by M. J. Rose
“My grandmother will never know that I’ve cut it,” I said as I examined myself in the mirror.
“So you are going back to dressing like a fine lady and keeping your studies a secret when you aren’t at school?”
“Yes, for the time being. I’ll set up my studio and keep my paints and clothes here. It’s close enough to school. I need to find the right way to tell her, and she’s quite busy now.”
Julien came over to me, handed me a glass of wine, then stood behind me and pulled all the pins out. “While you’re here, though, you don’t need to be so formal.” He ran his fingers through my hair.
In the mirror I watched his face with wonder. I’d never seen a man’s lust so clearly etched on his visage. Never watched muscles tighten in desire, nor noticed how lips parted, heard how breath quickened; never known how one’s natural scent becomes more exaggerated.
“The wine,” I said, pulling back a little and taking a sip. I couldn’t let him get too close, couldn’t let him touch me again. When he found out that I had no ability to take pleasure from a man, he’d reject me. And I didn’t want that to happen yet.
“Yes, the wine,” he said.
Stepping away, he picked up his glass and drank from it, never taking his eyes off me.
“What an intriguing picture you make, Sandrine. Half woman, half man. Quite fetching.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever called me fetching before.”
I sat down in one of the wooden chairs, and he pulled his over to be nearer to me.
“Your life has been very different from your grandmother’s, hasn’t it?”
“It couldn’t be more different.”
“So she didn’t have a great influence on you?”
“Hardly any influence at all. I visited here once, I think I told you, for a season. And she came to stay with us in New York three or four times. But who she is, what she does, was never really discussed. I knew she was younger and more exotic and beautiful than my other grandmother, or my friends’ grandmothers, but I didn’t really understand that she was a courtesan until shortly before I married.”
“You say that with regret.”
“Knowing my grandmother better might have been a help to me. Perhaps I would not have been so easily talked into marrying if I was more . . .” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does. This isn’t the first time that I’ve seen you come close to explaining your marriage and then retreat.”
“It’s not a worthwhile conversation.”
“If it disturbs you this much, it must be.”
I drank some of the deep, tangy wine. “I’m not able to be a proper wife, so I can’t really fault Benjamin for not being a proper husband.”
“Proper?”
I felt suddenly warm. Taking off my cravat, I laid it on my knee.
Julien was watching me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You are so much more comfortable than you were when I first met you.”
“Well, you were a stranger to me, and you are not one any longer.”
“It’s more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you arrived, you were running away from one thing, and now you are running toward another.”
He was right. I felt it inside of me. Unconsciously, I reached up and touched the necklace around my neck, warm against my skin.
“Those rubies become you; they bring out the color of your lips. I’m glad you didn’t pawn them.”
“How you flatter me, Julien.”
“It’s what I see.”
I felt myself blush. “I’m not quite sure what to do with you.”
“What would you like to do with me?”
What I did then was the most shocking thing I had ever done. More surprising than leaving New York, taking an assumed name, lying to people about who I was; more outrageous than stealing treasures to pawn, or dressing so I appeared more like a man than a woman, or applying to the École; even more astonishing than kissing Julien back when he kissed me.
Unbuttoning my blouse, I slipped out of it. Standing, I pulled my camisole over my head. Bare-breasted, I undid my trousers and stepped out of them and the pantaloons I wore under them. Finally naked, I walked over to Julien.
He had remained seated, and now looked up at me, staring at me. Inside, I felt a gathering and pulsing. Our eyes held for a moment, and then I bent over him, my hair falling into his face, and pressed my lips to his. I was the one who exerted pressure, who slid my tongue in between his smooth teeth, who explored his mouth, who gripped his shoulders and did not let up. Could not let up.
Julien reached up and pulled me down, positioning me so that I was sitting on his lap, maneuvering it without our lips coming apart.
“You’re shaking,” he said softly.
All I could do was nod. Everything I wanted, everything I had come to Paris to find, even if I hadn’t been aware of it, was here in this room. I had to know, was I truly capable of taking hold of it and making it mine?
Julien’s long fingers stroked my skin. Each touch set off trembles down the length of my torso. Little licks of flames dancing on my skin. Was it true? Was I feeling what I’d thought I could never feel?
Whispering my name, he moved his lips to my breasts.
I threw back my head, basking in the sensation that I had never known before: dark violet-and-ruby passion, powerful and dangerous and—most of all—delicious.
Reaching for his shirt, I undid the buttons, pulled it off, and started on his undergarments until I reached flesh and then pressed my breasts to his chest. I had rarely been naked with a man. My husband almost always took me while he was still dressed, hard and fast and rough.
This amazing fire I was feeling where our skin touched was more than I’d been able to imagine. My body was awakening. Every inch of flesh was alive. Every bone inside of me reverberated with the want coursing through me.
Julien lifted me up and, still pressed against me, moved to the daybed and laid me down.
“If I was an artist and painted you the way you look now, every man in Paris would desire you. The expression on your face, in your eyes, is magnificent. You want this as much as I do, don’t you?”
I nodded, not sure how to say it, but the feeling I had, odd as it seemed, was that I wanted him more, much more. That I had spent lifetimes wanting him.
“Hurry,” I said, suddenly impatient.
He shook his head. “No, no hurrying.”
Taking his time, Julien stroked my neck, my arms, my breasts, my stomach, then my thighs. Everywhere but the cleft between my legs. Softly and slowly, so slowly, but never stopping.
Writhing, I tried to move so that his hand would slip to where I wanted it, but he was in control. I arched and moaned. I begged, and even my own begging aroused me. That I could beg, that I was capable of wanting anything this much, made the flames rise.
When he lowered his head and placed his lips on my nether parts, I thought I might explode. Suddenly he stopped and waited. I thrust up toward him, and with a smile, he began again until my insides were dancing to a rhythm I had never known before.
He stopped again just as I had ceased being aware of where I was and what was happening. I opened my eyes to see him standing, loosening his pants, and letting them and his undergarments fall to the floor.
I gasped. Julien’s sinuous body was as beautiful as any of the paintings or sculptures I’d seen in the Louvre. But those weren’t living, breathing, flesh and blood men. I’d never seen a completely naked man before. Certainly never one who was aroused. I’d felt my husband inside of me—quickly and furiously pleasuring himself—but I’d never seen him in those moments and never wanted to. His attentions were just something I had had to endure. Now, I luxuriated in the sight of Julien’s naked body.
>
Slowly, achingly slowly, he lowered himself down on top of me until his whole body was touching my whole body. His lips covered mine, and as he kissed me, he slid inside of me so very, very slowly that I thought I might scream with anticipation. So this was what it felt like to be deeply and perfectly connected. We could not be any more entwined. I was breathing in Julien’s breath, and he was breathing in mine. His body filled the space inside of me completely and utterly.
And then he began to move.
Gently, he pulled out and then just as gently slid back inside. Again. And again. I opened my eyes. Looked at his face suffused with desire. His lips thicker. His skin slicked with perspiration. His eyes shut. His concentration all on the few inches of skin where he lay inside me and I enclosed him.
“Now,” he whispered to me. He said it again and added my name. “Now, Sandrine.” But by then I had lost all sense of who I was or where I was. I was flying through sky; stars were falling around me; I could hear the earth spin and the ocean roar. There was no way I could speak, or even keep thinking. I’d become nothing but sensation.
As everything exploded inside me, while I was still rocking, I thought I smelled the fragrance of roses and burning wood, and I thought I could hear an ever-so-slight hum from the tower’s ancient bells, as if our coming together was making them sway in contentment.
Chapter 14
The next few days brought huge changes. Taking my place among Moreau’s students at the École, I created quite a stir. News had spread quickly that a woman had been admitted and even though I was dressed the same as all the men, wherever I went heads turned.
After class, I would rush back to Maison de La Lune where Julien would be waiting and we would drink wine and make love. Afterward I’d dress in the clothes my grandmother expected to see me in and return to her apartment on rue de las Chaise.
At the end of the week, I arrived home to two pieces of terrible news. Grand-mère’s uncle had died that afternoon, and she had received a telegram from Mr. Lissauer in New York City.
I read it with a shaking hand. Benjamin, the lawyer wrote, had been to visit him again, now demanding information about my father’s family, looking for the names of even distant or estranged relatives who I might have turned to for sanctuary. Mr. Lissauer insisted he knew of none. Benjamin swore to do whatever it took to learn my whereabouts and left the lawyer’s office much aggrieved.
I was trembling by the time I finished reading it. Benjamin’s presence was suddenly there with us in the room, looming large and threatening. Try as I might, I was not sure I believed Grand-mère when she told me that Monsieur Lissauer would never betray my father’s trust in him.
In retrospect, agreeing to go with my grandmother to her uncle’s funeral the next day was a terrible mistake. How did I not realize that the service would sharpen the pain of my father’s death? I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d been so disturbed by the telegram, by the knowledge that my husband had stepped up his hunt for me, I was almost childlike in not wanting to leave my grandmother’s side.
Temple Emanu-El in New York City, which my family occasionally attended, and which was the most famous and elegant in all of Manhattan, was not as grand as the magnificent synagogue on rue Buffault by half. This house of worship was worthy of royalty. Everywhere was gilt and silver, gas lamps and candles. Everywhere, there was a glow, a shimmer. If God existed, and my father and I had never been certain he did, surely he would visit here and be impressed by the home he was offered.
Upstairs in the women’s section of the synagogue, all the mourners reminded me that loss was an inevitable reality. There was no escaping it. There were only ways to push it aside, hide it behind locked doors, but eventually it seeped out, its pain fresh and raw as if it were new.
Buffeted by feelings, I was not sure how I was going to survive the day. Then I remembered Moreau’s lecture about capturing not just the shapes and forms but also the emotion of the body. The most difficult lesson, he said, was learning to draw through pain and with pain.
I pulled a small sketchbook out of my reticule and began to draw the face of a woman mourner who sat in such a way I was able to include some of the architectural elements of the temple.
Grand-mère glanced at me. “What are you doing?” On her face was an expression of deep concern. Almost horror, I thought.
“I’m sorry if you think it’s rude. But it’s so hard to sit here . . . to see all this sadness . . . to think of Papa . . .”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean,” my grandmother said in an annoyed tone of voice. She pointed to my hands.
“I’m just sketching.”
“But why?”
“Why not? I’ve been spending so much time at museums. Everywhere I go there are artists and galleries and talk of this painter and that, and it both interests me and occupies me.”
She was staring at my drawing, and I knew what she was seeing. I knew how good I had become. And far too quickly. In class, the studies I was doing were getting better every day. Boring though they might be—I was just painting the model as she or he stood or sat or lay on the platform—my work was improving daily. Moreau didn’t question it—he had seen the paintings I’d presented as mine, the nude studies I’d taken from the studio. He expected me to excel as my wrist healed. But Julien had been astonished by my progress when I’d showed him what I had done in class. More than once he had asked me if it was really true that I had not been painting all along and just hid it from him. I assured him that I never had studied seriously. And when he asked how I could explain my ability, I told him I couldn’t.
“But if you are doing it here, now, this is no hobby,” Grand-mère said.
“What do you mean?” I asked
“You are obsessed, aren’t you? I’ve seen this affliction. I know about it. She—” My grandmother stopped herself from what she was about to say, paused, and then continued. “No, this is not good for you. I don’t like it, Sandrine. It’s not healthy.”
I was about to argue when the organ music began. I continued sketching, though. Suddenly my pencil was drawing something I wasn’t seeing in front of me but imagining. I’d experienced this twice in class. It had made me excited and afraid then and was having the same effect on me now.
Even though this image was coming from my own mind, it seemed foreign. I was drawing a gaunt creature with large sad eyes, dripping tears that, even though I only had a graphite pencil, I knew were tears of blood. And as I drew, I heard words . . . her ruby-red words flowing . . . flowing like blood . . . as she whispered to me. I understood the words but not their meaning, but I used them as part of the composition, weaving each letter of each word into her long curls, into the fabric of her elaborate skirt.
Finally to love. Finally to end the pain. Finally to find the secrets of my soul.
I was still filling in the garments when my grandmother put one of her gloved hands on the tiny sketchbook, and with her other hand took the pencil from mine and put it in her purse.
“I said enough.”
Staring at her, I dared her to look at me so I could show my displeasure, but she did not. I closed my Sennelier sketchbook and put it back inside my silk bag.
As the music filled the cavernous space, it also reverberated inside of me, the chords making my bones and my insides thrum. When Julien was inside of me, I felt like this, and as I sat there on the cushioned pew, I experienced the same surge of excitement his touch engendered. I was alive. I might not have wanted to be, but I was. The cool blood that used to run through my veins was always hot now. A small look, a gesture, was enough to ignite me. And it wasn’t just Julien who could spark me. In Moreau’s class there were several men who appealed to me. Of course I did not approach them. I tried to keep from even looking at them, but sometimes one would say something or move a certain way, and I’d feel that throb deep inside me and know.
I wondered if it was blasphemous to think such thoughts in shul. Certainly it was brazen.
The cantor ended his song, and the silence alerted me to the rabbi leading us in a prayer, followed by him speaking of the sad occasion that had brought us all there. As his words droned on, staid and expected, I imagined painting this scene: the black-robed, dour rabbi; the upturned faces of the mourners; the shafts of colored light filtering through the stained glass; the glinting silver and gold accoutrements and ornaments.
Moreau was a master at painting this kind of opulence. I didn’t want to copy him, though. Nor did he want me to. There were so many students who did nothing but that. Rather, he had been urging me to find my own painterly vocabulary. I hadn’t yet, but every day it became clearer to me that, once I learned the language of color and line, shadow and shine, I would paint the mystical world that we live in. The penumbras, the mysteries, the secrets behind the obvious. Everything that lay just beyond sight.
In my lap, my fingers twitched as I imagined squeezing yellows and browns and greens onto the palette. Dipping my brush into the luxurious colors. Stroking them onto a canvas just waiting for their embrace.
I longed to paint the faces of the mourners with their angels hovering above them and with the ghosts of their dead looking down on them, wanting to comfort them if only they knew the magical pathways to reach them.
The angels and ghosts were recognizable to me, and yet the people in the pews were strangers. How was that possible? I should have at least thought some of them looked familiar since many of us were related.
After the service we climbed into one of the waiting carriages and set off for the cemetery where my great-great uncle would be interred in what Grand-mère told me was the family mausoleum.
The idea of seeing this edifice excited me for some reason, and I sat perched on the edge of my seat in anticipation. With us were two of Grand-mère’s cousins, elderly sisters who didn’t stop gossiping about family the whole ride. They paid me little heed. They were far more caught up in the drama of how Max had died, in his lover’s bed, and the way he had—most fairly, they thought—left his estate. Only enough to his wife for her to subsist. And why? She had been carrying on an affair de coeur with a married woman, a famous English writer, and the doctor, for all his brilliance, found his wife’s flagrant sexual escapades embarrassing.