Lawless Page 9

  “I do. But Dolly wants the child to have a legal name. She wants us to get married.”

  The teacher’s hand stopped halfway to his lips. Then, abruptly, he flung the onion away. “What the devil is the matter with women? Do they not understand that it’s very difficult to serve the easel and the hearth at the same time? No, not difficult—impossible! Some few seem able to do both, I know. Manet, for instance. On the other hand, you wouldn’t call his courtship exactly conventional. He met that Dutch girl, Miss Leenhoff, in 1852—eleven years before the death of his father made it possible for him to ignore family objections and marry her. Someone knocked her up eleven years before the ceremony, too. Very mysterious. Well, at least she wasn’t hounding him to surrender to domesticity for all that time. Most women would have reminded him of his moral obligation every hour on the hour—God, some characteristics of the female species are just insufferable!”

  Matt was astonished at the vehemence of the little teacher, and even more astonished when Fochet blurted, “I know what I’m talking about! I’ve had five wives. Did I ever mention that?”

  Dumbfounded, Matt shook his head.

  “Well, I meant to do so, but you know how my thoughts wander—” That was true enough; Fochet was notoriously absentminded. Again this morning he’d forgotten to button his trousers.

  He went on. “Each of the five wanted me to spend more and more time with them, which meant less and less time in the studio. Of course they all launched their campaigns after we left the altar. Beforehand, they were very solicitous about my chosen vocation—oh, I tell you they’re clever, Kent. When you’re courting, they pretend the two of you can reach an accommodation in any disagreement. But after you have stood up before a droning priest, and after the lady has revealed her little treasures in the marriage bed, it’s you and you alone who do the accommodating. I’m not blaming them. I believe such tactics are part of their nature. But a man must learn to be wary. Especially a man in this profession. Five times I failed to heed that same advice which other unfortunates had given me. Four times hope triumphed over the warnings of personal experience. And wouldn’t you know it? Every one of the bitches loathed onions, too.”

  After a rueful laugh, Fochet spoke with more kindness than Matt had ever heard from him—and he pitched his voice low so nearby students couldn’t possibly eavesdrop. “Has Miss Dolly confronted you with a request that you marry her? Or is it a demand?”

  He pondered a moment. “No matter what you call it, the end result’s the same, isn’t it?”

  Fochet nodded in a grave way. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. How do you feel about her wishes?”

  “Independence is the last thing I want to give up.”

  “Splendid!”

  “But I don’t want to give her up, either.”

  At that, the teacher looked downcast. “Well, I do hope you can work things out without surrendering your freedom. If at all possible, I would like you to be spared the kind of painful choice many painters cannot avoid.”

  “Paul calls it choosing between two mistresses,” Matt said quietly.

  “I’m not sure I like your crazy friend’s metaphor. It smacks of the vulgar. It’s degrading, in fact. Art is a high calling. A priesthood whose members are privileged to show mere humans their common traits instead of their differences. Privileged to show them beauty in a world that has made them weary with its ugliness. Privileged, in short, to help them endure. And you know as well as I do—priests are celibate. For a very good reason. They know they can’t successfully serve both God and the flesh. Obviously that’s what Cézanne is getting at with his prattle about mistresses. But he’s right about one thing. You don’t want to make a choice between a girl and your career. I’ve seen such a choice tear many a talented fellow apart. Ruin his composure and his work for months—years—sometimes forever. The secret of avoiding that is to find a young woman who loves to copulate but who is also basically stupid and slovenly. One of those very rare and precious girls who not only don’t give a fig for respectability but don’t even know what it is.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Fochet. I love her.”

  “And you don’t think she would be content to bear the child out of wedlock?”

  He remembered the chilling threat about certain women who could solve the problem. “No. Once I thought she might, but over the past few months, she’s changed. I think she’s started to consider the future. When she found out she was pregnant, that convinced her to do something decisive”—a rueful smile—“and so she has. We either marry or”—he hid the worst—“or separate. You know she’s a strong-minded girl.”

  “Yes, I have gotten that impression.” The teacher sighed, scratched the tip of his nose. “Let me talk to her. Let me see whether I can convince her it’s disastrous to try to fetter someone in this crazy profession—why are you smiling?”

  “Because I meant to get around to asking you to do exactly that.”

  “Of course! Why not? It’s logical. I’m older. I know much more of the world than you do. You’re just a callow boy—”

  “She respects you too.”

  Fochet bunked. “She does?”

  “Very much so.”

  The teacher swelled visibly. “I’ll definitely speak to her. Just don’t get your hopes too high. Women are difficult. However, I can certainly make the effort. And if she does respect me, as you say—”

  “She does! You can convince her if anyone can. How can I thank you, Fochet?”

  “Very simple. By doing some work for a change.”

  The moment of sympathy was gone; the tutor was on the attack. “I say again—I believe your ambition exceeds your ability. Prove me wrong if you can. Show me your talent is as big as that”—he waved at the canvas—“expression of your confidence in it. In other words, as big as your ego.”

  Having thrust the spear in, he turned and walked away, regal as any king. Suddenly his jaw jutted. He broke into a waddling run, headed for the other side of the studio where another fight had erupted.

  Matt went back to work, hoping that the teacher might indeed be able to persuade Dolly to change her decision. Soften her attitude.

  At least the problem was temporarily out of his hands. He could turn to the Matamoras painting with all his concentration and energy—which was the only way a painter could accomplish anything decent. Dolly had to hear that again.

  Hear it and accept it—so their son could live.

  Chapter VII

  Someone Watching

  i

  BY MIDWEEK, Matt’s work on the Matamoras picture had almost reached a state of frenzy. He was painting for fourteen or fifteen hours at a stretch, sustained only by his young man’s strength. But even that flagged eventually, and after the long sessions he went limping back to the Rue Saint-Vincent, totally spent.

  Dolly grew short tempered because he wanted to do little more than eat and fall asleep when he got home. He wasn’t eager to hear the day’s happenings at the English school, or a lengthy account of her first visit to the doctor who’d been recommended to her, a peppery young physician named Clemenceau. He had returned from a stay in Connecticut the preceding year, brought an American wife with him, and set up a Parisian practice. Matt listened with a frown as Dolly took ten minutes to describe how Dr. Georges Clemenceau had examined her and pronounced her pregnant.

  She recognized his annoyance and voiced hers. “I should think you’d be interested in the welfare of your own child.”

  “I am, Dolly. But your sawbones hasn’t told us anything we don’t already know.”

  “I suppose you don’t worry about poor Sime, either.”

  “Of course I worry.” It was only partially true. In the studio there were long periods when thoughts of the child—or of his vanished neighbor—never entered his mind. He was slightly ashamed of that, but he couldn’t change the fact.

  He’d told Dolly everything Strelnik had said that evening at the café. She had immediately star
ted spending as much time as possible with Strelnik’s wife, to ease her through the tense period. “Has Leah still not heard from him?” Matt asked now.

  “No, not a word. She’s so upset, she’s almost ill.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder. I assume he’s all right, though. If he weren’t, his friends would have contacted us.”

  “How very considerate of you to spend a moment expressing that thought!” Dolly’s voice was oddly husky. In the light of the candles by which they were eating cheese and drinking wine for a midnight supper, her lovely eyes glowed with resentment. “I mean to say I know how highly you value your time, Matt. When you give up even one precious second on behalf of others, it’s deeply appreciated by lesser mortals.”

  Rage and sadness mingled as he rubbed his forehead. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dolly. Please don’t start again—”

  “Start what? It’s true. An expression of human feeling is a rare thing from a man whose only mistress is his work.”

  Matt’s eyes grew bleak. “What the hell’s gotten into you tonight?”

  Suddenly her hostility melted. “I’m frightened. I’m frightened of having a child. I want the baby but there’s so much to learn about having one—” She bent her head, tears glistening. “I’m just being bloody bitchy. I do apologize.”

  “I understand,” he said, though he didn’t, fully.

  Softly, she went on. “It is true about your work, though. If you were in love with another woman, I could fight that. I can’t fight a woman like the one you’re thinking about every moment these days.”

  She meant the cantina dancer. He’d been trying to solve a problem of arrangement of the painting’s central figure. He’d even been doing some little drawings tonight, before she’d set out the cheese and wine. The pad, charcoal and several discarded anatomical sketches lay at his feet.

  For a moment her glance rested on them with unconcealed loathing. He was infuriated by her suggestion that the problem was unimportant. Before he could say so, she glanced up from the sketches and sighed.

  “No, I can’t fight that. Come, let’s go to bed. I’m worn-out, too.”

  His anger faded. No doubt the pregnancy was upsetting and tiring her. He supposed that was the case when any woman had her first baby. But this pregnancy brought a special burden. She didn’t know whether it would go to its full term.

  July was approaching. The deadline she’d set for his decision. There’d been no further discussion of that decision, but obviously it was much in her thoughts.

  Fochet hasn’t spoken to her. When he does, she’ll calm down. Maybe July will come and she’ll back off and there’ll be no need for a decision.

  He clung to Fochet as a solution to his difficulty almost as tenaciously as he’d clung to the spar that had kept him from drowning in the Gulf—as tenaciously, and with fully as much desperation.

  ii

  The remainder of the week went by and the underpainting of the Matamoras scene began to emerge. As he saw it in his head, in his sketches, and then in broad outlines swiftly laid on in black, it would be a canvas full of sweeping line and swirling motion. The dominant color would represent a sinister amber lamplight which had flooded the actual café. He only hoped he could successfully transfer that light from his memory to the canvas.

  He’d finally solved the technical problem with the dancer. The problems with Dolly persisted. She seemed exhausted even when she woke in the morning and was increasingly prone to snap and quarrel over the smallest imagined slight.

  On Saturday he decided to try to do something to make her feel better. That evening he persuaded her to put on her best frock, and they ambled up to the Moulin de la Galette, which had long ago been converted from an actual mill to an open-air restaurant and dance hall.

  The spot was one of the most popular in Montmartre. Guests entered through a gate into a deliberately overgrown garden. Then they passed along a narrow hallway in the old house attached to the mill, which some said had first started grinding grain in the thirteenth century. The door at the end of the hall revealed a whole series of pleasing views on the hilltop: beds of daisies and bright morning glories in a broad lawn; an orchard; a vegetable garden. And surrounded by these charmingly rural aspects, there were clusters of white-painted outdoor furniture, a raised dance floor and a small band shell.

  To their surprise, they found Paul and Hortense at one table. “Join us, join us!” Paul urged.

  Matt and Dolly did so, though not without some unspoken fears about an unpleasant evening. Paul and his mistress had apparently reconciled, however, and both were in quite good spirits. Occasionally Matt had seen Paul completely forget his practiced truculence. Perhaps tonight would turn out to be one of those grand occasions when some curious chemistry took over and released Paul from his need to make people reject him so that he could continue to believe he was special.

  The Moulin soon grew crowded. They ordered good, cheap côtes du Rhône in a large pottery carafe with a brown glaze. After consuming two large glasses, Matt all but forgot his difficulties with Dolly.

  The lanterns strung in the trees glowed in the summer dusk. The musicians arrived, started exchanging jokes with the guests as they tuned up. Zola dropped in and stayed half an hour, chatting with Paul and the others about plans for his forthcoming wedding. Dolly sent one or two pointed glances Matt’s way, to remind him that some who were involved in the arts didn’t find it prohibited marriage. He just poured more wine and said nothing.

  Auguste Renoir arrived and pulled up a chair. An unusual young man in many ways, Matt thought. Renoir’s father had operated a tailoring shop in Limoges, but the business had failed so he’d come up to Paris when his son was quite small. Young Auguste had painted china just as Fochet had, meticulously copying scenes by Fragonard and Watteau in a dingy warehouse on the Rue du Temple. But to finance his education at the Beaux-Arts, he’d done all sorts of commercial jobs of the kind most aspiring artists scorned. He’d painted figures and ornamental designs on fans, decorated the blinds of shop windows, produced endless copies of coats of arms for important families, and created murals for the walls of obscure little taverns. He was still knocking out commissioned portraits to pay for his living expenses.

  Matt believed Renoir had ability equal or superior to Paul’s or Edouard’s and that his paintings would one day be famous. But the young man from Limoges unconsciously made light of his talent by frittering it away. He incessantly scribbled cartoons and caricatures on anything from napkins to his own paper cuffs. Tonight he started off by surreptitiously doing a sketch of Zola as a dirty, swag-bellied laborer. Renoir didn’t care for the journalist or his novels. “He thinks that he fully describes human beings merely by saying they smell,” was his comment after the writer had gone.

  Auguste Renoir had a tough air sometimes, almost as if he had grown up as a Paris gamin—which in fact he had—and would remain one until the end of his days. Yet mingled with that street-smart cynicism was something pensive and gentle—as now, when he forgot his pique, tore up the nasty cartoon and began another showing some of the Saturday evening celebrants. The Moulin was one of his favorite subjects.

  Matt and Dolly waltzed under the lanterns, whirling round and round the raised wooden floor to the melodies of Johann Strauss the younger. The orchestra played the Viennese music with apolitical enthusiasm. At the end of one number, they walked back to the table to find Renoir just completing a cartoon of them pressed close together, as though dancing languidly to some very slow piece. The lines of the drawing were few but eloquent, and there was no mistaking the models he’d chosen.

  “Auguste, that’s grand!” Matt exclaimed. “You must sign it!”

  Renoir ripped the drawing off his pad. “Why? It’s trivial.” He started to crush the cartoon into a ball. Dolly rescued it from his hand.

  “Not to me. It’s splendid. May we have it?”

  The young man seemed flattered. He glanced down in a modest way. “Of course, if you like it that
much.” He put his signature on it and handed it to her. She gazed at it with obvious pleasure while they rested during the next few dances.

  She really is feeling good tonight, Matt thought when they went back to waltz again. She’d actually shown a liking for a piece of work done by one of his artist friends. Usually her approval was limited to a cool word or two—if that. He often thought she was afraid to display enthusiasm for fear it might imply approval of the profession as well.

  Around and around the dance floor they spun, Dolly’s eyes sparkling from all the wine and her cheeks pink from the warmth of the summer night. Unexpectedly, he was reminded of the child as he rested his hand on her waist. He seemed to detect a slight thickening there.

  Soon the child would begin to change her figure visibly. That would be just the first of many changes in their lives. It was an awesome thing for a man to contemplate the birth of his first offspring. But under the gay lights of the Moulin, it was a happy thing to contemplate, too.

  For three short hours, neither he nor Dolly said a cross word. All was right with the world.

  Laughing and clinging to one another, they were weaving along the Rue Saint-Vincent as the bell of Saint-Pierre’s chimed midnight. Slowly the last tolling died away between the summer stars and the twinkling lights of Paris below the butte. The thickly shadowed street was silent except for the meow of an unseen cat on the prowl.

  Matt’s curiosity was getting the better of him. The wine he’d drunk finally overcame his caution. In a voice just slightly thickened, he said, “You’re in wonderful spirits tonight, Dolly.”

  “It was a wonderful evening. You know how much I love to dance. I won’t be able to do it much long—oops.” She slipped on the cobbles. He grabbed her around the waist to keep her from taking a spill.