“What did she say to that?”
“She said it was one hour too long.”
“I thought you wanted me to come here to make love to me.” The words spilled out before she could catch them.
“I already have. With my brush.”
She looked down at her lap. “I didn’t mean that way.”
“That’s the last thing I want to do now. I just want to be close to you.”
She had been too blunt. Too countryish. When a man takes a woman into his barn, she knows what to expect. Apparently Auguste was not like that.
“This time was just for you to see the studio. Not to paint you. Not to have relations with you. The proper time will come.”
She was confused and embarrassed and a little relieved. “Then you don’t want to paint me naked.” She didn’t know whether to hope he’d say yes or no.
“Of course I do, but you have to understand. The nude is a painter’s highest aspiration, my earthly paradise in fact, but a painter doesn’t do it with just anyone or on a whim. Someday I will, when you’re ready and I’m ready. I’m not now. I’ve been seduced by color and I have to reacquaint myself with line before I paint you nude. That may take me a long time.”
That made her feel dumb again. They were from different worlds.
“That’s why I have to go to Italy. To learn to paint you as Raphael and Titian painted nudes in the Renaissance.”
“My mother said it would come to this. She said that every painter wants you to take off your clothes, and after you model bare, you painters use up a woman and then abandon her.”
He didn’t laugh at her, but he didn’t deny it either. His hand stroked her hair and came around to her chin.
“Some things have to be resolved before love can grow roots or bear fruit. Next time, bring your mother with you.”
“You’re asking for trouble.”
“No. I’m asking for resolution.”
“And if she won’t come?”
His lips touched hers, softly at first, and he pressed her to him. She felt the top bone in his spine at the back of his neck.
“Then I guess you can’t come.” He breathed into her mouth, “Find a way.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
So Brief a Pair
Alphonsine was eating lunch on the lower terrace with her mother when Gustave bounded down the steps from the footbridge wearing a smile as wide as a frog’s.
“Is Auguste here?” he asked.
“I see that you’re dressed as a gentleman should,” Maman said. “It’s about time, after two months of wearing your undershirt around here.”
“Tch, tch. Just as your own son does, madame.”
“Guy hasn’t shown up to pose for two days, so Auguste is painting downstream from the railroad bridge,” Alphonsine said. She was annoyed at Guy but hoped for a different solution.
“It’s good for him,” her mother said. “He’s been moody.”
“Well, then, I won’t bother him. I just wanted to tell everyone that I bought a piece of property in Petit Gennevilliers.”
“You did it!” Alphonsine smacked her hand against her cheek. “You actually did it.”
He jingled a ring of keys. “I signed the papers yesterday.”
“We’ll almost be neighbors,” Louise said. “Both Alphonses will be so happy.”
“I wanted to show it to Auguste.”
“You can show me,” Alphonsine said.
“With pleasure.”
They took the train to Asnières and switched to the Montigny line, which had a stop across the river in Argenteuil. He had a look of utter contentment as they rode. She felt content too.
“I thought you’d be out practicing for the regatta, not buying houses.”
“Whenever I sail by this house, I can’t keep my mind on sailing. You were with me when I decided.”
“I was? When?”
“We were watching the fireworks. I said the river gave me peace.”
“Ah, it does that. You can come to it with a turbulent mind and feel the peace enfold you.”
“The most exciting period of my life is coming to a close,” he said.
She was shocked. “Why do you say that?”
“The contention among the painters. I don’t have the constitution for it. This will be a retreat to simpler pleasures. Gardening. Sailing. Designing a racing yacht.”
“Not painting?”
“When I feel like it. For me.”
They crossed the Argenteuil road bridge on foot. At this stretch of river, the Argenteuil bank had a wide, tree-lined promenade, large estates, and a few small factories. The Petit Gennevilliers bank was more rustic, with boatyards, and summerhouses nestled in orchards.
Gustave pointed to a short, narrow dock. “That’s mine. I’ll have a larger one built, and I’ll keep the slips in the Argenteuil marina until I can get a large boat garage built.”
Set back from the bank, the house had a steeply pitched roof of red tiles, two gables with windows and wooden balconies. A wide chimney ran the length with four chimney pots.
“I’ll plant a garden down to the river with trellises and a rose arbor.”
“With what kinds of flowers?” She thought she might prepare a basket of seed packets and bulbs as a gift.
“I want dahlias, lilacs, irises, lilies. I’ll build a greenhouse with a hotair stove so I can propagate orchids. Claude and I have some ideas about how to do that. There’s a gardener’s cottage and a wood behind.”
At the front door he sorted through the keys. “This is the first time I’ve been in it since I signed the documents.”
“I’m honored,” she said with a little curtsy.
“It hasn’t been kept up, and the rooms are all empty, but try to imagine what it will be like repainted and with furniture and paintings.”
The central parlor was large and airy and looked out on the river. “The bigger paintings will hang here, but…” He led her into another reception room. “Here’s where I’ll hang Auguste’s Bords de la Seine à Champrosay. And here will be Claude’s Régates à Argenteuil. And here Sisley’s La Seine à Suresnes.”
“You’ll feel just like you’re out on the water.”
He nodded with quick bobs of his head. “Exactly.”
“How many paintings do you have?”
“About fifty by others. Plus almost everything I’ve ever painted.”
“I can’t wait to see them.”
“Mine too?”
“Yours especially.”
“They’re odd. So people say.”
“They won’t be to me. They’re a part of you.”
He stopped his circuit of the room and turned to her. His cheeks lifted, and creases fanned out from the corners of his eyes, as though she’d said something unexpected, welcome, and important. Maybe there was possibility here, right under her nose, and she’d been facing the wrong direction.
They walked through room after room on each of two floors above the ground floor.
“The best view is from the upstairs studio, but you’ll have to climb a ladder.”
“I don’t mind.”
The studio was a separate structure built in the shape of a hexagon. Two wide bay windows let in light from two directions into a large open area. He positioned a ladder up to the loft. “Be careful. I’m right behind you.”
It was hard to climb the ladder without stepping on her skirt. She had to lift it and hold on to the ladder at the same time. When he opened the shutters, the river stretched like a glittering blue ribbon in both directions. The promenade at Argenteuil, the Argenteuil road bridge, the marina, and the Château Michelet with its pointed towers all within one view.
“It looks like a painting, right from here. Tell me you’ll paint it.”
He took a few minutes and gazed out the window. “Maybe someday. The château is owned by the president of the Cercle de la Voile à Paris.”
“Then it’s only fitting that you live across the river from
him.”
“You’ve heard your father speak of Chevreux and Luce, the boat builders?”
“Of course. They’re famous around here.”
“They’re building a new boatworks, the biggest on the river, right in Petit Gennevilliers. I think eventually I’ll give them some business.”
She whirled around and found him grinning. “A new boat?”
“A seagoing racing yacht so I can enter the big coastal regattas too.” He let out a breath that seemed long-held. “I’m going to like it here.”
“You’re going to love it.”
A fresh, new hope rose. She might be invited here from time to time. “I’m so happy.” For you, he could take it to mean, or for herself. He went to the ladder and descended partway.
“Be careful. I’ll be just a few steps below you. Face the ladder.”
Her skirt prevented her from seeing where to put her feet. She hesitated at each step until she felt his hand on her ankle guiding her to each rung, a caring intimacy.
“I’m down,” he said. “You have four more steps.”
Her heel caught her skirt hem and she shook her leg to free it and lost her footing and fell. He caught her, and held her for just an instant, until she righted herself and her feet were on the ground. He almost pushed her away as though she were hot to the touch.
“Are you all right?” He backed away with an odd expression on his face.
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell Auguste. He’ll think I was irresponsible to take you up there.”
“Of course I’ll tell him. How else could I describe the view?”
On the way back in the train, he said, “I’m going to be content here for the rest of my life.”
“Anyone would be,” she said.
“No. Not anyone. Not Auguste. He’s restless. One thing leads him to another. When he is painting a landscape, he loves water against a bank of trees. He loves a boat and its reflection. He loves what light does. If he’s painting a woman, he loves her. If he is painting a still life, he loves each petal. He may look at it afterward with joy that he and it and the light collaborated to make something that never existed before, something composed of all three, but the moment he finishes it, he goes on to something else.”
“Or someone else? Is that what you mean?”
“He keeps himself alive by the next subject and the next and the next. Any woman who thinks she can command all of his attentions will find herself unhappy.”
She had surmised as much, particularly after Aline arrived on the scene, but to hear it laid out like that was something else.
“I’ve seen what you’ve been doing,” he said in a gentle voice. “Insinuating yourself into his life by assisting with the painting in so many winsome ways.”
His tone wasn’t accusatory, but it held something inauspicious.
“That can get irksome to a man if it’s overly present or heavy.”
The sting.
“I can’t seem to hold back.”
“Not that he’s given any indication of feeling that way. I just thought you should know.”
“Does this have anything to do with Aline?”
“No. I would tell her the same thing.”
“You don’t have to worry. One more session with Guy, and the painting will be finished. He’ll go back to Paris.” She couldn’t control the pique in her voice. It wasn’t the truth of what he said that pricked, but the fact that he felt he needed to say it.
He laid his hand on her forearm. “I’m learning too that pleasure can be spoiled by expecting too much from it.”
She nodded in acquiescence, not in agreement.
When the train approached Asnières she said, “You don’t have to accompany me the rest of the way. You can go back to Paris on this line.” She stepped onto the platform. Speaking with all the affection she felt for him, she said, “Thank you for showing me your house. It’s perfect for you. Remember, I’ll be cheering for you at the regatta.”
She lingered on the footbridge, numbed by Gustave’s well-intentioned counsel. Still, she was so happy about his new house that she wanted to tell Auguste. She headed downstream. Under Alexander’s metal arches leaping across the river, she thought how tied her family was to the bridge. Alphonse had been in the unit ordered to blow it up so the Prussian army couldn’t use it to enter Paris, her father depended on it for his business, Alexander had designed the repair of it and killed himself right here. A love that fierce, and she hadn’t fully recognized the truth of it, or accepted that it could come to her. She should have known from Louis that love was too precious to waste.
A train passed overhead on its way to Paris. In the quiet that followed she heard Auguste humming on the other side of the stone piling and the thick foliage. She recognized the tune. Béranger’s “Garret.” She sang the words in her mind.
Yes, here’s the old room where I roughed it so long
In the penniless days I ne’er cease to regret,
When a scapegrace of twenty I lived but for song,
A few cheery friends, and the charms of Lisette.
A dart shot through her. Auguste was already thinking of his own garret studio in Paris. She sang the words softly to his humming:
In the prime of life’s spring-tide, ne’er taking account
Of the world and its ways, or what Fate had in store,
How gaily up six flights of stairs would I mount.
Ah, give me my youth and a garret once more.
The humming stopped.
“Alphonsine?”
“That’s truly your song, you know.”
“Where are you?”
“In a spot I own more than anyone.”
“Come here.”
She squeezed her way between bushes to his easel. On the canvas, beyond a small meadow done in feathery pastel strokes, Alexander’s green ironwork threaded through the upper branches of two flowering tamarisk trees in front and a third one behind, the blossoms mere smudges of rose and white, with poplars rising in the distance. Under one of the trees, barely discernible, stood a man wearing a flat-topped canotier. She could imagine him to be whomever she wanted.
“A companion painting!” she said. “The terrace painting you did of me looks at the railroad bridge from one side. This from the other. A man in one and a woman in the other. The railroad completes the story.”
Auguste gave her a wary look. “What story?”
“Just Parisians on the train coming out to our island of Cythera, for pleasure.”
“Where did you learn about Cythera?”
“In the Louvre. Watteau’s paintings.”
“You surprise me.”
Good. Aline would never have made the connection.
“More blossoms,” she said. “To make this spot a happy place.”
With a deadpan expression, he came toward her and lifted his brush to her cheek as though he were going to paint it. She backed away. “No, silly. On the canvas.”
He flipped the brush so that the handle was toward her now. “Do it. Add one more.”
“Do you mean that?”
His deadpan changed to mock exasperation.
“Why?” she asked.
“For pleasure, of course.” He held his palette toward her and pointed to a smear of rose. “Lick up some of that. Feel the wet gooeyness of it.”
He put his free hand around her waist and drew her toward the painting.
“Where?”
“Wherever you want. A collaboration.”
That lovely word. She aimed her brush. “Here?”
“D’accord.”
She daubed the paint on a branch that rested against the bridge.
“A blossom for him,” Auguste said. “Perfect.”
She handed back the brush. This was far better than a dance.
That’s just what they had done this summer—danced around Gustave and the Prussian and Alexander and Jeanne and Aline with light, uncertain steps.
“Gustave bought a ho
use in Petit Gennevilliers. Right on the river.”
A scramble of emotions darkened his face. “I thought he might, but not this soon.”
“What’s wrong? You should be happy for him.”
“I am, if that’s what he wants. I’m just concerned about what it might mean. His state of mind.”
“He was over the moon about it. It’s a perfect place for him.”
She told him all about it, and about going up to the studio loft and falling off the ladder.
“The instant he saw I was on the ground, he practically shoved me away as though I were made of hot coals.”
He set down his palette and brushes. “I wouldn’t recommend you to be overly fond of him. For your sake.”
“Why? Is he hiding a model with a quaint Burgundian accent?”
“That’s just it. He isn’t. He never has. His models are mostly men. He has strong feelings for them, and for his sailing crew and boat builders and friends in Paris. His need for intimacy is taken care of by men, chérie.”
“I don’t believe—”
“When have you ever seen him with a woman?”
“I…” The reality descended. “Never.”
Air escaped her lungs but would not come back. Her appalling blindness shamed her, her transparency embarrassed her. “I never thought.”
Auguste drew her against his chest. “I’m sorry.”
She felt his breath coming through her hair on the top of her head. This moment, enfolded in his tenderness, had to last her a long, long time. He didn’t seem anxious to pull away. She felt his hand stroke the top of her head and his fingers trail through her hair, for the pleasure of it. His doctrine. That big-knuckled hand that created beauty, that was beauty itself, was anointing her with affection.
How does one end a moment like this? It would kill her to feel him pull away. She had to be first. In a moment. One moment more. Yes. Now.
She drew back. The lines in his forehead contorted, the furrows from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth plowed deeper, and his cheeks were more hollowed. He had aged. Two months and he had aged.
“Thank you for telling me. It saved me from embarrassing myself, and him.” She glanced at the painting. “And for letting me add a blossom for Alexander.”
Luncheon of the Boating Party Page 42
