Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  She gave him a look a lady would give a street urchin who had just stepped on her hem, and turned to Antonio. “I understand you are a journalist?”

  “I write for Le Triboulet, mademoiselle.”

  “That means you must be very funny.”

  “Not so. I am too limited in your language to produce the witticisms people expect in Le Triboulet, so I must write about the absurd.”

  “For example?”

  “Oh, how to teach your pet frog to flirt, how to dress your poodle à la mode, how to express yourself by the manner in which you open your umbrella, how to piss on the street with style. Essential things.”

  “Disgusting.” She made a face at Auguste as though that word was her answer to his request.

  He had the rest of the meal to think of a different approach. Louise’s fried fish was a big success, but he hardly tasted it.

  “Perfect for a boating party by the river,” Gustave told her.

  “Why, thank you. Leave room for the dessert. Alphonsine made it.”

  “And what might that be?” Gustave asked.

  “They’re shaped like sails,” Alphonsine said. “They’re for boating champions, so you and the baron had better prove yourself worthy three weeks from today.”

  Did she have to remind him of the passage of time?

  When Anne brought up the apple pastries, Alphonsine served Gustave a particularly large one. She went around the tables with a globe-shaped bottle banded in brass, drizzling the Chambord Royale on each person’s sail, starting and ending with Gustave’s, giving him a second pour while resting her hand on his shoulder. Gustave would be blind if he didn’t recognize that something was happening. Auguste was worried, for her sake.

  He was itching to get started. It seemed forever before Anne came up to clear the plates. He and Paul rolled out the easel, Pierre rolled back the awning, people took their poses. Then he just sat.

  “We’re breaking our bodies here. What are you waiting for?” Circe asked.

  “The light, mademoiselle.”

  After a cloud blew by, he mixed a burnt sienna and added a touch of rose madder for Raoul’s jacket, making it more ocher for some areas, and close to burnt umber for the shadows. He mixed in a touch of violet tint where the light landed on Raoul’s shoulders and the wooden rail. With other brushes, he touched all parts of the canvas, bringing everyone out a little more, except for the vague spot in the middle, Ellen and Émile.

  He laid in more of the folds on Circe’s skirt and applied washes of pale pink and blue to the white stripes as he would do on the tablecloth, napkins, and Alphonse’s shirt. Circe shifted in her chair and the stripes changed. He set down his brush and bent down to try to get them back the way they were.

  “Don’t touch my dress!” she cried. “Your hands have paint on them.”

  He looked at his fingers. Not a bit of paint that he could see. Alphonsine circled around the table and adjusted the stripes according to his instructions.

  Circe faced straight ahead. “Turn to Gustave, please,” he said. She moved her chin an inch to the left. “Ah, now your cheek is lit like a pear blossom at this angle.” It was a strategy, yes, but it was also true.

  “As round and white as an angel’s arse is how he’s painting it,” Angèle said, baiting her.

  “Turn a little more.” Her frozen posture was a refusal. “As beautiful a profile as I’ve ever seen.”

  “What about my eyes?”

  “Like the midnight sky studded with a star.”

  Alphonsine blew air out of her mouth.

  “Then why don’t I have eyes in the painting?” Circe demanded.

  “You will, when you face Gustave and stay that way. Every time you move, your stripes change. Look. There he is, smiling at you. Talk to her, Gustave.”

  “You’ve posed for other artists, haven’t you?” Gustave asked.

  She turned to answer. “Yes.”

  Auguste hurried to paint her cheek.

  “Then you know what he needs. Stillness and compliance. Did you ever pose for Henri Gervex in Café Nouvelle-Athènes?” Gustave asked.

  “Yes.” Her mouth tightened and she turned back to face forward.

  Gustave glanced at him, as though trying to convey something.

  Auguste remembered Gervex painting in the café once. The motif was three men at a table and one overdressed woman in pink silk and lace. My God! It must have been Circe. If he remembered rightly, she was painted from the back, with the nape of her neck, an ear, and a shapeless cheek visible, but not her whole face. The men were reading the paper, smoking, ignoring her. It was a café scene of people not connecting, like Manet’s, suggesting the separateness of modern life. There was something pathetic about her in all her finery. Three men, and none with an admiring look for her. None like Maggiolo gazing at Angèle. She must have felt misused.

  “Turn toward Gustave, please. See how he’s adoring you?”

  “Je t’adore,” Gustave said, but his voice cracked. He was trying.

  “I insist on looking directly out. I insist on posing like Victorine Meurent did in Déjeuner sur l’herbe. And in Olympia too. Manet let her face the people looking at the painting.”

  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” muttered Jules.

  Auguste set down his brush and palette. An annoying rivulet of sweat trickled down his chest. He rubbed the heel of his hand against it.

  “I’ve been to Manet’s salon,” Circe went on. “I met Victorine there. She’s famous now.”

  “Famous for being called a female gorilla by the press,” Charles remarked.

  Auguste took her hand in his. “Chérie, this is a different sort of painting. I want it to be a natural moment of friends enjoying each other at lunch. This isn’t a portrait.”

  “So was Manet’s painting a moment of friends enjoying each other at lunch, only it was on the grass. A picnic,” she said petulantly.

  “Then why don’t you take your clothes off, like Manet’s model did?” Pierre taunted. “Then you’d be sure to be the center of attention.”

  Paul cheered, “Youpi!” and Alphonse exploded in a belly laugh.

  “Go ahead and help her, Alphonse. You’re closest,” Pierre said.

  “No,” Circe cried. “I don’t mean that. I just mean her face.”

  “Circe, you are a beautiful woman,” Auguste said. “As lovely from the side as from the front.” His voice had a tone of pleading. He was reduced to that.

  “I’m going to leave right now if you don’t let me pose facing forward.”

  Auguste pressed her hot hand so she would think about what she just said. A pain shot up his middle finger. He peeled away his fingers slowly and held her by a look. Her eyes were glossy with moisture. Cautiously, he stepped back and pointed with his index finger to Gustave.

  She rose halfway, wavered, her fingertips trembling against the tablecloth, then stood up completely and drew her shoulders back. “You know I can get you well hung at the Salon. Madame Charpentier can speak to—”

  “He’s already well hung, dolly,” Angèle said.

  Pierre and Raoul snickered. Paul and Alphonse were silent this time.

  “Or I can get her to denounce you.”

  Their snickering stopped. Angèle and Gustave turned their heads toward him. Alphonsine raised up, looking grave. He avoided her eyes and studied Circe to see how determined she was. Her chin quivered, but her back was rigid. She picked up her parasol. Any second her porcelain face would crack, out of frustrated disappointment or bewilderment that it would come to this.

  Jules lowered his pipe. Charles and Raoul turned to look. Antonio straightened up and scowled. Paul and Pierre glanced at each other.

  Deliberately, Auguste wagged his index finger. “Look—at—

  Gustave.”

  The air was charged with her indecision. She opened her mouth. Only a high-pitched croak came out. She raised her chin and took one step. Then another, giving him a chance. He only had to lowe
r his finger to keep her. He kept it pointing at Gustave. She crossed the terrace, in a melodramatic imitation of a queen in a procession. The sharp, slow tap of her heels on the stairs receded.

  There would never be another striped dress so beautiful. He could have made that ruffle luminous, could have created a highlight on the jewel, a clear, hot crystal between her clavicles.

  He picked up his scraping knife. The sooner he scraped, the cleaner he could get it.

  “Wait!” Alphonsine cried. “Look there.”

  Circe was standing on the bridge facing the terrace.

  “Do you want I should slap some sense into her?” Angèle asked.

  “The Fêtes Nautiques is only three weeks away,” Gustave murmured. “The sailing regatta four.”

  His knuckles cramped into position on the scraping knife. “Damn prima donna!”

  “Go to her, Renoir,” Charles urged.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pierre said. “I brought it on. Shall I apologize to her and try to bring her back?”

  “No. It was leading to this anyway.”

  Alphonse darted downstairs.

  With one slow, deliberate stroke, he scraped a stripe from the top of her head to the bottom of his painting. Fionie Tanguy’s purloined Prussian blue, eight francs a tube, now marbled with white in a mess on his scraping knife. Thirty francs for Circe’s posing fees. A four-week setback.

  “Look again,” Jules said.

  Alphonse was talking to Circe on the bridge, gesticulating broadly. She turned from him and strode stiffly to Rueil.

  “She’s a poor player who struts and frets her hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” Jules’s quiet voice roared with contempt.

  Auguste continued scraping. An ugly, raspy sound accompanied every swath. He scrubbed with turpentine, but the stripes remained a ghost image of what could have been exquisite. He noticed Alphonsine’s cheeks glistening in the sunlight in wet crystal streaks. The sight left him short of breath.

  Émile, Jeanne, Ellen, and now Circe. Who would be next to leave?

  Gustave and Angèle resumed their poses. Jules and Pierre took their cue and did the same. Paul angled his head toward a missing Jeanne. Alphonsine leaned forward on the railing. Charles and Raoul turned their backs to him. They were telling him to go right on. He picked up his brush. Where to work? On Jules and Charles, Pierre and Paul, safe subjects high up on the painting, so he wouldn’t have to look at the sickening vacancy.

  Alphonse came upstairs. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t convince her.”

  “You might as well go back to the boats. I can’t work on you without—”

  Alphonse cut him off with the flat of his hand, rested it on Auguste’s shoulder a moment, and went back down.

  Keeping her pose, Angèle began to sing softly, “De ses vertus ne parlons pas.” It was one of the Béranger tunes about Lisette, the unfaithful lover. Of her virtues we nevermore speak. It was good advice.

  He worked doggedly, trying to ignore and focus, but he couldn’t get out of his head Zola’s mocking voice chanting, The Impressionists remain inferior to what they undertake, inferior to what they undertake, inferior… The burden of the chant, the fate of the movement, weighed on his shoulders. The whole endeavor was a mistake, a reckless, overambitious decision in Madame Charpentier’s salon. All the same, he couldn’t let the abyss of his doubt show. That would negate all of their efforts.

  They refused a break and he kept working until the light faded. Downstairs, no one was inclined to stay to drink and dance.

  Charles lay his hand on his shoulder. “Your painting is going to be too fine a thing to have any woman of her stripe in it.”

  Jules said, “Ulysses overcame Circe’s enchantment by means of a magic herb. Maybe a glass of absinthe would do you some good tonight.”

  Auguste nodded. Jules followed Charles out the door. Gustave lingered at a table and talked quietly to Fournaise. Alphonsine and Raoul joined them.

  Auguste drew Angèle aside. “How about a little walk?”

  “I can’t think of anything better.”

  They escaped up the path. “Will you trust me for your modeling fee today? I need to buy more paint if I’m to go on.”

  “If? If? You let that chit with a broomstick up her arse kick up a fuss and make you quit, then it will be you I’ll have to slap some sense into. I should have cocked a snook at her, standing there on that bridge pitiful as a Maquis cat waiting for you to come crawling after her. She weren’t no fleur-de-Marie pure as the Virgin’s piss.” She snapped her knuckles against his chest. “Now cheer up. You want I should do a boulevard for you?”

  To Circe, that would mean walking down rue Saint Honoré on a binge of buying hats, gloves, dresses, jewelry, and mirrors. Then he realized.

  “No, I could never ask you—”

  “You’re not asking. I’m telling. You’ll have your money for paints sure as I’m standing here. And to keep things straight, I owe you my rent money back too.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Oh, don’t get your tit in a wringer. It’s not like it would be my first time.”

  “Please, Angèle. Don’t do this.”

  “You can’t stop me. Don’t worry you none. I have my scruples, and here they is. Fornication’s a full-article sin when it’s done to injure. It’s half-half when done out of mere pleasure. It’s only tinged with sin when it’s done by necessity. It’s no sin at all when it’s done out of love. And this lands somewhere between a necessity and love. No tinges ever scared me off.”

  Here was the spirit of Montmartre, alive and beating, sensuality as a fully generous act.

  “You saint of a hussy. Or should I say hussy of a saint?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Moonlight and Dawn

  It was too hot to sleep. Alphonsine kicked off the sheet. Moonlight cast a glow through the window. She turned away from it. Still, the ache of compassion kept her awake.

  The strain of the day persisted even though she’d drunk an absinthe with Papa and Raoul. She had been desperate for Circe to stop whining and turn the way he wanted her to. All the same, she was glad when Circe took those first humiliating steps down the stairs. Auguste seemed dazed after Angèle left. Gustave brought him an absinthe and they had sat on the bank watching the river turn copper-colored as the sun set. She had wanted to be right there with them, but had left them alone. It was a man’s moment with his friend.

  She didn’t know what he felt after her outburst in the boat. From the dock, she had just run into her room, and had kept her distance since. She’d been edgy, watching him. If she hadn’t said that x equals y equals z, he would not have said that she was a poet. Instead, he might have given her what she needed. She’d ruined her own telling.

  Someone stirred, a door opened, the hallway floor creaked.

  She had told Auguste the facts, and that had relieved her somewhat, even though he didn’t say he understood. But she hadn’t told him her feelings. She hadn’t said that in that crippled city where the cabaret singers belted out “La Marseillaise” while explosions torched the Left Bank, she was making her separate peace. She hadn’t said that for a long time afterward she resented the Emperor and his ministers for starting a war that had taken her husband, had forced everyone on both sides of the Rhine to suffer, and had brought humiliation and trauma to the nation for a decade. And she hadn’t said that the reason she had told him was that he was the first man after Alexander whom she wanted to know her deeply. That was still true.

  She loosened her nightdress where it stuck to her damp skin.

  She wondered if Paul or Gustave or Raoul would have understood. Maybe understanding was too much to ask of a man who fought. She wondered if the Prussian had a limp like Raoul’s—that is, if he got through the barricades. She liked to think that he was saying liebe to someone, and that someday he would dance at a daughter’s wedding. She could almost see him in a waistcoat and tails and top hat, like Pa
pa at her wedding, like any Frenchman at a daughter’s wedding.

  She turned over her pillow to get its coolness. If anyone wasn’t able to sleep tonight, it should be Auguste. She slung on her summer dressing gown, and stepped barefoot into the corridor and out to the terrace.

  He was sitting by the railing looking out in his usual way with his knees pulled up, his heels on the chair. She approached and he jerked to his feet. He was bare to the waist. The surprise of his body made her tense.

  In a low voice he asked, “Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “Too hot.”

  She held on tightly to herself, waiting for a sign.

  He lifted her wide, filmy sleeves. “Angel’s wings.”

  He looked like a marble statue—his shoulders, the subtle curvature of his chest, his ribs, his narrow waist—whitish in the moonlight.

  “It’s pleasurable to be the one looked at instead of the one looking.”

  The instant he said that, she felt flushed, and turned to look at the river. The moon cast a steady shimmer on the water, and a wide, frilled bar of silver reached down through its glassy surface. A nightingale sang. Crickets chirped their mating rituals. A bullfrog’s moan made her giggle.

  “He’s lonely for someone,” Auguste said. “Like me. When I’m awake in a place where everyone else is asleep, I feel all alone in the world.”

  “Even when it’s so lovely out here?”

  He threaded his fingers through her hair. “You’ve got moonlight in your hair. Your skin is creamy white like a gardenia. The moonlight makes everything insubstantial. What you bring to the river, the river transforms. Do you feel it?”

  “Yes. I often do. It’s something indescribable. The river has a soul, I think, and sometimes I can touch it with my thoughts, when I pause long enough to see the things of the river as ideas.”

  “Such as?”

  She hesitated. This wasn’t something she told to just anybody. “Birds in flight are aspirations soaring. Birds in nests tell of safety and family. A tree is stability. Leaves clapping together are the tree’s appreciation for a breeze, and the breeze itself coming down the river is refreshment.”