Luncheon of the Boating Party (48 page)

Everyone, including the two Alphonses, filed through the outdoor tables filled with customers, hurried up to the terrace, and crowded around one table, leaning in. Paul’s nose wasn’t straddled by his spectacles.

•
328
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

“You tell them, Raoul,” Pierre said.

“No,” Raoul said. “Paul should. It was his affair.”

“For the love of God, somebody tell!” Auguste said.

“I was in a duel.”

“Merde alors!”
Angèle said.

Antonio’s arm went around her shoulder.

Ellen and Aline gasped. Alphonsine’s face lost its color. Gustave looked about to faint.

“That’s what I dreaded,” Auguste said.

“Not by choice,” Paul said.

Fournaise poured all three men an
eau-de-vie.
Paul’s hand was steady as he took it. Pierre’s trembled.

“That fellow at the cabaret?” Auguste asked.

“Yes, the idiot and his plague of a woman. Curses on both of them.”

“Why did you come tearing in here earlier?” Alphonse asked

Pierre.

“To get a godfather,” Pierre said. “To negotiate Paul’s way out of pistols with only one of them loaded. To get Raoul’s swords.”

“I have a pair of light rapiers from my cavalry days with a lively whip to them.” He patted Paul on the back. “Just a few words of advice, a reminder of some moves, and he took the fi eld.”

“Was it a long engagement?” Antonio asked.

“Yes,” Paul said.

“Describe,” Antonio said.

“You tell it, Raoul. It’s a blur to me.”

“An inauspicious opening when his opponent, Douvaz, beat Paul’s blade aside and attacked,” Raoul said.

“Paul parried?” Antonio asked.

“And riposted with an ill-aimed thrust. Douvaz countered, but Paul changed the rhythm so that a
coup passé
by Douvaz threw him forward.”

“The result?” Antonio asked.

“It unsettled him enough that it put Paul in the aggressor’s position for a series. He did a fine feint that slid along Douvaz’s blade nearly to the hilt, but Douvaz dodged and countered with a Russian lunge. His

•
329
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

thrust missed but showed he meant no game. Paul tired him until Douvaz slowed enough for Paul to execute a
coup extraordinaire,
a deception that passed so quickly around Douvaz’s tip that he couldn’t follow and Paul thrust home. He performed admirably.”

“And Douvaz?” Auguste asked.

“He won’t be a problem again,” Raoul said. “A deep wound just

above the hip. His surgeon was on the field in a flash. He’s in the hospital by now.”

“Wishing he’d kept his foul trap shut,” Angèle said.

“No. Unconscious, I would guess. It’s not likely that he’ll be promenading for a while.”

Silence spread over the group as the seriousness set in. No one moved.

“Where are your spectacles?” Auguste asked.

Paul’s hands went up to his eyes. “They flew off, I guess.”

“
Mon Dieu,
you must be dazed not to notice,” Auguste said.

“I hope you don’t want to go back and get them,” Pierre said.

“Are you crazy? I never want to go near that bloody place.”

Fournaise refilled his glass. Pierre shoved his forward too.

“It’s a deadly relic of Romanticism,” Jules said. “A . . . a pernicious vice that makes for . . . a horrible frolicking. It’s . . . it’s downright Greek.”

There were a few feeble chuckles at the poet struggling for words.

“Italian,” Antonio corrected.

“It’s wrong that people think manhood requires such irrational displays,” Gustave said.

“Was he dark, hairy, hot, impetuous?” Jules asked. “Did he have a deep voice, a ruddy complexion above a healthy beard? Those are the clichéd expectations of the bourgeois taking on the comportment of the aristocracy of former times. Or was he attempting to compensate for their lack? Was he puny?”

Pierre snorted. “Not puny at all.”

“As big as Alphonse,” Auguste said.

Père Fournaise stood up and laid his hands on Paul’s shoulders. Al -

•
330
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

phonse leaned across the table and grasped Paul’s forearm in his big hand. Aline held her dog to her chest and stared at Paul.

After a while of just sitting, Alphonsine said quietly, “We’re going to pose for the last time Saturday morning if you can come.”

Paul raised both arms above his head. “I’ll be here!”

•
331
•

C h a p t e r T h i r t y - t w o

The Deal

Gustave rearranged the apples and peaches in his large, stemmed compote. He could build a revealing still life with them. His

brother’s compote sat far away on the vast ebony dining table. A quirk of Martial’s, to keep their fruit separate. Martial had been gone for nearly a week. Gustave didn’t know where, or when he’d be back. Typical of their bizarre brotherhood, each of them rowing his own boat, neither one exchanging thoughts about painting or music, yet living in harmony next to each other. Vacancy hung in the air.

He filled two faceted crystal carafes with water and set them diagonally. They reflected brilliantly on the polished wood. He set down two bottles of wine, wine glasses, and water glasses, asymmetrically, as far apart as the table would allow. They had touched them, his other brother, René, and his mother, with their hands and with their lips. He set out no plates or silverware to suggest a meal to come.

He had painted a similar arrangement a few years earlier with René and his mother absorbed in their food. Something about the silent apartment urged him to revisit the theme. This would be his own luncheon painting, different than his first, different than Auguste’s. Their places would be empty. Only their glasses existed now. Gone. René at a young age, a premonition of his own future. He bent down to pet Inès, and set up his easel.

His mood paralyzed him. He often suffered in composing until the painting was under way, but this time was worse. He couldn’t paint this

•
332
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

today. He went into his bedroom to change clothes and gazed at his
Floor Scrapers,
indulging himself. Such fineness in other male bodies.

He lusted to have that kind of beauty himself. He put on a cravat and a cream-colored summer jacket to try to feel jaunty, fed Inès and Mame, his cat and dog siblings, and left for Gare Saint-Lazare to take the train to Chatou.

He found Auguste on the terrace painting the railroad bridge in the rear of the boating party. He had adjusted the angle of the opposite bank to get in a couple of inns with red-tiled roofs.

“All it needs is the
Inès
heeling to starboard,” Gustave said. “When Paul Durand-Ruel sees this he’s going to hock his furniture in order to snatch it up.”

“My, my, look at you all decked out. Going to a garden party?”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? You act like I hadn’t told you anything yesterday.

The group. I’m so heartsick I can’t even paint.”

“Then row, or sail, or keep me company while I paint.”

Gustave slumped in a chair. That was one thing about Auguste. No matter what was happening, he worked. As for himself, he allowed for distractions of sailing, boat design, stamp collecting, long dinners out.

“I wouldn’t say this to anybody,” Auguste said, “but I think someday I will have wrung Impressionism dry. I’m beginning to see that if a painter works only in these wispy strokes, eventually he’d have nothing more than momentary effects, and would lose the ability to convey subject matter.”

“You’re talking like Zola.”

“You won’t run that risk of losing definition, but I might.”

“So might Claude.” Gustave lit a cigarette. “I don’t know if I can organize another show next spring.” He tried to say it casually, but it came out pinched.

“Do you have to know now, on a day as beautiful as this? Autumn is almost here. You ought not to waste a day.”

•
333
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

“I’m not. I’m going to see Durand-Ruel.”

Auguste chortled. “You must be misinformed. His gallery’s only fi ve blocks from your house. What are you doing here?”

“I want you to go with me.”

“Why?”

“To see if he has any interest in putting together the next group show. To feel him out about Degas’ cronies.”

“Why do I need to go with you if I’m not going to exhibit in it?”

“Because he’s the most important dealer in Paris. It’s time he knew about your painting. And because you understand the problem and can express it in a logical way. You’re smart, if you haven’t noticed.”

“You’re joking. I need a Larousse encyclopedia on my lap in order to keep up with you when you’re expounding,” Auguste said. “But I’m not a fi ghter.”

“That’s just it. You’re not as likely to get emotional as I am. You’re unflappable and I’m irascible.”

“Well, that last is true.”

Auguste used up the paint on his brush and began cleaning it.

He felt better just being with Auguste. At the station, he pulled out two tickets from his pocket, first class, to keep his jacket clean.

“You were pretty sure of yourself. Two tickets,” Auguste said.

“I was prepared to make an ass of myself pleading until you

agreed.”

On the train, Gustave asked, “Did you have a nice time with Aline in the boat yesterday?”

“Just a little too cozy.”

“You have your hands full with two women all of a sudden.”

“Feast or famine. You wouldn’t consider taking one, would you?”

Gustave chuckled. “You’ve got to handle it on your own, I think.”

“Time will do that for me. In a couple weeks I’ll be back at my studio. Until then, it could get downright complicated.”

Gustave saw nothing new on the walls of Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery.

Delacroix, Daubigny, Corot, Millet, as usual. But the second room sur-

•
334
•

L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y

prised him. “Ho-ho! Look at this. Sisley on all four walls. Good for Alfred!”

As soon as Durand-Ruel saw them, he broke away from a conversa-

tion and held out both arms. “My friends! Welcome.”

To Gustave, Durand-Ruel’s skin looked pink against his stiff white shirt collar and his precisely trimmed mustache. He was shortish, like him, but unlike him, heading toward stout. They shook hands. He smelled of cologne.

“I hear you’re at Chatou painting a gigantic thing,” he said to Auguste.

Auguste snapped his head sideways at him. “Gustave, did you

tell him?”

He held up his palms.

“Charles Ephrussi, I think it was,” said Durand-Ruel.

“How have you been getting along?” Auguste asked.

“To be candid, if I hadn’t grown up in the trade, I wouldn’t have survived the battle against public taste. In some circles, I’m still considered a madman. But the climate is improving. And both of you?”

“The group’s in trouble,” Gustave blurted.

“I’m somewhat aware.” He ushered them into his private offi ce

hung with drawings by Delacroix. Tufted velvet chairs were set in a half circle around a carved easel for private showings.

Durand-Ruel offered them cigarettes from an ornate silver box. He took one, but Auguste said, “Ready-made cigarettes? That’s a little like a kept woman. No, thanks.”

“Then a cognac for both of you?” Durand-Ruel poured from a cut

crystal decanter that reminded Gustave of his abandoned still life.

“Gustave means there is new contention in the group.”

He let Auguste explain the split and the impasse about the next show, but he couldn’t keep silent.

“Degas is the crux of it. He insists on bringing in his gang of camp followers. More than a dozen. He sent me this list.” Gustave handed it to him.

Durand-Ruel looked it over. “Nearly the same as the list he sent me.”

“We’ve actually splintered three ways,” Gustave said. “The original

•
335
•

S u s a n V r e e l a n d

group intent on exhibiting in an Impressionist show, as before— Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Guillaumin, and if you wish, Gauguin. And the originals who have submitted or will submit to the Salon—Auguste, Monet, Sisley, and Cézanne. And now Degas’ string of quasi-Impressionists—

Forain, Raffaëlli, Tillot, Vidal, Zandomeneghi, the Bracquemonds, and Mary Cassatt, together with the rest of his list. If they’re admitted as participants in an Impressionist show, that will outnumber the original group. Raffaëlli flooded our last exhibition with thirty-seven paintings to the ten or fifteen by each of the rest of us. It will only get worse next year.”

“You haven’t placed yourself,” Durand-Ruel said.

“I will when I know how you stand,” Gustave said. “Degas has im-mense talent and I admire his work as much as ever, but I’m less and less able to cooperate with him to keep the group cohesive.”

“There’s been some name-calling,” Auguste explained, his shoulder jerking. “And arguments over whom to admit and what to call themselves now on the posters.”

Hearing it that way, Gustave felt ridiculous.

Durand-Ruel put his elbows on his ostentatious Louis XIV desk.

“Someday, it won’t be important that you get along. You won’t have to organize your own exhibitions. That’s not your job. Your job is to paint.”

“But for now I need to know how to proceed with the next group

show, or whether to proceed at all,” Gustave said, massaging his damp palms against the carved arm of the chair. “How do you stand? Don’t feel pressed to include me. I know I provoked public outrage in the last show.”

Durand-Ruel snorted. “All of you have at one time or another.” He aligned the inkwell, the rolling blotter, the small clock on his desk. “I’ll help Degas with a sixth Impressionist show if he wants my help. My salons are committed, but I can get exhibit space on the boulevard des Capucines.”