I knew what he meant. I was looking in the mirror, too, and I wasn’t there. A young man I didn’t know was looking back at me. My costume concealed the most obvious female curves. The wig I had bought at the theatrical supply store hid my soft auburn curls, and this darker brown hair hung loose to my shoulders. A mustache, also purchased there, was glued to my upper lip. A pair of spectacles completed the transformation. There were traces of my face left: the jut of the chin my father called impish, the lips that were almost too full to belong to a man.
But if you weren’t searching for Sandrine, you’d never see her, never recognize her. I was missing. And that was as it should be, for I wasn’t applying for admission to the école; Monsieur Verlaine was.
I took off the wig.
“What are you doing?” Julien asked. “It’s perfect the way it is.”
I picked up some scissors and cut my hair scandalously short, with the curls reaching just as far as my shoulders, the length only men wore theirs.
“The wig is too uncomfortable. This will work just as well.”
“Your voice?” he asked. “Sandrine, how are you disguising your voice?”
“When we put on plays at school, some of us had to take on the male roles. Since I’m tall, I got more than my share. To create the illusion we really were men, our teacher taught us to how to speak from our diaphragms in a lower register. Most of us couldn’t fool anyone, but my voice is deep to begin with, so it was easier for me. All that practice, according to your response, seems to have paid off, yes?”
With Julien accompanying me, I had no trouble being shown to the admissions director’s office at the école des Beaux-Arts. Julien introduced me as Monsieur Verlaine, and Monsieur Girraud didn’t give my appearance a second glance. He welcomed me and proceeded to rifle through my portfolio. At first he hurried, but then he slowed and really examined the drawings and paintings.
As he did, I tried not to think about the painters who taught here and how much I wanted to study with them. Especially the symbolist Moreau. He would know how to help me invoke the visions that I had been seeing both waking and sleeping since coming to Paris.
“Where have you studied?” Girraud asked.
“In New York City at the Art Students League,” I said, speaking in my best mock male voice, naming the institution that I had walked by dozens of times without much interest.
“These do indeed show promise and skill. A certain force that is unusual. There’s no doubt you have talent, but you would be coming in halfway through the year, and all our classes are full. A stumbling block, you see?”
“It would be a favor to me, Girraud, for you to consider making an exception,” Julien said. “Since his accident, Monsieur Verlaine has been disconsolate.” He gestured to my hand, which I’d wrapped in a linen bandage, suggesting a calamity.
Julien continued: “It was my idea for him to come and get his hand back in practice, and I would feel terrible for having encouraged him to apply if you were to dismiss the request so rapidly.”
Girraud closed the portfolio. “All right. I won’t make the decision on my own. Let’s show your work to Monsieur Moreau.”
I was more than pleased he’d mentioned the one teacher I’d wanted most of all. As we set off, the three of us down the august hallways of one of the greatest art schools in the world, I thought of my father and how much he’d appreciate this scene. And how excited he’d be for me, knowing I was about to meet and speak with a painter whose work we’d both admired. Moreau was the best-known symbolist of the time. He concentrated on religious, historical, and mystical mythical subjects, the kind that appealed to my father and to me. A Moreau painting of Leda and the Swan was hanging in our Fifth Avenue home in my own bedroom. For my twenty-first birthday my father had given me a choice of a painting done by any living artist, and I’d chosen Moreau. Now I was going to be given the chance to meet him, and I hoped I could convince him to take me under his painterly wing.
My hands were trembling, and the portfolio shook.
“Moreau has stirred a lot of controversy,” Girraud said as we turned a corner. “He treats historical art tradition as a mystery religion or cult of the dead, and his poetic interpretations have tried critics’ souls. There is still much discussion over his theoretical approaches to subject matter, but as a teacher he is committed to his students’ mastery of the human form, as we all are, and seems to have quite a gift for bringing out what is best in each student as opposed to pushing them into a uniform style.”
We’d reached an enormous room covered by a glass roof supported by an ornate metal structure. The walls were painted in a wonderful Pompeii red-orange. Light poured into the grand space and illuminated the terra-cotta floor tiles so that they appeared to be on fire.
More than a dozen rows of plaster casts of famous sculptures created aisles. I counted six full-size horses, eight Greek and Roman warriors, a dozen gods and goddesses, several copies of treasures from the Louvre like Winged Victory, and too many academic plasters to count.
The room was so beautiful and overwhelming that at first I didn’t notice a group of men at the far end, each standing in front of his own easel, painting from life. The nude on the raised platform was posed like Diana, goddess of the hunt, whose visage was all over Maison de la Lune. The artists were so quiet they might have passed for more of the sculptures if only their hands had been still.
An older man with a heavy white beard and a dark, rumpled suit stood beside one of the students, pointing to his canvas and speaking in a quiet voice.
He looked familiar, but at first I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t until we approached and I could hear his voice that I realized I had seen this very man in the Louvre, talking in a similar way to a student who was copying the Witch of Endor painting by Rosa.
“Monsieur Moreau?” Girraud said, interrupting.
Moreau turned, excused himself from his student, and came over to our small group. Introductions were made.
After hearing Girraud’s explanation for the interruption, Moreau looked at me with deeply penetrating brown eyes. I could see sadness there. He, too, had loved someone who had died. Two people. Recently. His mother and a lover.
I felt a trickle of perspiration travel down my back. How did I know that?
“Any artist who studies with me walks a difficult path. Are you sure you are prepared to embark upon it?” he asked.
My throat was so dry, the words came out as a croak. “Yes, yes, I am.”
I’d spent so much time visiting galleries and museums with my father, never dreaming of creating art, just happy to be enjoying it. Now he was gone, and all that mattered to me was learning how to paint. As if my very existence depended on it.
“Then let me see what you have,” he said kindly.
I offered my portfolio with a hand that still trembled. Everything depended on what this one man thought.
Moreau studied La Lune’s work even more carefully than Girraud had. He examined the first drawing for a long time. Then the next. Scrutinizing a third, he stroked his beard while Girraud explained about my hand. Only after Moreau had studied the canvases, did he turn his gaze to me.
Did he somehow know that I hadn’t painted them? No, that was impossible. Then what was it? What was he trying so hard to figure out?
“There is a lot you need to address. For instance, here”—he pointed to the thigh section of a seated nude in one of the drawings—“the articulation is awkward. From your sketches I can see that you know your anatomy, which is good. Nudes are part of the academic repertoire. But your technique is a bit tentative and sometimes lazy. Your composition is interesting. You have a solid classical sensibility but no unique style. You need to be developing one that is wholly your own. How long have you been studying?”
“Five years, Monsieur.”
“Where?”
“In New York City.”
Moreau once more returned his attention to the canvases.
Julien glanced at me. I met his gaze. His expression was curious. Was he warning me about something? I couldn’t read his face well enough to know.
“Where do your interests lie?” Moreau asked.
Until he asked, I would not have had an answer, but there it was. “I’m interested, like you, in allegorical work.”
“Really? You want to paint l’art épique?”