The Fountain of St. James Court; Or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  Instantly I feel the blood drain from my face: how has this girl led me into such unguarded disclosures? For I am the most discreet salonnière in Paris. No one can trip me into divulging information better left unsaid.

  As though to implore aid, the girl presses her hands together, and I see that between her palms she is holding a tiny garment fabricated from thin white batiste. It is tucked in front and a band of finest lace encircles the neck. “I have made this gown myself,” she whispers, “a gift for the queen and for her infant to come. Perhaps you would take it with you now and present it on my behalf to the queen, when next you come to paint.”

  How is it possible this girl suspects, as do I, that the queen is newly pregnant? No one, not any member of court who frequents my salon, has even begun to hint at such a thing. And how did I know? Something in the queen’s complexion, which so transfixed my appreciation, and something of the joy in her eyes. I shake my head and say in as kindly a fashion as I can, “My dear, I could not dare to presume.”

  The girl presses her hands together almost ecstatically. “Then perhaps you would like to buy it from me for your own use?”

  “But—” There I stop myself. It is no business of this seamstress to know that I am not pregnant or that I am, or to presume I wish to purchase a gift for someone else. But is it possible that I, too, am pregnant, and that this waif can see in me what I saw in the mien of the queen? While the little garment is wonderfully made, quite artful really, it does not seem entirely clean. There is a grayish cast to the fabric.

  “Have you quite finished with the little dress?” I ask. “Do you consider it ready to sell?”

  “Madame, it is finished as to stitchery, but—” Here she looks down, and she rubs the back of her hand under her nose. “I know it should be laundered.” Now she looks up into my eyes again. “Something told me to bring it to this place at once. I think it was the Holy Spirit. The idea formed in my mind that I was not to tarry. Madame, I promise that when the dress is laundered and spread on a bush in the sun to dry, and ironed of wrinkles, then this will be a dress fit for a royal child. You will not find smaller or more perfect stitches anyplace in France, and the ideas for its shape and the lace, too, are like no other.”

  I am quite amazed by her ardor and no less so by her faith. When she spoke of the Holy Spirit, I thought of Bernini, not of the bust, which I have just seen, of Louis XIV before his dissipation but of the evocative engraving of Bernini’s sculpture of Saint Teresa of Avila. I know that I will buy the little garment, for I wondrously believe that perhaps I myself am with child or will be soon.

  “Will there be a full moon tonight? Have you noticed?” I ask her.

  “Madame, it was three nights ago. Tonight the moon is waning. Its back will be hunched.”

  Ah, I have been so excited and absorbed by the prospect of coming to Versailles that I forgot to notice the absence of my menses, which arrive each month as regularly as the full moon, unless . . .

  I reach into the placket of my dress for my pocket of coins. I know there are not many coins in it, for M. Le Brun gives me only a tiny allowance each month. Inside my skirt, my fingers bump against my own thigh, and the prodding and groping surprises my leg. I had almost forgotten that I had a body, other than my hands and eyes; this mystic child seems somehow disembodied—her thinness. Could it be that she and her family are starving?

  As I empty the purse into my hand, I look down at the little seamstress and ask hopefully, “Is it enough?” for I know she has spoken the truth about the value of her work.

  “It is more than enough, Mme Vigée-Le Brun.”

  “Take it all, Jeanne Marie.”

  Her lips part but she makes no sound. Nonetheless, the gratitude in her hungry eyes speaks for her.

  Woe be unto the girl in France who hears divine voices, my own inner voice warns, and I spontaneously remember an earlier Jeanne, Jeanne d’Arc of bygone times.

  After I climb into the carriage, I sit heavily upon the bench.

  I hear my father’s voice, with tears in his eyes and his voice cracking with joy, who tells me, “You are an artist, my child!” Today his prophecy is fulfilled, for I am indeed commissioned to paint the queen of France.

  Somewhat ruefully another voice within my head tells me, Yes, and you are a woman, too, with a husband who has pleasured you, and you with a body well prepared for childbearing. Involuntarily I place my hand beneath my bosom. My fingertips rub the fabric of my dress, deep rose and brown, maternal colors. Suddenly I long for fresher hues, something of light blue and celery green and sunny yellow.

  Would it not be nice to mother a little boy with hair as full of sunshine as the head of a summer dandelion? I ask myself. I am in a state of wonder.

  My encounter with the prescient little needlewoman has almost shoved aside my elation that I have been commissioned to paint the queen of France. The thin child’s prescience is something I can hardly doubt, for it echoes my own happy intuition about the queen’s pregnancy. I am more happy for her than I am for myself, for I know that the demands of pregnancy will take more from my work than I would like, no matter how sunny the child. The queen, the darling, will benefit enormously if she gives birth to a child, especially if the babe should be a boy. For the sake of the family into which she has married, for the sake of her own status, for the sake of France, and one may say for the sake of all of Europe as well, the queen’s pregnancy will be the most joyous possible news.

  I am pressing the dirty little garment against my mouth as though it were a lawn handkerchief, as though I am about to use it to wipe clear my own tears of joy for the happiness of the queen of France. Taking the little dress by its shoulders, I give it a hard shake within the carriage, but that does nothing toward removing its grayness. Dust is so thoroughly worked into the weave of the fabric that I know it will require soap and scrubbing.

  I imagine the young girl sewing beside a window for hours and even weeks. Yes, so much care has been taken with the work that the cloth must have been touched and maneuvered many times by her talented fingers. Still, the garment has no worth if it cannot be made pristine. Should I have let her learn that lesson? I sigh.

  It is very easy to ruin a work of art. Or to mar it through some impulse to hurry or because fatigue makes one careless. For now there is nothing to be done but to fold up the tiny gray batiste garment and put it away. I spread the little dress on my knee and fold it in half lengthwise, a soft bend that I do not smooth into a crease. As I softly fold up its length into thirds, something in me rebels against handling cloth less than clean, no matter how delicate its workmanship. Now it is a square shape about the size of my palm. Well, I shall place the garment inside my pocket. I note how truly light, almost weightless the thing is, as light as if it were a stack of folded cobwebs.

  And the little seamstress, she was but a wisp herself. My impulse was correct to empty my purse in her hand.

  Now the carriage is passing, and I within it, across the wide entrance pavings before the Château de Versailles—marble, then cobblestones. I have spoken with the splendor and grace of Europe; I have seen wan poverty, tantamount to starvation. Through the streets of the town of Versailles, I ponder these visions, and beyond, onto the road that will take us through the countryside back to Paris.

  VIII

  A CELLO IN THE AFTERNOON

  (continued)

  FOUNTAIN

  THERE WAS ENDLESS SORROW, the cello said, and yearning, but also full-throated fulfillment. A lone woman had jumped from Kathryn’s roof; her own parents were dead and buried; but friendship was at hand, and Kathryn could claim it. Down the curved steps, somewhat carelessly she went, with a clatter, an urgency. No need to be isolated in uncertainties.

  Long ago a student of Kathryn’s (the brilliant Aleda, now dead of cancer) had written a poem euphoniously titled “A Cello in the Afternoon.” Those two different but equally elongated o-sounds, that was part of what she had loved about Aleda’s title: cello, afternoon.
And Aleda would have loved this moment: a real cello in the afternoon. Now. The enveloping elegance of St. James Court. The elasticity of time.

  And there was Kathryn’s beloved fountain, Venus by day, goddess of love and beauty. Her verdigris face seemed triumphant against a sunny ceiling of sky blue. Oh, the fountain of St. James Court: how it refreshed—green against blue—how it both satisfied and inspired, as she crossed the daylit Court, pulled by emanations of a cello playing Bach.

  As she crossed the Court, Kathryn was tempted to drop some gold trinket into the grassy ring around the fountain, something that might be found years and eons hence, by archaeologists (perhaps with faces evolved to green or blue) so they would know the ancient goddess was still worshipped and offered tributes by a populace far beyond her time, but Kathryn wore no jewelry at all, unless she was dressing up. Amethyst, ruby, and gold, the jewelry of the trees.

  She felt she was holding Time, lightly, appreciatively, by the throat. If Humphrey were here on St. James Court, she would present him a bouquet of long-stemmed autumn leaves, encircled by her hand.

  BY OPENING THE DOOR of her building, Shirley, the resident from the third floor of the St. James flats, made it easier for Kathryn to enter the condo building. When the door closed, the resonant tones of the cello fell as through a funnel down the staircase. “I just love to hear her sawing away on that bass fiddle.” Shirley’s words followed Kathryn as she hurried up the interior stairs. “Don’t you?” When Kathryn reached the landing, she found Leslie’s door ajar, and the last note, rich and full with vibrato, was being released into the air. With her hand on the doorknob, Kathryn paused and thrust only her head into the room.

  THE CELLO SECURED between her knees, Leslie slowly opened her arm, theatrically, lifting the tip of the bow away from the strings in a wide arc. “Welcome, stranger,” she said, all warmth in the timbre of her voice, in the tone of her skin.

  “Been writing,” Kathryn said. Already she felt brighter.

  “I know. Been reading.” Leslie spoke happily, as though it were one of the major joys of life to read what Kathryn had written. “But I’m barely started.”

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t ask you about it if I let myself drop in. A social call. How are things going for you?”

  Loosening the bow at the nut, Leslie said, “The book is pure you.” She smiled.

  “It’s supposed to be Élisabeth. The reader should forget me. How is it pure me?”

  “Lined with silken sentences.”

  “You look happy to see me,” Kathryn replied.

  “Well, of course I am.” And for a moment the two old friends simply beamed at each other, Leslie with the cello between her knees.

  “Do you remember,” Kathryn continued, “what Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway wanted from life? That people should look happy when she entered the room.”

  “And that Evelyn Whitbread, the estimable Hugh Whitbread’s always ailing wife, never did look happy when Clarissa arrived.”

  “So you’re really and truly moved in?” Kathryn asked. “Here to stay?”

  “I think so. I intend so. And yourself ?”

  “I’ve been on St. James twelve years, but who knows what life might bring?” Kathryn felt excited and eager. “But I want to be sure of you.”

  “How fair is that?” Leslie asked, smiling again.

  “Critics and readers, too, always say that all my books are different.”

  “And they are, but they’re all you,” Leslie replied.

  “I hope I’m not turning sows’ ears into silk purses.” How was it possible, Kathryn wondered, for anyone, for Leslie, to look fresh and graceful every moment of her life? Woodsy, by which she meant natural, though sophisticated. Like a doe in the woods, Leslie was, with wide dark eyes and chiseled cheekbones, a quiet, alert, self-contained expression, unless she was speaking. “Then Portrait is okay?” Kathryn asked. “So far?” Now she was pushing when she shouldn’t, so she rattled on. “I took a little nap on the sunporch—it was midnight last night before I came over—but my nap got interrupted.”

  “I saw you out earlier with Peter, walking Prince.” Leslie gestured at one of the marshmallow beanbag chairs dressed in soft, white leather.

  As Kathryn sat down, she fingered the surface of the leather squash chair: pebbly. She would have preferred something more sentimental, a cuddly, brushed nap. “Royal. The poodle’s name is Royal. You sounded great on the sarabande.”

  “Prélude allemande, courante, sarabande, bourée gigue. I messed up the sarabande the first time, too distracted.”

  Ryn eyed the cello and the cellist as though they were one beast, a study in browns, wood and skin, though Leslie’s curly-frizzy hair had puffs of gray in it. “I came out my front door just in time to hear you starting over.”

  “A title idea came to me for a story while I was reading your book,” Leslie said. “‘The Death of J. S. Bach.’”

  Ryn’s attention wandered over the furnishings. Everything seemed freshly placed; everything was aesthetically pleasing and could be savored a great many times without losing its charm. No clutter.

  “A new short story.” Leslie’s glance was bright, eager for her friend’s interest. Levering the cello forward from between her knees, Leslie stood up and carried the instrument by its neck to the rigid case standing in a corner, upright and open. “A triumphant story, actually. At least as deaths go.” Retracting the endpin, Leslie slid the instrument inside the case, secured it with a strap, and closed the lid, as though it were a door. She sat down again opposite Ryn on the edge of the straight chair, pressed the palms and fingers of her hands together, placed the wedge between her knees, and leaned forward.

  “Part of a story collection based on lives of the composers, Moments Musicaux.”

  “Americans might have trouble with the French title,” Ryn warned, but already she was thinking of great performances she herself had witnessed. Moments that should be immortalized.

  This was the way of their conversations: they branched and branched, but usually they kept track of their branchings and could return to the point of juncture to redirect their topics.

  “In 1968,” Ryn began, “when I was in London with my mother and James, we went to hear the Russian orchestra at the Victoria and Albert Hall.” James had sometimes called her Piggle. “The Soviet Union had just invaded Czechoslovakia, and they were scheduled to play the Dvořák Cello Concerto with Rostropovich as soloist. He was still with the Soviets then.” As Ryn told the story, Leslie rose, and Ryn followed her into the kitchen, talking.

  Ryn knew that Leslie knew Ryn wanted her to fix a snack, that Leslie could do it with ease, that Leslie would be happy to fix something good for her—simple or elaborate.

  “When the orchestra began, the audience started shouting in English, ‘Freedom for Czechoslovakia!’ and in Russian, ‘Freedom for Czechoslovakia!’ The rafters rang with it, but the conductor conducted like mad, and the orchestra played like mad, and some people shouted, ‘They’re just musicians!’ and ‘Let them play!’ And the audience quieted down.

  “Then after the Dvořák, Rostropovich came out by himself to play an encore. He played the Bach sarabande you were just playing.”

  Leslie stopped, leaned back against the stove, listening.

  “It was the saddest thing in the world, the way Rostropovich played it. It was so clear that he was offering an apology for what his country had done.”

  “Terrifically moving,” Leslie murmured. “You should write that story.”

  “It was a wonderful moment for the three of us,” Ryn said. “All of us loving the timeless music so much and being so much a part of that moment.” She remembered how James had held his face lifted, his large nose tilted as though he were breathing in the music. And her mother, with a slight set smile, determined not to be moved to tears. Her mother, glad she was alive, in London for the first time, fulfilled in that moment. For the sake of the trip, Ryn had paused in her graduate studies, taught in Muscatine
for a whole year to earn the money—a trip to Europe for her mother, and for James and herself as companions. “Of course Rostropovich defected to the U.S. later. Became an advocate for human rights globally.”

  Leslie took the teakettle to the sink to fill it. “Like Casals,” she murmured.

  Moments Musicaux. Ryn recalled Leslie’s French title, an allusion to Franz Schubert’s Moments Musicaux, and felt bad to have sounded a cautionary note about it. “How big a collection of stories?” she asked Leslie.

  “Maybe just six. A slender volume.” Her eyes twinkled with the phrase a slender volume. When they were freshmen in college together, they had both said how lovely it would be to meet a young man on campus with long legs, his back against a tree, reading a slender volume of poems. For Ryn, Giles had been that young man, well discovered.

  There had been the college Daniel, too (not Daisy’s husband), not slender and long-legged but with the desired sensibility, despite his compact body. An organist and choir director, alive in every fiber of his being, a lover of Wordsworth. Quick, full of discerning empathy, but politically conservative. Kathryn’s soul had divided, loving them both, ecstatically, chastely, first Daniel, then Giles.

  Leslie had married mature men of practical sense, capable of success, socially viable, but men with secret vices under their respectable surfaces. The first marriage had postponed the completion of Leslie’s education for decades.

  “Apple cinnamon tea?” Reaching high, Leslie took ivory, gold-rimmed cups from their shelf. She popped two poppy seed muffins (strange flat seeds, pale, paving their crowns) into the toaster oven.