Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  It was too confusing, this woman thing. He called for a break.

  “I—I think Jacques Valentin needs to…” Aline hurried the pup downstairs, saying, “Ouch! Ouch!” on the way.

  Pierre said in a low voice, “A tasty morsel, that one. I can see it now. You’re going to make love to her with your brush.”

  “As I do with all the women I paint.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  An Errand in Paris

  After the light faded and Auguste couldn’t paint anymore, Alphonsine suggested that they go to Le Bal des Canotiers. “Papa can take us in the launch,” she said, knowing he’d enjoy being Admiral of the River. Everyone except Charles agreed to go. A riverside guinguette was too rustic for him. Under Papa’s banner advertising the Fêtes Nautiques, they sang “Les Canotiers” on the way. Papa kept time with the steam whistle, which set Jacques Valentin to yipping.

  The small orchestra was already playing. They walked through the rose garden and found two free tables under an arcade of flowering vines. Gustave ordered Asti Spumante for everyone, a musty, sparkling wine.

  “I like it here,” Auguste said. “Women don’t wear corsets.”

  “But they smoke cigars,” Antonio said.

  When a mazurka, a ladies’ choice, was announced, Alphonsine hesitated a moment too long. Aline asked Auguste, which was only natural, and he followed her like a hooked fish. Alphonsine turned to Gustave who was already grinning, waiting to be asked. She felt light-headed as they spun around, his arm firm on her waist. They bumped into Angèle and Antonio, and changed partners. Later, Aline danced the chahut with Raoul, imitating his wild, tipping steps and crazy kicks, ending with a military salute. Everyone stopped to watch.

  All the men took turns dancing with Aline, while Auguste sat back and watched, swinging Jacques Valentin’s leash in time to the music. Joy was written all over his face. “It’s her initiation into the group,” he said to no one in particular.

  Yes. Nous included Aline now.

  When Paul was waltzing with Aline, Auguste said, “She barely touches the ground. They were made to dance together. I’d just step on her toes. Look how he’s adoring her. That would make a fine painting.”

  “What would you call it?” Alphonsine asked.

  “A Dance in the Country, of course.”

  She could see it would make a lovely painting, but she was a girl of the country too. Nous was turning sour. A moment later, she was ashamed for thinking so.

  The evening ended with a farandole in which the string of dancers, holding hands, skipped between the tables and around the trees. Pierre and Angèle held up their arms to make an arch and Aline threaded the needle and came around to make a circle, ending with three hops to the traditional, “Oui, oui, oui!” only Aline said, “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” which made everyone laugh.

  They left on the small steam ferry boldly named The Great Eastern because it plied the east channel to the rail station in Rueil. The pon-pon-pon of the pistons pounded in her head. They lingered at the station, and those staying waved from the platform to those leaving, who waved back from the train windows as if they were going on a long voyage. Alphonsine felt the way one feels just before an ending.

  “Take care of our ladies,” Raoul shouted.

  On the walk across the bridge to their sailboats, Raoul and Gustave couldn’t stop talking about Aline. All afternoon and evening she had heard it, and had watched everyone watch Aline. It was too much. She flicked the back of her hand against Raoul’s shoulder. “You’re like a pack of schoolboys.”

  The next day rain pelted the river. Alphonsine ran out to the garden to save some roses from ruin and arranged them in a vase. Since there were no customers in the dining room, Auguste set up a small canvas.

  He let out a long sigh. “It’s relaxing. It doesn’t need the tense concentration that painting models does.”

  “Oh, go on. You can’t tell me that you were tense yesterday. You were painting like a child plays.”

  “But I wasn’t reckless. When I paint flowers, I can be reckless. I can make a petal have this tint or that, go this way or that, however it suits me. I can spread pigment in swirls, or dab it, or whisk it, like a feather. I can even smear it on with my finger if I want to. Working on this will keep my hand loose so I don’t make the big painting too tight.”

  He mixed red with white on his palette. “Such pleasure paint gives. This will be for my mother.”

  “Guy was right. Your eyes do see la vie en rose. Now.”

  By midafternoon he’d finished and borrowed an umbrella to take the small painting to his mother in Louveciennes even though the paint was wet. It seemed a strange time to do that, walking in the rain, sheltering the painting with the umbrella, but when he felt like doing something, he did it.

  The next morning, despite the possibility of more rain, Alphonsine had to go to Paris. Putting off her errand any longer might make her intention fade. As she rode on the train, she knew exactly where she would go, if she could forget her own wishes enough to do an act of self-denying love. But first, since she hadn’t been to Paris in a while, she thought she might go to see the hat shop. She took rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, a street she loved for the ironwork of its balconies, like black lace, she had told Louis. Or was it Alexander, who worked in iron? At place de Ternes, she saw the café where she and Louis went on summer evenings for a digestif after dinner. In winter, they ordered petite marmite, a soup-stew she loved, served in an earthenware pot. She felt no sadness at the memories. It seemed as though it had all happened to someone else. How good that her love for Paris had not been spoiled.

  On avenue des Ternes, she passed the boucherie that had rationed horsemeat during the Siege, the sheet music store where the pianist worked. And there was the stoop, the door in the alcove, but the sign said Jacques Verniot, Épicerie Fine. The window displayed jars of jam, tins of pâté, olive oil, grenadine, wines. Her eye passed over them quickly and went to the stone floor of the alcove. She remembered the stain, a concave hexagon, the shape of France, but saw no trace of it. She opened the door and looked down. No stain on the wooden floor inside either. History had been scrubbed away.

  “Bonjour, madame,” she heard.

  She greeted the man behind the condiment counter wearing a daisy in his buttonhole, and imagined a loving moment when his wife put it there.

  “S’il vous plaît, monsieur, how long has this shop been here?”

  “Just four years, madame.”

  Then the man who bought the hat shop after the war had kept it only half a dozen years. She had hoped to see the same display tables she had dusted every day, the same hat stands, but that was foolish. Things change.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “My husband and I had a hat shop here once.”

  “Monsieur Lequeux?”

  “No. Before him. Papillon et fils. Before the war.”

  He smiled kindly at her, with the crinkles of his pale gray eyes more than with his mouth, and invited her to have a look around. The floor still creaked in the back left corner where Louis had his desk. The sound filled her with him, a pleasant feeling, not a sad one.

  If the musician still lived above the shop, she would take him something. She surveyed shelves of syrups, chutneys of exotic fruits, spices, foie gras, tins of macaroons and madeleines, olives from Provence, honey from Languedoc, fruit compotes from Gascogne, mustard from Dijon, caviar from the Aquitaine, a wall of sausages from Auvergne. Madeleines. She’d gone to La Madeleine the day the Prussian left. She would give the musician madeleines.

  “Do you know if an old musician still lives above the shop?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  “Do you ever hear a piano?”

  “No.”

  It was too bad. It would have given her a reason for coming. Still, it was hugely satisfying, this abundance of fine food right where she and the soldier had survived on rat broth and horsemeat morsels. At least on one level, France had recovere
d.

  “You have beautiful displays. It’s a fine shop,” she said.

  “Merci.”

  She wanted to buy something for the models’ luncheon. Something entirely luxurious, something that spoke of regained joy. She stopped at a display of chocolates under glass. Les Bouchons de Bordeaux. Chocolate corks filled with cognac. They’d love them, but Auguste would know a deeper meaning. Corks in the current that carried him on.

  She bought two boxes, gave the shop one last look, and knew she didn’t need to come here again. She opened her umbrella and stepped out into light rain. The paving stones gave off a sheen. Paris was polished and fresh.

  Where next? She ought to go to the Marché du Temple to do the errand she’d come for, but not yet. Ah, she knew. The Louvre.

  At the end of the Salon Carré, an enormous painting shouted at her to come closer. The Marriage Feast at Cana by Veronese, one of the artists he had mentioned. Here was his inspiration. The end of a sumptuous meal, with grapes, goblets, even a little dog on the table. Did Auguste know that? They were eating sugared fruits. She would buy some for their last luncheon. Nineteen centuries ago, this feast. She felt part of something timeless.

  She went in search of the other painters he’d mentioned, and in the eighteenth-century gallery she found a painting by Watteau called Embarkation to Cythera. The information plaque explained that it depicted a fête galante, people on their way to spend the day on the isle of Cythera, called the Isle of Love. Near a statue of Venus, couples were dallying under the trees, and cupids floated above them. She sucked in her breath. Chatou was the modern-day Cythera! And she was hostess. In another painting in the same setting, a woman was swinging on a swing under a tree. It gave her an idea: two swings under the maple trees along the bank.

  She looked out the window and saw that the rain had stopped. If she was going to do what she had come for, she’d better do it now when she felt her role most keenly. It would require a generosity of spirit she didn’t know if she had, but it was for his painting. She had seen one man’s dream of an airy marvel die. Now she could help to make another man’s airy marvel live, more beautifully. She left the Louvre at a clipped pace, still not knowing if she would betray the painting or betray herself.

  She passed the vegetable stalls of Les Halles, sparse at this hour, and slowed as she approached the Marché du Temple. In the maze of narrow alleys, she found the frippery stalls where she used to buy millinery supplies to decorate hats for the shop. The future flashed before her—Auguste painting Aline dancing with Paul at Bal des Canotiers, both men adoring her all the more in the hat that she, the hostess of the isle of Cythera, had decorated for her. If she had earned any grace for loving France’s enemy as herself, giving a gift only to show how good and generous she was to a rival would diminish that grace. She would make the thing, but when the moment came to give it, she wasn’t sure if she could.

  There was Madame Tiret with a feather bird in her hair, so squat she could barely see over her piles of silk flowers and feathers. She had to use a hooked stick to get the bolts of lace stacked on shelves behind her.

  “Do you remember me?” Alphonsine asked. “I used to buy ribbons and flowers from you and Monsieur Tiret.” The woman looked at her curiously. “A long time ago. Monsieur Tiret used to call me la dame aux roses.”

  “Ah, yes. He liked you because you looked over everything and always ended up buying roses.”

  “Along with other things. Please tell him hello from me.”

  “I would if I could. He was executed in Père Lachaise Cemetery.”

  “The Commune!” She imagined them lined up against the cemetery wall, and then crumpling. “He was always kind to me.”

  It shook her to hear this, but Madame didn’t blink. She told her as though the wound had closed and the scar was only a faint shadow. She understood now, after seeing what had been the hat shop, how that could be. So much of life we can’t control, she thought. We must accept the cork we are and stay afl, and bob gaily when we can.

  She picked out a meter of tulle to gather up around the hat, three silk poppies, red-orange with black centers for the front, for gaiety, and three small white roses for the back, for remembrance of Monsieur Tiret.

  “These will make a fine hat to set off your pretty face,” Madame said, wrapping them in newspaper.

  “It’s not for me. But it is for a pretty face, even prettier now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Aux Folies-Bergère

  In the steamy basement of the Folies-Bergère, Ellen stepped out of the dressing room she shared with Charlotte, her substitute who had made it possible for her to model on Sundays. Now it was her turn to help Charlotte, even though her plan was risky. The sooner she began, the sooner Charlotte would be taken care of and might be able to come back to work before Auguste finished his painting. She just had to be careful about whose help she asked for. She knocked on the Egyptian dancer’s door, but since Mademoiselle was being dressed in her twelve-twelve, twelve meters of veils and twelve pounds of bangles, spangles, metal breast cups, chains, anklets, and toe rings, Ellen told the dresser she’d come back later.

  She went to Désirée and Clotilde’s cell, the dancers representing the Loire and the Rhône in her mimodrama, The Rivers of France. She closed the door behind her and said quietly, “I’m gathering a collection for Charlotte.”

  “How is she?” Désirée asked.

  “Not well. Complications. Pains and bleeding.”

  “Ah, rid of one problem but cursed with another,” Clotilde muttered. “Did they use soap or wormwood?”

  “Both,” Ellen replied. “And then they made her run around the inner courtyard to bring it on, until she fainted.”

  “Little ninny,” said Clotilde.

  “It’s true, then,” Désirée said, “the rumor that those buildings in the Batignolles were designed with inner courtyards just for women in trouble.”

  “She can be sewn up if she goes to a hospital,” Clotilde said.

  “She doesn’t have a lover to pay?” Désirée asked.

  “Apparently not one who covers his liberties with coin,” Ellen said.

  Désirée gave four francs. Clotilde shot her cellmate a scoffing look, and dug in her drawstring bag until she found a five franc coin. She dropped it on Désirée’s four francs so that it made a solid clink. Ellen snickered. Competition boiled in the Folies’ corridors.

  “This is against the rules,” Clotilde said.

  Ellen gave them both a sharp look. “I know. And I know you have no reason to snitch.”

  Désirée held up her hands as if to show they were clean. “D’accord.”

  Ellen went on to the dancers representing the Seine, the Rhine, and the Dordogne, saving Charlotte’s reputation by saying she had a miscarriage. Then she started on the other mimes, Sun, Moon, Star, and La Duchesse d’Amboise, and the Greek Goddesses, Euphorie and Eurythmie, who gave her five each, but her time ran out. She had to get in costume, a brown rag of the Ferryman’s Daughter. Thirty-six francs. It was a start, but she’d hoped for larger donations. The more people she had to involve, the more chance of some telltale opening her mouth. She lifted the cracked floor tile, hid the money, and put Charlotte’s chair in front of it draped with Charlotte’s soiled silk wrapper. She applied clown white to her face and overlaid that with pink rouge, exaggerated eyes, and cupid’s bow mouth, then applied the white to her arms and hands, and waited for the caller to come for her.

  When she got to the wings, the overture to the mimodrama had already begun and the rivers were dancing. On cue she stepped onto the stage and transformed herself into the poor Ferryman’s Daughter. Her father forced her to be a pickpocket, but she fell in love with the Distinguished Traveler from whom she was supposed to steal, and ran away with him. He took her on escapades to all the rivers of France. On a Rhine barge, the Prussian Braggart asked for vin d’Alsace. Stealthily, she contrived to serve him vinegar. At the Roman temple at the source of the Seine,
a spring called Sequana, she was made to think that her homespun dress had become a golden gown. On the Loire, the Distinguished Traveler took her to a ball in the Chateau d’Amboise. At the Rhône delta, the Cowboy of the Camargue carried her off on a wild horseback ride, and the Distinguished Traveler who loved her was left in misery.

  She danced and swooned and expressed every emotion of love and delight with her body and performed witticisms with her hands, but the people in the loges aimed their opera glasses at each other, and the swarms in the promenoirs beyond the orchestra seats were too busy flirting to appreciate her. If only she could spill out words to reach them. Words that would shine and sparkle. Funny words, brilliant words, immortal words. As a mime, she could act her heart out and it wouldn’t matter. The people of Paris came to the Folies for something else.

  “Lousy house tonight,” she muttered to a stagehand in the wings, angry instead at the constraints of mime. Alone for a moment in the dark, she clenched her greasy white fists. Why was it that what we couldn’t have was sweet beyond measure? Words, for example, or Sunday afternoons along the real Seine with friends, or untangled love, or peace of mind. Especially peace of mind.

  She descended the narrow iron stairway from stage level to the cells just as the Cossack dancers in red pants and black boots were going up, taking all the room. She bent backward over the railing so they wouldn’t brush against her white arms and swear at her if her greasepaint came off on them. In the corridor, Bruno, the knife thrower, leered at her and backed her against the wall with his sword. He lifted her skirt with its point and barked out a hoarse cackle. What a reptile! She splayed her fingers right in front of his face, mimicked his laugh, ducked under his sword and escaped to her cell.