Luncheon of the Boating Party Read online

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re going to leave it for me to tell them?”

  “No. I’ll tell them.”

  “You must ask Jeanne to be in it. Her cachet will smooth the way into the Salon.”

  “I already have, though I doubt that she’ll pose. She hated my full-length portrait of her.”

  In a flash of memory he saw the shimmering white gown with a train, the white satin slipper peeking out from her hemline, her white-gloved hands holding a handkerchief, her lips parted sensuously—every detail an injury to him now.

  “How could she hate it? It’s a masterpiece.”

  “She said it would do nothing for her reputation.”

  “She would have liked it well enough if it had been hung where Sarah Bernhardt’s was.”

  “The truth is, she’s left me for more academic painters. They’ll present her identifiably in her theatrical roles to advance her career, something I wouldn’t do. I’m not an advertiser.”

  “Left you? Completely? In all ways?”

  “I thought you, all-wise and all-knowing woman of society, would already know.” Auguste brushed his left palm down his pant leg as though smoothing a wrinkle. “When a lady and I go our separate ways, it’s been my custom to paint her one last time, and give it to her as a souvenir d’amour. She condescended to let me, but then she didn’t even want it.”

  Madame’s quiet, sudden intake of breath gave him a fleeting consolation.

  She patted his cast. “Perhaps a word from me might bring her around—to model for you, I mean. This Sunday, you say?”

  Renoir nodded. “I’d be much obliged.”

  “That means, of course, that you will take Cécile-Louise too.”

  His head snapped up to see her eyes, hard as the diamonds at her throat.

  “No.”

  “You’re rejecting two of my offerings? Auguste, you’re middle-aged now.”

  “Sounds like you’re talking about a cheese.”

  “You’ve been labeled as a philanderer, running with one model after another. If you persist in this profligate life, you’ll be called worse things. Marriage is the most crucial social institution in France today, to repeople the Republic—”

  He guffawed at the leap in her conversation.

  “And if you’re seen much longer in your perverse denial of the call of the Republic, no amount of beautiful paintings will touch the walls of the Salon or the drawing rooms in the better quarters. Find someone, Auguste. Fall in love and marry.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to be in love, but marriage is something else completely.”

  He saw himself in Madame Charpentier’s eyes, nearing forty and already brittle in his bones, his forehead as high as the grand boulevards were wide, still trying to charm women a decade or two younger. Pathetic, maybe. But a philanderer? He refused to accept that.

  “I’m urging unmarried women to marry also, so they won’t fall to the province of the demi-monde. If Jeanne has truly left you, then consider Cécile-Louise. She is full of money, and owns a mansion on Île Saint-Louis.”

  “Hm. Inherited?”

  Madame pursed her lips. “Acquired. Not by marriage. By social contract.”

  Wasn’t that the demi-monde, living off a man? “The man still lurking?”

  “Conveniently dead. A duel. Auguste, such a match would leave you free to paint whatever and however you want.”

  “I don’t even know her.”

  “Ah, but you will, n’est-ce pas, when she poses for you?”

  “You forget. One of my rules is never to do anything out of any impulse other than pleasure.”

  She laughed outright at that. “Then take your pleasure in her.”

  He wanted to be stubborn, to show her that he had some self-respect, and that she didn’t have him in her pocket. She looked at him with the stern expectation of a mother. He pulled his shoulders back. The right one twinged.

  “D’accord. I’ll let her pose. That’s all I promise.”

  “And shall I give Monsieur and Madame Beloir your regrets?”

  “Please.”

  A yellow glow poured out the windows of the Café Nouvelle-Athènes, the triangular-shaped building jutting like a white nose into place Pigalle at the foot of Montmartre. Pigalle, center for nightlife, for rendezvous at the fountain, for a vibrant mix of high and low culture. With any luck, Angèle would be in the café, one more model, one of the best.

  The etched glass door scraped against the sand on the floor as he entered. The place smelled like cigarettes, garlic, and cognac. Auguste nodded to Edgar Degas, who did the same from his own table behind the glass partition surrounded by his ducklings who never challenged him, Forain, Raffaëlli, and Bracquemond. Paul Lhôte was hunched over a sheaf of papers at his regular table forward of the glass partition near the front windows.

  “Clean your glasses, Paul, and you’ll see better,” Auguste said.

  Paul shook his head. “You just can’t stay off that engin de catastrophe, can you? At least this time you didn’t break your other arm.”

  Auguste sat down next to him. “I need your help.”

  “Fine, but right now I’m writing a story,” Paul said.

  “Ah. In the heart of every Paris clerk lurks a fiction writer.”

  “It’s called ‘Mademoiselle Zélia.’”

  Auguste sat down. “La belle Zélia. Une Montmartroise?”

  Paul nodded, dipping his pointed nose down to his paper and writing.

  “She’s got to be beautiful, right? And pale, though capable of feverish gaiety. Just the way we like them. Is she someone I know?”

  “No.”

  “How about this?” Auguste breathed in loudly, pulling together his nostrils, and gazed up at the ceiling, water-stained in familiar shapes—a cumulus cloud, a violin, a breast. “She was waltzing in a delicious yellow gown, in the arms of a dark-haired stranger with the air of an oarsman.”

  “You dunce. It’s about you. But the character’s name is Resmer, a painter who paints in the overgrown garden of a run-down house on the Butte.”

  “Ah, the rue Cortot, my old street.”

  “And he’s feeding her wine-soaked galettes and trying to convince her to model for him.”

  “Nude, I hope. There’s nothing as delectable as a dimpled buttock, unless it’s a dimpled breast.”

  “It takes place at Le Moulin de la Galette.”

  “What I have in mind takes place at La Maison Fournaise. Sunday. How many sentences do I have to contribute to equal you posing for a painting?”

  Paul scratched something out. “Don’t talk. I’m trying to write.”

  “Trying, that’s what we do in Montmartre. We try to write, like Duret, or we try to compose, like Cabaner, or we try to paint, like Cordey. To be a Montmartrois is to be a trier. And if we fail, we mope in a café or rage or drown ourselves in absinthe, and then we try again. We’re a village of triers.”

  Paul took a long draught of his amber bock. Auguste rolled a cigarette, lit it, and doodled on the marble table with the burnt-out match.

  “Give me two pieces of paper, will you?” Auguste asked. He leaned forward and wrote to a rich collector who had become a friend.

  Cher Monsieur Bérard,

  I trust that you are in the best of health in those fresh sea breezes of Normandy. As for me, I have taken upon myself the task to answer Zola’s criticism of the latest Impressionist show, particularly the charge that no masterpiece of complexity and thoughtful preparation has been painted in the Impressionist vein. I’m going to paint boaters on the terrace of La Maison Fournaise in Chatou, which I’ve been itching to do for years. I’m getting on, and I don’t want to postpone this little celebration of la vie moderne for which I might not be able to meet the expenses later. Even if the cost prevents me from finishing, it will teach me something.

  You know that I’m grateful for the commissions you have given me in the past, but I may find myself in need of money for this new, un
commissioned endeavor. I thought it best to alert you ahead of any prospective point of desperation. From time to time, a man has to attempt things that are beyond his capacities.

  Please give my regards to Madame Bérard and the children.

  Ever yours,

  A. Renoir

  He wrote a similar note to Charles Deudon. He hated this kind of letter-writing, laying the groundwork to hit them up for money later. He had some misgivings. Bérard had bought seventeen paintings from him last year and only three this year. If he had said yes to the Beloirs at Madame Charpentier’s salon, he wouldn’t have to write such letters.

  “Have you read Zola’s review of the last Impressionist show?” Auguste asked. “He blasts us for not producing a masterpiece. He who championed us from the start.”

  “You’ve got it in your head that he approves of the Impressionist style. He doesn’t give a flap about style. He supported you just because you’re insurrectionists, and because your subject matter is proletariat.”

  “I swear, this painting will make his head spin. Will you be there or not? Every Sunday for a while. No wild doings to interfere. No stowing away to Africa until I’m finished. No disappearing down in the catacombs.”

  Paul ran his hand through his hair and leaned back. “Are you going to ask that Valadon girl to pose too? Marie Clémentine?”

  Auguste spoke in a low voice. “And bring down Degas’ wrath? He thinks he owns her because he put a brush in her hand after she left the circus.”

  “I thought that was Puvis de Chavannes,” Paul said.

  “Maybe he did too, after he put his pubis there. Pubis de Chavannes, painter of stiffs. No doubt they both exercised themselves on her. No, I’m not dawdling after her. She’s only a girl. What do you take me for, a philanderer?” Paul chortled. “Will you be there anyway?”

  “Yes.” Paul peered at his pages. “Just leave me alone now. It’s coming.”

  “Then let it come and come again.” Renoir snickered and snapped his finger against Paul’s shoulder as he stood up. “Come early if you want to take out a girl in a yole. Bring Pierre Lestringuèz, to keep you in line. There’ll be plenty of boats.”

  He stood to leave and Edgar Degas hailed him. My God. He couldn’t have heard him. Auguste went over to his table.

  “Look here, Renoir,” Degas said without a smile, his mustache and his shoulders drooping, permanently tired. “I’m starting a new magazine, Le Jour et la Nuit, entirely made up of lithographs depicting society in the style of Realism. Lithography is the new way to advertise your work. Forain and Bracquemond here have already submitted. You’re welcome to submit too.”

  The false ring to Degas’ invitation made him sense a trap being laid.

  “All in the style of Realism, mind you. Nothing false. You embellish your models because you can’t stand ugliness, and it’s a deception, an offense against reality. If a woman has a horsey jaw, give it to us that way.”

  “Or if a man has a bloody cheek,” Forain said, looking him over curiously.

  “What we’re after is the truth of life,” Degas said.

  “Prettiness is truth too. You’ve painted plenty of pretty dancers.”

  “This is a journal of modern life,” Raffaëlli said with the smug assurance that he was Degas’ favorite. “So the subjects are café scenes of solitary down-and-outs, beggars at train stations, ragpickers in the Maquis, old men crippled in the war. That’s modern life.”

  “If you want to preach, young man, you ought to wear some kind of clerical costume so people would be warned. In my mind, there are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them. I hate le misérabilisme. I’m in the shining business, not the darkening business.”

  “Still doing commissioned portraits, then,” Degas said, taking charge again. “Prettying up your sitters so their husbands will throw their money at you. Renoir, you have no character at all to continue churning them out.”

  “There’s character in paying my own way and in painting my own way. I won’t have my motifs assigned. I’m not some student, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “We certainly didn’t notice you at the last Impressionist show.”

  “I would have been noticed there as well as at the Salon if it weren’t for your arbitrary rules.”

  “Raffaëlli here made an astonishing showing,” Degas said.

  “So I’ve heard.” He gave him a nod as recognition.

  Degas smoothed his grizzled beard the way he always did before pontificating. “Thirty-six works to your two that the Salon allows. Not that your two weren’t good paintings, but hung so badly among thousands that they were wasted. You’re making a mistake casting your net there.”

  “Several hundred thousand people come to the Salon compared to our three thousand in a good year. I go where I’m likely to be more noticed.”

  “And betray the group with your selfishness in the process.”

  A hot brand in his gut, that accusation.

  “Fine, fine. Think whatever way you will. Good evening.”

  He went out into the warm night. Two prostitutes on the café terrace looked like Degas’ marvelous pastel come to life. Inadvertently, he caught the eye of one of them in the yellow light from the window. A pitifully hopeful expression played across her lips. She was trying too. He passed her by.

  No, it wasn’t a hot brand. It was a setup. Degas knew he wouldn’t want to submit to the magazine under those terms. The prickly bastard just wanted an argument. The group was in trouble.

  Fatigue suddenly weighed him down. He dragged himself the four blocks to his studio and lay down on his narrow bed. His whole body throbbed. He had six, nine if Charles Ephrussi, Pierre Lestringuèz, and Jeanne would come. He needed a few more. He thought how good the day had been, on the whole, how different he was this night compared to the night before. Something miraculous had happened. He closed his eyes. It had been a long day.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Reflections on the Seine

  Alphonsine finished the week’s accounting in her father’s office and slapped the ledger closed. Normally she was content doing this task as she’d done in the hat shop in Paris, but today she thought, I have more appealing things to do—preparation for the painting-that-is-to-be.

  She would not be just the hostess of the restaurant, as usual, but hostess to the birth of a painting. A midwife. She wanted everything perfect—the weather, the light on the water, the fruit on the table, the dessert. If she picked pears today, by Sunday they would be golden streaked with bronze, with a pleasant tang. Auguste might want to paint them. She had river errands to do. She went to the oar shed for her paddle, basket, and collecting can, and lowered them into a périssoire at the dock.

  She pushed off. It happened to be her favorite périssoire, not because of anything about the boat. All their périssoires were nearly the same—long, wooden, needle-nosed boats with open hulls for one person using a doubled-bladed paddle. Their narrowness made them precarious for first-timers, but she had navigated the river in them for twenty years. It was her favorite because of its name. Aurore. Dawn. Full of promise.

  The painting-that-is-to-be was full of promise too. All the models to get to know. A chance to make real friends, not just day-trippers out for an afternoon affair in the country with any grenouille, any of the easy country girls of La Grenouillère who lifted their skirts and spread their knees like a frog to attract hungry young men eager to lie on the bank with them.

  She paddled out beyond Restaurant Lemaire on the northern point of the narrow island. Here commercial traffic wasn’t separated from pleasure boating. If she kept paddling up the big north loop, rounded it, and turned south along the Bois de Boulogne, then rounded the south loop, she’d eventually be in Paris, but she doubted if anyone had done that in a périssoire.

  Once, when she was a little girl, her brother had lifted a stone and pointed to a worm curved into three loops. “Look, it’s the Seine,” Alphonse had said.
<
br />   “No, imbécile. It’s a worm,” she’d insisted.

  “It’s the river. The river’s a worm.”

  That a worm could be a worm and a river, or that a single word could signify a worm as well as a river, was devious trickery. Her eyes told her it was only a worm, and she’d stubbornly held to that, stamping her feet, until he made their father show them a map. It was as Alphonse had said. For calling him names, Papa had given her the task of memorizing the river towns from the two that their island straddled, Chatou on the west bank and Rueil on the east bank, all the way to Paris. But knowing their names was less momentous than realizing that a person could look at one thing and see another or call it another. That was something truly thrilling. From then on, she’d felt justified in thinking of boats as wooden shoes, lily pads as frogs’ beds, and white fungi on trees as nature’s meringues.

  Now she conjured an image of the river as a blue-green ribbon tying the Maison Fournaise to Paris, not in a direct line as the train would go from Rueil-Malmaison, but meandering through loops of memory beginning with childhood here, school in Paris, and Louis, then through the time of peril to the eventual and permanent locking of the shop door behind her.

  Or the river was a cord plaited of many strands, as when slivers of islands like theirs divide the water for a time to reunite with its remembered self downstream, as friends separated for many years finally reuniting, flowing calmly, evaporating into fog, clouds, rain that would make puddles, rivulets, brooks, streams, the Marne, the Aube, the Oise, all joining the mighty Seine, until Le Havre and the sea, where the water evaporated again into fog, clouds, rain. Rain that could fall in other streams going to other rivers, the Loire, the Rhône, the Rhine. The Rhine, the river of the land of the Prussian. She trailed her hand in the water that might go anywhere, like a thought.

  She stayed close to the bank where there was hardly any current moving against her and the midsummer foliage overhead gave her shade and turned the water green. Under the sycamore boughs, she looked for marsh peppermint to make a wreath for Auguste’s luncheon on Sunday. When it was dry, it had a piquant, minty fragrance that might mask the occasional smell from the sewage plant upriver in Asnières. She wanted their day to be lovely in all ways so their pleasure would show on their faces for him to paint.