Authors: Michelle Gable
I arrived at Boldini’s at noon, not even close to the prescribed hour. Émilie warned if anyone saw me it’d be over, every teaspoon of reputation I’d gained frittered away. And indeed I say we’re dealing in teaspoons. I’ve come far, but a little plus zero is nonetheless still rounded to zero. Her point was well taken, of course: Noon was not the appropriate time to call on a man. Even if he wasn’t married, even if the impetus of my visit did not involve corset unstringing. Alas, following my shift at the Folies, I had nowhere else to go.
While I care about social customs and propriety, not everyone is of the same mind. Specifically, a little bird of a contortionist named Marguérite, who has taken up with a cancan dancer. The first time the dancer visited our flat I’d not even said hello before the two ladies promptly commenced their sapphic tryst. They didn’t mind my presence, but I certainly minded theirs. I saw too much. It’s awful how you cannot unsee things, isn’t it?
Today I arrived home from my barmaid shift later than usual due to an early-morning duel and the resultant broken glass and decapitated parakeets littering the main floor. Émilie and I spent the late morning sweeping feathers and mopping up little streaks of blood. I so looked forward to a bath and a nap, but Marguérite had other plans. I’d hardly stepped through the front door when Mlle. Cancan waggled her tail feathers inside. I could not well kick her out. I hate to disappoint Marguérite in any fashion. The women invited me to join in on the festivities. I politely declined and said I had somewhere to be, though I hadn’t a clue where I might possibly go.
As I wound through Pigalle, dodging the “ladies” returning home from their employ, Boldini’s funny, grumpy face popped into my head. He always expresses all manner of opinions following any duel; surely he’d be in prime form after one with so many feathered casualties.
I stopped by the Folies to check for the man. Émilie had not seen him in a fortnight because the two of us never worked the same shift, though I was “welcome to wait and see if he arrived.” As waiting has never been my strong suit, I made the audacious decision to visit Boldini’s studio directly. I knew where he lived as he bragged loudly and often of his expropriation of the John Singer Sargent place. Émilie issued her warnings, but I pretended not to hear.
It was a long walk, and by the time I was halfway across the Seine, there was no turning back. Literally. I hoped he’d send me home in his carriage.
After a stroll through the Luxembourg Gardens, Parisian weather cooperating for once, I popped onto his doorstep with a smile (no tail feathers for this girl!). Boldini greeted me with cheerful trepidation. By that I mean his voice sounded happy but his eyes looked scared. Perhaps it’s good I did not arrive during the four-to-five. Who knows what kind of entanglement I might’ve found him in?!
“Marguérite needed some privacy in the apartment,” I told him. “So I decided to take a walk and, lo and behold, I somehow ended up at your door!”
“You want to come
in
?” Boldini was incredulous, as though I’d pointed a revolver into his rib cage and demanded his pocket watch.
“Well, yes,” I said. “That is typically the outcome one seeks when paying a visit to a friend. I’ve come a long way and will need a ride home, by the by.”
Boldini sighed and reluctantly showed me through the doorway and into the studio.
What to say about the studio? It is as much an undone mess as Boldini himself. As I mentioned, it used to belong to Sargent, who was forced to relinquish it following the Madame Gautreau scandal, or Madame X as they call her now, as if anyone could forget that what is now X was once Gautreau.
As Boldini fussed around his kitchen for a teacup (he never found the tea to put in it), I took a moment to appraise the room, to see if I could feel the power of what happened. I was only eleven when the debacle unfolded, but I was already well into the gossips by then, much to the dismay of the nuns.
Now I stood in the very space where the beautiful Madame Gautreau let her strap fall, a small action that later inflamed all of Europe. Part of me expected to turn around and see the infamous portrait.
The studio itself is not horrible. It has potential if one could get through all the paints and canvases and artistic clutter. The room boasts crown moldings, decorative woodwork, and floors made of the finest oak. Its ceilings are so high they echo every breath. From the main studio one can access any three chambers, which are hidden behind heavy drapes. When I paused by one, my hand on the burgundy velvet, Boldini snapped at me.
“Not for guests,” he said.
I had to wonder what kind of untoward activities happened behind the veil!
A long mantel stretches the northernmost wall. On it sits a collection of limp, dirty dolls creepier than the Folies dancer with the glass eye and yellow teeth. According to Boldini they were Sargent’s, who never returned to collect them after his move. Boldini doesn’t possess the heart to throw them out, and Sargent could still come back. Silly man. It’s been seven years and even the most generous of timelines does not allow for it. Either way, these haunted dolls will disappear within the month. I promise you this!
To quell any doubts I had about the prolific nature of his portraiture, Boldini’s apartment is positively riotous with canvases, my favorite a half-completed self-portrait. In it he dons a wide black tie and a tan coat and displays his usual grim countenance, the ends of his mustache twisted upward, smiling where he does not. Just looking at it makes my insides flutter. I have a taste for the bitter, it seems, instead of for the sweet.
Beside the picture I found two other canvases, both portraits most of the way completed. A mother and her daughter, Boldini said when he sensed my lingering. Something about the word “daughter” squeezed at my heart. Or perhaps the word was “mother.”
“It’s Josefina de Alvear de Errázuriz,” he said when I refused to move from my spot on the floor. “The next portrait over, that’s her daughter, Giovinetta, a veritable squirrel of a child.”
“Never heard of her,” I said.
“You’ve never heard of Josefina? The wealthy Chilean expatriate?”
I chuckled. Chilean expatriate? Perhaps she knew the guano magnate of the Southern Hemisphere.
“Sorry,” I said. “The only South American I know is Pierre.”
“Yes, we all know how well acquainted the two of you are. If there’s a South American to know, it is Sir Pierre!”
Was it my imagination or did he sound testy about our relationship? Yes, I thought, he was thorny. This was a happy thing.
“Well,” I said. “Whoever this woman is, she is quite beautiful. The painting is magnificent.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled, blushing hard.
I did not add that Madame de Errázuriz was
so
beautiful that looking at her portrait made me feel as though her very eyes were challenging me with that beauty. The woman, this Josefina, glared at me straight from the canvas, eyebrows lifted, mouth pursed in a self-satisfied smile. Even here, back at my own flat, I can see her dress: thick golden satin, dark green stripes, a matching green sash around her waist. What’s more, the golden woman sat atop a golden chaise. Madame de Errázuriz was the very definition of luminosity. I promptly commenced my dislike.
“How fortunate they have such an esteemed portraitist at their disposal,” I said, as a buttered-up Boldini is always more tolerable than the usual one. “But what is with the young girl?”
As beautiful as the mother was, the squirrel-like Giovinetta looked downright insolent as she slouched against a purple velveteen settee. And her outfit? I did not understand her outfit. It was not befitting a ten-year-old, though there was no age in particular it did befit! Giovinetta sported a four-year-old’s bonnet, a cape straight out of a
grand-mère’
s bureau, and some dandy’s umbrella propped against her thigh.
Her thigh! Goodness! I can scarcely speak of it without blushing! In the portrait, long black stockings run the length of her legs, stockings more appropriate for a woman of eighteen and not a girl of ten. But that is the very least of it! Peeking over the top of one stocking is a swath of skin.
Mon dieu!
Boldini will fare worse than Sargent!
“What do you mean?” Boldini asked. “Do you not like the portrait?”
“Technically speaking it is well done. But have you noticed the”—I pointed at the girl’s leg—“skin?”
“Well, yes.” He smiled. “It is my painting, so indeed I noticed. Do you take issue with it?”
“I don’t take issue but fear you are in danger of creating your own scandal … your very own Madame Gautreau,
Madame X
, what have you! What new painter will take over the Sargent-cum-Boldini studio when you become a social pariah and can no longer make the rent?”
“Oh, Marthe,” he said. “I did not take you for such a delicate woman! You witness much more skin after fifteen minutes behind that bar of yours.”
“No one wants to see a child’s thigh, Giovanni. That is an entirely different matter!”
My outrage was genuine, as was the fear that this kind of scandal would render my dear Boldini exiled from Paris. Exiled from me!
Boldini only laughed.
Unable to suffer another moment of staring at a partially exposed little girl, I wandered the studio to see what other paintings he had in progress. As I inspected the premises, it was difficult to determine whether I was in the flat of a successful man or a struggling one. I suppose that’s the problem with artists. One can never tell if they have money!
The more I perused the apartment, the greater Boldini’s level of discomfort. He seemed concerned about my opinions, several times making an excuse for this work or that while occasionally insisting he would paint me and it would prove his greatest work to date. Though the statement thrilled me, I knew Boldini didn’t mean it, about my portrait. He merely didn’t know what else to say.
“You do not have to make my portrait to make me happy,” I said and reached for his hand. I laced my fingers through his.
Boldini jumped.
“I am a gentleman…,” he burbled. “I am not sure what…”
With my eyes I tried to convey a certain message. Namely that I deemed him a gentleman but he did not have to act like one then. My plan was not to seduce the man, but that day my intentions had other ideas!
Before either one of us could come to our senses I led a quivering Boldini into one of the chambers, hoping there was a place to rest our weary
feet
. We were in luck. Pushed up against the wall was Madame de Errázuriz’s yellow chaise.
While Boldini pecked and hemmed, I pulled us both down onto the chair. Something sparked inside him. Within seconds he had my dress and corset undone. I blinked, and his fingers ran over my nipples. I blinked again, and he replaced his fingers with his mouth, his hands suddenly busy in a fiendish manner below my skirt.
Allow me to stop here and simply say Giovanni Boldini is not only a skilled artist but an expert in at least a few other areas as well. The man is widely known as a genius with his hands, but I feel as though those particular appendages are getting an undue share of the glory. Either way, an artist he is!
Chapitre XXXIV
“Belle Époque porn.” April set the journals on the table. “That’s a new one for me.”
“Oh, dear,” Luc said as they clinked their glasses together and cheered Paris. “If you think that’s porn, then perhaps the journal entries are not the only periodicals I should share with you.”
“And now the ‘sexual badgering’ begins.” April took a sip to keep herself from grinning too wide. The champagne fizzed in her throat, dry and prickly. “I hadn’t known Boldini lived in Sargent’s studio. I should’ve known, but I didn’t. The diaries, the Sargent studio, it all feels so fortuitous, as if I was the one who was supposed to read these.”
It was more crucial than ever that she make the auction happen. A real one. For Marthe alone. She respected Olivier’s views on the matter, but that did not make him right.
“This all sounds very self-important and delusional, I realize,” April continued when Luc replied only with a raised and semimocking eyebrow. “But Sargent, he’s, like,
my
guy.”
“Your guy.”
“My hus … my friends and family, they accuse me of being a teensy bit obsessed with the artist. Well,
Madame X
in particular. She’s at the Met.”
“‘Madame X’? Is this a porn star of some kind?”
“At the Met?! What is
wrong
with you?” April said, almost laughing despite the chastising tone she’d been going for. “
Madame X
, she was formerly Madame Gautreau.” April tapped the journals. “Before they changed the name to protect the innocent. Haven’t I told you this? I’ve told you this. Sometimes I feel like you’re not listening to me at all.”
April batted his hand playfully. She did not want Luc to believe she was serious, to think she was some near-middle-aged shrew keeping careful inventory of affronts and slights.
“Avril,” he said, voice serious and unwavering. “I remember every word you say. Every word.”
Luc’s face held firm, no smirk to be found. April’s own face burned as he locked his eyes tightly to hers.
“Seriously, though,” she said, fiddling with all the eating and writing implements within grasp. “I’ve seen
Madame X
a hundred times, a thousand. It’s my favorite in the entire museum. My husband”—April found herself inexplicably blushing at the word—“Troy doesn’t understand how I can look at the same damn painting week after week, month after month, year after year. We go to the Met. A lot. His grandmother is some bigwig there. Plus—it’s the Met. He always wants to check out the latest collections: Klee, British silver,
Rugs and Ritual in Tibetan Buddhism
, what have you. But I always start with her,
Madame X
.”
“Ah,” Luc said. “There is something you enjoy more than your tables and bureaus.”
“Continental furniture is absolutely my thing, but when I was in grad school
Madame X
almost made me change my mind. Alas, John Singer Sargent would be an impossibly narrow focus. And lord knows I couldn’t abide spending large portions of my career looking at François Boucher.” April made a face. “Or Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
Blech
.”