The Witch of Painted Sorrows (The Daughters of La Lune)

by M. J. Rose

  Hurried and determined students—wearing smocks and coats, long hair, most with whiskers, carrying boxes of paints or rolls of architectural drawings—crisscrossed the courtyard beyond the gates. I walked among them, my heart beating fast. I was mesmerized by the activity and the architecture. Inside the building the floors were marble. Gleaming gilt columns held up the high ceiling. The walls were covered in paintings. Sculptures loomed. I imagined all the great artists who had stood here and gone through this very process.

  After encountering some trouble following the directions, I eventually navigated the last long hallway, which smelled of tobacco and turpentine, and found the office I was searching for.

  The clerk behind the desk, a dour-faced man with skin as gray as his hair and beard, asked if he could help me. I explained I wanted to apply.

  “But this is not the correct office,” he said with a sigh as if he answered this question far too many times a day and had no time for it anymore.

  “But I asked at the gate.”

  “Why didn’t you stay at the gate with the others until it was time?”

  “Others?”

  “Didn’t you see the other models?”

  I had, but what did they have to do with me?

  “Ah, no,” I said. “I’m not here to apply for the position of model. I wanted to find out about applying to the school. I want to study painting.”

  He shook his head and looked at me with disdain. “We don’t accept students in the middle of the semester, but Mademoiselle, even if we did, women cannot study at the École.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What don’t you understand? It’s quite simple. We don’t have female students.”

  At the Art Students League in New York City, men and women studied together. Was it really possible that here in Paris women could not attend the École? There were so many fine female painters in Paris—Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès. Did none of them attend classes here? Did none of them teach here?

  He must have taken pity on me, for he gave me a half-smile and said, “There are many good painters who take female students at their ateliers. I can offer some names.” He glanced at my empty hands and frowned. “But of course, you cannot just appear and ask to join without a portfolio. You will need to show your work.”

  It was a gray, chilly day, the clouds hung low over Paris, and I had nowhere to go. Restless, I walked by the Seine. Just being inside the school had intensified my desire to paint. I could still smell the turpentine and feel the energy of those students. I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to study there. I felt, as odd as it was, as if my future happiness depended on it. But what choice did I have? If I wanted to study, it would have to be privately. And I did want to study.

  Even on that cold morning, walking by the river, I was already seeing the world around me differently, the way a painter would see it. Breaking the sky up into patches of colors, I noticed impressions of light and shadow. I examined the people who walked by as forms, and the negative shapes between them jumped out as spaces to be dealt with.

  You will need to show your work.

  But I had no work. I remembered that sad little watercolor I had tried to paint for my father when I was younger. That had been a pastime, not a passion. Now I felt the desire to stand in front of a canvas and explore the world through the stroke of a brush oozing color.

  I did not go back to the apartment on rue de la Chaise but rather to Maison de la Lune. Maybe there were paints in the tower studio that I could use and try to do something good enough to get me admitted into one of those ateliers the clerk had told me about.

  As I let the hand of fate drop on the outside of the door, I remembered that I had seen Monsieur Duplessi leave with my grandmother earlier. He wouldn’t be here. Disappointed, I was just turning to leave when I heard the door open behind me.

  “Oh, hello,” he said.

  I turned. He was smiling.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, almost out of breath, clearly not in the slightest surprised that I had appeared without prearrangement.

  “Why? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “We left the door to the tower studio unlocked, did we not?”

  I nodded.

  “I went back just a little while ago to take inventory, and it was locked again. But no one has been here but me.”

  I’d followed him inside, and we were standing in the foyer.

  “Are you chilled? I can make you some coffee. It’s about time for me to take a break.”

  It was almost as if this was his house and I was the visitor. I said I would like some, and as we walked to the kitchen, I offered a suggestion: “Maybe my grandmother locked it. She comes in the morning to let you in, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, but she doesn’t usually go upstairs.”

  I wondered if my grandmother had found out—or somehow sensed—that I’d been in the attic and had come earlier than Monsieur Duplessi specifically to relock the door. She had that uncanny skill—her capacité, my father had called it—to know things that had happened or would be happening without being told. Like in the restaurant when she’d told me to get up just before the rock had been thrown through the window.

  When I’d asked my father more about her capacité, he’d laughed and said legend had it she had some witch’s blood in her and that must be how she could foretell the future.

  But what if she knew I’d found the studio? What would she do? My grandmother seemed so determined not to tell me about La Lune—surely the studio was La Lune’s world.

  “Did you tell her I’ve been here?” I asked.

  “No, I honored your request, but still don’t understand why you’d want to keep it a secret.”

  “Was she already here this morning when you arrived?” I asked.

  “No, I was first, and was quite uncomfortable waiting in the rain, if you must know, so as soon as she did arrive, we went to the locksmith and had a key made for me. She said she finds it tedious to have to come just to let me in, and that I shouldn’t plan on seeing her until I’ve finished taking inventory and am having the plans drawn up.”

  “Perhaps the key to the front door will work on the bell tower studio.”

  He poured the hot water over the coffee grounds, and a marvelous aroma filled the kitchen.

  “I doubt it. The front door is a double-acting pin tumbler lock, which was only invented about a hundred years ago. The lock on the tower door dates back at least a hundred years before that and is much simpler.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m an architect and trained to notice details.”

  When we were done with our coffee, I suggested we try the door with the key anyway. As we walked through the empty mansion, he told me that he’d hoped I’d be back today even before he discovered the locked door.

  “Why is that?”

  He seemed surprised by my question, as if it were normal for him to hope I’d return. After a moment, he said, “I enjoyed your company. And I was worried about you. You seemed so upset yesterday when you left.”

  “I was frightened.”

  “Because of the dates on the paintings?”

  “Yes, the dates were disturbing, but . . .” I couldn’t finish. How could I explain that what had scared me away were the feelings he’d stirred in me?

  “Was it something I said?” He’d stopped just as we were about to ascend the main staircase and turned to me. “I hope I didn’t offend you in some manner.”

  In the hours since I’d been here, I hadn’t quite been able to remember the shade of his eyes. They were more black than green, the color of evergreen trees in a thick forest. How would you mix up the right colors and hues on canvas to capture their gleam? I’d been wrong about the slant of his cheekbones, too. They were more exaggerated than I’d recalled
. The hollows beneath them, deeper. The desire to paint him overwhelmed me. I understood neither its scope nor its persistence.

  I shook my head. “No, it was nothing you said.”

  Continuing up the grand staircase, we passed the gallery of family portraits.

  “This is an odd collection of paintings, isn’t it?” Monsieur Duplessi asked.

  “It’s funny how you can see something all the time and never ­really focus on it,” I said. “I’ve never spent much time looking at them. They were all courtesans. Did you know that? Is that why you think it’s an odd collection?”

  We’d stopped and were examining them.

  “No, not at all. It’s that, looking at the dates on the plaques, it’s clear they span centuries, but all of them seem to be painted by the same hand. I wonder if someone re-created older portraits. And how do you think they became damaged in the same way?” he asked.

  “Damaged?”

  He pointed to first one and then the next.

  “I’d gotten so used to them, I forgot how they must look to someone seeing them anew.”

  The damage was indeed curious. Each of the ladies’ lips were unfinished and pale, with bits of bare canvas showing through.

  “When I was a little girl,” I told him, “I always thought it was because they’d been kissed too many times.”

  He laughed, and his eyes became less black and more green. “How charming. You must have been quite a precocious little girl who got into all kinds of trouble.”

  I had a sudden image of Leon and myself in the servants’ quarters and felt my cheeks flush. I ducked my head down and continued up the stairs, past Monsieur Duplessi, hoping he would not notice my embarrassment.

  Even before we reached the tower’s heavy wooden door, I recognized the same aroma I’d sniffed at the École earlier that day. It was an artist’s scent: oil paints, turpentine, and linseed oil mixed with the same scent of violets I’d smelled downstairs the other day. How could the smell of the paints and old flowers still be vital after so many years?

  We reached the top of the steps and stood facing the large carved door.

  “Why don’t you just try the key anyway?” I asked.

  He did but the lock didn’t release.

  “Let me try,” I said. The metal door handle was icy, and as I held it with my left hand, I inserted the key with my right and jiggled it.

  I felt the pins move.

  “It’s opening,” I said.

  What I didn’t say was that, as I held it, the doorknob was warming. Perhaps it was simply a sensitive metal responding to my body temperature. But it was a very odd sensation.

  “I don’t understand. I just did that,” Monsieur Duplessi said.

  “Maybe . . .” I didn’t know what to say. He had; I’d watched him. But the door had not opened for him. Only for me.

  “Well anyway, now we know the same key works on both doors,” I said, and handed it back to him as I stepped inside the room. “The locksmith must have been asked to create a lock for the front door that used the same basic configuration as this one, but more complicated. Is that possible?”

  Monsieur Duplessi followed me in. “I suppose so. Possible but not logical.”

  “And you prefer logic?”

  “I’m an architect.”

  “You’re also an artist,” I said. “I think that sometimes art defies logic.”

  “You may be right, but in architecture logic is important or the buildings we build wouldn’t remain upright.”

  I opened the louvers and let in the light and the fresh air.

  “There is something different about it here today,” I said.

  “So you believe your grandmother did come up here since we visited?”

  “I’m not sure. Does it feel different to you?”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  I didn’t know how to explain it, but the room seemed to have come alive since we had been here. As if it wasn’t holding its breath anymore.

  “I wanted to inventory the canvases. What was your reason for wanting to come back here?” Monsieur Duplessi asked.

  “I’ve decided to take art lessons while I am in Paris, but to be admitted, I need to show samples.” I took a jar off a shelf and opened it. Inside was the most gorgeous blue color, like the whole evening sky turned into powder. “I hoped I could use these supplies to paint some samples.”

  Cabinets were filled with dozens of bottles of pigments and oils. Canvases stacked against one another covered the lower half of the wall. Containers held paintbrushes in every size.

  “Surely everything I need is here. If I only knew how to mix paints.” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

  “Monsieur Sennelier’s store is not far from here. He has premixed paint in tubes. All the artists buy from him. I can walk you over and introduce you.”

  But how could I buy anything? I’d spent most of the little money I’d brought with me from America and couldn’t use credit in a store where I was not yet known. I could ask my grandmother for some spending money—but that could mean I’d have to tell her about my plan. I didn’t know why but was sure she’d be against my taking lessons.

  I dropped down on the bed, my excitement and enthusiasm evaporating. I put my head in my hands. My plan suddenly seemed impossible.

  Monsieur Duplessi pulled up a chair and sat opposite me.

  “What is wrong?”

  “My father always said that I was curious and impulsive. One trait would help more than it harmed. The other would do exactly the opposite.”

  “And which is it that is bothering you now? Your curiosity or your impulsiveness?”

  His eyes were lively, and he seemed interested in my dilemma. I didn’t mind explaining about the money and the other issues.

  “So I haven’t really thought everything through. And there are so many obstacles in my path. Even if I could get the money, what I want is to study at the École, but they don’t take women. I know I can take private classes, but I don’t want to. I have to be at the École.”

  I knew I sounded like a petulant child.

  “Why does that matter so much to you?”

  “I don’t know. But it does. I just have a sense . . .” I stopped, afraid for the moment to reveal what I was thinking.

  “What kind of sense?”

  “Do you believe in destiny?”

  An uncomfortable worry appeared in his eyes.

  “I’m not certain. Perhaps I do but wish I did not.”

  I laughed. “A strange answer.”

  “Some of my clients put great faith in things like destiny, and we’ve had our share of disagreements over it.”

  “My father and I used to talk about fate as a philosophical construct, my father coming down against predeterminism, although it fascinated him. I agreed and, until coming to Paris, never sensed that anything that was happening to me was predestined.”

  “But since you’ve come to Paris?”

  “I feel as if I’m following a path that is somehow inevitable. Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I’m not much of a believer in religion, the mysterious, or the esoteric. It makes me uncomfortable to think there are other forces operating that we have no control over. I can accept nature as a force I can’t control, but psychics, séances, and ghosts?” He shook his head. “I don’t even believe in God, which is not a stance as revolutionary here in France as I believe it is in America. I think that’s why I like architecture. It’s A plus B equals C. It’s all based on the laws of physics and engineering. One draws up plans, purchases wood, stone, tiles . . . mixes the concrete and the plaster . . . hires the men to build it, and voilà.”

  “But there’s inspiration, isn’t there?”

  “Ah, yes, divine inspiration.” He laughed. “No, inspi
ration isn’t magic; it’s discipline. If you develop your powers of observation, ideas are all around you. Really studying just one tree can inspire my designs for an entire house, inside and out.”

  I was still seated on the daybed, and Monsieur Duplessi was still in the chair he’d pulled up, facing me. Behind him was an old mirror spotted with mercury. When I glanced into it, he was all I could see, sitting there, his back in the mirror. I wasn’t visible at all; his form obscured me. So it looked as if he were all alone, a man alone in the tower.

  I knew how I could attend the École.

  I got up off the bed, ran over to the north wall, and began riffling through the stacks of paintings.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “You studied at the École, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, I did.”

  “Do you know anyone there who might make an exception and let someone in even though the new session has started?”

  “I know many people there, yes. But you can’t study there, Mademoiselle Verlaine.”

  “I’m a woman, I know. But I have a plan.”

  I continued sifting through the canvases. I needed ones that were not too finished. That someone might believe had been painted by a student. I was searching for early portraits of the man painted by LL before her style was fully developed, when she still wasn’t very proficient.

  I lined that side of the room with a half dozen portraits of the man I believed was Cherubino—painted, I thought, by the courtesan La Lune. After brushing the dust off my skirts, I stepped back and examined them. Monsieur Duplessi joined me.

  “What are you going to do with these paintings?”

  “The student you are going to introduce to the admissions office is going to present them as samples.”

  “Even if you could convince them to accept you, what will happen when you start to paint and can’t reach this level of accomplishment?” He pointed to the portraits. “Do you know how to paint at all?”

  “I took both drawing and painting at finishing school. My teachers always told me I had talent, but I was too impatient . . . until now.”

  “But can you come close to this level of achievement? My credibility is at stake. Introducing you to these men is serious business.”