Paris Without Her

by Gregory Curtis

  She was rapturous about Puvis de Chavannes, who is often overlooked because he is unique and can’t be easily grouped with any school. His paintings are filled with idealized but enigmatic personages who seem almost like marble statues and, she said, push the spectator toward meditation and reverie. She spoke of the “fury” in Delacroix’s work, and the high literary quality of his journals. She showed us Sérusier’s The Talisman. He had come to Pont-Aven and, challenged and prodded by Gauguin, had painted The Talisman, the first painting whose subject was color itself. And then she spoke of Monet as the supreme colorist.

  It was a magnificent course. She was so quiet and unassuming, but also completely confident. Each lecture was filled with knowledge and perception. She could look at a painting and tell you exactly what she saw and what was there for you to see. That may sound simple, but not everyone can do it, not even every art critic. It was an ability I had always admired in Tracy.

  We had to turn in a paper during the last class. I wrote mine on van Gogh’s final days, still a subject that interests me. During that last class, there was also a test. Most of the questions asked us to identify a painting and name the painter. It wasn’t too difficult. When we finished, we handed her our tests and our papers and left. As I handed her mine, I thanked her for an excellent course. She simply nodded, smiled, and said, “Merci,” almost in a whisper. That was the only time I spoke to her that semester. I left feeling quite sad that the course was over.

  When I returned to Austin in June, I decided to send Céleste Bernard copies of my books. I searched the Web, trying to find an e-mail address or a physical address for her, but found nothing and gave up with a shrug. Then, two weeks later, on July 18, I was stunned to find a message from her in my inbox. She could have found my e-mail address among the registration forms, or it might have been that we had to include our e-mails on our paper and test. At any rate, there the message was on my computer screen, written in French. It began with a simple “Bonjour” and no other salutation. She said she was contacting me to congratulate me on my results on the test. She suggested a book about van Gogh—Van Gogh: Le Soleil en face, by Pascal Bonafoux. She said she would be in Paris all summer giving lectures—“The Painters of Montparnasse,” “The Avant-Garde at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” and “Paris in the Fifties.” Despite these lectures, she had extra time during the summer and liked to meet with former students who were still in France, to hear their critiques and commentaries, so she could improve her courses. She also said she was an Anglophile—Oscar Wilde was her favorite British writer—and would like to discuss literature with me in English or in French. She signed her message “Céleste Bernard.”

  My first reaction was despair over not having stayed in Paris after the course, even though I knew that would have been impossible. I had had to vacate my apartment, for one thing, and then there was a long list of rational reasons for returning home. But I wrote her back that very day, addressing her as “Chère Mme Bernard.” I told her that I wasn’t in Paris any longer; I had had to return home because I had work to do at the University of Texas. I told her that I had been free to come to Paris because my wife had died more than three years ago and my children were grown and on their own. After some deliberation, I admitted that I had tried unsuccessfully to find her e-mail address, taking a chance that this would be welcome news rather than making her uncomfortable. I said that I had searched for her address because I wanted to send her my books, and that I would still like to send them to her. I added that I would very much like to begin an exchange with her on English and French literature, and that my three favorite French writers were Balzac, Georges Simenon, and La Rochefoucauld, which seemed like a bizarre trio to me then, and now still seems bizarre, although defensible. I signed the message “Greg.”

  I didn’t hear from her until four days later, on the 22nd, when I was relieved to receive a long message. Once again it began simply “Bonjour.” It contained some information but was not especially personal. She had traveled in the United States from Niagara Falls to Yosemite and from New York to Los Angeles, and her main impressions seemed to have been of size and space, of largeness compared with smallness in France. She found the whole country both appealing and disorienting. As for my strange trio of authors, she said she liked Balzac for his characters and his descriptions of Paris, but she preferred Maupassant and Flaubert. She hadn’t read La Rochefoucauld, and added, “I know that Simenon is well appreciated by Anglo-Saxons,” a statement I found curious but charming. I rarely thought of myself and my family and friends as Anglo-Saxons, but I suppose we are. She asked me directly about my writing and my work at the university. She concluded by telling me that I wouldn’t lose the French I’d learned if I would practice a little each day. That made me smile. “Yes, teacher,” I thought. Once again, she signed the message simply “Céleste Bernard.”

  I answered several days later with a rather long message addressed to “Chère madame.” Writing in French took a long time, as I searched a dictionary for the proper word and a grammar for correct usage. I’m certain I made plenty of mistakes despite my best efforts. But, I told myself, I was practicing a little each day. French has a formal pronoun “vous,” which means “you,” and is used in most situations. There is also an informal pronoun “tu,” which also means “you” and is used among family and friends. At the end of my message, I said that I wasn’t sure in France how one goes from formality to less formality, but that I wished she would call me “Greg” and use “tu” with me as well.

  When her next message arrived, I was very pleased that it began “Cher Greg.”

  This time, she included her mailing address so I could send her my books, and the whole message was more relaxed and personal than the first two. She lived near the Parc Monceau, which I should have gone to see during my stay but never did. She loved it. She walked there often on her way to go swimming. “I dream a little while crossing it,” she said. “I adore nature, trees, and flowers.” She was soon going to the south of France to visit her mother, sister, and brother, but she preferred Normandy and Brittany, in the north, with their steep cliffs and solitary beaches and changing skies. She included four photographs to show me what she meant. “It’s astonishing,” she said, “that we can talk like this even though an ocean and so many kilometers separate us.” She used “tu” in its various forms throughout her message—never the formal “vous”—and signed it “Céleste.”

  After this we began to exchange longer messages that usually contained photographs and details about our lives. She had been separated from her husband for five years. She had a large apartment in Paris, where she lived with her daughter, who was twenty-one and worked in graphic design. She and her daughter were “cohabitants,” as she put it, and lived independent lives. When the girl was younger, they had frequently traded apartments with couples who lived in other countries in Europe or in the United States, where they had spent many months. Her daughter had learned English by watching American children’s shows on television.

  Céleste was born in the countryside south of Paris. She’d loved painting and nature from the time she was young, and had had a blissful childhood. Her father and grandfather maintained a large garden of flowers and vegetables, where she spent many hours studying the plants as they grew and transformed according to the season. She loved the way the light changed with every season and at different times of the day. Even insects and small animals fascinated her.

  Then, in adolescence, her life became difficult. She lost faith in religion. Her father, who was stern and deeply religious, judged her lack of faith severely. Rebellious, she left home at eighteen and became a nurse, and then worked for Johnson & Johnson, selling surgical supplies. Although her work required her to travel throughout France, which she enjoyed, she was miserable otherwise. In the evening, she took courses in drawing and read books and spent time in dreamy reveries, in an effort to forget her tiresome
and unrewarding daily life.

  She was almost thirty when she met her husband. They quickly had a child. Since her job often required her to travel for whole weeks at a time, she quit working to take care of her daughter. Now living in Paris, and wanting never to return to working in medicine, she decided to go to school. She thought of studying painting but worried that she would never find work, so she studied the history of art instead, at the Louvre and the Sorbonne. These studies weren’t always easy, since she had to choose courses according to the hours when they were offered and not according to subjects that really interested her. But she persisted, and obtained a master’s degree, all the while raising her daughter. At last, she had the qualifications to start her life as a teacher and lecturer on art, and she had time to paint besides. She had abandoned one life she hated and created a new one that made her happy. And she had reconciled with her family long ago. Her father had since passed away, and her mother now lived in the south, near Céleste’s brother.

  We talked a lot about books. She had in fact read very widely. I sent her a copy of my book on the Venus de Milo, and because I mentioned Larry McMurtry she ordered a copy of Duane est dépressif. “It’s astonishing, impossible to imagine less than a month ago,” she wrote, “that I would correspond with you, that I would read Larry McMurtry (whom I had never heard of), and that I would read your book on the Venus de Milo. Life is very strange and holds nice surprises!” Then she surprised me with an invitation: “If you are able to take some days of vacation this summer, why wouldn’t you come refresh yourself in Europe?” She was going to paint at a studio in the country. “There is a small house decorated as of old with furniture from the Normandy of yesterday. There are three bedrooms and plenty of space. You would be able to read and write while I would paint in the studio. And we would explore the region together.”

  I had been puzzling over how we could see each other again. Inviting her to Austin was my first thought, but it didn’t seem to me that we had reached a point where we would both be comfortable in Austin together, whether she stayed with me or in a hotel. I speculated that perhaps by fall a visit to Austin would be comfortable for us both. And by then the weather would be cooler, I could show her the countryside, and we could drive to see the museums in Houston and Fort Worth. Still, I couldn’t quite see it. But now that didn’t matter. She had filled the vacuum of the huge distance between us by sending me this invitation.

  It was the second week in July. I wrote her that I would be very pleased to come back to Paris, but I couldn’t leave for a week or so, and then school would start during the last week of August. She wrote back suggesting five days in early August that would be convenient for her. Could I come then? Yes, I could. I bought my tickets. Was there a hotel near her apartment where I could stay? No, that wasn’t necessary. I could stay in her apartment, in her daughter’s room. Also, there was no need to take a cab from the airport. She would drive to Charles de Gaulle and meet me at the gate.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Le Horla

  Although I had flown across an ocean all the way to Paris to see her, when I was at last on the ground at Charles de Gaulle and waiting in line at the passport control, I began to doubt that any of this was real. I prepared myself to find nobody at all waiting for me inside the airport. But once I was through the passport control, and after a bored customs officer waved me past his desk without bothering even to glance at my suitcase, I emerged into the multinational crowds and the incessant multilingual babble of a concourse at Charles de Gaulle. Céleste was there, in the midst of it all, shyly smiling. She was wearing a white blouse and a trim skirt printed with red roses. Our greeting was a little awkward, but not too awkward. We acted as if we were friends or business associates, and she was picking me up as a favor. We shook hands.

  She asked about the flight as we walked to her car. It was about ten-thirty on a warm, sunny August morning. I had slept only a little, if at all, during the flight, but I didn’t feel tired. I was very concentrated on her, without knowing what to say. She spoke hardly any English, as it turned out, and I was self-conscious about my French, even after a semester at the school. I knew that most of what I said in French was halting and faulty. Nevertheless, we did manage some chitchat and some easy laughs. She acted as if all this was a normal part of a well-established routine, by which she often came to Charles de Gaulle to pick me up. For me, every impression was new. I had never been in a parking lot at Charles de Gaulle. I didn’t know for certain that there were parking lots there. But now I was standing by a parking space among hundreds of vehicles as I waited on the passenger side of her blue Toyota while she unlocked the driver’s side door. Everything was mundane and dreamlike all at once.

  As she drove into Paris, I was able to look at her closely for the first time. Her eyes were the same red-brown color as her thick and still-untamed hair. She had fair skin and wore little or no makeup. Except for her eyes, the most distinguishing feature of her face was her long, straight mouth. Altogether, she was slender and pretty and feminine. Her skirt stopped above her knees. I liked seeing her bare legs move as her right foot reached for the gas pedal or the brake.

  Her apartment was on a quiet, unremarkable street in the Eighth Arrondissement, in north-central Paris, not far from her beloved Parc Monceau. She found a parking spot close to the door of her building. She and I and my suitcase crowded together in the tiny elevator as our bodies were pressed ever so slightly together.

  She unlocked the door of her apartment and asked me to take off my shoes, as she did the same. Just inside the door was a heavy wooden armoire that looked as if it had been in her family for generations. To the right was her bedroom; to the left, the kitchen and a hallway that led to the bathroom and her daughter’s bedroom, where I was to sleep. Straight ahead was a bright living room with a sofa and stuffed chairs and an alcove where she worked on her watercolors. There was a large folding screen painted with roses beside a fireplace with a marble mantel. A huge framed mirror was mounted on the wall above it. Vases filled with flowers were everywhere. White lace curtains hung by the windows, which opened onto the street. Flower boxes filled with green plants were attached to the black iron railing of the balcony.

  She had told me on the way from the airport that she would have to pick up her sister at the Gare de Lyon. I assumed we would do that together, later in the afternoon. But after only five minutes or so, she said she needed to leave or she would be late. She put on her shoes again—they were multicolored designer sneakers—and disappeared out the door. Silence descended. I didn’t move. After just over an hour back in Paris, I was alone in her apartment. Now what?

  Almost immediately I discovered that I wasn’t entirely alone. A brown-and-gray-spotted cat, who was hiding under the sofa in the living room, peered at me intently, waiting to see what I would do next. I decided to look around, starting with her bedroom. She slept on a low, narrow cot that was pushed against a wall. It looked like something one might find in a cell in a convent. There was a large closet with sliding doors against one wall. I went back to the living room and then looked at the watercolors in progress in her studio. They were either landscapes or detailed botanical studies of leaves, grasses, and flowers. They were exquisite, very assured and masterful. I understood now that her lectures were strengthened by her own skill as a painter. She had confronted problems in color and composition in her own work and could understand how other painters had solved similar problems.

  I was glad to see that her daughter’s room had a larger, more comfortable bed than Céleste’s cot. Her daughter was off at an internship in Germany. The bathroom was quite large. Isolated in the center stood an immaculate, gleaming white enamel bathtub on legs. Thick white towels were folded on a stool at the side of the tub. Boxes, bottles, tubes of lotions, salts, powders, and oils waited on a second stool, near the first. On the opposite side of the tub was a folding wooden rack where several items of pretty and
delicate lingerie had been hung to dry. This hidden enclave of sensuality fueled my imagination. I imagined seeing a nude Céleste sinking into the tub, where scented oils floated in steamy water.

  Back in the living room, I tried and failed to get the cat to come to me. I would have liked to explore the neighborhood, but I couldn’t leave, because I had no way to get back into the apartment. With nothing better to do, I read a book I had brought with me on the airplane.

  Later in the afternoon, Céleste returned alone: her sister was staying with a friend, and she had dropped her off there. There was a café Céleste liked on the other side of the Parc Monceau where we could have dinner. Outside, it had become overcast and looked like rain, but the somber sky did nothing to diminish the appeal of the park as we entered. In fact, the threat of bad weather made it even more romantic, since almost no one was there except for the two of us. It became our own special province.