by M. J. Rose
How was he stroking me? How could he be moving me to distraction? How was this ephemeral being making my heart race and my breath come in shorter and shorter spurts? A force building deep inside of me beat to a rhythm I couldn’t hear but my blood responded to. A spark burst into tiny tickling flames, the flames licking the cleft between my legs, my legs pressing together as the gathering tightened and tightened more and then exploded into fragments of fire . . . a hundred tiny pinpricks of sensation reaching up and up and then finally slowing, easing, so nothing existed but the feeling of my heart pounding with excitement and the sound of the blood rushing faster and faster.
And then it ended. As I caught my breath, I waited to hear what he would say. How he would describe what had occurred.
“Jean Luc?”
No response.
“Jean Luc?”
I waited, but still no response. If he’d been there, he wasn’t any longer. The tears came then and surprised me with their intensity. I wanted him to be real. He made me feel as if I belonged to someone and someone belonged to me. As if I’d found my place in the world. Except he wasn’t in this world with me. His body had burned in a terrible explosion that destroyed dozens of lives. Ash on a field at the front. He wasn’t supposed to have died there like that. I was sure of it. He was supposed to come home. So we could meet. So a true spark might have ignited. So when he kissed me, he’d be able to feel my lips on his. I fell asleep with tears still flowing, clutching the talisman, wondering into what darkness my phantom lover had disappeared.
Chapter 16
In the morning, I went down to the shop and suffered through the work waiting for me, looking at the clock every quarter hour until I could finally take off my apron, put down my tools, and tell Monsieur Orloff I would be going out for a few hours on an errand during my lunch break.
With Jean Luc’s talisman against my breast, with his words in my ears, I walked to the Louvre. Because I hadn’t grown up in Paris, only visiting my great-grandmother for short periods, there were many attractions I either hadn’t seen or hadn’t seen enough of—like the great museum. And since I’d moved to Paris, the Louvre had been closed for more days than it had been open to the public. As I approached, I hoped that afternoon would be an exception.
Ahead of me, the ancient palace that had seen so many kings and queens, tragedies and intrigues, stood solid against the ravages of time. Stepping onto the plaza in front of the museum, I felt a surge of anticipation at visiting another of Jean Luc’s haunts. I had one of his unpublished columns with me. I’d copied it out so I could bring it and not miss a step of its instructions.
The Louvre was in fact open. Inside, the sheer size and grandeur of the palace overwhelmed me. To reach the first stop on Jean Luc’s tour, I climbed an ornate marble staircase. He’d written about how often he thought of the royalty who’d taken the same steps so long ago, so long dead. The concept intrigued me.
We walk in the footsteps of so many who are forgotten. What of them lingers? Do we leave some aspect of ourselves in the places we live and others we visit? If my eyes could see a plane other than this one, would the atmosphere be crowded with people who’d passed through the same halls?
I reached the first landing. Had Jean Luc stood here? Gazing up at the tall ceilings, every corner and crevice decorated in the most elaborate designs of the era, I wondered if he’d noticed the same details.
I stopped at a high arched window overlooking the courtyard. Where war-weary Parisians walked now, in search of an hour’s respite, kings and queens and nobility had once trod the same ground, weary of their own wars.
Ma chère,
The inconstancy of love is easy to speak of. We bemoan a lover’s treacheries and make light of an ex-lover’s faults. What I think of out here is the love immortalized in art. For those who hear of it in song, or on the stage, or who read of it in poetry or novels, or who see it in a painting or sculpture—it is everlasting. And offers solace to those of us who witness endless examples of instantaneous disaster here, in the muck and mud, amidst the sounds of cannons and gunfire.
Once you enter the museum, turn right and go into the Richelieu wing. Take the staircase to the first floor, and opposite the café, walk to room 4, where you can find objects from the Middle Ages. Here is our first stop on our lovers’ journey: the tapestry of a lady and her love. In the 1400s, when this lovely piece was made, the most popular story told was The Romance of the Rose. It tells the tale of a suitor’s progress through a garden of love. Here in this tapestry, he is offering her a declaration of his devotion. Look, even the animals and the flowers encircle and bind the lovers together. Step closer and look at the gift he is giving her—a heart—a symbol of his love.
Next, you will need to go to room 37 in the French collection. Stand in front of the small painting called Le Faux Pas, painted by Watteau in 1717. Of the time, Voltaire wrote that it was the age of licentiousness, and freedom was expressed not only in how people indulged in pleasures, but how they were celebrated in the arts, music, and poetry.
Stand closer and enter into the intimacy of the two lovers. A staged game of love and chance. Be the voyeur.
Have you ever watched two people make love? If you aren’t observed, it can be exhilarating. I did once and was mesmerized by the passion with which the man kissed the woman and held her. The delicate way she responded. For several minutes, I couldn’t even take a breath.
Before I could follow Jean Luc’s instructions to the next room, his voice stopped me from moving forward.
What I didn’t write was . . . If I were there with you now in the gallery, I would touch your neck behind your ear, with my lips, and whisper to you to just look at the painting. Not to turn to me. And while you studied the Watteau, my lips would travel down your neck until you’d need to put your hand out to steady yourself.
Jean Luc’s lips pressed on my skin. Indeed my neck was warm, growing warmer still as I studied the small painting. My cheeks flushed. A mother and teenage daughter entered the room, their presence an intrusion.
I moved on and followed Jean Luc’s instructions to the next room, where my next assignment was to study a painting entitled The Bolt, by the French master Fragonard sometime around 1777.
Positioning myself in front of the canvas, I studied the violent and sensual embrace between a man and a woman in her bedroom. Although it was a fairly small painting, Jean Luc wrote that it burst with love and desire. He said I should examine first how the strong shaft of light, almost the focal point of the work, illuminated the three major clues as to the painting’s meaning: the man pushing the bolt on the door as he grabs his lover, the rumpled messy bed, and the ripe apple on his lover’s nightstand, which symbolized the fruit of Eve, the fruit of sin.
Had I ever stood so long in front of a painting before? The longer I remained, the more fully I entered its dark sensuous world. I sensed the tension in the male lover’s legs as he pushed against his mistress. And her teasing halfhearted retreat away from him. But why was he bolting the door when, from the appearance of the room, they’d already enjoyed their amorous respite? Was he unbolting the door and she stopping him from leaving?
Suddenly, I started to see erotic symbolism in every aspect of the painting. Every inch seethed with unspent passion. The upturned chair looked now like legs up in the air. The vase and the roses suggested the woman’s genitals. And the bed itself. I sighed. It echoed the woman’s sensuality, suggesting folds of flesh. Oh, to be with Jean Luc in that bed with its deep downy pillows that looked like breasts, enclosed by the blood-red velvet curtains keeping out the world.
Alone in the room, I shocked myself by pressing my hand to my breast and holding it there. Feeling the pressure. Wanting it to be Jean Luc’s hand. Wanting him to be there in flesh and blood and pressed up against me the way the man in the painting pressed up to his lover. The sensations between my legs were so strong I leaned again
st the wall. How could I be aroused like this, alone, with no one near? Just from looking at a painting, from reading a dead man’s words?
There were more paintings to stop and stare at and wonder about, but I ignored them as I thought about a man who knew the Louvre so well that from a trench in Vichy he could put together a lover’s art tour and recall the room numbers of these works and their nuances.
It wasn’t just his romantic nature I thought about as I headed to the next piece; it wasn’t just his knowledge. Jean Luc’s delight delighted me, his interests interested me, his fascinations fascinated me.
And now we come to the most erotic and strange piece of all, one which might make you uncomfortable. I ask you to begin your journey from afar. Do you see the full-size marble sculpture of the sleeping figure? Slightly to the left? Wait. Don’t look at its name yet. Don’t circle it. Position yourself so you are looking at the figure’s back. Take in the curves and the languid pose. You want to touch it, don’t you? Run your fingers down the sinuous spine. Feel the satiny skin. If there are no guards in the room, do it. Dare it. Risk it. You won’t be disappointed. Finger the curve of the waist, thrill to the velvet. Almost impossible this is stone, isn’t it? You want to slip your fingers between the figure’s thighs, don’t you . . . to feel the warmth . . . so inviting, isn’t it?
Now, slowly walk to the sculpture’s feet and then around so you can view the piece’s other side. Let your eyes travel up from the ankles to the calves, the knees, the thighs. Surprised? Ah yes, so was I.
There in all their crude beauty are his genitals. Now, Ma chère, look at his chest. How is it possible? Beautiful female breasts as well as a fully formed penis.
Gaze on the face of The Sleeping Hermaphrodite. What a marvel, isn’t it? From some angles a lovely naked woman and from others a lusty young man. Curves and cravings.
According to scholars, this work was typical of Hellenistic art, designed to tease and provide surprise. The statue is a Roman antiquity found in 1608. Eleven years later Cardinal Borghese commissioned the great Italian sculptor Bernini to carve the sumptuous mattress as a base.
Do you know the story of Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite? The water nymph Salmacis fell in love with the handsome boy and tried to seduce him, but he rejected her. Unable to resign herself to the loss, she begged Zeus to unite them and he did, merging them into one bisexed figure.
Scholars at the Louvre say this “utopian combination of two sexes is sometimes interpreted as a half-playful, half-erotic creation, designed to illustrate Platonic and more general philosophical reflections on love.”
The eroticism of the god lying in abandon, half asleep on the sensual bed, repels some who gaze upon him, but not I. I find this hermaphrodite the ultimate embodiment of the coming together of man and woman. A metaphor for sexual desire, a visualizing of the dichotomy in each of us, for don’t we all, whether man or woman, want to be taken and take, want to be aroused and arouse, don’t we all want to desire and be desired and find that one soul who completes us as we complete them?
Aristotle said it best: “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance.”
The column came to its close. I stood, staring at the hermaphrodite. Imagining Jean Luc beside me. And then I heard his voice.
For me, and hopefully for you, Ma chère, the sculpture is titillating, yes? This is the miracle of art to me, why we must preserve and protect it. The artist alone can take the grotesque and make it beautiful, can take the confusing and explain it. The individuality of each one of us who creates must be protected and encouraged. For only in art do we learn who we are and of what we are made.
Chapter 17
When the last post of the day was delivered, Monsieur finished sorting through it, crossed the room to my workstation, and ceremoniously handed me a small package with my mother’s handwriting on the label and an assortment of stamps in the corner.
Usually my father wrote, adding an addendum from my mother. So something from her alone aroused my curiosity.
Inside, well wrapped to protect it from the journey, I found one of her miniature triptychs: three paintings hinged together and folded up into a compact objet d’art no larger than a book. The delicate wood framing had obviously been done in my father’s atelier, in Art Nouveau lines as sensuous as my mother’s own painting style.
During the Middle Ages, triptychs were a standard format for altar paintings and adorned many churches and cathedrals. Smaller versions served as movable chapels for their owners to pray to while traveling.
Borrowing the form, my mother created these folded works of art to hide and reveal secret messages. Since she’d first started painting, the year before my birth, her style never strayed far from highly detailed and often erotic symbolism. One could never just glance at a painting by “La Lune,” as she signed her canvases. You needed to study it for quite some time, over days or weeks, to understand all it concealed.
I placed the “painting with doors,” as I’d called these when I was a little girl, on my worktable and moved the lamp so it shone down on it.
The triptych’s wings were shut, and pictured on the front were large wrought iron gates leading to a garden. The scene looked familiar, but at first I didn’t realize why. Then, looking more closely, I recognized the gates at Père-Lachaise. Not opening to a garden, in fact, but to the parklike cemetery I’d visited just days before.
Twilight settled on the cemetery in my mother’s rendition, just as I remembered. Birds hid in the branches of leafy trees shadowing cobblestone walks. I picked up my magnifying glasses. Could they be? Yes, they were crows. A chill crept down my arms.
I opened the wings, revealing the interior three panels. The one in the center, the largest, arched at the top, was flanked by two slightly smaller panels. Just like its religious counterparts, the piece was meant to be read from left to right.
In the first frame, I sat where I was sitting at that very minute, bent over my worktable. A man stood behind me, his body long and achingly sensual. Leaning over, he watched my efforts, his hand on my shoulder.
Something about him looked familiar. I peered more closely at his face. Impossibly, I made out Jean Luc!
Almost as if summer had instantly turned to winter, I shivered. How did my mother paint him? And how cruel to depict him as if he were alive, teasing me into imagining how it would look if we were together. Jean Luc was my insanity. My delusion. Proof of how slight a hold I held over reason and rational thinking. Nothing more than a phantom lover I’d created out of my guilt and frustration.
Why had my mother sent me this taunt?
With trepidation, I read the next frame. Jean Luc and I sat on the settee in my sitting room below the shop, entwined in a languorous embrace. His strong arms wrapped around me, his lips pressed against mine. The muscles in his neck tight and tense with ardor. I blushed that my own mother had painted me in the throes of such a passionate hold.
In the last frame, Jean Luc and I stood side by side, in front of the fountain in the gardens of the Palais. Around us, the rosebushes blossomed with flowers so lush and ripe I could smell their heady, spicy scent just by gazing at them.
She’d painted us from the back. Not touching. Or so it seemed at first, and then I noticed the tips of the fingers of his right hand met the tips of the fingers of my left. A fire-like glow emanated from where they connected.
I’d stumbled on a clue.
Returning to the first frame, I reexamined the scene, looking for and . . . yes . . . finding another glow where Jean Luc’s hand met my shoulder. Exploring the embrace in the middle painting, I found the same glow where his arm touched my back and even found a tiny blaze where our lips joined.
Turning the object around, I studied the scene at Père-Lachaise more closely. The crows’ eyes smoldered with that same warm orange-yellow light. Tiny flowers at
the base of some of the trees, tombstones, and mausoleums burned with it as well.
There was a message here, but I couldn’t decipher it—not yet. The very fact of this object overwhelmed me and distracted me from working out the puzzle. Why and how had my mother created this? How could she know about Jean Luc, much less what he looked like? She possessed talents, both as an artist and a witch, but even this seemed beyond her abilities. Maman could read the future, but only in a general sense. She could create spells and potions to heal, to harm, and to help. She could slow the ravages of time upon the human body and enchant and influence other people.
Unlike the witches of old wives’ tales, she could not raise the dead. Or fly. She could not change the past or travel there.
She might have sensed my distress, but could not have been privy to my very actions. She was able to sense my moods, but not read my mind. Or so she always swore.
I certainly hadn’t told her anything about Jean Luc in the weekly letters my parents and I exchanged. We visited several times a year when they came to Paris, either to see my mother’s dealer or when my father obtained a commission. Most recently, we’d all gone to Picasso’s wedding to his new wife, Olga, just a few weeks before. But then I hadn’t yet met Madame Alouette. Or heard from Jean Luc. And I’d never told my great-grandmother about him—so she couldn’t have written to my mother about my sad obsession.
And yet, in my hand, I held a series of paintings that not only depicted Jean Luc but also illustrated our trysts . . . portraying him as if he were flesh and blood in instances that had occurred—I’d felt him behind me at my worktable, and certainly making love to me in my bedroom, and I’d gone to Père-Lachaise because of his column.