The Blue Period

by Luke Jerod Kummer

  In the night, every night, Pablo painted, completing and refining pictures from the past. He also took up etching, his first big work a zinc plate of a spartan table setting shared between a gaunt man and his wife, their arms wrapped around one another tenderly. Everyone on the butte knew him as the talented little Spaniard with big handsome eyes that were filled with something heavy and captivating, the one who dressed like a mechanic and painted in only blue. Pablo, however, felt himself looking for new subjects now, another mood.

  For money, Pablo had discovered a gallery on Rue Laffitte that he’d somehow never noticed before. It was little more than a bric-a-brac shop, run by a retired professional clown named Clovis who was keen to amass the works of undiscovered artists. Pablo managed to sweet-talk him into agreeing to hand over ten francs per painting—and then regularly appeared with almost more than Clovis could keep up with. Even Manolo gave Pablo kudos for this. It wasn’t a lot of money, but Pablo’s studio only cost fifteen francs per month. The arrangement allowed Pablo to avoid the hardships of his last trip to Paris, to maintain a virtuous cycle—make painting, sell painting, buy more paint—and to have a modestly gay time.

  There was a farmhouse tavern that Pablo frequented called Le Lapin Agile. The owner, a bearded man named Frédé, strummed old, oddly stringed instruments that looked to be of his own invention and sang folk songs. During the day, he led around a donkey cart selling fish. At night, he was musician, barman, troubadour, and cook. Frédé kept a pet raven, and after Pablo saw the man’s daughter press her lips against its dark crown one day, he asked to paint her with the bird. He started by adding a flat background of ultramarine, but for the first time in ages, Pablo splashed onto the canvas bright, madder orange for her sleeve and dilutions of the color for her hand and the waves of her trussed hair.

  Across the street from Frédé’s place was the pink house where Germaine lived with the artist Pichot. Now and then, Pablo would run into her at the tavern and admire whatever new outfit she was wearing. He’d once found her there in a red walking dress with sleeves that extended to buttoned gloves of black suede. She was busy adjusting her ostrich-feathered coiffure when Pablo couldn’t help telling her how fetching she looked.

  “You should see Odette,” Germaine replied, adding that their old friend had practically become nightlife royalty in Brussels, livening top cabaret stages and packing in whistling crowds. “They’ve got posters of her all over.”

  Pablo was pleased to hear this—and to spend a little time with Germaine, even if everything was different now. He did feel a twinge of jealousy when he saw her with Pichot, but he was amazed the man could keep from going crazy as Carles had, for after Germaine took up with him, she still wandered wildly, foraging for experiences, new adventure. Pablo guessed that Pichot loved Germaine in the only way one might endure—freely and without pretense of containing her. It would have been foolish to try otherwise. In return, her affection for him never wavered, and she didn’t let his presence get in the way.

  Together, Germaine and Pichot were remaking their Maison Rose into a boisterous inn and sanctuary for free spirits. They seemed content.

  While strolling one afternoon by the Place des Invalides, near where the World’s Fair had stood, Pablo heard a great clattering of footsteps and the blaring of a trumpet. Appearing from nowhere—tumbling, flipping, and hurtling like dancing meteoroids—was a troupe of circus acrobats.

  It struck Pablo right then how every waking hour these performers were making something with their very limbs, never ceasing—just like Germaine, always up in the air, living in between trapezes.

  Finally Pablo knew how it was that she’d not only mastered her body but made her very life into art. With all she did—each night out, every pose struck, one spectacular high-flying love affair after another—she wasn’t pretending but creating. He had no doubt afterward that along with the ancients it was she who’d led him to understand that constant creation is the only way to keep cataclysm at bay. Forever, he would be obliged to her.

  Pablo started rendering lovers again. A surfeit of models passed in and out of his building, and he befriended and became intimate with some of them. In his paintings, Pablo made these new subjects into flyaway angels come down to his quiet blue realm to reflect.

  There was another woman, too, who sat on the bench by the fountain in the plaza, reading in the shade of the only pear tree. She was full-figured and had the most enchanting, almond-shaped emerald eyes he’d ever seen. She wore violets in her deep-amber hair and read books till dusk. He thought he caught her glancing over the pages at him sometimes, and he couldn’t help but stare at her while bantering with the Catalans on a stoop nearby.

  She was a model, Pablo heard, but she seemed different than the others, refined. He studied her as she came and went, tried to catch her replenishing her water cask, make conversation. But she always had a way of eluding him.

  II

  Open up! I haven’t any pants!”

  Pablo recognized Max’s voice through the studio door and groaned. “What time is it?” he called out, hoping he might be able to roll back over, cover his ears, and wait for the disturbance to go away.

  “C’mon! I know you’re in there now!” Max pleaded with Pablo. He was in dire straits, he said, having dashed outside in only his knickers, possibly arousing the suspicions of the police. He might even be arrested for some dubious crime passionnel. “I can see the papers now: ‘The perpetrator fled the scene in his checkered shorts.’ I’ll be referred to in the press as the Knock-Kneed Massacrer.”

  “You’ll be famous. Please let me sleep.”

  “Wake up! Pablo!” Max screamed.

  Then Pablo heard Paco’s voice outside his door, announcing he carried with him a life-sized ceramic head he’d sculpted and was eager to show off. He must have noticed that Max was in the hallway with only the top two-thirds of a three-piece suit because he asked, “Is there a theme party tonight?”

  Max explained he’d woken this morning and discovered someone had purloined all his trousers. “To think, my family in Brittany blames me for not holding a steady job. Montmartre, it’s a madhouse!”

  Paco said it was probably that no-count Manolo. He’d let him stay in his studio a couple days, and he came home to find his Gauguins were gone. Paco had to enter every gallery on Rue Laffitte to see if the thief had already fenced them. “There they were, hanging at Vollard’s.”

  “Did you get them back?”

  “That old buzzard said he’d bought the half dozen for one hundred francs from some scrawny Catalan, figuring he’d got the deal of a lifetime,” Paco explained, adding that he confronted Manolo afterward, asking him if he’d stolen the paintings. “He looks at me, taken aback, and tells me he was practically starving, hadn’t eaten anything but wine and chocolate pastries for days. Says, ‘It was your Gauguins or my life.’”

  “That little rat! I’ll murder him!”

  Seeing no chance of falling back to sleep, Pablo finally got up and opened the door. It was hot and stuffy in the studio, so they migrated outside to their earmarked spots on the stoop, to be joined by Fabián’s guitar. Everyone ended up removing shirts and pants—those who had them, anyway—and tanned on their stomachs in the midday sun.

  Summer had become sweltering, the air thick and tropical as a palmetto grove. There was a green zing in the way everything smelled. The sky above was dense with touches of yellow around the edges of bloated clouds, the sun every once in a while shining through and projecting warmth like an opened oven. Pablo had worked all last night without dinner and grew hungry quickly. He pulled up and noticed how the sandstone had made an impression on his skin, making it look like iguana hide, then bid goodbye to his friends.

  Pablo felt the hotness gather on the back of his neck as he walked to a pleasant café with a generous owner who was happy enough to give credit to artists for a simple meal or even trade pastis for a handmade sketch. Pablo rested on a stool at a little table near the open win
dow, dunking the corner of a croissant into coffee, craning his face to catch the breeze. A wren flew onto the ledge and beat its beak up and down, staring at Pablo while singing a rush-and-jumble melody that echoed in the air. Pablo sat, watching with his elbows on the linoleum, tearing off croissant flakes and flinging them to the bird.

  Behind him, the bell dangling from a string above the door rang as someone entered. The intoxicating fragrance of lily of the Nile filled the room and mixed with burnt coffee and warm butter. He didn’t turn right away, just inhaled and licked crumbs from his fingers, trying to conjure in his mind a face to match such a scent.

  “Noisette,” a lovely soprano whispered before asking for a scoop of ice cream on the side. The origin of the flowery aroma deposited herself at a table directly behind Pablo. A few moments later, the café owner returned with the espresso and a dish on a salver.

  When the woman carefully sipped the froth from the hot liquid, the sound went straight to Pablo’s ear. He was sure he could hear even the steam rise as she poured the coffee over the cold ice cream.

  How perfect on this August afternoon, Pablo thought, leaning back on the stool.

  Metal clinked against the dish. Pablo pictured the spoon in a delicate hand pushing deeper into the frozen mound, like a tiny plow. He heard a little smack of the lips, and a shiver ran down his spine, as if he, too, felt a cold thrill.

  No longer could he resist. Pablo swiveled his neck to discover whose sounds and smell he’d been studying.

  It was her. That fair artist’s model whom Pablo had seen so often perched on a bench, rapt in her novel, the light filtering through the pear tree bending around her as those almond eyes peeked above the dust jacket. She was so ripe with nectar, it was almost bursting through her skin. Already, the woman’s features were like an entrancing picture—the painters hardly had to work.

  She acted as though she didn’t notice him and carried on her way, leaving behind the ice cream dish, sugary brown and vanilla-white marbling the bottom of the glossy porcelain.

  The temperature only climbed as the day moved. Heat seemed to descend from above and rise from the pavement below, compressing and cooking Montmartre’s inhabitants in between. Pablo worried about his animals. His cat had given birth to a litter of calico kittens a few weeks ago. He braved the weather and walked home to make sure she had water in her bowl. Back in his studio, he found three tiny felines nursing as their mother slept, the other gamboling in the corner of the Bordeaux crate where they were born.

  Pablo cupped the squeaking loner in his hands and observed the way it pawed the air. He picked up the bowl and carried them both outside to the fountain. As he leaned down to scoop up the water, there was a deafening crack that frightened the creature before the sky opened to a torrent.

  Leaning forward, Pablo hugged the kitten close to his chest and ran for cover. He stood in the doorway of the stucco building and reached his arm out so the bowl filled with the water gushing from the roof. He set it down by his feet to watch the glittering streams falling from the sky. Pablo stroked the kitten, teaching him to not be afraid of a storm.

  Racing footsteps clattered against the paving stones. Pablo looked up, and there was the woman from the café, her soaking wet shirtsleeve held pointlessly above her head.

  She stopped in front of where Pablo was standing, her mouth gaping and her eyes batting away the drops. She laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, of being so impossibly wet.

  Pablo smiled and extended his hands, opening them just enough so the woman could see the kitten playing inside.

  “Where’s the little darling’s mother?” she asked, ducking under the narrow entrance and nudging up to watch.

  “Napping,” Pablo said.

  “That’s exactly what I should have done, isn’t it? Instead, I’ve been all over Paris. First in the unbearable heat, now this mind-boggling rain. It’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Like from a book.”

  “You read a lot.”

  “When I’m not modeling for twelve hours straight, you mean?”

  “It’s hard work,” Pablo said. “The body gets tired, I know.”

  She told him it was nice to escape to a sunset and a novel, then apologized for not introducing herself earlier. Her name was Fernande. “And you, you’re that painter everyone talks about.”

  “What do they say?”

  “You’re something of a mystery. Sleeps all day, paints like the possessed at night. But people tell me it’s good, your painting—is it? Maybe I shouldn’t ask. They say we’re our own worst critics.”

  “Critics are the worst critics,” Pablo said.

  Fernande laughed again, and Pablo’s heart fluttered like a turtledove does when a new hand reaches into its cote.

  “Can I—”

  “See the paintings?”

  She said she’d love to, of course. “But do you have a towel?”

  Pablo said he was silly, he should have offered.

  “You don’t seem to mind practically swimming in wet clothes,” she said. “Perhaps it’s nothing to you.”

  “I actually hate when it’s chilly and damp,” he said.

  “I’m the same way,” Fernande said.

  Inside the studio, there was clutter everywhere. They had to step over spent tubes of paint and abandoned brushes, and Pablo blushed. From a whitewood table he plucked a towel and wiped away the water from her forehead before laying the cloth in her palm.

  “Your hands,” he said, his eyes studying them, their slenderness, the way her fingers bent far back as she received the towel, as if they were double-jointed.

  “Oh, don’t look,” she said. “They’re so hard to hide when I’m modeling. I can’t bear it.”

  “Why?”

  “My aunt says these long fingers make my hands look like spiders. Just like she says my eyes are too small.”

  “Is she an artist?”

  “No.”

  “Take it from one—your hands, your eyes, they’re a painter’s dream.”

  Pablo was still holding one end of the towel. He tugged on it gently, bringing the two of them closer.

  Fernande felt the touch of his wrist on her cheek, then met his lips with her own. But she paused unexpectedly, breaking away just an inch to peer around the room, noticing that it was filled with stacks of canvases in the same cold hues.

  “Why,” she asked, “do you paint in blue?”

  “I was sad,” Pablo said.

  She gave another little laugh. “Not anymore?”

  “What for?”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This piece of historical fiction relates familiar and lesser-known details of Picasso’s life. I drew on the labor of scholars, journalists, and scientists for source material. But what I’ve written over the previous pages shouldn’t be jumbled with the fine works from these other disciplines. This novel was carefully researched but also just as meticulously imagined.

  With that said, the following is an abridged rundown of the very many sources that I am abundantly grateful for.

  In addition to Picasso’s thousands of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, I repeatedly turned to the books of John Richardson, who has released three excellent volumes on Picasso and has a fourth in the works.

  Others biographies, such as Picasso: Creator and Destroyer by Arianna Huffington; Picasso: A Biography by Patrick O’Brian; Picasso: The Early Years, 1881–1907 by Josep Palau i Fabre; and Picasso: His Life and Work by Roland Penrose, were exceptional resources that aided me broadly and in constructing specific scenes.

  Picasso: An Intimate Portrait, written by the artist’s friend and long-suffering secretary, Jaime Sabartés, gave helpful anecdotes from Picasso’s childhood and wonderful memories of old Barcelona and Paris.

  The image of Catalunya that I share, however, wouldn’t have been possible without Barcelona by Robert Hughes. In particular, I want to recognize him for adding the context around how the era’s viewers would have interpreted Ramon Casas’s painting
Corpus. Sortida de la processó de l’església de Santa Maria.

  Likewise, I relied heavily on Red City, Blue Period by Temma Kaplan for my depictions of Barcelona’s social strife and the 1902 general strike.

  The description of palm-reading that I recount is derived from a real-life exchange between Picasso and Max Jacob. The resulting sketch and notes can be viewed in the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. I also am thankful for that institute’s curation and display of art and artifacts from the painter’s life and for producing such works as Picasso and Els 4 Gats: The Early Years in Turn-of-the-Century Barcelona, a series of monographs penned by various authors under the direction of María Teresa Ocaña.

  The poem partially reprinted in this book’s epigraph was composed by Carles Casagemas and is titled “Amor Gris.” It originally appeared in L’Eco de Sitges and was unearthed by the art historian Eduard Vallès. I incorporated it into the thought and speech of my character Carles. Elsewhere, The Blue Period borrows from correspondences that Casagemas or Picasso wrote or received (many of which are also housed in the Museu Picasso).

  Descriptions of the Bateau-Lavoir and the woman Pablo meets at the novel’s end are shaped largely by Fernande Olivier’s memoir, Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier, and from Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. So, too, the dialogue here is inspired by these works.

  The vision of Montmartre that I fashioned was born after reading three compelling books: In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and the Birth of Modernist Art by Sue Roe; Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends Through the Great War by Mary McAuliffe; and Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art by Dan Franck.