by JH Fletcher
Spare me, she thought. ‘Blackmail, that’s all this is. Revolution means overthrowing the government, not stealing pictures. Where is the damn thing, anyway? Not here, I hope?’
‘Somewhere safe.’
‘You’d better be right.’
She was still furious. To take her mind off what had happened, she painted the picture that had been forming in her head since she had seen the grave on the river bank.
It was the picture of a killing, uniformed police about their victim, a Christ-like figure, eyes turned to heaven as he was dragged from the water. Behind the figures, the tranquil river flowed, bright with flowers. She painted in the title, making it an integral part of the painting.
Brett studied it. ‘La Fuite?’
‘That’s right. The Escape.’
‘How does that work?’
‘Because, once they’ve killed him, they can do no more. Life can do no more. He is free.’
For the next three weeks, the authorities turned the country upside down. Picasso’s friend Apollinaire was arrested and released. They should never have laid a finger on him, Brett said; he’d had nothing to do with it.
‘When do you send this famous letter to the government?’ demanded Marie, out of patience with him and the situation.
It seemed there was a problem. Vincenzo Perrugia, the batty house painter, had stolen a march on them. He had disappeared, taking the Mona Lisa with him.
‘What a fiasco!’
But in truth she was relieved. She hoped that neither man nor painting would ever be found, leaving her free to concentrate on her work at last. She had enough problems without the Mona Lisa. She had intended to experiment with the use of colour and had gone to a Matisse exhibition but came home very down in the dumps.
‘Bloody man! The way he uses colour, he’s left no room for anyone else.’
More than anything, she wanted to make a name for herself at the cutting edge of artistic development. With Matisse’s mastery of colour, she would have to look for something else. She studied the work of Picasso, but was dubious about what she considered his gimmickry. At last, she found what she was seeking in an exhibition of antiquities that featured artefacts from the ancient worlds of Egypt, the Mediterranean and the East. Entranced, she walked amid a succession of masks and seals from Cambodia and Crete, vases from Mycaenae, carvings from India and the Pacific islands, fossilised remains of animals hundreds of thousands of years old. She felt herself one with the continuity of all things, determined that her art should reflect this. She told herself that it should develop as an integral part, not merely of the history of humanity, but of life itself.
She was afraid that no-one would understand what she was trying to do, that success would remain elusive but, from the first, her new style of painting struck a resonance in the hearts of collectors. She had worked out how to combine her sense of the past not only with contemporary design, but with the use of colour, too. For the first time she felt confident she was on the right track, forging her own individual statement of perception and integrity.
‘There are riots in England,’ Brett announced. ‘We must go. This could be the start of things, at last.’ Brett was as firmly wedded as ever to his dreams of revolution, of the world of justice, peace and prosperity that would emerge, miraculously, from the ashes of the old.
Marie had had enough of Brett’s endless enthusiasms. She wanted to stay where she was and get on with her work. She’d had her share of bad times and now could see her way clear, at last. Hibou was selling her work as quickly as she could produce it; even better, Picasso had made several well-publicised statements attacking it, which had to be a good sign. She had no intention of going anywhere.
‘You go, you go alone.’
Brett dug his heels in. ‘If that’s the way you want it …’
‘Will you really put your revolution before us?’
‘A man does what he must,’ Brett declared, jaw set. ‘The future of humanity transcends personal considerations.’
‘If your revolution doesn’t understand that human relationships are the most important thing in the world,’ she told him, ‘it will be a catastrophe.’
Brett continued to posture ferociously, announcing for the twentieth time his unalterable determination to mount the barricades in London — ‘with you or without you’ — but did nothing as mundane as packing his bags, and soon the riots across the Channel began to peter out.
Silence returned, while Marie worked. Yet the upheaval that Brett had threatened, so recklessly, had an impact, after all.
* * *
Darkness. A noisome stench. A confusion of noise and fear, out of which an unseen hand came to stifle her. It closed her mouth, her nose. She was unable to breathe, to cry out. Panic, while her silent screams reverberated in her head. An explosion of rushing water, again and again …
She awoke, sweat-drenched, to a pellucid dawn. To weep, endlessly.
‘We should go away.’ This from Brett.
‘No!’
‘You’re not yourself. You need to rest.’
‘No. No!’
Instead she sought refuge in her imagination, the world of past gods, of colour. There, perhaps, she would find peace.
PART XI
NIGHTRIDE AND SUNRISE
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Locksley Hall)
Alan
The first Paris exhibition of Marie’s work took place at the Galerie Condorcet in October 1912.
The sales of her paintings had already made her a household name. There had been articles in the popular press about la belle Australienne, and the show was certain to be a success, but no-one had anticipated it would be a landmark event that, according to the eminent critic Charles Giraud, recalled the first performance of Hernani, eighty-two years before.
It was hyperbole — the first night of Victor Hugo’s play had caused a riot, and there was nothing like that at Marie’s exhibition — yet the importance of Giraud’s review could not be overstated. During his lifetime and since, Victor Hugo had been the major figure of French art and nationalism; for Marie to be compared with him was to put a seal of acceptance upon her work that no foreigner could hope to achieve. Marie Desmoulins had been born in France and had a French name; now the French people accepted her as one of their own. There would be no more talk of la Australienne, belle or not.
The results were immediate. There were sixty exhibits on show — it is impossible, now, to understand how she had been able to produce such a volume of quality work in so short a time — and, by the evening of the first day, every one of them had been sold.
‘Every one!’
She could not believe it. The papers reported that people who had been unable to buy paintings off the walls were offering two and even three times the original price to those who had. To nationalistic pride was added the incentive of an almost-certain, and substantial, profit; nothing could have been calculated to appeal more to the French mentality. Hibou reported that offers of commissions would keep her busy for years.
She had wanted only to remain where she was, free to paint without distractions; now she was in another country. A few months before, she had been destitute; now she was on the road to becoming rich.
She did not know which way to turn. It was wonderful to think that her work was finally being recognised; praise warmed bones long frozen by indifference. She gained mean satisfaction from reports that Picasso had been so infuriated by her success that he had left Paris to salve his jealousy in the deserts of Morocco. But everything that went with it — the demands for more and more work, for interviews, the relentless assault upon her privacy — horrified her.
‘It’s what success means,’ Brett told her. ‘You’re in the entertainment business, now.’
‘I am not!’
It reminded her how, in Sydney, he had wanted her to paint propaganda pictures for the Revolution. Now it seemed that en
tertainment, not propaganda, was the word.
‘It makes me feel such a fraud,’ she complained.
She no longer knew who she was, or what.
Marie
1
In February she received a letter from an American woman resident in France who, in her way, was as famous as Marie herself. Isadora Duncan was a dancer, but her primary skills were to live her life regardless of convention and to outrage the more prudish elements of French society while she did so. She had two children by different fathers, neither of whom she had married, and saw no reason to hide their existence from the world.
She told Marie she wanted to invite herself to tea. Marie had no chance to reply; within an hour of receiving the letter, the dancer arrived on her doorstep, stepping gaily out of a huge and shining motor car, complete with uniformed chauffeur.
Marie had her own studio now; it was located in an alleyway so narrow that the car fitted it like a cork in a bottle; there was hardly room for Isadora to get out and no hope at all for anyone to squeeze past while the car was parked there.
Not that the dancer cared about that. ‘I am delighted to meet you!’ And swept past Marie into the apartment.
Isadora was beautiful, exuberant, overpowering. Since the exhibition, Marie had become something of a recluse in her efforts to hide from those so anxious to take over her life. She had expected to hate the flamboyant woman who seemed determined to intrude upon her. Instead, she found her delightful.
‘Show me your paintings …’
Queen Mary on a state visit, Marie thought.
Isadora studied one, then others. No flamboyance now, only an attentive eye as she scrutinised the canvases. Marie waited for her opinion or her laugh.
She turned from the last painting and knelt at Marie’s feet. ‘You are a wonder and a delight,’ she said. ‘You are the hope for the world.’
Marie was so embarrassed that she could hardly breathe.
‘I was told you had a wonderful talent,’ the dancer said. ‘It is so true. Never in my life have I been so moved by another person’s work.’ Without putting her hands to the ground, she rose gracefully to her feet. ‘I shall dance for you,’ she decreed.
And did so, barefooted. Marie did not know where to put her hands or face but sat on the shabby sofa, limbs drawn into herself as though to hide from such outpourings of emotion.
At last — thank God, Marie thought — Isadora finished. She sat at Marie’s side. She picked up her hand and examined it intently, finger by finger, drawing her own fingers over each in turn. ‘Such practical hands,’ she said. ‘Will you do a portrait of me?’
Marie was unsure whether she would be willing. It might be impossible to capture so mercurial a temperament, or the expressions that moved so rapidly across the beautiful face. Isadora Duncan’s fame held as many dangers as advantages; failure to do a good job would be very bad for her reputation.
‘You would honour me so much if you would,’ Isadora said.
‘Why me?’
‘Because you understand what I am trying to do in my life.’
Marie was not sure that she did; fortunately, Isadora said it for her.
‘Everything I do is not only for myself, but for all women. It is wrong that we should be imprisoned by the prejudices of men.’
‘It’s women who are the worst,’ said Marie, ‘when it comes to criticism.’
Isadora sighed. ‘That is the saddest thing of all. They have been conditioned to accept what men have decided is the right role for women. By denying us the freedom to choose, they also deny it to themselves.’ She stared searchingly into Marie’s eyes. ‘You must feel as I do; I can see it in your face.’
‘It is hard to be a painter,’ Marie admitted cautiously, ‘and at the same time to be a woman.’
‘Yet you have triumphed,’ cried Isadora ecstatically. ‘Despite what people say and think.’
Had she? To Marie, it didn’t feel like triumph; more like sacrifice, meaningless and self-destructive. She suspected she would never know anything as definite as triumph or achievement, only endeavour, endless and unrelenting, and a vision that would never be fulfilled.
‘Please,’ Isadora said. ‘Please do my portrait.’
And Marie, still troubled and unsure, gave in.
2
Isadora’s portrait took twenty sittings, far more than anything Marie had done before. It might have been unbearable but, in their own way, they were both perfectionists who understood what they were trying to do together.
‘Be yourself,’ Marie implored her. ‘Let me do the interpretations.’
Isadora could not do it; always she had to vary her expression to illustrate this, or that, aspect of her personality.
‘You need a photographer, not an artist,’ Marie said. Yet she persevered, despite all, while Isadora told her stories of her life with the fathers of her two children.
‘You must meet my babies, when the portrait is finished.’
Marie envied her so much. Her own child lived on the far side of the world. She wrote to Alice every month, but heard from her only at Christmas. ‘Do they stay with you?’ she wondered.
It seemed not. ‘But they come and see me regularly.’
Still Marie hadn’t got the portrait right. ‘I’m doing something wrong …’ Then, between one blink and the next, she knew. ‘The clothes. That’s what it is. You are a woman at home in your body and proud of it. That is what I should be painting: your body. That will be your true portrait.’
She could barely wait for Isadora to get out of her clothes, to pose her this way and that, the dancer’s limbs as pliable as clay beneath her hands, until her fingers knew even before her eyes that she had got it right.
‘Stay like that! Exactly as you are!’
She sketched furiously, stopped to check, sketched again.
Yes. Yes!
The face, so mobile, remained a problem. ‘Imagine you’re dancing.’ Which indeed the pose suggested.
‘Maybe I should think of my lovers?’
‘Think what you like. But stick to it. Don’t keep changing.’ Whether through thoughts of dance or lovers, they got it right at last.
With the expression anchored, the rest was mainly concerned with tints of flesh, the impact of light, and those — relatively speaking — were easy.
At last it was over. For the first time, Marie permitted the sitter to view what had taken so many weeks to complete.
Isadora looked at the portrait of herself, if it were herself. A figure of dance and lightness, of flesh, too, and the will and blood of flesh, portraying not a woman, but all women down the centuries who had celebrated their personal mysteries in movement.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘Is that me?’ She prowled, examining the painting from different angles, creeping up on it, retreating to view it from a distance, approaching it again, stealthily, as though to catch it off guard and surprise it into revealing its secrets.
Marie said nothing, watching Isadora and the painting coming to terms with each other.
Abruptly, the dancer laughed. ‘I wonder what it thinks of me?’
Delighted, Marie saw that Isadora, of the dozens who had sat for her, was the first who truly understood. For her, the portrait was not a matter of pigment and canvas, but had become another aspect of reality: the face, the being and, importantly, the depths beneath both.
‘I swear it could talk to me,’ Isadora marvelled.
‘It does talk,’ Marie said. ‘If you’ve the ears to hear it.’
Isadora turned and flung her arms around Marie’s neck. ‘Thank you! Thank you!’
At last they could relax over a bottle of wine that Isadora produced from the wicker basket her chauffeur had carried in for her at the beginning of the morning. Wine and salad, paté, and bread, fruit …
‘Heavens,’ Marie said. ‘A feast.’
Unused to wine, she was soon giggly, protesting as Isadora topped up her glass. The dancer took no notice. ‘Live a little,
while you’ve got the chance. Why not?’
Later, they stood side by side before the painting, examining it together. ‘It’s like you know me better than I do,’ Isadora said. ‘How do you manage it?’
‘The same way you get so much into your dance.’
‘I guess.’ Was suddenly sad. ‘There are times when I wonder why I bother. The guys who come to watch … I put all I know into it, yet the only thing that really interests them is a bit of tit and bum.’
‘They’ve got both there,’ Marie said, nodding at the painting.
‘Damn right. They can see more of me than they ever will on the stage. Hell, if I appeared in public like that, they’d lock me up.’
They polished off the wine, to celebrate the thought.
‘That painting’s mine,’ Isadora said. ‘You hear me?’
‘Only if you pay my price.’
‘Name it.’
‘With pleasure.’ She did so, emboldened by alcohol.
‘Discount for the wine?’
Marie shook her head, laughing. The world might be blurred, but business remained business. ‘The wine was your idea.’
‘What the hell,’ Isadora said. ‘It’s only money. I said I wanted you to meet my kids. What say we have lunch next weekend? They’ll be there and I’ll have the money for you. How about that?’
‘How do I get there?’
‘I’ll send my car for you.’ She laughed. ‘Maurice can carry the painting. He’ll enjoy that, once he knows what it looks like.’
3
April in Paris: a day for dreaming, and delight. A day, too, for business. The car arrived punctually at ten o’clock. Maurice carried the painting to the car. Everything secure, they drove bumping through the cobblestoned streets and out of the city. They followed the Seine past meadows bright with flowers.
‘The scent of the countryside is very pleasant,’ Marie ventured to Maurice’s neck, tight and pink in his close-fitting uniform. She did not like to travel with someone and say nothing, even if he were only the chauffeur.