Last Lovers
Last Lovers
William Wharton
A middle-aged man abandons his corporate life to follow his dream to become a painter. On the way, he develops an unlikely but beautiful relationship with an older woman.Jack is a middle-aged American living as a squatter in a Paris attic. He paints in a public square and sells his work to survive. There he meets Mirabelle, a blind, 71-year-old, self-appointed pigeon lady who cares for the birds who flutter about his easel. Between Jack and Mirabelle springs a friendship that deepens into an improbable but impassioned love affair.
WILLIAM WHARTON
Last Lovers
To my wife, Rosemary
This tale takes place
between April and November 1975.
Location: Paris, France.
Believing is seeing.
—W.W.
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uc29ed207-b774-5d40-a5e3-1682e6c7cfd7)
Dedication (#ua92c2422-f21c-5cc3-b684-1b8c15c3eb1b)
Epigraph (#uac7ec61b-7e53-585d-9465-1762b8cce288)
Chapter 1 (#u411de412-307f-506a-b627-3e32cd4acc38)
Blind Reverie (#u3ce61fde-d14f-58ba-a952-e3adf05f8122)
Chapter 2 (#ua7e9015c-565c-5350-9a15-49b372ff55ae)
Blind Reverie (#u49db01b2-da90-59ee-a8ff-9c33f474ce5c)
Chapter 3 (#u1e620b5f-d4ad-52cc-8190-115e543a9ba3)
Blind Reverie (#u0f78e2be-08b4-59cf-92c4-d58d165f8670)
Chapter 4 (#u4811873a-34bf-5188-afa1-c4a4a73f3e01)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by William Wharton (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1
ZAMBO!! Suddenly I’m on my hands and knees down on the asphalt next to a bench near the statue of Diderot in the small Place beside the boulevard Saint-Germain, across from the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
My precious thirteen tubes of paint are scattered all over the place. My prize easel, my hundred-franc easel I bargained for in the Marché Aligre, is knocked all galley-west with one leg bent under and another splayed out like a spavined camel trying to stand up in a windstorm.
Shit! This is just what I didn’t need. I’m still holding a paintbrush in my hand, the top of it is snapped off about three inches above my knuckle. Luckily the canvas landed with the painting side up, so it could be worse.
Then I notice. There’s an old lady all dressed in red on her knees beside me. We must look like two elderly clochards chasing after the same butt someone just flipped. My first reaction is, this whole thing is her fault; why the hell doesn’t she look where she’s going?
So, still on my knees, trying to ignore her, I start scooping the tubes of paints toward me, before some other idiot steps on one of them. That’d be a real mess, colored footsteps tromping through the Latin Quarter, yellow, green, alizarine crimson. I scramble over to pick up my canvas and lean it against the bench, no serious damage I can see. Next time I’ll cozy myself up in the lee of that bench, safe from kooky old gals wearing red costumes.
Then, finally, I go over. She’s swung herself around and is sitting on her duff rubbing one knee. Both her stockings are ripped where she hit the ground. One knee is bleeding and she’s licking her finger and rubbing it, the way a cat would. But she’s not looking at her knee. She’s looking at me.
‘Est-ce que vous êtes peintre, monsieur, artiste-peintre?’
What the hell else does she think I am, a surveyor taking measurements of Saint-Germain-des-Prés so we can make a copy and build it out in the desert for some Arab prince to convert into a mosque? Hey, maybe they’d let me house my chevalet there, a horse turned camel. The French call easels chevalets for some reason, sounds like something to do with horses, at least to my semiliterate French-American ear.
I lean down and try straightening my box up, lengthening the collapsed rear leg, slowly twisting one side leg that’s sticking out all cockeyed. Nothing seems to be broken, thank God. It could just possibly end my budding career as artist. Maybe that’s ‘grafted’ career, more accurate, probably.
‘Oui, madame, je suis peintre, artiste-peintre.’
‘Ah, and you are American, too. That’s very interesting.’
Then I see the cane. It’s white. I feel like a real asshole. It’s the kind of insensitivity, unawareness, that’s my greatest problem. I get down on my knees again beside the old lady.
‘Est-ce que je peux vous aider?’
She seems to look right through me. I realize only then she’s spoken in perfect, practically unaccented English-English.
‘Ah, ha, you have seen my cane. I can tell by the change in your voice. Yes, you may assist me. Would you help me pull myself to my feet? If I try getting up myself, I shall need to roll onto my knees again and that would be rather painful.’
She stretches out her hands. They’re small and smooth. I gently pull her to her feet. Actually, she more pulls herself up, using my hands as support. She has strong arms for an old gal.
I lean over, pick up her cane, give it to her. She brushes herself off, all over, not knowing where she’s dirty, with the thoroughness of a blind person. Then she starts swinging her cane in arcs around her, close to the ground, like a radar scanner or somebody hunting for money at a beach with a metal detector.
I see what she’s looking for, a purse, more like a satchel, about two yards nearer the church. I go over and pick it up. I step inside the radar sweeps and touch her hand, push the leather straps of the satchel out so she can grab them.
‘Ah, sir. Sometimes it is difficult being blind. Thank you for your kindness. I am very sorry I bumped into you. Or should that be crashed? Anyway, I am sorry. You see, I have my little private paths where there is the least chance I will stumble into anything or anyone, and you were in the middle of one; I did not expect you, you fooled me.
‘You must work very quietly, monsieur, or I would have heard you. Of course, there is the noise of automobile traffic out there.’
She waves her cane at the boulevard Saint-Germain.
‘But I should have smelled you, at least, the wonderful smell of turpentine. I should have smelled that. Yes, I must be getting old, it is hard to realize.’
‘Perhaps the wind was blowing the wrong way.’
She leans back, smiles, looks me in the eye, that is, if a blind person can look someone in the eye.
‘Ah, an American, an American painter, with a sense of humor. This is very interesting. It is something I did not expect, a pleasant surprise. There do not seem to be very many pleasant surprises left in this life.’
I notice then she isn’t completely in red, not anymore, anyway. She is wearing a red pillbox hat, the kind Jackie Kennedy was wearing in Dallas, only red, not pink; a bright Santa Claus-red skirt, sweater, and coat. But now the coat is well dabbed with several colors from my palette. It must have brushed against her in the cataclysm, bump, crash, or collision; whatever it was.
‘Excuse me, madame, but there is paint on your coat. If you would stand still I can take it off now with my turpentine. If I don’t, and it dries, it will stay there.’
‘Is it a good design, the paint on my coat? If so, I should like it to remain. It would be lovely having a hand-painted coat, painted by an American artist here in Paris, n’est-ce pas? Even though I could not see it, would it not be exciting?’
‘I’m afraid, madame, it is only a smear of burnt sienna, yellow ocher, alizarine crimson, and a touch of ultramarine. Even in the Salon de Mai it would not be considered much of a composition.’
I’m not usually so flip, so verbal. Perhaps it’s because I don’t get to speak much English these days and I’m enjoying the freedom of my own language, but I think it’s the nature of this woman, the situation. I want to continue our wordplay, our game, practically a flirtation.
Or maybe it’s because I sense she’s lonely, too, wants to talk with someone, practice her English.
‘Then perhaps, monsieur, it would be best if I take off the coat so you can obliterate, transform, or remove your work of spontaneous art. At least, then I shall have the smell of turpentine following me around for a day or two, a souvenir of our meeting. I think I should like that.
‘I am sure definitely it will be better than going into one of the art galleries. I always feel so unwanted there. Some painters seem to feel a blind person staring at their paintings is an insult; perhaps it is. I am only looking for something I should want to see. From what my sister, Rolande, has told me, it would not make much difference if I could see; I am not missing much. Oh yes, sometimes there are advantages to being blind.’
She starts to unbutton and shrug the coat off her shoulders. She’s a slim woman, straight, neat. I go around behind her and take the coat, slipping it down her arms. She transfers her cane and satchel from hand to hand as I remove the coat.
‘Won’t you be cold, madame? I could lend you my jacket, but it is almost completely covered with paint. It might just well be accepted in the salon.’
‘No, I do not think I shall be cold. I am going over to the stone bench there at the foot of Monsieur Diderot. It is where I was going when we met so precipitously, or, perhaps, fortuitously; no, that has too strong a French derivation. What would be a better way to say that in American, monsieur?’
I swear she looks me in the eye again. Maybe she’s only partly blind, or likes to pretend she is and for some reason enjoys carrying a white cane. Maybe she isn’t even French. She speaks English better than most English or American people I’ve known, so precise, with such an elaborate, thought-out vocabulary.
‘Would you accept “propitiously,” madame?’
‘Oh yes, wonderful. An American with a sense of humor, and so gallant, as well. Oh yes!’
She walks away directly, quickly, toward the statue, not tapping her cane or in any way indicating she’s blind. No wonder she crashed into me. If she was going at a pace like that, it’s amazing either of us survived. In a football game, they’d definitely have given her fifteen yards for clipping.
I manage to gather my stuff together. Except for a swipe across my palette and the broken brush, I’m in good shape. I spread her coat over the bench and start working on it with turpentine and one of my paint rags.
Yesterday I found three towels thrown out in the trash over by where I stay near the Bastille. The centers had the toweling worn thin, but they make perfect paint rags. I’ve torn them up into foot-square pieces. I use one of my best rags.
The problem is not to spread the paint any more than is necessary and still get it off. I work about ten minutes, a separate part of the cloth for each color. When I’m finished, the only stain that shows is the dark wetness of the turpentine.
It’s an early spring in Paris. The chestnut trees are only now sprouting leaves, limp baby leaves, just out of the bud, no blossoms yet. The famous song talks about April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, and so forth, but actually the blossoms usually come in May. Today is April ninth, and although the sun is out and it’s just possible to paint without the paint and my fingers stiffening up, that old lady must be freezing without her coat. I make a final inspection.
I look over. For Christ’s sake, she has pigeons all over her! There are pigeons sitting on her shoulders, on her head, on her lap, and she’s actually holding one in her hand. How the hell can a blind woman catch a pigeon?
I scurry over. When I come close, most of the pigeons fly up and away, a few retreat to the ground at her feet, watching to see what happens next.
I hate pigeons myself, and if she’s going to have them squatting on her like that, I’ve just wasted too much time and turpentine removing paint spots. She’s going to have pigeon shit all over her, so what difference could a few dabs of paint make? Pigeons, dammit, flying rats, that’s all they are!
She turns toward me when I’m still about ten feet away.
‘Ah, the American painter comes to visit with me. Do not worry, my feathered companions here will fly back when they know you are a friend of mine.’
I’ve been promoted to friend. Does that translate directly from French as ami? As far as her pigeons are concerned, I just don’t want them shitting on me or my painting.
‘I’ve removed the paint from your coat. The smell will go away rather quickly. I hope it doesn’t bother your pigeons.’
It doesn’t hurt anything trying to be nice. She stands and I slip the coat over her arms. She snugs it against her shoulders, feels with her hands if the collar is straight, fastens the buttons. She does everything with smooth, easy movements, no hurry, but very efficiently. She turns her eyes toward me. There’s nothing I can see wrong in those eyes. They’re clear; I don’t see any cataracts, no film over them. They look like perfectly good eyes to me, regular doorways to the soul.
‘Please will you not sit down with me a minute, Monsieur le Peintre? I do not have a chance very often to speak with anyone, especially a painter, an American painter. It is strange, but I begin to have the feeling I might be in one of those films, those moving pictures I have heard about.’
She sits, I sit beside her. The stone bench is cold. I notice she’s sitting on a small inflatable cushion. She reaches into her bag and pulls out another, rolled into a small package about the size of a cigar.
‘Here, you may sit on this. If not, you are liable to develop pain in your kidneys.’
God, she sounds like my mother! And it seems she can read minds as well as ‘see’ when she’s blind. I feel somewhat foolish, but I blow up the cushion and slide it under my duff. It’s comfortable and does keep off the cold as well as being softer than the hard stone. This old lady really knows how to do things.
It’s one of those days when, if the sun is shining, it’s warm. However, when the sun is blocked by the many scudding white and dark clouds overlapping each other, immediately a cool breeze springs up and it’s cold. Right now the sun is bright and lighting the tops of those beautiful French clouds, the kinds the Impressionists painted, that I’ve never seen anywhere else. I hope someday I can work up enough nerve to really try a crack at those clouds.
The damned pigeons have come back. They don’t seem to mind me, as if this old lady gives some kind of magic protection. She’s devoting herself to them now. I watch. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
She has a small leather roll-up kit, the kind a good mechanic might have to store his wrenches, only smaller. She has it open beside her on the bench, that’s on the other side from where I’m sitting. In the kit are small scissors, two pairs of tweezers, both large and small, various little metal picks, toothpicks, tiny sticks with cotton wrapped on the end like Q-tips, miniature bottles with the smell of alcohol, and several small files. There is also a bottle of antiseptic.
I don’t know how she manages, but she puts out a finger, no food on it, just a finger, and several of those crazy pigeons fly down to land on it. She selects one of the birds by putting her hand over its back, slowly, carefully. As it hunches down, she picks it up. She then gently spreads out a wing and runs her finger along its length, checking the feathers. If there’s a twisted feather, she tries to straighten it, or, if it’s badly twisted, she quickly pulls it, checking the feather socket with her sensitive fingers and with a Q-tip applying a touch of antiseptic.
She goes over the entire body of the pigeon that way: probing, feeling, adjusting. Each pigeon seems to enjoy this, like a Swedish massage. There’s no fluttering to get away, no panic, they just relax and let all this happen. She then checks the feet, feeling for scales, I think, smoothing or filing rough spots with one of her small files, clipping the toenails if they need it, cleaning out the space between nail and toe, washing the whole foot. I wish somebody would take care of me like that. I wouldn’t shit on their statues, either.
One bird has an infected joint, where the toe joins the leg. She cleans this thoroughly, gently, expertly touching, feeling for swelling, and puts both alcohol and antiseptic in the sore spot.
As she finishes with a pigeon, she deftly reaches into each of about ten little bags she has lined up close to her thigh. She chooses individual grains, as if they’re vitamin pills, and feeds them, one at a time, to the bird on which she’s just worked. The pigeon, meanwhile, is flutting out its feathers, doing a quick little inspection with its beak, checking any repair work that’s been done.
The pigeon takes the grains from her hand as she offers them, then she gracefully swings away the pigeon on which she’s been working, gently off her finger. They usually fly up, circle a few times, then land on the statue of Diderot for a quick rump-thumping crap. The favorite places seem to be the pen in his hand, his hand itself, and his head.
There are pigeons all over Diderot. He has even more pigeons on him than the old lady, but then he’s about ten times bigger. He has a patina of white pigeon shit over the dark green patina of his bronze to show for it, too.
I watch through about five or six pigeons. I’m too fascinated to even think about getting back to work. I’ve never seen anything like this. I had canaries when I was in high school and I loved to hear them sing. But pigeons only make that gargling noise all the time, could make you vomit just listening to them. However, I must admit, I’ve never seen anybody handle birds the way this old lady does.
While she works on the pigeons she talks to me, mostly asking questions. She never takes her mind from her work with the birds, but once in a while she ‘looks’ at me and smiles. I begin to realize she’s guessing at the location of my eyes from my voice, my smell, something. I feel she does it so I won’t be uncomfortable with her blindness. She’s pretending she can see, for me. But I am uncomfortable, I can’t help it, I still can’t figure how she can look directly into my eyes, read me. It’s weird.
‘Are you long here in Paris, Monsieur le Peintre?’
‘Yes, I’ve been here almost five years now.’
‘But you have such a heavy American accent. After so long in Paris you should speak better French.’
God, I think I only said about fifteen words to her in French. I didn’t know it was that bad.
‘I don’t seem to have a good ear for languages, madame. I try to learn French, but it is difficult. I speak much better now than I did a year ago, so that’s something.’
She’s concentrating on a flight feather which is dangling and must be removed. She could be a surgeon, her hands are so sure and quick.
‘So you have good eyes and I have good ears. Together we would know much about this world if we could share. Almost no one uses the gifts they have. Only when one loses one gift does one begin to find and appreciate the others.’
There’s a long pause as she carefully extracts the feather, puts antiseptic on the feather socket.
‘Now, Orlando, that will be much better. You will be able to fly faster away from the automobiles and soon a new feather will grow in.’
She turns to me again, smiles.
‘I hope you do not mind if I talk to my pigeons. I have a name for each of them and they are my only friends, my only family. Being an old, blind woman is sometimes quite lonely.’
‘I’ve talked to pigeons myself, also, madame, sometimes they are the only creatures with whom I can talk.’
I don’t tell her how mostly I’m cursing them when they make that sudden flurry of stiff feathers from behind me when I’m trying to concentrate on a painting. A person could have a heart attack when a flock of pigeons soars off in a bunch like that.
‘But I don’t know them the way you do, madame. When I talk to them it’s as if I’m talking to myself and seem to learn nothing. I’ve never been as close to pigeons as you are.’
‘Well, you see, monsieur, I have been coming here every day from about ten in the morning until the midday bells ring for thirty years, since the end of the second great war. The pigeons in the flock change but the flock itself remains. Even the young new ones, or a pigeon who joins this flock from another, know me. You see, pigeons are some of the kindest, most trusting, least hostile creatures on this earth. I am convinced they communicate with each other, can talk in a special way, but hard as I have listened, I have never learned their language. However, humans could learn much from them as to how we should live.’
Being out in the streets, I run into all kinds of loons, but this may be my prize catch, a blind old lady in a red suit who wants to talk to pigeons because maybe they can tell her how humans should live.
I’m beginning to feel I might be getting involved with another nut. I’ve developed a sort of sixth sense for sorting out the real crazies. But this woman seems different. Except for all the pigeon business and her blindness she seems more normal, more clear, intelligent, than anybody I’ve talked with in a long time.
But also, I’m beginning to feel itchy about getting on with my painting. I’ve decided to paint this woman in at the base of the statue. I definitely could use a strong color there in the foreground and red would go great against the green of the trees in the park next to the church. I’ve already decided to treat Monsieur Diderot loosely, with suggestions of the bronze, a few pigeons, and the thrust of his leaning toward the church across the street.
‘Well, I’d best get back to work, madame. The light is changing fast and I want to finish my underpainting today.’
‘What are you painting? Is it the church?’
I still can’t get used to her being blind. When she comes out with something like this I almost feel as if she’s kidding, but then I’ve had this happen often before, with people who can see. I’ll be sitting directly in front of something that interests me, making what I consider a fairly good representation of what I’m seeing, and they’ll stand there, looking all around, puzzled, and finally ask me what I’m painting. It can drive me up a wall, it also isn’t very good for my confidence.
I thought they were kidding at first, but no, it just isn’t what they’re good at, the way I can’t seem to learn French. But, of course, with this woman, she’s really blind. She only knows I’m beside the statue of Diderot. I could be painting the café or even the Hôtel Madison.
‘Yes, madame. It is the church, but much more. I have the statue of Diderot on the left side of my painting, then I’m looking up boulevard Saint-Germain with Le Drugstore, and across the street, Les Deux Magots, then the opening to rue Bonaparte. In the middle is the tower of the church, with the nave going across the painting to the fountain. In the foreground, I have the little garden where children play, and in front of that, le boulevard with the bus stop.’
She stops working on her pigeons and listens to me. She closes her blind eyes the way a person with sight would close theirs to picture something.
‘You describe it all very well, I can see it in my mind. I do wish I could see your painting. I have lived in this quarter all my life. I feel you are probably a very good painter because I think you are a good man. Thank you for cleaning my coat and then keeping me company. I hope you are happy with your painting when it is finished.’
As she speaks, the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés start their beautiful, hollow, hallowed gonging, ringing. The first few notes, then the crescendo as they pick up speed, are so comforting. The bells are one of the things I’ve learned to love in Paris. Not far away, I hear the deeper bells of Saint-Sulpice start their welcoming answer to noon, invitation to the important French déjeuner.
The old blind lady has been gathering her tools together and fastening them. She puts away her small sacks of feed, then pulls out a larger sack and strews some grains on the ground in front of her. She turns to me.
‘This way, they do not notice I am leaving and it is not so hard for them. Tell me, are there any small birds there with the pigeons?’
I look and there are sparrows darting in front of the pigeons, getting their share and more.
‘Yes, there are sparrows.’
‘Are any of the pigeons fighting them for the food?’
I look. Sure enough, they aren’t, they’re pushing each other to get to the grain but there is no pecking or fighting among themselves or against the small sparrows.
‘No. There’s no fighting. They allow the small birds to take what they want.’
‘You see, monsieur, the pigeons have much to teach us.’
With that, she picks up her cane, stands, and reaches out her hand toward me. We shake hands.
‘Will you be here tomorrow to work on your painting?’
‘Yes, if it isn’t raining or too cold.’
She lifts her head, turning it left and right like a pointer trying to get a scent.
‘No, tomorrow will be like today. I hope to see you then.’
I watch as she turns and walks away quickly, using her cane only occasionally, She said she’d ‘see’ me. It must be strange to be blind and still use the terms of seeing.
I go back to my painting. I block in where I’m going to paint her. I must consult her to see if it’s all right. There’s no way she could ever know, but it seems the right thing to do. It’s the kind of lesson I’m learning, slowly but surely. Something that might seem perfectly right and logical to one person can be a terrible violation to another; we’re all different. I wish I’d learned this earlier. I’ll ask tomorrow before I start painting her in seriously.
I work away at the underpainting for several hours. Usually I go more quickly, but in the few oil paintings I’ve tried so far, I’ve discovered that faults of drawing or composition which might be acceptable, even invisible, early on become glaring as the painting comes to conclusion. I’m trying to eliminate all such awkwardness.
Still, I can already feel I’m going to have the same trouble I’ve had with the others. Even if I manage the drawing right, not only accurate, but well designed; even if the selection of forms and colors for the underpainting seems vital, appropriate, there’s no excitement in the painting. I don’t seem able to incorporate, build into my paintings, the strong emotional feelings I have about my subject, about Paris, about life itself. There’s something missing, a wall of fear, of timidity, between me and what I want to say. Also, there’s an arrogance. I don’t seem willing to let go, to fall into the painting, become part of it. Perhaps it will come with practice, when I’m less concerned with technical problems; I hope so.
At about five o’clock, the light is too far gone. I feel the underpainting is finished and a night of drying will get the surface just right for my impasto tomorrow. I’ll start with the sky, make a stab at those constantly changing, magic clouds against the blending blue of the sky. It’s where my cerulean blue should come in handy.
Someday, I’d like to try wet-in-wet, go right from the underpainting to the impasto with no drying time between. Rembrandt did it and so did some other great Dutch painters, some of the Italians, too.
I pack up my box, hang the painting on the back of it, and start my walk home. I could take the number 86 bus almost directly to where I’m living, but I like walking in Paris. It’s what kept me together over the worst days. Also, at this time, the buses will be filled and it’s easy to smear a painting on someone, even if it’s only underpainting.
I walk down boulevard Saint-Germain, across the Pont Sully, up Henri IV to the Bastille. I go along Roquette and cut off down a narrow street called rue Keller. It’s about a forty-five-minute walk. The painting box is light enough so I hardly notice it. The walking helps keep me in shape, too. I’ll really enjoy my dinner tonight.
I come onto the passage des Taillandiers, the street where I live. It’s still early, so the buzzer to the door isn’t set. I slip past the loge de concierge without any trouble. I know the name of a painter in the building, and if the concierge ever asks anything, I’ve decided to say I’m going to visit him. Actually I’ve never met this artist and hope I never do.
I go up Escalier C, the least used of the staircases. At this time, most of the artisans, furniture builders, and carpenters have all gone home. I, quietly, but with a casual step, as if I belong here, jiggling a meaningless ring of keys in my hands, go to the very top, past the last legitimate door, up one more flight, and through a heavy fire door into the dark attic, le grenier.
There’s no light up here. I find my hidden flashlight, flick it on, and feel my way down the narrow hallway, between the individual attic rooms, to the one I consider my own, although I’m only a squatter. I reach for the key hidden over the door and let myself in.
The smell of old dust, of dry stored wood coated with sawdust, of stale air, is home to me. I stand my box with the painting at the far end of the room. There’s a skylight in the slanted ceiling with a metal brace. I push it open to air the room. I block the cracks in the door with an old curtain so no light will show through, and light two candles. I unhook my painting from the box and put it between the two candles. I look around and see nothing’s been disturbed. I think it’s been years since anyone other than me has come into this room. I don’t even know which of the carpenters’ workshops below uses it for storage.
I pull down my piece of foam rubber and my sleeping bag from up in the rafters where I hide them during the day. I get out my tiny butane cooker and one of the sealed one-liter mason jars with my supply of cooked vegetables. I take out my bottle of wine and the half a baguette I hoard over two days. I only eat once a day and I’m really hungry. I was about ready to snitch some of those grains from the pigeons.
I turn on the cooker and warm up my Mulligan-type stew in an old pot. I pull my spoon from behind a supporting post where I store it and pour myself the one small glass of wine I allow myself each day. The six-franc bottle of wine I drink has to last a week. Aside from the costs of my painting materials, this wine, the butane, my baguettes, and the candles are the bulk of my expenditures.
I sit in the gathering dusk with the candles for light and slowly eat my portion of stew. I, who all my life have been a meat and potatoes man, have, perforce, become a vegetarian. At first I bemoaned the fact, but now, after several months, I sometimes think I couldn’t face a steak, or even a well-done hamburger. I feel a lot better, too. But that could be from the running.
I look at the painting. In this light, away from the subject matter, it looks better. I probably won’t paint in my sleep tonight. The whole idea of me painting oil paintings, considering everything, especially the cost, is an insanity; but I’m hooked. I don’t know how I’ll ever sell these things for enough money to pay back the cost of paint and canvas, let alone make a few francs. If I have to return to drawing and watercolor again, I’ll feel as if my legs have been chopped off. But I’ll do it, to keep my freedom.
I bought the paint box for a song. It’s a genuine collapsible easel made with hardwood, dovetail joints, brass fittings. This box has to be at least fifty years old, older than I am. It doesn’t have a metal inner liner as the new ones do, nor a second drawer underneath, but it’s sturdy and light. It’s constructed so the legs fold out and can be tightened to give strength. It’s all there, storage for paints, palette, brushes, turp, varnish, oil, paint cloths, and it opens to hold the canvas, any canvas, up to size 25F. Also, it’s smeared with paint and the air of authenticity. Just going out to paint with it gives me a thrill. I walk along feeling in tune with Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Sisley, a real painter in the field.
I thought carefully when I bought my paints. I found a place called HMB near here. It’s not an art store but a real paint store for the artisans around this area. The paints and brushes are about half the price I’d pay anywhere else. I decided on Le Franc Bourgeois paints, because they’re not too expensive, yet aren’t packed with filler or too much oil. I bought studio-sized tubes. I tried to stay with the cheapest colors, colors listed 1 or 2 on a scale of 6. I bought titanium white and ivory black. Those I remembered as my favorites from when I was back in school at Penn, with dreams of being a painter.
Then I bought earth colors. If necessary, I’d paint with them and black and white only. I bought burnt and raw sienna, burnt umber, yellow ocher. Next I bought a tube of ultramarine light. That was seven colors. To fill out my spectrum, at not too great a cost, I bought ultramarine violet, the cheapest violet; the other violets were 5s or 6s. Next, chrome yellow, chrome orange, both substitutes for cadmiums, which are 6s. Then alizarine crimson. For green I bought sap green. It’s transparent and can be used in the underpainting and also added to the yellows and earth colors for foliage. Last, I splurged and bought cerulean blue as a thirteenth color. Painting skies in Paris without cerulean would be a real challenge.
For brushes I bought pig’s bristles numbers 4, 8, and 10 and, luxury of luxuries, a number 6 sable. That last brush alone cost 42 francs, enough for me to live two weeks.
I make my own varnish from Damaar crystals I buy at HMB. It’s there I also buy huge cans of white acrylic house paint for sizing canvas, also turpentine and linseed oil by the half gallon. I usually have some crystals soaking in turpentine inside a woman’s nylon stocking up here in the attic. I try for a five-pound cut, but it’s mostly by guess and luck.
It’s the canvas that’s expensive. I shot half my whole wad buying a roll of raw duck canvas at a shop where they sell canvas drop cloths for painters. I snitch boards from up here in the attic to make stretchers. I tack canvas to them with carpet tacks and a hammer. I found the hammer, with a broken handle, in a trash can down the street. The short handle is enough for me, short-handled hammer and now a short-handled brush.
I use my fingers to stretch the canvas. I can get it tight enough that way. One trouble for me was figuring out when I should hammer the canvas onto the stretchers and heat the glue for sizing. Since weekends practically no one’s around, also the concierge leaves Sundays, I decide that will be the best day. The hammering makes noise and the glue stinks to high heaven.
I worked all last Sunday, that is, after I’d gathered my vegetables and some fruit when they closed the market at the Marché d’Aligre. They just throw away anything that’s started to rot. I cooked up my weekly stew at the same time I stretched canvas and made glue; all the smells blended together.
I built five stretchers, sized and put two layers of acrylic paint on the canvases after I’d stretched them. I pulled them nice and tight and have them stored in the rafters. I built them to the standard French dimensions. Two were 15 Figure and the last three were 25 Figure, or about two feet by three feet. It’s the first of those bigger ones I’m working on now, after getting frustrated with the 15s; they were too small. I’m getting to be a real big-shot painter; I’m just not making any money.
Even with all these cheapo solutions it’s going to break me soon unless I can figure some way to sell these damned paintings. I calculate, materials included, but not my time or labor, that I’ve got a hundred francs in each canvas when it’s finished. This means I need to recoup at least three hundred francs a painting. There aren’t many people walking around with that kind of money in their pockets, especially to spend on paintings by some nobody. However, the tourist season is coming soon. Probably I’ll sell something during the summer. I’ve got to!
I’m not complaining, though. Things have worked out so far and I’m feeling great. I know it’ll all come around okay. I have the feeling my life is beginning to make some sense again, despite everything.
The worst thing is loneliness. I try fighting it off, but it keeps sneaking up on me. I also try to keep myself clean. Once a week I go to the public baths next to the police station near the Marché d’Aligre. I scrub the worst dirt off my body and stomp on my clothes to get them clean. I wring out those clothes, put them in a plastic bag, and hang them in the attic to dry. I have a second set of clothes I wear out of the bath. But I still look pretty much like a bum. Maybe it’s the beard. I try scissoring it so it’s sort of neat, but if you’re wearing foot-stomped clothes, not ironed, and a beard, even if you’re clean, you can’t help looking like a clochard. It’s tough shaving every morning with no warm water. Razors would increase expenses, and besides, I’ve begun to like my beard. It takes the MBI curse off me, aims me in the right direction, the direction I want to go the rest of my life.
Once every month or so, I take my clothes to a self-service laundry. I shove them all in one washer, except for a sweat suit I wash by hand, then put them in the little spinner for a franc a shot. Together it costs seventeen francs, with drying. But after that I smell like an angel for a few days. My T-shirts glisten and my jeans almost have creases.
After I finish eating, I blow out my candles and stare for a while through the attic window. I keep thinking I’ll climb up and clean the grime off so I can see out to the sky, but I’m afraid of tipping off whoever really owns this place to the idea I’m up here, so I don’t. The weather’s getting good enough now so I can leave the window pushed up at night and have a good look at the stars when there are any. I’ve discovered from experience just how far I can push it up and still not have rain come in.
Before I fall into a deep sleep, I remember that tomorrow I should stop at American Express to see if there are any letters from Lorrie or the kids. Also, I want to write and let them know I’m all right and how well my painting is coming along.
Blind Reverie
His smell is so different from that of most men, not only the turpentine. And his voice, sometimes calm when he answers me, but there is excitement in there. At the same time, this is a sad man, an alone man. I think he is probably a good painter.
He was kind to join me under the statue. The feet of Monsieur Diderot had a moldy smell today, could it be from the rain and the pigeons. It was stronger than usual.
I do not think Monsieur le Peintre cares for my pigeons. It was in his voice, in the way he sat, even with my pillow, I felt he was uncomfortable. I must teach him to love them as I do. I hope he comes back tomorrow. I can smell his turpentine in my coat all the way in the other room.
I hope I was not too brash. It is so rare to find someone with whom to talk, who is not always thinking about my blindness. That is their blindness. I so often feel sorry for those who must live inside the world and not outside it as I do. It must be so hard and cruel for them.
2
I wake with the first light. I slip on my running costume: a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and a sweat suit. The best thing I took with me when I left were my two pairs of running shoes. These running shoes I’d had at least three years and never ran in them. I dread to think of when they wear out. These things cost fifty bucks a pair. Now I use one pair for everyday, for painting, and the other for running only.
I sneak out the gate downstairs. Nobody is up at this time in the morning except garbage collectors and Algerian street sweepers. I start my usual warm-up, run down Ledru-Rollin and across the river to the Left Bank quai. I run through the little park there and the sculpture garden.
I stay with the quai even when I have to go up steps and down the other side. I take the steps quickly and two at a time. I want to make my blood really bubble. I run till I get to the Pont Alexandre III and cross it. Now the light is coming on stronger and traffic is picking up. I don’t like to run when there’s too much automobile smell.
I run along the street above the Right Bank quai. Sometimes I need to run up here along where the bouquiniste stands are, because of the road they’ve built along the quai. I cut in through the Marais to the Bastille. Traffic is picking up seriously. I go down the rue de la Roquette, the way I came home yesterday, and up rue Keller and home. It’s only about an hour’s run but it wakes me up. There’s no trouble getting through the gate, the concierge sleeps until seven-thirty or so. I’m dripping as I quietly run up the stairs, my usual two at a time, to my hideout.
I take off my sweat suit and hang it on a hook behind the door. I spread my soaking shorts and T-shirt on a piece of string along the back wall behind some long pieces of wood. I stretch out on the floor until I stop sweating. I have a little piece of rug I found in the trash by the rug store at the corner of rue de Charonne and avenue Ledru-Rollin. I’m flat out on it, getting my breath back and trying to relax.
After about five minutes, I start my one hundred, deep-breathing, sit-ups and then do a few yoga exercises. I finish with fifty slow push-ups, hands lifted off the floor each time.
I don’t think I’ve been in as good a shape in my life, not since high school. I’d better stay in condition, I have no backup, no social security from the French, no health plan, no MBI. I’ve got to stay healthy. The best part is it’s such fun staying in shape.
When I first started living in the streets, almost a year ago now, I was slowly going downhill. I didn’t eat right, I didn’t keep myself clean, I’d put down a bottle of red wine every night so I’d sleep, and then it’d be noon before I could shake my head without hurting. I was well on my way to becoming a real clochard. It’s hard to believe how quickly one can go down when one just doesn’t care enough.
I splurge this morning and give myself my usual Sunday treat, even though it’s only Thursday. At least, I think it’s Thursday. I still have the end of my baguette saved from yesterday and dunk it into a cup of coffee I brew on my stove. Real luxury. I sit against my bedroll and look across at the painting. I’m anxious to get into it again. From the look of the sky as I was running, that old, blind lady was right, we’re going to have another great day, another painting day.
I hide everything, tuck away my running clothes where they can’t be seen but will have room to dry, wash myself off quickly with the water I pack up in wine bottles. I don’t have any soap. I tuck my key and flashlight in place and quietly go down the staircase. Nobody really gets to work before eight, so I’m okay. The concierge’s door is still closed, too.
Out on the street, the sun is up, long slanting light making everything clear and shining. There are the usual morning Paris sounds of garbage trucks, water running in the gutters, pigeons gurgling and splashing in the dirty water as they’re just waking up. Then I watch as they glide against the sky. I guess the flock around here lives in the tower at Sainte-Marguerite’s. I think about the blind old lady and what she said about pigeons. What a nutty idea. I’ve got to admit, though, they look great against a sky, and I’m going to start using them to hold things together, tie the sky to the earth.
I decide to walk straight down Henri IV the way the bus goes, so I can get the long view of Notre-Dame from the back. It’s a special view from the bridge, with the little garden tucked on the end of the island.
I get to my painting spot at about eight-thirty. I put down my box and sit on the bench just soaking up what I’m going to be painting, trying my damnedest to let it happen to me. Letting it really come into me is something I’m trying to learn. I’m too aggressive, keep forcing the subject matter too much, not changing it but trying to make it mine instead of letting me become it. I breathe deeply, trying to relax, have confidence in things. I’ve had too many years where if you were caught relaxing, ‘goofing off,’ it was held against you. Every day it was a race to see who’d be first in the office and last to leave. I never even realized it was happening, either. And it wasn’t happening just to me, it was all of us.
When the bells ring nine, I’m into it. I’ve set up slightly to the left of where I was painting yesterday. There’s no chance anybody will be crashing into me and I can use the bench to store my varnish and turpentine bottles.
I start with that sky, working from the top, buttering it between the trees, around the tops of buildings. I like having the sky established before I start lighting the rest of the painting. I’ll let the other parts of the painting happen to the sky, later. Also, the sky’s up where it doesn’t get in the way, doesn’t get smeared as I work.
I’m lighting the top of the tower when she sneaks up behind me. I actually jump. I didn’t hear or feel her near me at all.
‘Ah, Monsieur le Peintre, you are here. That is good. Are you happy with your painting this beautiful day?’
She’s holding out her hand to shake. My hands are relatively clean but with some dabs of blue and yellow ocher. I quickly wipe them on my paint rag and shake with her.
‘Oh, it does not matter if you get paint on my hands from yours, monsieur. I could feel it and wipe it off with a tissue.’
She smiles. I try to think how she knew. Of course, it was the slight delay before I shook hands with her, she knew I was painting. She’s a regular Sherlock Holmes.
‘Yes, madame, so far the painting is going well. I am just now painting the tower of the church against the sky.’
‘It must make you feel like a pigeon flying up there. Sometimes, as I am falling asleep, I try to imagine myself as a pigeon in the open air, close to the bells, the sky, above the trees, the streets. It is lovely.’
She pauses.
‘Do you know, often I dream of it. In my dreams I can see. I see all of Paris below me, glowing, glistening in magic light. I am never blind in my dreams. Is that not interesting?’
It tells me something. It tells me she hasn’t always been blind. The company-trained psychologist strikes. Or else it tells me she likes to lie, also interesting. I start painting again. She stays beside me.
‘Monsieur le Peintre, is it possible that I could make an arrangement with you?’
Oh boy, what’s coming next. I step back from the painting but I keep my brush in hand. I’m ready to take the en garde position. I can just see it spread on the front page of Le Soir:
American artist arrested
for attacking old, blind woman
with paintbrush
This would be in French, of course.
‘You see, I know each of the birds in my flock, all forty-six of them, but only by feel; I should like very much to know how they look: what color they are, how they are marked, striped, checked. Since you are an artist, trained to see, truly, clearly, you could describe them to me.’
She pauses. I wait. What’s next? She said something about an arrangement. Is she going to offer money?
‘If you will do this for me, monsieur, I shall prepare for you a very good meal today at midday. I assure you I am an excellent cook. I like to eat. As I said, when we lose one gift, other senses become stronger. My senses of taste and smell are very strong. I think you would like my food.’
How can I say no? It means I won’t get much painting done, but I’m in no hurry. I’m for sure not going anywhere. She can’t live too far from here if she’s blind.
‘I live just there, behind the statue of Monsieur Diderot just past where the Italian restaurant is. It is called the rue des Ciseaux. I live at number 5 and on the second floor. There is only one door on that floor. If you come, you need only knock.’
My God, maybe she has a sixth sense as well. She seems to read my mind.
She stops and now she waits. I know the rue des Ciseaux. It’s a street of restaurants. I never thought of anyone living there.
‘Of course, madame. It would be a joy for me to watch you with your birds again and, if you will have me, I should very much enjoy my déjeuner with you. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, monsieur. I hope you do not think I am being too forward, but it means much to me, also I shall enjoy having someone dine with me to whom I can speak in English.’
I start painting again. I think I’m taking advantage of her blindness, that she won’t know, but she knows immediately. It’s probably the direction of my movements or even the sound of the brushes.
‘Yes, you keep painting until it is a good time for you to stop, perhaps when you have caught the beautiful light on the tower against the sky. I shall wait for you.’
With that, she turns away. I continue painting the steeple and heavy stone of the massive tower. Her comments about being a pigeon, flying up there, the openness of the sky, the strength of the tower, all seem to flow into me. I’m painting it with much more force and at the same time a new sensitivity. It’s amazing how an idea can affect the way you see.
I paint for perhaps fifteen minutes or half an hour more and it’s good painting, some of the best I’ve done. I put down my brushes and walk over to sit next to the old lady.
She turns toward me, smiles her quiet, not quite sad smile.
‘I hope I have not interrupted you at an important point. I do very much appreciate this help you are giving me. I have not yet worked on any of the birds, but as you can see, they are waiting for me.’
Sure enough, there are pigeons all over the place, all over her. It’s amazing no sparrows or any other birds come. But then, come to think of it, only pigeons seem tame enough, friendly enough with humans to come close. They’re either very stupid, or very trusting, as she insists.
She opens her little satchel and unfolds her kit. This is some kind of signal. She holds out her finger and two birds fly down; one lands first, so the other veers away. She puts her hand over it.
This is a really peculiar-looking bird for a pigeon, smoky-dark, with some remnants of checks on the back. It’s slightly lighter on the chest, with a few almost white feathers on the thighs. Its beak is yellowish, with a streak of blue or violet, and its legs are a dark yellowish pink, almost salmon color. I describe all this to the blind lady while she does her inspection and files off a few scales from one leg.
‘This hen is not young, she must be more than five years old. Her name is Nicole. She has been in the flock a long time. She has had at least fifteen nests and most of her young have grown. Some of her sons have left the flock. She is becoming thin and I do not think she will have more than one nest this year. From the way you describe her, she is not a very beautiful bird, is she? I had always thought she would be one of the most lovely. I imagine what we think is beautiful in a pigeon is not necessarily what pigeons might feel. Perhaps sometimes it is best to be blind, so one can see the way things really are, and not be blinded by the way they look.’
She gently launches Nicole away and another bird flies down to her hand. This bird is almost pure white but has irregular blue-gray markings. It is big, with a tinge of iridescent color around its neck. It has beautiful pink, almost scaleless legs with bluish nails. I describe this one as best I can.
‘Oh yes. I always felt he must be white. He is so bossy, even though he is only from one of last year’s nests.
‘Almost always he is one of the first to come to me, not because there is anything wrong with him. He only wants the grains I give.’
She’s started feeding him his individual grains and he picks them quickly from between her fingers. She more brusquely lofts him off into flight.
I sit and describe each of the birds as they come. It takes more than an hour. I’m enjoying myself, enjoy trying to describe the birds accurately. There’s something in it of the careful seeing one does while painting. But I’m also wanting to get back into my own work.
‘Well, Monsieur le Peintre, I suspect that is all we are going to have today. There are two who did not come, perhaps they are with another flock or perhaps something has happened to them. It is terrible the number of pigeons killed by speeding automobiles in this city. The automobiles never stop, so the pigeons are smashed into the street and are totally destroyed. There should be a law against it.’
I don’t tell her how they seem to lose their color, how the feathers become spread under the tires so that, in the end, the pigeon disappears into the asphalt. In one day, on a busy street, a pigeon can turn into nothing.
‘Well, I shall go prepare our meal. If you stop painting when the bells start ringing, I shall expect you about ten minutes later. You can bring your box with you and place it on the palier or in the vestibule. It is at your disposition.’
She bows her head slightly in dismissal and begins to gather up her equipment. I go back to my painting. The work I’ve just finished is even better than I remember it. I start painting across the long façade of the nave, trying to vary the color of the stone with the shadows, with the staining of age, with the flashes of light through the trees, at the same time fighting to make it all hold together. I also begin working the foliage of the trees against this light. When I have a color I feel would be good in another place, I put it there. The statue of Diderot takes careful but loose painting, as I bring the color of the sky down into the color of the pigeon shit, as it blends to the color of the oxidized bronze. I’m beginning to feel that, in parts at least, I’m entering the painting and being inside it. Time seems to fly.
Then I hear the bells of the church ringing. I don’t remember hearing them start, I was that much out of things. I quickly pack up my box. I put the bottles of turp and varnish into my pockets, rapidly clean paint off the brushes. I’m packed in no time. I look around to see if I’m forgetting anything. I have it all. I start off behind Diderot, to the mouth of the rue des Ciseaux, and down the hill of that small street toward the rue du Four.
On the left, I find number 5. It’s an old building with walls slanted in from the time when mortar wasn’t strong enough to support straight-up walls. The stairway is narrow, so I need to take the painting off the easel on my back to maneuver the tight corners. At the second floor, I put down my box and painting. There’s a place under the electric box for me to store them. I knock.
Almost immediately the door is opened.
‘I heard you coming up the steps. You had to stop because the painting was too big to come around the corner, am I right?’
I nod, then realize I must speak. It takes time getting accustomed to a blind person.
‘That’s right. I almost knocked the corners off the walls.’
I go inside. It’s a nice apartment but dark. It opens onto the court. Of course, for her, the darkness would be no disadvantage. Although it’s neatly kept up, no disorder, everything in its place, the plaster is hanging from the ceiling, the wallpaper is loosened from the walls, hanging in strips, and the woodwork is unpainted, dirt-stained from constant handling.
The rugs are worn. It’s a strange contrast between this wellkept woman, her carefully set table, the general order of the room, and the overall squalor of the apartment.
Also, to make it worse, on the two windows opening onto the dark court are hanging ragged green curtains, faded with age into yellowish stripes. I see five doors I imagine enter into other rooms. The old lady is wearing an apron and she’s smiling.
‘Please, if you would like to wash up or if you have any needs, the water closet and the salle d’eau are over there.’
I actually am awfully filthy, both from the way I live generally and because I’ve just come in from painting. I bow (invisible), smile (invisible), then, to compensate, say thank you. I move toward the door where she’s pointed.
I go in, close the door to find it totally dark in the toilet room. I open the door again to look for the light switch and find it. I flick the switch, but no light. I look up and find the light bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling with a green metal shade. I screw out the bulb, classic, French, old-fashioned, bayonet bulb. I can see through the clear glass that it’s burned out.
I get myself oriented, close the door, lift the toilet seat, and, lining myself up with the toilet by my knees, let fly. Knowing her supersensitive ears, I pee against the side of the toilet so I won’t make any noise. I hope I’m not peeing over the side onto the floor. I flush and open the door. I inspect. Luckily, I managed to get it all inside the bowl.
Then I go to the salle d’eau, a room with a basin for washing hands, cold water only, and with a bathtub, one of those tubs made from enameled metal and standing on lion’s feet.
Again, the light switch doesn’t work. I don’t even climb up on the side of the tub to check the bulb. I imagine after years of someone blind living alone in a place, either all the bulbs get burned out by being left on with nobody to see them, or the thin wire in the bulbs goes bad and burns out the first time somebody happens to switch one on. French electricity tends to have surges which burn out light bulbs anyway, no matter how careful you are.
This time I leave the door open while I wash my hands. The tub has hot water as well as cold and there’s an old-fashioned water heater hanging over it. I’d give a medium-sized watercolor just to soak for half an hour in sudsy water filled to the top of this tub. Instead, I do my best, washing up at the sink. The mirror above the sink has a layer of grime and flyspecks over it, so there’s no way I can see myself. I’m not all that interested anyway. I just want to check and see if I have paint on my face. I often hold brushes in my teeth, not very professional, but I do it often, and paint smears on my cheeks.
I come out. The old lady is bustling about from the kitchen corner where she cooks, to the table where we’re to eat. It’s as if she never knew what it was to be blind. I wonder if the light bulbs work in this room. I’m willing to bet there’s not a functioning light bulb in the entire apartment.
She indicates where I’m to sit and I do. There are clean cloth napkins and an hors d’oeuvre of coquilles Saint-Jacques, hot in the shell. This is the kind of haute cuisine I used to get at all those business lunches. Of course, when we were dealing with the French, it would be almost absurd, the food would be so good, and the prices were impossible, but I wasn’t paying. OPM, other people’s money, was what we were all spending.
There was one place called the Coq Hardi, about a fifteen-minute drive from my office, where we’d eat often, and they’d practically hand-feed us, a waiter standing beside each of us, passing different cutlery, different goodies. The bill after all that cosseting would be enough to keep me for six months now.
But this, right here, in this dark dingy room, is a good start toward one of those fancy meals. The old lady has taken off her red costume and is dressed in a dark blue sweater with a white collar showing and a dark blue skirt. The dull light is coming through the window behind her and shining through her hair. She wears it in braids tied tight around her head almost like a crown.
‘Bon appétit, Monsieur le Peintre. I hope you like the coquilles.’
‘Bon appétit to you, too, madame. I’m sure I will. This is one of my favorite hors d’oeuvre.’
‘I am mademoiselle.’
‘Okay, mademoiselle. Bon appétit.’
We eat slowly, carefully. These are some of the best coquilles I’ve ever had. It’s a mixture of scallops, a white sauce, mushrooms, and Armagnac. There are also small shrimp, each about the size of a fingernail. I wonder how she manages.
‘Have you been painting for a long time, monsieur?’
‘It’s a complicated story, mademoiselle. I studied painting a long time ago and then was in a large American corporation doing business, first in America, then here in France. Now I am back to painting again.’
‘Have you retired?’
‘Yes, probably one could say I’ve retired, but I actually feel as if I’ve just started my work after a long interruption.’
She’s quiet. I don’t really want to go into all of it. It’s still damned painful. I remember I want to stop to check for mail at American Express, and write a letter. I’ll stop by before they close.
To change the subject, I figure it might be time to bring up the idea of including her in my painting, at the foot of Diderot. For some reason, I’ve been putting it off.
‘Mademoiselle, I hope you don’t object, but I would like to paint you in my picture. I’d like to have you sitting with your pigeons on the stone bench at the base of Monsieur Diderot’s statue.’
She stops with her fork halfway to her mouth. She puts it down and wipes her mouth carefully with her napkin. She looks me directly in the eyes and I can see the beginnings of tears in hers.
‘Thank you very much. I would be most happy to be in your painting. One of the worst things about being blind is the sensation, the conviction, that no one sees you. Most of the time I feel terribly invisible.
‘Monsieur, it will give me great pleasure to know I am there in your painting, in the world I can no longer see, to be visible to all.’
She looks down at the table and wipes her eyes gently at each corner with her napkin.
I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal. Normally, I’d start to get nervous. Sometimes when I was doing a watercolor people would ask me to put them in and I was always sure it would ruin the picture. Painting people isn’t really my thing. Mostly, I guess I just haven’t had much practice. But since she can’t see, she’ll never know, I can relax. No matter how I might botch her, it won’t matter. I can even paint her out if it’s too bad. Only the painting will know, and it’s part of me. But I’m glad I mentioned it.
She stands up, comes over, and faultlessly takes my dish with the eaten coquilles and the small three-pronged fork, then moves into the kitchen corner. I can smell something delicious that’s been simmering in a frying pan there. I’m hoping it won’t be some half-raw red meat cooked the way most French insist these things must be done. I’m not sure I could handle it after all my vegetarianism.
But no, it’s one of my favorites again. She must be a mind reader. It’s escalope à la crème champignons and beautifully done, the cream sauce lightly flavored with the same Armagnac as the coquilles, blending the two together. She brings some pommes frites allumettes to go with it, and thin white asparagus. I’m really getting the best of this deal. At this rate, I’ll describe every pigeon in Paris for her if she wants.
And it’s pleasant being with her, eating such good food in such a civilized manner. We eat, comment on the food, talk about pigeons, something about my painting, nothing too serious. I know she’s curious concerning me, but she’s a real lady, no probing questions. It can be hard with women sometimes, especially American women. They’ll ask about anything, before you even get to know them. This is a wonderful woman of the old school, a true lady.
After we’re finished with the escalope, she brings on fruit and cheese. Again, everything is perfect. How will I ever go back to my Mulligan stew again?
Finally, there’s coffee, and she goes to another tall cupboard, climbs on a small stool, and pulls down a dusty bottle. She wipes it off, then puts it in the center of the table.
The coffee, of course, is outstanding. We sip at it. She looks, if she can look, over the edge of her cup at me.
‘Tell me, monsieur. Is there really a pear inside that bottle?’
It’s one of those fancy bottles of Poire William. It looks as if it might be the original bottle, it’s so dusty, faded.
‘Yes, there’s a pear inside.’
‘It is the last thing my father sent home to us before he was killed. My sister, Rolande, insisted we never drink it, that we keep it there, locked in the closet, in honor of his memory.’
‘That was very thoughtful of her.’
‘Monsieur, I should like to drink from this bottle with you today. It has been too long; it is time.’
It’s her decision. I really enjoy this particular liqueur, one can actually taste the gritty, pithy quality of the pear when it is properly aged, and this liqueur is certainly aged, in fact, I think it has even evaporated a bit.
‘That would be very kind, mademoiselle. But are you sure you want to drink it after all these years?’
‘Yes, I am quite positive.’
She looks at me with those clear, sightless eyes again.
‘Do you know how the pear gets into the bottle, monsieur?’
I’d never really thought about it. I know one can soak an egg in vinegar and then, when it’s soft, slide it through the neck of a bottle, where it will harden, but I’ve never tried it. I guess I just wasn’t curious enough. I don’t imagine one could do that with a pear, anyway.
‘No, mademoiselle, I have no idea. It is interesting to think about, isn’t it.’
‘I know how it is done. They wait until the blossom on the pear tree has been fertilized by the bee, then they place that blossom inside the bottle and tie the bottle to the tree. The pear is born, grows inside the bottle.
‘When it is grown, they cut the stem of the pear, take the bottle from the tree, then pour liquor made from other pears on top. They close it up tight with the cork, and the pear remains in the bottle. It can never come out. Is it not a lovely idea, even though it is so sad?’
She stands and goes deftly over to a drawer. She pulls out a tire-bouchon, a corkscrew, and hands it to me.
‘Would you be so kind, monsieur, as to open the bottle, and we shall drink this liqueur which has been waiting inside with this pear for over fifty years just for us today.’
While I center the corkscrew and twist it in, she goes to the cupboard and comes back with two small glasses. They are etched on the sides with tiny cupids frisking in an encirclement of leaves. She watches, or appears to watch, as I pull the cork. I sniff and there is an aroma through the room. I hand the bottle across to the old lady.
‘Please, would you pour, mademoiselle? I know the man is supposed to do it, but this is such a special occasion, a private celebration, it seems only right you should be the one.’
She takes the bottle from me. Her hand is steady. As she pours into each glass she has the tip of her thumb just inside the rim of the glass and, as the liqueur reaches it, she stops pouring. It’s something I wouldn’t’ve thought of. I guess, if I were blind, I would. We all have so many blindnesses.
When she finishes pouring, she carefully puts down the bottle. She holds her glass up to me and looks across into my eyes.
‘Please, before we drink, would you tell me your name, monsieur. I do not want to be impolite, but it seems proper that when we share this we should know at least that much about each other.’
That’s natural enough. But I don’t think anyone has asked me my name in almost a year. I’d almost forgotten I have one.
‘I’ve been called Jack most of my life, mademoiselle. My real name is John, spelled J-O-H-N in English. But this past year I’ve been calling myself Jean, J-E-A-N, the French way. It sounds better to me.’
‘I like your American name, Jack; like the English villain Jack the Ripper. But may I call you Jacques in the French style? I know it means James in English, but I’d like to call you Jacques.’
She doesn’t ask my last name, but I would have told her, for whatever it meant.
‘And may I ask your name before we drink this delicious liqueur, this fateful beverage?’
‘Call me Mirabelle, please, Jacques.’
‘But that seems so impolite, mademoiselle, I mean, Mirabelle. What is your family name?’
‘That does not matter. I shall call you Jacques and you call me Mirabelle. You know, Jacques, there is no one left on this earth who calls me Mirabelle. My sister was the last one, and she has been dead for fifteen years. I do not want Mirabelle, the idea of Mirabelle, to die. Please, Jacques, call me by the name of my childhood, Mirabelle.’
There are tears in her eyes again. We touch glasses, they clink with the sound of true crystal. I know I’m expected to say something.
‘To the two of us, Mirabelle and Jacques, on this wonderful day, drinking to the dreams of our past.’
‘And to the dreams of our future.’
She drinks and I drink with her. It is absolutely incredible. Never have I tasted a liquid so filled with nectar. It is as if the pears have been compacted, distilled, heightened in flavor until only the essence is left. We both sip, close our eyes, let the warmth flow through us, then, simultaneously, open our eyes and smile. It can only be coincidence. She could not match my smile and I know I am not consciously trying to match hers. She holds the glass against her breast.
‘It is as if my father lives again. I can almost feel, hear him. Thank you so much, Jacques for this wonderful moment.’
We drink the rest of our glasses and I ease the cork back into the bottle. Each sip was like the first, an experience into another world.
‘Jacques, I shall drink the rest of that bottle with no one but you. Is it too much if I ask you to déjeuner with me tomorrow?’
I’m slow to answer. One part of me doesn’t want to get involved with anyone, even if it is only an old, blind lady. But another part does want to share time with her. I’m feeling ice clots breaking up inside me.
‘Yes, Mirabelle, and thank you. But you must pass the test first.’
She leans forward, obviously puzzled.
‘Tomorrow you must tell me the color and markings of each bird when it comes to you. Show me what you have learned today.’
Mirabelle smiles, the most spontaneous smile yet.
‘I have learned much, Jacques. You shall be surprised.’
Soon after, I rise, ease myself toward the door, pick up my painting box in the hall, and leave. Mirabelle ‘sees’ me to the door. She’s refused my offer to help her clear the table, help with the dishes.
‘No, Jacques, I want this time to myself so I can savor the pleasure of our meal. Also, it would be wrong for you to stay in here on this beautiful day, when you have your painting to finish. Goodbye for now. All revoir.’
On the way down the stairs I start smiling about my new name, Jacques. I’m not even sure I can spell it. I know the way Mirabelle pronounces it, it sounds a bit like Jock in English. I never thought I’d ever be a ‘jock.’
There are about two hours of good painting time left. I have some trouble handling the street in the foreground and the bottom right-hand corner. I think of putting in a bus at the bus stop, but that’s against my idea of what I’m trying to paint. I don’t want to put in any cars either. What I’m trying to paint is a Paris that transcends time somehow, a Paris which will always seem to be; yet, in another way, never was. I don’t put in TV antennae, automobiles, or motorcycles, not even bicycles. When I paint in people I make them vague so there’s no problem with dated clothes.
Also, I’ve found, if I put in a figure, no matter how hard I’ve worked on the entire scope of the painting, people will see it only in relation to that figure. I noticed this with my watercolors. I’d do an entire composition of buildings with shadows cast upon them, shutters, chimney pots against the sky, a sense of space, then I’d make the mistake of putting in a woman hanging out some clothes from one of the windows. People’d look at it and call my painting The Woman Hanging Clothes out the Window. But they’d buy it, much more frequently than if there were no woman at the window.
I’ll probably have the same trouble with this painting. Nobody can resist ignoring the sky, the trees, the entire Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Les Deux Magots, Diderot, the entire composition; it’ll just be The Lady in the Red Suit with the Pigeons. So it goes. In this case, because of all that’s happened, I can live with it.
I more or less solve the lower right with shadows cast by the trees in the garden and by putting in cobblestones, the cobblestones that used to be there but have been smeared over with asphalt. It isn’t the best of solutions, but it’s the only one I can come up with.
I find, in my paintings, I have the most trouble composing the upper left and the lower right areas. I never even notice I’m going to have this same problem again until I get there. Sometimes I think I’ll never learn.
I scratch my signature and the date on the painting. It’s almost invisible, just a scratch using the top of my brush. Then I turn it over, title it Mirabelle with Diderot, date and sign it. Mirabelle really fits in the painting. It’s as if she’s always belonged there.
The sun is off the front of the church when I pack up and start for home. Tomorrow I’ll use another of my 25F canvases. I’m not sure just what subject I’ll paint but I know it will be near to where I’ve been painting. I found when I was doing drawings and watercolors that each little quartier has its particular quality and one painting tends to lead into another. I’m half thinking I might try the Place Furstenberg. It’s a beautiful Place and I’ve painted it three times with watercolors and drawn it at least four or five times. When things were desperate I could always sell a few watercolors or drawings of the Place, and it was fun doing them, it’s a real challenge in its simplicity. There are a fair number of tourists who go through there but at the same time it isn’t exactly a tourist trap.
I stop in at American Express just before it closes. There’s nothing. I pull a folded sheet of paper and an envelope out of my jacket and use my drawing pencil to write a reasonably long letter. I try describing the painting I’ve just finished, and also tell something about the blind old lady named Mirabelle. I finish by assuring them I’m fine but miss them all. I sign it with ‘all my love.’ I mail it to Lorrie at her new address.
The next morning, after my run, as I beat my way crosstown, I realize I’m looking forward to seeing Mirabelle, not just enjoying some more of her wonderful food, but spending time with her, absorbing her strength, vitality; feeling her concern, sensitivity, empathy.
The day is beautiful. More sun and fewer clouds, but there are still some soft, floating, spidery ones drifting quietly across the sky. Unless you stop and line them up with something on earth, it’s hard to tell they’re moving.
I’m wearing my usual painting outfit, a falling-apart, multi-stitched denim jacket I bought for twenty francs at the flea market. I didn’t put on the green check woolen shirt I usually wear under it. The shirt’s missing more than half its buttons but it’s warm. When I ran this morning I realized today I wouldn’t need it. I’m beginning to think I don’t even need the jacket. Paris is giving us a little taste of what spring will be, real spring, maybe with a touch of summer.
I get to the site and elect to paint the Place from the uphill side and to the left of the street leading into it. I set myself practically in the Place because I want the lamps in the middle to be the center of my painting, sort of a focus around which the rest will swing in three dimensions; I’d like something of a merry-go-round feeling.
I do a rather careful drawing, keeping in mind the painting as I go. It’s amazing how one can paint something several times and it’s always different. I’m about to start putting paint on my palette for the underpainting when I begin to think of time passing. I don’t have a watch. I forgot it, left it behind on the night table in our bedroom when I packed up, more than a year ago, so I ask the time from somebody passing by. It’s just five minutes to ten.
I break down the box, swing it onto my back, and move up behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the Place in front of the church. I look across the street and there she is sitting in her usual spot. I try to see how close I can creep up on her before she senses me. I walk carefully. If anybody was watching, they’d think I was some kind of Jack the Ripper with a specialty in old ladies, because I’m practically walking on tiptoe. Before I get within six feet, she turns to me, smiles.
‘I thought you might not come, Jacques. I knew you were not here and I was disappointed. It is so very good of you to come after all.’
‘It was the smell, wasn’t it. You smelled me coming. Is that it, Mirabelle?’
She smiles and pulls out her second inflatable cushion for me.
‘No, there is something on your painting box which jiggles when you walk, it sounds like metal hitting wood. I did not smell you until after.’
‘Do I smell that bad? What do I smell like, anyway?’
‘Oh, Jacques, you want to know all my secrets. All right. You smell like turpentine, of course, and you smell something of perspiration because you concentrate so hard. And you smell …’
She pauses.
‘You smell like a man. You have a special man smell about you. It is not the smell of tobacco as with my father or some other men, and it is not the smell of the different perfumes so many men wear these days. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell the men from women except for the sound of the shoes they wear, and even that is changing.
‘You have a very special smell. I cannot describe it but I like it. The closest thing I can think of is the smell of horses.’
I’ve finished blowing up my cushion and I sit beside her.
‘I’d better not sit too close, Mirabelle. I never realized I was so smelly.’
‘No, Jacques, I like you sitting close to me. Remember, I enjoy your smells. They are very healthy, hardy smells.
‘Now, are we ready for my test? I shall touch and feel my pigeons and then tell you how they look, is that right?’
‘That’s right. But I was only teasing, Mirabelle. It will be impossible.’
‘Let us see.’
She puts out her finger and one of the pigeons, which had been hovering around her, lands. She picks it up, turns it over, inspects it.
‘This one is a tannish brown with two brown stripes across the wings. It has yellower eyes than most and its legs are a nice persimmon red. You admired the look of this bird and said it was almost acceptable, even for a pigeon. Am I right?’
She’s right, all right. She’s so right she’s telling me things I don’t even remember telling her.
‘I don’t believe it, Mirabelle. Come on, try again.’
Another bird flies down. This time it’s a heavy, dark blue bird with stripes on its wings, an ordinary-looking pigeon. Mirabelle strokes its neck with her finger and massages the feet and legs. She looks at me.
‘This one is bluish gray with two darker bars on each of her wings. She has a sheen of color on her neck almost like a cock. She has pale pink legs and darker than amber eyes.’
She lets this one fly away, after giving her grains from her little sacks.
‘I am not sure what color amber is, Jacques. Is it more an orange color or yellow?’
We go through the entire flock. The only interruption to her perfect replay of what I told her yesterday is one bird, a small-sized, gray one, which had not come the day before. Mirabelle tells me immediately when she handles her that she does not know the markings of this bird. She knows it is one of the birds who didn’t show up yesterday, that she is probably brooding an early nest.
An hour has passed and I’m ready to go back and start my underpainting.
‘Where are you painting, Jacques?’
‘I’m on the Place Furstenberg. I’m painting down the hill with the rue Jacob at the end.’
‘Oh yes. That is a lovely Place. I would play with a ball there when I was a child. It is one of my special places.’
‘What do you mean? Is it one of your favorite places?’
‘Yes, that is true, but more than that. It is very complicated. You go paint now and I shall explain to you while we déjeuner. I must go now to prepare. The food for the week was delivered from the market this morning, so we shall eat well.’
With that she begins putting her things together.
One of the strange aspects about being with a blind person, I’m finding, is when they stop talking to you, you do sort of disappear yourself. I stand, watch her a few seconds, and walk back across the boulevard. I’m still astounded at how she could describe all those birds in such detail. How could an old lady like this have such a remarkable memory?
On the Place, I’m soon into the painting. It seems no time at all before the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés start ringing, I have the sky and the left side of the Place with the bare trees roughed in. It’s a good time in a painting, everything still seems possible.
We have another wonderful meal. I try to talk about my enforced vegetarianism, how I don’t eat as much meat as before. She’s served small tournedos of beef with fresh string beans and pommes Dauphine. It is magnificently prepared. This time I notice how she must be cleaning things up as she goes, because there’s no mess in the kitchen, everything except the absolutely necessary pans and dishes is soaking in hot water in the sink.
Then she asks where I’m living. I tell her about my squatter’s attic, how I cook, where I get my food, about my running, just about everything concerning the life I lead, even to the stink from the glue and noise of my hammering. I try to tell it as humorously as possible. If you think about it, considering everything, it is all damned funny.
She keeps staring into my eyes. There is a concentration beyond sight.
‘But why do you live like this? What will you do in the winter when it becomes cold?’
‘I survived last winter and then I had no attic in which to live. Now I have a home. This winter I’ll buy an extra blanket at the flea market and be just fine.’
We’re finished eating. She goes over, picks up her stool, and reaches into her closet for the Poire William. I move to help her, then settle back. She’s too quick for me. As she stands on the stool, stretches, slightly lifting one leg, I see her legs are thin like those of a young girl, perhaps a girl thirteen or fourteen years old. She wears thick old-lady stockings, lisle, I think it’s called. She comes to the table. I know where the glasses are and take them down. She hands me the bottle.
‘Please, Jacques, this time will you pour? I want to feel spoiled, taken care of, treated like a young woman just a little bit.’
She sits, ankles crossed under her chair. I pull out the cork, the smell of pears fills the room again, she inhales. I pour three-quarters of a glass each. I hand one glass to her, pick up my own, and we touch glasses.
‘To Jacques, one of the finest painters in the world.’
‘How can you know that, Mirabelle?’
‘Because I am blind? Most of what I know, I know because I am blind. I know you are a fine painter.’
‘All right, then: to Mirabelle, the best blind critic of paintings in the world. May all critics have such a depth of perception.’
We sip. I remember.
‘Mirabelle, you called Place Furstenberg one of your special places. What did you mean by that? You said you would explain.’
She sips again, tilts her head toward the table, then looks up at me.
‘You know, Jacques, I am not really blind.’
She’s looking me right in the eyes. I’m not surprised. I’m only wondering why she pretends. Why in heaven’s name did she smash into me when I was painting, actually hurt herself. Am I involved with another total crazy?
‘No, you see, I have perfectly good eyes, there is nothing wrong with them. I have perfect nerves to carry what my eyes see to my brain.’
She pauses.
‘But my mind, it will not let me see. I am what is called hysterically blind, aveugle hystérique. I have tried everything, but since I was fourteen years old I have been able to see nothing.’
‘You mean you don’t see me now, here in front of you? You don’t see this room? What do you see?’
‘I see only the visions which are in my mind. I have my own world of things I see, but they are all ancient images, visions of when I was a child. Many doctors have worked with me trying to make me see again. My sister took me to psychiatrists and others. I was hypnotized many times. But I cannot see. Sometimes I think I shall never see.
‘One of the things I was supposed to do, helping me see again, was to remember places of my childhood, places I loved, enjoyed, and then go to those places, close my eyes, try to remember everything that was there. After, I was to open my eyes and hope I would see these things of the real world, but they were never there for me.
‘I have twenty-two places, all here in the quartier, which I have in my mind. They are almost like personal picture postcards, postcards I can bring before my mind. For many years, I would go to those places and concentrate, trying to see, trying to see anything, even the slightest light, but it never happened. Place Furstenberg was one of those places.’
‘What happened? How did this come to be, Mirabelle? It’s terrible.’
‘It is terrible to you. But it is not terrible to me. The doctors tell me I do not see because deep inside I do not want to see. I am afraid.’
‘What are you afraid of, Mirabelle?’
‘I am afraid of what I will see. I have learned to enjoy this private world in which I live. Yes, it is inconvenient being blind, but it is also very comforting.’
‘My God, whatever happened? Why are you afraid?’
She sips again and holds the drink against her breast. I’ve never seen anyone do that before, until she did it yesterday. Maybe it’s a way to protect the glass from being knocked from her hand by accident.
‘Perhaps another time, Jacques. I should like to talk with you right now about something important, if I may.’
What could be more important than why she’s blind? I wait.
‘I should like you to paint my portrait. Since you have created me in the picture at the foot of Diderot it has given me much comfort. I feel I exist in the outside world, not just in the world of my imagination, inside my mind. Please, will you paint me?’
This I hadn’t expected. It’s so embarrassing. I sip some more of the Poire William, trying to figure what to say, how to refuse without hurting her feelings.
‘I am not really a portraitist, Mirabelle. Since I was a young man, a student, I’ve tried painting portraits of people. I couldn’t do it then and I don’t think I could do it now.’
‘Yes, however, with this painting, you have no one to please but yourself. I cannot be a critic. I do not even know how I do look. I only want to have you make a painting, an object, which says something about the way you see me, feel about me. It would mean much to have this happen.’
‘But, Mirabelle, it’s so expensive. I’d be happy to paint you for nothing, but then I’d want the painting myself. Also I am running out of francs.’
‘You may have the painting for yourself, in any case. I would prefer that. But you cannot paint it for no money. I want you to charge me a regular price. This is a commission.’
‘It would be my first commission, Mirabelle. But you have no idea of the cost. I must charge three hundred francs for each painting to have enough to live.’
‘I will not pay three hundred francs.’
She pauses. I’m off the hook. She just has no idea. I see her differently now, though. I see her as a painting. I would like to paint her if she would be willing to pose. I’d like to paint her inner calm, vitality, separateness, courage, if those things can be painted. It’d be more money down the tubes, more paint out of the tubes, but I still have a few francs left and then there’ll be the tourist money this summer. Maybe I’ll go up onto the hill at Montmartre, play animal with the others in the artists’ zoo; I’m sure I could sell something there.
‘Jacques, I must pay at least a thousand francs or you cannot paint my portrait. I would gladly pay more if you want it.’
Hell, I’m not off the hook! In fact I’m really hooked. Mirabelle gets up and glides in that special way she has, not dragging her feet but hardly lifting them, feeling forward with them, as if she’s sliding her feet into slippers with each step, moving quickly to the cupboard again. What other delicious goody will she pull out?
She takes down a metal box with pictures enameled on it. She pries the lid open, reaches inside, and feels around. She pulls out one, then two, five-hundred-franc bills. She closes the box and puts it up on the shelf again. She comes back to the table.
‘Now you know where the blind old lady hides all her money. She does not hide it from herself.’
She holds the bills out to me. I don’t want to take them.
‘Wait till I’m finished with the portrait, Mirabelle. This is crazy.’
‘No, but it is crazy waiting until the painting is finished before I pay you. What is the difference. This way you can have the money now and I would only keep it in that box doing nothing. You can buy paints with it so the painting can be better. That makes much more sense.’
She leans the money closer to me, looking into my eyes the entire time. I take the money. She’s right.
‘If I come over to where you are painting now, on La Place Furstenberg, may I stay beside you? I will not be a bother, I want to feel you painting, know you are seeing, really seeing, that which I can only remember. Would that be all right?’
It’s okay with me, but how’s she going to get over? It means crossing boulevard Saint-Germain and that’s a fast-moving, wide street, not exactly the kind of street a blind old lady should try to cross.
‘You can come with me if you want. I’ll help you across boulevard Saint-Germain.’
‘No, I shall clean up here first. You would be surprised how I can find my way. I go anywhere in Paris I want. At the boulevard, I listen to the feet. When they start moving across the street I go with the others. Also, there is always someone to give an arm to an old lady in a red costume with a white cane. I can sometimes almost see myself in my mind. Of course, the boulevard was completely different when I last saw it, but I can tell much from the sounds and smells.’
So I take off. The light should be just right now. I’m realizing that, in the end, I’ll be running two paintings at the same time if it’s going to take me several days to paint each one. I’ll need one canvas for morning light and one for afternoon. I’ll really have good use for that thousand francs, just keeping myself in paint and canvas.
I’ve been painting about an hour when I look beside me and there’s Mirabelle sitting in a little collapsible chair. She smiles.
‘Oh, now you see me. I have been here awhile and you have been so busy looking, you didn’t know I was here. Sometimes looking so hard can make one blind. Is that not interesting?’
I’m just getting into painting the globes of the light stand in the center of the Place. I swear each one is a slightly different color. If you didn’t look closely, you’d think they were only white, but one’s slightly bluish white, one’s greenish, one yellowish, and the other has a violet tinge. I never would have guessed it until I tried painting them. I try explaining this to Mirabelle. Again she closes her eyes as I talk as if she’s trying to cast up the images in her mind. We’re quiet for a while.
‘Jacques, do you mind if I talk about what I am seeing here, myself, in my mind, listening to the wind against the trees, smelling the street, the paint, you; remembering from when I was a little girl?’
‘No, I’d like that very much, Mirabelle.’
‘Well, first I remember it was like a giant room, as if it were not outside at all. The trees make a great cover like an umbrella. There were benches on each side of the lamp and I would sit and stare at each of the globes, moving my head back and forth to watch my reflection move in each of them. The walls then were gray, blue-gray, violet, brown-gray, and when the sun would shine on them, they seemed to glow with a white luminescence not much different from the white in the sky between the leaves.
‘Now I understand the walls have all been painted white and yellow and light colors of brown. It must be beautiful, but it is not what I have in my mind.
‘It seemed then, as a child, that the street down to the rue Jacob was very long. We would roller-skate down that street, our skates strapped to our shoes, and we would roll hoops. There were very few automobiles and many horses. Only part of the street was smooth, the rest was stones. The rue Cardinale was only dirt. The windows were mostly open and will always be open in my mind, with flowers at the windows and clothing hanging on little lines, like butterflies against the green of the trees.
‘Also, at certain times, the trees would have purple flowers, the flowers would then fall, and we would gather them in our skirts and throw the petals at each other. It was a wonderful time.’
She stops. She still has her eyes closed. She’s brought such a freshness, a dreamlike vision to what I’m seeing, I find I’m integrating some of her feelings into my painting. I have alternatives for almost any decision I make in the painting now. There’s what my eyes see, there’s what my mind is seeing, the selective vision of the painter; and then there’s the vision of Mirabelle’s mind. It’s the same as it was with the pigeons against the sky over Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I’m flying in her dream, painting her desires.
She keeps on talking, resurrecting the memories she’s stored, cherished, all these years, speaking of the way it was, and it seems so much more real than what I’m seeing before me.
I begin to think I’m going blind myself, then realize it’s only getting dark. I have no idea what time it is, but the painting is almost finished. I never believed I could get so far along on a painting in a single day. And what I’ve done is good, it holds together; more than that, it sings out the feelings I have, about Paris, about Mirabelle, and in many ways her feelings about Paris as a young girl, and now as a blind old woman.
I pack up the box. Mirabelle has some grains with her for the pigeons. Many from the flock at Saint-Germain-des-Prés come here to this Place and pick up bits of food tourists or others leave on the ground. When my box is packed, I lean against the wall beside where Mirabelle is sitting. It’s a great little folding stool she has, I wish I had one for myself, sometimes my back gets tired standing. She turns to me.
‘I feel it growing cooler. Is it really becoming dark? Is that why you have packed up your paints?’
‘That’s right, Mirabelle. It was getting so dark I was beginning to think I might be going blind myself.’
‘No, Jacques, that is not the way one goes blind.’
She still sits there. The pigeons are all around her. It is evening and I guess that’s when pigeon mating instincts come to the fore, because two or three cocks are doing the old courtship routine, puffed out, head bobbing, flight feathers dragging, rattling, on the ground, going round in tight circles.
‘Are they dancing their love dance, Jacques?’
‘That’s right, Mirabelle. I guess pigeons spend more time courting than any other creature I know.’
‘But you know pigeons are mated for life. They do their dance around almost any hen, but they are mated for life.’
‘Somebody told me that once, but it’s hard to believe. It certainly would be nice if it were true. I like the idea.’
‘Honestly. Have you ever seen pigeons mating in the streets, in public, as cats, dogs, even other birds do?’
‘No, now you mention it, I never have. Maybe you’ve got something there, Mirabelle, about pigeons teaching humans how to live.’
‘They are only flirting with the hens, showing how they care for, admire, value them. I think it is most beautiful. I thrill to hear their cooing song, hear their feet pounding on the ground, listen to their feathers bristle. It is such a dance of meaningful, purposeless passion.’
She looks up at me in the blueing dusk.
‘You know, Jacques, there is not enough love in this world. Sometimes I think the pigeons are the last lovers in Paris. There seems to be much of sex in these times, but very little of true love, of love that makes all creatures come closer together, that allows one creature to express an inner feeling toward another creature so they know they are important and valuable to them.’
She stands and I help fold her chair. I throw it over the top of my box. I offer her my arm and she takes it.
‘Jacques, would you be my guest at La Palette on the rue de Seine? We can have a cup of coffee or something there. It is a place where artists have long gone. I have not been there for more than ten years, since before Rolande’s death. Please, take me there. It would be such a pleasure for me to hear and feel the excitement of that place.’
I’ve passed the café tens of times but never gone in. Café sitting just doesn’t fit into my budget. I hope I’m not spending Mirabelle’s savings. It doesn’t seem fair or right.
‘If that’s what you want, Mirabelle, let’s go. But I must pay. I’m a rich man. I have a thousand francs in my pocket right now.’
I smile down at her, knowing the smile means nothing, is invisible, she cannot see it, but it makes me feel good. I’m smiling for myself.
She holds tighter on to my arm, not clutching, only tucking herself in closer. It’s a lovely evening and we must make quite a pair walking into La Palette. We find a table in the back and both order a Cointreau. It seems the perfect thing to finish off a good day’s work. It’s going to cost more than a week’s living but it’ll be worth it.
Mirabelle has all her antennae out. I can tell by the almost ecstatic look on her face, the smile, the inner concentration. She’s probably ‘perceiving’ more of this ambience than I am, by far. I close my eyes and try to experience the way she does. While I have my eyes closed, the Cointreau arrives. I can tell it’s there even without opening them. The smell of oranges surrounds us. I wonder if I would have smelled it if I’d been sitting there with my eyes open.
‘Is it not wonderful, Jacques?’
She is fingering the round ballon of Cointreau, spinning it around in her small, pointed, thin-skinned, dainty fingers.
‘I feel everything so strongly it’s almost like seeing.’
We clink glasses, she makes the first move, of course. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Cointreau, and this isn’t the best but it tastes good, not as good as that Poire William, but good on an early spring evening.
We sit sipping and listening. I’m also watching the coming and going, the flirting, the general horsing around of the young people. Why do artists always feel they need to make such a scene all the time? Probably it’s what makes them artists, or makes them want to be artists in the first place. They want, need, to be seen. For some reason, they aren’t sure they are. I wonder how much of that is in me. Probably anyone who has all the love, acceptance they need would never actually create, do, anything. They’d be complete within themselves. That would be the end of writers, poets, painters, singers, musicians, politicians, most of the people who help make the world go around, at least who strive for human communication.
It’s dark when I escort Mirabelle home. She invites me up but I don’t feel like sitting in a dark room while she wouldn’t even know it. I’ll have to buy a few light bulbs and slip them in around her place if I’m ever going to spend any time there.
I have a great walk home, I use the gate code number I learned by watching others punch it in, sneak up the stairs quietly, and settle in. I watch my painting for a long time in the candlelight as I eat a light supper. With all the lunches, I’m not eating up my stew for this week.
Blind Reverie
I feel so brazen. I wonder if he feels it, too, but he means so much to me. He must have some idea of my feelings. even if he can see.
I am confused. Knowing how my pigeons look has taken so much away. I thought my love for them would be more, but it is somehow less. I should have known. I think he is convinced I am childish, calling them by name, but they have been my only companions for so long. I hope he doesn’t mind my calling him Jacques. He cannot know it was the name of my father.
I felt something negative when he came into the apartment. Can it be so dirty, unkempt? I must ask him. But I must go slowly. It was much, asking him to paint me. Now I am glad I did it. I wanted something we could share, a way to keep him near.
I think he likes my food. I could tell by the sounds as he ate. I am so happy to have found him. It is wonderful to have someone with whom I can share my pear in the bottle.
3
The next morning I’m finishing the painting of the Place Furstenberg. I feel in control. The strong movements I established yesterday are holding up as I move into the more descriptive elements. The light is coming through the trees and I’m using a tremendous variety of color to capture the sense of light on the paving of the Place. The painting is somewhere between Impressionism and something different, a new kind of vision for me, a highly personal vision such as Vincent van Gogh had, a conviction that the way I see is valid.
I work all morning and then I feel Mirabelle beside and behind me.
‘I can tell you are happy with your work, Jacques. The bells are ringing, will you déjeuner with me, and then perhaps we can start the portrait.’
How can she possibly know I’m just about finished? Do I give off some kind of ‘satisfaction vibrations’? I scratch my signature in the lower right-hand corner. I pull the canvas off the easel and print in the title, Place Furstenberg, date and sign it on the back. I’m almost tempted to sign it ‘Jacques.’
‘Yes, I’m very happy with the painting. But I don’t think I can start with your portrait because I have no other canvas here with me. I didn’t realize I’d finish this one so quickly. I wish you could see it. It’s the best painting I’ve done and you helped very much.’
‘Thank you. It means much to me to feel I could help. Can you understand what this must mean to someone blind such as I?’
Her face is very serious, then it breaks into a smile and she ‘looks’ down at her feet briefly. She finds my eyes again.
‘Could you not buy a canvas near here? I do not think the shops are closed as yet.’
‘It is very expensive to buy a canvas, Mirabelle. A canvas stretched, of the size I would need, could cost over a hundred and fifty francs.’
She reaches into her purse. She pulls out two hundred francs.
‘Here, please, Jacques, buy it. We do not know how long I shall be around to be painted and every day I am getting older. I should like to be painted as soon as possible, while I am still young.’
‘Okay. I’ll give it back to you this afternoon from the thousand francs when I have it changed. That’s only fair. All right?’
‘Yes, if that is what you want. But you must hurry now to find a shop open before they close. I shall go home and prepare our food. It is mostly ready, but there are some last little things to do. I shall meet you there.’
She turns away. The art store is just around the corner, not far from La Palette, where we had our Cointreau. I decide to leave the box standing in the Place. I put the painting back on the easel. I take off right away. Nobody will steal it in the few minutes I’ll be gone. I start running, holding the two hundred francs bunched in my hand.
The bells are still ringing when I get there and they’re open. The canvas, real linen on a good stretcher, 20F, with portrait linen, is a hundred and ninety francs. I feel like a rich man. But at this rate I’d be a candidate for the poorhouse in no time.
I dash back to my box and everything is fine. There are two people looking at the painting, a well-dressed French couple. The man asks me if I want to sell the painting.
I do and I don’t. He’s pretty insistent and I’m busy cracking down the box, putting things away. At the sound of my crappy French, he switches into good-quality, heavily accented English-English.
‘But you must be in business, monsieur. Do you have a gallery where I may see your work?’
‘No, I have no gallery.’
‘But you are a professional, yes. The painting is of very high quality.’
‘Thank you.’
I don’t answer the first question. I guess I am a professional but I don’t think of myself that way. It sounds like a prizefighter or a whore. The French word amateur means ‘lover.’ I think I’m more an amateur, at least when it comes to painting.
‘How much money would you take for your painting, monsieur? My wife and I like it very much.’
I figure I’ll name a big price to shut him up. I’m sure he thinks it’s like Montmartre, where paintings are knocked out for nothing.
‘The painting would cost fifteen hundred francs, monsieur. I must live.’
He reaches into his inside jacket pocket, slides out a dark, shining leather billfold, and separates three five-hundred-franc notes. He hands them to me.
I could kick myself. I haven’t had enough time to enjoy this painting. But, God, fifteen hundred francs, I can get through the entire summer with that. But I’m going to be very professional about all this.
I lift the painting from the place where I’ve leaned it against the wall and hold it at arm’s length for a last long look at it. I feel I’m selling part of Mirabelle at the same time. I hand it to him.
‘Be careful, monsieur. It is still wet. It will be a week or more before it is dry.’
‘That is quite all right. We live near here. We love this Place and thank you again for selling us your work. You are very talented.’
With that, the two of them walk away carrying our painting. She’s wearing a white fur coat and white stockings with clocks in them, slightly off-white shoes. Her hair is perfectly coiffed. He looks as if he could be the Prime Minister of France. Hell, I wouldn’t know the Prime Minister if I fell over him.
Inside myself, I’m really torn. I need to tell Mirabelle. I’ve sold our painting. How will she feel about that? I put my paint box on my back, empty, and start the walk to her place. I’m carrying the new canvas in my free hand. Now I’m late.
I put the box outside and her door is open. I knock and go in. She’s in the kitchen.
‘I began to think you were not coming. Please, let us sit down. I have little crêpes with mushrooms and a cheese sauce. I have just finished making them.’
I go in to take a leak. I use the same ‘knee-locking’ system as before. Then I go over and wash my hands, leaving the door open for light again. I’ve taken several sheets of toilet paper from the toilet room and I wet them. I try to wipe off some of the grime and specks from the mirror. The dirt’s really ground in. I manage to clear a circle in the center of the mirror, enough to see myself. I haven’t actually looked at myself in a mirror, up close, in a long time. I don’t look as bad as I thought I would. I definitely look younger than I did two years ago. If it weren’t for the gray in my beard I could maybe even pass for forty.
I sit down. Mirabelle puts three beautiful crêpes on each of our plates. They smell delicious. Again I close my eyes and let the smell come into me. It’s getting to be a habit. Before I know it, I’ll probably go blind myself.
‘Mirabelle. I have something to tell you.’
‘The art shop was closed and you could not buy the canvas.’
‘Worse than that.’
There’s no way around it. I must tell her, I owe her that, at least.
‘I sold our painting, the painting of the Place Furstenberg.’
She’s quiet on her chair, looking at me. She hands me a bottle of white wine, a Pouilly-Fumé, to open. I start turning the corkscrew.
‘But that is very good, Jacques. You said you must sell paintings to live. We can always paint the Place Furstenberg again. It is in my mind, all of it. It makes me feel happy to think we have shared our vision with someone else.’
And I suddenly feel released. Mirabelle’s right. I can paint it again. I’ll paint it better than last time. I just didn’t have enough confidence in myself. And I really do have over twenty-five hundred francs in my pocket, the thousand from Mirabelle and now the fifteen hundred. I reach in my pocket. I hold out the thousand francs.
‘Here, Mirabelle, take this. I don’t need it now. All you need pay is the money for the canvas, and you’ve already done that. We’re even.’
She pulls away from the money as if it were a snake.
‘Do not do this, Jacques. You have a commission from me. I could never feel right if you do not take this money. Please, take it away. I can smell it in front of my face. It smells sour, a blend of dirt, cheap perfume, the inside of pocketbooks, and perspiration, as does all money. Please, take it away, or I cannot eat.’
I put it on the table beside me.
‘Well, we can discuss that later. For now, I want to eat these beautiful crêpes and drink this wonderful wine.’
I hold out my glass and there’s just the slightest delay until she realizes what I’m doing. No one would probably have picked up the slight pause, but I’m getting more closely tuned to her now.
‘Yes, Jacques, we drink to the sale of your beautiful painting. I knew you were a very good painter. You should sell your paintings for much more money, you sell them too cheaply.’
‘I have more money than I can use now, Mirabelle. I know that doing things to make money can pollute life faster than anything else. I’m happy to have this money, but it must not become the reason why I paint. This is something I’ve learned.’
‘You will never paint for money alone, Jacques, only when you are hungry and desperate. Before that, you can come live with me.’
We drink. The wine is dry and cooled just properly. It has a deep raisin taste, yet is light and almost effervescent. It’s time to change the subject.
‘Where do you get these wines, Mirabelle? This kind of wine costs almost as much as that painting.’
‘They are not mine. These are the wines of Rolande. Where she worked with the Ministère des Finances at the Louvre, she would always receive cases of wine at Christmas. We hardly ever drank them, so there are many cases stored in the cave. I am glad I can share them with you. I think Rolande would be happy, too. At least, I hope she would.’
After the wine, we have a wonderful soufflé. To think of all I’ve heard about how hard it is to make a soufflé properly and here this elderly blind woman has pulled off one to match any I’ve ever had in my life. Mirabelle is a constant wonder. I find myself sneaking glances at her. In my mind I’m already starting to paint her portrait.
We finish off with our usual Poire William. We’re coming close to the bottom of the bottle. I wonder what Mirabelle will want to do with the pear when it’s all that’s left.
She clears the table and pours two cups of coffee. Again, she makes some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Perhaps this is partly because I have the chance to drink coffee so infrequently. I’ve heard it said that the best way to ensure yourself compliments as a cook is to keep your guests waiting until they’re practically starved, and I’m sure in my past I’ve been victim to this theory, but with Mirabelle, everything seems to arrive just at the appropriate moment.
I watch as she so efficiently, gracefully, removes the dishes from our table, slides them into soapy water, rinses them, stacks them in a rack. It’s like music, calming, just to watch her. I know I could never dance to her dance, so I stay seated, talk to her about the people who came up to me and bought the painting. I tell it with the kind of detached elation I felt, and it comes out as so funny, we’re both laughing. Mirabelle comes over from the kitchen, drying her hands.
‘Now, Jacques, are you ready to paint my portrait?’
‘Yes. First I’ll bring in my box and the new canvas from the palier. I think I’ll paint you by the windows so I have enough light on the canvas.’
I move toward the door. I struggle the canvas and box inside, closing the door behind me. There are only two windows in the room, both opening onto the court, so there isn’t much light. But worst of all are the raggedy drapes, three-quarters drawn across the windows. They block just about any light that might come in.
‘Mirabelle, would it be all right if I take down the drapes on the windows, or pull them back? I need more light to see.’
‘Oh yes, please do. I had completely forgotten they were there. You must have been sitting here with me in the dark. Why did you not say something?’
For the first time, including when she’d bumped into me and fallen, she seems generally nonplussed, embarrassed.
‘Oh, I could see enough to eat. But if I’m going to paint you, I must have more light.’
‘Please take them down. There is no one to peer in at me and I would like it if they did, at least somebody would be seeing me. We had those drapes up for Rolande.’
I use the stool she’s been using to reach up into the cupboard. I stand on it and find that the mechanism for moving the drapes is completely jammed. I lift the entire contraption off its hooks, lower the curtain, and step down onto the floor again. The drapes are coated with dust and so fragile they tear in my hand.
‘I think these drapes are finished, Mirabelle. Do you want me to save them?’
‘No. Please throw them away. The smell of the dust makes me feel as if I am dead already. Put them out on the palier. Later, I shall take them down to the poubelle.’
I climb to lift down the other set of drapes. Same thing: jammed, rusty, dusty drapes, faded, falling apart. I lower them as I come down from the stool, wrap them around the valence. I take both of them to the door and shove them out onto the landing, the palier, where my paint box had been.
‘I’ll take them downstairs when I go home, Mirabelle.’
Now I look at the windows. They’re as filthy as the mirror had been. But I’m not going to clean them now. The weather is mild, maybe I can open them.
‘Do you mind if I open the windows, Mirabelle? It will clear the air. If you feel cold you can wear another sweater, perhaps.’
‘Oh yes. That will be fine. What would you like me to wear for this portrait?’
‘I think just what you are wearing now, your dark blue sweater with the collar.’
‘Is my hair in order?’
She feels over her head, shifting bobby pins and maybe hairpins over and around her head.
‘You look wonderful.’
I move one of the chairs from the table and place it so I have a three-quarter light falling on her face. It gives enough penumbra, but not too much. I can pick up the features on the shaded section, even in this limited light.
‘Shall I sit in the chair now?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps you can finish cleaning the pots and pans from our wonderful meal, if you want, while I open my box and prepare myself.’
I’d noticed that in her cleanup she’d left some pans soaking in the sink.
I wedge the long back leg of my box under the window. I want to have enough light on the canvas and still not have the canvas block my view of Mirabelle. I want the eye level of the portrait at my eye level and at just about the same eye level as Mirabelle. I’m going to paint her one and a half times life size. Painting on the vertical dimension, this should fill a 20F just fine.
I’m all settled in when Mirabelle sits in the chair. I need her head turned more to the light with her sightless eyes seeming to look at me. I want the dynamic of the two directions. I wonder if when I paint her, her eyes will seem empty, they don’t seem that way to me at all. I have the other chair set up in front of my paint box. I stand and go over to where she’s sitting. I put my hands on each side of her face and turn it so the light is just right. I think it’s the first time I touch her face.
Usually, from the little experience I’ve had with painting portraiture, one asks models, after they’ve been posed, to pick something and fix their eyes on it. But this is obviously impossible in this case. She does the mind-reading trick on me again.
‘I can hold my head still like this because I know where you are and I can feel the open window.’
I start my pencil sketch with a 3B pencil. I’ll move up to 6B later on when I’m more sure. I really don’t like working the drawing with charcoal and then blowing fixative on it the way they taught me those long years ago at school. I draw with the pencil and correct with a soft eraser. I begin drawing and concentrate for at least fifteen minutes, getting her placed on the canvas, having the right relationship between head, body, and negative space. I want her placed up high on the canvas but not too dominant. I make quite a few erasures before I get the proportions and angles I want.
‘Please tell me, Jacques, how I look. No one seems to look at me, or, if they do, they have never told me. Many times I would ask Rolande how I looked but she would only say I was quite presentable, or sometimes when she was cross, that I was too pretty for my own good. But that was a long time ago.
‘I can feel with my fingers that I am getting older. There seems nothing one can do to stop that. It is only natural, is it not?’
She pauses. I’m trying to concentrate, get it right, what’s she talking about now?
‘Do I have gray hair, Jacques?’
This is going to be hard but I want to be truthful. I look away from the painting, up at her.
‘White, Mirabelle, you have white hair. There are some dark hairs in your eyebrows, but the hair on your head is practically white.’
‘Oh dear! I have begun to think so. At first, twenty years ago, I could tell some of the hairs were stiffer and were hard to manage. I imagine they were the white ones. They were not like the kind of hair usually growing on my head. Now they are all the same, all stiff and straight. You know, it is hard for me to think of myself with white hair. Is that not silly? Here I am, seventy-one years old, and I actually almost did not believe I had even gray hair. I feel like such a fool.’
‘None of us ever really look at ourselves, Mirabelle, even if we can see. Perhaps it is best, it helps us sustain our illusions.’
She’s quiet for a while. I’m working on the relationship between her eyes and nose. She has a lovely, thin aquiline nose with visible, slightly flaring nostrils. Her eyes, her non-seeing eyes, are set wide and are large. It’s so hard to believe she sees nothing.
‘Yes, you are right; perhaps that is why I do not allow myself to see. But tell me, do I have wrinkles in my face? Of course I do. Would you please tell me about them? I want to know, I really do.’
It’s hard to concentrate because that’s not the part of her face I’m working on yet. I can see this is going to be quite a problem painting her. I lean back and look.
‘Yes, Mirabelle, you have wrinkles. So do I. I’m forty-nine years old, so naturally I have wrinkles. Without wrinkles nobody’s face would be very interesting.
‘You have a wonderful line of concentration, slightly to the left, between your eyes, and a smaller one just beside it. Then across your forehead you have four questioning lines, unevenly spaced, going all the way across. Two of them intersect on the left side. There are lines coming out of your eyes on each side, mostly smiling lines, lines from avoiding the glare of the sun. No, that can’t be, the glare of the sun would mean nothing to you. They must only be smiling lines. You do smile often, you know, Mirabelle.
‘There are lines down the sides of your mouth from your nose. These are the deepest lines in your face. They come right down past your mouth to your chin. Those are the main lines on your face, the most visible, but not the most important.’
She’s quiet some more. I get back to work with my drawing. Again, by having explained to her, I’m seeing better. The spacing between the eyes and the mouth is better related to the length of the nose. This can always be a problem in doing a portrait.
‘And what other lines are there?’
I don’t stop drawing this time.
‘Well, there are all the lines that come with aging, with the gradual loss of skin tone, small crosshatch lines, the lines from the pull of gravity on the skin. These are the usual lines which don’t really tell much about a person, what they are, the way they’ve thought. They’re only the lines that come naturally as anybody gets older, lines of normal skin aging.’
I don’t mention the lines I’m drawing in now, those lines that run down into the upper lip, the lines of a shrinking face, the most prominent aging marks on almost any face. I hope she doesn’t question me anymore.
‘Am I ugly, Jacques?’
This is asked in a very low voice.
‘No, Mirabelle, you are quite a handsome, mature woman. I’m sure you must have been a very pretty girl and a lovely young woman, as well. I’m quite proud and happy to be painting your portrait.’
I can say this and really mean it. There’s something mystical, almost childlike in her face, her voice, and all her moves, which denies her age. Maybe blindness helps people not get old too fast. Perhaps she’s been protected from so much of the distraction, the impact, the stress of ordinary city life, she’s been preserved in some way. There’s a strange quality, so fresh, new, clean, about her.
‘Do you think anybody could ever love me, Jacques? Be honest now, please.’
What a question! I finish up with the curvature of her cheek before I answer.
‘I love you, Mirabelle. You’re one of the finest, most intelligent, sensitive, and interesting people I’ve ever met. I enjoy your company. I feel like a better person when I’m with you. Does that answer your question?’
And I’m not lying.
‘Thank you, Jacques.’
I hope that’s the end of it.
‘But I mean, really love me; want to make love, faire l’amour with me. Do you think it is at all possible for some man to feel that way?’
Well, this stops me. Maybe I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear her. But I can’t, the intensity of her question demands an answer.
I sit back, look at her, look at the drawing. Actually, it’s coming along pretty well, considering everything. I’m beginning to realize there’s a young girl locked up in this old woman’s body. It seems sad. It’s like the pear.
‘It’s not impossible, Mirabelle. You are really a most attractive older woman. It is only because you are blind you do not have enough opportunity to make contact with enough men, and Rolande was so protective of you. I’m sure some intelligent man your age would want to have an intimate relationship with you.’
I lean forward to work again. How much more does she want? I’m surprised at how embarrassed I am. Then she comes straight out with it.
‘When I was younger, when I was thirty years old, I wanted very much to have a baby, to be a mother. I thought if I had my own child, maybe I would want to see it so much I could let myself see. I was sure that, given a chance, I could find a man who would make one with me, even though I was blind. He would not have to marry me, or even see me again, I didn’t care. I just wanted my own baby.
‘Oh, how I wish I knew you then, Jacques. But you would only have been a young boy in America. Ah, it can be difficult, these things, time is strange.
‘Rolande was so shocked, so angry. She said it was immoral and where did I get such ideas? She said I could not take care of a child, that I could not even take care of myself. She said all the responsibility would be hers. So I stopped talking about it, but I did not stop thinking about it.’
She stops, smiles, ‘looks’ at me, slightly turning her head in my direction.
‘And now it is too late. I am a virgin, Jacques, and I do not want to die a virgin. I feel I have great capacity for giving and receiving passionate love but I have never had a chance. It does not seem fair.’
There are tears rolling out those wrinkles from the sides of her eyes, and down the outside of her face. This is more than I can handle. I’m feeling sorry for her, at the same time I’m feeling boxed in. I try to keep my hand steady as I develop the line of her jaw.
I’ve stopped working. We’re staring into each other’s eyes. She, of course, can’t see me, and I’m not seeing her as a subject for a portrait. I guess I’m seeing her as a woman for the first time.
‘I know you are a good and kind man, Jacques, someone I can trust, or I could not talk to you like this. I am surprised at myself. Please forgive me.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive, Mirabelle. It must be terrible for you to be so alone. I must tell you, I’m a married man. I have a family, I love my wife, my children. Even though I am separated from them now, I feel responsible to them.’
There’s a long time while she’s quiet. She’s stopped crying. I lean back into the canvas, my drawing starts coming alive again. I wouldn’t think I could keep drawing with all the emotional stress I’m feeling.
‘I am sorry, Jacques. I did not know. We know so little of each other. While you are drawing me I should like to tell you something about myself. You deserve to know.’
Blind Reverie
It was so exciting for me when he called the Place Furstenberg ‘our’ painting. It is the way I felt myself, it was something we did together.
I do not think he particularly noticed when I suggested he could live with me, perhaps he did not believe what I was saying. I almost did not myself.
It is so strange being painted. I can almost sense myself being seen, I have a sensation of his eyes upon me. It made me feel very real. I could not help myself. I wanted so to know what he was actually seeing. And then, more, what I looked like to him, as a man, not only as an artist. Am I truly a woman, yet, still? I hope I did not scare him by almost offering myself, but I have known from the first moment we came together, this was a man I could love with all my body and soul, give of myself and feel gifted.
I must be more careful or he will be frightened away. I did not think he was married, at the same time, I could not think of a man like him being alone. He feels, seems, the way my father was, a true family man, a man a woman could love deeply.
I hope I am right in telling him about myself.
4
‘We were a very happy family in this house, Jacques. Perhaps it is only because my memories are so old, so worn down by wishes, by tears, that it seems so. Still, I remember many wonderful things.
‘My father worked in reliure, book binding. He had a beautiful reliure on the rue des Canettes. It had been the place of his father and his grandfather before him. He loved his work. Sometimes he would bring it home with him to share with us. It was wonderful to feel the smooth leather and rub our fingers over the mounds of string bindings and etching of titles on the spines of books.
‘He was kind to us. Always on Sundays and Mondays he took us to the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Parc Zoologique at Vincennes. He loved life, he loved us, and he loved our mother. I do not think it is only time which makes it seem this way. I remember so clearly. It is one of the things about being blind, there is not so much to cloud the vision one has of the past.
‘Our mother was a nervous woman, she was afraid of many things, but when my father was there, she was never afraid. We would row in the wooden boats in the Bois de Vincennes or in the Bois de Boulogne. We had picnics and played games. It was a very calm, beautiful life.
‘Then, when I was only ten years old, came the Great War. My father had to leave immediately. My mother cried for days. When she stopped crying, I never remember her smiling again, except when she received letters from my father, or on the two times he came home to us on leave.
‘My sister and I went to school at the Alsacienne on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Rolande was three classes ahead of me. We were happy students.
‘It was October eleventh and I was released from school three hours before Rolande, because she had piano lessons on that day. Each of us had our own key around our neck, under our uniforms. I had my books in my arms. All this I remember very well.
‘I came into the house, calling for Maman. It was the time when she always had a goûter for us. In the kitchen there was nothing. I could not imagine Mother not being home. She rarely went out, especially after Father was gone. I looked into each of our bedrooms and there was nothing. The door to the WC was open. I carefully knocked on the door to the room of my parents, then pushed the door open. There was nothing. I was beginning to be frightened. The only room left was the bathroom, la salle d’eau. I knocked and no one answered. I pushed open the door, it was not locked.
‘There was my mother. She was in the bathtub and the tub was filled with blood! Her eyes were open. I went down on my knees beside her. I still did not know what could have happened. I was so young. I had just had my fourteenth birthday and also had begun with my règles. My first thought was that somehow my mother had had her règles and was bleeding to death.
‘When I touched her she was cold. The blood in the tub was only slightly warmer. I saw the razor of my father on the edge of the tub. I still did not know, could not understand. I only wanted to lift my mother out of the blood. I reached down into the depths, staining my school uniform, and pulled the plug to let the blood and water drain. As it drained, my mother sagged into the depths of the tub. I started running fresh water, crying, screaming, but nobody came. I washed the blood from my mother, calling her name over and over, not her name but Maman, MAMAN!
‘When she was clean, I lifted her in my arms and somehow struggled to her bed. I stretched her out as best I could, crying and screaming all the time for help. I pulled her nightgown over her cold, naked body. I wanted so for everything to be all right again, for my mother to be warm, to speak to me. I remember I could not fit her arms into the sleeves, so I pulled the nightgown down over the tops of her arms. I opened the covers and slid her into the bed. I pulled off my own clothes, down to my chemise, and crept in beside her.
‘I wanted to warm her. I had seen the slits, the gaping wounds of her wrists, but they did not seem bad enough to kill. They were not bleeding and they were water-shriveled. My only thought was to hold her in my arms and make her living, warm again, bring her back. I held her to me and cried until I went to sleep.
‘When Rolande came home, that is how she found us. Afterward, she told me she almost backed out and closed the door, thinking we were only taking a nap, but then saw blood on the floor, went into the wet, still-blood-soaked bathroom, and came out screaming. She was three years older than I and knew enough to be aware that something terrible had happened.
‘She tried to waken us and I woke, saw her first, then looked over and saw the eyes of my mother, empty, staring, not seeing. It was the last thing I remember, the last time I saw. It was her eyes, open and not seeing. I did not want to see any more. Inside, I think I wanted to be like my mother, my eyes open but not seeing.
‘I do not remember the funeral. It was as if I were dead. I did not want to eat, to breathe, to live. In the bedroom, they found a telegram saying my father had been killed. It seemed everything I loved in life, my mother, my father, was gone, and I wanted to be gone, too.
‘The mother of my mother, our grandmother, came to live with us and take care of us. Her husband was also dead. She was always tired, and Rolande had to stop school before graduating, in her “Terminale,” and help with the house and help take care of me. When I was twenty, my grandmother died, too. The shock of losing her husband, then her only daughter, my mother, had killed something inside her.
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William Wharton
A middle-aged man abandons his corporate life to follow his dream to become a painter. On the way, he develops an unlikely but beautiful relationship with an older woman.Jack is a middle-aged American living as a squatter in a Paris attic. He paints in a public square and sells his work to survive. There he meets Mirabelle, a blind, 71-year-old, self-appointed pigeon lady who cares for the birds who flutter about his easel. Between Jack and Mirabelle springs a friendship that deepens into an improbable but impassioned love affair.
WILLIAM WHARTON
Last Lovers
To my wife, Rosemary
This tale takes place
between April and November 1975.
Location: Paris, France.
Believing is seeing.
—W.W.
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uc29ed207-b774-5d40-a5e3-1682e6c7cfd7)
Dedication (#ua92c2422-f21c-5cc3-b684-1b8c15c3eb1b)
Epigraph (#uac7ec61b-7e53-585d-9465-1762b8cce288)
Chapter 1 (#u411de412-307f-506a-b627-3e32cd4acc38)
Blind Reverie (#u3ce61fde-d14f-58ba-a952-e3adf05f8122)
Chapter 2 (#ua7e9015c-565c-5350-9a15-49b372ff55ae)
Blind Reverie (#u49db01b2-da90-59ee-a8ff-9c33f474ce5c)
Chapter 3 (#u1e620b5f-d4ad-52cc-8190-115e543a9ba3)
Blind Reverie (#u0f78e2be-08b4-59cf-92c4-d58d165f8670)
Chapter 4 (#u4811873a-34bf-5188-afa1-c4a4a73f3e01)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Blind Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Reverie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by William Wharton (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1
ZAMBO!! Suddenly I’m on my hands and knees down on the asphalt next to a bench near the statue of Diderot in the small Place beside the boulevard Saint-Germain, across from the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
My precious thirteen tubes of paint are scattered all over the place. My prize easel, my hundred-franc easel I bargained for in the Marché Aligre, is knocked all galley-west with one leg bent under and another splayed out like a spavined camel trying to stand up in a windstorm.
Shit! This is just what I didn’t need. I’m still holding a paintbrush in my hand, the top of it is snapped off about three inches above my knuckle. Luckily the canvas landed with the painting side up, so it could be worse.
Then I notice. There’s an old lady all dressed in red on her knees beside me. We must look like two elderly clochards chasing after the same butt someone just flipped. My first reaction is, this whole thing is her fault; why the hell doesn’t she look where she’s going?
So, still on my knees, trying to ignore her, I start scooping the tubes of paints toward me, before some other idiot steps on one of them. That’d be a real mess, colored footsteps tromping through the Latin Quarter, yellow, green, alizarine crimson. I scramble over to pick up my canvas and lean it against the bench, no serious damage I can see. Next time I’ll cozy myself up in the lee of that bench, safe from kooky old gals wearing red costumes.
Then, finally, I go over. She’s swung herself around and is sitting on her duff rubbing one knee. Both her stockings are ripped where she hit the ground. One knee is bleeding and she’s licking her finger and rubbing it, the way a cat would. But she’s not looking at her knee. She’s looking at me.
‘Est-ce que vous êtes peintre, monsieur, artiste-peintre?’
What the hell else does she think I am, a surveyor taking measurements of Saint-Germain-des-Prés so we can make a copy and build it out in the desert for some Arab prince to convert into a mosque? Hey, maybe they’d let me house my chevalet there, a horse turned camel. The French call easels chevalets for some reason, sounds like something to do with horses, at least to my semiliterate French-American ear.
I lean down and try straightening my box up, lengthening the collapsed rear leg, slowly twisting one side leg that’s sticking out all cockeyed. Nothing seems to be broken, thank God. It could just possibly end my budding career as artist. Maybe that’s ‘grafted’ career, more accurate, probably.
‘Oui, madame, je suis peintre, artiste-peintre.’
‘Ah, and you are American, too. That’s very interesting.’
Then I see the cane. It’s white. I feel like a real asshole. It’s the kind of insensitivity, unawareness, that’s my greatest problem. I get down on my knees again beside the old lady.
‘Est-ce que je peux vous aider?’
She seems to look right through me. I realize only then she’s spoken in perfect, practically unaccented English-English.
‘Ah, ha, you have seen my cane. I can tell by the change in your voice. Yes, you may assist me. Would you help me pull myself to my feet? If I try getting up myself, I shall need to roll onto my knees again and that would be rather painful.’
She stretches out her hands. They’re small and smooth. I gently pull her to her feet. Actually, she more pulls herself up, using my hands as support. She has strong arms for an old gal.
I lean over, pick up her cane, give it to her. She brushes herself off, all over, not knowing where she’s dirty, with the thoroughness of a blind person. Then she starts swinging her cane in arcs around her, close to the ground, like a radar scanner or somebody hunting for money at a beach with a metal detector.
I see what she’s looking for, a purse, more like a satchel, about two yards nearer the church. I go over and pick it up. I step inside the radar sweeps and touch her hand, push the leather straps of the satchel out so she can grab them.
‘Ah, sir. Sometimes it is difficult being blind. Thank you for your kindness. I am very sorry I bumped into you. Or should that be crashed? Anyway, I am sorry. You see, I have my little private paths where there is the least chance I will stumble into anything or anyone, and you were in the middle of one; I did not expect you, you fooled me.
‘You must work very quietly, monsieur, or I would have heard you. Of course, there is the noise of automobile traffic out there.’
She waves her cane at the boulevard Saint-Germain.
‘But I should have smelled you, at least, the wonderful smell of turpentine. I should have smelled that. Yes, I must be getting old, it is hard to realize.’
‘Perhaps the wind was blowing the wrong way.’
She leans back, smiles, looks me in the eye, that is, if a blind person can look someone in the eye.
‘Ah, an American, an American painter, with a sense of humor. This is very interesting. It is something I did not expect, a pleasant surprise. There do not seem to be very many pleasant surprises left in this life.’
I notice then she isn’t completely in red, not anymore, anyway. She is wearing a red pillbox hat, the kind Jackie Kennedy was wearing in Dallas, only red, not pink; a bright Santa Claus-red skirt, sweater, and coat. But now the coat is well dabbed with several colors from my palette. It must have brushed against her in the cataclysm, bump, crash, or collision; whatever it was.
‘Excuse me, madame, but there is paint on your coat. If you would stand still I can take it off now with my turpentine. If I don’t, and it dries, it will stay there.’
‘Is it a good design, the paint on my coat? If so, I should like it to remain. It would be lovely having a hand-painted coat, painted by an American artist here in Paris, n’est-ce pas? Even though I could not see it, would it not be exciting?’
‘I’m afraid, madame, it is only a smear of burnt sienna, yellow ocher, alizarine crimson, and a touch of ultramarine. Even in the Salon de Mai it would not be considered much of a composition.’
I’m not usually so flip, so verbal. Perhaps it’s because I don’t get to speak much English these days and I’m enjoying the freedom of my own language, but I think it’s the nature of this woman, the situation. I want to continue our wordplay, our game, practically a flirtation.
Or maybe it’s because I sense she’s lonely, too, wants to talk with someone, practice her English.
‘Then perhaps, monsieur, it would be best if I take off the coat so you can obliterate, transform, or remove your work of spontaneous art. At least, then I shall have the smell of turpentine following me around for a day or two, a souvenir of our meeting. I think I should like that.
‘I am sure definitely it will be better than going into one of the art galleries. I always feel so unwanted there. Some painters seem to feel a blind person staring at their paintings is an insult; perhaps it is. I am only looking for something I should want to see. From what my sister, Rolande, has told me, it would not make much difference if I could see; I am not missing much. Oh yes, sometimes there are advantages to being blind.’
She starts to unbutton and shrug the coat off her shoulders. She’s a slim woman, straight, neat. I go around behind her and take the coat, slipping it down her arms. She transfers her cane and satchel from hand to hand as I remove the coat.
‘Won’t you be cold, madame? I could lend you my jacket, but it is almost completely covered with paint. It might just well be accepted in the salon.’
‘No, I do not think I shall be cold. I am going over to the stone bench there at the foot of Monsieur Diderot. It is where I was going when we met so precipitously, or, perhaps, fortuitously; no, that has too strong a French derivation. What would be a better way to say that in American, monsieur?’
I swear she looks me in the eye again. Maybe she’s only partly blind, or likes to pretend she is and for some reason enjoys carrying a white cane. Maybe she isn’t even French. She speaks English better than most English or American people I’ve known, so precise, with such an elaborate, thought-out vocabulary.
‘Would you accept “propitiously,” madame?’
‘Oh yes, wonderful. An American with a sense of humor, and so gallant, as well. Oh yes!’
She walks away directly, quickly, toward the statue, not tapping her cane or in any way indicating she’s blind. No wonder she crashed into me. If she was going at a pace like that, it’s amazing either of us survived. In a football game, they’d definitely have given her fifteen yards for clipping.
I manage to gather my stuff together. Except for a swipe across my palette and the broken brush, I’m in good shape. I spread her coat over the bench and start working on it with turpentine and one of my paint rags.
Yesterday I found three towels thrown out in the trash over by where I stay near the Bastille. The centers had the toweling worn thin, but they make perfect paint rags. I’ve torn them up into foot-square pieces. I use one of my best rags.
The problem is not to spread the paint any more than is necessary and still get it off. I work about ten minutes, a separate part of the cloth for each color. When I’m finished, the only stain that shows is the dark wetness of the turpentine.
It’s an early spring in Paris. The chestnut trees are only now sprouting leaves, limp baby leaves, just out of the bud, no blossoms yet. The famous song talks about April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, and so forth, but actually the blossoms usually come in May. Today is April ninth, and although the sun is out and it’s just possible to paint without the paint and my fingers stiffening up, that old lady must be freezing without her coat. I make a final inspection.
I look over. For Christ’s sake, she has pigeons all over her! There are pigeons sitting on her shoulders, on her head, on her lap, and she’s actually holding one in her hand. How the hell can a blind woman catch a pigeon?
I scurry over. When I come close, most of the pigeons fly up and away, a few retreat to the ground at her feet, watching to see what happens next.
I hate pigeons myself, and if she’s going to have them squatting on her like that, I’ve just wasted too much time and turpentine removing paint spots. She’s going to have pigeon shit all over her, so what difference could a few dabs of paint make? Pigeons, dammit, flying rats, that’s all they are!
She turns toward me when I’m still about ten feet away.
‘Ah, the American painter comes to visit with me. Do not worry, my feathered companions here will fly back when they know you are a friend of mine.’
I’ve been promoted to friend. Does that translate directly from French as ami? As far as her pigeons are concerned, I just don’t want them shitting on me or my painting.
‘I’ve removed the paint from your coat. The smell will go away rather quickly. I hope it doesn’t bother your pigeons.’
It doesn’t hurt anything trying to be nice. She stands and I slip the coat over her arms. She snugs it against her shoulders, feels with her hands if the collar is straight, fastens the buttons. She does everything with smooth, easy movements, no hurry, but very efficiently. She turns her eyes toward me. There’s nothing I can see wrong in those eyes. They’re clear; I don’t see any cataracts, no film over them. They look like perfectly good eyes to me, regular doorways to the soul.
‘Please will you not sit down with me a minute, Monsieur le Peintre? I do not have a chance very often to speak with anyone, especially a painter, an American painter. It is strange, but I begin to have the feeling I might be in one of those films, those moving pictures I have heard about.’
She sits, I sit beside her. The stone bench is cold. I notice she’s sitting on a small inflatable cushion. She reaches into her bag and pulls out another, rolled into a small package about the size of a cigar.
‘Here, you may sit on this. If not, you are liable to develop pain in your kidneys.’
God, she sounds like my mother! And it seems she can read minds as well as ‘see’ when she’s blind. I feel somewhat foolish, but I blow up the cushion and slide it under my duff. It’s comfortable and does keep off the cold as well as being softer than the hard stone. This old lady really knows how to do things.
It’s one of those days when, if the sun is shining, it’s warm. However, when the sun is blocked by the many scudding white and dark clouds overlapping each other, immediately a cool breeze springs up and it’s cold. Right now the sun is bright and lighting the tops of those beautiful French clouds, the kinds the Impressionists painted, that I’ve never seen anywhere else. I hope someday I can work up enough nerve to really try a crack at those clouds.
The damned pigeons have come back. They don’t seem to mind me, as if this old lady gives some kind of magic protection. She’s devoting herself to them now. I watch. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
She has a small leather roll-up kit, the kind a good mechanic might have to store his wrenches, only smaller. She has it open beside her on the bench, that’s on the other side from where I’m sitting. In the kit are small scissors, two pairs of tweezers, both large and small, various little metal picks, toothpicks, tiny sticks with cotton wrapped on the end like Q-tips, miniature bottles with the smell of alcohol, and several small files. There is also a bottle of antiseptic.
I don’t know how she manages, but she puts out a finger, no food on it, just a finger, and several of those crazy pigeons fly down to land on it. She selects one of the birds by putting her hand over its back, slowly, carefully. As it hunches down, she picks it up. She then gently spreads out a wing and runs her finger along its length, checking the feathers. If there’s a twisted feather, she tries to straighten it, or, if it’s badly twisted, she quickly pulls it, checking the feather socket with her sensitive fingers and with a Q-tip applying a touch of antiseptic.
She goes over the entire body of the pigeon that way: probing, feeling, adjusting. Each pigeon seems to enjoy this, like a Swedish massage. There’s no fluttering to get away, no panic, they just relax and let all this happen. She then checks the feet, feeling for scales, I think, smoothing or filing rough spots with one of her small files, clipping the toenails if they need it, cleaning out the space between nail and toe, washing the whole foot. I wish somebody would take care of me like that. I wouldn’t shit on their statues, either.
One bird has an infected joint, where the toe joins the leg. She cleans this thoroughly, gently, expertly touching, feeling for swelling, and puts both alcohol and antiseptic in the sore spot.
As she finishes with a pigeon, she deftly reaches into each of about ten little bags she has lined up close to her thigh. She chooses individual grains, as if they’re vitamin pills, and feeds them, one at a time, to the bird on which she’s just worked. The pigeon, meanwhile, is flutting out its feathers, doing a quick little inspection with its beak, checking any repair work that’s been done.
The pigeon takes the grains from her hand as she offers them, then she gracefully swings away the pigeon on which she’s been working, gently off her finger. They usually fly up, circle a few times, then land on the statue of Diderot for a quick rump-thumping crap. The favorite places seem to be the pen in his hand, his hand itself, and his head.
There are pigeons all over Diderot. He has even more pigeons on him than the old lady, but then he’s about ten times bigger. He has a patina of white pigeon shit over the dark green patina of his bronze to show for it, too.
I watch through about five or six pigeons. I’m too fascinated to even think about getting back to work. I’ve never seen anything like this. I had canaries when I was in high school and I loved to hear them sing. But pigeons only make that gargling noise all the time, could make you vomit just listening to them. However, I must admit, I’ve never seen anybody handle birds the way this old lady does.
While she works on the pigeons she talks to me, mostly asking questions. She never takes her mind from her work with the birds, but once in a while she ‘looks’ at me and smiles. I begin to realize she’s guessing at the location of my eyes from my voice, my smell, something. I feel she does it so I won’t be uncomfortable with her blindness. She’s pretending she can see, for me. But I am uncomfortable, I can’t help it, I still can’t figure how she can look directly into my eyes, read me. It’s weird.
‘Are you long here in Paris, Monsieur le Peintre?’
‘Yes, I’ve been here almost five years now.’
‘But you have such a heavy American accent. After so long in Paris you should speak better French.’
God, I think I only said about fifteen words to her in French. I didn’t know it was that bad.
‘I don’t seem to have a good ear for languages, madame. I try to learn French, but it is difficult. I speak much better now than I did a year ago, so that’s something.’
She’s concentrating on a flight feather which is dangling and must be removed. She could be a surgeon, her hands are so sure and quick.
‘So you have good eyes and I have good ears. Together we would know much about this world if we could share. Almost no one uses the gifts they have. Only when one loses one gift does one begin to find and appreciate the others.’
There’s a long pause as she carefully extracts the feather, puts antiseptic on the feather socket.
‘Now, Orlando, that will be much better. You will be able to fly faster away from the automobiles and soon a new feather will grow in.’
She turns to me again, smiles.
‘I hope you do not mind if I talk to my pigeons. I have a name for each of them and they are my only friends, my only family. Being an old, blind woman is sometimes quite lonely.’
‘I’ve talked to pigeons myself, also, madame, sometimes they are the only creatures with whom I can talk.’
I don’t tell her how mostly I’m cursing them when they make that sudden flurry of stiff feathers from behind me when I’m trying to concentrate on a painting. A person could have a heart attack when a flock of pigeons soars off in a bunch like that.
‘But I don’t know them the way you do, madame. When I talk to them it’s as if I’m talking to myself and seem to learn nothing. I’ve never been as close to pigeons as you are.’
‘Well, you see, monsieur, I have been coming here every day from about ten in the morning until the midday bells ring for thirty years, since the end of the second great war. The pigeons in the flock change but the flock itself remains. Even the young new ones, or a pigeon who joins this flock from another, know me. You see, pigeons are some of the kindest, most trusting, least hostile creatures on this earth. I am convinced they communicate with each other, can talk in a special way, but hard as I have listened, I have never learned their language. However, humans could learn much from them as to how we should live.’
Being out in the streets, I run into all kinds of loons, but this may be my prize catch, a blind old lady in a red suit who wants to talk to pigeons because maybe they can tell her how humans should live.
I’m beginning to feel I might be getting involved with another nut. I’ve developed a sort of sixth sense for sorting out the real crazies. But this woman seems different. Except for all the pigeon business and her blindness she seems more normal, more clear, intelligent, than anybody I’ve talked with in a long time.
But also, I’m beginning to feel itchy about getting on with my painting. I’ve decided to paint this woman in at the base of the statue. I definitely could use a strong color there in the foreground and red would go great against the green of the trees in the park next to the church. I’ve already decided to treat Monsieur Diderot loosely, with suggestions of the bronze, a few pigeons, and the thrust of his leaning toward the church across the street.
‘Well, I’d best get back to work, madame. The light is changing fast and I want to finish my underpainting today.’
‘What are you painting? Is it the church?’
I still can’t get used to her being blind. When she comes out with something like this I almost feel as if she’s kidding, but then I’ve had this happen often before, with people who can see. I’ll be sitting directly in front of something that interests me, making what I consider a fairly good representation of what I’m seeing, and they’ll stand there, looking all around, puzzled, and finally ask me what I’m painting. It can drive me up a wall, it also isn’t very good for my confidence.
I thought they were kidding at first, but no, it just isn’t what they’re good at, the way I can’t seem to learn French. But, of course, with this woman, she’s really blind. She only knows I’m beside the statue of Diderot. I could be painting the café or even the Hôtel Madison.
‘Yes, madame. It is the church, but much more. I have the statue of Diderot on the left side of my painting, then I’m looking up boulevard Saint-Germain with Le Drugstore, and across the street, Les Deux Magots, then the opening to rue Bonaparte. In the middle is the tower of the church, with the nave going across the painting to the fountain. In the foreground, I have the little garden where children play, and in front of that, le boulevard with the bus stop.’
She stops working on her pigeons and listens to me. She closes her blind eyes the way a person with sight would close theirs to picture something.
‘You describe it all very well, I can see it in my mind. I do wish I could see your painting. I have lived in this quarter all my life. I feel you are probably a very good painter because I think you are a good man. Thank you for cleaning my coat and then keeping me company. I hope you are happy with your painting when it is finished.’
As she speaks, the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés start their beautiful, hollow, hallowed gonging, ringing. The first few notes, then the crescendo as they pick up speed, are so comforting. The bells are one of the things I’ve learned to love in Paris. Not far away, I hear the deeper bells of Saint-Sulpice start their welcoming answer to noon, invitation to the important French déjeuner.
The old blind lady has been gathering her tools together and fastening them. She puts away her small sacks of feed, then pulls out a larger sack and strews some grains on the ground in front of her. She turns to me.
‘This way, they do not notice I am leaving and it is not so hard for them. Tell me, are there any small birds there with the pigeons?’
I look and there are sparrows darting in front of the pigeons, getting their share and more.
‘Yes, there are sparrows.’
‘Are any of the pigeons fighting them for the food?’
I look. Sure enough, they aren’t, they’re pushing each other to get to the grain but there is no pecking or fighting among themselves or against the small sparrows.
‘No. There’s no fighting. They allow the small birds to take what they want.’
‘You see, monsieur, the pigeons have much to teach us.’
With that, she picks up her cane, stands, and reaches out her hand toward me. We shake hands.
‘Will you be here tomorrow to work on your painting?’
‘Yes, if it isn’t raining or too cold.’
She lifts her head, turning it left and right like a pointer trying to get a scent.
‘No, tomorrow will be like today. I hope to see you then.’
I watch as she turns and walks away quickly, using her cane only occasionally, She said she’d ‘see’ me. It must be strange to be blind and still use the terms of seeing.
I go back to my painting. I block in where I’m going to paint her. I must consult her to see if it’s all right. There’s no way she could ever know, but it seems the right thing to do. It’s the kind of lesson I’m learning, slowly but surely. Something that might seem perfectly right and logical to one person can be a terrible violation to another; we’re all different. I wish I’d learned this earlier. I’ll ask tomorrow before I start painting her in seriously.
I work away at the underpainting for several hours. Usually I go more quickly, but in the few oil paintings I’ve tried so far, I’ve discovered that faults of drawing or composition which might be acceptable, even invisible, early on become glaring as the painting comes to conclusion. I’m trying to eliminate all such awkwardness.
Still, I can already feel I’m going to have the same trouble I’ve had with the others. Even if I manage the drawing right, not only accurate, but well designed; even if the selection of forms and colors for the underpainting seems vital, appropriate, there’s no excitement in the painting. I don’t seem able to incorporate, build into my paintings, the strong emotional feelings I have about my subject, about Paris, about life itself. There’s something missing, a wall of fear, of timidity, between me and what I want to say. Also, there’s an arrogance. I don’t seem willing to let go, to fall into the painting, become part of it. Perhaps it will come with practice, when I’m less concerned with technical problems; I hope so.
At about five o’clock, the light is too far gone. I feel the underpainting is finished and a night of drying will get the surface just right for my impasto tomorrow. I’ll start with the sky, make a stab at those constantly changing, magic clouds against the blending blue of the sky. It’s where my cerulean blue should come in handy.
Someday, I’d like to try wet-in-wet, go right from the underpainting to the impasto with no drying time between. Rembrandt did it and so did some other great Dutch painters, some of the Italians, too.
I pack up my box, hang the painting on the back of it, and start my walk home. I could take the number 86 bus almost directly to where I’m living, but I like walking in Paris. It’s what kept me together over the worst days. Also, at this time, the buses will be filled and it’s easy to smear a painting on someone, even if it’s only underpainting.
I walk down boulevard Saint-Germain, across the Pont Sully, up Henri IV to the Bastille. I go along Roquette and cut off down a narrow street called rue Keller. It’s about a forty-five-minute walk. The painting box is light enough so I hardly notice it. The walking helps keep me in shape, too. I’ll really enjoy my dinner tonight.
I come onto the passage des Taillandiers, the street where I live. It’s still early, so the buzzer to the door isn’t set. I slip past the loge de concierge without any trouble. I know the name of a painter in the building, and if the concierge ever asks anything, I’ve decided to say I’m going to visit him. Actually I’ve never met this artist and hope I never do.
I go up Escalier C, the least used of the staircases. At this time, most of the artisans, furniture builders, and carpenters have all gone home. I, quietly, but with a casual step, as if I belong here, jiggling a meaningless ring of keys in my hands, go to the very top, past the last legitimate door, up one more flight, and through a heavy fire door into the dark attic, le grenier.
There’s no light up here. I find my hidden flashlight, flick it on, and feel my way down the narrow hallway, between the individual attic rooms, to the one I consider my own, although I’m only a squatter. I reach for the key hidden over the door and let myself in.
The smell of old dust, of dry stored wood coated with sawdust, of stale air, is home to me. I stand my box with the painting at the far end of the room. There’s a skylight in the slanted ceiling with a metal brace. I push it open to air the room. I block the cracks in the door with an old curtain so no light will show through, and light two candles. I unhook my painting from the box and put it between the two candles. I look around and see nothing’s been disturbed. I think it’s been years since anyone other than me has come into this room. I don’t even know which of the carpenters’ workshops below uses it for storage.
I pull down my piece of foam rubber and my sleeping bag from up in the rafters where I hide them during the day. I get out my tiny butane cooker and one of the sealed one-liter mason jars with my supply of cooked vegetables. I take out my bottle of wine and the half a baguette I hoard over two days. I only eat once a day and I’m really hungry. I was about ready to snitch some of those grains from the pigeons.
I turn on the cooker and warm up my Mulligan-type stew in an old pot. I pull my spoon from behind a supporting post where I store it and pour myself the one small glass of wine I allow myself each day. The six-franc bottle of wine I drink has to last a week. Aside from the costs of my painting materials, this wine, the butane, my baguettes, and the candles are the bulk of my expenditures.
I sit in the gathering dusk with the candles for light and slowly eat my portion of stew. I, who all my life have been a meat and potatoes man, have, perforce, become a vegetarian. At first I bemoaned the fact, but now, after several months, I sometimes think I couldn’t face a steak, or even a well-done hamburger. I feel a lot better, too. But that could be from the running.
I look at the painting. In this light, away from the subject matter, it looks better. I probably won’t paint in my sleep tonight. The whole idea of me painting oil paintings, considering everything, especially the cost, is an insanity; but I’m hooked. I don’t know how I’ll ever sell these things for enough money to pay back the cost of paint and canvas, let alone make a few francs. If I have to return to drawing and watercolor again, I’ll feel as if my legs have been chopped off. But I’ll do it, to keep my freedom.
I bought the paint box for a song. It’s a genuine collapsible easel made with hardwood, dovetail joints, brass fittings. This box has to be at least fifty years old, older than I am. It doesn’t have a metal inner liner as the new ones do, nor a second drawer underneath, but it’s sturdy and light. It’s constructed so the legs fold out and can be tightened to give strength. It’s all there, storage for paints, palette, brushes, turp, varnish, oil, paint cloths, and it opens to hold the canvas, any canvas, up to size 25F. Also, it’s smeared with paint and the air of authenticity. Just going out to paint with it gives me a thrill. I walk along feeling in tune with Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Sisley, a real painter in the field.
I thought carefully when I bought my paints. I found a place called HMB near here. It’s not an art store but a real paint store for the artisans around this area. The paints and brushes are about half the price I’d pay anywhere else. I decided on Le Franc Bourgeois paints, because they’re not too expensive, yet aren’t packed with filler or too much oil. I bought studio-sized tubes. I tried to stay with the cheapest colors, colors listed 1 or 2 on a scale of 6. I bought titanium white and ivory black. Those I remembered as my favorites from when I was back in school at Penn, with dreams of being a painter.
Then I bought earth colors. If necessary, I’d paint with them and black and white only. I bought burnt and raw sienna, burnt umber, yellow ocher. Next I bought a tube of ultramarine light. That was seven colors. To fill out my spectrum, at not too great a cost, I bought ultramarine violet, the cheapest violet; the other violets were 5s or 6s. Next, chrome yellow, chrome orange, both substitutes for cadmiums, which are 6s. Then alizarine crimson. For green I bought sap green. It’s transparent and can be used in the underpainting and also added to the yellows and earth colors for foliage. Last, I splurged and bought cerulean blue as a thirteenth color. Painting skies in Paris without cerulean would be a real challenge.
For brushes I bought pig’s bristles numbers 4, 8, and 10 and, luxury of luxuries, a number 6 sable. That last brush alone cost 42 francs, enough for me to live two weeks.
I make my own varnish from Damaar crystals I buy at HMB. It’s there I also buy huge cans of white acrylic house paint for sizing canvas, also turpentine and linseed oil by the half gallon. I usually have some crystals soaking in turpentine inside a woman’s nylon stocking up here in the attic. I try for a five-pound cut, but it’s mostly by guess and luck.
It’s the canvas that’s expensive. I shot half my whole wad buying a roll of raw duck canvas at a shop where they sell canvas drop cloths for painters. I snitch boards from up here in the attic to make stretchers. I tack canvas to them with carpet tacks and a hammer. I found the hammer, with a broken handle, in a trash can down the street. The short handle is enough for me, short-handled hammer and now a short-handled brush.
I use my fingers to stretch the canvas. I can get it tight enough that way. One trouble for me was figuring out when I should hammer the canvas onto the stretchers and heat the glue for sizing. Since weekends practically no one’s around, also the concierge leaves Sundays, I decide that will be the best day. The hammering makes noise and the glue stinks to high heaven.
I worked all last Sunday, that is, after I’d gathered my vegetables and some fruit when they closed the market at the Marché d’Aligre. They just throw away anything that’s started to rot. I cooked up my weekly stew at the same time I stretched canvas and made glue; all the smells blended together.
I built five stretchers, sized and put two layers of acrylic paint on the canvases after I’d stretched them. I pulled them nice and tight and have them stored in the rafters. I built them to the standard French dimensions. Two were 15 Figure and the last three were 25 Figure, or about two feet by three feet. It’s the first of those bigger ones I’m working on now, after getting frustrated with the 15s; they were too small. I’m getting to be a real big-shot painter; I’m just not making any money.
Even with all these cheapo solutions it’s going to break me soon unless I can figure some way to sell these damned paintings. I calculate, materials included, but not my time or labor, that I’ve got a hundred francs in each canvas when it’s finished. This means I need to recoup at least three hundred francs a painting. There aren’t many people walking around with that kind of money in their pockets, especially to spend on paintings by some nobody. However, the tourist season is coming soon. Probably I’ll sell something during the summer. I’ve got to!
I’m not complaining, though. Things have worked out so far and I’m feeling great. I know it’ll all come around okay. I have the feeling my life is beginning to make some sense again, despite everything.
The worst thing is loneliness. I try fighting it off, but it keeps sneaking up on me. I also try to keep myself clean. Once a week I go to the public baths next to the police station near the Marché d’Aligre. I scrub the worst dirt off my body and stomp on my clothes to get them clean. I wring out those clothes, put them in a plastic bag, and hang them in the attic to dry. I have a second set of clothes I wear out of the bath. But I still look pretty much like a bum. Maybe it’s the beard. I try scissoring it so it’s sort of neat, but if you’re wearing foot-stomped clothes, not ironed, and a beard, even if you’re clean, you can’t help looking like a clochard. It’s tough shaving every morning with no warm water. Razors would increase expenses, and besides, I’ve begun to like my beard. It takes the MBI curse off me, aims me in the right direction, the direction I want to go the rest of my life.
Once every month or so, I take my clothes to a self-service laundry. I shove them all in one washer, except for a sweat suit I wash by hand, then put them in the little spinner for a franc a shot. Together it costs seventeen francs, with drying. But after that I smell like an angel for a few days. My T-shirts glisten and my jeans almost have creases.
After I finish eating, I blow out my candles and stare for a while through the attic window. I keep thinking I’ll climb up and clean the grime off so I can see out to the sky, but I’m afraid of tipping off whoever really owns this place to the idea I’m up here, so I don’t. The weather’s getting good enough now so I can leave the window pushed up at night and have a good look at the stars when there are any. I’ve discovered from experience just how far I can push it up and still not have rain come in.
Before I fall into a deep sleep, I remember that tomorrow I should stop at American Express to see if there are any letters from Lorrie or the kids. Also, I want to write and let them know I’m all right and how well my painting is coming along.
Blind Reverie
His smell is so different from that of most men, not only the turpentine. And his voice, sometimes calm when he answers me, but there is excitement in there. At the same time, this is a sad man, an alone man. I think he is probably a good painter.
He was kind to join me under the statue. The feet of Monsieur Diderot had a moldy smell today, could it be from the rain and the pigeons. It was stronger than usual.
I do not think Monsieur le Peintre cares for my pigeons. It was in his voice, in the way he sat, even with my pillow, I felt he was uncomfortable. I must teach him to love them as I do. I hope he comes back tomorrow. I can smell his turpentine in my coat all the way in the other room.
I hope I was not too brash. It is so rare to find someone with whom to talk, who is not always thinking about my blindness. That is their blindness. I so often feel sorry for those who must live inside the world and not outside it as I do. It must be so hard and cruel for them.
2
I wake with the first light. I slip on my running costume: a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and a sweat suit. The best thing I took with me when I left were my two pairs of running shoes. These running shoes I’d had at least three years and never ran in them. I dread to think of when they wear out. These things cost fifty bucks a pair. Now I use one pair for everyday, for painting, and the other for running only.
I sneak out the gate downstairs. Nobody is up at this time in the morning except garbage collectors and Algerian street sweepers. I start my usual warm-up, run down Ledru-Rollin and across the river to the Left Bank quai. I run through the little park there and the sculpture garden.
I stay with the quai even when I have to go up steps and down the other side. I take the steps quickly and two at a time. I want to make my blood really bubble. I run till I get to the Pont Alexandre III and cross it. Now the light is coming on stronger and traffic is picking up. I don’t like to run when there’s too much automobile smell.
I run along the street above the Right Bank quai. Sometimes I need to run up here along where the bouquiniste stands are, because of the road they’ve built along the quai. I cut in through the Marais to the Bastille. Traffic is picking up seriously. I go down the rue de la Roquette, the way I came home yesterday, and up rue Keller and home. It’s only about an hour’s run but it wakes me up. There’s no trouble getting through the gate, the concierge sleeps until seven-thirty or so. I’m dripping as I quietly run up the stairs, my usual two at a time, to my hideout.
I take off my sweat suit and hang it on a hook behind the door. I spread my soaking shorts and T-shirt on a piece of string along the back wall behind some long pieces of wood. I stretch out on the floor until I stop sweating. I have a little piece of rug I found in the trash by the rug store at the corner of rue de Charonne and avenue Ledru-Rollin. I’m flat out on it, getting my breath back and trying to relax.
After about five minutes, I start my one hundred, deep-breathing, sit-ups and then do a few yoga exercises. I finish with fifty slow push-ups, hands lifted off the floor each time.
I don’t think I’ve been in as good a shape in my life, not since high school. I’d better stay in condition, I have no backup, no social security from the French, no health plan, no MBI. I’ve got to stay healthy. The best part is it’s such fun staying in shape.
When I first started living in the streets, almost a year ago now, I was slowly going downhill. I didn’t eat right, I didn’t keep myself clean, I’d put down a bottle of red wine every night so I’d sleep, and then it’d be noon before I could shake my head without hurting. I was well on my way to becoming a real clochard. It’s hard to believe how quickly one can go down when one just doesn’t care enough.
I splurge this morning and give myself my usual Sunday treat, even though it’s only Thursday. At least, I think it’s Thursday. I still have the end of my baguette saved from yesterday and dunk it into a cup of coffee I brew on my stove. Real luxury. I sit against my bedroll and look across at the painting. I’m anxious to get into it again. From the look of the sky as I was running, that old, blind lady was right, we’re going to have another great day, another painting day.
I hide everything, tuck away my running clothes where they can’t be seen but will have room to dry, wash myself off quickly with the water I pack up in wine bottles. I don’t have any soap. I tuck my key and flashlight in place and quietly go down the staircase. Nobody really gets to work before eight, so I’m okay. The concierge’s door is still closed, too.
Out on the street, the sun is up, long slanting light making everything clear and shining. There are the usual morning Paris sounds of garbage trucks, water running in the gutters, pigeons gurgling and splashing in the dirty water as they’re just waking up. Then I watch as they glide against the sky. I guess the flock around here lives in the tower at Sainte-Marguerite’s. I think about the blind old lady and what she said about pigeons. What a nutty idea. I’ve got to admit, though, they look great against a sky, and I’m going to start using them to hold things together, tie the sky to the earth.
I decide to walk straight down Henri IV the way the bus goes, so I can get the long view of Notre-Dame from the back. It’s a special view from the bridge, with the little garden tucked on the end of the island.
I get to my painting spot at about eight-thirty. I put down my box and sit on the bench just soaking up what I’m going to be painting, trying my damnedest to let it happen to me. Letting it really come into me is something I’m trying to learn. I’m too aggressive, keep forcing the subject matter too much, not changing it but trying to make it mine instead of letting me become it. I breathe deeply, trying to relax, have confidence in things. I’ve had too many years where if you were caught relaxing, ‘goofing off,’ it was held against you. Every day it was a race to see who’d be first in the office and last to leave. I never even realized it was happening, either. And it wasn’t happening just to me, it was all of us.
When the bells ring nine, I’m into it. I’ve set up slightly to the left of where I was painting yesterday. There’s no chance anybody will be crashing into me and I can use the bench to store my varnish and turpentine bottles.
I start with that sky, working from the top, buttering it between the trees, around the tops of buildings. I like having the sky established before I start lighting the rest of the painting. I’ll let the other parts of the painting happen to the sky, later. Also, the sky’s up where it doesn’t get in the way, doesn’t get smeared as I work.
I’m lighting the top of the tower when she sneaks up behind me. I actually jump. I didn’t hear or feel her near me at all.
‘Ah, Monsieur le Peintre, you are here. That is good. Are you happy with your painting this beautiful day?’
She’s holding out her hand to shake. My hands are relatively clean but with some dabs of blue and yellow ocher. I quickly wipe them on my paint rag and shake with her.
‘Oh, it does not matter if you get paint on my hands from yours, monsieur. I could feel it and wipe it off with a tissue.’
She smiles. I try to think how she knew. Of course, it was the slight delay before I shook hands with her, she knew I was painting. She’s a regular Sherlock Holmes.
‘Yes, madame, so far the painting is going well. I am just now painting the tower of the church against the sky.’
‘It must make you feel like a pigeon flying up there. Sometimes, as I am falling asleep, I try to imagine myself as a pigeon in the open air, close to the bells, the sky, above the trees, the streets. It is lovely.’
She pauses.
‘Do you know, often I dream of it. In my dreams I can see. I see all of Paris below me, glowing, glistening in magic light. I am never blind in my dreams. Is that not interesting?’
It tells me something. It tells me she hasn’t always been blind. The company-trained psychologist strikes. Or else it tells me she likes to lie, also interesting. I start painting again. She stays beside me.
‘Monsieur le Peintre, is it possible that I could make an arrangement with you?’
Oh boy, what’s coming next. I step back from the painting but I keep my brush in hand. I’m ready to take the en garde position. I can just see it spread on the front page of Le Soir:
American artist arrested
for attacking old, blind woman
with paintbrush
This would be in French, of course.
‘You see, I know each of the birds in my flock, all forty-six of them, but only by feel; I should like very much to know how they look: what color they are, how they are marked, striped, checked. Since you are an artist, trained to see, truly, clearly, you could describe them to me.’
She pauses. I wait. What’s next? She said something about an arrangement. Is she going to offer money?
‘If you will do this for me, monsieur, I shall prepare for you a very good meal today at midday. I assure you I am an excellent cook. I like to eat. As I said, when we lose one gift, other senses become stronger. My senses of taste and smell are very strong. I think you would like my food.’
How can I say no? It means I won’t get much painting done, but I’m in no hurry. I’m for sure not going anywhere. She can’t live too far from here if she’s blind.
‘I live just there, behind the statue of Monsieur Diderot just past where the Italian restaurant is. It is called the rue des Ciseaux. I live at number 5 and on the second floor. There is only one door on that floor. If you come, you need only knock.’
My God, maybe she has a sixth sense as well. She seems to read my mind.
She stops and now she waits. I know the rue des Ciseaux. It’s a street of restaurants. I never thought of anyone living there.
‘Of course, madame. It would be a joy for me to watch you with your birds again and, if you will have me, I should very much enjoy my déjeuner with you. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, monsieur. I hope you do not think I am being too forward, but it means much to me, also I shall enjoy having someone dine with me to whom I can speak in English.’
I start painting again. I think I’m taking advantage of her blindness, that she won’t know, but she knows immediately. It’s probably the direction of my movements or even the sound of the brushes.
‘Yes, you keep painting until it is a good time for you to stop, perhaps when you have caught the beautiful light on the tower against the sky. I shall wait for you.’
With that, she turns away. I continue painting the steeple and heavy stone of the massive tower. Her comments about being a pigeon, flying up there, the openness of the sky, the strength of the tower, all seem to flow into me. I’m painting it with much more force and at the same time a new sensitivity. It’s amazing how an idea can affect the way you see.
I paint for perhaps fifteen minutes or half an hour more and it’s good painting, some of the best I’ve done. I put down my brushes and walk over to sit next to the old lady.
She turns toward me, smiles her quiet, not quite sad smile.
‘I hope I have not interrupted you at an important point. I do very much appreciate this help you are giving me. I have not yet worked on any of the birds, but as you can see, they are waiting for me.’
Sure enough, there are pigeons all over the place, all over her. It’s amazing no sparrows or any other birds come. But then, come to think of it, only pigeons seem tame enough, friendly enough with humans to come close. They’re either very stupid, or very trusting, as she insists.
She opens her little satchel and unfolds her kit. This is some kind of signal. She holds out her finger and two birds fly down; one lands first, so the other veers away. She puts her hand over it.
This is a really peculiar-looking bird for a pigeon, smoky-dark, with some remnants of checks on the back. It’s slightly lighter on the chest, with a few almost white feathers on the thighs. Its beak is yellowish, with a streak of blue or violet, and its legs are a dark yellowish pink, almost salmon color. I describe all this to the blind lady while she does her inspection and files off a few scales from one leg.
‘This hen is not young, she must be more than five years old. Her name is Nicole. She has been in the flock a long time. She has had at least fifteen nests and most of her young have grown. Some of her sons have left the flock. She is becoming thin and I do not think she will have more than one nest this year. From the way you describe her, she is not a very beautiful bird, is she? I had always thought she would be one of the most lovely. I imagine what we think is beautiful in a pigeon is not necessarily what pigeons might feel. Perhaps sometimes it is best to be blind, so one can see the way things really are, and not be blinded by the way they look.’
She gently launches Nicole away and another bird flies down to her hand. This bird is almost pure white but has irregular blue-gray markings. It is big, with a tinge of iridescent color around its neck. It has beautiful pink, almost scaleless legs with bluish nails. I describe this one as best I can.
‘Oh yes. I always felt he must be white. He is so bossy, even though he is only from one of last year’s nests.
‘Almost always he is one of the first to come to me, not because there is anything wrong with him. He only wants the grains I give.’
She’s started feeding him his individual grains and he picks them quickly from between her fingers. She more brusquely lofts him off into flight.
I sit and describe each of the birds as they come. It takes more than an hour. I’m enjoying myself, enjoy trying to describe the birds accurately. There’s something in it of the careful seeing one does while painting. But I’m also wanting to get back into my own work.
‘Well, Monsieur le Peintre, I suspect that is all we are going to have today. There are two who did not come, perhaps they are with another flock or perhaps something has happened to them. It is terrible the number of pigeons killed by speeding automobiles in this city. The automobiles never stop, so the pigeons are smashed into the street and are totally destroyed. There should be a law against it.’
I don’t tell her how they seem to lose their color, how the feathers become spread under the tires so that, in the end, the pigeon disappears into the asphalt. In one day, on a busy street, a pigeon can turn into nothing.
‘Well, I shall go prepare our meal. If you stop painting when the bells start ringing, I shall expect you about ten minutes later. You can bring your box with you and place it on the palier or in the vestibule. It is at your disposition.’
She bows her head slightly in dismissal and begins to gather up her equipment. I go back to my painting. The work I’ve just finished is even better than I remember it. I start painting across the long façade of the nave, trying to vary the color of the stone with the shadows, with the staining of age, with the flashes of light through the trees, at the same time fighting to make it all hold together. I also begin working the foliage of the trees against this light. When I have a color I feel would be good in another place, I put it there. The statue of Diderot takes careful but loose painting, as I bring the color of the sky down into the color of the pigeon shit, as it blends to the color of the oxidized bronze. I’m beginning to feel that, in parts at least, I’m entering the painting and being inside it. Time seems to fly.
Then I hear the bells of the church ringing. I don’t remember hearing them start, I was that much out of things. I quickly pack up my box. I put the bottles of turp and varnish into my pockets, rapidly clean paint off the brushes. I’m packed in no time. I look around to see if I’m forgetting anything. I have it all. I start off behind Diderot, to the mouth of the rue des Ciseaux, and down the hill of that small street toward the rue du Four.
On the left, I find number 5. It’s an old building with walls slanted in from the time when mortar wasn’t strong enough to support straight-up walls. The stairway is narrow, so I need to take the painting off the easel on my back to maneuver the tight corners. At the second floor, I put down my box and painting. There’s a place under the electric box for me to store them. I knock.
Almost immediately the door is opened.
‘I heard you coming up the steps. You had to stop because the painting was too big to come around the corner, am I right?’
I nod, then realize I must speak. It takes time getting accustomed to a blind person.
‘That’s right. I almost knocked the corners off the walls.’
I go inside. It’s a nice apartment but dark. It opens onto the court. Of course, for her, the darkness would be no disadvantage. Although it’s neatly kept up, no disorder, everything in its place, the plaster is hanging from the ceiling, the wallpaper is loosened from the walls, hanging in strips, and the woodwork is unpainted, dirt-stained from constant handling.
The rugs are worn. It’s a strange contrast between this wellkept woman, her carefully set table, the general order of the room, and the overall squalor of the apartment.
Also, to make it worse, on the two windows opening onto the dark court are hanging ragged green curtains, faded with age into yellowish stripes. I see five doors I imagine enter into other rooms. The old lady is wearing an apron and she’s smiling.
‘Please, if you would like to wash up or if you have any needs, the water closet and the salle d’eau are over there.’
I actually am awfully filthy, both from the way I live generally and because I’ve just come in from painting. I bow (invisible), smile (invisible), then, to compensate, say thank you. I move toward the door where she’s pointed.
I go in, close the door to find it totally dark in the toilet room. I open the door again to look for the light switch and find it. I flick the switch, but no light. I look up and find the light bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling with a green metal shade. I screw out the bulb, classic, French, old-fashioned, bayonet bulb. I can see through the clear glass that it’s burned out.
I get myself oriented, close the door, lift the toilet seat, and, lining myself up with the toilet by my knees, let fly. Knowing her supersensitive ears, I pee against the side of the toilet so I won’t make any noise. I hope I’m not peeing over the side onto the floor. I flush and open the door. I inspect. Luckily, I managed to get it all inside the bowl.
Then I go to the salle d’eau, a room with a basin for washing hands, cold water only, and with a bathtub, one of those tubs made from enameled metal and standing on lion’s feet.
Again, the light switch doesn’t work. I don’t even climb up on the side of the tub to check the bulb. I imagine after years of someone blind living alone in a place, either all the bulbs get burned out by being left on with nobody to see them, or the thin wire in the bulbs goes bad and burns out the first time somebody happens to switch one on. French electricity tends to have surges which burn out light bulbs anyway, no matter how careful you are.
This time I leave the door open while I wash my hands. The tub has hot water as well as cold and there’s an old-fashioned water heater hanging over it. I’d give a medium-sized watercolor just to soak for half an hour in sudsy water filled to the top of this tub. Instead, I do my best, washing up at the sink. The mirror above the sink has a layer of grime and flyspecks over it, so there’s no way I can see myself. I’m not all that interested anyway. I just want to check and see if I have paint on my face. I often hold brushes in my teeth, not very professional, but I do it often, and paint smears on my cheeks.
I come out. The old lady is bustling about from the kitchen corner where she cooks, to the table where we’re to eat. It’s as if she never knew what it was to be blind. I wonder if the light bulbs work in this room. I’m willing to bet there’s not a functioning light bulb in the entire apartment.
She indicates where I’m to sit and I do. There are clean cloth napkins and an hors d’oeuvre of coquilles Saint-Jacques, hot in the shell. This is the kind of haute cuisine I used to get at all those business lunches. Of course, when we were dealing with the French, it would be almost absurd, the food would be so good, and the prices were impossible, but I wasn’t paying. OPM, other people’s money, was what we were all spending.
There was one place called the Coq Hardi, about a fifteen-minute drive from my office, where we’d eat often, and they’d practically hand-feed us, a waiter standing beside each of us, passing different cutlery, different goodies. The bill after all that cosseting would be enough to keep me for six months now.
But this, right here, in this dark dingy room, is a good start toward one of those fancy meals. The old lady has taken off her red costume and is dressed in a dark blue sweater with a white collar showing and a dark blue skirt. The dull light is coming through the window behind her and shining through her hair. She wears it in braids tied tight around her head almost like a crown.
‘Bon appétit, Monsieur le Peintre. I hope you like the coquilles.’
‘Bon appétit to you, too, madame. I’m sure I will. This is one of my favorite hors d’oeuvre.’
‘I am mademoiselle.’
‘Okay, mademoiselle. Bon appétit.’
We eat slowly, carefully. These are some of the best coquilles I’ve ever had. It’s a mixture of scallops, a white sauce, mushrooms, and Armagnac. There are also small shrimp, each about the size of a fingernail. I wonder how she manages.
‘Have you been painting for a long time, monsieur?’
‘It’s a complicated story, mademoiselle. I studied painting a long time ago and then was in a large American corporation doing business, first in America, then here in France. Now I am back to painting again.’
‘Have you retired?’
‘Yes, probably one could say I’ve retired, but I actually feel as if I’ve just started my work after a long interruption.’
She’s quiet. I don’t really want to go into all of it. It’s still damned painful. I remember I want to stop to check for mail at American Express, and write a letter. I’ll stop by before they close.
To change the subject, I figure it might be time to bring up the idea of including her in my painting, at the foot of Diderot. For some reason, I’ve been putting it off.
‘Mademoiselle, I hope you don’t object, but I would like to paint you in my picture. I’d like to have you sitting with your pigeons on the stone bench at the base of Monsieur Diderot’s statue.’
She stops with her fork halfway to her mouth. She puts it down and wipes her mouth carefully with her napkin. She looks me directly in the eyes and I can see the beginnings of tears in hers.
‘Thank you very much. I would be most happy to be in your painting. One of the worst things about being blind is the sensation, the conviction, that no one sees you. Most of the time I feel terribly invisible.
‘Monsieur, it will give me great pleasure to know I am there in your painting, in the world I can no longer see, to be visible to all.’
She looks down at the table and wipes her eyes gently at each corner with her napkin.
I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal. Normally, I’d start to get nervous. Sometimes when I was doing a watercolor people would ask me to put them in and I was always sure it would ruin the picture. Painting people isn’t really my thing. Mostly, I guess I just haven’t had much practice. But since she can’t see, she’ll never know, I can relax. No matter how I might botch her, it won’t matter. I can even paint her out if it’s too bad. Only the painting will know, and it’s part of me. But I’m glad I mentioned it.
She stands up, comes over, and faultlessly takes my dish with the eaten coquilles and the small three-pronged fork, then moves into the kitchen corner. I can smell something delicious that’s been simmering in a frying pan there. I’m hoping it won’t be some half-raw red meat cooked the way most French insist these things must be done. I’m not sure I could handle it after all my vegetarianism.
But no, it’s one of my favorites again. She must be a mind reader. It’s escalope à la crème champignons and beautifully done, the cream sauce lightly flavored with the same Armagnac as the coquilles, blending the two together. She brings some pommes frites allumettes to go with it, and thin white asparagus. I’m really getting the best of this deal. At this rate, I’ll describe every pigeon in Paris for her if she wants.
And it’s pleasant being with her, eating such good food in such a civilized manner. We eat, comment on the food, talk about pigeons, something about my painting, nothing too serious. I know she’s curious concerning me, but she’s a real lady, no probing questions. It can be hard with women sometimes, especially American women. They’ll ask about anything, before you even get to know them. This is a wonderful woman of the old school, a true lady.
After we’re finished with the escalope, she brings on fruit and cheese. Again, everything is perfect. How will I ever go back to my Mulligan stew again?
Finally, there’s coffee, and she goes to another tall cupboard, climbs on a small stool, and pulls down a dusty bottle. She wipes it off, then puts it in the center of the table.
The coffee, of course, is outstanding. We sip at it. She looks, if she can look, over the edge of her cup at me.
‘Tell me, monsieur. Is there really a pear inside that bottle?’
It’s one of those fancy bottles of Poire William. It looks as if it might be the original bottle, it’s so dusty, faded.
‘Yes, there’s a pear inside.’
‘It is the last thing my father sent home to us before he was killed. My sister, Rolande, insisted we never drink it, that we keep it there, locked in the closet, in honor of his memory.’
‘That was very thoughtful of her.’
‘Monsieur, I should like to drink from this bottle with you today. It has been too long; it is time.’
It’s her decision. I really enjoy this particular liqueur, one can actually taste the gritty, pithy quality of the pear when it is properly aged, and this liqueur is certainly aged, in fact, I think it has even evaporated a bit.
‘That would be very kind, mademoiselle. But are you sure you want to drink it after all these years?’
‘Yes, I am quite positive.’
She looks at me with those clear, sightless eyes again.
‘Do you know how the pear gets into the bottle, monsieur?’
I’d never really thought about it. I know one can soak an egg in vinegar and then, when it’s soft, slide it through the neck of a bottle, where it will harden, but I’ve never tried it. I guess I just wasn’t curious enough. I don’t imagine one could do that with a pear, anyway.
‘No, mademoiselle, I have no idea. It is interesting to think about, isn’t it.’
‘I know how it is done. They wait until the blossom on the pear tree has been fertilized by the bee, then they place that blossom inside the bottle and tie the bottle to the tree. The pear is born, grows inside the bottle.
‘When it is grown, they cut the stem of the pear, take the bottle from the tree, then pour liquor made from other pears on top. They close it up tight with the cork, and the pear remains in the bottle. It can never come out. Is it not a lovely idea, even though it is so sad?’
She stands and goes deftly over to a drawer. She pulls out a tire-bouchon, a corkscrew, and hands it to me.
‘Would you be so kind, monsieur, as to open the bottle, and we shall drink this liqueur which has been waiting inside with this pear for over fifty years just for us today.’
While I center the corkscrew and twist it in, she goes to the cupboard and comes back with two small glasses. They are etched on the sides with tiny cupids frisking in an encirclement of leaves. She watches, or appears to watch, as I pull the cork. I sniff and there is an aroma through the room. I hand the bottle across to the old lady.
‘Please, would you pour, mademoiselle? I know the man is supposed to do it, but this is such a special occasion, a private celebration, it seems only right you should be the one.’
She takes the bottle from me. Her hand is steady. As she pours into each glass she has the tip of her thumb just inside the rim of the glass and, as the liqueur reaches it, she stops pouring. It’s something I wouldn’t’ve thought of. I guess, if I were blind, I would. We all have so many blindnesses.
When she finishes pouring, she carefully puts down the bottle. She holds her glass up to me and looks across into my eyes.
‘Please, before we drink, would you tell me your name, monsieur. I do not want to be impolite, but it seems proper that when we share this we should know at least that much about each other.’
That’s natural enough. But I don’t think anyone has asked me my name in almost a year. I’d almost forgotten I have one.
‘I’ve been called Jack most of my life, mademoiselle. My real name is John, spelled J-O-H-N in English. But this past year I’ve been calling myself Jean, J-E-A-N, the French way. It sounds better to me.’
‘I like your American name, Jack; like the English villain Jack the Ripper. But may I call you Jacques in the French style? I know it means James in English, but I’d like to call you Jacques.’
She doesn’t ask my last name, but I would have told her, for whatever it meant.
‘And may I ask your name before we drink this delicious liqueur, this fateful beverage?’
‘Call me Mirabelle, please, Jacques.’
‘But that seems so impolite, mademoiselle, I mean, Mirabelle. What is your family name?’
‘That does not matter. I shall call you Jacques and you call me Mirabelle. You know, Jacques, there is no one left on this earth who calls me Mirabelle. My sister was the last one, and she has been dead for fifteen years. I do not want Mirabelle, the idea of Mirabelle, to die. Please, Jacques, call me by the name of my childhood, Mirabelle.’
There are tears in her eyes again. We touch glasses, they clink with the sound of true crystal. I know I’m expected to say something.
‘To the two of us, Mirabelle and Jacques, on this wonderful day, drinking to the dreams of our past.’
‘And to the dreams of our future.’
She drinks and I drink with her. It is absolutely incredible. Never have I tasted a liquid so filled with nectar. It is as if the pears have been compacted, distilled, heightened in flavor until only the essence is left. We both sip, close our eyes, let the warmth flow through us, then, simultaneously, open our eyes and smile. It can only be coincidence. She could not match my smile and I know I am not consciously trying to match hers. She holds the glass against her breast.
‘It is as if my father lives again. I can almost feel, hear him. Thank you so much, Jacques for this wonderful moment.’
We drink the rest of our glasses and I ease the cork back into the bottle. Each sip was like the first, an experience into another world.
‘Jacques, I shall drink the rest of that bottle with no one but you. Is it too much if I ask you to déjeuner with me tomorrow?’
I’m slow to answer. One part of me doesn’t want to get involved with anyone, even if it is only an old, blind lady. But another part does want to share time with her. I’m feeling ice clots breaking up inside me.
‘Yes, Mirabelle, and thank you. But you must pass the test first.’
She leans forward, obviously puzzled.
‘Tomorrow you must tell me the color and markings of each bird when it comes to you. Show me what you have learned today.’
Mirabelle smiles, the most spontaneous smile yet.
‘I have learned much, Jacques. You shall be surprised.’
Soon after, I rise, ease myself toward the door, pick up my painting box in the hall, and leave. Mirabelle ‘sees’ me to the door. She’s refused my offer to help her clear the table, help with the dishes.
‘No, Jacques, I want this time to myself so I can savor the pleasure of our meal. Also, it would be wrong for you to stay in here on this beautiful day, when you have your painting to finish. Goodbye for now. All revoir.’
On the way down the stairs I start smiling about my new name, Jacques. I’m not even sure I can spell it. I know the way Mirabelle pronounces it, it sounds a bit like Jock in English. I never thought I’d ever be a ‘jock.’
There are about two hours of good painting time left. I have some trouble handling the street in the foreground and the bottom right-hand corner. I think of putting in a bus at the bus stop, but that’s against my idea of what I’m trying to paint. I don’t want to put in any cars either. What I’m trying to paint is a Paris that transcends time somehow, a Paris which will always seem to be; yet, in another way, never was. I don’t put in TV antennae, automobiles, or motorcycles, not even bicycles. When I paint in people I make them vague so there’s no problem with dated clothes.
Also, I’ve found, if I put in a figure, no matter how hard I’ve worked on the entire scope of the painting, people will see it only in relation to that figure. I noticed this with my watercolors. I’d do an entire composition of buildings with shadows cast upon them, shutters, chimney pots against the sky, a sense of space, then I’d make the mistake of putting in a woman hanging out some clothes from one of the windows. People’d look at it and call my painting The Woman Hanging Clothes out the Window. But they’d buy it, much more frequently than if there were no woman at the window.
I’ll probably have the same trouble with this painting. Nobody can resist ignoring the sky, the trees, the entire Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Les Deux Magots, Diderot, the entire composition; it’ll just be The Lady in the Red Suit with the Pigeons. So it goes. In this case, because of all that’s happened, I can live with it.
I more or less solve the lower right with shadows cast by the trees in the garden and by putting in cobblestones, the cobblestones that used to be there but have been smeared over with asphalt. It isn’t the best of solutions, but it’s the only one I can come up with.
I find, in my paintings, I have the most trouble composing the upper left and the lower right areas. I never even notice I’m going to have this same problem again until I get there. Sometimes I think I’ll never learn.
I scratch my signature and the date on the painting. It’s almost invisible, just a scratch using the top of my brush. Then I turn it over, title it Mirabelle with Diderot, date and sign it. Mirabelle really fits in the painting. It’s as if she’s always belonged there.
The sun is off the front of the church when I pack up and start for home. Tomorrow I’ll use another of my 25F canvases. I’m not sure just what subject I’ll paint but I know it will be near to where I’ve been painting. I found when I was doing drawings and watercolors that each little quartier has its particular quality and one painting tends to lead into another. I’m half thinking I might try the Place Furstenberg. It’s a beautiful Place and I’ve painted it three times with watercolors and drawn it at least four or five times. When things were desperate I could always sell a few watercolors or drawings of the Place, and it was fun doing them, it’s a real challenge in its simplicity. There are a fair number of tourists who go through there but at the same time it isn’t exactly a tourist trap.
I stop in at American Express just before it closes. There’s nothing. I pull a folded sheet of paper and an envelope out of my jacket and use my drawing pencil to write a reasonably long letter. I try describing the painting I’ve just finished, and also tell something about the blind old lady named Mirabelle. I finish by assuring them I’m fine but miss them all. I sign it with ‘all my love.’ I mail it to Lorrie at her new address.
The next morning, after my run, as I beat my way crosstown, I realize I’m looking forward to seeing Mirabelle, not just enjoying some more of her wonderful food, but spending time with her, absorbing her strength, vitality; feeling her concern, sensitivity, empathy.
The day is beautiful. More sun and fewer clouds, but there are still some soft, floating, spidery ones drifting quietly across the sky. Unless you stop and line them up with something on earth, it’s hard to tell they’re moving.
I’m wearing my usual painting outfit, a falling-apart, multi-stitched denim jacket I bought for twenty francs at the flea market. I didn’t put on the green check woolen shirt I usually wear under it. The shirt’s missing more than half its buttons but it’s warm. When I ran this morning I realized today I wouldn’t need it. I’m beginning to think I don’t even need the jacket. Paris is giving us a little taste of what spring will be, real spring, maybe with a touch of summer.
I get to the site and elect to paint the Place from the uphill side and to the left of the street leading into it. I set myself practically in the Place because I want the lamps in the middle to be the center of my painting, sort of a focus around which the rest will swing in three dimensions; I’d like something of a merry-go-round feeling.
I do a rather careful drawing, keeping in mind the painting as I go. It’s amazing how one can paint something several times and it’s always different. I’m about to start putting paint on my palette for the underpainting when I begin to think of time passing. I don’t have a watch. I forgot it, left it behind on the night table in our bedroom when I packed up, more than a year ago, so I ask the time from somebody passing by. It’s just five minutes to ten.
I break down the box, swing it onto my back, and move up behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the Place in front of the church. I look across the street and there she is sitting in her usual spot. I try to see how close I can creep up on her before she senses me. I walk carefully. If anybody was watching, they’d think I was some kind of Jack the Ripper with a specialty in old ladies, because I’m practically walking on tiptoe. Before I get within six feet, she turns to me, smiles.
‘I thought you might not come, Jacques. I knew you were not here and I was disappointed. It is so very good of you to come after all.’
‘It was the smell, wasn’t it. You smelled me coming. Is that it, Mirabelle?’
She smiles and pulls out her second inflatable cushion for me.
‘No, there is something on your painting box which jiggles when you walk, it sounds like metal hitting wood. I did not smell you until after.’
‘Do I smell that bad? What do I smell like, anyway?’
‘Oh, Jacques, you want to know all my secrets. All right. You smell like turpentine, of course, and you smell something of perspiration because you concentrate so hard. And you smell …’
She pauses.
‘You smell like a man. You have a special man smell about you. It is not the smell of tobacco as with my father or some other men, and it is not the smell of the different perfumes so many men wear these days. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell the men from women except for the sound of the shoes they wear, and even that is changing.
‘You have a very special smell. I cannot describe it but I like it. The closest thing I can think of is the smell of horses.’
I’ve finished blowing up my cushion and I sit beside her.
‘I’d better not sit too close, Mirabelle. I never realized I was so smelly.’
‘No, Jacques, I like you sitting close to me. Remember, I enjoy your smells. They are very healthy, hardy smells.
‘Now, are we ready for my test? I shall touch and feel my pigeons and then tell you how they look, is that right?’
‘That’s right. But I was only teasing, Mirabelle. It will be impossible.’
‘Let us see.’
She puts out her finger and one of the pigeons, which had been hovering around her, lands. She picks it up, turns it over, inspects it.
‘This one is a tannish brown with two brown stripes across the wings. It has yellower eyes than most and its legs are a nice persimmon red. You admired the look of this bird and said it was almost acceptable, even for a pigeon. Am I right?’
She’s right, all right. She’s so right she’s telling me things I don’t even remember telling her.
‘I don’t believe it, Mirabelle. Come on, try again.’
Another bird flies down. This time it’s a heavy, dark blue bird with stripes on its wings, an ordinary-looking pigeon. Mirabelle strokes its neck with her finger and massages the feet and legs. She looks at me.
‘This one is bluish gray with two darker bars on each of her wings. She has a sheen of color on her neck almost like a cock. She has pale pink legs and darker than amber eyes.’
She lets this one fly away, after giving her grains from her little sacks.
‘I am not sure what color amber is, Jacques. Is it more an orange color or yellow?’
We go through the entire flock. The only interruption to her perfect replay of what I told her yesterday is one bird, a small-sized, gray one, which had not come the day before. Mirabelle tells me immediately when she handles her that she does not know the markings of this bird. She knows it is one of the birds who didn’t show up yesterday, that she is probably brooding an early nest.
An hour has passed and I’m ready to go back and start my underpainting.
‘Where are you painting, Jacques?’
‘I’m on the Place Furstenberg. I’m painting down the hill with the rue Jacob at the end.’
‘Oh yes. That is a lovely Place. I would play with a ball there when I was a child. It is one of my special places.’
‘What do you mean? Is it one of your favorite places?’
‘Yes, that is true, but more than that. It is very complicated. You go paint now and I shall explain to you while we déjeuner. I must go now to prepare. The food for the week was delivered from the market this morning, so we shall eat well.’
With that she begins putting her things together.
One of the strange aspects about being with a blind person, I’m finding, is when they stop talking to you, you do sort of disappear yourself. I stand, watch her a few seconds, and walk back across the boulevard. I’m still astounded at how she could describe all those birds in such detail. How could an old lady like this have such a remarkable memory?
On the Place, I’m soon into the painting. It seems no time at all before the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés start ringing, I have the sky and the left side of the Place with the bare trees roughed in. It’s a good time in a painting, everything still seems possible.
We have another wonderful meal. I try to talk about my enforced vegetarianism, how I don’t eat as much meat as before. She’s served small tournedos of beef with fresh string beans and pommes Dauphine. It is magnificently prepared. This time I notice how she must be cleaning things up as she goes, because there’s no mess in the kitchen, everything except the absolutely necessary pans and dishes is soaking in hot water in the sink.
Then she asks where I’m living. I tell her about my squatter’s attic, how I cook, where I get my food, about my running, just about everything concerning the life I lead, even to the stink from the glue and noise of my hammering. I try to tell it as humorously as possible. If you think about it, considering everything, it is all damned funny.
She keeps staring into my eyes. There is a concentration beyond sight.
‘But why do you live like this? What will you do in the winter when it becomes cold?’
‘I survived last winter and then I had no attic in which to live. Now I have a home. This winter I’ll buy an extra blanket at the flea market and be just fine.’
We’re finished eating. She goes over, picks up her stool, and reaches into her closet for the Poire William. I move to help her, then settle back. She’s too quick for me. As she stands on the stool, stretches, slightly lifting one leg, I see her legs are thin like those of a young girl, perhaps a girl thirteen or fourteen years old. She wears thick old-lady stockings, lisle, I think it’s called. She comes to the table. I know where the glasses are and take them down. She hands me the bottle.
‘Please, Jacques, this time will you pour? I want to feel spoiled, taken care of, treated like a young woman just a little bit.’
She sits, ankles crossed under her chair. I pull out the cork, the smell of pears fills the room again, she inhales. I pour three-quarters of a glass each. I hand one glass to her, pick up my own, and we touch glasses.
‘To Jacques, one of the finest painters in the world.’
‘How can you know that, Mirabelle?’
‘Because I am blind? Most of what I know, I know because I am blind. I know you are a fine painter.’
‘All right, then: to Mirabelle, the best blind critic of paintings in the world. May all critics have such a depth of perception.’
We sip. I remember.
‘Mirabelle, you called Place Furstenberg one of your special places. What did you mean by that? You said you would explain.’
She sips again, tilts her head toward the table, then looks up at me.
‘You know, Jacques, I am not really blind.’
She’s looking me right in the eyes. I’m not surprised. I’m only wondering why she pretends. Why in heaven’s name did she smash into me when I was painting, actually hurt herself. Am I involved with another total crazy?
‘No, you see, I have perfectly good eyes, there is nothing wrong with them. I have perfect nerves to carry what my eyes see to my brain.’
She pauses.
‘But my mind, it will not let me see. I am what is called hysterically blind, aveugle hystérique. I have tried everything, but since I was fourteen years old I have been able to see nothing.’
‘You mean you don’t see me now, here in front of you? You don’t see this room? What do you see?’
‘I see only the visions which are in my mind. I have my own world of things I see, but they are all ancient images, visions of when I was a child. Many doctors have worked with me trying to make me see again. My sister took me to psychiatrists and others. I was hypnotized many times. But I cannot see. Sometimes I think I shall never see.
‘One of the things I was supposed to do, helping me see again, was to remember places of my childhood, places I loved, enjoyed, and then go to those places, close my eyes, try to remember everything that was there. After, I was to open my eyes and hope I would see these things of the real world, but they were never there for me.
‘I have twenty-two places, all here in the quartier, which I have in my mind. They are almost like personal picture postcards, postcards I can bring before my mind. For many years, I would go to those places and concentrate, trying to see, trying to see anything, even the slightest light, but it never happened. Place Furstenberg was one of those places.’
‘What happened? How did this come to be, Mirabelle? It’s terrible.’
‘It is terrible to you. But it is not terrible to me. The doctors tell me I do not see because deep inside I do not want to see. I am afraid.’
‘What are you afraid of, Mirabelle?’
‘I am afraid of what I will see. I have learned to enjoy this private world in which I live. Yes, it is inconvenient being blind, but it is also very comforting.’
‘My God, whatever happened? Why are you afraid?’
She sips again and holds the drink against her breast. I’ve never seen anyone do that before, until she did it yesterday. Maybe it’s a way to protect the glass from being knocked from her hand by accident.
‘Perhaps another time, Jacques. I should like to talk with you right now about something important, if I may.’
What could be more important than why she’s blind? I wait.
‘I should like you to paint my portrait. Since you have created me in the picture at the foot of Diderot it has given me much comfort. I feel I exist in the outside world, not just in the world of my imagination, inside my mind. Please, will you paint me?’
This I hadn’t expected. It’s so embarrassing. I sip some more of the Poire William, trying to figure what to say, how to refuse without hurting her feelings.
‘I am not really a portraitist, Mirabelle. Since I was a young man, a student, I’ve tried painting portraits of people. I couldn’t do it then and I don’t think I could do it now.’
‘Yes, however, with this painting, you have no one to please but yourself. I cannot be a critic. I do not even know how I do look. I only want to have you make a painting, an object, which says something about the way you see me, feel about me. It would mean much to have this happen.’
‘But, Mirabelle, it’s so expensive. I’d be happy to paint you for nothing, but then I’d want the painting myself. Also I am running out of francs.’
‘You may have the painting for yourself, in any case. I would prefer that. But you cannot paint it for no money. I want you to charge me a regular price. This is a commission.’
‘It would be my first commission, Mirabelle. But you have no idea of the cost. I must charge three hundred francs for each painting to have enough to live.’
‘I will not pay three hundred francs.’
She pauses. I’m off the hook. She just has no idea. I see her differently now, though. I see her as a painting. I would like to paint her if she would be willing to pose. I’d like to paint her inner calm, vitality, separateness, courage, if those things can be painted. It’d be more money down the tubes, more paint out of the tubes, but I still have a few francs left and then there’ll be the tourist money this summer. Maybe I’ll go up onto the hill at Montmartre, play animal with the others in the artists’ zoo; I’m sure I could sell something there.
‘Jacques, I must pay at least a thousand francs or you cannot paint my portrait. I would gladly pay more if you want it.’
Hell, I’m not off the hook! In fact I’m really hooked. Mirabelle gets up and glides in that special way she has, not dragging her feet but hardly lifting them, feeling forward with them, as if she’s sliding her feet into slippers with each step, moving quickly to the cupboard again. What other delicious goody will she pull out?
She takes down a metal box with pictures enameled on it. She pries the lid open, reaches inside, and feels around. She pulls out one, then two, five-hundred-franc bills. She closes the box and puts it up on the shelf again. She comes back to the table.
‘Now you know where the blind old lady hides all her money. She does not hide it from herself.’
She holds the bills out to me. I don’t want to take them.
‘Wait till I’m finished with the portrait, Mirabelle. This is crazy.’
‘No, but it is crazy waiting until the painting is finished before I pay you. What is the difference. This way you can have the money now and I would only keep it in that box doing nothing. You can buy paints with it so the painting can be better. That makes much more sense.’
She leans the money closer to me, looking into my eyes the entire time. I take the money. She’s right.
‘If I come over to where you are painting now, on La Place Furstenberg, may I stay beside you? I will not be a bother, I want to feel you painting, know you are seeing, really seeing, that which I can only remember. Would that be all right?’
It’s okay with me, but how’s she going to get over? It means crossing boulevard Saint-Germain and that’s a fast-moving, wide street, not exactly the kind of street a blind old lady should try to cross.
‘You can come with me if you want. I’ll help you across boulevard Saint-Germain.’
‘No, I shall clean up here first. You would be surprised how I can find my way. I go anywhere in Paris I want. At the boulevard, I listen to the feet. When they start moving across the street I go with the others. Also, there is always someone to give an arm to an old lady in a red costume with a white cane. I can sometimes almost see myself in my mind. Of course, the boulevard was completely different when I last saw it, but I can tell much from the sounds and smells.’
So I take off. The light should be just right now. I’m realizing that, in the end, I’ll be running two paintings at the same time if it’s going to take me several days to paint each one. I’ll need one canvas for morning light and one for afternoon. I’ll really have good use for that thousand francs, just keeping myself in paint and canvas.
I’ve been painting about an hour when I look beside me and there’s Mirabelle sitting in a little collapsible chair. She smiles.
‘Oh, now you see me. I have been here awhile and you have been so busy looking, you didn’t know I was here. Sometimes looking so hard can make one blind. Is that not interesting?’
I’m just getting into painting the globes of the light stand in the center of the Place. I swear each one is a slightly different color. If you didn’t look closely, you’d think they were only white, but one’s slightly bluish white, one’s greenish, one yellowish, and the other has a violet tinge. I never would have guessed it until I tried painting them. I try explaining this to Mirabelle. Again she closes her eyes as I talk as if she’s trying to cast up the images in her mind. We’re quiet for a while.
‘Jacques, do you mind if I talk about what I am seeing here, myself, in my mind, listening to the wind against the trees, smelling the street, the paint, you; remembering from when I was a little girl?’
‘No, I’d like that very much, Mirabelle.’
‘Well, first I remember it was like a giant room, as if it were not outside at all. The trees make a great cover like an umbrella. There were benches on each side of the lamp and I would sit and stare at each of the globes, moving my head back and forth to watch my reflection move in each of them. The walls then were gray, blue-gray, violet, brown-gray, and when the sun would shine on them, they seemed to glow with a white luminescence not much different from the white in the sky between the leaves.
‘Now I understand the walls have all been painted white and yellow and light colors of brown. It must be beautiful, but it is not what I have in my mind.
‘It seemed then, as a child, that the street down to the rue Jacob was very long. We would roller-skate down that street, our skates strapped to our shoes, and we would roll hoops. There were very few automobiles and many horses. Only part of the street was smooth, the rest was stones. The rue Cardinale was only dirt. The windows were mostly open and will always be open in my mind, with flowers at the windows and clothing hanging on little lines, like butterflies against the green of the trees.
‘Also, at certain times, the trees would have purple flowers, the flowers would then fall, and we would gather them in our skirts and throw the petals at each other. It was a wonderful time.’
She stops. She still has her eyes closed. She’s brought such a freshness, a dreamlike vision to what I’m seeing, I find I’m integrating some of her feelings into my painting. I have alternatives for almost any decision I make in the painting now. There’s what my eyes see, there’s what my mind is seeing, the selective vision of the painter; and then there’s the vision of Mirabelle’s mind. It’s the same as it was with the pigeons against the sky over Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I’m flying in her dream, painting her desires.
She keeps on talking, resurrecting the memories she’s stored, cherished, all these years, speaking of the way it was, and it seems so much more real than what I’m seeing before me.
I begin to think I’m going blind myself, then realize it’s only getting dark. I have no idea what time it is, but the painting is almost finished. I never believed I could get so far along on a painting in a single day. And what I’ve done is good, it holds together; more than that, it sings out the feelings I have, about Paris, about Mirabelle, and in many ways her feelings about Paris as a young girl, and now as a blind old woman.
I pack up the box. Mirabelle has some grains with her for the pigeons. Many from the flock at Saint-Germain-des-Prés come here to this Place and pick up bits of food tourists or others leave on the ground. When my box is packed, I lean against the wall beside where Mirabelle is sitting. It’s a great little folding stool she has, I wish I had one for myself, sometimes my back gets tired standing. She turns to me.
‘I feel it growing cooler. Is it really becoming dark? Is that why you have packed up your paints?’
‘That’s right, Mirabelle. It was getting so dark I was beginning to think I might be going blind myself.’
‘No, Jacques, that is not the way one goes blind.’
She still sits there. The pigeons are all around her. It is evening and I guess that’s when pigeon mating instincts come to the fore, because two or three cocks are doing the old courtship routine, puffed out, head bobbing, flight feathers dragging, rattling, on the ground, going round in tight circles.
‘Are they dancing their love dance, Jacques?’
‘That’s right, Mirabelle. I guess pigeons spend more time courting than any other creature I know.’
‘But you know pigeons are mated for life. They do their dance around almost any hen, but they are mated for life.’
‘Somebody told me that once, but it’s hard to believe. It certainly would be nice if it were true. I like the idea.’
‘Honestly. Have you ever seen pigeons mating in the streets, in public, as cats, dogs, even other birds do?’
‘No, now you mention it, I never have. Maybe you’ve got something there, Mirabelle, about pigeons teaching humans how to live.’
‘They are only flirting with the hens, showing how they care for, admire, value them. I think it is most beautiful. I thrill to hear their cooing song, hear their feet pounding on the ground, listen to their feathers bristle. It is such a dance of meaningful, purposeless passion.’
She looks up at me in the blueing dusk.
‘You know, Jacques, there is not enough love in this world. Sometimes I think the pigeons are the last lovers in Paris. There seems to be much of sex in these times, but very little of true love, of love that makes all creatures come closer together, that allows one creature to express an inner feeling toward another creature so they know they are important and valuable to them.’
She stands and I help fold her chair. I throw it over the top of my box. I offer her my arm and she takes it.
‘Jacques, would you be my guest at La Palette on the rue de Seine? We can have a cup of coffee or something there. It is a place where artists have long gone. I have not been there for more than ten years, since before Rolande’s death. Please, take me there. It would be such a pleasure for me to hear and feel the excitement of that place.’
I’ve passed the café tens of times but never gone in. Café sitting just doesn’t fit into my budget. I hope I’m not spending Mirabelle’s savings. It doesn’t seem fair or right.
‘If that’s what you want, Mirabelle, let’s go. But I must pay. I’m a rich man. I have a thousand francs in my pocket right now.’
I smile down at her, knowing the smile means nothing, is invisible, she cannot see it, but it makes me feel good. I’m smiling for myself.
She holds tighter on to my arm, not clutching, only tucking herself in closer. It’s a lovely evening and we must make quite a pair walking into La Palette. We find a table in the back and both order a Cointreau. It seems the perfect thing to finish off a good day’s work. It’s going to cost more than a week’s living but it’ll be worth it.
Mirabelle has all her antennae out. I can tell by the almost ecstatic look on her face, the smile, the inner concentration. She’s probably ‘perceiving’ more of this ambience than I am, by far. I close my eyes and try to experience the way she does. While I have my eyes closed, the Cointreau arrives. I can tell it’s there even without opening them. The smell of oranges surrounds us. I wonder if I would have smelled it if I’d been sitting there with my eyes open.
‘Is it not wonderful, Jacques?’
She is fingering the round ballon of Cointreau, spinning it around in her small, pointed, thin-skinned, dainty fingers.
‘I feel everything so strongly it’s almost like seeing.’
We clink glasses, she makes the first move, of course. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Cointreau, and this isn’t the best but it tastes good, not as good as that Poire William, but good on an early spring evening.
We sit sipping and listening. I’m also watching the coming and going, the flirting, the general horsing around of the young people. Why do artists always feel they need to make such a scene all the time? Probably it’s what makes them artists, or makes them want to be artists in the first place. They want, need, to be seen. For some reason, they aren’t sure they are. I wonder how much of that is in me. Probably anyone who has all the love, acceptance they need would never actually create, do, anything. They’d be complete within themselves. That would be the end of writers, poets, painters, singers, musicians, politicians, most of the people who help make the world go around, at least who strive for human communication.
It’s dark when I escort Mirabelle home. She invites me up but I don’t feel like sitting in a dark room while she wouldn’t even know it. I’ll have to buy a few light bulbs and slip them in around her place if I’m ever going to spend any time there.
I have a great walk home, I use the gate code number I learned by watching others punch it in, sneak up the stairs quietly, and settle in. I watch my painting for a long time in the candlelight as I eat a light supper. With all the lunches, I’m not eating up my stew for this week.
Blind Reverie
I feel so brazen. I wonder if he feels it, too, but he means so much to me. He must have some idea of my feelings. even if he can see.
I am confused. Knowing how my pigeons look has taken so much away. I thought my love for them would be more, but it is somehow less. I should have known. I think he is convinced I am childish, calling them by name, but they have been my only companions for so long. I hope he doesn’t mind my calling him Jacques. He cannot know it was the name of my father.
I felt something negative when he came into the apartment. Can it be so dirty, unkempt? I must ask him. But I must go slowly. It was much, asking him to paint me. Now I am glad I did it. I wanted something we could share, a way to keep him near.
I think he likes my food. I could tell by the sounds as he ate. I am so happy to have found him. It is wonderful to have someone with whom I can share my pear in the bottle.
3
The next morning I’m finishing the painting of the Place Furstenberg. I feel in control. The strong movements I established yesterday are holding up as I move into the more descriptive elements. The light is coming through the trees and I’m using a tremendous variety of color to capture the sense of light on the paving of the Place. The painting is somewhere between Impressionism and something different, a new kind of vision for me, a highly personal vision such as Vincent van Gogh had, a conviction that the way I see is valid.
I work all morning and then I feel Mirabelle beside and behind me.
‘I can tell you are happy with your work, Jacques. The bells are ringing, will you déjeuner with me, and then perhaps we can start the portrait.’
How can she possibly know I’m just about finished? Do I give off some kind of ‘satisfaction vibrations’? I scratch my signature in the lower right-hand corner. I pull the canvas off the easel and print in the title, Place Furstenberg, date and sign it on the back. I’m almost tempted to sign it ‘Jacques.’
‘Yes, I’m very happy with the painting. But I don’t think I can start with your portrait because I have no other canvas here with me. I didn’t realize I’d finish this one so quickly. I wish you could see it. It’s the best painting I’ve done and you helped very much.’
‘Thank you. It means much to me to feel I could help. Can you understand what this must mean to someone blind such as I?’
Her face is very serious, then it breaks into a smile and she ‘looks’ down at her feet briefly. She finds my eyes again.
‘Could you not buy a canvas near here? I do not think the shops are closed as yet.’
‘It is very expensive to buy a canvas, Mirabelle. A canvas stretched, of the size I would need, could cost over a hundred and fifty francs.’
She reaches into her purse. She pulls out two hundred francs.
‘Here, please, Jacques, buy it. We do not know how long I shall be around to be painted and every day I am getting older. I should like to be painted as soon as possible, while I am still young.’
‘Okay. I’ll give it back to you this afternoon from the thousand francs when I have it changed. That’s only fair. All right?’
‘Yes, if that is what you want. But you must hurry now to find a shop open before they close. I shall go home and prepare our food. It is mostly ready, but there are some last little things to do. I shall meet you there.’
She turns away. The art store is just around the corner, not far from La Palette, where we had our Cointreau. I decide to leave the box standing in the Place. I put the painting back on the easel. I take off right away. Nobody will steal it in the few minutes I’ll be gone. I start running, holding the two hundred francs bunched in my hand.
The bells are still ringing when I get there and they’re open. The canvas, real linen on a good stretcher, 20F, with portrait linen, is a hundred and ninety francs. I feel like a rich man. But at this rate I’d be a candidate for the poorhouse in no time.
I dash back to my box and everything is fine. There are two people looking at the painting, a well-dressed French couple. The man asks me if I want to sell the painting.
I do and I don’t. He’s pretty insistent and I’m busy cracking down the box, putting things away. At the sound of my crappy French, he switches into good-quality, heavily accented English-English.
‘But you must be in business, monsieur. Do you have a gallery where I may see your work?’
‘No, I have no gallery.’
‘But you are a professional, yes. The painting is of very high quality.’
‘Thank you.’
I don’t answer the first question. I guess I am a professional but I don’t think of myself that way. It sounds like a prizefighter or a whore. The French word amateur means ‘lover.’ I think I’m more an amateur, at least when it comes to painting.
‘How much money would you take for your painting, monsieur? My wife and I like it very much.’
I figure I’ll name a big price to shut him up. I’m sure he thinks it’s like Montmartre, where paintings are knocked out for nothing.
‘The painting would cost fifteen hundred francs, monsieur. I must live.’
He reaches into his inside jacket pocket, slides out a dark, shining leather billfold, and separates three five-hundred-franc notes. He hands them to me.
I could kick myself. I haven’t had enough time to enjoy this painting. But, God, fifteen hundred francs, I can get through the entire summer with that. But I’m going to be very professional about all this.
I lift the painting from the place where I’ve leaned it against the wall and hold it at arm’s length for a last long look at it. I feel I’m selling part of Mirabelle at the same time. I hand it to him.
‘Be careful, monsieur. It is still wet. It will be a week or more before it is dry.’
‘That is quite all right. We live near here. We love this Place and thank you again for selling us your work. You are very talented.’
With that, the two of them walk away carrying our painting. She’s wearing a white fur coat and white stockings with clocks in them, slightly off-white shoes. Her hair is perfectly coiffed. He looks as if he could be the Prime Minister of France. Hell, I wouldn’t know the Prime Minister if I fell over him.
Inside myself, I’m really torn. I need to tell Mirabelle. I’ve sold our painting. How will she feel about that? I put my paint box on my back, empty, and start the walk to her place. I’m carrying the new canvas in my free hand. Now I’m late.
I put the box outside and her door is open. I knock and go in. She’s in the kitchen.
‘I began to think you were not coming. Please, let us sit down. I have little crêpes with mushrooms and a cheese sauce. I have just finished making them.’
I go in to take a leak. I use the same ‘knee-locking’ system as before. Then I go over and wash my hands, leaving the door open for light again. I’ve taken several sheets of toilet paper from the toilet room and I wet them. I try to wipe off some of the grime and specks from the mirror. The dirt’s really ground in. I manage to clear a circle in the center of the mirror, enough to see myself. I haven’t actually looked at myself in a mirror, up close, in a long time. I don’t look as bad as I thought I would. I definitely look younger than I did two years ago. If it weren’t for the gray in my beard I could maybe even pass for forty.
I sit down. Mirabelle puts three beautiful crêpes on each of our plates. They smell delicious. Again I close my eyes and let the smell come into me. It’s getting to be a habit. Before I know it, I’ll probably go blind myself.
‘Mirabelle. I have something to tell you.’
‘The art shop was closed and you could not buy the canvas.’
‘Worse than that.’
There’s no way around it. I must tell her, I owe her that, at least.
‘I sold our painting, the painting of the Place Furstenberg.’
She’s quiet on her chair, looking at me. She hands me a bottle of white wine, a Pouilly-Fumé, to open. I start turning the corkscrew.
‘But that is very good, Jacques. You said you must sell paintings to live. We can always paint the Place Furstenberg again. It is in my mind, all of it. It makes me feel happy to think we have shared our vision with someone else.’
And I suddenly feel released. Mirabelle’s right. I can paint it again. I’ll paint it better than last time. I just didn’t have enough confidence in myself. And I really do have over twenty-five hundred francs in my pocket, the thousand from Mirabelle and now the fifteen hundred. I reach in my pocket. I hold out the thousand francs.
‘Here, Mirabelle, take this. I don’t need it now. All you need pay is the money for the canvas, and you’ve already done that. We’re even.’
She pulls away from the money as if it were a snake.
‘Do not do this, Jacques. You have a commission from me. I could never feel right if you do not take this money. Please, take it away. I can smell it in front of my face. It smells sour, a blend of dirt, cheap perfume, the inside of pocketbooks, and perspiration, as does all money. Please, take it away, or I cannot eat.’
I put it on the table beside me.
‘Well, we can discuss that later. For now, I want to eat these beautiful crêpes and drink this wonderful wine.’
I hold out my glass and there’s just the slightest delay until she realizes what I’m doing. No one would probably have picked up the slight pause, but I’m getting more closely tuned to her now.
‘Yes, Jacques, we drink to the sale of your beautiful painting. I knew you were a very good painter. You should sell your paintings for much more money, you sell them too cheaply.’
‘I have more money than I can use now, Mirabelle. I know that doing things to make money can pollute life faster than anything else. I’m happy to have this money, but it must not become the reason why I paint. This is something I’ve learned.’
‘You will never paint for money alone, Jacques, only when you are hungry and desperate. Before that, you can come live with me.’
We drink. The wine is dry and cooled just properly. It has a deep raisin taste, yet is light and almost effervescent. It’s time to change the subject.
‘Where do you get these wines, Mirabelle? This kind of wine costs almost as much as that painting.’
‘They are not mine. These are the wines of Rolande. Where she worked with the Ministère des Finances at the Louvre, she would always receive cases of wine at Christmas. We hardly ever drank them, so there are many cases stored in the cave. I am glad I can share them with you. I think Rolande would be happy, too. At least, I hope she would.’
After the wine, we have a wonderful soufflé. To think of all I’ve heard about how hard it is to make a soufflé properly and here this elderly blind woman has pulled off one to match any I’ve ever had in my life. Mirabelle is a constant wonder. I find myself sneaking glances at her. In my mind I’m already starting to paint her portrait.
We finish off with our usual Poire William. We’re coming close to the bottom of the bottle. I wonder what Mirabelle will want to do with the pear when it’s all that’s left.
She clears the table and pours two cups of coffee. Again, she makes some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Perhaps this is partly because I have the chance to drink coffee so infrequently. I’ve heard it said that the best way to ensure yourself compliments as a cook is to keep your guests waiting until they’re practically starved, and I’m sure in my past I’ve been victim to this theory, but with Mirabelle, everything seems to arrive just at the appropriate moment.
I watch as she so efficiently, gracefully, removes the dishes from our table, slides them into soapy water, rinses them, stacks them in a rack. It’s like music, calming, just to watch her. I know I could never dance to her dance, so I stay seated, talk to her about the people who came up to me and bought the painting. I tell it with the kind of detached elation I felt, and it comes out as so funny, we’re both laughing. Mirabelle comes over from the kitchen, drying her hands.
‘Now, Jacques, are you ready to paint my portrait?’
‘Yes. First I’ll bring in my box and the new canvas from the palier. I think I’ll paint you by the windows so I have enough light on the canvas.’
I move toward the door. I struggle the canvas and box inside, closing the door behind me. There are only two windows in the room, both opening onto the court, so there isn’t much light. But worst of all are the raggedy drapes, three-quarters drawn across the windows. They block just about any light that might come in.
‘Mirabelle, would it be all right if I take down the drapes on the windows, or pull them back? I need more light to see.’
‘Oh yes, please do. I had completely forgotten they were there. You must have been sitting here with me in the dark. Why did you not say something?’
For the first time, including when she’d bumped into me and fallen, she seems generally nonplussed, embarrassed.
‘Oh, I could see enough to eat. But if I’m going to paint you, I must have more light.’
‘Please take them down. There is no one to peer in at me and I would like it if they did, at least somebody would be seeing me. We had those drapes up for Rolande.’
I use the stool she’s been using to reach up into the cupboard. I stand on it and find that the mechanism for moving the drapes is completely jammed. I lift the entire contraption off its hooks, lower the curtain, and step down onto the floor again. The drapes are coated with dust and so fragile they tear in my hand.
‘I think these drapes are finished, Mirabelle. Do you want me to save them?’
‘No. Please throw them away. The smell of the dust makes me feel as if I am dead already. Put them out on the palier. Later, I shall take them down to the poubelle.’
I climb to lift down the other set of drapes. Same thing: jammed, rusty, dusty drapes, faded, falling apart. I lower them as I come down from the stool, wrap them around the valence. I take both of them to the door and shove them out onto the landing, the palier, where my paint box had been.
‘I’ll take them downstairs when I go home, Mirabelle.’
Now I look at the windows. They’re as filthy as the mirror had been. But I’m not going to clean them now. The weather is mild, maybe I can open them.
‘Do you mind if I open the windows, Mirabelle? It will clear the air. If you feel cold you can wear another sweater, perhaps.’
‘Oh yes. That will be fine. What would you like me to wear for this portrait?’
‘I think just what you are wearing now, your dark blue sweater with the collar.’
‘Is my hair in order?’
She feels over her head, shifting bobby pins and maybe hairpins over and around her head.
‘You look wonderful.’
I move one of the chairs from the table and place it so I have a three-quarter light falling on her face. It gives enough penumbra, but not too much. I can pick up the features on the shaded section, even in this limited light.
‘Shall I sit in the chair now?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps you can finish cleaning the pots and pans from our wonderful meal, if you want, while I open my box and prepare myself.’
I’d noticed that in her cleanup she’d left some pans soaking in the sink.
I wedge the long back leg of my box under the window. I want to have enough light on the canvas and still not have the canvas block my view of Mirabelle. I want the eye level of the portrait at my eye level and at just about the same eye level as Mirabelle. I’m going to paint her one and a half times life size. Painting on the vertical dimension, this should fill a 20F just fine.
I’m all settled in when Mirabelle sits in the chair. I need her head turned more to the light with her sightless eyes seeming to look at me. I want the dynamic of the two directions. I wonder if when I paint her, her eyes will seem empty, they don’t seem that way to me at all. I have the other chair set up in front of my paint box. I stand and go over to where she’s sitting. I put my hands on each side of her face and turn it so the light is just right. I think it’s the first time I touch her face.
Usually, from the little experience I’ve had with painting portraiture, one asks models, after they’ve been posed, to pick something and fix their eyes on it. But this is obviously impossible in this case. She does the mind-reading trick on me again.
‘I can hold my head still like this because I know where you are and I can feel the open window.’
I start my pencil sketch with a 3B pencil. I’ll move up to 6B later on when I’m more sure. I really don’t like working the drawing with charcoal and then blowing fixative on it the way they taught me those long years ago at school. I draw with the pencil and correct with a soft eraser. I begin drawing and concentrate for at least fifteen minutes, getting her placed on the canvas, having the right relationship between head, body, and negative space. I want her placed up high on the canvas but not too dominant. I make quite a few erasures before I get the proportions and angles I want.
‘Please tell me, Jacques, how I look. No one seems to look at me, or, if they do, they have never told me. Many times I would ask Rolande how I looked but she would only say I was quite presentable, or sometimes when she was cross, that I was too pretty for my own good. But that was a long time ago.
‘I can feel with my fingers that I am getting older. There seems nothing one can do to stop that. It is only natural, is it not?’
She pauses. I’m trying to concentrate, get it right, what’s she talking about now?
‘Do I have gray hair, Jacques?’
This is going to be hard but I want to be truthful. I look away from the painting, up at her.
‘White, Mirabelle, you have white hair. There are some dark hairs in your eyebrows, but the hair on your head is practically white.’
‘Oh dear! I have begun to think so. At first, twenty years ago, I could tell some of the hairs were stiffer and were hard to manage. I imagine they were the white ones. They were not like the kind of hair usually growing on my head. Now they are all the same, all stiff and straight. You know, it is hard for me to think of myself with white hair. Is that not silly? Here I am, seventy-one years old, and I actually almost did not believe I had even gray hair. I feel like such a fool.’
‘None of us ever really look at ourselves, Mirabelle, even if we can see. Perhaps it is best, it helps us sustain our illusions.’
She’s quiet for a while. I’m working on the relationship between her eyes and nose. She has a lovely, thin aquiline nose with visible, slightly flaring nostrils. Her eyes, her non-seeing eyes, are set wide and are large. It’s so hard to believe she sees nothing.
‘Yes, you are right; perhaps that is why I do not allow myself to see. But tell me, do I have wrinkles in my face? Of course I do. Would you please tell me about them? I want to know, I really do.’
It’s hard to concentrate because that’s not the part of her face I’m working on yet. I can see this is going to be quite a problem painting her. I lean back and look.
‘Yes, Mirabelle, you have wrinkles. So do I. I’m forty-nine years old, so naturally I have wrinkles. Without wrinkles nobody’s face would be very interesting.
‘You have a wonderful line of concentration, slightly to the left, between your eyes, and a smaller one just beside it. Then across your forehead you have four questioning lines, unevenly spaced, going all the way across. Two of them intersect on the left side. There are lines coming out of your eyes on each side, mostly smiling lines, lines from avoiding the glare of the sun. No, that can’t be, the glare of the sun would mean nothing to you. They must only be smiling lines. You do smile often, you know, Mirabelle.
‘There are lines down the sides of your mouth from your nose. These are the deepest lines in your face. They come right down past your mouth to your chin. Those are the main lines on your face, the most visible, but not the most important.’
She’s quiet some more. I get back to work with my drawing. Again, by having explained to her, I’m seeing better. The spacing between the eyes and the mouth is better related to the length of the nose. This can always be a problem in doing a portrait.
‘And what other lines are there?’
I don’t stop drawing this time.
‘Well, there are all the lines that come with aging, with the gradual loss of skin tone, small crosshatch lines, the lines from the pull of gravity on the skin. These are the usual lines which don’t really tell much about a person, what they are, the way they’ve thought. They’re only the lines that come naturally as anybody gets older, lines of normal skin aging.’
I don’t mention the lines I’m drawing in now, those lines that run down into the upper lip, the lines of a shrinking face, the most prominent aging marks on almost any face. I hope she doesn’t question me anymore.
‘Am I ugly, Jacques?’
This is asked in a very low voice.
‘No, Mirabelle, you are quite a handsome, mature woman. I’m sure you must have been a very pretty girl and a lovely young woman, as well. I’m quite proud and happy to be painting your portrait.’
I can say this and really mean it. There’s something mystical, almost childlike in her face, her voice, and all her moves, which denies her age. Maybe blindness helps people not get old too fast. Perhaps she’s been protected from so much of the distraction, the impact, the stress of ordinary city life, she’s been preserved in some way. There’s a strange quality, so fresh, new, clean, about her.
‘Do you think anybody could ever love me, Jacques? Be honest now, please.’
What a question! I finish up with the curvature of her cheek before I answer.
‘I love you, Mirabelle. You’re one of the finest, most intelligent, sensitive, and interesting people I’ve ever met. I enjoy your company. I feel like a better person when I’m with you. Does that answer your question?’
And I’m not lying.
‘Thank you, Jacques.’
I hope that’s the end of it.
‘But I mean, really love me; want to make love, faire l’amour with me. Do you think it is at all possible for some man to feel that way?’
Well, this stops me. Maybe I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear her. But I can’t, the intensity of her question demands an answer.
I sit back, look at her, look at the drawing. Actually, it’s coming along pretty well, considering everything. I’m beginning to realize there’s a young girl locked up in this old woman’s body. It seems sad. It’s like the pear.
‘It’s not impossible, Mirabelle. You are really a most attractive older woman. It is only because you are blind you do not have enough opportunity to make contact with enough men, and Rolande was so protective of you. I’m sure some intelligent man your age would want to have an intimate relationship with you.’
I lean forward to work again. How much more does she want? I’m surprised at how embarrassed I am. Then she comes straight out with it.
‘When I was younger, when I was thirty years old, I wanted very much to have a baby, to be a mother. I thought if I had my own child, maybe I would want to see it so much I could let myself see. I was sure that, given a chance, I could find a man who would make one with me, even though I was blind. He would not have to marry me, or even see me again, I didn’t care. I just wanted my own baby.
‘Oh, how I wish I knew you then, Jacques. But you would only have been a young boy in America. Ah, it can be difficult, these things, time is strange.
‘Rolande was so shocked, so angry. She said it was immoral and where did I get such ideas? She said I could not take care of a child, that I could not even take care of myself. She said all the responsibility would be hers. So I stopped talking about it, but I did not stop thinking about it.’
She stops, smiles, ‘looks’ at me, slightly turning her head in my direction.
‘And now it is too late. I am a virgin, Jacques, and I do not want to die a virgin. I feel I have great capacity for giving and receiving passionate love but I have never had a chance. It does not seem fair.’
There are tears rolling out those wrinkles from the sides of her eyes, and down the outside of her face. This is more than I can handle. I’m feeling sorry for her, at the same time I’m feeling boxed in. I try to keep my hand steady as I develop the line of her jaw.
I’ve stopped working. We’re staring into each other’s eyes. She, of course, can’t see me, and I’m not seeing her as a subject for a portrait. I guess I’m seeing her as a woman for the first time.
‘I know you are a good and kind man, Jacques, someone I can trust, or I could not talk to you like this. I am surprised at myself. Please forgive me.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive, Mirabelle. It must be terrible for you to be so alone. I must tell you, I’m a married man. I have a family, I love my wife, my children. Even though I am separated from them now, I feel responsible to them.’
There’s a long time while she’s quiet. She’s stopped crying. I lean back into the canvas, my drawing starts coming alive again. I wouldn’t think I could keep drawing with all the emotional stress I’m feeling.
‘I am sorry, Jacques. I did not know. We know so little of each other. While you are drawing me I should like to tell you something about myself. You deserve to know.’
Blind Reverie
It was so exciting for me when he called the Place Furstenberg ‘our’ painting. It is the way I felt myself, it was something we did together.
I do not think he particularly noticed when I suggested he could live with me, perhaps he did not believe what I was saying. I almost did not myself.
It is so strange being painted. I can almost sense myself being seen, I have a sensation of his eyes upon me. It made me feel very real. I could not help myself. I wanted so to know what he was actually seeing. And then, more, what I looked like to him, as a man, not only as an artist. Am I truly a woman, yet, still? I hope I did not scare him by almost offering myself, but I have known from the first moment we came together, this was a man I could love with all my body and soul, give of myself and feel gifted.
I must be more careful or he will be frightened away. I did not think he was married, at the same time, I could not think of a man like him being alone. He feels, seems, the way my father was, a true family man, a man a woman could love deeply.
I hope I am right in telling him about myself.
4
‘We were a very happy family in this house, Jacques. Perhaps it is only because my memories are so old, so worn down by wishes, by tears, that it seems so. Still, I remember many wonderful things.
‘My father worked in reliure, book binding. He had a beautiful reliure on the rue des Canettes. It had been the place of his father and his grandfather before him. He loved his work. Sometimes he would bring it home with him to share with us. It was wonderful to feel the smooth leather and rub our fingers over the mounds of string bindings and etching of titles on the spines of books.
‘He was kind to us. Always on Sundays and Mondays he took us to the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Parc Zoologique at Vincennes. He loved life, he loved us, and he loved our mother. I do not think it is only time which makes it seem this way. I remember so clearly. It is one of the things about being blind, there is not so much to cloud the vision one has of the past.
‘Our mother was a nervous woman, she was afraid of many things, but when my father was there, she was never afraid. We would row in the wooden boats in the Bois de Vincennes or in the Bois de Boulogne. We had picnics and played games. It was a very calm, beautiful life.
‘Then, when I was only ten years old, came the Great War. My father had to leave immediately. My mother cried for days. When she stopped crying, I never remember her smiling again, except when she received letters from my father, or on the two times he came home to us on leave.
‘My sister and I went to school at the Alsacienne on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Rolande was three classes ahead of me. We were happy students.
‘It was October eleventh and I was released from school three hours before Rolande, because she had piano lessons on that day. Each of us had our own key around our neck, under our uniforms. I had my books in my arms. All this I remember very well.
‘I came into the house, calling for Maman. It was the time when she always had a goûter for us. In the kitchen there was nothing. I could not imagine Mother not being home. She rarely went out, especially after Father was gone. I looked into each of our bedrooms and there was nothing. The door to the WC was open. I carefully knocked on the door to the room of my parents, then pushed the door open. There was nothing. I was beginning to be frightened. The only room left was the bathroom, la salle d’eau. I knocked and no one answered. I pushed open the door, it was not locked.
‘There was my mother. She was in the bathtub and the tub was filled with blood! Her eyes were open. I went down on my knees beside her. I still did not know what could have happened. I was so young. I had just had my fourteenth birthday and also had begun with my règles. My first thought was that somehow my mother had had her règles and was bleeding to death.
‘When I touched her she was cold. The blood in the tub was only slightly warmer. I saw the razor of my father on the edge of the tub. I still did not know, could not understand. I only wanted to lift my mother out of the blood. I reached down into the depths, staining my school uniform, and pulled the plug to let the blood and water drain. As it drained, my mother sagged into the depths of the tub. I started running fresh water, crying, screaming, but nobody came. I washed the blood from my mother, calling her name over and over, not her name but Maman, MAMAN!
‘When she was clean, I lifted her in my arms and somehow struggled to her bed. I stretched her out as best I could, crying and screaming all the time for help. I pulled her nightgown over her cold, naked body. I wanted so for everything to be all right again, for my mother to be warm, to speak to me. I remember I could not fit her arms into the sleeves, so I pulled the nightgown down over the tops of her arms. I opened the covers and slid her into the bed. I pulled off my own clothes, down to my chemise, and crept in beside her.
‘I wanted to warm her. I had seen the slits, the gaping wounds of her wrists, but they did not seem bad enough to kill. They were not bleeding and they were water-shriveled. My only thought was to hold her in my arms and make her living, warm again, bring her back. I held her to me and cried until I went to sleep.
‘When Rolande came home, that is how she found us. Afterward, she told me she almost backed out and closed the door, thinking we were only taking a nap, but then saw blood on the floor, went into the wet, still-blood-soaked bathroom, and came out screaming. She was three years older than I and knew enough to be aware that something terrible had happened.
‘She tried to waken us and I woke, saw her first, then looked over and saw the eyes of my mother, empty, staring, not seeing. It was the last thing I remember, the last time I saw. It was her eyes, open and not seeing. I did not want to see any more. Inside, I think I wanted to be like my mother, my eyes open but not seeing.
‘I do not remember the funeral. It was as if I were dead. I did not want to eat, to breathe, to live. In the bedroom, they found a telegram saying my father had been killed. It seemed everything I loved in life, my mother, my father, was gone, and I wanted to be gone, too.
‘The mother of my mother, our grandmother, came to live with us and take care of us. Her husband was also dead. She was always tired, and Rolande had to stop school before graduating, in her “Terminale,” and help with the house and help take care of me. When I was twenty, my grandmother died, too. The shock of losing her husband, then her only daughter, my mother, had killed something inside her.
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Уильям Уортон
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A middle-aged man abandons his corporate life to follow his dream to become a painter. On the way, he develops an unlikely but beautiful relationship with an older woman.Jack is a middle-aged American living as a squatter in a Paris attic. He paints in a public square and sells his work to survive. There he meets Mirabelle, a blind, 71-year-old, self-appointed pigeon lady who cares for the birds who flutter about his easel. Between Jack and Mirabelle springs a friendship that deepens into an improbable but impassioned love affair.