Last Lovers

by William Wharton

  I continue talking and prying the tacks out of the paintings, rolling the canvases, putting the pieces of stretcher sticks inside, filling the duffel bag.

  ‘In my paintings I want to express the awe and excitement I feel from what I see, how what I see relates to what it seems I am.’

  I stop and concentrate for a while on the tacks. I finish several more canvases. I’m having a hard time telling Mirabelle and myself what I mean. I pull over another canvas, it’s one looking down the rue des Canettes toward the rue du Four.

  ‘You see, Mirabelle. No, of course you don’t see. First, you’re dead, and even if you were alive, I’m not sure if you could see. It doesn’t matter.’

  I come to the edge of breaking down again. I take deep breaths. There’s no way I can dismantle these canvases with shaking hands and tears.

  ‘It’s like this. I want people to look at my painting so they can share joy with me. Also, there are things I’m doing with composition, with texture, lighting, brushstrokes, to make this little piece of canvas seem magic, like a window onto another world, a world related to one moment in time and one place, as seen by one person, me. But more than that, a window onto a place of imagination, of beauty, of excitement. It’s a tiny illusion of light and space I’m trying to make seem true.’

  I’m a little closer now. I look at the canvas still half-attached to the stretcher, curling down on itself. Did I ever really believe in the place I’m suggesting here, is it all some kind of self-hypnosis that doesn’t mean anything except it gives me pleasure? Is all art just that, a form of self-delusion, self-gratification, self-serving pretension?

  I turn the painting around, stretch it out. No, I can still fall into it. For me it still works, even after over a month. But that’s the problem, does it work for others?

  ‘Mirabelle, every time I painted our paintings, I had you in mind. I wanted you to see them. It wasn’t enough that I could please myself, I wanted it to be a place where we were together. And because you are blind, could share your inner vision, it seemed to happen. I felt, knew, that, if only for the two of us, the painting was a special object which brought us together. Then, beginning with the couple who bought the painting of the Place Furstenberg, I began to feel our vision meant something to others, alone, by itself.

  ‘But how many people can see these magic things? I want to share with as many people as possible, but still be true to myself, to the subject. There’s the trap, Mirabelle, I find myself, sometimes, painting the painting to attract others, like putting feathers on bait for fish. It happens. Perhaps I want too much, or perhaps I’ve had too much training, or perhaps it’s only that I want adulation, money, success. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. It’s here, too, where I can never be innocent, Mirabelle. I need your strength.

  ‘I’m afraid when I go back to America, live with all the others, our friends, who value success more than anything else, and success, for them, means making money, or being recognized, I’ll fail, fall into contrivance again, lose the magic.

  ‘Will I be able to continue what we’ve started, our private, soft, free involvement with the paintings we’ve made? I really don’t know, and it frightens me.’

  I look over at Mirabelle, quiet, smiling in the big bed. The walls around us stare down, empty now, without the paintings. At least they were good decorations. But if that’s all there is to painting I’d rather go back to MBI. I take another canvas from the stack, stare at it for a few minutes, try to pretend I didn’t paint it, that I’ve just seen it for the first time, in a gallery or a home or on the chevalet of some other artist. I can’t do it. These paintings are so much a part of me, or I’m a part of them, I can’t really see them anymore as objects.

  ‘Oh, Mirabelle, I miss you so. In your blindness you taught me to see. And now that I can see, not just passively, but actively, as a painter, I’m not sure if I have the strength to carry on alone.

  ‘I know Lorrie will like my paintings. Her reaction to even the photographs was so rewarding. But why does she like them? Is it only because they look like “paintings”? How is a painting supposed to look? Painters can’t agree. It seems to change with time, almost like the styles of clothing or houses.

  ‘But some painters have crossed the boundaries of time and mode, Mirabelle. Rembrandt, Chardin, Titian, van Gogh, Monet, many others, were just true to themselves in their best work, so true it was almost impossible for anyone to follow in their footsteps. And now I can look at their work and somehow become them, in their time, in a mystical communion.

  ‘Yes, there is something there, but will I ever attain anything like that? Is it worth it? I’ve already caused so much pain to my family, can I justify this mad search for a dream that seems so unattainable one can begin to doubt its existence? Do I make any sense at all, Mirabelle?’

  I work all afternoon as the cup fills with tacks and the duffel bag begins to swell with the rolled paintings. It’s so strange to think that all my joy, my creations, can be rolled so easily and packed into this sack like a pile of dirty clothes. When they were on the wall, they seemed so much more, they gave me a sense of elation, of completion, I’d never known, and now they’re as nothing. I could put them out by the poubelle and they’d be thrown into the grinding truck and mauled into so much more compacted trash.

  I hear the six o’clock evening bells ringing. I’m not hungry, although I haven’t eaten all day. I don’t even want to think about eating without Mirabelle across from me. It would be an admission that she really is gone. I still don’t feel I’ve told Mirabelle why I’m so concerned about my innocence, my ability to keep on with my painting, painting as she taught me.

  ‘What worries me more than anything else, Mirabelle, is that I might be painting for only a small elite group of people, mostly moneyed people, who have the time and interest to look at, or even buy, paintings. This would seem to be the exact opposite of the reasons why I want to paint. If painting is going to separate people along economic or class lines the way music or theater or literature does, then I don’t want to be part of it. Since I was a student, this has been a problem for me. The kind of people who dominate the world of art, who have access to the galleries, to the museums, to the publication of paintings in books, or even postcards, are not the people I’m interested in.

  ‘They gain control of paintings as possessions, huckster them, promote, hustle, sell them, like any other commodity. They gain control of the distribution, so that anything unique, tender, true to itself and the artist, has virtually no chance of being seen.

  ‘With almost all the great painters this has been the case. Rarely does the artist live to know that thousands, millions of people have their lives improved by the insights he’s sacrificed to share. Am I strong enough to live and die as Vincent van Gogh did, without selling one painting, the debtor and ward to his brother? He obviously wasn’t, and I don’t think I am. He was a true innocent, Mirabelle, and he died one. I don’t think I’m innocent, trusting, tolerant enough, to be so magnanimous. Do you understand?’

  I give up. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say myself. I turn on a light and continue dismounting the paintings. It’s dark when I roll the last one and squeeze it in beside the others. I slide the bag from the table and the end swings to the floor. It’s heavier than I thought it would be but I can lift it. I thump it a few times on the floor so the paintings slide to the bottom, then pull the grommets together and slide the hook at the end of the strap through the U-shaped latch. I hoist it onto my shoulders, it’s heavy but I can manage. It and my paint box will be all my luggage home.

  There’s one painting, the last one I was working on, a view across the Place Saint-Sulpice, that is too wet to dismount and pack. I leave it leaning against the wall. I also leave the first painting I did of Mirabelle. The second portrait I’m taking with me.

  Then I start cleaning out the paint box. I use my palette knife to clean off my palette down to the wood. I squeeze all the paints with the tops on so
the paint is in the upper part of the tube. I wash all the brushes thoroughly, first with turpentine, then rubbing them into a bar of soap under hot water in the kitchen sink. Because I’ve been painting so consistently, I’ve gotten somewhat sloppy about keeping my materials in order. One painting just seemed to lead to another and I was always in such a hurry to be painting.

  There are several brushes which are so worn there are only a few short bristles or hairs left. These I throw away. I dump the turpentine and varnish medium from my little containers into paper towels and scrub them out.

  All the time I’m doing this I’m talking to Mirabelle. Mostly I’m remembering the good times we had, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing. She’s always been such a good listener to my rantings, it’s almost as if she’s hearing me, registering, nodding, laughing quietly inside herself. I still can’t let go.

  When I’m finished, I put it all together and tie a piece of rope around my paint box so the legs won’t get detached and bent or broken in the luggage bay of the plane.

  By now it’s dark. I go back into the bedroom and stretch out beside Mirabelle in the darkness. I try to pull myself together. I know I’m doing almost everything automatically and I need to make sure I don’t make mistakes.

  I roll over on my side toward Mirabelle and stroke her forehead, letting the tips of my fingers rest lightly on her eyes, the sides of her nose, her lips, her chin, her neck. I remember how she explored me, and then start crying again. I put my arm across her stiffening body and my face into the pillow. It’s all so impossible.

  Finally, I pull myself together and start cleaning house. First, I turn on all the lights in all the rooms. I just walk around for a while, enjoying the lovely home we’ve shared these months. Next, I take away everything I own, every piece of clothing, including my tux, fancy shoes, even my toothbrush. I throw them all into a plastic trash bag. I take out all the food from the refrigerator, any perishables from the shelves, put them in another bag. I only keep the clothes I’m going to wear on the airplane.

  I draw a bath, remembering Mirabelle drawing one for me each morning. Then I lower myself into it and try to relax. I scrub my whole body as if I’m trying to shed my skin. I’m red and tingling when I pull the plug, wash out the tub, and dry myself. I think of Mirabelle’s mother, of Mirabelle pulling what was probably that same plug to let out the bloodied water.

  I dress again in the clothes I’ve been wearing during the day, and spread the clothes I plan to wear on the plane across the bed beside Mirabelle. I look once more around the apartment, then tie the bags shut, using the plastic string dangling from the bottom. I walk back into the bedroom.

  ‘I’ll be right back, Mirabelle. I have a few things that must be done.’

  I take the keys from their place, both the apartment key and the key for the church tower. I pick up a small dust broom, and another plastic sack. I go into Mirabelle’s music room and open the armoire which holds all her works of musical sculpture. I lower each one carefully into this sack. They aren’t heavy, they’re like Mirabelle, so much of love and concentration in such a small space and weighing so little. Then I gather up some of my reserve candles, some matches, and the painting of Mirabelle that I didn’t pack. It’s about ten o’clock in the evening, but it’s a Monday, so there shouldn’t be too big a crowd out in the street.

  I go down the stairs after closing the door. The streets are busy, but nothing exceptional. Except for the painting, I could look like one of the street sweepers out a bit early for the night’s work, or a clochard with my trash bags.

  I walk a block away from the apartment, then stuff my plastic bags with the surplus clothes and food in them into one of the trash cans at the curb. I then cross the boulevard Saint-Germain to the church. I look around carefully and slip over the fence around the presbytery to the side and in front of the church. I easily discover the door to the tower. The key turns in the lock, stiffly, and the opposite way I would have thought, but the door swings open. I close it behind me. I’m in total darkness. I decide not to light a candle yet; I can feel my way up the worn stone steps.

  It isn’t as far as I thought it might be. I come to a trapdoor, push it open, there’s a counterweight, and I’m in the belfry. I look down through the slits in the arches and see the traffic and crowds below. I look across the boulevard and see the building in which Mirabelle’s apartment is located. I think of her stretched out on my bed. Enough light comes in through the slits in the arches so I can see where I am, what I’m doing.

  I climb up onto the huge oaken beam supporting the bells. I hope there’s no reason for them to ring bells now, I’d probably lose my hearing, become the deaf artist taught by a blind woman. There shouldn’t be bells, not at ten in the evening, no wedding, no baptism, and only one quiet, unannounced funeral.

  I disturb several pigeons and they fly crisply, frantically, in the dark, stiff wing feathers beating against the walls, then they settle down. I find, as the bell tower cleaner had said, several dead pigeons on top of the broad beam. I gather them into a pile in the corner by the trapdoor. The beam is at least three feet wide. The gray-blue-green bells loom in the dimness below me. Below them is a dark hole. I crawl out on the beam, brushing it clean as I go, brushing the dirt into the hole. In the years since it has last been cleaned, considerable dirt has accumulated.

  When I’m finished, I crawl backward to where I can secure my footing again. I’m dripping wet from perspiration, a combination of exertion, fear, and anxiety. I crawl once more across the beam and put the painting of Mirabelle at the other end, away from the trapdoor through which I came. I store the sack of sculptures and the candles in the near corner with the dead pigeons.

  I quietly descend the steps. I go out the door, peering carefully for anyone, then close it quickly and lock it again. I climb over the fence, step out on the street, hurry across and past Monsieur Diderot, then down the rue des Ciseaux and home.

  I wash off thoroughly in the bathroom, then go back into the bedroom with Mirabelle. I’ll probably need another bath before I’m finished. There’s the slight flashing from a flickering neon light outside, which seems almost to animate Mirabelle’s face; strange I never noticed it before. I stretch myself on the bed beside her again, to prepare for the next step of what I intend to do.

  ‘Mirabelle, I hope you will be happy with what I’m planning. We never exactly talked about it but this is the closest I can come to what I think you said you would like.’

  I really don’t want to make an extra trip but, at the same time, I want to do this right, wrong as it all probably is.

  There’s still another painting against the wall, the one of Place Saint-Sulpice that isn’t dry. I gather it under my arm, being careful not to smear it. I also take from its place in the cupboard our bottle of Poire William, almost empty again now, except for the pear. I hurry across the street, over the fence, and up the tower, deposit these things, then hurry back again to the apartment without any problem. Now it’s only a question of waiting, and some luck.

  I lie in the semidark talking quietly to Mirabelle while we wait. I go over all I can remember with her, from when she crashed into me, until that last wonderful night. Was it only last night when she could actually see me for the first time? I almost laugh remembering how we laughed.

  It must be almost four in the morning when I decide the time has come. It’s after most of the tourists and revelers have left the street, before the street cleaners start. It’s the quietest time.

  I wrap Mirabelle in a sheet first, then enfold her again in a blanket. I allow just a small flap of the blanket to cover her head, the way it would if a father were carrying his child in the night. If anyone sees me, I hope I can pass it off as that. In a way, she is my child as I am hers.

  I have no trouble scurrying across the boulevard. There’s practically no one out. I hurry but try not to seem hurried or harried. I enter the small yard of the church, swing Mirabelle up onto my back while I climb over the fence
, step into the vestibule, and open the door. I have the key in my hand and it locks automatically behind me. I’ve made it through the hard part. In the dark, it’s difficult maneuvering Mirabelle, who is quite stiff now, around the corners of the twisting stone stairs, but I manage to arrive at the top, where I’ve left the trapdoor closed.

  I push it open and close it behind me with my foot. I lower Mirabelle carefully onto the end of the beam beside the dead pigeons. Again I disturb a few sleeping pigeons, they flutter some, then quiet down, making their cooing nighttime noises. Can they possibly know who it is who is coming to stay with them?

  I light one of my candles. I carefully crawl across the beam to the other end. I place the candle in front of the painting of Mirabelle, sticking it in its own drippings. I then stand the painting of Saint-Sulpice at the other end of the beam and light a candle in front of it. There’s no danger of the candles lighting the oak beam, they’ll just be extinguished in their own meltings.

  Then I slowly, gently arrange Mirabelle until she’s stretched out on the oaken beam in its center. I uncover her face. The light from the candles lights her so there are deep shadows on her face and her eyes seem open and watching me. In the moving from the apartment, her smile seems to have widened, yet still there is approval. I think she begins to find all my theatrics somewhat amusing. I’m talking to her all the time as I arrange things.

  ‘You are in the tower against the sky, Mirabelle. You are with your friends the pigeons. It seems like the right place.’

  I take the dead pigeons and arrange them around Mirabelle as if they are a cortege. Between each two pigeons I place one of her sculptures. In the flickering light, I swear I can almost hear the tinkling of her harpsichord as she plays the music they represent. I don’t think I’m going crazy, but I could be.