Madame Picasso

“I’m told you like my work,” he said affably as he barged between them as everyone was doing with one another in the crowd.

“I do.”

“Any poem in particular?”

“‘We knew very well that we were damned, / But hope of love along the way / Made both of us think / Of what the Gypsy did prophesy.’ That one has always spoken to me the most.”

Eva saw a spark of jealousy flare in Picasso’s eyes and she reveled in it.

“You memorized it?”

“Several of them, actually. ‘I have picked this sprig of heather. / Autumn has ended, you do remember. / Never on this earth shall we meet again. / Scent of time, sprig of heather / Remember always, I wait for you forever.’”

“I’m duly impressed, mademoiselle.”

“Apo, go see if our table is ready yet,” Picasso grumbled with an authoritative air. He seemed to be completely ignoring Fernande, and what was happening between her and Louis, half a bar’s length away.

“I must see you again. You must allow me to paint you.”

“Sit for you, like last time? Oh, I think not.”

“Was it really so bad between us, Mademoiselle Gouel?” Picasso pressed as he leaned in close enough that she could feel the warm, primal attraction between them, and his breath near her throat.

Eva drew up her wineglass and took a sip. When she realized her hand was shaking, she slowly set the glass back down on the bar, hoping he had not seen it.

“I certainly didn’t know you were living with someone,” she said.

“And I didn’t know you were such an innocent to the ways of the world. So we each have had the other at a disadvantage.”

She never expected him to be so clever, or so disarming—particularly now in a crowd of people in which his lover was mere steps away. Eva might be out of her league with him but she was just angry enough not to submit to his artful ploys again.

“Forgive me, I don’t mean to toy with you,” Picasso said as he trapped her fingers in his own beneath the bar. “Only say you’ll allow me to see you again.”

“And Madame Picasso?”

“Fernande has a new lover, as it turns out, a strapping young German boy. My friends think I don’t know. They are trying to protect me so that I will keep painting. Anything to keep the peace, and keep the money rolling in. But I know.”

“It is all just too dangerous for me,” Eva shook her head. “I really cannot get caught up into this.”

“Alas, it seems to me, mi belleza, that you already are.”

When their table was finally ready, Apollinaire insisted that Eva sit beside him so that they might speak further of poetry and the poets she liked. Then, in turn, he would reveal how he had come to write some of his own intentionally cryptic, often gritty, verses. It was such a joy, he said, to speak to anyone who respected the art. Picasso sat across from her at the table between Germaine and Ramón. Throughout dinner, in spite of their distance, Picasso’s gaze never strayed far from Eva. She could feel it even as Apollinaire chattered on about poetry and drugs.

“Do you not ever write about love?” she asked as they were served a course of terrine.

“I’ve never been in love. Only lust.” He sighed. “And I make a point only to write what I know.”

“Seems prudent. I don’t think I have been, either.” Eva chuckled, knowing she hadn’t.

“So Fernande tells me you, too, are from Poland, Mademoiselle Humbert?”

“My parents met there. My father is French, my mother Polish. We lived there only when I was a small child, until my father brought us all back to live in France.”

He really was surprisingly easy to talk with for someone whose work she had so long admired. “My real name is Eva Gouel, but I’m putting it aside for now to see what else is out there for a Parisian girl who goes by the name Marcelle Humbert.”

“Ah, yes. That is much more Parisian. Not clearly quite so authentic, though, for your lovely Polish smile. I’m really the very unpoetic Wilhelm Kostrowicki, but, as a fellow Pole, I will trust you not to spread that around.” He chuckled.

“Fernande told me she, too, has called herself many different things here in the city.”

“Including Madame Picasso.”

“You don’t approve of her calling herself that?” Eva asked.

“I wouldn’t dare say so if I didn’t. Fernande Olivier is a force with which to be reckoned. Certainly not one to be crossed.”

And into the mix suddenly came Fernande’s lovely voice from across the table. She was telling Louis that she had come up with a name for him and that after tonight he must be known in Paris as Marcoussis. That, she decreed, was a wonderfully artistic name that was sure to bring him luck.

“I will consider myself warned,” Eva said to Apollinaire.

“But you are her new friend, so there is nothing in the world to worry about,” he said with a throaty chuckle, and he lifted up his knife and fork. “As long as she likes you.”

Chapter 7 (#ulink_d3fd201e-ea37-56e0-8810-0d19200ef5e1)

“Why, Pablo Diego Ruiz y Picasso, what the devil has gotten into you? I’ll be damned if you aren’t stone drunk!” Max Jacob chuckled as he stepped back from the open door of his brick apartment building on the boulevard Barbès.

“Not drunk enough,” Picasso grunted as motorcars and carriages moved past in the street behind him. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “Where’s your wine?”

“Haven’t got any, I’m afraid, ol’ chum. Sound familiar?” Max quipped tauntingly. He never missed a chance with his old friend to give as good as he got. He had given Picasso the first roof over his head here in Paris, lent him a few centimes when he needed it and bought him food. Max felt that gave him license that few others had.

“Where’s your ether, then? I know you’ve got that,” Picasso slurred.

“Now what kind of a friend would I be if I told you?” Max put a hand on his arm as Picasso lunged for the dresser drawers. “I’ve gone cold turkey this time, amigo. I woke up two days ago in front of my house in a pool of my own swill, with a stray cat licking my face. Nothing quite so poetic to set you right as that. It put me off the stuff for good. I swear it.”

Max spoke it as a musing but he had battled a drug problem for years. When Picasso and Fernande had given up smoking opium two years ago, Max had gone on with a vengeance, adding ether to his ever-growing list of addictions.

“I need to speak about Fernande and, of all our friends, you’re the least biased in her favor so I know you will be honest.”

“You mean, I’m the one who is the least captivated by her seductive charms.” Max chuckled as he closed the door.

“Sí, if you like.”

“That may have more to do with my sexual preferences than my powers of discernment, mon ami. She’s just never held sexual sway over me. But like everyone else, I do acknowledge her undeniable beauty.”

“I’m not sure she holds that sway over me any longer, either.”

Max stepped back as if he’d been struck. Then he sank into the shabby wingback chair beside his coal fireplace. “Merde. That’s something I truly never thought I’d hear you say.”

“Me, either.”