“I’ve done it, Elise,” he said, his eyes burning with something different now, something like hope. “Come see.”
She set down her dishrag and walked after her husband, realizing as she moved in his shadow that she would follow him anywhere. Was that a sign of strength or weakness, the fierce loving of someone who didn’t let you in? He took her hand and smiled at her, a real smile, not one twisted with the anguish and fire of chasing a cause, and then opened the door to his studio.
The acrid smell of fresh paint assaulted her nose and made her stomach lurch, a side effect of pregnancy that had startled her when it first appeared, but as she followed him into the room, she quickly forgot the discomfort as she gazed around in awe.
There were four large easels set up, one in each corner of the studio, each holding a large canvas. What Olivier had painted on them over the course of the past few days was breathtaking.
In the north corner of the room, a tangle of broken chains snaked through a burning battleground, a discarded Phrygian cap, the color of blood, with its singular bent apex, in the corner of the frame, smoke rising from it. “Liberté,” Elise murmured, turning to the painting in the east corner, which seemed set on the same flaming field, the French Revolution’s winged woman rising from the ashes, a teardrop of blood falling from her right eye as she reached in vain for a stone tablet. “?galité,” Elise said, turning once more, to the painting in the south corner. In it, a bundle of rods wrapped in torn ribbons of blue, white, and red, representing France, sat in the center of the fiery field, the symbol of unity born from the French Revolution, representing the strength of togetherness. But in Olivier’s painting, the rods were burning, and the soldiers standing around the bundle were tossing logs into a pyre, feeding the flames. “Fraternité,” she whispered.
But it was the fourth painting, the one in the west corner of the room, that left her short of breath. It was a heavily pregnant woman, standing in the same burning battlefield, one hand on her rounded belly, the other clutching a sickle by her side as she looked toward a rising sun to the east. From this angle, one could see that beyond the battlefield lay endless fields of grain. From the woman’s eyes fell tiny red tears in the shape of stars, forming a pool of blood beneath her feet. She was looking skyward, her face anguished, toward dark clouds gathering on a sunrise horizon. It was the most overtly communist thing Olivier had ever painted—the stars and sickle left no doubt—and though it was stunningly beautiful, it would spell the end of Olivier’s career, and perhaps even his life, if it was ever displayed.
“You can’t.…” It was all Elise could manage to say as she turned to him, her eyes damp, her heart thudding with something she couldn’t quite name.
“Why can’t I?” Olivier asked, his voice low and thrumming with anger.
“You will put yourself in danger,” she said at last. She looked back at the woman in the field. “You will put us in danger.”
Olivier took a step closer and folded his hand around hers, following her gaze to the painting. “She is you, you know. You were the inspiration. You inspire me.”
The woman didn’t look like Elise, except for the swollen belly, and she wondered if the words were a lie to placate her. She wanted to be by her husband’s side, fighting for France, fighting for a path forward, but this wasn’t the way. This was a road that would destroy them both and harm their unborn child in the process, for if the baby was born into a world in which his parents were marked as traitors, there would only be grief and despair ahead. Already, there were rumblings that Daladier’s government would ban communist propaganda, perhaps even impose the death penalty for those found guilty of creating it. And while the first three paintings could be construed as nationalist, the fourth was undoubtedly a nod to Moscow. “No,” she said. “No, my love, you have not painted me. I would protect my baby at all costs.”
“But don’t you see, Elise? That’s what I’m trying to do!” He pulled away from her, raking both hands through his thick hair, disappointment radiating from him. “You act like this art is selfish, but it is what is inside me, Elise, all of it. It is what I’m called to do. It’s my duty.”
“But your duty has already alienated you from your peers,” she said. “Your dedication to the party and their ideals of art and culture have forced us out of the circles we used to be a part of. Think of what Picasso said the last time we were there!”
When Elise had first arrived in Paris, she had been welcomed with open arms at the studio of the famed Spanish painter on the rue des Grands-Augustins. Olivier hadn’t been part of Picasso’s inner circle, exactly, but he’d been an accepted member of Paris’s artistic community. Elise used to dream that one day, the artists who gathered in Picasso’s salon would see her as belonging, too, but in that orbit, women were too often treated as subjects rather than creators, with few exceptions. She had said that to Olivier once, and he had bristled, defending Picasso and bringing up Picasso’s respect for his partner, photographer Dora Maar, as an example; but as Olivier’s relationship with the painter had soured over their difference of opinion about art as a social statement, he had admitted to Elise that he’d seen her point.
Anger flashed across Olivier’s face. “They’re all communists, too, Elise, even if they can’t admit it to themselves.”
“Do you even know what you’re fighting for, Olivier? Do you even understand this movement you seem so willing to lay your life down for?”
Olivier didn’t seem to hear her. “Pablo has André Gide in his ear anyhow, mumbling about censorship and freedom.”
As she looked around at the paintings again, she felt the baby stir. Until now, Olivier had kept his communist leanings to himself, attending party meetings in secret, managing to keep the imagery out of his art. But letting the world see this painting, as the continent slid into war, would put them in great danger. She imagined this moment as a tiny snowball clutched in Olivier’s fist at the top of a mountain. If she let him release it, it would roll down the incline, gathering size and speed, until it flattened and destroyed everything in its path.
“Olivier…” she began, reaching for him, and then his lips were on hers, and his hands were under the cool cotton of her nightgown, ice on her hot skin, and as he led her from the studio toward the bedroom, his fingers painted the curves of her body, and she forgot, as she often did, just what she was fighting for. As he fell on top of her on their bed, pulling her gown over her head and tangling his fingers in her long hair, she pulled him closer, imagining that with the warmth of her body, she could keep them all safe against the gathering storm.
* * *
Later, Olivier snored peacefully beside Elise while she wiped tears of despair away. He only seemed to see her these days when he wanted the closeness of her; at all other times, his indifference cut her to the core.
She owed Olivier everything, and perhaps that was what made it so difficult when it felt to her, sometimes, that he was trying to erase her.
When they’d met at a meeting of the Artists Union in New York, back in 1935, she’d only been in the city for a couple of years. She was trying to make her way as a clay sculptor, but the Depression had hit artists hard, and she was barely scraping by. She knew she had more in her, but she couldn’t seem to coax her visions from the clay. She’d been on the verge of giving up and returning to Kansas, where her only living family member, her great-aunt Berthe, had told her she would be welcome as long as she pitched in around the farm. It would have meant giving up her dream, but perhaps it was the responsible thing to do.
She’s been attending Artists Union meetings every Wednesday night for more than a year, hopeful that she’d feel inspired by being among a group of her peers, praying that their advocacy for government funding of the visual arts would buy her more time. But at those meetings, she often felt overwhelmed, out of her depth. Artists like Byron Browne, Bernarda Bryson, and Annelies Cash were already doing incredible things, and who was she? Just some nobody from Kansas with oversize dreams and a dwindling bank account.
But then Olivier LeClair—already a big name in the Parisian art scene—had appeared at her side. He was in town for an exhibition of his work at the new Museum of Modern Art, and he had come to the Artists Union meeting to see what it was all about. Everyone knew who he was, of course, and so Elise was acutely aware of him as the crowd shifted, parting like the Red Sea. Somehow, he wound up standing beside her as Byron droned on and on about government responsibility in work relief for artists.