by Heather Webb
“I have . . . something to tell you,” Paul said slowly. “You won’t like it, but it’s the reason I wanted us to meet today.”
“I am happy for your success, regardless of my situation,” Camille said. “You know that.”
He nudged an anthill with the tip of his shoe. A frenzy of miniature insects marched out of their home to locate the source of the disturbance.
“Well?” she said.
“I’ve been appointed First Vice-Consul of France. I depart in two weeks for America.” A shy smile spread across his face.
Camille stood in stunned silence. She could see the happiness oozing from behind her brother’s guarded countenance. He harnessed his joy for her sake. America? Her darling Paul was not just a playwright, but a diplomat. He would leave her and join the ranks of her former friends—Giganti, Jessie, and even Mother. One by one they had abandoned her. And now he would.
“Well?” he asked. “Are you happy for me?”
She regarded his shiny blond hair, slicked to his head with pomade, his expensive coat and foulard. He looked the part of a diplomat.
“Of course I am!” She ruffled his hair as she had when they were children and squeezed him hard. “But how can I part with you? You will be so far away.” A clot of despair clogged her throat.
“I will write to you. And I will write to those blasted ministers and to the papers. They’ll regret they have turned away the sister of a diplomat.”
“And the sister of a famous playwright.” She kissed his cheek. “I am so proud of you.”
Paul beamed at her acceptance.
Camille forced a smile for his sake. “We should celebrate.”
They would celebrate his going away, and her oblivion.
The crackling of old plaster coming loose echoed in the vast ceilings of the château Folie le Prestre, Auguste’s crumbling estate with overgrown gardens and nymph statuettes. Camille adored working in the abode. Though located in the middle of the restless city, it felt like a vacation home, far from all of his assistants and his swarm of admirers. They had multiplied in number in the past year and their presence had become almost unbearable.
Camille caressed Auguste’s face and the silvery hair curling all over his stout chest. He sighed in contentment.
A glint of light winked in the window. Curious, Camille propped herself up on one elbow. There was nothing metallic in the garden. She waited for several minutes more, but the light did not flash again.
Someone has been following you. It’s Rodin’s band! They have come to drag you away.
She reached for the wineglass she had abandoned just before they made love. She finished the remainder in her glass, then his.
Auguste ran his hand over her shoulders and back. “You should eat something. You haven’t touched a thing all day.”
Camille glanced at the third version of La Petite Châteleine, now in plaster. She had created a dozen maquettes of children in the past months. Their innocence and vibrant eyes made for beautiful expression, and filled a new ache inside her.
“You have only one son,” she said. “You have never considered more children?”
Auguste pulled on his shirt and helped her into her chemise. “They’re expensive and drain you of energy. They disappoint you.” A look Camille could not decipher shadowed his face.
“You had one with Rose.” Her jealousy left a vile taste in her mouth. “That old hag you live with.”
“You do not want children of your own, do you?” he asked, giving her a wary look.
She ambled to the worktable near the front window. “I’ve never yearned for children the way my sister always has. My art has consumed me all my life.” She leaned against the sill and stared through the warped glass at the unruly bushes. “A child would only hamper my work and my dreams.”
Auguste came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. “And imagine this world without the beauty Camille Claudel has created.” He shuddered dramatically.
She smiled weakly. “I would be a terrible mother at any rate.”
She heard the movement in the room before she saw it. The clack of heels on wood floor, the rustling of petticoats.
“Get away from him!” A shrill voice sliced the air.
Camille and Auguste spun around to see a woman. Shock painted Auguste’s features. “For God’s sake, Rose! What are you doing here?”
It was she! The woman between them, the woman who kept Auguste from her. Rodin’s lover.
Rose Beuret pointed a pistol directly at Camille. “You filthy prostitute!” she screeched, waving the gun. “He is twice your age!”
“Put the gun down, Rose.” Auguste took a step toward her. “Jesus, do you want to go to jail?”
“He uses you.” Rose stepped closer. “And he will discard you like he has the rest.”
“He loves me because I’m nothing like you,” Camille said in a steely tone. “I understand his passion. I am his passion. And you—you’re nothing but a mother to him!”
Auguste lunged at Rose. The pop of the fired gun sent Camille to her knees. She scrambled behind a worktable for cover.
“He’s mine! Do you hear me? Mine!” Rose sobbed.
Camille hunkered lower to the floor, heaving in gasps of air. The woman had lost her mind. But now, at long last, Auguste must choose. Relief mingled with fear in the pit of her stomach.
Another shot was fired. A bullet ricocheted off something metallic, then a bust exploded, sending chunks of hardened clay in every direction. Auguste grabbed Rose’s arm. She flailed about and her elbow smashed him hard in the nose. He stumbled backward, blood oozing down his face.
A male figure barged through the front door. “Put down your gun!” a familiar voice called out. Sergeant Alphonse Bertillion stepped into the room, a pistol in hand.
Camille gaped at her former suitor. What was he doing here? She shivered at the uncanny coincidence. Here, in the dilapidated studio of her lover, her former suitor had found her once more, and saved her from un crime passionnel. Fate mocked her. She should have married Bertillion when she had the chance.
“Madame,” Sergeant Bertillion said, “put down your gun or I’ll shoot.”
Rose’s shoulders slumped and she let the gun fall to the floor. “How did you know to follow me?”
“When I saw you exit the omnibus, you gripped something in your bag,” Bertillion said. “Call it intuition, but I have learned to follow a hunch.”
Rose burst into tears. “I am sorry. I—I did not know what I was doing—”
“Nothing happened,” Bertillion said. “That is what matters.”
Camille stood and brushed debris from her chemise. No sense in hiding from him; the sergeant would see her sooner or later.
Bertillion’s eyes widened when he spotted the object of Rose’s scorn.
“Monsieur Bertillion, we meet again.” Camille grinned.
Auguste looked from one to the other, his face set in a mask.
“Mademoiselle Claudel? How is this . . . possible?” The policeman’s eyes never left her face.
Auguste crossed the room and wrapped Camille in a blanket to cover her state of undress. “Are you hurt?” He brushed the hair from her face with a soft hand.
She withered at his touch. “Your lover needs you.”
“Camille—”
She turned her head to the side. “Just go.”
Auguste’s hand dropped to his side in defeat. “Very well, but I will return for you.”
Bertillion cleared his throat. “Will you see this woman home or shall I?”
“I will,” Auguste said. “She is my responsibility.” Rose stuck out her chin, triumphant to be stealing him away.
In an instant, Auguste finished dressing and the trio departed.
Camille collapsed to the floor in defeat, self-disg
ust, and despair. Auguste had chosen Rose again. Camille was nothing but a second choice. Her hand flew to her stomach. She had not even found the right moment to tell him—the washing syringe had not worked this time. She had missed her monthly courses.
Chapter 32
Camille studied her reflection in the framed looking glass on her atelier wall. She appeared the same on the outside: undulating chestnut tresses bulging from their combs, bright eyes, and a weak chin that receded before it should. But she wasn’t the same. She pulled the fabric of her dress flush against her abdomen and placed a hand on her flat stomach. How far would it extend? She could not see herself round and waddling through her studio, lugging blocks of marble with a heavy load around her middle. What would she do with the child?
Fear wrapped around her throat. What would become of her career?
She needed air. She lifted her wool overcoat from the plaster bust where she’d left it. Rodin’s sloping forehead and grizzled brow stared back at her. Those all-seeing eyes, even in plaster, watched her every move.
“Stop watching me,” she snarled.
Camille dashed through the door. A blast of icy air whipped against her face and the bubble of warmth over her frame dissipated. Would Auguste leave her to toil on her own? He had yet to leave the crazy old hag, even after Rose had attempted to shoot her! Despair hit her like an ocean wave, filled the hollow of her chest, her lungs, until she felt as if she would drown. She perched in the doorway of a condemned building and sucked in steadying breaths.
Then it dawned on her—the alternative way Auguste might view her pregnancy. He might be overjoyed. Not for the sake of the child, but to make her dependent on him, a woman at home with a child to raise. She would pose no threat to his own fame and she could never truly leave him. He had impregnated her on purpose!
Fury replaced her despair, and propelled her forward once more. Auguste would love her for a time and then abandon her for his art, chase the next beautiful woman who excited him. Though he wouldn’t have to chase them—they already swarmed his studios to be near the Great Rodin.
Camille stalked past two little girls holding hands and giggling as they skipped in front of their parents. Such a happy family, she thought, as envy radiated through her limbs.
The slick soles of her boots slid on a patch of ice and she pitched forward.
“Steady there.” A man on the street caught her.
She righted herself and glanced briefly at the man. A painter, he toted a tableau under one arm and his supplies in the other. Even as an unknown artist he had a greater chance of success than she did, she thought bitterly. She pulled her coat tighter and continued.
A wayward bicyclist weaved between the pedestrians over the uneven cobblestones. At the last moment he dodged a young boy carrying newspapers. “Watch it!” the paperboy shouted. He pushed his cap out of his eyes and promptly slammed into Camille.
Her hand flew to her stomach. Had he knocked it loose?
“Watch it yourself, you ass!” She huffed and moved around the boy.
The roads widened and became more crowded as she pushed down the street. The faces of the pedestrians melted and their bodies became misshapen blobs of color moving in a stream on either side of her, all a blur but their eyes. Their pupils stood out against their glowing white eyeballs as if they were demons. There it was again—that shift of shape as if the human form was not rigid at all, but pliable clay. Camille ducked into a large doorway, slid to the ground, and covered her eyes. She rocked back and forth. Rocking like Papa in his favorite garden swing, like Paul on the rope dangling from a limb of the giant oak in Villeneuve.
Rocking, rocking, rocking.
Minutes became threads, then wisps of smoke. Camille reached out to catch them, but the image wavered and slipped through her fingers. A sharp metallic rattling came from across the street, so loud she could feel it in her teeth. She covered her ears. The rattling grew louder, cutting through the noise on the street, through the web of confusion and sensations. It split open her sadness. God, how it devoured her head, her heart, her will.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Camille peeked warily through one eye to find its source. A woman’s misshapen form in a tattered dress and shawl sat huddled against a nook where a tavern wall met a café. Her daughter rattled a tin cup of coins.
“Spare some change, madame?” the little girl said to an elegant woman passing. The woman’s gait did not slow and she continued on her way. The little girl’s dirt-smeared face fell and her mother squeezed her hand.
Camille stared on in bleak dismay. She would end up this way—abandoned in the street with her baby. Mother already wanted nothing to do with her, and Papa would be disgusted at her shame.
Dispose of it. You can’t even take care of it yourself. Your baby would only hate you as you do your mother.
A hot current of sorrow piped up her throat and the tears began. How had she let this happen?
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
You ungrateful wretch. Do something! If you don’t, Rodin’s band will hunt for you and kill you both. Go now! Dispose of it, or they will kill you!
Camille shot to her feet in terror. Colors bled into each other and the demon pedestrians continued to stream by her. As they approached, she screeched and turned back in the direction of her apartment. Where was Rodin’s band of men? Home—she must hide where it was quiet and safe. Through a blur of tears and agony, she raced away.
Camille shifted uncomfortably in her bed. Minou repositioned herself in the warm spot in the sheets and curled into a ball next to her. The cat was the only one who was there for her. The procedure had been horrid—far worse than she expected. The catholic pills the doctor had given her, the grinding cramps in her abdomen, and the sharp instrument. Bile bubbled in her throat at the memory. She turned on her side as vomit streamed from her lips and puddled on the floor. She’d done it—she’d rid herself of the threat to her career, saved herself from death.
What threat? Rodin is the threat! Not the child. It is his fault.
She whimpered in pain and exhaustion. The Voice tormented her even now. Where was the relief? It had lied to her! She had saved herself from nothing, from no one. And she loved Auguste—how very much she loved him, in spite of all. Yet where was he? She slipped from bed to clean the mess. He wasn’t there for her. Though she had told him to stay away before, he had never listened, but tracked her like an animal—until now, when she most needed him. Now he avoided her completely.
It’s Rose he wants.
Sweat broke out across her forehead. God, he did want Rose. The desolate truth of her solitude soaked into the hollow inside her and she slid to the floor. A lump of forgotten red clay sat underneath her chair. She dipped it in Minou’s water bowl. A few minutes of reworking the clay between her hands and it regained its moist texture. She put it to her nostrils and inhaled, desperate for the smell of earth, for the memory of Villeneuve’s windswept lands and the wild beauty that had matched her own at one time. What she wouldn’t give to be cradled in the Devil’s rock garden under the moonlight, far from the disillusionment of Paris, from her tattered dreams and the child she would never have. Far from the man who loved her and destroyed her.
Camille dipped the clay into the water again, until the clump became a slick paste. She smeared the red mass on her cheeks and forehead, along her arms. Anything to bring her closer to home, to the time when all was innocence and hope and she did not hate herself. To the time when she knew who she was.
Chapter 33
Auguste sat at his worktable, poring over a sketch of Balzac. He had found a proper model at last with similar build, heavy brow, and the same fleshy lips as the great writer. In fact, the model could be his brother. Now to capture the spirit of the intelligent, legendary man—in one month’s time. Auguste wiped his hand on his smock. It was a ludicrous idea. He would not finish the maquette alone
for months and months. Zola would be furious—furious like Camille.
Somehow he managed to enrage all those who were important in his life at one time or another. He had let Camille down, again. He frowned. He had tried to take care of her; he paid her rent, helped her gain commissions—he loved her with every bit of his strength. He had even sent three different doctors to her door to assess her, but she had refused them all. He didn’t know what else to do, outside of contacting her family. He reshaped the head of the maquette to make it more square. The result made the forehead too elongated. Frustrated, he squished the head between his fingers until it was flattened and unrecognizable. He couldn’t contact the Claudels—not after the scene in Villeneuve. Never mind the fury he would face from sa féroce amie.
He smashed the remainder of the figure and rolled the lump into a ball. Last night Rose had asked him why he didn’t leave her. She had pointed out that he loved Camille, so why bother with her? What had kept him at Rose’s side for so long? He couldn’t say, but it must be love. The thought of Rose no longer being a part of his life after so many years terrified him, made him feel weary and old, cast-off. She was family and to cut her out would be like severing a limb.
Marcel popped his head into the office. “Someone’s here to see you, Monsieur Rodin.”
“Who is it?” he asked.
“The mayor and his wife.”
“I don’t have time for this,” he grumbled. Then he remembered the robust, naked male posing in the central room of the atelier. He scooted quickly from behind his desk and darted into the work space as if his pants were on fire. “Get down!” He motioned to the model. “Quickly, now!”
“Why?” the model asked.
Auguste pulled the naked man down from his pedestal and shoved him behind a block of marble. “Madame Maire must not see you. You’ll scar her eyes.”
Laughter erupted in the studio. The smile that spread over Auguste’s lips felt strangely foreign, but welcome. The model covered the exposed area between his legs.