Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  “There were times of closeness.” The only answer she wanted to give.

  “He tried to walk a few steps. I could tell he wanted to be gone. I put a set of Louis’s clothes and a pair of his old shoes by the man’s bed. His soldier’s boots would have given him away.”

  “Didn’t you think of how you would explain when Louis noticed them missing?”

  Of course she had, even in nightmares. “One risk led to another.”

  Just like now, a risk. But she had to know if Auguste could give her what she needed, not just forgiveness for betraying France, but understanding.

  “I asked him to teach me a word in German. I held up a book and pointed to one word and then another. ‘Word. Allemand. Deutsch.’ He shook his head. I held up one finger. ‘One. Ein word.’

  “‘Nein gutt…Deutsch…vous,’ he said.

  “I boiled a beaver top hat and we drank the broth together. The fine ones were rubbed with mutton suet for firmness. Then he whispered, ‘Liebe.’

  “‘Liebe,’ I repeated, not romantically as we would say amour, or Je t’adore, but as a recognition of a universal need.”

  Her dry lips stuck together a fraction of a second when she made the b sound in the German word for love.

  “Once, as I bent over him to rinse his shoulder wound and put on a clean bandage, he struggled to raise up in bed on his elbows, even with his injured shoulder. His mouth was so close I could feel his breath. His eyes took on the look I’d come to recognize as gratitude and yearning. Just think of what he might have been feeling, with his life so precarious.”

  Here was the moment, whether to tell all, or crumple. The stone of anxiety that had lodged in her chest for ten years swelled into something roused and frightful. If he wanted to, Auguste could make it melt. One word could free her, or crush her.

  “I said I’ve kissed no one for a decade. I did not say I’ve kissed no one since Louis.”

  “Did you kiss him?”

  He waited without moving, rare for him.

  “What was a kiss since I’d already saved him? Already betrayed Louis, and France. Yes, Auguste. I breathed my life into him. I allowed him to thank me in that way.”

  Auguste’s cheek twitched violently. It made her think that he needed her to say that nothing else happened between them.

  “He was gone in the morning. He had straightened the daybed, military style, and had left a medal on the pillow. Heiliger Christophorus, it said. Saint Christopher, I assumed.”

  How quickly, that morning, she had hurried down rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré to the church of La Madeleine. Bodies of French soldiers and citizens had been piled four deep in the portico. She covered her nose with her handkerchief and went inside. Amid the din of screams and moans, the nuns calling for more bandages, the stench of rotting flesh and feces, she squeezed her way past rows of wounded men on cots, to get to the small painting and offertory of Sainte Rita, Advocate of Desperate Causes, and said the prayer. You, the saint of the impossible, give me the courage to hope. Tell me how to love more. She’d lit two candles. Neither one was for her.

  “I knew that Louis would know, but I could not, would not take back what I’d done. And Louis didn’t come home.”

  “Leaving the man to die would not have brought Louis home.”

  “I know.” She put her hand in the water, washing it cool and clean. The awkwardness of the silence made her say, “See? X equals y equals z. Hat shop, soldier, sadness.”

  “You are a poet. Une Symboliste.”

  Was that all he would give her? That she was a poet? Not that she was a humanitarian or even a compassionate person? Not that he understood? He was as silent as a dumb brute.

  She yanked one steering cord out of his hand to turn the boat around, and dug in the oars. Her rage exploded in each hard stroke.

  “So, Alsace and Lorraine were to be joined to Bavaria.” Words tumbled out in a hot flood. “Did they have to learn to breathe differently as Bavarians? Weep differently? Die differently? Did Bavarians make love differently? Does it make a difference whether we say amour or liebe? Every French person would say yes, including you, Auguste, but when Bismarck’s legions marched triumphantly under our Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs-Élysées a month after the surrender, what was I doing while Parisians all around me were hissing? Looking for my Prussian in the ranks.”

  She was practically yelling at him. “And then the Communards. We hadn’t had enough dying, we had to kill each other. That’s la vie moderne. Your painting is celebrating modern life? Just think what we’re doing in our modern life. Tossing live babies in trapeze acts to make us forget.”

  “Take a breath, Alphonsine.”

  She gave him a chance to say something, but he didn’t.

  “Isn’t there anything more to you than a brush? You don’t see me, do you? You with the vision to see hundreds of colors, you see only a carrot. Maybe Guy and Edgar are right about you and your pretty rose-colored world.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Ride in the Country

  Jeanne raised the pale green dress over her head and let it fall billowing over her shoulders and down to her ankles, feeling a cool swoosh of air bathing her. She read the script for Le bourgeois gentilhomme on the bed while she did up her hair. Nicole’s lines were short, but they still had potential. How many ways could she say, “I won’t”? She practiced it with a pretty pout. “I won’t.” A glare. A dash of spunk. A husky, unladylike outburst. A syrupy sweetness but fire in her eyes. She put on a touch of rouge, chose her cream-colored hat, and brought the script with her.

  Downstairs, her father was already at work in the music room. How would she get by without music in the house?

  “A Sunday dress on a Friday?” her mother said in the hallway, not frowning, but with an eyebrow raised. “Are you posing again?”

  “No. Just going on an outing with Joseph-Paul.” She turned her back to have her mother do up her row of hooks. “A ride in the country, then to the theater. I won’t be home for dinner.”

  “Sit down. Don’t rush through life. Have your café.”

  She sipped her café au lait with her eyes on the script. Maman always had her café ready when she came downstairs, and they talked a bit. Now how would it be? She and Joseph-Paul together speaking of the day ahead over their café and croissant? But who would make it?

  “We have to live above a café. I’m going to demand it.”

  Maman’s mouth formed an uncertain smile. “Just make sure…”

  Jeanne’s cup rattled as she replaced it in the saucer.

  “Make sure you know what you’re doing.”

  Jeanne took her last sip, and placed her hand over her mother’s for a moment. “I will.” She tucked the script into her drawstring bag.

  Outside, she plucked off a sprig of honeysuckle at Eva’s house and held it to her nose. A bride’s flower. At the foot of the crescent she opened the iron gate and, with Joseph-Paul extending his hand, stepped into the waiting carriage.

  “You had me worried. You’re ten minutes late,” Joseph said.

  “I had to have a café with Maman.”

  The carriage lurched ahead and his kiss landed on her ear.

  “You’re especially beautiful this morning. It’s a shame we don’t have time to stop at Nadar’s studio for your portrait.”

  “Can’t we get married the proper way? Telling your parents too? I feel like a thief robbing them of happy moments.”

  He gave her an understanding look. “It won’t be happy if my father thinks he can stop us.”

  “He’s not God.”

  “No, but he has powerful connections on this earth. He and my grandfather spent their lifetimes acquiring an estate and a reputation which I will inherit and you will enjoy. I’m sorry to say it will be a come-down to him at first, until he comes to love you, which he will, I’m sure. So in the meantime, please pay him the respect to give him time to adjust and to put on a public face.”

  “He’s only a fin
ancial middleman. My father’s a creator, an artist. That should make him at least equal in the scheme of things.”

  “All artists are only playthings of a fickle public.”

  “That’s unkind of you.”

  “I’m only telling you the way my father will see it.”

  She thought of Molière’s line for Madame Jourdain: Marriages between people not of the same rank are subject to the most serious inconveniences. This deception, then, was a mere inconvenience? Molière had the lovers marry through deception, but each couple married within their class. Not a good sign, but that was in the seventeenth century.

  She looked out the window. They were heading north through Porte de Clichy. Beyond the town, they turned to the northwest through rolling hills. Wheat fields were beginning to turn golden, almost ready for harvest, and pickers were on ladders in the plum orchards. In every fold of land a stream flowed, and at every crossing there was a village.

  “You must promise me one thing. Two things. That we will have a proper wedding in Paris, for Maman and Papa and our friends.”

  “Don’t you think I want to show off my bride to all of Paris?”

  “Do your parents love each other?” she asked.

  “I’ve never thought about it.” He kissed her hand. “All that matters is that we do.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. Where will we live?”

  “I found a large suite not too far from the Bourse. You’ll be pleased.” He smiled as if knowing that he was going to drop her a plum. “It’s on rue Molière.”

  “Rue Molière! That’s near the theater!” There were two good cafés on that one-block street where actors ate. More important than the cafés, he wouldn’t have chosen that street if he were going to deny her the theater, would he?

  “Now, what was the second promise?”

  “The dowry. Our parents will come together to discuss that.”

  “Our fathers only, when the time is right.”

  “When the papers are drawn up, I want the dowry to be designated as falling under the régime dotal.”

  He puffed out a breath. “You surprise me. What’s wrong with the régime d’acquêts, sharing everything equally?”

  “Under the régime dotal, the capital, or principal of the dowry, is inviolable. The husband can use the income from the dowry, but not the dowry itself. It’s a protection for the woman. Otherwise, if you go bankrupt, the whole dowry could be seized.”

  “Mon Dieu! Where did you learn all those big words, my little worrier?”

  “From Hubertine Auclert. I attended a talk she gave.”

  “That virago! I’m not planning to go bankrupt, so you don’t need to fill your pretty head with numbers and laws.” He knocked his knuckle on her forehead.

  She turned her head away and said with real pique in her voice, “I don’t want my father’s money, which he earned note by note, as a lowly musician to be used to make good on your debts if the Bourse turns fickle. I want the régime dotal.”

  He let out a huge, false sigh. “We’ll see. Let’s not have that spoil this lovely ride, the only such ride we’ll ever take.”

  She gave him a sharp nod, to tell him she considered it settled.

  The carriage stopped. She poked her head out the window and breathed the smells of clover and earth and manure. A narrow bridge ahead was occupied by a boy and his goats. A bell on the lead goat rang out a cheerful sound. The bell would last longer than the goats, or the boy. A few stone houses, centuries old, were overgrown with vines. Right here, people had been born, were married, had children, and died. A timeless cycle. Here, no doubt, people all married within their class.

  “These people, so close to Paris yet their lives are so different from ours, except for the broadest story lines,” she said. “They may never have heard of Molière.”

  “Or the régime dotal.”

  After an hour, the coachman stopped in front of a church.

  “What village is this?” she asked.

  “Saint Ouen-l’Aumône. The priest and mayor are expecting us.”

  Joseph-Paul leapt out and offered her his hand. Once, only once in her life would she step out of a carriage for so momentous an errand. When she would step back up, in only a few minutes, would avenue Frochot still exist?

  The church was small, dark, and cool. Père Bellon, the round-cheeked priest with milky blue eyes extended both hands in welcome—thick hands like a peasant’s, with age spots.

  “The mayor will be here right away.”

  He rang the church bell and the mayor arrived and read the required sections of the Civil Code. Against his monotonous blur of words, the many ways of saying I won’t kept creeping into her thoughts.

  The emptiness of the sanctuary, its plaster crucifix, the dust motes floating in a ray of light coming through a window onto the altar made the moment solemn, timeless, and very private. Each time they stood for a recitation and then sat again, the pew creaked. The priest’s words were a comfort, countering the satire of the playwrights. Finally he came to the crux, and she was ready. She looked directly at Joseph-Paul.

  “Do you, Léontine-Pauline-Jeanne Samary, take Marie-Joseph-Paul Lagarde, to be your lawfully wedded husband, to honor and cherish for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?”

  “I do…”

  Don’t change that tenderest of expressions, she told him with her eyes. Don’t blink, don’t twitch a muscle, she told herself.

  “…on the condition that the dowry be contracted under the régime dotal,” she said in the sweetest voice she had in her repertoire, but with fire in her eyes.

  Joseph-Paul’s smile vanished. The priest looked to him for a sign to continue. She kept her pose as though she were commanding a moment of drama on the stage. Joseph-Paul gave a slight nod and the priest continued, ending with, “I now pronounce you man and wife, with the stipulation that the dowry be contracted under the régime dotal.”

  The priest and mayor sent them on their way with benign smiles and a hand clasp for Joseph-Paul, and they climbed into the carriage to cross the Oise at Pontoise.

  At an auberge festooned with ivy, she speculated about the apartment he had picked, the friends they would invite to the city wedding. She asked him about his favorite food, his favorite color, his favorite possession, what he kept in his pocket, when he got up in the morning, what he did at home in the evenings, those mysteries that surrounded him, and then she stopped. A certain mystique was essential for love, to anticipate touching the untouched. There were thresholds she didn’t want to reach without imagining them first.

  One more question nipped at her mind. “Will we have a cook and housemaid?” When he said yes, she nestled in his arms for the ride back to Paris. The house would not be the battlefield. Theater would.

  After the last curtain call that evening, she hurried through the backstage corridors to her dressing loge. Red and white roses crowded her dressing table on both sides. Joseph-Paul sprang to his feet and pulled her to him. “Your performance was particularly brilliant tonight, Madame Lagarde,” he said, whispering the last two words.

  “Madame Samary,” she corrected. “I honor you in all other matters, but it shall stay as Jeanne Samary. For sake of the stage.”

  Her parents had retired by the time she came in carrying a dozen of the roses. She opened the door to her room, and on her bed lay a flat package wrapped in brown paper with a delivery label. A wedding present? Did he dare send one before he told his father? She ripped off the paper and sank onto the bed holding Auguste’s small portrait of her, his remembrance of times past.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Circe’s Stripes

  Auguste noticed that she of the ramrod back wore a haughty expression today sitting on the terrace as stiff as a figure in a wax museum, but he had a plan. He would flatter her vain self until she melted like Brie into something pliant.

  Paul brought some peppermint liqueur of a gorgeous emerald green. It would
be a good substitute for one of the bottles of wine in the painting.

  “It’s to mark the halfway point,” Paul said.

  That shocked him. He’d be far from half finished by the end of the day.

  Angèle arrived with a note from Ellen. He opened it and read:

  Dear Auguste,

  I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t come today. I’m forced to do the matinee because my substitute who has been doing them has gotten herself in trouble and went to one of those awful women in the Batignolles. Now she’s abed. I’m sick with worry and feel awful for you. I don’t know when I can come back on a Sunday. I’ll try to come on a weekday although I have acting lessons in the mornings and rehearsals for a horrible new pantomime in the afternoons.

  Ta bien dévouée,

  Ellen

  “Did you know about this?” he asked Angèle.

  “I guessed as much. I knew she’s had to pay her substitute to take her place every Sunday.”

  “I had no idea. I should have been paying.”

  He asked Alphonsine to take Ellen’s chair and eat with them. “Let Anne serve from now on.”

  Louise came upstairs carrying a platter, one step behind Charles, the last to arrive. “Sit. Just taste this, monsieur. Aubergines à la Russe. Aren’t they as fine as any eggplants in Russia?”

  Charles tasted, his nose in the air, his eyes closed. “Hm! Nothing finer from Odessa to Moscow, madame.”

  “You ought to ask that fellow to paint eggplants for you,” Louise said. “A companion to the asparagus painting. A thousand francs for three purple eggplants. C’est ridicule!”

  Circe fluttered her filmy sleeve. “I agree, madame.”

  Auguste launched his plan. “That ruffle will be a delight to paint. See how pliant it is? That’s how I want you to be.”

  Maybe her corset was the problem. He leaned toward her. “Circe, I’m wondering if you’d consider stepping into Alphonsine’s room and removing your corset. That might make it easier for you to pose naturally.”