The Blue Period

by Luke Jerod Kummer

  Germaine said she’d fallen in love once but declined to elaborate. “Temporarily I lost my most prized possession—liberty. Love’s fun, but it was a price too high.”

  There was a disapproving look in Carles’s eye.

  “My greatest affair,” Germaine proposed, “is with Montmartre—always handsome, full of excitement, and showers me lavishly with endless surprises. Who can compete?”

  When the brandy wore down, Germaine slipped off her shoes. Pablo admired her long, narrow feet—a woman made for walking tightropes, he thought. He could see Carles moping after her homage to Montmartre. He watched Germaine notice it also, then saw how something in her softened, as if Carles’s devotion—childlike and pathetic—tripped a wire inside her that forced a change in her disposition toward him. This, too, set into motion a cascade of jealousy in Pablo. He felt it flowing when Germaine leaned back to recline on the floor and rested her head on Carles’s leg. She asked him, “Who was your meteor?”

  “A young lady I petitioned to marry,” Carles replied. “Had my father allowed me in the navy, she might have reciprocated my affection, or so I presume, since my offer was spurned for a lieutenant.”

  “You’re the first anarchist to shed a tear because he wasn’t allowed to die for a king,” Germaine said, comforting him.

  It had started innocently. A pose, a painting. But that was a blur.

  When Pablo awoke, the bedroom was dark and hot, his flesh sticky, pressed against Germaine as she slept. He pulled away, and it was like peeling banana skin.

  They’d been out cold—for how long, he wondered? An hour? The night?

  Pablo went to the toilet. The urine was slow to come. Then it burst forth, followed by a pleasant feeling, the sensation of becoming again a channel.

  For days, the studio had been full of brandied storytelling and nestling by the fireplace. But then the logs ran out, just as Paris was growing colder. Pablo went back to painting in the night and spending the day sleeping a bit before setting up on the street with his work to earn money. To his surprise, Carles had petitioned him for advice on how to do the same. Pablo told him to always appear to be laboring at an easel beside whatever paintings are for sale. “You must merge yourself and the painting into a memory that passersby will want to keep, then offer it to them for a price.”

  Carles had looked at him funny, and asked, “This is why you do art?”

  “Absolutely not,” Pablo replied. “But it is how to sell art—the reason I could afford to see bullfights in Spain.”

  Now, there was a washcloth hanging in the bathroom, and Pablo dipped it into the basin. He was cleaning his privates when he heard the door on the first floor of the town house shut. There were the clicks of footsteps—toe-heel, toe-heel—coming upstairs.

  Pablo inhaled deeply, searching for the scent of sex, but smelled only that of fire embers combing through the air.

  There was a jangling at the studio door, then the slide of the key—metal parts turning before the creaking of the hinge.

  Carles poked his head inside the studio and was greeted by the aroma of burnt cedar. He laid down a bundle of logs on the floor beside ones already there. He was surprised to find Pablo curled on the chaise in the corner, quiet and alone. Pablo was usually painting or else cuddling with Odette at this hour.

  There was no canvas on the easel, only those tucked nearby, their fronts turned to the wall. Pablo appeared fast asleep, his Parisian pet nowhere in sight.

  Carles wandered into the other small room where was the only proper bed. Germaine was lying there in an immaculate, Caravaggesque slumber. He stood over her, watching her drift on a raft of dream. Gone was the heavy look she wore sometimes. He thought of how he could admire forever that perfect French nose as it flared gently.

  The house was hot. Carles set his coat by the fire and pulled off his undershirt. He left his trousers in a crumpled pile on top of his shoes—flinching when the belt buckle hit the floor, hoping it wouldn’t wake the sleeping painter, then scolding himself for caring. He couldn’t figure out: Had he first become annoyed with Pablo at the Exposition or even before? Carles pondered this as he rummaged through his pockets for the most vital possession he owned and then placed it on the nightstand.

  Germaine was naked, lying on her side, facing away from him. A breach in the sheets revealed a peninsula of flesh extending from ribs to ankle, an ideally placed cinnamon-colored mole adorning the crest of her pelvis. He’d never noticed it before, and now the spot seemed the totality of her. It was quite beautiful. He looked at the carved musculature of her long trunk, apparent in the smoldering orange light. He tugged at the sheet and slipped in behind her.

  “Mmmh,” she purred, pushing her round backside against Carles’s middle. “Where did you go?” she groaned. “Painting in the other room?”

  Carles reached past her head and pulled the hair from her face behind her ears. “No, no,” he said.

  She startled.

  “I’ve been in the square all night, nearly froze. But I sold two canvases—eight francs. Bought firewood with it, although I see I’m not the only one.”

  Germaine recognized the voice, then the scent of cologne instead of sweat and spirits of turpentine. “Christ, Carles, where have you been?”

  “I told you. I sold a watercolor of an old Spanish woman and another of a night sky to some tourists marveling at the marvelous Montmartre, where abide the artistes,” Carles said, singing the last words sarcastically, showing off that he’d become a jaded local who mocked what outsiders thought of their enclave. “Artists and their muses, that is,” he said, playfully. “What have you been up to, my dear?”

  “Sleeping. In bed, all day. I have a terrible headache. Don’t touch me, please. Can you go away?”

  “Where to? Why?” He placed his wrist on her forehead. “You have a fever. What do you need? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, Carles. Bring me water. You can stay, but please, please leave me be. Why is it so hot?”

  “Pablo must have made a fire before going to sleep,” he said, getting up to fill her cup.

  “Sleep? Where is he?”

  “In the other room, on the chaise, knocked out. And all alone, for once. Where’s Odette? They fuck like mice.”

  There was already envy in his voice. Germaine wanted to tell him that, no, Pablo is a man. “Odette’s at her mother’s,” she said only.

  “Drat. I didn’t mean to sound cross. He’s incroyable, Pablo is—why, he’s like le petit Jésus!” Carles replied, handing her the water before glancing back toward where Pablo lay outside and then reaching to the nightstand for the cold glass object he’d retrieved from his pocket. “His work, it’s miraculous. Yes, yes, he’d have us believe he’s art’s messiah. But why not? So be it. Art needs saving. I’ll play along as apostle, one of the loyal ones. Hell, I’ll even be a whore cavorting with the Christ,” he proclaimed, drinking deeply from the amber vial and lying back on his pillow.

  “It’s what we all are,” Germaine said, wetting her lips.

  “What?”

  “The whores.” She promised herself then she would have no time for self-pity or its cousin, guilt. She rolled over in the heat and closed her eyes.

  Pablo made sure he was gone before the first bells chimed. How could he face Carles, paint over what he’d done? He felt weepy, even as the cinders of desire still flared, his mind flashing with scenes of love, lust, and consequence.

  To the Louvre’s galleries Pablo returned each day, seeking refuge, pacing through the exhibits, wandering the museum’s Egyptian halls, studying the frosty quartz eyes of the seated scribe who seemed to cast judgment. He froze before the plinth of Mantegna’s Madonna to stare at the Tree of Knowledge carved into the throne the Virgin rests upon—where the serpent was curling round a limb, speaking to Adam and Eve. They looked so young, so dumb, Pablo thought.

  Finally, at week’s end, Pablo stopped fleeing before dawn and coming home after midnight. He returned to painting in
the studio, resolving as he cleaned his brushes with solvent, the thin colors swirling down the drain and the fumes biting his nose, to wear the face of the Sphinx, to act like nothing had transpired.

  Germaine, he knew, would do the same.

  V

  There was no sign of Pablo or Carles when Pajaresco got off the train from Barcelona at noon, though he’d sent them word of his arrival time by post.

  Pajaresco searched every track, waiting until the station clock reached two. The gray sky outside was brightening, even though the sun was past its pinnacle and would soon fade. Days were short now, Paris more wintry than Spain. He decided to find Montmartre on his own.

  On the steps of the Gare d’Orsay, Pajaresco lit a cigarette as the wind picked up. He cupped the end with his hands to keep it from going out, this strange city crystallizing around him. The suit he’d had cut by the same tailor as Pablo and Carles—from the exact same panther-black corduroy—was not nearly warm enough, even with the collar flipped up. Nonetheless, with his waves of flaxen hair, strong jaw, and farmhand’s build, he knew he looked quite dashing in it.

  But the further Pajaresco walked, the more frustrated he grew at being adrift, so far away from a warm room and hot food. Knowing no French, all the traveling Catalan could do when he encountered someone on the street was say “Montmartre” and stand dumbly while they jabbed a finger in one direction or another. In this way, Pajaresco climbed up Boulevard de Magenta, past garment shops and the monument at Place de la République, and turned left at Boulevard de Rochechouart, where the light-colored buildings with clay roofs began to be replaced by wooden settlements with straw ones. Finally, atop a high hill, he could see the low base of a wide, bone-white structure enmeshed in scaffolding. A few odd builders lurked about like garden spiders. The air up here was misty. The sky was darkening.

  “Montmartre,” Pajaresco said to an itinerant.

  The man gave a cheerful, toothless smile, his gums purple and withered as prunes. He pointed to the ground beneath them.

  “Forty-Nine Rue Gabrielle,” Pajaresco said.

  The old tramp grabbed his crotch—apparently misunderstanding.

  Pajaresco quickened his pace again. After more than two hours, he came to the address and knocked on the building’s red door. There was no answer. “Pablito,” he screamed. “Carles!”

  There in the entranceway, Pajaresco stood for a long time, swearing and begging mercy on his poor feet, becoming wetter, colder. He crouched and wrapped his arms around his knees, sipping the brandy he carried from Spain to keep himself from turning to ice.

  As the church bells announced the vespers just after five o’clock, the door opened in a whoosh, and Pajaresco felt a kick to his rib.

  “Fucking vagrant!” shouted the man stumbling over him. Pajaresco leapt up in alarm, his fist cocked behind his ear. But it dawned on him who this fellow Catalan was. “Where the hell have you been?” Pajaresco said. “Were you upstairs this whole time?”

  “It’s you—from Barcelona,” Carles said, confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “You two begged me to come. Remember? Why didn’t you answer? I’ve been out freezing my prick off. You could have maybe considered meeting me at the train so I’m not walking around France like a goddamned fool.”

  “I was asleep. And how was I to know?” Carles replied.

  “I mailed my train time. You didn’t get it?” Pajaresco squinted and looked at Carles’s pale face, his wobbly eyes. He’d heard stories about him. “What’s wrong with you?” he said scornfully. “You might have noticed my letter if you weren’t such a fucking dope fiend.”

  They turned to the shouting of Pablo coming up the street with a woman on each arm, one blonde and one brunette, and another younger one with fiery red tangles skipping just ahead. He charged up the steps like a bull and pressed his face into Pajaresco’s belly, laughing with such buoyancy that it seemed to lift them into the air. Pajaresco flung his arms around his old amic.

  “When did you get here?” Pablo asked. “I’m gladder to see you than anything.”

  “I brought the brandy you like, but it’s half gone,” Pajaresco said.

  “In Paris, we will drink so much absinthe, you’ll want your head back. And the women here? Pajaresco, who saved my life in Horta, you have no idea. They are not of this world but from above it.”

  Pajaresco saw Pablo’s three companions were busy inspecting him, and he straightened his already sturdy posture, puffed up his brawny chest.

  One, introducing herself as Germaine, kissed Pajaresco on both cheeks.

  Another called Odette outstretched her hand and cooed when he pressed his lips against it.

  “And last but not least,” Pablo said, “I give you the adorable Antoinette, Germaine’s sister.”

  “Pretty family,” Pajaresco said.

  “You should see the work we’ve done since we arrived. Lautrec? No one will talk about him anymore. Paris is to sing of me alone—except for El Pajaresco!”

  “You paint?” Germaine asked Pajaresco.

  “I mess around. But I’m no Pablo Picasso. He wrote me about those joints with the cancan girls, though. I’m going to pin him down to teach me how to get the garters and lace just right.”

  “Why leave the studio?” said Germaine. Pajaresco was enticed by her eagerness but saw how it made Carles’s already hard brow turn to a scowl. Pablo also looked taken aback. Carles seemed to notice this as well and glanced sideways at him.

  “Antoinette, she can model anything, if you like,” Germaine said.

  “Should say I do,” Pajaresco replied.

  “Then,” she said, “you must do.”

  That night, Germaine led them along Rue Ravignan to a little boîte with peeling plaster walls inside. The dim light created a pale-yellow background that they became silhouettes against, like streaks of Chinese ink on tree bark. They quaffed cider, and Pablo and his art school chum recounted their adventures in the wilds outside Horta. Pajaresco told of how he’d tracked a boar along a mountainside. “When I put the gun up to my shoulder,” he said, “the bastard charged. Came so close, I could feel its whiskers.”

  The girls hung on every word. Carles sat at the corner of the table, stewing.

  “Haven’t they great big teeth?” Germaine said.

  “More like tusks!” Pajaresco crowed.

  “You were almost eaten by a pig?” Carles sniffed. “Sounds like Sancho Panza.”

  “Who?”

  “From Don Quixote. The book. You’ve heard of it, no?”

  “I wasn’t doing a whole lot of reading at the time—just running like hell.”

  “Sancho is the buffoon,” Carles said. “What is it you paint, again? Landscapes?”

  “Some,” Pajaresco said, massaging his chin. “Not mostly, lately, though. Just finished painting a chapel, floor to ceiling. Received a real nice commission. But I like a landscape, now and then, sure do. ’Cause it don’t have too many people to get on your nerves.”

  Pablo ordered a round of mint cordials. “Something to sweeten everyone’s mood,” he said. The barman’s belly was big as a cassoulet and shook like aspic as he rustled behind the counter to gather teensy crystal glasses. They toasted to them having all made it, one way or another, to Paris.

  If Carles had been paying attention instead of fretting about Germaine falling for Pajaresco, he’d have registered that the newcomer had a clear affinity for the sprightly Antoinette. Beneath her auburn ringlets, her face had something of the East, from Moscow or even further. Pablo could tell it was driving Pajaresco mad. He also wondered if Germaine actually enjoyed watching Carles becoming jealous. Did she like seeing his own envy grow, too—part of some game she entertained herself with, the people around her nothing but playing pieces made of ivory and bone?

  The barman informed everybody that, with regrets, he must kick them out so he could sleep a few winks before his infant woke with ceaseless wails. “But what can I do? She’s my little girl,” he said
with fondness.

  Germaine inquired about the man’s wife, and after a few minutes of her easy chitchat, they all had another round poured in front of them.

  Carles’ ire steeped in the alcohol, giving it more bite. This is what women want, he told himself: menfolk who regale them with shotshells and swine.

  His hatred shifted, however, when he thought he noticed Germaine’s focus steal over to Pablo, the two exchanging looks. Had it really been what it appeared to be?

  “We go now to another place,” Germaine said to Pajaresco, clapping her palms together. “Will you come?” As if there was any doubt.

  “You lead, ma’am. I’ll follow,” Pajaresco replied.

  Carles trailed behind, steaming underneath his flipped-up coat collar.

  The lot of them tromped up the street and stopped in front of a dark bungalow, without even lights in the window. Germaine ushered them inside, where a piano player’s hands raced across the row of zebra keys, becoming two soft blurs. The musicians were leftovers from the Romanian pavilion at the Exposition that closed after running out of money, she explained.

  Pajaresco and Odette carried drinks from the back, and they all squeezed to fit around a table no bigger than a crepe pan. Something nudged against Carles’s knee underneath. His first reaction was to jerk away. But he caught himself and discovered it was Germaine’s leg that was suddenly crossed over his, the warmth of her thigh heating his own. He inhaled her jasmine perfume.

  How can this woman be?

  Who—and what!—was she after?

  Why’d she insist on torturing him?