I gasped. Julien’s sinuous body was as beautiful as any of the paintings or sculptures I’d seen in the Louvre. But those weren’t living, breathing, flesh and blood men. I’d never seen a completely naked man before. Certainly never one who was aroused. I’d felt my husband inside of me—quickly and furiously pleasuring himself—but I’d never seen him in those moments and never wanted to. His attentions were just something I had had to endure. Now, I luxuriated in the sight of Julien’s naked body.
Slowly, achingly slowly, he lowered himself down on top of me until his whole body was touching my whole body. His lips covered mine, and as he kissed me, he slid inside of me so very, very slowly that I thought I might scream with anticipation. So this was what it felt like to be deeply and perfectly connected. We could not be any more entwined. I was breathing in Julien’s breath, and he was breathing in mine. His body filled the space inside of me completely and utterly.
And then he began to move.
Gently, he pulled out and then just as gently slid back inside. Again. And again. I opened my eyes. Looked at his face suffused with desire. His lips thicker. His skin slicked with perspiration. His eyes shut. His concentration all on the few inches of skin where he lay inside me and I enclosed him.
“Now,” he whispered to me. He said it again and added my name. “Now, Sandrine.” But by then I had lost all sense of who I was or where I was. I was flying through sky; stars were falling around me; I could hear the earth spin and the ocean roar. There was no way I could speak, or even keep thinking. I’d become nothing but sensation.
As everything exploded inside me, while I was still rocking, I thought I smelled the fragrance of roses and burning wood, and I thought I could hear an ever-so-slight hum from the tower’s ancient bells, as if our coming together was making them sway in contentment.
Chapter 14
The next few days brought huge changes. Taking my place among Moreau’s students at the école, I created quite a stir. News had spread quickly that a woman had been admitted and even though I was dressed the same as all the men, wherever I went heads turned.
After class, I would rush back to Maison de La Lune where Julien would be waiting and we would drink wine and make love. Afterward I’d dress in the clothes my grandmother expected to see me in and return to her apartment on rue de las Chaise.
At the end of the week, I arrived home to two pieces of terrible news. Grand-mère’s uncle had died that afternoon, and she had received a telegram from Mr. Lissauer in New York City.
I read it with a shaking hand. Benjamin, the lawyer wrote, had been to visit him again, now demanding information about my father’s family, looking for the names of even distant or estranged relatives who I might have turned to for sanctuary. Mr. Lissauer insisted he knew of none. Benjamin swore to do whatever it took to learn my whereabouts and left the lawyer’s office much aggrieved.
I was trembling by the time I finished reading it. Benjamin’s presence was suddenly there with us in the room, looming large and threatening. Try as I might, I was not sure I believed Grand-mère when she told me that Monsieur Lissauer would never betray my father’s trust in him.
In retrospect, agreeing to go with my grandmother to her uncle’s funeral the next day was a terrible mistake. How did I not realize that the service would sharpen the pain of my father’s death? I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d been so disturbed by the telegram, by the knowledge that my husband had stepped up his hunt for me, I was almost childlike in not wanting to leave my grandmother’s side.
Temple Emanu-El in New York City, which my family occasionally attended, and which was the most famous and elegant in all of Manhattan, was not as grand as the magnificent synagogue on rue Buffault by half. This house of worship was worthy of royalty. Everywhere was gilt and silver, gas lamps and candles. Everywhere, there was a glow, a shimmer. If God existed, and my father and I had never been certain he did, surely he would visit here and be impressed by the home he was offered.
Upstairs in the women’s section of the synagogue, all the mourners reminded me that loss was an inevitable reality. There was no escaping it. There were only ways to push it aside, hide it behind locked doors, but eventually it seeped out, its pain fresh and raw as if it were new.
Buffeted by feelings, I was not sure how I was going to survive the day. Then I remembered Moreau’s lecture about capturing not just the shapes and forms but also the emotion of the body. The most difficult lesson, he said, was learning to draw through pain and with pain.
I pulled a small sketchbook out of my reticule and began to draw the face of a woman mourner who sat in such a way I was able to include some of the architectural elements of the temple.
Grand-mère glanced at me. “What are you doing?” On her face was an expression of deep concern. Almost horror, I thought.
“I’m sorry if you think it’s rude. But it’s so hard to sit here . . . to see all this sadness . . . to think of Papa . . .”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean,” my grandmother said in an annoyed tone of voice. She pointed to my hands.
“I’m just sketching.”
“But why?”
“Why not? I’ve been spending so much time at museums. Everywhere I go there are artists and galleries and talk of this painter and that, and it both interests me and occupies me.”
She was staring at my drawing, and I knew what she was seeing. I knew how good I had become. And far too quickly. In class, the studies I was doing were getting better every day. Boring though they might be—I was just painting the model as she or he stood or sat or lay on the platform—my work was improving daily. Moreau didn’t question it—he had seen the paintings I’d presented as mine, the nude studies I’d taken from the studio. He expected me to excel as my wrist healed. But Julien had been astonished by my progress when I’d showed him what I had done in class. More than once he had asked me if it was really true that I had not been painting all along and just hid it from him. I assured him that I never had studied seriously. And when he asked how I could explain my ability, I told him I couldn’t.
“But if you are doing it here, now, this is no hobby,” Grand-mère said.
“What do you mean?” I asked
“You are obsessed, aren’t you? I’ve seen this affliction. I know about it. She—” My grandmother stopped herself from what she was about to say, paused, and then continued. “No, this is not good for you. I don’t like it, Sandrine. It’s not healthy.”
I was about to argue when the organ music began. I continued sketching, though. Suddenly my pencil was drawing something I wasn’t seeing in front of me but imagining. I’d experienced this twice in class. It had made me excited and afraid then and was having the same effect on me now.
Even though this image was coming from my own mind, it seemed foreign. I was drawing a gaunt creature with large sad eyes, dripping tears that, even though I only had a graphite pencil, I knew were tears of blood. And as I drew, I heard words . . . her ruby-red words flowing . . . flowing like blood . . . as she whispered to me. I understood the words but not their meaning, but I used them as part of the composition, weaving each letter of each word into her long curls, into the fabric of her elaborate skirt.
Finally to love. Finally to end the pain. Finally to find the secrets of my soul.
I was still filling in the garments when my grandmother put one of her gloved hands on the tiny sketchbook, and with her other hand took the pencil from mine and put it in her purse.
“I said enough.”