The Last Summer of the World

by Emily Mitchell

  He goes to the back door of the studio and lets himself in. The large main room is quiet and empty. It is filled with the hooded shapes of statues, covered in white sheeting and tied, so they look like big clumsy ghosts, their outlines muted by the white billows enclosing them. He likes the way the room looks full of these strange, soft shapes. I must ask him if I can photograph these when they are covered, as well as in the flesh, Edward thinks. In the flesh. Would that be the correct expression for a figure made of marble or bronze?

  Rodin and his guest must be in the smaller room at the other end where he keeps his models in rows of glass-fronted cabinets. Edward makes his way across the wooden floor that wheezes under his weight. At the door to the other room, he pauses for a moment. Then he pushes it open and steps inside.

  On the floor between two of the cabinets, Rodin and a young woman are making love. They have taken some of the spare sheeting from the studio and laid it beneath them so that it forms a nest for their bodies. Their moving limbs have made circular ripples in the sheet’s smooth surface; it furrows around them like the impression of a stone dropped in water. From where Edward is standing, he can see Rodin’s great back, still clad in his customary linen work shirt, and his bare hindquarters. He can see the face of the woman framed in dark hair, her eyes dreamy, half-closed, and, just visible beneath Rodin’s arm, one lovely white breast.

  They are so absorbed in what they are doing that they don’t notice that he has entered the room, and Edward remains where he is, rooted to the spot, afraid to move for fear of making the noise that will alert them to his presence. The woman stretches and pulls herself up, letting out a little gasp of pleasure. As she does so, her eyes click over toward the door and suddenly they are on him. He feels his insides turn over in a mixture of terror and embarrassment. He expects that she will scream, or try to hide, curl up under the massive barrel body of the man above her. And then, what? Rage, banishment, humiliation. He has no idea what will happen next.

  But the woman neither flinches nor cries out. She watches him for a moment, with an expression that is curious but not upset, and maybe a little amused. Then she looks back to her lover, reaches up and slides her arms more tightly around his torso, and Edward feels himself vanish from her mind entirely. Freed as though from a spell, he steps backward and out of the room in a single pace, pulling the door closed behind him.

  After that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Confusion alone carries him back across the studio and out into the garden. He starts to circle the house but then halts, changes his mind and heads instead out into the pathways of the flower garden. He doesn’t want to see Rose right now; he doesn’t want to see anyone. He sits down on the bench in the lowest level of the garden. It is the same one where he’d waited three years ago when he’d first come here, nervously hoping for an audience. He leans against its wooden back and closes his eyes.

  Of course he has heard about Rodin’s affairs. It would have been impossible to avoid the rumors that followed the sculptor around constantly, linking his name with this woman or that one, whispered at dinner parties and implied in the society pages of Le Figaro. Edward has never had any reason to believe or disbelieve them either way—he and Rodin have never in their years of acquaintance had any reason to speak of such things. So to suddenly have such, well, vivid proof is a little bewildering. Edward doesn’t know if he should leave or go back into the house and make some excuse to Rose, say that he couldn’t get into the studio after all, although that would sound patently ridiculous, he knows. And anyway, how could he bring himself to look her in the face? At this moment, he has no idea how he should act, what he should do. He is off the maps of behavior he has known all his life, and all the more so because the woman (who must of course be Isadora Duncan) did not react with shame or fright but merely with a calm sort of pleasure that reached toward him and took him in almost as though he were meant to see this …

  “There you are!” The round gong of Rodin’s voice comes from the path above and behind him. It makes him jump; he hadn’t been expecting to be disturbed, nor to be greeted quite so jovially. “I have been looking for you.” Rodin comes down the steps and shakes his hand. He is smiling broadly and there is no sign of awkwardness or suspicion in his manner.

  “I let myself in …” Edward says, and then realizes that this is the wrong thing to say. “That is, the front gate. I found it open.”

  “Well, I am glad you are here. You must come and meet my charming visitor. Mademoiselle Duncan, the dancer. And then I have some new models in clay that I have to show you.”

  “I …” Edward tries to think of a way he can get out of this, but none comes to mind. He pulls back instinctively, his mind racing.

  “Come along, dear boy.” Rodin is insistent. “Mademoiselle Duncan is sitting inside with Madame. I’m sure you will take to each other.”

  “She’s with Rose?”

  “Yes, yes.” And he sets off toward the house with those great solid strides of his, leaving Edward nothing to do but trail after him, shaking his head in bewilderment that everything should seem to be so entirely normal.

  So this is how it unfolds. From this moment on, the visit occurs exactly as one might expect. When they reach the house, Rose and Isadora are sitting in the front parlor, and if there has been any strangeness between them, it is erased by Rose’s courteous attentions to all of them, her readiness to converse or to smile consolingly when her English fails or when Isadora’s French (which is poor) does the same. Edward watches her, talking and listening, as she rises to bring their lunch to the table, or to pour each of them some more wine. He can detect no sign of the blustery sadness that had so overwhelmed her when he found her in the greenhouse just a little while earlier. She seems to be in good spirits and calm, and perhaps it is only because he knows her well that he thinks she is being a little more friendly, a little more polite, than usual. If there is anything troubling her, no one could tell.

  Rodin, too, talks enthusiastically with Edward about his new commissions—for a set of doors based on Dante’s Inferno. He has just begun planning them. He will use certain of the figures he has already modeled for other works and, he has decided, he will include a self-portrait in the bottom left-hand corner—something he has never done before—just to see if anyone notices. He laughs at this, delighted by the idea. He tells stories and is solicitous and gentle to Rose. He calls her sweetheart, lays his hand on top of hers on the tablecloth in a quiet gesture of affection.

  And Isadora: she is full of such an intense energy that when she asks him a question, even a simple one, he feels that his answer is tremendously important.

  “What was the first photograph you ever took?” she asks him. “I mean the very, very first one.”

  “My sister,” he says. “Dancing. In my parents’ garden in Milwaukee.”

  “Oh, it must have been beautiful. I wish I could see it right now. I think the loveliest art is made by free instinct, when we aren’t scared by too much thinking and tradition. Don’t you agree, Mr. Steichen? You must agree.”

  She is absolutely uninhibited, he thinks; Clara would have said she was too loud; “vulgar,” that’s the word she would have used if she were here, but she isn’t and he finds himself increasingly relieved about that. Clara would not have liked Isadora at all, he thinks. And heaven knows what she would have made of the scene in … he blushes thinking of it. But he likes Isadora. He likes her very much. There is a gravity and a grace to her, a physical beauty that is its own engine, entirely self-possessed.

  Gradually, the upside-down feeling leaves him. Here he is having lunch with his friends and nothing seems out of the ordinary. What he saw in the studio feels like he must have dreamt it, because how can it be part of this world where they sit and eat and drink coffee and then go for a walk around the edge of the property to take the air after lunch? It seems to have been cut neatly out of the flow of reality. If he wanted to, he could forget it entirely.

  Rose and I
sadora go down to look at the view from the bottom of the garden, and Rodin stays with Edward, smoking his pipe and pacing slowly along the stone paths.

  “She is a marvelous girl,” he says meditatively.

  “Yes,” Edward says, “she is very charming.” Rodin nods but doesn’t say anything and so he goes on: “I saw her dance with her troop in London. It was unusual …”

  “No, no,” Rodin says. “I don’t mean Isadora. I was referring to Madame, to Rose. I am so grateful to her, I don’t know what I would do without her.” Edward stares at him, not knowing how to reply. Rodin stops and turns to him.

  “You were surprised, I think, this afternoon.” It is the first time that he has given Edward any indication that he was aware of his presence in the studio earlier. “You were a little shocked.” Edward looks at Rodin, expecting to see anger, opprobrium, in his face, a stern warning. But Rodin looks unfazed. He is pulling on his pipe slowly, and the sweet smell of burning tobacco hovers around them.

  “I …” Edward starts, but finds he has nothing at all to say.

  “It is all right, you know. I am not annoyed, though I wouldn’t wish to make that a regular occurrence.” He chuckles, takes another draw from his pipe. “Two in the room, that is plenty. Well, usually.” He chuckles again. Then he turns to Edward, his face serious now. He puts a hand on his arm to make sure he is paying special attention.

  “The body,” he says, “is not a thing to be afraid of. It is not something to hide from, to hem in with rules and regulations. You have to listen to it, use the energy of its needs for your work. Yes? As an artist, your body is part of your work, not outside it.” He tugs on Edward’s sleeve to emphasize this. “Even,” he continues, and there is the laughing glint in his eye, “if you are a photographer.

  “If you try to stifle the body, ignore its urges, you will never find your full power. Your work will be diminished, because you will not be experiencing the world to the fullest extent that you are able. I say this to you because I feel you very often pulling yourself back into the conventional life, the bourgeois life. I see these restrictions you place on yourself; they show in your work. This is how it is with Americans—always there is that wonderful energy choked off by a concern for morality. But you must learn to ignore the old restrictions and move toward what is new, what your senses can discover. Do you understand?”

  Edward is bowled over by this. He has never seen Rodin so insistent, so directly concerned with the way he lives his life. In general, they have discussed only the art that they produce and they have spoken of it as the product of their conscious intentions; not as the fruit of their whole lives. It is thrilling to have this man, his hero, speaking to him with the earnestness of a father imparting wisdom to his son. “I think I understand,” he says, although he isn’t sure this is true.

  “Good,” Rodin says. He is looking out now at where the hill slopes away down toward Paris. The late afternoon light is beginning to turn to evening around them. The trees and the stone walks subside into shadow. Below them, Rose and Isadora are walking along the perimeter of the property. “That is why I praise Madame to you. That is why I say she is so marvelous—because she understands this perfectly.”

  Edward watches the women make their way across the grass. They stop when they realize they are being watched. Isadora waves, and Rose smiles and nods.

  “She understands,” Rodin repeats, “and in this, she is very much unlike most other women.” Edward is silent. “You are thinking of your own wife, yes?” Edward nods. “It isn’t easy, you know, I am not saying it is easy. But she must understand that you need freedom more than anything else. Otherwise, your work will suffer. Does she understand this need for absolute freedom? I am not sure.”

  Now the women are walking back up toward them, picking their way slowly across the lawn in the growing gloom, and their conversation is cut short, but he cannot stop thinking about what Rodin has said, even as Isadora takes his arm and asks him more of her fiery questions. Does Clara understand his needs as an artist? As a man? He isn’t sure, for though she took him back after what happened three years ago with Kathleen Bruce, it was only amid his protestations of regret and penitence; it was only with his promises that it would never, ever happen again. But perhaps he has been thinking about this backward: perhaps he shouldn’t have to apologize for simply following the promptings of his senses. Perhaps it was not the desire that was wrong; perhaps it was the shame.

  Isadora by his side seems to sense his distraction and looks up at him, and he sees that same wide, gently amused expression that he recognizes from when she saw him standing frozen in the studio door. He feels her communicating a sense of conspiratorial delight. He finds himself smiling despite himself, and then they are both giggling, their faces close to each other, suspending their secret between them.

  “How stricken you looked!” she whispers, and this sets them off giggling again. This is how it can be, he thinks, love can be given and received freely without possessiveness or jealousy or the suffering that we place on it artificially. How different this is from what he has known before. How much he still has to learn.

  When it is time for Edward to take the train back into the city, Rodin suggests that he accompany Miss Duncan to where she is staying. He walks with them to the gate. He kisses Isadora’s hand. Then he embraces them both warmly.

  “You will come back again soon, to see us,” he states rather than asks.

  “Make certain she gets home safely,” Rodin says to Edward as he closes the gate. They set off toward the station, and Edward feels as though he is on the edge of something dark, exciting and mysterious. A universe where none of the tiresome, restrictive rules apply, where his actions will be as weightless as they are in dreams. He does not have to do very much to break the glass that separates him from this. All he has to do, in fact, is to reach up and gently run his fingers along the line of Isadora’s cheekbone, like so.

  SIX

  June 16, 1918

  NOW THE MORNINGS came over the horizon as clear and as terrifyingly empty as diamonds, with skies so uniformly blue that Edward felt blind if he stared up into them for too long. The men flew out to the front each day at dawn with their cameras and cases of plates. The planes would go one by one, moving into lateral formation in the air. They would fly toward the lines, tracing parallel routes, so that each piece of ground could be recorded twice for the stereoscope; they swept up as far as Montdidier in the west and down beyond Reims and Souain to the south and east. They shot from a high altitude, making a map of the war’s crooked frontier. Edward was relieved to find that, once they began work, the men learned quickly how to take useful photographs, how to time their exposures, how to spot artillery from the air. He went up on the morning runs in Captain McIntyre’s plane.

  The pilots they flew with were pleasant, boisterous, in love with flight. They were new to the war; they had just come from the training school at Issoudun and before that from Kansas, Maine, Georgia; they believed in the cause, in Liberty. They cracked jokes as they strode out to their planes; they stunted for fun, turning illicit loops above the airfield; they buzzed official cars or army buildings or sometimes herds of terrified cattle if nothing else was available, then rode off into the sky with impunity.

  Those first two weeks at Épernay were mostly uneventful. The reconnaissance planes were not attacked, except by antiaircraft fire. Allied control of the air kept them safe; the Germans, as Cundall had said, rarely engaged in a fight. Edward would see a Pfalz or an Albatros across the lines, sometimes groups of them, patrolling at a lower altitude. But they just turned and flew away.

  Gilles Marchand was allowed to join Photo Section 4 under Lieutenant Dawson, and the men adopted him as a kind of mascot. They mispronounced his name so it sounded like “congeals,” but if he minded, he didn’t show it. They would ask him the French for obscene words and he would reply with a perfectly straight face while they fell about laughing. They tried to repeat what he said in thei
r round, careless accents: Mayored. Space de saloud. Fairmee yer booch, he overheard Kelsey say, or I’ll fairmee it for you. They called each other coach ons. They taught Marchand to play poker.

  Edward saw him after his first morning flight.

  “How do you like it, then?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Flying.”

  Gilles paused, considering, his face grave.

  “Flying,” he said, “is the most marvelous thing I have ever done.”

  Edward’s days became absorbed with flight; developing the morning’s exposures; making prints, then sending them out along the lines; writing up intelligence reports for headquarters at Chaumont. They didn’t seem able to find conclusive evidence of the direction of the coming German advance, and this began, as the days progressed, to worry him. Sometimes he would wake up early in the morning, moving from anxious sleep to lying awake, his mind tracing and retracing the intelligence from the previous day. When this happened, he got up, put on clothes and walked over to the laboratory. He let himself in and stood over the table where they’d laid out a photomosaic of the front. He stared at it, trying to drag some meaning from the scrawls of roads and rivers, the stands of trees like clustered bruises. He wrote notes: Troop movements to section five, near Vaux. Rotation or reinforcements? Extra canteens; additional traffic to supply depot.

  During these sleepless hours, he thought often of Marion Beckett. She played in his head like a song heard too many times, at once compelling and maddening. To find her there, and to have that intense flash of familiarity, and then to be cut off from her, made him restlessly unhappy. He found that the physical facts of her came back to him suddenly and uninvited: her face, drawn with tiredness; her hair pulled up off the nape of her neck; the way her hands moved steadily as she administered morphine to the patient on the bed. He started to write to her several times. He always broke off, though, crumpled up the paper and threw it away, mindful of the prohibition she’d placed on correspondence and uncertain of exactly what he wanted to say.