Girl in the Afternoon (5 page)

She became obsessed with drawing hands. Touch, she decided, was what made a person real. At night she'd lie in bed and stroke her fingers up her thighs, imagining the hands of whatever model she'd painted that day pressed against the walls of her skin, trying to feel herself into her own life.

After a while, hands did not satisfy her. Nudes were what she wanted. Ripe nipples, plump breasts, muscular thighs, taut arms, and full, rippled stomachs.

She enrolled at the Académie Julian. It was crowded and loud and horribly competitive, but it was the only school open to women, and the only place where she could paint her nudes, turn the bristles of her brush into hundreds of tiny fingers brushing the models to life.

The noise was frightening—all that snickering, coughing, shuffling, sighing, and general chaotic din that comes with a roomful of people. But Aimée had never liked painting alone in the three years since Henri had left. At least at the académie she was surrounded by real artists all struggling for the same end. Which, of course, was to get into the Salon de Paris, the official art exhibit of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Aimée's instructor, Rodolphe Julian, told her there was no hope. Her work was too bright. She used far too much blue.
Tone it down,
he would say. But he didn't have the faintest notion of values, so his criticism did not deter her. Aimée spent fourteen hours at a stretch at her canvas, took lessons in anatomy, endured hours of life classes. She started keeping real vertebrae in her bureau drawer next to her perfumed paper and visiting cards, which she'd study in the late hours of the night.

The mistake she made was in thinking that this would be enough, filling her canvases, filling her mind, filling up time. It wasn't. A part of her was restless and unsettled, expectant. Waiting, always, for something to happen.

And then it did. At first, the moment appeared insignificant, a passing encounter, hardly enough to change the course of everything.

It was a mild evening in late November, nothing too cold. The sky was clear with bright flecks of stars and the cool light of a half moon. Already the snow lay thick on the roofs, and the sparrows alighted on the eaves, balancing on twiggy legs.

Colette Savaray was throwing one of her soirées, and everyone appeared in high spirits as they shed their coats and hats, smiling at Colette and Auguste, who stood side by side, opulent as ever.

Aimée hovered behind her maman, self-conscious in her green shot silk dress with its low, round neck. Colette had picked out the fabric, much darker than her own pink and white stripes, but a color that suited Aimée.

A tall man walked through the door, and Colette lowered her chin, keeping her eyes on the man as she whispered to Aimée, “Arnaud Gaudet,” whom they all knew as the wealthy owner of a porcelain factory.

Aimée watched the man draw his greatcoat from his shoulders, swing it around, and hand it to the housekeeper with an efficient nod. The man's neck was far too long for his small head. Under all his fine fabric he was certain to have hideous, knobby knees and elbows.

Avoiding an introduction, Aimée hurried over to her cousin Julia, who had come in behind Monsieur Gaudet. They latched hands and kissed. Aimée glanced over her cousin's shoulder, thinking how strange it still felt to see Julia without her brothers, those rowdy boys who had pulled the ribbons from Aimée's hair so long ago. All three of them had been killed in the war.

Everyone, in some way, had been affected by the war and the revolution, topics that wove their way into conversation at the dinner table, opinions flying over gleaming baroque silver, crystal glasses, truffle salad, and lobster, shelled and drenched in brown butter and vinegar.

France had lost the war, full surrender. They spoke of Napoleon III's deposition and the National Assembly that was formed, a monarchist majority that agreed to all of Prussia's peace terms. And in low, fervent voices, they whispered of the bloody revolution, the massacre, that took place just months after the war ended, when spring was forgotten under a smoldering red cloud of smoke and the streets of Paris filled again with gunfire and lifeless bodies.

Aimée ate silently, listening as everyone blamed the commune—the Parisian workers, the unemployed, men who had fought diligently in the National Guard—for rising up and making demands the government wasn't prepared to meet. Aimée imagined there was only so much a person could take, and she pictured the soldier she'd seen from her bedroom window, his boots dragging behind him, his blood smeared against a palette of snow. For one fleeting moment she thought of Henri, but pushed him from her mind. She couldn't stand to think of him as that soldier, or one of the Communards who had been imprisoned by government troops—forty thousand, Aimée had heard, men and women, wealthy and poor, bound together by their wrists and marched through the streets in a sheet of rain.

It seemed strange that she was sitting here, and others, like her cousins, were simply dead.

She looked at her maman, radiant and lively, her cheeks flushed from wine, her lips parted as she listened to the man on her left. Aimée's papa sat at the opposite end of the table shooting his hand in the air and making declarative statements in support of the new republic with its monarchist leanings.

A memory came back to Aimée, an isolated, childhood memory. She was descending the stairs with her thumb in her mouth, her rag doll—with all its yarn hair pulled out—thumping behind her. Her papa was coming up the stairs, and he halted when he saw her. Because of their positions on the steps, Aimée could see his face clearly.
Papa,
she had asked.
Are you sad?

It was his unhesitating
yes
that stood vividly in Aimée's mind. She wondered if it was because she had been young and insignificant that he felt he could tell her the truth. He'd never say anything like that to her now. As she listened to him, she wondered if he believed all the things he said, or if he just said them to be liked.

Last week he had ranted about Édouard Manet helping draft a charter for a new society of plein air artists. After being rejected from the Salon de Paris, these radicals had decided to form their own association, with elected members, shares, and partnership. Claiming the Académie des Beaux-Arts refused to recognize progress, they had decided to exhibit independently, doing away with judges, juries, and rewards.
Ridiculous lot of fools,
her papa had called them, outraged at their deliberate attempt to insult the new republic, whose president happened to be the director of fine arts at the académie. And yet, here Édouard was sitting next to his fat wife, Suzanne.

Aimée knew all about the independent exhibition of these plein air artists, but she had said nothing to her papa. Her papa always said that a difference of opinion, especially when it came to politics or art, made for a boisterous evening. It was dull to dine with people of like mind. And yet, Aimée knew this referred to important men, such as Édouard, and not herself.

Three chairs down from Aimée sat Madame Savaray, who hadn't eaten a thing and sat rigid listening to a woman discuss the deportations to New Caledonia in an unreasonably loud voice.

“I'd rather be shot to death than deported,” a bold young man declared. Madame Savaray gave him a withering look, thinking him ridiculous. At any other time she would have said so out loud, but the nation's troubles, for now, weren't nearly as concerning as hers.

Two weeks ago, Madame Savaray had been out walking, under a bleak winter sky, when the truth of Henri's leaving hit her, and with such clarity that she stopped right in the middle of the sidewalk. People steered around her, a few knocked into her, but she couldn't move for some time, and when she did it felt as if a boulder had risen in front of her and somehow, dress, shoes, bad knees and all, she had to find a way to climb over it. If she'd been a younger woman, if she hadn't come to understand what people were capable of over the years, it would never have occurred to her. It was unthinkable. It's what desperation looked like. One could argue a war had been going on and they were all desperate. But this went back long before the war to a time when she knew, in her mother's heart, just how dark her son's marriage would turn out to be.

As she sat listening to these people all claiming to know the truth about one thing or another, she felt tremendously lonely holding this secret. When dessert arrived, she excused herself to her room. There was a slight throb in her knee, but she found the pain oddly comforting, familiar and reassuring, a pain she knew how to tolerate and endure.

*   *   *

After
dessert, the guests moved into the parlor. Colette circled the room making sure glasses were full, cigars lit, and conversation steered clear of politics for a while.

Aimée stood listening to her cousin's frivolous account of avoiding being kissed by a man with terrible breath.

“Like rotten eggs.” Julia laughed. “And his hair”—she patted the top of her chignon—“shiny as a wax doll's with all that pomade.” She leaned in to whisper something more, then snapped her mouth shut, indicating with a tilt of her head that someone was standing behind Aimée.

Turning, Aimée's bare shoulder brushed against the soft velvet of Édouard Manet's frock coat.

“Good evening, Monsieur Manet,” Julia said, lowering her chin. “If you'd be so good as to excuse me. I do believe Mademoiselle Beaux is beckoning me.” She smiled and skirted away with a pinch to Aimée's arm.

Édouard held the lapels of his frock coat and rocked on his heels, not offering any conversation, and Aimée wasn't sure if she should feel slighted or complimented. It seemed silly to stand beside her if he didn't wish to speak to her.

“Will you be going to the regattas this summer at Argenteuil?” she asked.

“I will, yes.” He shifted his arm and the sleeve of his coat slipped away from Aimée's shoulder.

“It's a shame about l'Opéra Le Peletier.” Her voice rose with the effort of making conversation. “Burning to the ground, all those costumes and musical scores gone forever. Is it true you were painting it?”

“I was,” he said. “The shame is that I wasn't finished.”

He made no further attempt to engage her, but he kept his small, dark eyes on her, and Aimée felt the tips of her ears grow hot. With a tight smile, she said, “It was lovely to see you,” and walked away, heat crawling into her cheeks.

It was when she reached the other side of the room that he announced, loudly, as if it had been his intention all along that everyone should hear, “You would be doing me a great service, Mademoiselle Savaray, if you would let me paint your portrait.”

The room went silent, and everyone stared at Aimée.

If Édouard had intended to flatter her, it did not work. She felt ashamed, as if suddenly there was something unique about her simply because Édouard Manet declared it so.

Her papa rose from the sofa, and his look of astonishment sent a cool resentment coursing through Aimée. He walked over to Édouard, a feather of smoke spiraling from the end of his cigar.

“It would be an honor, Monsieur Manet, to have you paint my daughter,” he said with pride, as if, just now, she had become worth something.

Colette emerged from a group of whispering ladies, their gloved hands held over their lips. “Yes,” she said, as if it were entirely their decision. “We would be utterly flattered.” But Aimée saw her maman's mouth twitch ever so slightly.

Aimée almost said no
.
She would have liked to defy her parents. But then she thought of Édouard's painting,
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
. It depicted a naked woman staring out, audacious and daring, with the men around her fully dressed, casually enjoying their afternoon in the vast forest of the Fontainebleau.

She was eleven when the painting showed at the Salon des Refusés, having been rejected by the Salon de Paris
,
and she remembered the gasps, the whispers of obscenity, the scandal the painting brought, disgusting in its ordinariness. Aimée had stared at it, awed, a tingling sensation between her legs, and her maman had clapped a hand over her eyes and turned her away.

Aimée looked from her parents to Édouard, and he looked back at her with amusement and intrigue, as if the suspense of her indecision was even more fun than the asking.

Édouard Manet had broken the rules, endured the assault of ridicule, and he now stood proud and famous, confident in his abilities to do as he pleased.

Aimée gave him a smile and a single nod. She would go, but not because of her parents, or because Édouard found something interesting about her. She would go because of that painting, and the thread of desire it had tugged loose inside her.

 

Chapter 5

Édouard's studio on the rue de Saint-Pétersbourg was magnificent, vast, and airy. Four enormous windows took in the rue Mosnier on the west side, and the Place de l'Europe on the south. Aimée had walked through the busy plaza to get there, the black trusses of the bridge still covered in a sheen of morning frost, her breath a puff of smoke through her veil.

The concierge, an ugly, long-faced woman, showed Aimée into the studio where Édouard leaned over the divan arranging colorful pillows. “I thought you might change your mind,” he said.

“And disappoint my parents?” Aimée stepped into the cool light that poured through the balcony windows.

Édouard lifted a lavender evening gown from the back of the divan and turned to her. “Wouldn't dare disappoint those two,'' he said, holding out the dress.

Of all colors, lavender was the least flattering against Aimée's skin, but she didn't say a word as she gathered the heavy silk in her arms and walked toward the screen at the far end of the room.

When she stepped out, Édouard was setting pots of paint on the table. He glanced at her and gestured to the divan where he had arranged the pillows.