by M. J. Rose
I ran my hand down Julien’s thigh. His skin was so warm. I inhaled the smoky maleness of him and wondered if she had smelled it, too.
What was I thinking? Why did I care what she had seen, smelled, thought, wanted? She was gone. I was not.
Careful not to move too abruptly so as not to jiggle the bed, I inched down until my face was even with Julien’s hips and took him into my mouth. I held him like that, barely moving, only putting a little pressure on him with my lips. Not enough to wake him. Just enough to arouse him in his sleep.
Was I in his dream now? Was he dreaming of me as he grew and then grew some more? In his sleep—or was he even still fully asleep?—he began to thrust. I matched his rhythm, letting some of him slip out, then taking him back in deeper. Looking up, I saw his eyes flutter open. A smile played on his lips.
I let go of him. Climbed up and lowered myself down on top of him, all the while watching his beautiful face, thinking that it was a miracle I had found him, that I could open my body to a man, that I could find and experience pleasure after all.
I lifted my hips. Slid down and then again up. My body was one motion of agonizing pleasure. One motion of sliding and rising, sliding and rising. Feeling full, filled . . . I was on fire. Burning up. He was burning me up. He was allowing me to stay in control; he asked for nothing. I ground myself into him, rubbing myself on him. Years of being taken roughly, thoughtlessly, dissolving. Anger at having someone move in me and inflict pain, dissolving. Centuries of waiting, of failing, of longing, dissolving. I was taking him. Grinding, sliding, squeezing, holding, going slow, slower, sliding, rising, slow, slower, sliding, rising. There was no sound but of our skin rubbing. No smells but the fragrant secret scent of my sex and his, mixed with the faint scent of paints. No feeling but those of great, gigantic swells gathering. My world had shrunk to the two of us in this bed in this one room, and I never wanted it to end, yet I urgently wanted to find the end so that I could feel the explosion, find the release, let the gathering go, because the pressure was too great to hold onto for much longer. For any longer. For any longer.
Beneath me Julien began to thrust up harder, with more intensity.
“No,” I whispered. “Not yet.”
I did not want him to change the pace. This was my velvet and silk bejeweled pleasure. This was my streaming light, my diamond-encrusted treasure. My blood, hot and thick, rushed. His was heated to the temperature of a furnace. We were melting metals, and together we would make gold and solve the search for the elusive Elixir of Life.
I had visions that were not mine as I moved on top of Julien. I saw a man who was not him and a woman who was not me. I began to smell their scents, which were not ours, and hear their whispers in voices other than his and mine. What I felt was what she felt. And what Julien felt? I couldn’t be sure.
“No,” I whispered, this time to her. “I don’t want you here. This is mine. I am Sandrine. This is Julien.”
Slide, rise, want, wait, then slow, slowly, slide, rise, want, and wait.
His eyes opened wider. The smile faded from his lips. Whispering, he said my name urgently, like a prayer: “Sandrine.”
“I want you, just you. Just you,” I said.
“You have me.” He knew more than I’d thought he did. “And I want just you”—and as he said it he reached up and grabbed my necklace. He forced his fingers under the rubies and pulled.
“Help me take it off, Sandrine.”
I was sliding up and down on him. The pressure was building. “I can’t.”
“I will.”
He pulled at it harder. The necklace bit into my skin. The way it had when my grandmother had tried to pull it off. It hadn’t come off for her. He pulled harder.
“It won’t come off!” he hissed, frustrated.
But I barely understood what he was saying anymore. And what I did understand didn’t matter to me. I was exploding on top of him. It was a slow-rolling opening. A heated agony of longing. Of yearning. An explosion of promises and possibilities.
And in the midst of it, I knew two things:
Julien had never experienced anything like this with Charlotte, and he was becoming mine in a way that he had never been before.
And I knew that La Lune had found yet one more foothold to help her step into the present and into me.
Chapter 33
I was examining the canvas I had painted the night before. I’d just decided that yes, once finished, this would be my entry to the Salon. I was thinking about what improvements I needed to make when Julien awoke.
I called for the maid to bring us café au lait, and as I sat with him on the bed and ate flaky croissants and drank the scalding coffee, I thought everything was all right. He was studying the painting.
“It seems almost impossible for you to have learned so much so quickly and become so proficient.”
“It seems so to me, too.”
He continued to study the painting.
“You didn’t paint it, did you?”
“What are you suggesting? Someone snuck into the bedroom last night and painted you?” I laughed.
“Isn’t that what you believe?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you believe you are becoming someone else. Taking on a role. Being unduly influenced by a myth. I spoke to Dujols. He came to see me during the week, to pay his respects.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“He told me you had gone back to see him and what you talked about. They are a dangerous group, Sandrine. They know how to stimulate people’s thoughts. There are rumors of black masses and witches’ covens and—”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me and the painting.”
“Dujols told me about the legend . . . about La Lune spending eternity searching for a woman to . . . What did he call it? Oh yes, a woman she can merge with so that she can relive her thwarted love affair and make it turn out all right this time.”
I nodded.
“I reminded him that I’m a rationalist. An atheist. I don’t believe in a god above or a devil below. But he told me there was a way I could prove it. He said La Lune would need to be physically tethered to you in some way for her to incubate. And that no one but you could loosen her grip.”
His eyes moved to my ruby necklace. I put my hands up and hid it from his gaze.
“Is that why you tried to take this off last night?”
He’d failed, though. Did that mean he believed in La Lune now? Would he accept her? Or would he run from me if he thought me possessed? I held my breath, waiting to hear what he was going to say next.
“But you fought me. You wouldn’t let me remove it. Why?”
I let out a breath. So he didn’t believe what Dujols had told him.
“You were hurting me. I pushed you away.”
Julien threw back the sheets. He was naked underneath but didn’t seem to care. He stood, walked over to the window, looked out for a moment, and then turned back to me.
“I love you, Sandrine. All your passions and your aspirations. But you are becoming invested in this myth. You believe this ancestor of yours is helping you with your painting. It’s very understandable. You arrived in Paris aggrieved over your father’s death and your unstable marriage. You were ripe to be influenced. But now it’s time to detach yourself from the fantasy.”
I didn’t know what to say. He’d told me he loved me. But at the same time it sounded as if his affection came with demands.
“You believe that you’re communing with a ghost, don’t you?”
“I’m not certain.”
“I do not believe in ghosts. Or witches. Or demons,” he said.
“I never did either.”
“Before.”
“Before,” I echoed.
“I can’t accept that you
are haunted and that there is a force pushing you to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. That would mean that I wasn’t in love with you but with your demon. That the things about you that make you special are not you but rather attributes of some spirit who has given you these abilities, and at the same time caused havoc around you.”
I reached up and touched the necklace around my neck.
Make of the blood, a stone . . .
What was I supposed to do? All the things Julien was saying he loved about me were her gifts to me. Would he really care for that woman who had come to Paris? She was untalented. Timid. Frigid. But if I didn’t exorcise La Lune, would he stay with me?
“You are who you are. You have talent. It was there all along, but being in Paris triggered it. Yes, it seemed to spring forth miraculously, but it didn’t. It couldn’t. You’ve been working night and day, learning more and more. Your progress is your accomplishment. It’s not some supernatural power changing you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I can help you, but you have to be willing to let go of this fantasy.”
“It’s not a fantasy.”
“There are doctors.”
I shook my head. “I’m not ill.”
But he was looking at me as if I was.
In desperation I offered the only solution I could think of. “I can work with Dujols and the others. There must be methods they can teach me to control—” I was about to say her. Instead I said: “—control what is happening.”
“Dujols is part of the problem. He’s filling your head with this nonsense.” Julien was angry.
“It’s not nonsense. People have died. Things have happened we can’t explain. You are right that I need help, but help from people who understand this for what it is.”
“It is irrational,” he said.
“It is as old as the Bible,” I responded.
“It is fearmongering and mythology.”
I went to him and put my hands in his. He lifted my hands to his cheeks and kept them there for a minute. He was so tender with me that it hurt my heart.
“Let me take you to Dr. Blanche,” he said softly.
I pulled my hand away. “You think I’m crazy?”
“I told you, I think you need help.”
“I can’t go back to the way I was.”
“There is nothing wrong with the way you were. You are the way you were. This is you. The other thing is only in your mind.”
I felt La Lune there with me, trying to help. After all, she had a stake in this, too. She had done so much to get Julien and me to this point. My grandmother was in an asylum. Cousin Jacob and Charlotte were dead.
For the first time since I’d come to Paris, I wished I were not there. Not faced with this untenable conundrum: accept Julien’s help, banish La Lune, and become someone he might not love, or fight him, hold on to La Lune, and lose myself.
I smelled violets, and the scent nauseated me. Her anger swirled around me, crimson, purple, and stinking of flowers and sulfur.
I was on the verge of losing the very thing she wanted, but the only sure way to keep it was to let her go.
“Please, Sandrine, please let me take you to see Dr. Blanche.”
“To be locked up like my grandmother? I said no. I am not mad!”
He let go of my hands, turned from me, and dressed without saying another word.
Before he left, he stood at the door for a moment and gave me the saddest smile I’d ever seen. “When you are ready to be rational and let me help you find a doctor, you know where to find me.”
And then he walked out of my bedroom, leaving me alone with the glorious painting of him and a ghost who was, at that moment, as lost as I was.
Chapter 34
I returned to school a day later, bringing Moreau the paintings that he’d requested. He assessed them quickly and said he was satisfied that I’d painted them.
That was because I had.
These weren’t the paintings I’d showed him that first day but copies—close enough to the originals to look familiar, but at the same time done in my hand.
Did he know I’d tricked him?
Now, looking back, I think he did, for he assessed them in seconds and seemed relieved to move on and discuss that day’s work.
I watched Serge watching Moreau, his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed. Was he that frightened of my talent that he would sabotage me? More than ten thousand artists submitted paintings to the Salon. Thousands competed for a prize. What difference did one more make?
After class, I tried to visit my grandmother but was not allowed in by orders from the doctor. It seemed my visits impeded her improvement too greatly. I went home and spent the rest of the day and night and then the rest of the week miserable, missing Julien, confused as to what to do next, and trying to distract myself by working on my Sleeping Cupid.
On Wednesday of the following week, a package with a label from a jeweler on rue Royale awaited me when I came home from school. Opening the fine leather box, I found a single luminous pink pearl hanging from a ruby station necklace.
Sandrine— Are you ready to exchange her necklace for mine? I miss you. —Julien
I fingered the smooth pearl. I wanted him back. Wanted to be with him. Should I submit to seeing a doctor? Would Dr. Blanche even agree to help me?
I put the necklace away and went to Passy.
Sitting across the desk from Dr. Blanche, fully prepared to discuss La Lune with him, I found I couldn’t speak. Every time I started to explain what had brought me there, I began to cough. I felt as if La Lune was inside of me, tickling my throat and holding my lips closed. I wondered if they looked bloodless to him, like the lips of the women in the paintings.
They couldn’t speak to tell their stories either.
Embarrassed and frustrated, I croaked out a question about my grandmother. I told him I was unhappy at not being able to see her and wanted to know why he was keeping me away. And I was. I had never been so alone in my life. Maison de la Lune echoed with my footsteps, and I felt as empty as the house.
I left Passy dejected and returned to rue des Saints-Pères.
The painting of Julien became the only thing that mattered to me and, other than attending classes, my only interaction with the outside world. I worked almost nonstop preparing my submission for the École. I’d come to believe that if Sleeping Cupid was accepted, Julien would come to the opening and see the painting and accept me as I was. Both the dark and the light of me.
The morning of March 1, I awoke from nightmares with a feeling of dread. It was the day submissions were due for the 1894 Salon. After dressing, I went to the studio to prepare Sleeping Cupid for the walk to the École.
The bell tower was in shadows. Without any sun shining through the windows, an atmosphere of melancholy clung to the pillows and coverlet on the daybed. It seemed to be sitting in the chairs, adhering to the walls. The only light came from the portrait sitting on the easel in the middle of the space.
Julien Duplessi depicted as an adult male Cupid. Julien’s body, his face, but with an angel’s iridescent feather wings. An erotic otherworldly creature. Luminous and shining. Long torso, longer legs, and between them, the partially erect proof of his arousing dream.
A nude painted of lust, painted in lust. It was provocative, to be sure. Too much so? Moreau would be surprised. I had brought a sketch of Leda and the Swan to his atelier, and he’d approved that. But I knew she didn’t have the chance that Cupid did. More than ten thousand paintings would be submitted, and only three thousand would be chosen. Of those, only a handful would be anointed. To be one of them, a painting not only had to be superlative; it had to stand out.
The entrance to the school was crowded with throngs of painters all dropping off their paintings on this one day. I stood on line, not seeing any of my clas
smates until I made my way inside. A group of them had already been through the line and were watching the goings-on from the sidelines.
Gaston saw me first, came over and told me that after I was done they’d be at La Palette if I wanted to join them.
“All year leading up to one day,” he said, shaking his head. “We deserve to get good and drunk.”
He cocked his head toward my covered canvas. “Are you pleased with how Leda turned out?”
“I’m too nervous to know.”
“That’s how I felt, too,” he said. “May I see?”
Before I could refuse, he lifted up the cloth and after a moment emitted a long slow whistle. “Now, what’s this? Not the painting you’ve been working on.”
“No, I thought this would have more of a chance.”
I was too nervous to ask him what he thought of it. But I didn’t have to. He told me.
“Are you out of your mind?” Gaston asked.
“I’d say far more clever than mad.” Serge had come over to see my painting and eyed it with disdain. “Played a trick on all of us, didn’t you, Sandrine? Pretended you were doing something tame and cautious while all the while planning a shock like this.” He paused as he stepped back to examine it from a greater distance. Other students noticed what was going on and gathered round, all examining my submission, talking and whispering among themselves.
“It’s perverse and decadent. And they will reject it,” Serge predicted. “Women are not allowed to paint male nudes. Not one has ever been accepted. And being Moreau’s darling won’t make any difference. You wasted your chance.”
I thought I detected a smile.
“Unless the committee is in the mood to prove one century is ending and the future is upon us,” Gaston said hopefully.
Other students came and went, reacting with shock and scorn. Other than Gaston, no one had a kind work to say.
Had I made a mistake? Would the committee reject my painting without even judging it simply based on its subject matter? No matter, it was too late to do anything about it.