The Blue Period

by Luke Jerod Kummer

  The only part of the letter Germaine sent Pablo in Madrid that he kept is the upper-left corner of the envelope. On a moonless night, he hunts down the return address and finds a dwelling space on the second floor of a decrepit warehouse on the edge of the Maquis. Pablo climbs a wooden ramp, the kind used for machinery and materials to be rolled up and down on hand trucks. The air smells of tar. Pablo bangs on the rickety plank-and-batten door. He digs his fists into the pockets of his coveralls, which have become a uniform of sorts.

  The door flings open, and there she is, in a pink satin robe. She looks almost exactly the way he remembers her: hair loose, eyes and lips unpainted. But her middle is puffed out like a beignet.

  “You got my letter,” she says in a paper-thin voice. “I don’t leave my house. No one knows.”

  Germaine leans into Pablo and clasps her arms around him.

  He feels his anger melt until it drips down his legs, pools at his feet, drains through the ramp’s wooden slats, and falls two flights to the dusty earth, which absorbs it, making it disappear like winter snow.

  Opening night at Vollard’s gallery on Rue Laffitte is packed, the stifling air and free-flowing Beaujolais loosening collars and purse strings.

  Pablo worked like a dervish for weeks and has produced dozens more paintings than the Basque headliner, Iturrino. There is no vacant inch on the walls, no room for frames even, just edge-to-edge paintings, floor to high ceiling. Displayed everywhere are Pablo’s colorful café socialites, his absinthe drinkers, his grandes dames gliding across the grass at Longchamp, his chorus girls, his spent lovers with arms draped over brows. Hanging in the middle of the wall facing the entrance, a mysterious creature with blue-black hair leans forward as if she’ll crane right out of the picture, her eyes inviting the viewer everywhere. There’s also a smaller work nearby in which a disemboweled horse is laid out in a sunny Spanish bullring, its head resting on the limp carcass of the toro just slain.

  The paintings aim to excite the senses but are also executed in a range of styles—from thick, slithering lines to bright, boiling whirlpools of color; watery caricatures to smudgy pastels; fierce raids of the brush to languorous harmonies—as if to say to each and every one who witnesses them, “Name your fancy, and I can please you beyond compare.” There’s even a dashing impasto self-portrait inscribed “Yo, Picasso,” in which Pablo has donned a flamenco’s white ruffled shirt, a saffron scarf trussed around the neck, and gibbous hither-come-I black eyes.

  Pablo stands in the back of the room, taking it all in. He is impressed that the real insiders and trendsetters of the city’s milieu artistique have flocked to the gallery, habitués of posh arrondissements mingling with bohemians, as easy to distinguish from one another as show dogs among mongrels.

  The denizens of high society and bourgeoisie Paris file in with bowler hats and walking sticks, striped wool and cream linen, and two-tone spectator shoes—their dangling gold timepieces swishing back and forth as they travel picture to picture, rubbing their chins. They come cresting through the crowd in fitted and boned bodices, bishop sleeves, and two-inch-tall Louie heels, accompanied by paper parasols, glass beads, and clattering metal spangles, their fingertips extending beyond the openings of lace mittens to point to the risqué portraits of reclining courtesans with garishly carmined lips. Oh, the way these prized guests to the gallery act demure—drawing back, coolly analyzing Pablo’s images of sin!

  Pablo savors what he imagines is going on inside their heads. How his paintings make them wonder for a moment what it would be like to lie naked on a bed, a stranger working the canvas above you, tracing your outline, studying your flesh, extracting the essence of what your body has to say and preserving it for all of time in line and shadow, color and oil. One lady even gathers in very close to a painting, clasps her hands behind her back, turns down her mouth, and clenches her eyes in a squint before Pablo hears her make a little humming sound and sees her appear to sniff the canvas, as if expecting to detect a whiff of sexual intercourse.

  In turn, each time Vollard approaches one of the society mavens, Pablo sees his glance rove from earlobes, to neckline, to wrists, to fingers, as the gallery owner conducts an audit of her jewels to estimate the size of her probable spending allowance. He adjusts his praise accordingly.

  Manyac also carefully eyes each arrival, and Pablo watches and guesses how his sponsor is mentally subdividing the well-dressed into private buyers and competitors, those savvy secondhand dealers who seek to snap up anything that might interest collectors in a few years’ time, ideally at a much-appreciated rate. All the while, he must observe the dilettantes keenly to know what bait they’re biting at today.

  As for the bohemians who ramble in, many are young, thin, unwashed Spaniards paying tribute to one of their own. “Adds a sort of authenticity,” Manyac says.

  Then, there are the critics. Pablo is learning that potential purchasers won’t trust their own instincts until they are confirmed with tomorrow’s ink. Entreating these tastemakers to give a rapturous review is one of the secrets of Vollard’s success, Manyac says, a talent he’s pristinely nurtured over the years. He laid it out to Pablo once: “The public, see, is highly susceptible to persuasion by a noted critic who says a certain artist is good. But it is impervious to the same overtures by a gallery owner, who cannot tell an audience directly it must pay for a painter’s works.”

  Luckily, for the most part, critics are as pliable in the hands of a talented dealer as the public is impressionable, Manyac has assured Pablo. In this case, some of them Vollard has wheedled by having him paint their portraits before the show. He says that for those who too easily wash off so much soft-soap, there is always, as with many bullfighting writers in Spain and opera columnists in Milan, the option of outright bribery.

  However, such wooing clearly eats into dealers’ profits. For Manyac to call an exhibition a success, then, means that the newspapermen didn’t require too handsome of a sum just to dash off a reasonably well-embellished review.

  And, by this standard, he says, Pablo’s debut in Paris will do nicely.

  Gustave Coquiot, who cost time but not much fortune, agrees to remark eloquently on the momentum and tenacity of Pablo’s eye and brush hand, adding that the new artist “wants to see everything and say everything.” He will grant him this likelihood in the review’s flattering closing sentence that promises all the world should be hearing of this young man soon. Another critic will write an even more gracious phrase to lodge in readers’ ears, branding Pablo “the painter, wholly and beautifully the painter.”

  In all, more than half the works sell, many of which were cranked out in the previous few days. Indeed, Pablo learns that one of the reasons he appeals to Manyac and Vollard is his manic and unfathomably quick means of production. Why, if calibrated properly, Pablo might spit money faster than the mint, he overhears them say to each other.

  By the end of the night, Pablo has downed several glasses of wine, and everything seems to shimmer and move. He marvels for a moment at how never in Don José’s life did his old man see a triumph such as this. But then, Pablo thinks—also a little drunk on himself—even God had to wait for his son to achieve what evaded Him.

  II

  The diners cramming the sidewalk tables along the Seine sparkle with grand air aristocratique like so many plump swans loitering atop the finest real estate on the Left Bank. This is not where Pablo expected to lunch.

  But after inquiring twice with the maître d’ whether he was indeed at the place called Le Voltaire, Pablo sits down at one of the cane-backed Louis XVI chairs and tries to fake belonging. Manolo, the puckish Catalan who’d introduced him to Manyac before Christmas, said to meet at noon so they might catch up.

  While Pablo waits, he gapes at the Louvre just across the river. Inside that building, he thinks, resides the biggest art collection on earth, with masterpieces representing the entire lineage of human creation.

  Since the gallery opening on Monday, Pablo has e
xperienced an acute postpartum comedown. He’s fallen from floating on top of the world into a vacuum where he mourns Carles, fixates on his own precarious health, and can’t help but think of Germaine locked away in that warehouse cubbyhole, her middle expanding.

  If this weren’t enough, Pablo still hasn’t seen a bit of extra income from the show. How long will he be able to get by?

  As Pablo stares at the museum on the watery horizon, all his troubles are pressed beneath a more complex quandary, however—the contents of the building also constitute countless years of artists’ lives. Many never saw anything approaching the acclaim their names have enjoyed since they’ve been dead or an ounce of what their works have earned. So what, really, is the point?

  How long, after all, did Dürer spend in a mirror rendering his self-portrait with a thistle, and how much more time layering varnish for the colors to hold?

  How could Michelangelo manage to keep The Dying Slave alive in his mind for the years needed to complete it with a chisel and mallet?

  And the real pyramid-builders depicted in hieroglyphs on stone and acacia wood—their likenesses now entombed behind display glass—how much had they given of themselves? Everything? Clearly these artworks are cherished, since Napoléon bothered stealing them from a faraway desert—this lucre that is not gold but rather pigment imbued with mysterious value. But why?

  How come art exists at all? And why do artists do this and not something else? There must be more to it than prettiness or hoped-for esteem. As he’d once suggested to Germaine, maybe so many academics, drawing instructors, art dealers, and critics corrupted what the ancients naturally understood. Perhaps “primitive” artists comprehended far more than today’s tastemakers can imagine—that there’s something in humans’ will to create the universe depends on.

  Manolo sits down across from Pablo, excusing himself for being late. “A little something kept me,” he says, removing a straw hat from above his deep-set eyes and placing it on the table. His hairline has begun to creep away from his thick brows. “What, you’re not going to ask me her name?”

  “Actually, I hoped you might be painting for a change.”

  “I’m more of a sculptor,” Manolo says, carving the air with his quick, soft hands. “But, really, you gotta do what’s hot—oils, waters, exotic ink, smears of goose shit—whatever’s selling.” He points at a pair of imaginary patrons and barks, “‘How’s that? Double portrait with both youse? Coming up. A Grecian urn? Yeah, m’OK. I got one right here.’ You know how it is.”

  Manolo orders two dozen oysters from a harried waiter. “You can never tell when you might get a pearl,” he grins. “Know where I learned to eat those?” he asks in his reedy Catalan. “Not any fancy restaurant.” He tells Pablo about being a kid with no money and nothing in his stomach, humping through gorse and mud to where the Llobregat enters the sea—a half-day hike from Barcelona—before reaching straight into the sludge. “But the shell, it’s sharp, see? So I tried not to cut my wrists.”

  “You almost made poverty sound tasty.”

  “Gotta survive,” Manolo says, tapping his temple, “with wits.”

  “I always figured you was slumming it at Els Gats.”

  “You kidding? I was a dog with no pack after Mama died. Smartest thing she ever did, dying,” Manolo says. “My father didn’t even see his real kids, let alone the fuzzy illegitimates. I was a tramp. Studied every hustle. That’s an art, too, you know?” Manolo’s face belies that he doesn’t believe Pablo gets it. “Anyway, how’s Manyac treating you?”

  “Kind of an odd fellow. Awfully particular. But he comes through,” Pablo says, telling Manolo about the show at Vollard’s. “And the money, it’s not bad, I don’t think. Or pretty-not-bad, I guess.”

  “Vollard, huh? That Creole’s gallery is tops. He knows how to pack ’em in. That’s what it’s all about in Paris—publicity.” Manolo rattles on about how cabarets increase their business by paying Lautrec to make posters. “Then the dancers close their eyes and give that gimpy freak a backroom treat to look pretty in the pictures so their salary goes up. The artists and dealers, what do they do? Shell out for nice press to push their prices up. Everything’s publicity, understand?” Manolo takes a drag on his smoke. “And Manyac, he felt you up yet?”

  “Never,” Pablo shoots back, lowering his voice as the waiter slings the oysters onto the table. “So that’s his game, is it?”

  “Him, he got lots of games.” Manolo shrugs. “Likes manille, for one. Ain’t half bad, neither. Takes talent to cheat where no one’s saying nothin’, everyone’s all eyes, all the time. Ripping off picture painters, that’s two.”

  Pablo wonders if something transpired since last fall for Manolo to sour on Manyac. Or maybe Manolo was just in on the scheme at the time.

  “As for the other, well, you’re smart. He’s faster than a barracuda and more slippery, too. He’ll want you to work for that little stipend. Fine, if your pictures sell. If not? He’ll want something else,” Manolo says, dangling the live mollusk over his gullet before slurping it down and kissing his fingertips.

  Pablo looks nervously at the platter and reaches for one of the half shells.

  “See, I’m watching out for you, OK? You look more innocent than guys with a halo for a hat.”

  “I . . . am not,” Pablo contests, swallowing the oyster lodged in his throat.

  The waiter returns, huffing from sprinting around the restaurant, which has filled up since Pablo sat down. Manolo orders Rouen duck—young, plump, pressed, and roasted, served in sauce made of its own liver. Pablo asks for the cheapest thing on the menu, a hard-boiled egg nestled in mayonnaise. He can’t help worrying he’ll soon be completely broke. Paris is too hard to predict. And his friend—should he call Manolo that?—seems to be issuing a warning.

  The food arrives, and they eat and drink listening to the music of the crowd until the silence between them becomes awkward. Pablo is still thinking of the Louvre’s relics and masters—about how if it represents ancestry and parentage, then who will decide what’s next? He finally says, “You know, in art, I think we have to kill our fathers.”

  “Just don’t forget,” Manolo responds without pause, as if he’s been waiting for this ball with his racquet, “to grab what they got on them.”

  A puzzling thing to say, Pablo thinks.

  Manolo wipes tarragon from his lip with the tablecloth. “My papa held a general’s rank in the war of ’68,” he begins. “Comes home from Cuba and hears I’d run afoul—a mix-up, naturally. So he sends some hard-nosed MPs to bring me back in cuffs. ‘I seen your ol’ man slit a guerilla’s throat with a shaving razor,’ one of ’em says, talking about how they got orders to throw me in the brig. Pretty rich, coming from a philanderer and a deadbeat, right? But Pops is a decorated guy. He don’t give a shit. Anyways, first time in a dozen years I seen him, not since I was pulling on his pants leg to stand. I’d hated him, letting me live like a wharf rat. But I bust out in tears—it’s the Ebro River, times two! I says, ‘Take me away! Lock me up for what I done. But before I go, give me just one thing. Let me touch my papa, who survived the war. Because there was a time when I thought he’s dead as a Danish king, and I had nobody to look after me but the street.’ The officers who got me by the arms, they was even bawling.”

  The story touches Pablo, who can’t help thinking of Don José. “Did your father understand what you felt, everything all pent-up?”

  “The general went to waterworks, too—tells ’em, ‘Release the captive, my son.’” Manolo rubs away the droplet that’s gathered at the corner of his eye again. “It broke me to pieces. Next thing, we both take two steps in and wrap our arms around one another like a pair of wet seals.”

  “Can you even imagine what’s it to become someone’s father?” Pablo asks Manolo, thinking of Germaine, wondering again what he has been wondering since he found her in the doorway. “Fine, if things work out and life is going in the direction it’s supposed to. But if not?” Then
Pablo just doesn’t know. “So many years, I felt the same way—despised my own papa. But what sort, I ask myself, could I be? What would I teach anyone? What do I know?”

  “You knocked somebody up, didn’t you? One of them models?”

  Again, the words from Manolo are quick, like he saw Pablo’s response coming. Pablo hears them, but his thoughts have drifted back to La Coruña and the sting of Don José’s hand as it crashed into his cheekbone that awful night after painting the pigeon’s claw, how his father had foretold suffering for everyone he would encounter.

  “I’ll bet it’s Germaine, eh?” Manolo wagers.

  Pablo doesn’t respond, instead turning to look down at the mayonnaise on his plate, now littered with yellow crumbles of egg yolk. He recalls how Carles hated the stuff.

  Manolo yanks the waiter by the shirtsleeve when he passes and orders more Champagne and a chocolate soufflé with crème anglaise, which vexes the sturdy man in a bow tie and too-tight waistcoat. Diners should order this at the meal’s start, the waiter fumes. It would be at least another quarter hour before dessert will come now.

  “Take your time,” Manolo says magnanimously. “Relax.”

  The waiter disappears, and Pablo asks Manolo if after he and his father embraced, things finally got better.

  “Sure, I ran like the lil’ bastard I am.”

  Pablo squints. “Why?”

  “’Cause I stole his watch—solid gold, crusted with gems, all types! Rubies, diamonds—every broad at the bordello got something that sparkles that night, and I ain’t just talking about my pearls. I had more farranaco than I could hold with three arms!”

  Having been chiseled into spilling his deepest anxieties, Pablo feels like one of Manolo’s unlucky lottery customers. “And just one little prick, right?” he bleats.

  “Hey, that’s me,” Manolo beams, tilting his head as he excuses himself to take a leak.

  “You’re something else, Manolo,” Pablo says bitterly. “Tell you what, by the time you get back, I bet I steal the air right out of your soufflé. Happy?”