Girl in the Afternoon

by Serena Burdick

  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 c
ool 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.

  Aimée lowered herself down. Through the thin soles of her slippers she could feel the tremor from the trains chugging in and out of the Gare Saint-Lazare. Édouard had told her not to wear gloves so her arms were exposed all the way to her wrists and her hands were bare, which made her feel slightly naked.

  Édouard plucked a dark object from the console and walked over to her. He smelled of tobacco and of sweet citrus, as if he’d rubbed orange peels on his clothes. Tiny hairs rose on the back of Aimée’s neck as he leaned down and pinned a velvet ribbon around her throat.

  Reaching down, he smoothed the silk over her knees, draping her skirt first one way and then the other. He placed her hands together, pulled them apart. Lifted the curls off her forehead and let them drop back down. Then he stood and looked at her, tugging on his beard.

  “It’s your dress. The color’s wrong.” He sounded irritated, as if this were her fault. “Go change.” He dismissed her with a flip of his hand. “I’ll have to rent another dress tomorrow.”

  Those few minutes sitting still, being fussed over, had made Aimée prickle with impatience. Relieved, she said, “I could have told you that when you handed it to me.”

  Édouard frowned, and a deep line appeared between his eyebrows. “I suppose I should have asked.”

  “White or black are the only colors I can get away with.”

  “What shade of white?”

  “Pure white. A snow white.”

  “You looked exceptional in green the other night.”

  “It was dark green. Very dark.”

  He gave an efficient nod. “Pure white and shades of the deep ocean then.”

  Through the scruff of his beard Aimée could see the tip of his tongue and his slightly yellow teeth. His look implied some subtle intimacy, and Aimée felt a loosening in her legs as she ducked behind the screen. She slipped the lavender dress off, now keenly aware of the act of undressing.

  When she came out, fastened back into her morning dress, Édouard was at his canvas sketching a pink peony that he had pulled from its vase and tossed onto a sleek table. Within minutes the flower appeared in delicate, vulnerable marks, the petals thin and tender.

  Without asking, Aimée took a sheet of paper and pencil and sat at a table under a portrait of a woman sitting with her face completely hidden by a black fan, and one smooth, white ankle extending out from under her black dress. Aimée couldn’t see the woman’s face, but the daring length of that exposed ankle excited her, and she wondered how it would feel to create something so natural and revealing. Looking down, she drew a single precise mark.

  Without breaking the rhythm of his pencil, Édouard said, “I work alone.” His voice was not unkind, just decisive and uncompromising.

  Aimée had no right to be so bold, but she kept on sketching, and for a moment it seemed he was going to ignore her. Then, a little firmer, he said, “I am not an instructor.”

  “You taught Eva Gonzalès,” she said, continuing to move her pencil across the paper, her confidence growing with every stroke. Aimée did not work from the same obsessed, passionate place as Édouard. Hers was a quiet determination.

  “That was different,” he said.

  From the gossip her maman repeated at the dinner table, Édouard’s wife had been unhappy with the arrangement. Maybe he had wanted Eva in his bed, and that was the difference.

  Édouard swung around, and Aimée jumped, a line appearing where she had not intended.

  “I will paint you as you are now.” A smile of satisfaction sprang across his face.

  “I’d rather you not,” she said truthfully, hoping Édouard did not think her insolent and ungrateful.

  But he only looked intrigued. “And why, pray, is that?”

  She hesitated, wondering if Édouard was the kind of man you could be honest with. “I fear you will make me look like an amateur. The painting you did of Mademoiselle Gonzalès at her canvas made her appear as if she’d never held a brush in her life. She’s a fine painter.”

  “You forgot to mention that I painted her as the great beauty she is. Which means more to a woman than the way she holds her brush.”

  “You underestimate some women then.”

  “Is it you I’ve underestimated?”

  “I’m not a great beauty. I’m not even the slightest bit attractive.”

  “Then you’ve underestimated yourself.”

  Aimée reddened and looked away. Out the window she could see great puffs of steam rising into the blue sky. Édouard’s forthright words were flattering, but also a means to get what he wanted.

  “I’ll have another dress for you tomorrow.” He turned back to his canvas. “Come again in the morning.”

  Determined, Aimée pushed back her chair and stood up. “Monsieur Manet, pardon me for saying it, but I detest sitting for a portrait. I find it impossible to sit still. It makes me itch all over. I only came here because I thought you might have something of value to teach me.”

  Édouard leaned back in his chair, regarding her without expression. There wasn’t a sound other than the dim tapping of his pencil against the wooden armrest. “T
ell me,” he said, finally, “are you an equally miserable painter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The same look of amused curiosity that Aimée had seen at the soirée came to his face, only now there was something slightly more personal in it.

  “Well,” he sighed, as if relinquishing a rule he never broke. “I suppose it might be worth finding out.”

  At that moment, Aimée thought of Henri. It felt like a betrayal, painting privately beside someone else.

  Édouard stood and offered his chair. “Draw nothing with the same process.” He proffered his pencil. “Forget all your eye has seen before. You must learn to come to the work anew, each and every time.”

  And so they began.

  PARIS 1874

  Chapter 6

  A cool spring arrived. Buds stayed tight and green, the branches of trees sharp, naked lines against the sky. Thin clouds spread like the inner veins of a feather over Aimée’s head as she passed through the Place de Clichy to the steep, narrow streets of Montmartre.

  Despite the chill breeze, people moved their chairs out to take in the sun. Aimée was forced to walk in the street, avoiding a man with his legs stuck out and his hat pulled over his eyes. A rat darted across her path, and a horse-drawn cart rattled by, splashing mud up Aimée’s stockings. She stepped quickly back onto the sidewalk, slowing her pace as the hill grew steeper. By the time she reached the small, blue-roofed house at the top of the hill, she was hot and short of breath.

  “Leonie?” she called, pushing open the front door and moving down the narrow hallway into the kitchen.

  It was a small apartment, but decent compared to the others on the street. Instead of one room with a mattress in the corner, there was an actual bedroom in the back where Leonie and her grand-tante shared a bed lifted off the floor on a high wooden frame.

  The kitchen was stiflingly hot, and Aimée’s cheeks tingled. Old Madame Fiavre stood hunched over the potbellied stove. She glanced at Aimée, and her lips curled in a toothless smile as she waved at the back door. In the small patch of yard, Leonie was pinning wet clothes on the line, the sleeves of her dress pushed up past her round elbows.