Last Lovers

‘You know, Jacques, there is not enough love in this world. Sometimes I think the pigeons are the last lovers in Paris. There seems to be much of sex in these times, but very little of true love, of love that makes all creatures come closer together, that allows one creature to express an inner feeling toward another creature so they know they are important and valuable to them.’

She stands and I help fold her chair. I throw it over the top of my box. I offer her my arm and she takes it.

‘Jacques, would you be my guest at La Palette on the rue de Seine? We can have a cup of coffee or something there. It is a place where artists have long gone. I have not been there for more than ten years, since before Rolande’s death. Please, take me there. It would be such a pleasure for me to hear and feel the excitement of that place.’

I’ve passed the café tens of times but never gone in. Café sitting just doesn’t fit into my budget. I hope I’m not spending Mirabelle’s savings. It doesn’t seem fair or right.

‘If that’s what you want, Mirabelle, let’s go. But I must pay. I’m a rich man. I have a thousand francs in my pocket right now.’

I smile down at her, knowing the smile means nothing, is invisible, she cannot see it, but it makes me feel good. I’m smiling for myself.

She holds tighter on to my arm, not clutching, only tucking herself in closer. It’s a lovely evening and we must make quite a pair walking into La Palette. We find a table in the back and both order a Cointreau. It seems the perfect thing to finish off a good day’s work. It’s going to cost more than a week’s living but it’ll be worth it.

Mirabelle has all her antennae out. I can tell by the almost ecstatic look on her face, the smile, the inner concentration. She’s probably ‘perceiving’ more of this ambience than I am, by far. I close my eyes and try to experience the way she does. While I have my eyes closed, the Cointreau arrives. I can tell it’s there even without opening them. The smell of oranges surrounds us. I wonder if I would have smelled it if I’d been sitting there with my eyes open.

‘Is it not wonderful, Jacques?’

She is fingering the round ballon of Cointreau, spinning it around in her small, pointed, thin-skinned, dainty fingers.

‘I feel everything so strongly it’s almost like seeing.’

We clink glasses, she makes the first move, of course. It’s been a long time since I’ve had Cointreau, and this isn’t the best but it tastes good, not as good as that Poire William, but good on an early spring evening.

We sit sipping and listening. I’m also watching the coming and going, the flirting, the general horsing around of the young people. Why do artists always feel they need to make such a scene all the time? Probably it’s what makes them artists, or makes them want to be artists in the first place. They want, need, to be seen. For some reason, they aren’t sure they are. I wonder how much of that is in me. Probably anyone who has all the love, acceptance they need would never actually create, do, anything. They’d be complete within themselves. That would be the end of writers, poets, painters, singers, musicians, politicians, most of the people who help make the world go around, at least who strive for human communication.

It’s dark when I escort Mirabelle home. She invites me up but I don’t feel like sitting in a dark room while she wouldn’t even know it. I’ll have to buy a few light bulbs and slip them in around her place if I’m ever going to spend any time there.

I have a great walk home, I use the gate code number I learned by watching others punch it in, sneak up the stairs quietly, and settle in. I watch my painting for a long time in the candlelight as I eat a light supper. With all the lunches, I’m not eating up my stew for this week.

Blind Reverie

I feel so brazen. I wonder if he feels it, too, but he means so much to me. He must have some idea of my feelings. even if he can see.

I am confused. Knowing how my pigeons look has taken so much away. I thought my love for them would be more, but it is somehow less. I should have known. I think he is convinced I am childish, calling them by name, but they have been my only companions for so long. I hope he doesn’t mind my calling him Jacques. He cannot know it was the name of my father.

I felt something negative when he came into the apartment. Can it be so dirty, unkempt? I must ask him. But I must go slowly. It was much, asking him to paint me. Now I am glad I did it. I wanted something we could share, a way to keep him near.

I think he likes my food. I could tell by the sounds as he ate. I am so happy to have found him. It is wonderful to have someone with whom I can share my pear in the bottle.

3

The next morning I’m finishing the painting of the Place Furstenberg. I feel in control. The strong movements I established yesterday are holding up as I move into the more descriptive elements. The light is coming through the trees and I’m using a tremendous variety of color to capture the sense of light on the paving of the Place. The painting is somewhere between Impressionism and something different, a new kind of vision for me, a highly personal vision such as Vincent van Gogh had, a conviction that the way I see is valid.

I work all morning and then I feel Mirabelle beside and behind me.

‘I can tell you are happy with your work, Jacques. The bells are ringing, will you déjeuner with me, and then perhaps we can start the portrait.’

How can she possibly know I’m just about finished? Do I give off some kind of ‘satisfaction vibrations’? I scratch my signature in the lower right-hand corner. I pull the canvas off the easel and print in the title, Place Furstenberg, date and sign it on the back. I’m almost tempted to sign it ‘Jacques.’

‘Yes, I’m very happy with the painting. But I don’t think I can start with your portrait because I have no other canvas here with me. I didn’t realize I’d finish this one so quickly. I wish you could see it. It’s the best painting I’ve done and you helped very much.’

‘Thank you. It means much to me to feel I could help. Can you understand what this must mean to someone blind such as I?’

Her face is very serious, then it breaks into a smile and she ‘looks’ down at her feet briefly. She finds my eyes again.

‘Could you not buy a canvas near here? I do not think the shops are closed as yet.’

‘It is very expensive to buy a canvas, Mirabelle. A canvas stretched, of the size I would need, could cost over a hundred and fifty francs.’

She reaches into her purse. She pulls out two hundred francs.

‘Here, please, Jacques, buy it. We do not know how long I shall be around to be painted and every day I am getting older. I should like to be painted as soon as possible, while I am still young.’

‘Okay. I’ll give it back to you this afternoon from the thousand francs when I have it changed. That’s only fair. All right?’

‘Yes, if that is what you want. But you must hurry now to find a shop open before they close. I shall go home and prepare our food. It is mostly ready, but there are some last little things to do. I shall meet you there.’

She turns away. The art store is just around the corner, not far from La Palette, where we had our Cointreau. I decide to leave the box standing in the Place. I put the painting back on the easel. I take off right away. Nobody will steal it in the few minutes I’ll be gone. I start running, holding the two hundred francs bunched in my hand.

The bells are still ringing when I get there and they’re open. The canvas, real linen on a good stretcher, 20F, with portrait linen, is a hundred and ninety francs. I feel like a rich man. But at this rate I’d be a candidate for the poorhouse in no time.

I dash back to my box and everything is fine. There are two people looking at the painting, a well-dressed French couple. The man asks me if I want to sell the painting.

I do and I don’t. He’s pretty insistent and I’m busy cracking down the box, putting things away. At the sound of my crappy French, he switches into good-quality, heavily accented English-English.

‘But you must be in business, monsieur. Do you have a gallery where I may see your work?’

‘No, I have no gallery.’

‘But you are a professional, yes. The painting is of very high quality.’

‘Thank you.’

I don’t answer the first question. I guess I am a professional but I don’t think of myself that way. It sounds like a prizefighter or a whore. The French word amateur means ‘lover.’ I think I’m more an amateur, at least when it comes to painting.

‘How much money would you take for your painting, monsieur? My wife and I like it very much.’

I figure I’ll name a big price to shut him up. I’m sure he thinks it’s like Montmartre, where paintings are knocked out for nothing.

‘The painting would cost fifteen hundred francs, monsieur. I must live.’

He reaches into his inside jacket pocket, slides out a dark, shining leather billfold, and separates three five-hundred-franc notes. He hands them to me.

I could kick myself. I haven’t had enough time to enjoy this painting. But, God, fifteen hundred francs, I can get through the entire summer with that. But I’m going to be very professional about all this.

I lift the painting from the place where I’ve leaned it against the wall and hold it at arm’s length for a last long look at it. I feel I’m selling part of Mirabelle at the same time. I hand it to him.

‘Be careful, monsieur. It is still wet. It will be a week or more before it is dry.’

‘That is quite all right. We live near here. We love this Place and thank you again for selling us your work. You are very talented.’

With that, the two of them walk away carrying our painting. She’s wearing a white fur coat and white stockings with clocks in them, slightly off-white shoes. Her hair is perfectly coiffed. He looks as if he could be the Prime Minister of France. Hell, I wouldn’t know the Prime Minister if I fell over him.

Inside myself, I’m really torn. I need to tell Mirabelle. I’ve sold our painting. How will she feel about that? I put my paint box on my back, empty, and start the walk to her place. I’m carrying the new canvas in my free hand. Now I’m late.

I put the box outside and her door is open. I knock and go in. She’s in the kitchen.

‘I began to think you were not coming. Please, let us sit down. I have little crêpes with mushrooms and a cheese sauce. I have just finished making them.’

I go in to take a leak. I use the same ‘knee-locking’ system as before. Then I go over and wash my hands, leaving the door open for light again. I’ve taken several sheets of toilet paper from the toilet room and I wet them. I try to wipe off some of the grime and specks from the mirror. The dirt’s really ground in. I manage to clear a circle in the center of the mirror, enough to see myself. I haven’t actually looked at myself in a mirror, up close, in a long time. I don’t look as bad as I thought I would. I definitely look younger than I did two years ago. If it weren’t for the gray in my beard I could maybe even pass for forty.

I sit down. Mirabelle puts three beautiful crêpes on each of our plates. They smell delicious. Again I close my eyes and let the smell come into me. It’s getting to be a habit. Before I know it, I’ll probably go blind myself.

‘Mirabelle. I have something to tell you.’

‘The art shop was closed and you could not buy the canvas.’

‘Worse than that.’

There’s no way around it. I must tell her, I owe her that, at least.

‘I sold our painting, the painting of the Place Furstenberg.’

She’s quiet on her chair, looking at me. She hands me a bottle of white wine, a Pouilly-Fumé, to open. I start turning the corkscrew.

‘But that is very good, Jacques. You said you must sell paintings to live. We can always paint the Place Furstenberg again. It is in my mind, all of it. It makes me feel happy to think we have shared our vision with someone else.’

And I suddenly feel released. Mirabelle’s right. I can paint it again. I’ll paint it better than last time. I just didn’t have enough confidence in myself. And I really do have over twenty-five hundred francs in my pocket, the thousand from Mirabelle and now the fifteen hundred. I reach in my pocket. I hold out the thousand francs.

‘Here, Mirabelle, take this. I don’t need it now. All you need pay is the money for the canvas, and you’ve already done that. We’re even.’

She pulls away from the money as if it were a snake.

‘Do not do this, Jacques. You have a commission from me. I could never feel right if you do not take this money. Please, take it away. I can smell it in front of my face. It smells sour, a blend of dirt, cheap perfume, the inside of pocketbooks, and perspiration, as does all money. Please, take it away, or I cannot eat.’

I put it on the table beside me.

‘Well, we can discuss that later. For now, I want to eat these beautiful crêpes and drink this wonderful wine.’

I hold out my glass and there’s just the slightest delay until she realizes what I’m doing. No one would probably have picked up the slight pause, but I’m getting more closely tuned to her now.

‘Yes, Jacques, we drink to the sale of your beautiful painting. I knew you were a very good painter. You should sell your paintings for much more money, you sell them too cheaply.’

‘I have more money than I can use now, Mirabelle. I know that doing things to make money can pollute life faster than anything else. I’m happy to have this money, but it must not become the reason why I paint. This is something I’ve learned.’

‘You will never paint for money alone, Jacques, only when you are hungry and desperate. Before that, you can come live with me.’

We drink. The wine is dry and cooled just properly. It has a deep raisin taste, yet is light and almost effervescent. It’s time to change the subject.

‘Where do you get these wines, Mirabelle? This kind of wine costs almost as much as that painting.’

‘They are not mine. These are the wines of Rolande. Where she worked with the Ministère des Finances at the Louvre, she would always receive cases of wine at Christmas. We hardly ever drank them, so there are many cases stored in the cave. I am glad I can share them with you. I think Rolande would be happy, too. At least, I hope she would.’

After the wine, we have a wonderful soufflé. To think of all I’ve heard about how hard it is to make a soufflé properly and here this elderly blind woman has pulled off one to match any I’ve ever had in my life. Mirabelle is a constant wonder. I find myself sneaking glances at her. In my mind I’m already starting to paint her portrait.

We finish off with our usual Poire William. We’re coming close to the bottom of the bottle. I wonder what Mirabelle will want to do with the pear when it’s all that’s left.

She clears the table and pours two cups of coffee. Again, she makes some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Perhaps this is partly because I have the chance to drink coffee so infrequently. I’ve heard it said that the best way to ensure yourself compliments as a cook is to keep your guests waiting until they’re practically starved, and I’m sure in my past I’ve been victim to this theory, but with Mirabelle, everything seems to arrive just at the appropriate moment.

I watch as she so efficiently, gracefully, removes the dishes from our table, slides them into soapy water, rinses them, stacks them in a rack. It’s like music, calming, just to watch her. I know I could never dance to her dance, so I stay seated, talk to her about the people who came up to me and bought the painting. I tell it with the kind of detached elation I felt, and it comes out as so funny, we’re both laughing. Mirabelle comes over from the kitchen, drying her hands.

‘Now, Jacques, are you ready to paint my portrait?’

‘Yes. First I’ll bring in my box and the new canvas from the palier. I think I’ll paint you by the windows so I have enough light on the canvas.’

I move toward the door. I struggle the canvas and box inside, closing the door behind me. There are only two windows in the room, both opening onto the court, so there isn’t much light. But worst of all are the raggedy drapes, three-quarters drawn across the windows. They block just about any light that might come in.

‘Mirabelle, would it be all right if I take down the drapes on the windows, or pull them back? I need more light to see.’

‘Oh yes, please do. I had completely forgotten they were there. You must have been sitting here with me in the dark. Why did you not say something?’

For the first time, including when she’d bumped into me and fallen, she seems generally nonplussed, embarrassed.

‘Oh, I could see enough to eat. But if I’m going to paint you, I must have more light.’

‘Please take them down. There is no one to peer in at me and I would like it if they did, at least somebody would be seeing me. We had those drapes up for Rolande.’

I use the stool she’s been using to reach up into the cupboard. I stand on it and find that the mechanism for moving the drapes is completely jammed. I lift the entire contraption off its hooks, lower the curtain, and step down onto the floor again. The drapes are coated with dust and so fragile they tear in my hand.

‘I think these drapes are finished, Mirabelle. Do you want me to save them?’

‘No. Please throw them away. The smell of the dust makes me feel as if I am dead already. Put them out on the palier. Later, I shall take them down to the poubelle.’

I climb to lift down the other set of drapes. Same thing: jammed, rusty, dusty drapes, faded, falling apart. I lower them as I come down from the stool, wrap them around the valence. I take both of them to the door and shove them out onto the landing, the palier, where my paint box had been.

‘I’ll take them downstairs when I go home, Mirabelle.’

Now I look at the windows. They’re as filthy as the mirror had been. But I’m not going to clean them now. The weather is mild, maybe I can open them.

‘Do you mind if I open the windows, Mirabelle? It will clear the air. If you feel cold you can wear another sweater, perhaps.’

‘Oh yes. That will be fine. What would you like me to wear for this portrait?’

‘I think just what you are wearing now, your dark blue sweater with the collar.’

‘Is my hair in order?’

She feels over her head, shifting bobby pins and maybe hairpins over and around her head.

‘You look wonderful.’

I move one of the chairs from the table and place it so I have a three-quarter light falling on her face. It gives enough penumbra, but not too much. I can pick up the features on the shaded section, even in this limited light.

‘Shall I sit in the chair now?’

‘Not yet. Perhaps you can finish cleaning the pots and pans from our wonderful meal, if you want, while I open my box and prepare myself.’

I’d noticed that in her cleanup she’d left some pans soaking in the sink.

I wedge the long back leg of my box under the window. I want to have enough light on the canvas and still not have the canvas block my view of Mirabelle. I want the eye level of the portrait at my eye level and at just about the same eye level as Mirabelle. I’m going to paint her one and a half times life size. Painting on the vertical dimension, this should fill a 20F just fine.

I’m all settled in when Mirabelle sits in the chair. I need her head turned more to the light with her sightless eyes seeming to look at me. I want the dynamic of the two directions. I wonder if when I paint her, her eyes will seem empty, they don’t seem that way to me at all. I have the other chair set up in front of my paint box. I stand and go over to where she’s sitting. I put my hands on each side of her face and turn it so the light is just right. I think it’s the first time I touch her face.

Usually, from the little experience I’ve had with painting portraiture, one asks models, after they’ve been posed, to pick something and fix their eyes on it. But this is obviously impossible in this case. She does the mind-reading trick on me again.

‘I can hold my head still like this because I know where you are and I can feel the open window.’

I start my pencil sketch with a 3B pencil. I’ll move up to 6B later on when I’m more sure. I really don’t like working the drawing with charcoal and then blowing fixative on it the way they taught me those long years ago at school. I draw with the pencil and correct with a soft eraser. I begin drawing and concentrate for at least fifteen minutes, getting her placed on the canvas, having the right relationship between head, body, and negative space. I want her placed up high on the canvas but not too dominant. I make quite a few erasures before I get the proportions and angles I want.

‘Please tell me, Jacques, how I look. No one seems to look at me, or, if they do, they have never told me. Many times I would ask Rolande how I looked but she would only say I was quite presentable, or sometimes when she was cross, that I was too pretty for my own good. But that was a long time ago.

‘I can feel with my fingers that I am getting older. There seems nothing one can do to stop that. It is only natural, is it not?’

She pauses. I’m trying to concentrate, get it right, what’s she talking about now?

‘Do I have gray hair, Jacques?’

This is going to be hard but I want to be truthful. I look away from the painting, up at her.

‘White, Mirabelle, you have white hair. There are some dark hairs in your eyebrows, but the hair on your head is practically white.’

‘Oh dear! I have begun to think so. At first, twenty years ago, I could tell some of the hairs were stiffer and were hard to manage. I imagine they were the white ones. They were not like the kind of hair usually growing on my head. Now they are all the same, all stiff and straight. You know, it is hard for me to think of myself with white hair. Is that not silly? Here I am, seventy-one years old, and I actually almost did not believe I had even gray hair. I feel like such a fool.’

‘None of us ever really look at ourselves, Mirabelle, even if we can see. Perhaps it is best, it helps us sustain our illusions.’

She’s quiet for a while. I’m working on the relationship between her eyes and nose. She has a lovely, thin aquiline nose with visible, slightly flaring nostrils. Her eyes, her non-seeing eyes, are set wide and are large. It’s so hard to believe she sees nothing.

‘Yes, you are right; perhaps that is why I do not allow myself to see. But tell me, do I have wrinkles in my face? Of course I do. Would you please tell me about them? I want to know, I really do.’

It’s hard to concentrate because that’s not the part of her face I’m working on yet. I can see this is going to be quite a problem painting her. I lean back and look.

‘Yes, Mirabelle, you have wrinkles. So do I. I’m forty-nine years old, so naturally I have wrinkles. Without wrinkles nobody’s face would be very interesting.

‘You have a wonderful line of concentration, slightly to the left, between your eyes, and a smaller one just beside it. Then across your forehead you have four questioning lines, unevenly spaced, going all the way across. Two of them intersect on the left side. There are lines coming out of your eyes on each side, mostly smiling lines, lines from avoiding the glare of the sun. No, that can’t be, the glare of the sun would mean nothing to you. They must only be smiling lines. You do smile often, you know, Mirabelle.

‘There are lines down the sides of your mouth from your nose. These are the deepest lines in your face. They come right down past your mouth to your chin. Those are the main lines on your face, the most visible, but not the most important.’

She’s quiet some more. I get back to work with my drawing. Again, by having explained to her, I’m seeing better. The spacing between the eyes and the mouth is better related to the length of the nose. This can always be a problem in doing a portrait.