The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves Page 41

The outside of his studio building in the rue Lamartine is unprepossessing. She sits looking at it from her carriage. She has told herself since yesterday that she will bring her maid up with her. But at the last minute, before leaving her house, she realizes she wants no witness at all. Her unnecessary note to the housekeeper explains that she will be calling on a friend and orders a tray to be taken up to her father-in-law at midday.

The facade of the building is thoroughly real, and she swallows hard under the bow of her bonnet; she has tied it too tightly. Late morning--the streets are full of the bustle of carriages, the heavy clopping of paired horses, the delivery wagons. Waiters push the chairs outside their cafes into straight lines, and an old woman sweeps up rubbish at the curb. Beatrice watches as the woman, who wears tattered gloves and a patched skirt, accepts a few coins from a man in a long apron and moves on down the street with broom and pail.

The note in Beatrice's little bag contains a street number and a sketch of the building. His invitation is to see a new large canvas, which he would like to send to the Salon jury next week, so that she must view it now or wait until then--and who knows if it will be accepted? It is a flimsy pretext; she will see the painting later with Yves, she knows, whether or not it is hung in the Salon. But Olivier has mentioned the submission several times, an unwieldy canvas, his uncertainty. The thought of the painting, his struggles with it, have become their mutual concern, almost a shared project. It is the portrait of a young woman, he has most recently told her. Beatrice dares not ask who she is -- a model, no doubt. He has also thought about sending an earlier landscape instead. She knows all this and feels the pride of involvement, of being consulted--that is her thin justification for appearing alone there in a new bonnet. Besides, it is not as if she is going to see him at his home; he has only lured her to his studio, and perhaps there will be others there as well, taking refreshments and studying the paintings.

She excuses the carriage for an hour and lifts her skirts to descend. She has dressed herself in a walking suit the color of plums, and over it a cloak of blue wool trimmed with gray fur. Her bonnet goes with the cloak; it has the new shape for hats, in blue velvet lined with silver and heavy with blue silk forget-me-nots, chicory, lupine--marvelously real, like a hat decorated in a field. The mirror at home has told her that her cheeks are already flushed, her eyes bright with something like guilt.

She watches her own foot in black leather leave the carriage first, step onto the paving stones, avoiding some slimy water. This is a part of town where some of the troubles occurred, she realizes, and tries to imagine it eight years before, piled with barricades and perhaps even bodies, but her imagination will not quite be diverted; she is thinking only about the man waiting for her somewhere above. Can he see her? She is careful not to glance up again. With skirts gathered in one gloved hand, she makes her way to the entrance, knocks, then realizes that she must simply walk in--there is no servant to answer. Inside, a worn staircase leads her to the third floor, to his studio. None of the closed doors on the other floors open as she passes them. She stands looking at his name and catching her breath--her stays are tight--before knocking.

Olivier answers at once, as if he has been just behind the door, listening for her, and they regard each other without speaking. They have not been face-to-face in more than a week, and during that time something has deepened between them. Their eyes meet, inevitably, across this knowledge, and she sees that he is aware of the change. For her part, she feels the shock of his age, because she hasn't seen him recently and she knows him more and more as a man, objectively; he is handsome, only a little past middle age, but there are deep vertical lines from the corners of his nose to the corners of his mouth and beneath his eyes, and his hair is pale silver.

Under his face she sees the younger man he must once have been, and this young man gazes back at her as if through a mask he never wanted to wear, vulnerable and expressive, revealing eyes still bright--but not as they must once have been; they droop redly in the lower rims and their blue is compromised, diluted. He has combed his hair away from a pink parting, which she can see when he bows over her hand. His beard still has some brown in it, a warmth at the roots, and his lips are also warm as they touch the back of her hand. In their brief contact, she feels his essence--neither the boy in love looking out of his eyes nor the aging man. She feels instead the artist himself, ageless and in the midst of a long accumulated life. His presence goes through her like the unexpected sound of a bell, so that she cannot catch her breath after all.

"Please, come in," he says. "Entrez, je vous en prie. My studio." He does not call her "tu." He holds the door for her, and she realizes now that he is wearing an old suit, shabbier than what she has seen him in before, with an open linen smock over the jacket. The sleeves of the smock are rolled back, as if they are too long even for him. His white shirt has a few spatters of paint on the breast, and his four-in-hand tie is black silk, also threadbare. He has not dressed up for her visit; he is allowing her to know him as he actually works. She passes into the room, noting that no one else is there, feeling his proximity at the door. He shuts it behind her gently, as if not wishing to draw attention to the point they both understand, the possible compromise to their two reputations. The door is shut. It is done. She wishes she felt more regret, more shame; she reminds herself that the outside world can still consider him merely a relative, a dignified elder who might well invite his nephew's wife to see a painting.

But it is as if instead of shutting a door he has opened one, making a long space of daylight and air between them. After a moment, he moves, saying, "May I take your cloak?"

She remembers the ordinary gestures, unties her bonnet and lifts it straight up and off so as not to disarrange the coils of her hair. She unfastens her cloak at the throat and folds it once, vertically, inside out, to protect the delicate fur. She hands him both, and he carries them away through another door. Standing alone in the studio, she feels the increased intimacy of a room without its occupant. It is full of light from long windows, clean inside and badly streaked on the outside, and there is an ornate skylight above her. She can hear the sounds of the street below--muffled thumps; rattling, screeching iron; horses' hooves -- all so faint that there is no need for her to believe in its existence anymore, nor to think about her coachman taking a hot drink at a stable up the street, where perhaps he knows other coachmen and will not think of her for an hour. Olivier returns and gestures toward his paintings; she has deliberately not looked at them. "I have censored nothing," he says. "You are a fellow artist." He says it without ostentation, almost shyly, and she smiles and glances away.

"Thank you. You have done me an honor by leaving your studio as it is." But she needs some courage to view the paintings.

He points. "Here is the one that hung in the Salon last year. Perhaps you remember it, if I am not flattering myself." She remembers well; it is a landscape three or four hand-lengths across, a subtle piece, a floating field with a layer of white and yellow flowers on the surface, a cow grazing at the far edge, brown trees mixed with green. It is a little bit old-fashioned, rather in the style of Corot, she thinks, and chides herself--he paints the way he has always painted, and he is good. But it is another reminder of the years that separate them. "You like it, but you think it passe," he says.

"No, no," she protests, but he puts up a hand to stop her.

"Between friends," he says, "there can be only honesty." His eyes are very blue; why has she thought them old? Now they radiate a vigor that is better than mere youth.

"Very well," she says. "Then I like the bravery of this one more." She has turned to a large canvas standing on the floor. "Is that the one you will submit?"

"No, alas." He is laughing now--the reality of his body next to hers. As long as she doesn't actually look at him, she feels again the presence of the young man inside that body. "This one is a little too brave, as you say--they might not take it." The painting shows a tree in the foreground, a fellow in an elegant suit and hat seated beneath it on the grass, his legs crossed negligently and his long hands hanging down over his knee. It is done in a skillful perspective that makes her want to walk around behind the tree to see what is on the other side. The brushwork is more modern than that in the cow painting--here she can see an influence.

"This one shows an admiration of the work of Monsieur Manet?"

"A grudging admiration, my dear, yes. You have a sharp eye. At the Salon, they might say that it is offensive because it has no purpose."

"Who is the boy?"

"The son I never had." He speaks lightly, but she studies his face, feeling puzzled, afraid of revelations. "Oh, I simply think of him that way--my godson from Normandy, who lives in Paris now--I see him several times a year, and we go for a long walk or two. A dear boy, son of some young friends. He will make a good doctor in a few years--he studies incessantly. I am the only one who can get him out to the country for exercise, and I believe he thinks it does me good, his poor old godfather--that's why he goes, pretending to take my orders for his health. Thus each of us attempts to fool the other."

"It's very fine," she says in earnest.

"Ah, well." He touches her plum-colored sleeve. "Come, I'll show you the rest, and then we'll have some tea."

The other paintings are harder for her to look at, but she does it unflinchingly; models half-dressed, the back of a nude woman, graceful, unfinished--does that mean the woman will return to the studio one of these days and take off her clothes for him again? Has she ever been his lover? Isn't that the way of artists? She tries not to think of it except as a fellow painter, not to mind. Models are often women of loose conduct, as everyone knows, but she herself has come alone to a man's private rooms, his studio -- is she any better? She hardens herself against her own fear and turns to examine his still lifes, fruit and flowers, which he explains are youthful works. To her they appear a little dull, but skillful, delicate; she sees the Old Masters. "I had been to Holland just before I painted these," he says. "I took them out the other day to see how they had held up. They are antiques, aren't they?"

She is careful not to answer. "And your submission for this year? Have I seen it?"

"Not yet." He crosses the long room, beyond the two shabby armchairs and little round table where, she assumes, he will serve tea. Leaning against the wall is a canvas draped in cloth, a large one; he has to lift it with both hands. He leans it against a chair. "You are sure you want to?"

For the first time she is frightened, almost afraid of the man himself, this familiar figure whom she understands now in a wholly new way because of his letters, his forthrightness, the revelation of himself, the strange response of her own heart as she stands at his shoulder. She turns to him questioningly but can't think of the question. Why is he hesitant to show her his painting? Perhaps it is a genuinely shocking nude or some other subject she can't imagine. She has a sense of her husband's presence, disapproving, his arms folded to indicate that she has gone too far. But Olivier has told her in his letter that Yves wants her to see this painting. She doesn't know what to think or say.

When Olivier lifts the sheet, she catches her breath, the sound audible to them both. It is her painting, her golden-haired maid seated at work, her own rose-colored sofa, the brushwork she tried to make loose and free and yet seeing, all-seeing. "You understand why I have chosen this one to submit to the Salon this year," he says. "It is by a better artist than I."

She puts her hands to her face, and her vision is smeared, embarrassingly, with tears. "What do you mean?" Her own voice sounds weak in her ears. "Are you playing with me?"

He turns to her, swift in his concern. "No, no--I didn't mean to offend you. I took it home with me last week, after you had said good night to us. You must let me submit it for you. Yves approves completely and asks only that you protect your privacy a little by using another name. But it is remarkable--you have merged in it something old and something very new. When you showed it to me, I understood that the jury must see this painting, even if it turns out to be too modern for them. I wanted only to persuade you."

"And Yves knows that you took it?" She somehow does not want to say her husband's name here, in this other man's rooms.

"Yes, of course. I asked him first, but not you--I knew he would say yes and you would say no."

"I do say no," she tells him, and the tears brim over and run down her face. She is humiliated, she who seldom cries, even in front of her husband. She can't explain how it feels to see this private painting in strange surroundings, or--above all--to hear it praised. She wipes her face, searches for a handkerchief in the velvet bag at her wrist. He has moved closer, pulling something from inside his jacket. Now he is carefully wiping her face--patting, drying, arranging with hands that have spent years holding brush and pencil and palette knife. He takes her elbows deliberately in his cupped palms, as if weighing them, and then he draws her toward him.

For the first time she puts her head against his neck, his cheek, feeling that it is permissible to both of them because he is comforting her. He strokes her hair and the back of her neck, and at his touch a network of cool strands runs down it. His fingertips move over the mass of braids at the back of her head, touching them without disturbing their meticulous arrangement, and his arm goes around her shoulders. He pulls her against his chest, so that she has to put one hand on his back to steady herself. He strokes her cheek, her ear; he has already come very close, so that his mouth finds her mouth before his hand does. His lips are warm and dry but rather thick, like softened leather, and his breath tastes of coffee and bread. She has been kissed many times, but only by Yves, so it is the alien nature of these new lips she understands first; only after that does she realize that these lips are more skilled than her husband's, more insistent.

The impossibility of his kissing her and of her wanting him to kiss her puts a wave of heat into her face and down her neck, a fist clenching inside her, desire that she hasn't known before to associate with desire. He holds her by the upper arms now, as if afraid she will pull away. His grip is strong, and again she feels the years when she hasn't known him, when he built up that strength simply by living and working.

"I can't let you," she tries to say, but the words disappear under his lips, and she doesn't know whether she means that she can't let him send her painting to the Salon or that she can't let him kiss her. He is the one who gently puts her away from him. He is quivering, as nervous as she is.

"Forgive me." His words come out choked. His eyes hold hers but blindly. Now that she can look at him again, she sees he is indeed old. And brave, she realizes. "I didn't mean to offend you further. I have forgotten myself."

She believes him; he forgot himself, remembering only her.

"You have not offended me," she says in a voice she can hardly hear herself, straightening her sleeves, her bag, her gloves. His handkerchief is at their feet. She can't stoop for it in her stays; she is afraid of losing her balance. He bends to pick it up, but instead of giving it to her again he tucks it slowly inside his jacket. "The fault is mine," he tells her. She finds herself staring at his shoes, brown leather, the tips a little worn, the edge of one spattered with yellow paint. She is seeing the shoes he works in, his real life.

"No," she murmurs. "I should not have come."

"Beatrice," he says. He picks up her hand seriously, formally. She remembers with sharp misery the moment when Yves asked her to marry him years ago, the same formality. They are, after all, uncle and nephew, so why would they not share gestures, family characteristics?

"I must leave," she says, trying to withdraw her hand, but he retains it.

"Before you go, please understand that I respect and love you. I am dazzled by you, by who you are. I will never ask anything of you except to kiss your feet. Allow me to tell you everything, just once." The intensity of his voice moves her, the contrast of it with his familiar face.

"You honor me," she says helplessly, looking around for her cloak and hat. She remembers that they are in the other room.

"I also love your painting, your instinct for art, and I love them apart from my love for you. You have a splendid gift." He speaks more calmly this time. She realizes that, in spite of the nature of the moment, he is sincere. He is sad, earnest--a man time has already left behind, and who has little time left. He stands before her a moment longer and then disappears into the next room for her things. She ties the bonnet on with shaking fingers; he holds the cloak carefully around her while she buttons it at her throat.

When she turns back, there is such loss in his face that she goes to him without allowing herself to think. She kisses his cheek, pauses, then his mouth, swiftly. To her regret, it already feels and tastes familiar. "I really must go," she says. Neither of them mentions tea or her painting. He holds the door open for her, bowing in silence. She clutches the balustrade all the way down the stairs to the street. She listens for the sound of his door closing but does not hear it; perhaps he is still standing in the open doorway at the top of the building. Her carriage will not return for at least another half hour, so she must either walk up to the stables at the end of the block or find a hansom to take her home. She leans against the front of his building for a moment, feeling the facade through her glove, trying to steady her mind. Succeeding.

But later, when she sits alone on her sunporch, trying to make everything simple, the kiss returns, fills the air around her. It floods the high windows, the carpet, the folds of her dress, the pages of her book. "Please understand that I respect and love you." She cannot make the kiss disappear. By the next morning she no longer wants it to. She means no harm--she will do no harm--but she wants to keep that moment with her as long as she can.