As a manservant ladles the soup, Suzanne rises and whispers something in her mother-in-law’s ear. Madame Manet nods. Suzanne takes leave. No one stands.
The room is so alive with merriment no one seems to notice her departure. I suffer a pang for her. I know how it feels to be alone in a crowd. My gaze drifts to Édouard, who is nodding intently at something Maman says. His eyes snap to mine as if I have called his name, and my breath catches. In that instant, I realize perhaps somewhere deep down, on some base level, Suzanne and I are not so dissimilar.
We dine on the sumptuous feast under the champagne glow of candlelight. Potage Saint-Germain; grilled red mullet; lamb chops on a bed of asparagus; roasted woodcock; truff le salad; glace aux fraises; cheese; fruits; and nuts.
The delicious aromas and diffused colors—all contrasts and shadows—swirl around the room, weighing heavy and intense on the night, bathing it in the smoldering warmth of a humid summer sunset. The food is superb, yes. But just as the heat of
summer steals my appetite, tonight I have no enthusiasm for food. What I crave is the delicious company, the energy of the evening.
Maman is in prime form, entertaining Édouard and Eugène, reveling in the attention they lavish upon her. I rather enjoy sitting back amidst the hum of conversation, drinking in the festive energy.
Eyeing Édouard, Maman dabs coyly at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. She touched his arm. “Tell me about your work.”
“What would you like to know beyond that I paint pictures that enrage the critics? Have you not read the vile things they publish about me in
Le Soir
?”
Maman’s hand f lutters to the brooch at her neckline.
“Indeed, I have seen your name in the news.” She sips her Bordeaux. “Not always in a favorable context, I must admit.”
Édouard shrugs. “I am in the fortunate position to live well without the necessity of selling my paintings. The critics and their tiny minds are of little consequence to me.”
“Ah, to be in such an enviable position.” Stevens empties his glass. “You can afford to paint your brazen naked women because you do not have to kowtow to the establishment with the rest of us peasants.”
“If you do not like the way the Academy runs things,” says Degas, “do something to change it. Do not just sit and whine.” “Wine? Yes, please, I would love more wine.” Stevens holds out his glass to Degas and laughs. “Oh, I see, you do not
mean
wine.
You mean do not
whine
.”
Degas frowns, and I wonder if the dour little man has a sense of humor. Really, I find Stevens’s antics quite funny.
“Rather than playing the buffoon, it would serve you well to take a stand against the stodgy academicians who dictate the direction of art. Their views are criminal.”
Édouard leans back in his chair, looking amused.
The manservant fills Stevens’s glass. He sips it. “Unfortunately, I am not of the means to paint a nude shopping the Champs Elysées for the shock value.”
“I am not merely painting to shock,” says Édouard. “We must be of our time and paint what we see.”
“Even Napoleon the third has not had inf luence in changing the minds of the old Academy stodgers, and he has tried,” counters Stevens. “I depend on the Salon, and it would be the end of me if I alienated the establishment.”
“And we all know how Napoleon handled the Maximilian Affair. Pulled out of Mexico and left the emperor to the gun.” Degas sneers. “He only runs with a cause until it no longer suits his purpose. If you are content to do nothing to change the Salon, then you are worse than he.”
Madame Manet taps her wineglass with her fork.
“That is enough. I will not have gory political talk at my dinner table. If you must argue such matters, save it for your cognac and cigars.”
I can appreciate both Stevens’s and Degas’ points. The Academy has a firm grasp, dictating the direction of modern art. Many, myself included, believe they need to move forward, away from the staid mode of history painting. We are more than halfway through the nineteenth century, yet art does not ref lect the times. But who is so bold as to slap the hands of those who hold an artist’s fate in their fat fists?
I watch Édouard as Maman speaks to him. I revel in being able to gaze at him freely, unself-consciously, and it dawns on me that it is his unpretentious freedom that draws me to him. His ability to just
be.
He is taking a stand against the status quo by painting what
he must. In turn, he suffered a brutal beating when the Salon shut him out. It is that rebel quality coming from someone
who, for all appearances, resembles the perfect gentleman that I find rare and endearing.
And I must admit very, very seductive.
Yes.
Très seduisant.
Extremely seductive.
Ahhh,
to be so liberated to even utter such a forbidden word as
seduisant
.
“You are awfully quiet, Mademoiselle.” His eyes are a soft caress. “I hope tonight’s conversation has not offended you.”
“Monsieur Manet, I am not easily shocked. I should think art a most inappropriate profession for someone with a delicate sensibility.”
“Très bon.”
He leans closer, resting his chin on his palm. His elbow touches my dessertspoon, sending it askew. I want to straighten it, set it back in its place, but I do not.
He reaches over and teases the silver handle with a mani-cured finger, leaving it out of line. Then starts to say something, but stops.
“Comment?”
I sip my wine, watching him over the rim.
He hesitates. I can see the great wheels turning in his mind as his gaze drops to my lips. What I imagine him thinking frightens me. I drop my gaze and it lands where his shirtsleeve pulls from his wrist. I glimpse the hair on his forearm, curly and golden downy in the candlelight; the subtle masculine line where the hair stops and the skin grows pale and smooth. I want to touch him there. To judge for myself if, as promised, the texture of hair and skin hold the very essence of all things male.
I should not notice such things, in his wife’s home, at his wife’s table.
But it is not his wife’s home. Nor her table.
Even so, he remains a married man. Unattainable.
Forbidden.
The trill of Maman’s laughter slices the air. She is captivated by Eugène’s conversation, and I glance back to Édouard and find him still watching me.
“Do tell me what thoughts go through your mind to provoke such a look.” His voice is honey, tempting me to taste that for which I should not hunger.
I toy with the idea of actually speaking my thoughts. Right there with everyone around us, I want to offer a coy smile and stroke his naked wrist and tell him
that
was what brings such a look to my face.
I lean in a bit.
“Perhaps . . .” I bite my lip. “Perhaps I shall tell you sometime. Once we know each other better.”
Warmed by the wine and soothed by the faint sound of the falling rain outside, a breathless sense of pleasure spreads through me.
“Then I hope we shall know each other better,” he says. “Very soon.”
He smiles, and I am moved by the same force that coaxes the earth around the sun. Although, I do not know who is rotating around whom. We seem to f loat up and out of the room, away from the party and pointless polite conversation. Again, I am gripped by the overwhelming need to touch him, to press my hands to his cheeks, to let his warmth course through me.
He refills my wine goblet with Bordeaux from the decanter on the table, then raises his glass to mine in a toast. The crisp
ping
of crystal sounds a personal symphony. For an instant I feel unsteady, as if I am gazing through the cheval glass at the male image of myself. It is nonsense, but somehow in that instant, I know him intimately. Deeper than the cutting rubbish published by critics. Beyond the surface glances to a pure dimen-sion devoid of space or time.
“Just ask her, Édouard.” A deep voice from the opposite end of the table slices through our private universe.
I feel myself freefalling and crash-landing in the midst of the silent room where all heads are turned toward us.
It is Stevens who speaks. He gulps the last of his wine, then wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “The poor fellow has been in misery for days over Mademoiselle Berthe. That’s why I brought him the painting of her.” He slurs the comment to no one in particular and chuckles.
The painting that set Madame Manet on edge before dinner?
Mon Dieu
. I have done nothing to deliberately cause Monsieur Manet misery. Nothing to provoke a wrong message.
A clap of thunder erupts, as if we’ve angered the Gods.
In my peripheral vision, I see him still leaning on his elbow, only now his clenched fist has slid to the bridge of his nose, hiding his expression.
“My dear miserable friend,” Stevens says. “She is right there at your fingertips. Just ask her.”
Our words must seem to be inevitable.
—William Butler Yeats
“
ou
insult my daughter and offend me with your crass insinuations.” Maman shoves back her chair and stands up
from the table, wobbling a bit, glaring first at Stevens, then at
Édouard. “Do you think Berthe a common model? Like your Olympia?”
Maman does not wait for an answer, but gives a curt nod to Madame Manet.
“Merci, Madame. Bonne nuit.”
Édouard gets to his feet, and I think for a moment he will
not let her pass. The two square off, Maman
glaring,
Édouard silently imploring her to stay.
“Madame,
s’il vous plaît,
Mademoiselle Berthe is very beautiful. I simply wish to paint her portrait. That is all Monsieur Stevens was trying to say, although very poorly, I must admit. He meant no harm. There was no insult behind his jest.
Oui,
Stevens?”
The man, slumps down in his chair like a naughty child ruefully trying to render himself invisible. He shrugs. “Of course. I meant no harm. Please forgive me Madame, Mademoiselle.”
With all the commotion stirring around me all I can think is
Édouard Manet wants to paint me
. All I can do is sit leaden in my seat, hands in my lap, trying to breathe. Stevens painted my portrait, yet somehow this is different.
I do not know whether to hug Monsieur Stevens or strangle him for laying the unmentionable wide open on the table for all see. I steal a glance at Edma, who looks simply captivated by the fiasco.
Degas frowns and studies his fingernails. “I do not understand the fuss. I certainly don’t see any harm in Manet painting her. She knows she is a painter, not a model, even if she does afford her colleagues the favor of her likeness every so often.”
Maman gasps. She lets loose a little cry and throws up her hands. “I am now quite sure I regret giving Monsieur Stevens permission to paint my daughter.”
She storms out of the room. Edma and I follow. As does Édouard.
“Madame, please. Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” I fear Maman might slap him. Instead, as bold as you please, she strides over and snatches up the gift Stevens presented to Édouard.
White knuckled and shaking, she grips the gilded frame.
Instantly, her face turns an unhealthy shade of ash. “Maman?” I murmur.
Edma and I rush to her side to comfort her. From the look on her face I fear she might faint dead away. Then I see for myself what has offended her so.
Stevens’s painting. Of me.
It is not the likeness that is so horrid, it is how he has inscribed it. The words are painted on the canvas bold and black, right above my head.
To Monsieur Ed. Manet.
My mother’s face f lashes like the lightning storm outside. “My daughter’s image gifted like chattel to a man whose acquaintance I have just made this evening? A married man at that.” She signals a manservant for our wraps and hats. “Unfor-givable.”
Madame Manet appears at her side and gently lifts the frame from Maman’s hands and gives it to Eugène who whisks it away.
“Madame . . .” Her voice, low and discomfited, trails off as if she is at a loss for words.
Gustave places a tender hand on his mother’s shoulder. All of us, except Degas and Fantin, stand in stony, hot silence.
It is what Maman did
not
say that screams loudest:
Your son is a man whose radical politics and reputation for a risqué sense of the appropriate trails after him like the unclean stench of a leper. I do not wish my daughters infected by him.
A bouquet of purple hyacinths and a note arrive the next morning.
When Amélie presents them to Maman, Edma and I are sitting on the divan in the drawing room with sketch pads in our laps. Maman rests in her chair by the window and reads the letter with a face as blank as untouched paper
.
Cradling the blossoms, Amélie stands slightly behind our
mother and gives us a knowing smile.
An arched brow.
A nearly imperceptible nod.
Edma elbows me and mouths, “From
him.
”
I bite my lip as my gaze f lickers to Maman
.
But she is still scrutinizing the note through her lorgnette.
Amélie shifts the f lowers so she can hold them out for Ma-man’s inspection
.
Their pleasing scent f ills the room, and I inhale the sweet expression of Édouard’s regret.
Hyacinths, the f lower of repentance. A symbol of atone-ment for one’s misdeeds.
Maman inspects the bouquet through her glasses, but does not accept it.
After a moment’s hesitation, Amélie retracts the f lowers. “I beg your pardon, Madame, the courier awaits your answer.”
Lips pursed into a tight rosebud, my mother lowers her looking glass and thrusts the card at the maid. “The answer is no. Return the f lowers immediately.”
Edma gasps.
My heart twists. “No? Maman!
”
I scoot to the edge of the divan. The sketch pad falls from my lap as I hover in a half-sitting, not-quite-standing pose.