‘That’s very generous, darling,’ said Mum in a voice completely different to before. ‘But wouldn’t you prefer to spend your money moving somewhere a bit nicer? A bit safer?’
‘Or maybe change jobs? You could earn less but do something you like.’ Dad took every chance he got to jab Hana about her job.
‘I’m fine where I am for now, work-wise. And you know I love my place.’
Hana explained the program. ‘And the exchange kids are from all around the world – not just Aussie kids. It’s kind of the luck of the draw where in the country you get placed, but even if you’re in a little hick town there’s still opportunities to travel. And apparently your language skills will take right off.’
‘And how do you know so much about it?’ Dad asked.
‘There’s a family scholarship that’s allied with my company,’ she said, dismissively, with a classic Hana flap of the hand. ‘Don’t you remember how much I wanted to go on exchange? I’d like to give Sofie that chance. If she wants to, of course.’
I remember when she wanted to go. I was little, and the idea of her going away for months and months was terrifying, but also a little bit thrilling. I’d never known you could leave your family and have adventures by yourself.
Mum smooshed Hana into a hug. ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t go.’
Hana wriggled free. ‘Get off. It’s fine.’ Turning to me, she asked, ‘So what do you think?’
I was thinking so many things. ‘Don’t you want to use your money to travel yourself?’
Hana shrugged. ‘I’ll get around to it. Don’t think about the money. With the scholarship it’s really not going to be that bad. I want to help you. And you’ve got a year or whatever to save up. Sell more cards or get a job.’
I could do those things, I thought.
Croissants.
The Eiffel Tower.
The Louvre!
THE MUSÉE D’ORSAY.
I couldn’t get ‘yes’ out fast enough.
And now here I am. At the Musée d’Orsay.
I tell Delphine this story and she is interested in my sister. She asks questions about Hana in that very polite, non-invasive French way. ‘What does your sister study? Oh, she has finished university? She’s fortunate to have found such a good job. Do you get along well together, in spite of the age difference?’
The French are very private people. We’ve learned this in class (I think it was even part of last year’s assignment on French society). They have over 400 official cheeses, and they don’t like to overstep boundaries. They kiss near-strangers hello, but rarely invite people into their homes unless they’re very good friends.
We have to wait in the Musée d’Orsay line for about twenty minutes, but between Delphine’s questions and my stories it doesn’t feel too long. Then we are in. I gaze around, and you’d think I’d be used to this by now: seeing something with my very own eyes that up until now I’ve seen only in photos, my textbooks and on the internet. But no.
‘Is there something that you particularly want to see?’ asks Delphine.
But I am seeing everything already. This magnificent building! The white stone, the arched glass roof curving overhead. The high, high ceilings of this place that houses some of the most extraordinary art pieces of all time. Truly, everyone knows these pieces: Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Gauguin.
It feels like walking into a church. I am reverent.
‘I don’t know where to go first,’ I say.
Delphine moves around the space with confidence – she knows where to point me so I can find specific paintings I want to see. We glide about together, moving around the other museum-goers and their many languages and interests and so many people taking photos. I take photos.
There is a special exhibition called Renoir père et fils. Peinture et cinéma.
There’s Pierre-August Renoir, the Impressionist painter.
Then his son, Jean Renoir, the cinematographer.
‘I didn’t know they were related,’ I say. ‘I suppose I should have worked it out.’
The idyllic country scenes in the movies and the paintings make me long for springtime and for the creek back home. It is magical and romantic – full of light and whimsy.
‘Do you paint?’ I ask Delphine. Perhaps art is passed down within families.
‘No, no,’ she says. ‘Just piano. And even then …’ She stifles something of a sigh.
I want to know more about this girl.
Here, in front of Pierre-August’s paintings, I realise where the spark for my daydreams may have originated. The white dresses on the girls and women in his paintings. The dappled light – how does he make that effect? I wonder, and get up as close as I can.
But Delphine’s reaction isn’t the same as mine. Her nose goes into the air as she observes the artwork. ‘All these paintings, all these artworks. Made by men looking at women,’ she says. ‘The women aren’t involved; they’re just for looking at.’
I’m not sure how to respond. It wasn’t my reaction – but I feel like maybe there is something, some kind of truth, nudging me. Her comment makes me think about Crow. Delphine obviously isn’t waiting for a response though, and we walk on, leaving père and fils behind, and I think I’m finally starting to understand the meaning of the ‘male gaze’.
We see Degas’s ballerinas. The colours and the brushstrokes are so familiar, but the full excited feeling inside me just grows and bubbles as we walk around the gallery. Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet and Monet and Van Gogh too.
‘I’ve seen paintings like these before,’ I say. ‘Exhibitions in Melbourne, you know.’
But I am looking at them with a new eye, somehow. Delphine’s criticism is astute, and it’s woken something up inside my brain. We look at Toulouse-Lautrec’s pencil and oil and pastel sketches of Moulin Rouge dancers and women in the brothels.
‘It makes you think about the lives lived and exploited, doesn’t it?’ I say.
‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ says Delphine. ‘These pictures are both sexy and grotesque.’
What was he trying to tell us with this work, and how should we feel about it? Like Delphine, I feel conflicted. But maybe in a good way. A way that will affect how I approach my own art. Why this piece? What’s my perspective? My bias? What am I trying to say?
‘Thank you,’ I say to Delphine. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me here.’
‘It’s no problem,’ she replies lightly.
But I’m actually worried that I might start to cry. My mind is spinning, my world is expanding – how could I have considered leaving and going back to the place I’ve always known like the back of my hand?
I feel my sense of adventure and quest for beauty revived. As we return home, even Belleville doesn’t seem so ugly. It feels familiar, like the way people become better looking over time, as you get to know them.
Still, I plan to have a big cry in bed tonight, a big cry of relief and of exhaustion and of being overwhelmed with how lucky I am and how beautiful things can be.
I think I’m beginning to love this real version of Paris that I’m slowly getting to know. Or at least, I am starting to understand it better.
I begin to enjoy school as I immerse myself in the projects and challenges of my Arts Plastiques classes. They are like a soothing balm four times a week. Even though the words are foreign, I speak the language of pencil (le crayon), paintbrush (le pinceau) and canvas (la toile).
At school people are rough and loud – the voices hammer and echo off the concrete walls of the soulless courtyard when we stand around on break, shoving our hands into the pockets of our jackets.
Léa turns out to be really funny, and she is unstoppable with her eagerness to speak English with me, even though I still feel frustrated wanting to speak French. I have this idea that by speaking French I will become French – I will be
come sophisticated and worldly and an object of romance … but Léa wants to speak English. People ask her to ask me questions, and we all get to know each other in translation. I love listening to the way she makes mistakes.
I’m not sure it’s equally as endearing when I make errors in French, though perhaps them laughing and correcting me isn’t a reason to stop trying. But it does stop me trying.
But the atelier! In between classes I can go there and work on a drawing or look through the paints to make plans. There are often people around, but everyone is busy, and it feels like a productive but calm place to be.
The hours of school here are so different to back home. Sometimes I don’t start until 10 am, but other times I have to get up early and go to school in the dim morning light for an 8.30 am class. I’ll have an hour of Histoire-Géo and then have two hours free before Maths. Then the canteen for lunch.
Sometimes Léa drags me out to a café with one or more of her friends, where we sit shivering while they have coffee and smoke cigarettes, and I just hope no-one notices that I don’t order anything.
In French un café is a coffee. Un café is also a café, like the coffee shop. Context is everything.
One afternoon we are in the café with a café, the sky icy blue above us. I’m wearing an oversized scarf I’d found at an op shop back home, and feel so much like I belong that I accidentally echo Léa’s order of ‘un petit café’ without thinking. Léa is texting her boyfriend, and I am assuming a confident air while doodling in my sketchbook to pass the time – when who should come sauntering along the road but Olivier, alongside Amandine, and they sit down at the table right next to us.
I (privately) swoon. A magnificent oh là là rolls off his tongue, and it doesn’t sound affected or put on. I have an image of myself at some point in my Parisian future – my perfect hair, perfectly red-painted lips: oh là là – flitting off in a cloud of Chanel towards the metro.
Olivier lights his cigarette like he should be advertising them. He catches me looking at him (argh!), so I have to speak.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi, Sofie,’ he says. He turns his head to blow smoke away.
And, because I don’t quite know how to continue the conversation, I slowly bring my tiny coffee cup to my mouth, but hesitate before sipping, self-consciously. I look at Olivier, my mind flicking over and over with possible questions and not landing on any.
I wet my lips again with coffee. It tastes bitter, but leaves a somehow-sweet flavour.
A waiter comes over and greets Olivier with enthusiasm, shaking his hand – ‘Quoi de neuf?’ What’s new? – and starts a conversation that I can’t follow, just a few words snatched here and there.
I pull my attention away, to see Amandine leafing casually through my sketchbook, although when she notices me looking, she places it quickly back on my table. I pretend not to mind that she was peeping.
‘Have you thought about your piece for the exhibition yet, Amandine?’ I know already that Amandine is interested in sculpture and Cubism and using oversized house-painting brushes in her work. Véronique would, I’m sure, want me to take note of the freedom of Amandine’s lines.
‘Not yet,’ she says, taking a cigarette and offering me one. I shake my head.
Suddenly Léa lurches forward, reaching out to touch Amandine on the arm and speaking in a rush. Her words are so fast that I can’t make out their meaning, but it’s clearly an important piece of news. Amandine leans forward too and they mutter between themselves. But it’s not rude, somehow, and I just try to assume a detached air of confidence and ennui. The conversation will come back around again.
Olivier seems happy to sit and smoke; he seems comfortable with not being an active part of a conversation. I relax into my chair and let the girls’ chatter flow around me. I pretend (with flair) that I too am comfortable not being an active part of a conversation. Really, it’s just that I understand about fifty per cent of what is going on.
There are old men garbling at the next table, and the waiters are having a chat by the door, and it all washes through my ears as though I am underwater. I spot an elderly lady browsing over some endives at the fruit and vegetable shop across the road. Just one week ago I hadn’t even known what an endive was. But then Claudette served up an endive salad (I’m starting to get used to having dinner at 9 pm now – it’s very weird and wonderful), and the flavour was so new on my tongue that I wanted to spit it out. But when the meal was over, I had somehow grown to enjoy the fresh peppery taste.
‘Do you have a piece of paper?’ asks Olivier. There’s laughter in him, making his body looser, and I feel myself growing excited and – uh oh – a bit of silliness coming on. Crow and I are often silly, though less and less as we get older. I miss it.
He takes the piece of paper and hunches his shoulders over it, hiding it from us as he draws. I both want to watch his hands and to be surprised with what he comes up with.
After a few minutes he makes a fold in the paper, lifts his head up – his brown eyes lovely and dark and laughing – and hands it to Amandine. The fold covers nearly all of his picture, just some lines spearing below the fold to show where his beginning ends.
‘It is le cadavre exquis – the exquisite corpse game,’ Olivier explains to me, while Amandine starts sketching on to the paper, a small private smile on her face. ‘Each person just has a tiny hint to what might come next.’
I know this game. Crow and I played it often as children, mostly with silly stories. You write a line or two, leave a hint word or two showing, and then someone else continues the tale. We would cry with laughter at the nonsense we came up with. Like the story that began with a demure little girl called Crow who liked to eat the souls of racists, visited Paris with a fox, brought down civilisations using only an HB pencil, and wound up queen of the garbage dump with a teapot for a crown.
The page is handed to me. Amandine passes me a pen and I admire (and envy!) her perfect fingernails for just a moment, before turning my attention to the task.
I assume my bit is the belly. Olivier took the head, Amandine probably the shoulders. So I’ve got the guts, and I feel pressure to make it fascinating. I want to be sure to elevate what’s come before. How do I be both funny and talented? Amandine’s clues for me are two thick, rough points peeking from beneath the fold. I draw a round, fluffy tummy – I’m panicking because I started drawing before I thought about it.
‘And I’m the feet?’ Léa asks as I hand her the paper. She hardly pauses before she begins to draw. She finishes the final segment by swiping her pen across the paper at the bottom with a flourish. ‘And this is why I don’t take les Arts Plastiques!’ she says, laughing.
Olivier takes the paper and unfolds it, taking time to look at it himself, before turning it around. His eyes dart across the page, lingering on one part, then the next, then scanning the whole. ‘Thank you, everyone, and congratulations on a magnificent work,’ he says, laughing.
‘Fais voir?’ I say. I’ve learned this means ‘Let me see’.
‘This is too funny,’ says Amandine in her becoming-familiar monotone, letting the piece of paper drop back to the table.
I am happy our creation is more funny than monstrous. I would not call it exquisite, but Frankenstein would feel jealous at how well our corpse goes together. The head of a beautiful woman, her eyes closed, a crown of flowers, and narrow, naked shoulders leading down to a feathered torso – maybe bird-like? A prehistoric bird chest with jagged wings stretching out. My little chubby possum tummy, with its brush tail. Léa’s contribution is sexy lady legs and a pair of fabulous 1970s platform shoes.
When I smile over at Olivier, he smiles back and winks quickly. Sometimes a wink can seem threatening, but this is conspiratorial, like we are somehow in it together. But what is it? I feel seen by him. I feel beautiful when he looks at me.
I haven’t ever felt like this
. I feel obsessed with his face. Could he look at me the same way? He has to! How is a crush supposed to feel? I feel crushed – heavy with expectation and dizzy with fighting against gravity. I feel magnetised.
A few days later, my Arts Plastiques class meets on the forecourt of the Centre Pompidou for an on-the-ground art lesson after school. I’ve got my sketchbook, my fine-liners and my pencils. I don’t quite have a handle on keeping my crush under control.
Olivier is sitting on a step, reading a book called L’Être et le Néant – Being and Nothingness. It has a black and white photograph of a man on the back cover.
‘I never knew that Jean-Paul Sartre had a lazy eye,’ I say, in English.
He looks up from the page, with a quizzical glance, and I smile at him. He smiles back and I bloom a little inside.
Véronique leads us into the gallery, past Chagalls and Kandinskys and even Duchamps, to a painting of a woman in a green dress. She gives us our day’s lesson – to create an art deco portrait in the style of Tamara de Lempicka. Then she sets us working with a wave of her hand.
I settle onto a bench and start sketching. I usually draw in my natural, preferred style, but it is good and challenging to try to improve my technique, and to imitate another artist’s style. The women in De Lempicka’s pieces have the most wonderful eyes. I am quickly absorbed. I only half see Olivier flick his curls away and barely notice his cheekbone when he does so.
My phone vibrates with a message and I swipe it open without putting down my pencil.
Are you OK? It’s from Mum. Then another: Reply to this RIGHT AWAY.
I stare for a bit and try to think of reasons I might not be okay, and why she needs to know so urgently. It’s 2 am at home.
I’m ok, I type. Why? What are you doing up?
While I watch the three dots go, another message beeps. It’s Crow. Shit Sof, tell me you’re ok! There is a link as well.
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