Read Online The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. by Carole DeSanti - Free Book Online Page B

green bottle forgot for him; what the white tablet could not remember; where he went when the work did not come. I understood that, in some part of me. And in his arms there—and later, in his bed, I let myself be comforted, a little, for all that had been lost.

5. La Lune
    D OWN ONE FLIGHT from the atelier, in wedge-shaped maid’s quarters off one end of the hall, was the place Chasseloup slept, hung his trousers, and heated a tiny stove. A window overlooked the balconies of other apartments; plants in pots and cloths hanging out to dry. Occasionally from the window you saw someone coming or going, a glimpse of skirt or a sleeve. The two rooms were so cramped that the door to the hall ran into the kitchen cupboard, which contained a bottle of vinegar, a soft potato, scraps of canvas, a bulging paper packet of sugar, and bits of drawing chalk. Coffee was dust at the bottom of a can; coal, silt at the bottom of the bin. The main room held a balding, velvet-upholstered divan for a bed; a writing desk; and a giant map of Paris tacked to the wall. It didn’t matter; we spent every available hour in the atelier.
    My key to number 12 had disappeared behind the Tivoli’s desk for the last time, after I had bumped my small luggage down the stairs and flashed my eyes at Madame with the giddiness of a prisoner freed. She grimaced as though her joints were hurting her; as if the season had changed before she was ready for it.
She’d seen the likes of me a thousand times before,
she might have said. But still I sensed that I had made a narrow escape—so maybe Stephan’s luck was with me still.
    Chasseloup asked no questions. We lived from day to day, as was customary in such circumstances; that is, when Art rules, and crowds out everything else. After a week’s effort, we sat across the table from each other, a bottle uncorked between us, half a loaf and a sausage. During that day’s sitting Chasseloup had had me up on and down from the crate; altered the light—gone so far as to let me try on costumes from the photographer’s racks, none of which ended up pleasing him. Vollard had stopped by to shake his head.
    â€œSo? What is the matter?” I took a blunt knife to our
saucisson.
    He hunched forward in his chair. Poured.
    â€œI cannot—solve this problem in time for the Salon.”
    â€œBut I have been absolutely obedient,” I said, in an effort to lighten the mood.
    â€œOr maybe it is just”—he reached over with a lingering caress—“that I am distracted.”
    I leaned back and felt his words trickle down, ominously.
    â€œI will have to do a fish, a cheese, maybe a green bottle on a cool stretch of zinc—”
    Chasseloup rocked back on his chair, folded his good arm around his thin frame. Those hungry, too-soft, full-moon eyes.
    â€œDo you want me to leave, then?”
    â€œNo! I mean—”
    He meant that it might be appropriate to study me, at rest and in the course of daily life. And besides, I took out the laundry and gave him courage; without the feminine influence life became primitive . . . Could we drink to that ? We did.
    So the model-for-small-wages became a full-time
grisette,
maiden of the bed, hearth, and table; last of a vanishing breed. A feminine soul to believe in and serve the greater cause of Art, with a gay night or two thrown in. We went to little dark cafés where there was music and a bottle or two, and Pierre and his friends talked into the small hours.
    Twenty years earlier, even ten, we might have seen a few more of these nights, talking philosophy until dawn; coffee from workman’s carts—as on my first mornings in Paris—but laughing with the cart sellers now; in a small herd of artists and young people, bubbles in our noses at sunrise and then blissfully, dizzily to bed just as the shops were opening, the cries of street merchants breaking the morning’s calm. But it was late in the