by M. J. Rose
“A male lover,” one of the cousins said, “wouldn’t have bothered Max a bit. But a woman? Well, that implied far too much about him.”
As we walked through the rows of graves at the cemetery, I began to see things that could not be there. Or perhaps I was just composing a horror painting in my mind’s eye and, because of my grief, believed I was seeing it.
The people beneath the graves, skeletons wearing shrouds, were celebrating our arrival. A burial wasn’t a sorrowful occasion for them. Welcoming a loved one to the underworld was a happy event. Most of the ghouls’ faces were largely intact; only bits of flesh had rotted away to reveal bone.
One ghoul, who I somehow knew was Max’s first wife, even though no one had mentioned he’d been married before, stood apart from the pack. She had lustrous black hair and glowing blue eyes that dripped pearl tears that pooled at her feet as she joyously waited for the father of her babies to join her.
Small children who had died far too early scampered up to her, stealing the pearls, stringing them on sinew they pulled from their bones so they could make wigs of them. Soon all the imps were wearing elaborate hair dressings of pure white or pink-tinged pearls. The scene shone with their glow.
The graveside service was long, and when it was over, I hoped we would leave hastily. I wanted to return home so I could sketch out my vision, but my grandmother insisted we stay so she might introduce me to the rabbi, Jacob Richter, another of my cousins.
“I am so sorry for your recent loss,” he said. “Your father and I were very close growing up. I loved him like a brother.” Taking my hand, he held it to his chest. For a moment, he gazed into my face as if searching for something.
Then he frowned.
My grandmother never missed an expression, a gesture, a mood, or a fleeting thought that passed over someone’s face.
“Is something wrong, Jacob?” she asked.
He ignored her and leaned closer to me. “Have you been well, Sandrine?”
“Well?”
“Since coming to Paris, how have you slept? Have you been having disturbing dreams?”
How did he know? I’d told Julien about the dreams but not that they’d returned.
I backed away a bit so that it seemed the rabbi was pulling me. I let go of his hand and stumbled.
“You’re in touch with a troubled spirit, aren’t you?” he asked. “She’s showing you her realm. We must find out why.”
“No, no . . . I don’t know what you mean.”
“The dreams you are having may not be yours but hers,” he said, in such a low voice I wasn’t sure my grandmother could hear him.
I sensed he was trying to be compassionate, but he was frightening me, and I just shook my head. “No, no.”
My grandmother spoke. “Since Sandrine’s father so recently died, whatever disturbance you sense is her grief.”
“Is your father’s passing all that is troubling you?” he asked me. “Or is there something else?”
“Do the souls here today stay here? Are they trapped here?” I asked the question that had been bothering me.
“What are you talking about, Sandrine? You sound mad,” my grandmother exclaimed.
“It’s all right, Eva,” the rabbi said to her. “Her question makes sense to me.” He looked back at me. “You know, it’s forbidden for women to study the Kabala.”
“I never studied the Kabala. I just want to know if the souls are trapped here.”
“Are you saying you haven’t read it?”
It was as if a door inside my mind opened and information came flooding in. The way it did when I painted. One moment I would be looking at a white canvas, and the next I would see an entire composition in my mind.
“I haven’t read it, no. My father did, and we discussed certain parts, but nothing about what I’ve seen here today.”
“If you would like, we can meet to talk about what is troubling you,” he offered.
“Her father died, that’s what is troubling her.” Grand-mère seemed determined to assign her own meaning and explanation to my conversation with the rabbi.
Ignoring my grandmother, the rabbi continued to hold my gaze. “Have you been finding new interests?”
I said nothing, but my grandmother answered: “She’s sketching.”
Part of me wanted to laugh. Of all the things I was doing, sketching was the most benign and least radical.
“Are you feeling things with more intensity?” the rabbi continued his questioning.
I didn’t answer, but I felt my cheeks flush. Suddenly, standing there in the cemetery in front of the large mausoleum with its lovely stained glass windows, I was actually experiencing Julien’s lips on mine, and the gathering and pulsing that was so new to me still, started up deep inside me.
Beside me, my grandmother became even more agitated. “What is it, Jacob? What do all these questions mean? What are you suggesting?”
Ignoring her still, he asked me if I was able to sleep.
I told him I was.
“And when you are awake, are your thoughts your own?”
“What do you mean?” My grandmother’s voice was raised. Had anyone from the mourning party still been present, it would have been most embarrassing. “It’s not possible, Jacob. These things don’t exist.”
The rabbi turned to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Eva. I can help her.”
She brushed off his hand. “No, this is rubbish. Nonsense. Old-fashioned fairy tales. We are living in an age of science and reason. There are no ghosts. No demons. People are not possessed by spirits from the past.”
I stared at her. What was she saying? The rabbi had not mentioned any such thing to me. But that was what his questions meant, wasn’t it? And my answers, even if I had not voiced them out loud, suggested they certainly did exist, and I was being haunted by one.
Chapter 15
“The modeling here is heavy, Mademoiselle Verlaine. And too light here.”
“Yes, I see.”
Monsieur Moreau stood beside me, studying my canvas. Per the assignment, I’d been painting the female nude posing on the podium, but in my composition had positioned her in blue-black darkness. Lurking in the shadows, I’d sketched in some of the angelic creatures I’d seen hovering over the tombstones in the cemetery. One of them, a male with wings, was about to swoop down on her.
“You’ve lost some of the figure’s dimensionality, and she’s too flat around the calves and ankles. But I’m pleased to see a style emerging.” He stepped back and peered at my painting from another angle. “Yes, it’s an interesting and atmospheric vision.” He looked away from the canvas to me. “You are impatient, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I think I am.”
“ ‘Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near’?” he said, quoting the well-known Andrew Marvell poem. “You’re young and have years of painting ahead of you. What is your rush?”
I couldn’t tell the maître that I had another life and that I might not be able to remain in Paris for long enough to soak up all the knowledge he had to impart. Just that morning my grandmother had shown me yet another telegram from Mr. Lissauer. This one coming only a week after the last.
According to the lawyer, Benjamin had hired a detective agency to find me. Once again I mentally retraced my steps. Had I left any clues in Southampton? My passage to Calais couldn’t have been recorded; I had paid for my ferry ticket with cash, not a bank note, and had not been asked to offer any form of identification. But surely there were people who’d seen me on the boat. Or on the train from Calais to Paris later that day. Would they be able to identify me if shown my portrait?
No, I might not be able to stay and study with Moreau indefinitely. I might not have years of painting ahead of me. Nothing was certain; events were unfolding and changing so rapidly that I couldn’t be sure the
center, as I knew it, would hold. But I couldn’t say that to my teacher, so instead I said: “I am trying to make up for all the time I lost after my accident when I couldn’t paint.”
“Understandable,” Moreau said, “but may I suggest you slow down while in class. Improved technique will lead to refinement of style.”
“I’ll try, of course.”
“If you want to increase our time together, you might think about joining my atelier. Is that something that you would like to do?”
“I would be honored.”
Moreau only asked a few students to join him at his studio, and I had only dared to dream I’d be invited into the inner circle that included Desvallières, du Gardier, Matisse, Rouault, and Maxence.
“We meet two nights a week, and the work we do there is a commitment in addition to what we do in our classes here. The address is 14 rue de la Rochefoucauld.” He was about to move on. Then turned back. “The Old Masters had a very specific technique using a strong contrast between light and dark to give the illusion of three-dimensionality . . . I see that seventeenth-century chiaroscuro in your work, and I like it. I didn’t think they were teaching that at the art school in New York. Very few painters still use it. Is it part of the regular curriculum?”
I was stumped. I had no idea. I had to come up with an answer. He was waiting. “Not usually, no. When I tried to copy techniques I’d seen at the Metropolitan Museum in the Caravaggios my father and I enjoyed so much, my teacher gave me special instruction.”
It was a lie. But what else could I have said? I wasn’t aware of how I’d learned anything that I was able to do with paints and brushes on canvas. Yes, Cherubino and La Lune had employed chiaroscuro to give their paintings depth, but how could I have learned it from artists who’d been dead for over two centuries?
“You’re a very exciting student, Mademoiselle. Your compositions are still slightly awkward, your color sense could be more refined, but your vision is provocative and very curious. You show great promise.”
He walked away, and I picked up my brush and continued working on the woman’s form. Why was I so afraid of the future? I could write Mr. Lissauer and ask him if there was a way to start divorce proceedings while I remained in France. Regardless of the social stigma, there was no question I needed to end my marriage. If I could sell my father’s house in Newport and the mansion on Fifth Avenue, both of which had been left to me directly, I’d have more than enough money to remain in Paris, buy a small house, and have my own studio. Like Mary Cassatt, Sandrine Jeanette Verlaine could be an American painting in Paris. Once I had my own home, I wouldn’t need my grandmother’s help or even her consent to live my own life the way I wanted.
Our conversations since the funeral the previous week had been stilted. She was convinced I was troubled, hated that I had taken up drawing, was certain I was being affected negatively by being in Paris, and wanted me to consult with her cousin the rabbi.
I refused. Her theories about me were rubbish. I was certain that when I told him, Julien would agree. Being possessed by a demon was a nonsensical concept invited by overactive imaginations. But Julien wasn’t there to concur. He’d left the day of my cousin’s funeral to travel to his hometown of Nancy to oversee several suites of furniture his uncle was creating for a house on the exclusive Avenue Hoche in the 8th arrondissement.
When the class ended that day, a few of the students whom I had gotten to know invited me to join them at the café around the corner. Since my grandmother would be dining with the count and I’d told her I was spending the evening with my imaginary visitor from America, I was free.
At La Palette our group included Gaston Billet, who was gentle and quiet but painted boldly and with fervor; Maurice Soubrelle, an aesthete and intellectual who frustrated Moreau with questions that our teacher said were better left to critics than creators; and Serge Mouton. I had the hardest time with Serge, who was often lewd and always smelled of beer, but his paintings were glorious and full of colors that made me want to get lost in them. I never could reconcile his personality with his beautiful canvases. He was two different people—the artist who was a marvel and the man who was often appalling and unappealing.
“Lillian’s skin today glowed like a peach,” Gaston said when we were seated and the wine had been served. He was blond and had pale blue eyes that he blinked a bit too often.
“She’s the toast of the art school,” Maurice said. He was a bit of a dandy, always dressed better than everyone else, and wore a lemon-scented pomade in his hair. “But very aloof,” he added.
Serge laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.” A big man, he took up more space than anyone else. I was surprised he didn’t break the wineglass when he touched it.
It was a strange phenomenon, but when I was dressed in my art school garb, the others weren’t circumspect with me the way they would have been had I been in a dress and all the finery that went with it. I was one of them, a fellow artist, and it made me fearless. Freedom, when you’ve never really known it, is exhilarating. I found it liberating not to wait for someone to help me with doors or offer to carry my packages, and to be able to say anything I pleased without worrying about being considered unladylike.
“Don’t worry, when we get to male models, we’ll tease you, too, Sandrine,” Gaston said.
“Do you prefer them fair or dark?” Serge asked.
“As long as they don’t look like you, I’ll be happy,” I answered.
They laughed.
“You prefer someone handsome then?” Maurice joked at Serge’s expense, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Tomas,” Gaston said. “That’s who she’ll like.”
“No, she’ll go for Alexander,” Serge said.
“Why Alexander?” I asked.
Gaston told me: “Serge is attempting humor. Alexander is an ancient man, about eighty, with a long Methuselah beard and a cane.”
“I hope Moreau keeps Lillian a bit longer,” Maurice said.
“Yes, yes, she’s quite an eyeful. But it’s clear she’s not interested in artists,” Serge told me.
“So you’ve all tried?” I asked.
“We all have,” Serge said. “She may look hot, but when it comes to art students, she’s a cold fish.”
“Maybe it’s just that you all have cold hands,” I said, and rubbed my palms together as if to start a fire.
After more laughter, more wine, and a plate of cheese, the conversation turned to our work and our teacher.
“You know what the author Huysmans wrote about Moreau, don’t you?” Maurice asked me.
I told him I didn’t.
“He called him an extraordinary and unique artist and said he was ‘a mystic locked up in the middle of Paris in a cell.’ And that nothing from everyday life penetrates that cloister.” Opening his sketchbook, he riffled through the pages. “I have more of the quote: ‘Thrown in ecstasy, he sees the resplendent fairy-like visions, the apotheoses of other times.’ ”
“Some say he’s our greatest living painter,” said Gaston. “You’ll see if you join the atelier. He has two hundred paintings he’s working on at one time.” Gaston paused. “He’s changed since his wife died.”
“They were never married,” Maurice corrected.
“No one knows very much about her,” Serge said. “But Gaston is right. Since she died, he’s become even more obsessed with painting Orpheus and Eurydice.”
“How poignant that he keeps painting the story of soul mates over and over,” I said.
“There’s a rumor that he is part of a secret society,” Maurice whispered.
“Who in Paris isn’t part of a secret society?” Gaston said, and then quaffed what was left of his wine.
“I heard he met with Delacroix when he was younger,” Maurice continued. “And Delacroix was linked with the secret Angelic Society made up of artists who rece
ived visions of angels who aided them in their art. It’s always been rumored Delacroix introduced and inducted Moreau into the society.”
“Does the society still exist?” I asked.
“Are you interested in joining?” Gaston asked.
“From the looks of your work you already belong,” Serge added under his breath.
I blushed then, which I hated. None of the other students blushed when given compliments. I resolved to accept commendations the way men did. Why did women think they had to be demure when they were praised?
“I could use a little angelic intervention,” Serge said, “to help me get into the Salon. I wasn’t accepted last year. But with Moreau as my teacher, I have a better chance this year.”
“Why does having him as a teacher help?” I asked.
“Because Moreau is on the acceptance committee,” Maurice said.
Every student at the École and thousands of artists in Paris—from all over France, in fact—had been working toward the goal of having a painting accepted into the 1894 Salon de la Société des Artistes Français for longer than I had even been in the city. Academic-quality paintings took several months to achieve, and submissions were due at the end of March.
“What did Moreau say about your esquisse?” Gaston asked me. “As you might imagine, the advice he gives about a painter’s sketch is invaluable.”
“I haven’t done a sketch to show him. Even if I knew what I wanted to paint, there’s just not time. And there are so many restrictions to what the Salon would accept from a woman.” I shrugged.
“You’re fast, though. At least try,” Gaston said. “Moreau encourages us to submit portraits, figure studies, or history paintings. You’re excellent with nudes, which take the least amount of time, and a woman can submit a female nude.”