Last Lovers

by William Wharton

  I put in a good morning’s work. In some ways, I think the drawing and composition are even better than the one I sold. It’s in the actual painting where I feel Mirabelle most affects the work. In the intensity and sensitivity of her descriptions, she opens up a big part of me to the directness of color and texture which I don’t seem to manage on my own. Up till now, I’ve been letting the drawing, the composition, dominate the paint. Somehow, with her, the paint takes on a life of its own.

  When I hear the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés ringing, I stop. I sit there listening while they trace the sky, then pack up my box. There’s sun now, and shadows of leaves are across the Place. I look and wonder how I can make it appear to be lit like that on my canvas. Sometimes it all seems impossible.

  After another wonderful lunch, Mirabelle folds up her own little chair, I throw it on top of my box and we start off to the Place. I go down the stairs first because they’re too narrow for the two of us together. They’re so narrow, that, if you want, you can bump against the railing, then against the opposite wall as you go down, like a sailor or a drunk. My 25F canvas just clears on the corners. I look back and watch Mirabelle. She has one hand brushing the wall on her left and her right hand on the rail. For her, blind, this is the perfect staircase.

  The sun is still out. She takes my arm and we walk around the church to the Place. We aren’t saying much, just appreciating the warm sun after the long winter, and enjoying being together.

  At the Place, I unfold and set up the two chairs first. Then I open my box, stretch out the legs, put paint on my palette, varnish and turp in my little pots, and look out. The shadows of the opening leaves on the trees have moved and a good part of the Place is in darker shadow. There’s a gentle spring breeze blowing, but in general it’s calm and quiet.

  As I’m beginning the underpainting, Mirabelle starts talking about the Place as she remembers it, telling little anecdotes and giving brief, cogent descriptions. Most of the time she keeps her eyes closed, as if blocking the possible images in front of her from invading her personal vision. Once in a while, she’ll ask about something she remembers, if it’s still there; she wants me to describe how it looks now.

  Normally, this would be an interruption of my painting, but somehow we keep in tune. We talk and the paint flows out of my brush. I find I’m doing a much deeper, darker underpainting, at the same time with higher chroma, than I usually do. I feel as a coach driver must feel when he is driving a pair of horses who are well trained and know where they’re going. Sure, I’m holding the reins, the brush, but the power, the direction are Mirabelle’s. I almost feel hypnotized. I’m so much under her influence, I hate to stop the underpainting and put out the paints for the beginnings of the impasto.

  I’ll be working wet-in-wet, so I’ll start with the sky and the leaves of the tree. I tell Mirabelle what I’m doing.

  ‘How green are the leaves, Jacques?’

  ‘They’re about halfway out, Mirabelle. The leaves are just now getting their strength and are almost more yellow than green where the sun shines through them.’

  ‘Are they the way they used to be, with different colors of blue where the sky is reflected in them on top? Or when they have their real color, dark, thick, green? But best was the color looking up through them, Sparkling bright yellow-green, almost like windows in a church.’

  I look up and it’s as she says. It’s so easy to miss such beauty. I sit there staring up through the leaves. I’m seeing how the sky, too, appears as different colors according to the colors of the leaves surrounding each space. Sometimes it is pale, almost cerulean, other times deep as violet. This can’t be, because it’s the same sky, but that’s the way it seems.

  ‘When I was a little girl, I liked to hold my hand against the stone base for the lamps and run around fast as I could, round and round in circles. Then I would hold tight to that cold stone base and look up through the lights at the trees and sky still spinning above me. It was like being in the center of a carrousel. It was so beautiful.’

  I stop as I’m just starting to put in the first strokes for the sky and look up again. It all seems so still after hearing Mirabelle describe what she did as a girl. Did I ever do anything like that? I can’t remember. I don’t think I did. I put down my brush.

  ‘Mirabelle, you’ve tempted me. I must do what you did all those years ago or I can never paint this Place the way it should be painted.’

  ‘Oh no, Jacques!’

  She laughs, a little-girl laugh but with the soft gasps of an old lady.

  ‘They will arrest you.’

  ‘No, Mirabelle. I must.’

  I walk to the center of the Place, put my left hand against the base, and start going round and round in a counterclockwise direction. It isn’t long before I feel I’m going to fall and I wrap my arms around the base to the lamp tightly. I look up through the spinning lamps into the spinning sky. It’s as she says. I feel as if I’m the center of the universe with the stars spinning around me. The trees and the sky bend and blend. I stay that way until it all stops, then I go back and sit down.

  ‘You really did it, did you not, Jacques? I could hear you running.’

  I’m still dizzy and somewhat out of breath. My hands are shaking.

  ‘It was just as miraculous as you said, Mirabelle. I feel now I can make an even more beautiful painting. You’ve opened my eyes and mind to many things.’

  We stay there, me painting, Mirabelle sometimes talking, sometimes asking questions, as I, almost incredibly, bring us all together into the canvas. It’s a wonderful confluence of the paint itself, as paint, my vision of the Place, the Place itself, and Mirabelle’s magical vision. As the painting appears, I almost feel sometimes as if it’s happening independently of me. I find myself holding my breath, afraid to disturb the vibrations I sense around us.

  It begins to grow dark. It’s Mirabelle who notices first. I’m so lost in the painting I could probably paint until night.

  ‘Jacques, is it not becoming too dark to paint? Are you not afraid the colors are changing too much?’

  I come out of my reverie. I look around me, independently, as just me, American Jack, Mirabelle’s Jacques. It’s dark all right. I must’ve been out of my mind to keep painting with so little light.

  I pack up, feeling so calm inside I could almost fall asleep right there on the Place. Mirabelle takes my arm and we fight our way across the evening traffic on the boulevard Saint-Germain, past Monsieur Diderot, down rue des Ciseaux, up the dark stairs, and into the apartment. I’m still adrift in my mind, in Mirabelle’s, in the Place. I put away my paints behind the curtain covering the door and sit at the table.

  Mirabelle has turned on the lights for me and is bustling about.

  ‘Jacques, you should take a bath, relax, put on your sleeping costume, and then I shall feed you. You must be very tired.’

  I am. I follow her instructions, still in my dream. I’m not like myself at all. I feel very relaxed, tired, but at the same time tuned to everything, all the small things, sounds, shadows, smells. When I go into the bedroom where I sleep, I smell the dust still, the freshness of the clean sheets, the mold of an old house. I undress in slow motion, feeling the air hit my body. I sit on the bed and take off my shoes. I walk into the bathroom, start running water into the tub. I strip down the rest of the way and ease my body into the water as it flows up around me. I have almost no desire to do the practical things one does taking a bath, soaping, scrubbing, rubbing out the paint on my hands. I only want to lie there stretched out, practically floating.

  But I finally do get myself more or less clean, into my clean sweat suit, and go out to the room.

  ‘Now you will be more rested, more refreshed. Come, let us eat. I think you will like my soup, it is pommes de terre et poireaux. It will give you strength.’

  We eat without too much conversation. We communed so deeply there on the Place, ordinary talk seems just that, ordinary. The soup is perfect. I break bread int
o it and eat with the large soup spoon, slowly, almost methodically, for me. Mirabelle has poured us each a glass of wine. It’s a simple table wine and cuts the thickness of the soup perfectly. I sit there starting at my empty bowl.

  ‘Do you want some more, Jacques? There is more soup in the pot.’

  I shake my head, then realize again she can’t see me.

  ‘No, Mirabelle. The soup was very good, but I’ve had enough.’

  I look up at her. She’s concentrating on me, my every move, every sound. I guess it’s the blind person’s equivalent of a concerned stare.

  ‘I’m fine, Mirabelle, just relaxed, as you said I should be. I don’t feel sleepy, only very calm inside.’

  ‘Would you like to hear some music?’

  That sounds about right. Again I nod my head, forgetting.

  ‘Yes, Mirabelle. I’d like that very much.’

  She takes the dishes from the table. I try to help her but it’s difficult not to get in the way of a blind person who knows all the paths. I decide to sit down again and just watch her. I enjoy the efficiency of her every move, the revelations to me of the little techniques she’s worked out to compensate for her blindness. She makes less clatter of dishes when washing them than almost any ‘seeing’ person I know. It’s as if she’s washing dishes while someone else is sleeping.

  ‘Now, Jacques, we shall have music. I want to play for you something I’ve been working on today.’

  I follow her into the music room. I don’t turn the light on. There’s no need. I prefer listening to music with my eyes closed anyway. She opens her instrument and sits quietly at the keyboard, no rustling of music. All the music is in her head. I settle back.

  She plays François Couperin this time, starting with the ‘Tick-tock-choc,’ which has some polyphony in it but is not as difficult as the first suite she played. It’s perfect. I find myself floating with the melody, the tinkling rhythms. And then I must have fallen asleep because Mirabelle is gently shaking me. She’s dressed for bed in a clean, long flannel nightgown with a ruffled collar. I sit up suddenly, not knowing where I am, almost not knowing who she is, feeling like a little boy.

  ‘You shouldn’t sleep here, Jacques. It is very late, you must go to bed.’

  I struggle to my feet.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Was it so tiring, my music, that it put you to sleep?’

  ‘No, it was perfect, beautifully played. Nothing could have been so wonderful. It was like going to heaven without dying.’

  ‘I could tell from your breathing you had gone to sleep and then you snored lightly. Rolande would snore sometimes when she was very tired.’

  She takes me by the arm and leads me out the dark room into the center room and then into my bedroom. She’s turned back the covers on the bed. Sleep is taking me away. Why should I be so tired? I didn’t work that hard.

  I slide under the covers and Mirabelle stands over me. She has her hair down in a long braid hanging forward over her left shoulder. She touches me with her hand, then sits on the bed beside me. I close my eyes.

  I feel her hand on my brow. It is cool, light.

  ‘Now go to sleep, Jacques, and you will wake with the bells tomorrow fresh and ready to paint.’

  I realize she’s in her parents’ room, now my room, for the first time, probably, since she slept here with her dead mother those long years ago. That’s the last I remember.

  The next day, in the morning, I go to the BHV and order the cork, the paint, the rollers, brushes, all the things I’ll need to do my room. I’ve decided to fix up one room at a time so the place won’t be in a constant mess. At the BHV, they promise delivery for the next day.

  I come back and tell Mirabelle. I tell her how much it’s going to cost, going over the bills with her, so she knows what she’s getting into.

  ‘It is all right. I cannot understand all of it but I trust you and I have enough money. This is a wonderful way to spend it, making this place, the home of my parents and now of us two, beautiful.

  ‘I even have my own checkbook and I can sign my name. I also have a way to write the numbers, names, and dates in the right place on the check. Do you want me to show you?’

  She goes into her music room and brings out a checkbook. Inside, she has a small piece of celluloid cut so openings are aligned with the spaces on her checks. I wonder if she figured this for herself, and if she did, who cut the openings for her.

  ‘You see, I can write the checks for money myself. Now let us have our déjeuner and then we shall go out to paint in the Place.’

  The day isn’t as beautiful as yesterday. There are long periods when the sun is covered by dark gray clouds. Several times during the afternoon, I think it’s sure to rain, but each time Mirabelle says no.

  ‘I shall tell you when it is going to rain, Jacques. I can feel from the air and the sounds of the trees and especially the birds. The birds know.’

  And she’s right. We paint there four hours and I finish the painting. We’ve picked up just where we left off and the painting almost seems to glow when it’s finished. More than that, I know right away when it’s finished, there’s no dinking around at the end, wondering if I can improve it. I can’t. Also, Mirabelle knows when it’s finished, almost before I do.

  ‘I think it must be a most beautiful painting. I can hear the beauty of it in your voice. I hear the people who stop by, sometimes they say how lovely it is, and sometimes they are only silent, but I can tell. What a wonderful afternoon this has been, now I think it is going to rain very soon. Let us go.’

  That night, when I’m stretched out in bed, remembering the painting, I hear the door to my room open quietly. The light in the main room is out and very little light comes in the window behind me, so I can barely make out the form of Mirabelle in her nightgown.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Please do, Mirabelle, come right in.’

  I slide over more toward the other edge of the bed. Mirabelle sits lightly on the edge. She’s silent for a long time.

  ‘I could not sleep. We were so close again today and then in the night I feel very alone.’

  A part of me is scared. I knew this would probably happen and I thought I was prepared for it, but now it’s actually happening I feel very passive. This is Mirabelle, I admire, respect, love her. But I’ve felt nothing of passion. How can I tell her this? Must I?

  ‘Jacques, I feel I know your mind and your heart so well, but I know nothing about how you look. I know nothing of men. The last man to touch me, except for doctors, was my father when I was a child and he was gone to the war before I was eleven years old. I know nothing of how a man feels. I can smell you, hear you, and when we faisons les baisers, I have felt the roughness of your skin, the stiffness of the hair in your beard, like the white hairs on my head, but that is all.’

  She’s quiet again. I’m trying to think of what to say and nothing comes. I reach over and take her hand in mine. It’s cool in the dark room.

  ‘Please, Jacques, may I touch your face? May I let my fingers tell me what my eyes cannot, how your nose fits between your eyes, your mouth, your lips, how they are formed, so I can have a picture in my mind? Is it asking too much?’

  I still can’t speak. It’s so sad to sense the completeness of her darkness. I lift her hand from her lap and place it across my mouth. She braces herself with her other hand on the pillow beside my head.

  ‘Thank you, you are very kind.’

  At first, she only keeps her hand across my mouth, lightly changing the position of her fingers against my lips. It’s almost like being kissed. Then she starts gently stroking my mustache with the tips of her fingers, gliding softly over the stiffness of the hair, down to the corners of my mouth. My mouth begins to tickle but I don’t move my lips. The sensuality of her touch is incredible.

  She explores the end of my nose, lightly penetrating my nostrils with the tips of her fingers, moving them tenderly over the outside edge, into the crease of the
wings. She enters my nostrils again, seeming to search.

  ‘Jacques, you have so much hair growing in your nose. Is that the way it is with men? I have some hairs in my nose but they are not so stiff and there is not so much.’

  I suppress a rising desire to laugh, to reach out and hold her.

  ‘I don’t think I have more hair in my nose than most men, Mirabelle. In the old days, when I went to the barber, he would clip any hairs that showed with the tips of his scissors, but I think it was normal.’

  Her fingers now are exploring the length of my nose. She lingers with thumb and finger along the tender sides as they go up to the corners of my eyes. I have my eyes closed. There’s no way she’s going to touch my eyeballs; they’re about the most valuable things I have. It’s as if she reads my mind. Maybe it’s in some small movement of my face.

  ‘I shall not hurt you. Only relax, I am learning much about you, about men.’

  Tenderly she passes each finger, in turn, over my eyelids, lightly tickling the lashes with her fingernails. I have to admit it feels fine. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone pay such close attention to me.

  She rubs her thumbs along my eyebrows, pushing them so they stand up, then pressing them down again. She shifts her weight, so her side is against mine, then brings both hands up so she can rub her thumbs over each of my eyebrows at the same time, her fingers resting along the side of my head.

  ‘I hope you do not object, Jacques, but I want to feel the differences of your face, one side to the other. I know the two sides of my face are not the same, and neither are yours. I think it must be an important part of how a face looks. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, Mirabelle, in painting a face, the artist always knows this. Everyone is two people in one face and body.’

  ‘You have such deep-set eyes, Jacques, and such a high brow over your eyes. Is this the same with all men? It must make you look much more primitive than women, if other women are like me.’