by Amelia Gray
I wonder what life has handed you in the months we have been apart. Did you determine the proper ingress for the bronze? I’m so interested to have a glimpse of your current work, be it sculptural or on canvas or even on the page. I wonder if you are still sketching on the edges of newspapers and if you are, might you do a sketch of me from memory and drop it in the mail? I’m only curious. You might also sketch your view which I am also very curious about.
Business as usual out here. We are all “gearing up” for a solstice celebration and the girls are preparing very amusing costumes. I feel and harbor for you an intense desire that leads me at times to distraction. Would that you might consider joining us for the performance next month, and meanwhile I hope you are finding every comfort in your mother’s home. With affection—E.
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FOR GOD’S SAKE cut reference to intense desire—cut poetic reference—cut invitation—add convivial feeling—add sense of mystery—cut allusions to curiosity—
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R—Can you picture the morning in Darmstadt? It’s all cool air and warm light. There are leaves and quick evenings. It adds mysterious depth to my thoughts. Hopefully your own are progressing. I can early feel the chill of Autumn—E.
* * *
cut allusions to self—
* * *
R—Can you picture the morning in Darmstadt?
* * *
cut allusions to home—
* * *
R—Can you picture the morning?
At Oldway, Paris finds an unlikely guest in his stairwell
A few years back, Paris had gotten wrapped up in the excitement of an exhibition and accidentally funded a new wing at the Louvre. He bought The Coronation of Napoleon, depicting Napoleon at Notre-Dame, raising the crown of the empire over Josephine’s bowed head. Paris had seen the image in a half-size reproduction and felt he had a sense of the piece, but there was such glory in the original, which was revealed to him in the museum’s basement, the piece flanked monumentally by pillars of the ancient fortress, the dim light of the room drawing him closer to the painting itself. The processional cross lifted dead center meant to allude to the spiritual significance, but the real focus was of Josephine in the center, kneeling to receive such power. The whole coronation business looked like a supremely satisfying experience.
It had been a supremely satisfying experience to buy it, too. He felt none of the remorse he usually felt with large purchases, shuddering along with a new car negotiating rough road. With art, at least he knew his money had gone toward the appreciation of sublimity in the world. And at such breadth; spanning six by ten meters, the scene was life-size before him, as if he might only take a step forward and enter the hall. He was pleased with the piece, its size and importance, and it was only once it was delivered to Oldway in a crate hanging off the back of a lorry that Paris worried he might not find pleasure in the work itself. But time would tell.
After some delay he had it hung in the broad empty place on the grand gallery landing, a space on the wall larger than most sitting rooms, which turned out to be the perfect place for a gilt-edged window into the French Revolution. Jacques-Louis David had rendered hundreds of individuals to fill the frame, most of them supposedly recognizable from portraits hanging in various ancestral halls across France. Paris noticed that, while the principal players in the center of the scene were larger than life, the audience members in the dark gallery had been painted at their actual height, which gave him the sense he was standing among mortals in the presence of consecrated gods.
Once the painting was properly set and balanced, Paris began a daily study of it. He decided to observe each face in an orderly fashion, limiting himself to one individual per day with the idea that, by observing the gallery’s varied expressions and moods, eventually he would have a fuller understanding of the work as a whole.
He started with Napoleon. The man extended the crown with an attitude of great power and grace, though with close attention it was possible to see how the angle of his offering matched the painter’s earlier sketches, which featured Napoleon crowning himself.
The next day was spent with Pius VII. The pope was a fair-skinned man who blessed the proceedings with two fingers. This would have been a few years before his exile and a few more before the canonizing event in which he miraculously rose and hovered over an altar, a scene Paris would have very much liked to see. He had once read that Pius VII succumbed to an injury and died after repeating the names of the cities to which he had been exiled by the French. He tried to sense a grimace or sneer in the man’s face in the painting, but the pope seemed resigned to the proceedings more than anything.
After those two, Paris counted one hundred and seventy-five figures, fourteen he knew for certain. Beside Josephine stood her immediate family and Joseph the Prince Imperial. There was Napoleon’s sister, Hortense de Beauharnais, holding the hand of her oldest child, a boy, Napoleon Charles, heir to the throne at five years old. He would be dead before the work was dry. There was the diplomat Talleyrand, and Joachim Murat. And there was Jacques-Louis David, studious over his sketchpad in the back gallery, artists always painting themselves into garrets.
Paris went from right to left, and the weeks passed quite pleasantly until he got stuck on the child, Napoleon Charles. He studied the boy for hours, unable to look away. The painter had gifted him with a strikingly optimistic pose; the boy pulled at his mother’s hand as if he were actually straining to move forward, to walk without delay into a future that was already planning to leave him behind.
He had his mother’s reed of a nose, but otherwise they could have been strangers to each other; actually Hortense bore a closer resemblance to her husband in the foreground than to the child they made together. Paris followed the line of sight, trying to determine if the boy was gazing at the crown or the ladies or Josephine’s opulent gown or something else, Christ on the cross or the Pietà, the corner of which was visible and evoked the rest. He was struck by the thought of observing one work of art within another, the loss of dimension in the transition to canvas, ideas brought to bear by a different mind supported by an entirely different time. It was unsettling to think of how art, like invention, could be altered beyond its initial purpose simply by continuing to exist. Of course a painting could be destroyed, but the psychic damage of a regime change on a piece of art could be far more devastating. He pictured his family’s sewing machines creating the uniforms of whole companies of men at war, the perfect stitched rows of enemy flags.
That wasn’t the only similarity he found between art and invention. Though artists worked hard to elevate themselves—particularly when under commission, as he learned from every overserious painter who worked on his yearly portrait—he saw artists as the same breed as the farmers who came in from their country homes bearing sketches on brown paper for minor improvements to treadle mechanics. Artists and inventors both studied the extant form and found their own part. They were like children as well, watching the game for just a moment before jumping in.
He missed his girls, with their mother in Florida. Sweet Lillie, their mother; he missed her too, in a way. Neither of them had wanted the hassle or humiliation of divorce, and both continued to enjoy a fruitful partnership in truth, with the organization of many households to consider. If Lillie had dreamed of romantic love as a girl, she had long forgotten it by the time she entered into the marital contract with him. She was nothing like Isadora, who once demanded that a sofa be brought to her in a restaurant and, when her request was refused, ruined the entire meal trying to properly pose in a straight-back chair.
The painting began to consume more of his day, and he arranged a small table to be set up on the landing so he could take his meals there. He spent an entire week observing Napoleon Charles, and a second. He arranged the chair before the boy, finding that he could align his observation at the perfect angle for viewing his exact expression. The boy held a plumed hat, which his mother must have made him wear in
to the cathedral but forgot to mind, and in her distraction he slipped it off, exposing his fine curls to the assembled. Paris looked for clues of his impending croup. If he wasn’t already sick, any sign in the painting would mean the artist had foreseen it, observing a little coughing fit during the ceremony, the worried expression of a nurse in the gallery. Those rosy cheeks might have been added after the boy was already dead, an awkward gesture made for his grieving parents.
Paris had always seen himself as a reasonable man, a Catholic in some circles, but with two major differences in opinion: he never picked up the rigorous superstition demanded by the faith, and he had never been able to bring himself to trust in an idea of a heavenly afterlife. Heaven, to him, had always seemed a kind of consolation prize for the living, a place where a glittering reward was promised for a meek and inconsequential life. He hadn’t spent much time considering the question of heaven; the whole thing had a delicate consistency for him, as if the clouds were made from spun sugar.
His feelings changed after the accident. Lately it comforted him to imagine Patrick tottering behind Napoleon Charles as they explored the softer clouds behind celestial pulpits, playing tug of war with golden curtain cords and jabbing at the legs of the ethereal chorus under their robes before settling at the foot of the holy throne for a nap. Paris worried that the boys might have to contend with the flocks of angels, their thousand eyes bearing down in a wind of righteous judgment; he had never discussed the possibility with Patrick and feared in hindsight that he would be unprepared. Deirdre was usually patient with her brother, but the two of them would need someone to help them for those first few ageless decades. Napoleon Charles would be the perfect guide, explaining the thousand horrible eyes in a way that made the whole thing a game, the three of them eternal playmates in a gilded park. Patrick was so used to dancing and music it would all feel like an afternoon recital with better lighting. Paris hoped there would be a pair of sandals to suit his feet, and someone to ensure that he was served the food he liked. Most of all, he hoped that the boy wouldn’t miss his home, wouldn’t long for any of them in the way they longed for him, startling awake at night to remember his absence. It would be a major design flaw on the part of heaven if you arrived at last only to miss the poor mortals below.
Easing himself from his chair, Paris came to stand close to the painting, crouching to come face to face with Napoleon Charles. He was trying to find some kindness in the boy’s expression, anything that might suggest he would be a suitable guide and not abandon his companions with a band of sophists. Paris reached out to touch the painting, drawing his fingers gently across the petrified slicks and divots. It was hard to tell for certain, but it did seem that the child possessed some headstrong nature, an old soul in his young eyes. He looked brave, but bravery was the least of it; he needed to be thoughtful, but not too serious, orderly and responsible but playful and easy in temperament, a fine and patient teacher and a friend. It was a lot to ask of a boy, Paris knew.
Preparing for dinner on the evening of their first full day in Constantinople
The lobby of the Pera Palace is warm and light by day, with soaring stone archways and six domed skylights, but when we checked in around midnight, the big chandeliers reflected themselves in the black glass above, and we felt trapped in an atrium at the bottom of the sea. Penelope insisted on using the elevator, though the bellhop noted that the motor was loud enough to wake other guests, and if she had ever ridden an elevator before, she certainly didn’t act like it. Worst of all, once we were finally alone in the yellow light of the room, she removed her dress to reveal the thin swell of her pregnancy, the child making slow turns under the blood-strung chandelier of her heart, and I lay awake all night, staring at her from the other side of our shared bed.
Our room at least is very fine. The porter came by in the morning with a breakfast for eight and insisted that we keep it all, leaving us with tiers of sweet and savory cakes, pastry and pressed nutmeats, and breads dotted with sesame seeds. We lay in bed all morning and went down once for coffee, but we haven’t yet left the hotel. It’s as if we have been charmed to remain here. Dinner will be served at eight, and they’ve refused to bring it up to us, so we dress in the lazy way of ladies on vacation, half asleep in stockings, our arms too heavy to lift themselves into sleeves. Penelope sings a lullaby and brushes her hair, fondling her nightgown’s half-imagined swell. I crouch beside the cart, my hips wound as tight as a ball of baker’s twine.
The joint between thigh and pelvis shudders as if some magic has fused them, and not even a rich squat over the course of an hour offers ease from this choking knot. My bones feel bloated in the hot machine of my body.
Elizabeth would say it serves me right. The deep squat had become a vice, as easy as a tumbler of wine and just as necessary backstage. In a stranger’s home I needed only half a minute and a chair to crouch behind. My tendons have slackened to their tensile limit, the wings of my hips peel toward the floor.
“Sounding rather witchy,” Penelope says, pausing her lullaby to pluck a cake from the tray. “What are you incanting?”
“Nothing in particular.” Reserves of slight energy collect in my wrists, and when she turns away, it is possible to gnaw at one vein or another, offering the blood within a gentle massage. Earlier she caught me licking ash from my fingers, the wooden book hinged open on my lap. She looked away quickly so as to not implicate herself in my insanity.
There generates in the hip points that demon neurasthenia, who threatens to steal my life away. If I don’t address it quickly, the condition could seep across me and spread to harm the innocents in my life, Penelope and her unborn child. Consider the bleak welcome her poor baby would find, emerging from loving warmth into a haze. This tightness in my hips must be excised, or else nothing will stop me from fouling this world, death will not stop me, my buried body will poison wells.
With my fingers hooked round my largest toes, I am able to rock back and forth like a beetle on its back. Penelope turns from her dressing mirror to find my full wealth of flesh spread wide on the bed.
“Let’s quit these cakes and go down for supper,” she says.
“To hell with supper.”
There was a time when my body would take on the condition of the surfaces it touched: strong and solid against the warm studio floor, then plumping itself wide enough to be indistinguishable from the satin cushions perched on an overstuffed bed. My feet would feel the road I ran across and know how each brick had come into being, the women who sifted the clay and the men who laid the stone. But now I feel estranged from that knowledge, distant from my body, and lonely for myself.
A mysterious Madame Candemir called before sunrise and left her card at the desk. We spent the morning wondering who she was, deciding alternately that she was a Bolshoi apprentice, then the mother of a stageman in London. Penelope thinks it unlikely that her friends in Constantinople would call on her, as she has been away for years and sent no word in advance of our arrival, anticipating that she would grow ill on the journey and would want to spend a few days in bed. Even now, feeling healthy and well, she seems content to braid and rebraid her hair like a girl, speculating on her callers.
“If it’s a friend of mine,” she says, “it must be a married name. I don’t know any Candemir at all.”
“I met a soloist once from Turkey, perhaps it was her.” It had been at the end of a long night, when everyone promises to meet again.
“Raymond must have told his local friends to call,” she says, shaking the braid out and starting again. “He must have sent word. But then she would have met us at the dock, and there would have been others—”
“Wait a minute, perhaps our caller was the veiled woman we met on the dock?”
“We did suggest she call.”
“I think we’ve solved our mystery.”
She picks up the card. “She’s nearby, in Stamboul. We can find a driver.”
“Could you help me stretch?”
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sp; She replaces the quilt where it has slipped away between my legs and gives a halfhearted shove to both knees. “You know, you could stand to explore a garment designed for this very posture.”
“Harder, toward the bedposts, please. Pay attention.”
She does what I ask, grimacing. “The simple cleanliness and comfort of bloomers,” she says. “The hygienic aspect. You might consider it, is all.” Her belly swells, quietly superior, against my shins.
Adjusting position to draw my legs aside serves to press myself more fully against her, with subtle violence, as if I could grind the cloth to shreds between us. I wrap my legs around her to draw her closer. She fixes her gaze on the headboard, thinking of Greece and her mother, the pair of them walking through poppy fields at sunset, poppy seeds all about, working into their hair and clothes, milled with the grain to make hearty flour, women raised on Adonis flour to be strong and sure. A shame such a woman is made pregnant by a lecherous dilettante with designs on philosophy but no real aptitude for it, and now, insult to insult, she finds herself trapped here with that lesser man’s sister, a woman she has agreed to care for out of an obligation to a family she is beginning to doubt more and more by the day.
“All right,” I say, releasing her and rolling to my feet. “Let’s visit Candemir in the morning and bring her some of these cakes.”
“All right,” she echoes. She returns to her dressing table and brushes her hair for a while in silence before starting up again with the lullaby she sings only to soothe herself. The wooden book sits on the bedside table, waiting patiently for my attention. When we return after dinner looking for dessert, the pastry cart will be gone and I’ll have nothing to eat but these ashes.