“Surely everything I need is here. If I only knew how to mix paints.” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
“Monsieur Sennelier’s store is not far from here. He has premixed paint in tubes. All the artists buy from him. I can walk you over and introduce you.”
But how could I buy anything? I’d spent most of the little money I’d brought with me from America and couldn’t use credit in a store where I was not yet known. I could ask my grandmother for some spending money—but that could mean I’d have to tell her about my plan. I didn’t know why but was sure she’d be against my taking lessons.
I dropped down on the bed, my excitement and enthusiasm evaporating. I put my head in my hands. My plan suddenly seemed impossible.
Monsieur Duplessi pulled up a chair and sat opposite me.
“What is wrong?”
“My father always said that I was curious and impulsive. One trait would help more than it harmed. The other would do exactly the opposite.”
“And which is it that is bothering you now? Your curiosity or your impulsiveness?”
His eyes were lively, and he seemed interested in my dilemma. I didn’t mind explaining about the money and the other issues.
“So I haven’t really thought everything through. And there are so many obstacles in my path. Even if I could get the money, what I want is to study at the école, but they don’t take women. I know I can take private classes, but I don’t want to. I have to be at the école.”
I knew I sounded like a petulant child.
“Why does that matter so much to you?”
“I don’t know. But it does. I just have a sense . . .” I stopped, afraid for the moment to reveal what I was thinking.
“What kind of sense?”
“Do you believe in destiny?”
An uncomfortable worry appeared in his eyes.
“I’m not certain. Perhaps I do but wish I did not.”
I laughed. “A strange answer.”
“Some of my clients put great faith in things like destiny, and we’ve had our share of disagreements over it.”
“My father and I used to talk about fate as a philosophical construct, my father coming down against predeterminism, although it fascinated him. I agreed and, until coming to Paris, never sensed that anything that was happening to me was predestined.”
“But since you’ve come to Paris?”
“I feel as if I’m following a path that is somehow inevitable. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I’m not much of a believer in religion, the mysterious, or the esoteric. It makes me uncomfortable to think there are other forces operating that we have no control over. I can accept nature as a force I can’t control, but psychics, séances, and ghosts?” He shook his head. “I don’t even believe in God, which is not a stance as revolutionary here in France as I believe it is in America. I think that’s why I like architecture. It’s A plus B equals C. It’s all based on the laws of physics and engineering. One draws up plans, purchases wood, stone, tiles . . . mixes the concrete and the plaster . . . hires the men to build it, and voilà.”
“But there’s inspiration, isn’t there?”
“Ah, yes, divine inspiration.” He laughed. “No, inspiration isn’t magic; it’s discipline. If you develop your powers of observation, ideas are all around you. Really studying just one tree can inspire my designs for an entire house, inside and out.”
I was still seated on the daybed, and Monsieur Duplessi was still in the chair he’d pulled up, facing me. Behind him was an old mirror spotted with mercury. When I glanced into it, he was all I could see, sitting there, his back in the mirror. I wasn’t visible at all; his form obscured me. So it looked as if he were all alone, a man alone in the tower.
I knew how I could attend the école.
I got up off the bed, ran over to the north wall, and began riffling through the stacks of paintings.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“You studied at the école, didn’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I did.”
“Do you know anyone there who might make an exception and let someone in even though the new session has started?”
“I know many people there, yes. But you can’t study there, Mademoiselle Verlaine.”
“I’m a woman, I know. But I have a plan.”
I continued sifting through the canvases. I needed ones that were not too finished. That someone might believe had been painted by a student. I was searching for early portraits of the man painted by LL before her style was fully developed, when she still wasn’t very proficient.
I lined that side of the room with a half dozen portraits of the man I believed was Cherubino—painted, I thought, by the courtesan La Lune. After brushing the dust off my skirts, I stepped back and examined them. Monsieur Duplessi joined me.
“What are you going to do with these paintings?”
“The student you are going to introduce to the admissions office is going to present them as samples.”
“Even if you could convince them to accept you, what will happen when you start to paint and can’t reach this level of accomplishment?” He pointed to the portraits. “Do you know how to paint at all?”
“I took both drawing and painting at finishing school. My teachers always told me I had talent, but I was too impatient . . . until now.”
“But can you come close to this level of achievement? My credibility is at stake. Introducing you to these men is serious business.”
“I will not embarrass you, I promise.”
I don’t know why I was so certain that I would rise to the challenge and be a quick study, but I was.
Monsieur Duplessi was still looking at me skeptically.
“Please don’t worry. I have a plan.”
“So you said.”
“We’re going to tell them I broke my wrist and my fingers in a horseback riding accident last spring and that I am learning all over again. That this is how I had been painting and need to relearn.” The fiction came so easily.
“But there’s another problem, no?” he asked, pointing to the paintings.
I examined them, unsure of what he meant. And then felt a flush creep up my neck and reach my cheeks. Yes, there was a problem. The paintings were far too sensual. La Lune had painted Cherubino Cellini with lust. It was layered into her glazes. It saturated her colors. And I was going to be applying as a man.
Aware of Monsieur Duplessi’s presence close to me, I was overwhelmed with the desire to turn and look at him. I refrained, but he turned away from the paintings and in my direction. Then I faced him. I almost took a step toward him, but couldn’t.
“What are you afraid of?” he whispered.
How had he known, even before I had, that I was afraid? And why was I afraid?
I wanted to draw him. To capture his elegant long neck, the graceful slope of his shoulders, his hair falling in curls over his forehead, his right eyebrow arching just a hint and making him look slightly devilish. He was so long and lithe, bending toward me just a hint, like a willow reaching toward a lake. I wanted to learn his face so that I could paint it and have it with me forever. So that from this moment on, whenever I was lonely or lost, I could gaze at the portrait and remember how he was looking at me and know that, for a moment, a man who was this exquisite had wanted me.
But why did wanting to paint him frighten me?
Because it wasn’t all I wanted. I wanted him to touch me, but was afraid that if he did, I would feel nothing, the way I felt nothing when my husband touched me. I didn’t need more proof that I was incapable of passion. I had years of it.
The daybed was behind us. The pillows on it smelled fresh and sweet, as if they’d been scented that morning. I imagined us falling against them. I’d open his shirt buttons. Feel his warm flesh on my fingers. He would touch his lips to mine.