see. You and I are months behind.
I wish my skills had paid better, Jacob said.
The manager’s wife looked into the room. Tacked to the ceiling was a jumbled gallery of small landscapes, half-finished watercolours, oil sketches, drawings in ink and pencil. All lights and tones and weathers, every manner of sky, the same view along the Seine. In each a few birds hovered above the river, and barely visible, the same silhouetted figures walked beneath the trees.
Where will you go? the woman said.
Under the stars for a while, I think.
The manager’s wife poked Jacob in the ribs.
You are too thin for the bohemian life, monsieur. Sell a few pictures. For once carry some coins in your pocket. Pay some rent.
He lived near the food markets for a time. He wanted to paint the noisy chicken men, the overflowing mounds of vegetables, the fat and happy fishwives, the porters with their enormous mushroom hats. But when the smell of rotting cabbages and yesterday’s cheese seeped into one hovel after another, Jacob moved on. It was the scalded piglets, their eyelashes caught in mid-flutter, their tails still curled in death, that forced him from the markets for good. He found a dry corner tucked high under the arches of the Pont des Arts, staking his claim with all he owned.
All contained in his carpetbag. The paint supplies, the remains of a woollen sweater, a pair of fingerless gloves, mismatched socks, the thick corduroy jacket he had worn on his first day in Paris, a tin of scrounged cigarette ends. Only his sketching book, refreshed with the money he made touting portraits, was stiff with blank pages. A square of canvas, rolled so it might not crease, nestled between the bag’s handles.
On this one canvas Jacob would make a fresh attempt each day. And if the sun clouded over or the winds picked up, he would unclamp the day’s work from his easel and make his way to the river’s edge. Laying it on the surface of the water, he would slide the canvas back and forth in the current. As tendrils of colour wafted downstream, the numb in his fingers would creep to his wrists. The tints of green he had used to render the bookstalls were the last to dissolve.
At night he would lay the blank canvas beside him as he slept. If the river mist lay low, it might be dry by first light. Dry enough for another day and another start on the bridge.
For Jacob the booksellers along the quays became a variety troupe of live models. Some went bare-headed; some wore hats. Some pushed spectacles to their foreheads; others slumped and snored. There were thick scarves around scrawny necks, too-small overcoats over too-wide shoulders, old boots and rope shoes. Each guarded his stall with everything from walking sticks and dusters to well-aimed tobacco spits and loud curses. Each had peculiar rituals of opening for the day or closing up for the night. They may have squirmed on the same stools or smoked under the same trees or wished with one mind that the occasional passerby would just move along and stop disturbing them, yet each was as different as the books they offered.
Not long after moving to the river, Jacob noticed a particular bookstall. It was the colour that caught his eye: how the green changed the higher or lower the sun, the duller or brighter the sky. He tried including the stall in his landscapes, spent weeks adjusting his mixes: Prussian blue and Indian yellow for the evening shades of deep green; thalo blue, cadmium yellow, a drop of alizarin crimson for its morning sage; its midday lime green requiring a generous brushful of lemon yellow.
The stall appeared to have three proprietors. One was old and bent, the second flabby and middle-aged, the third a young man, perhaps in his teen years. Jacob assumed it was a family-run concern; the young one had drawn the short straw. He occupied the stool most every day.
In the evenings, as the sun dipped behind the buildings along the quay, Jacob would watch as the young bookseller removed a large volume from the stall. The boy would peer up and down the quay, satisfy himself that no one was approaching, and place the book on the pavement. Sliding his spectacles to the top of his head, the bookseller would plant his feet on the book’s open pages, lift his arms out from his sides and turn his face to the sky.
The baker drops his books, searches frantically for a path through the crowd. As they move aside some turn away, ashamed they could do nothing, unable now to watch a man they have known all his life meet such a tragedy. A few call out that they are with him.
Remember who you are, monsieur. Remember your father. Be a Notre-Dame.
The old fellow with the thick spectacles steps into the baker’s path.
I am sorry, my friend. They are all gone now.
The elderly woman who had been shouting directions reaches from the edge of the crowd.
My dearest boy, thank the Lord you are safe.
The baker sees no one, hears no comfort.
He shrugs the old man’s hand off his shoulder and reaches the blue doors. He cannot remember leaving them open. Running past the counter and the empty baskets, he follows a trail of boot prints to the rear stairwell and takes the steps two at a time.
Octavio Notre-Dame was as thin as his father, though his hands were strong and nimble for one so young. His mother had given him a head of black hair that behaved only when oiled and pushed under a hat. Yet the boy’s eyes were his own; as small as collar buttons, the brightest grey, one crowned with
a brow that arched slightly higher than the other. As though he were about to share a secret.
In a stifling room of six-year-olds, each scratch and twitch pushing faith in the innocence of boys to its edge, a Sister of Grace chalked numbers on a blackboard: 1349; 1431; 1572; 100,000; 1793; 16.
The nun turned to face her students. Gentlemen, she said, we will now review our histories.
Octavio sank his chin deep into his collar; his fingers clenched under the desk. He whispered to himself.
Monsieur Notre-Dame? the Sister said. She drew a line under 1349.
Fingernails digging into his hands, Octavio muttered the word plague.
LOUDER, MONSIEUR. That God might hear you.
1349, Sister. The Black Death.
Continue, the woman said. She stamped at each number with her chalk.
1431, Sister. Joan of Arc burned alive.
1572. Saint Bartholomew’s Day. 100,000 killed by the Catholics.
1793. King Louis guillotined.
Which Louis would that be, monsieur?
16, Sister.
Very good. And the 100,000?
Octavio watched the nun’s wrinkled face melt into that of Saint Joan. The girl’s pale skin crackled in the fire while her dripping armour formed a pool at the front of the class. She kept asking Octavio why. Why so many had to perish.
Notre-Dame? the Sister said.
Octavio wished they had not shaved poor Joan’s head.
NOTRE DAME!
The maid of Orléans vanished in a burst of flame.
Because they were Protestants, Sister.
It is the boy’s shoes, madame.
The school’s curé had summoned Madame Notre-Dame. Sitting in the young priest’s office, her eyes wandered over a map of the holy lands pinned to the wall behind him.
The Emperor of Paris Page 5
