by Alex George
Souren knows.
“He’s twenty-four years old and hasn’t learned that everywhere he goes, people see him. Or rather, they don’t see him. They see the color of his skin.” Younis pauses. “I keep telling him he needs to learn to be invisible.”
Souren nods. He may perform in public every day, but he is always hidden behind the striped awning of his puppet theater. Out of sight is the only place he feels comfortable.
“He won’t listen, of course,” continues Younis gloomily. “Unlike me, he was born in France, and he believes that he has as much right to be here as anyone.”
“You don’t agree?”
“There’s one big difference between you and me, Souren. You can walk down the street and nobody will look twice at you. But me or my brother?” Younis gestures to the street outside. “Most of Paris just sees our dark skin.” He sighs. “Of course, my brother is right. He does have as much right to be here as anyone. But being right and being safe are different things. And I know which is more important.” Younis pauses. “He’s my brother. All I want to do is protect him.”
Souren bends down and chooses two apples. “He’s a grown man, Younis. There’s only so much you can do.”
Younis looks at him. “Do you have any brothers?”
“No,” says Souren. The word barely escapes his lips.
“Well, I have eleven of them,” says Younis. “And I can tell you: brothers, especially younger brothers, all know much more than you do. You try to give them the best advice you can, of course. And they listen politely, or sometimes not so politely, and then they go and do exactly as they please anyway. But I’d die for my brothers in a heartbeat.”
Souren stares down at his shoes.
Younis claps him on the shoulder. “You and I will never get too comfortable here, my friend. We’ll always be from somewhere else, won’t we?”
“That’s true,” agrees Souren.
“I’ll never forget landing in Marseilles for the first time. I’d never been on a boat before, and I’d felt ill for the whole journey from Tunis. The moment my feet hit dry land in France I vomited all over my shoes—that was how I celebrated my arrival here. The docks were madness. What a circus! We lined up to have our papers inspected and all around us there were officials, traders, thieves, and whores. My poor mother took one look at them all and begged my father to get back on the ship. He refused, of course.” Younis shakes his head in rueful remembrance. “They spent their first three days in France not speaking to each other.” He looks at Souren. “And you? Do you remember your arrival?”
“Oh yes,” says Souren.
14
Paris, 1915: The Circus Medrano
Guillaume Blanc arrived in Paris with no more than a notebook, some paintbrushes, and bucketfuls of hope. He made his way directly to the cobbled streets of Montmartre, where he rented a tiny room in the cheapest lodgings he could find. He had come to the city with only one purpose: he was going to paint.
He spent those first days wandering up and down the boulevards of the city, absorbing every sight and sound. After each excursion he returned to his room and drew everything he had seen. Young children playing by a fountain. A woman, her back bent with age, carrying home groceries. The tall, dark windows of Saint-Sulpice. A hungry dog scrounging for scraps in the Passage Jouffroy. He filled page after page with his visions of the streets. As he committed Paris first to his memory and then to paper, he could feel the place flowing into his veins. La Rochelle grew more distant with every passing day.
In the evenings, Guillaume prowled the quartier. The streets of Montmartre were swarming with artists, the atmosphere febrile with genius. André Derain held court in a café on Avenue Junot, dressed like a peacock in a fancy vest and colorful cravat. Sometimes Guillaume would see Juan Gris or Francis Picabia walking toward him on the sidewalk and it was all he could do to keep his starstruck feet moving forward. He learned to linger unobtrusively at bars over a single cup of coffee while he listened to artists at neighboring tables bicker and gossip with their friends and colleagues. It was during one such overheard conversation that he learned that Pablo Picasso was fond of spending his evenings at the bar of the Cirque Medrano.
Pablo Picasso!
Guillaume returned to his room and counted out his money. He could barely afford to feed himself, let alone buy a ticket to the circus. But he had come to Paris to paint, and the circus had always been a welcome home to artists. Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas had made masterpieces there. Seurat, too. And if he found Picasso at the bar, well, so much the better.
The following night Guillaume walked down Rue Dancourt wearing his best hat. As he turned onto Boulevard Rochechouart, he saw the crowd milling about in front of the circus’s grandly proportioned arches, and his heart ballooned. A cart was selling bags of sweetly roasting chestnuts, and Guillaume’s stomach rumbled. He had not eaten that evening, a token of frugality to compensate for the extravagance of this adventure. His hunger was eclipsed by excitement.
Once he’d purchased his ticket, he went in search of the famous Spaniard. The floor of the circus bar was polished marble and the walls were painted gold. Mirrors stretched up to the ceiling. People jostled good-naturedly against each other, yelling to make themselves heard. Guillaume tacked back and forth through the sea of drinkers, looking for Pablo Picasso, but he was not at the Cirque Medrano that night.
Trying not to feel disappointed, Guillaume took his seat in the circus arena a few minutes before the show was due to begin. Vaulted ceilings soared over the heads of the spectators. In the center of the huge room was a circular stage. All around him audience members were chattering and laughing.
Once the show began, Guillaume forgot about Pablo Picasso.
A daredevil Mexican with black hair flowing down his back stood blindfolded on the back of a snorting stallion as it cantered around the circus ring. Jugglers threw blazing batons in ceaseless arcs of tumbling light. A riotous posse of clowns made the crowd howl with laughter. A strongman in a red tunic paraded around the arena, balancing a woman on each of his upturned hands. A magician sawed one of the women in half, and turned the other one into a rooster. The rooster ran in circles before itself being transformed into a rabbit. There were knife throwers, fire eaters, and a troupe of acrobats who tossed each other through the air, landing on each other’s shoulders and then somersaulting off again. The climax of their act was to create a human Eiffel Tower. Guillaume cheered along with everyone else.
But it was the trapeze artists who changed everything.
Two women, one white and one black, walked to the center of the circus ring. Unlike the other performers, they did not smile and wave at the audience. The white woman wore a black costume, a snorting dragon’s head of silver sequins glittering on her back. Her kohl-rimmed eyes and darkly painted mouth made a perfect triangle on her face, and a long mane of black hair fell down her back. Her partner was her perfect monochromatic opposite—she wore a white costume, decorated with a black dragon. Both were beautiful.
The women scaled twin rope ladders until they reached small wooden platforms that had been built on opposite sides of the arena, high up near the roof. Guillaume craned his neck upward and watched as one of the acrobats took the end of a rope in her hands and launched herself over the heads of the audience, swinging into the void in long, graceful arcs. The second woman stood perfectly still on the opposite platform, until in a quicksilver flash of movement she threw herself headlong into nothingness. Guillaume held his breath as her outstretched hands reached through the empty air for her partner’s ankles, and then they were swinging in tandem over his head, a human rope of interlocking limbs.
There was no safety net.
The women flew high above the circus ring. Their tricks became more elaborate and more dangerous. They swung in perfect synchronicity, every twist and half turn measured to perfection, every grip and release timed to the millisecond. The smallest of errors would have been fatal.
When the ac
robats climbed back down to the circus ring to take their bows, the audience rose to its feet and roared. Soon afterward Guillaume hurried back to his studio and put a fresh canvas onto his easel before he had even taken off his hat and coat. He needed to paint the trapeze artists while his heart was still racing. He wanted to capture their bravery, their strength, their fluid grace. He worked long into the night.
When he woke the following morning, Guillaume was dismayed to discover that nothing he had painted the previous evening came close to the dazzling spectacle he had witnessed. The acrobats’ lithe bodies and taut muscles were executed well enough, but the thrilling poetry of those death-defying stunts had escaped his brush.
That evening he returned to Boulevard Rochechouart. He could not afford another ticket, but he knew he had to watch the acrobats again. After the performance had begun, he crept down the alleyway behind the circus building, hoping to find an unguarded back entrance. As he made his way through the shadows he could hear the cheers and applause of the audience inside.
The first door he tried did not yield, but the second one did. He stepped inside. The backstage area was dimly lit and unfurnished. The aromas of freshly cut straw and sour horse piss hit the back of his nostrils. Exotically dressed performers waited for their turn to go onstage. None of them noticed him—they were all too busy watching the show from the wings. Guillaume skirted the periphery of the room, staying in the shadows, until he could see into the arena. The watching crowd of performers blocked his view of the circus ring itself, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t care what was happening on the ground. He was waiting for the acrobats. When they began, he would just have to look up.
That night, as the women swung high over the audience, he was mesmerized afresh by their need for constant perfection. Once again, he returned to his room and painted until he could no longer keep his eyes open.
Guillaume began to spend three or four nights a week at the Cirque Medrano, creeping through the back door after the show began. He returned to his studio each night and tried to capture the acrobats’ strength and beauty on the canvas, but every morning brought the same disappointment.
He was no longer interested in the other glories that Paris had to offer. All he wanted to do was to paint the acrobats. He sketched them compulsively, their elegant forms appearing on every piece of paper he touched. Soon their bodies became as familiar to him as his own hands. He went back to the circus night after night and wondered about the women as they flew over the audience. Were they lovers? He pictured the two of them together. His paintings took on a vivid, erotic charge.
And then one night, the white woman lost her footing as she climbed down the rope ladder at the end of the act. She was thirty feet from the ground when she fell. Guillaume heard her cry when she landed on the ground. The audience murmured anxiously, but he could not see what was going on. When she was carried out of the circus ring on a makeshift stretcher, Guillaume put on his hat and left.
He returned the following night, but the trapeze artists did not perform.
He never went back to the circus again.
* * *
Nobody wanted to buy Guillaume’s paintings of the trapeze artists in miraculous flight. Reluctantly, he turned his attention to other subjects. Without the acrobats of the Cirque Medrano to inspire him, he painted the chaotic aggregations of empty bottles that littered his studio and street scenes that unfolded daily around Pigalle. He sold dashed-off cartoon caricatures of tourists strolling through the streets of Montmartre for a franc or two, just so he could eat.
A year passed. One morning Guillaume was sitting in a café on Rue Lepic, sketching while he waited for his coffee to cool. He had spent the previous afternoon wandering through the Montmartre cemetery, and now he was idly filling a page of his notebook with an army of weeping stone angels.
“That one is beautiful.” An elegant fingertip on the paper.
Guillaume looked up. A woman was standing next to him. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders in russet waves. She was looking at the page with beautiful gray eyes.
“Thank you,” he said. Then he added: “It’s just a sketch.”
“But a good one.” The woman bent down to look more closely. Guillaume caught the faintest hint of citrus. “You’ve captured them perfectly.”
“Would you like it?” he asked.
The woman laughed in surprise. “I would love it!”
Guillaume tore the sheet of paper out of the notebook and handed it to her.
“Are you quite sure?” she said.
“Of course.”
“You must let me give you something for it.”
He shook his head. “I’m happy for you to have it.”
“Well, thank you.” The woman smiled at him. “I shall cherish this.” With that she began to walk toward the door of the café.
Guillaume did not want her to leave, but he was too shy to ask her to stay. “You’re most welcome, madame,” he called.
She stopped and looked back at him. “Actually,” she said, “it’s mademoiselle.” Then she pushed open the door without another backward glance. Guillaume stared through the window as she made her way toward Rue Véron. She walked with a slight limp. So, he thought, not entirely perfect.
Once she had disappeared from view, Guillaume sat back and drank his coffee. He remembered her limp, and that was when he realized that he had seen her before.
* * *
He began to look for her.
For weeks he prowled the streets of Montmartre, peering hopefully into every bar and café. How could he not have seen at once that she was the trapeze artist from the circus? He had drawn her face and body so many times! Even with her hair a different color, he should have recognized her. Drawing a person is first and foremost an act of looking. He had stared at her for countless hours, both in the flesh and on canvas—but when it mattered most, he had failed to see her.
And then, one morning, there she was, sitting alone on a bench in front of Sacré-Coeur. Guillaume came to a halt several paces away. Her hands were clasped together on her lap. She had tilted her head back so that her face met the full embrace of the sun; her eyes were closed against its glare. Guillaume watched her for several minutes. Finally, he walked up to her.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The woman opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
She gave him a radiant smile. “Of course I remember you,” she said. “I look at your angels every day, monsieur. They’re beautiful.”
He blushed. “Guillaume Blanc.” He held out his hand.
“Suzanne Mauriac,” she said. Her hand was warm and strong. “Won’t you join me?”
Guillaume sat down next to her on the bench. Paris stretched out in front of them, vast and beautiful, the city’s rooftops twinkling in the sunlight. “I’ve been hoping I would see you again,” he said.
She smiled. All around them mothers kept a close watch on their playing children, vigilant shepherds of their flocks. Men strode by in twos and threes, gesticulating in earnest conversation. “I like to sit here and watch the world go by,” she said. “If you wait long enough, most of life will pass under your nose. It’s quite the show.”
“Any street or square in Paris would give the Folies-Bergère a run for its money,” agreed Guillaume.
“In Montmartre especially,” she said. “Always a spectacle!”
“You live here?”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”
“I realized after you left the café the other day that I’ve seen you before,” said Guillaume.
“Oh yes?”
“It was at the Cirque Medrano. You were an acrobat.”
Suzanne Mauriac pressed her hand against her throat as she let out a gleeful laugh. “Enfin!” she exclaimed. “My terrible secret is out!”
“I saw you fall and hurt your foot.”
She looked at him. “You were there that night?”
“I was there most nights. There was a back door to the place that was always open. I used to creep in and watch your act from the wings. Then I went home and painted you.”
“Goodness,” said Suzanne.
They were silent for a moment.
“What happened to the other girl?” asked Guillaume.
“Hélène? She left. I broke my ankle in that fall, and I was no good to her after that. I couldn’t walk for months, let alone swing on a trapeze. She found work somewhere else, and left soon afterward. I haven’t seen her since.”
“That’s too bad.”
Suzanne shrugged. “Do you still have any of the paintings you made of us?” she asked. “I’d love to see them.”
Guillaume shook his head. “Not a single one.”
“You sold them all?”
“I painted over them.”
“Ah, non. Why?”
“Because they were terrible.”
“I doubt that. I’ve seen your work, remember.”
“I could never capture the thrill of it all, the excitement.”
She turned to look at him. “Would you like another chance?” she asked.
“Another chance to what?”
Her gray eyes dancing. “To paint me.”
* * *
He had one unused canvas in his studio. He pulled a chair into the center of the room, and motioned to Suzanne to sit.
“I have a question,” she said.
“Of course.”
A small smile played around the edges of her mouth. “Should I take my clothes off before I sit down?”
Guillaume swallowed. He had spent countless hours thinking about the acrobats, obsessively drawing them in infinite permutations and configurations. Night after night he had dreamed of their lithe, supple bodies. He had often imagined what lay beneath those outfits.