Last Lovers

‘And what other lines are there?’

I don’t stop drawing this time.

‘Well, there are all the lines that come with aging, with the gradual loss of skin tone, small crosshatch lines, the lines from the pull of gravity on the skin. These are the usual lines which don’t really tell much about a person, what they are, the way they’ve thought. They’re only the lines that come naturally as anybody gets older, lines of normal skin aging.’

I don’t mention the lines I’m drawing in now, those lines that run down into the upper lip, the lines of a shrinking face, the most prominent aging marks on almost any face. I hope she doesn’t question me anymore.

‘Am I ugly, Jacques?’

This is asked in a very low voice.

‘No, Mirabelle, you are quite a handsome, mature woman. I’m sure you must have been a very pretty girl and a lovely young woman, as well. I’m quite proud and happy to be painting your portrait.’

I can say this and really mean it. There’s something mystical, almost childlike in her face, her voice, and all her moves, which denies her age. Maybe blindness helps people not get old too fast. Perhaps she’s been protected from so much of the distraction, the impact, the stress of ordinary city life, she’s been preserved in some way. There’s a strange quality, so fresh, new, clean, about her.

‘Do you think anybody could ever love me, Jacques? Be honest now, please.’

What a question! I finish up with the curvature of her cheek before I answer.

‘I love you, Mirabelle. You’re one of the finest, most intelligent, sensitive, and interesting people I’ve ever met. I enjoy your company. I feel like a better person when I’m with you. Does that answer your question?’

And I’m not lying.

‘Thank you, Jacques.’

I hope that’s the end of it.

‘But I mean, really love me; want to make love, faire l’amour with me. Do you think it is at all possible for some man to feel that way?’

Well, this stops me. Maybe I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear her. But I can’t, the intensity of her question demands an answer.

I sit back, look at her, look at the drawing. Actually, it’s coming along pretty well, considering everything. I’m beginning to realize there’s a young girl locked up in this old woman’s body. It seems sad. It’s like the pear.

‘It’s not impossible, Mirabelle. You are really a most attractive older woman. It is only because you are blind you do not have enough opportunity to make contact with enough men, and Rolande was so protective of you. I’m sure some intelligent man your age would want to have an intimate relationship with you.’

I lean forward to work again. How much more does she want? I’m surprised at how embarrassed I am. Then she comes straight out with it.

‘When I was younger, when I was thirty years old, I wanted very much to have a baby, to be a mother. I thought if I had my own child, maybe I would want to see it so much I could let myself see. I was sure that, given a chance, I could find a man who would make one with me, even though I was blind. He would not have to marry me, or even see me again, I didn’t care. I just wanted my own baby.

‘Oh, how I wish I knew you then, Jacques. But you would only have been a young boy in America. Ah, it can be difficult, these things, time is strange.

‘Rolande was so shocked, so angry. She said it was immoral and where did I get such ideas? She said I could not take care of a child, that I could not even take care of myself. She said all the responsibility would be hers. So I stopped talking about it, but I did not stop thinking about it.’

She stops, smiles, ‘looks’ at me, slightly turning her head in my direction.

‘And now it is too late. I am a virgin, Jacques, and I do not want to die a virgin. I feel I have great capacity for giving and receiving passionate love but I have never had a chance. It does not seem fair.’

There are tears rolling out those wrinkles from the sides of her eyes, and down the outside of her face. This is more than I can handle. I’m feeling sorry for her, at the same time I’m feeling boxed in. I try to keep my hand steady as I develop the line of her jaw.

I’ve stopped working. We’re staring into each other’s eyes. She, of course, can’t see me, and I’m not seeing her as a subject for a portrait. I guess I’m seeing her as a woman for the first time.

‘I know you are a good and kind man, Jacques, someone I can trust, or I could not talk to you like this. I am surprised at myself. Please forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive, Mirabelle. It must be terrible for you to be so alone. I must tell you, I’m a married man. I have a family, I love my wife, my children. Even though I am separated from them now, I feel responsible to them.’

There’s a long time while she’s quiet. She’s stopped crying. I lean back into the canvas, my drawing starts coming alive again. I wouldn’t think I could keep drawing with all the emotional stress I’m feeling.

‘I am sorry, Jacques. I did not know. We know so little of each other. While you are drawing me I should like to tell you something about myself. You deserve to know.’

Blind Reverie

It was so exciting for me when he called the Place Furstenberg ‘our’ painting. It is the way I felt myself, it was something we did together.

I do not think he particularly noticed when I suggested he could live with me, perhaps he did not believe what I was saying. I almost did not myself.

It is so strange being painted. I can almost sense myself being seen, I have a sensation of his eyes upon me. It made me feel very real. I could not help myself. I wanted so to know what he was actually seeing. And then, more, what I looked like to him, as a man, not only as an artist. Am I truly a woman, yet, still? I hope I did not scare him by almost offering myself, but I have known from the first moment we came together, this was a man I could love with all my body and soul, give of myself and feel gifted.

I must be more careful or he will be frightened away. I did not think he was married, at the same time, I could not think of a man like him being alone. He feels, seems, the way my father was, a true family man, a man a woman could love deeply.

I hope I am right in telling him about myself.

4

‘We were a very happy family in this house, Jacques. Perhaps it is only because my memories are so old, so worn down by wishes, by tears, that it seems so. Still, I remember many wonderful things.

‘My father worked in reliure, book binding. He had a beautiful reliure on the rue des Canettes. It had been the place of his father and his grandfather before him. He loved his work. Sometimes he would bring it home with him to share with us. It was wonderful to feel the smooth leather and rub our fingers over the mounds of string bindings and etching of titles on the spines of books.

‘He was kind to us. Always on Sundays and Mondays he took us to the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Parc Zoologique at Vincennes. He loved life, he loved us, and he loved our mother. I do not think it is only time which makes it seem this way. I remember so clearly. It is one of the things about being blind, there is not so much to cloud the vision one has of the past.

‘Our mother was a nervous woman, she was afraid of many things, but when my father was there, she was never afraid. We would row in the wooden boats in the Bois de Vincennes or in the Bois de Boulogne. We had picnics and played games. It was a very calm, beautiful life.

‘Then, when I was only ten years old, came the Great War. My father had to leave immediately. My mother cried for days. When she stopped crying, I never remember her smiling again, except when she received letters from my father, or on the two times he came home to us on leave.

‘My sister and I went to school at the Alsacienne on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Rolande was three classes ahead of me. We were happy students.

‘It was October eleventh and I was released from school three hours before Rolande, because she had piano lessons on that day. Each of us had our own key around our neck, under our uniforms. I had my books in my arms. All this I remember very well.

‘I came into the house, calling for Maman. It was the time when she always had a goûter for us. In the kitchen there was nothing. I could not imagine Mother not being home. She rarely went out, especially after Father was gone. I looked into each of our bedrooms and there was nothing. The door to the WC was open. I carefully knocked on the door to the room of my parents, then pushed the door open. There was nothing. I was beginning to be frightened. The only room left was the bathroom, la salle d’eau. I knocked and no one answered. I pushed open the door, it was not locked.

‘There was my mother. She was in the bathtub and the tub was filled with blood! Her eyes were open. I went down on my knees beside her. I still did not know what could have happened. I was so young. I had just had my fourteenth birthday and also had begun with my règles. My first thought was that somehow my mother had had her règles and was bleeding to death.

‘When I touched her she was cold. The blood in the tub was only slightly warmer. I saw the razor of my father on the edge of the tub. I still did not know, could not understand. I only wanted to lift my mother out of the blood. I reached down into the depths, staining my school uniform, and pulled the plug to let the blood and water drain. As it drained, my mother sagged into the depths of the tub. I started running fresh water, crying, screaming, but nobody came. I washed the blood from my mother, calling her name over and over, not her name but Maman, MAMAN!

‘When she was clean, I lifted her in my arms and somehow struggled to her bed. I stretched her out as best I could, crying and screaming all the time for help. I pulled her nightgown over her cold, naked body. I wanted so for everything to be all right again, for my mother to be warm, to speak to me. I remember I could not fit her arms into the sleeves, so I pulled the nightgown down over the tops of her arms. I opened the covers and slid her into the bed. I pulled off my own clothes, down to my chemise, and crept in beside her.

‘I wanted to warm her. I had seen the slits, the gaping wounds of her wrists, but they did not seem bad enough to kill. They were not bleeding and they were water-shriveled. My only thought was to hold her in my arms and make her living, warm again, bring her back. I held her to me and cried until I went to sleep.

‘When Rolande came home, that is how she found us. Afterward, she told me she almost backed out and closed the door, thinking we were only taking a nap, but then saw blood on the floor, went into the wet, still-blood-soaked bathroom, and came out screaming. She was three years older than I and knew enough to be aware that something terrible had happened.

‘She tried to waken us and I woke, saw her first, then looked over and saw the eyes of my mother, empty, staring, not seeing. It was the last thing I remember, the last time I saw. It was her eyes, open and not seeing. I did not want to see any more. Inside, I think I wanted to be like my mother, my eyes open but not seeing.

‘I do not remember the funeral. It was as if I were dead. I did not want to eat, to breathe, to live. In the bedroom, they found a telegram saying my father had been killed. It seemed everything I loved in life, my mother, my father, was gone, and I wanted to be gone, too.

‘The mother of my mother, our grandmother, came to live with us and take care of us. Her husband was also dead. She was always tired, and Rolande had to stop school before graduating, in her “Terminale,” and help with the house and help take care of me. When I was twenty, my grandmother died, too. The shock of losing her husband, then her only daughter, my mother, had killed something inside her.

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