Madame Picasso

Her parents were not terrible people. She knew her mother had struggled to find a way out of the poverty she had known in Warsaw, and she dreamed of marrying and having a child in the peaceful suburbs of France. But Eva did not share the same dream. Eva had dried her tears as she’d stepped onto the Métro car in her only pair of button shoes. She knew how badly she was hurting her parents, but she had craved excitement. And the powerful hope for something more than she could find at home.

“Sylvette?”

“Hmm?”

“What happened to the seamstress before me?”

“Mistinguett didn’t like her,” Sylvette answered after another small silence.

“She is so awfully intimidating.”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it might make you feel better. Mistinguett’s real name is Jeanne, but no one dares to call her that.”

“Why not?”

“Because her own mother was a seamstress. I think she wants to distance herself from her past, as you do. Throwing her weight around helps her do that. It is her one weakness, I think, that those days still can wound her and she flares up in defense.”

“Sylvette?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you for helping me get the job,” Eva said, feeding the next little silence.

“It was nothing. I only told you about the opening. You got the job all on your own,” Sylvette replied with a yawn. “Besides, you will be able to repay me one day. I feel certain of it.”

* * *

The next afternoon, Eva and Louis made their way together along the busy quai d’Orsay beneath a wonderfully warming spring sun. Everyone in Paris seemed to be out enjoying the lovely weather—parasols open, wide-brimmed hats, their plumes fluttering in the breeze. The sidewalks were ornamented by shabby little bookstalls filled with ragged leather-bound treasures. Brightly painted boats bobbed on the shimmering Seine beyond.

This was her favorite part of the city, and today, with the sunlight playing through the Tour Eiffel and the Parisian rooftops on the horizon, it all looked positively magical.

Ah, how she loved the vibrance of this city!

Next, they cut through the shaded luxury of the Luxembourg Gardens, with its broad sun-dappled walkways, manicured lawns, Grecian urns and magnificent fountains luring them beneath its lush bower of trees. Young bourgeois couples strolled hand in hand casually with them past the Medici Fountain, the ladies twirling their parasols, the men in high cravats and bowler hats or crisp boaters, and fashionable walking sticks. Other couples sat on green park benches scattered along the walkways, some of them feeding the pigeons.

As they walked, they spoke of the latest news. Everyone was talking about what the newspapers called the World’s Largest Ocean Liner, being nearly completed across the channel in Ireland. They were going to call it the Titanic, excitedly heralding it unsinkable.

Now that seemed a sure way to tempt fate, Louis said. The prospect of going all the way from England to America on her maiden voyage seemed absolutely terrifying. Yet, was life not really all about doing the things that frightened one the most?

The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Ironically, it was her father who had always said that. “Would you take a voyage if you had the fare?”

“Not in a million years.” Louis laughed. “I despise the ocean. It’s too big and black and unknown!”

“It’s the unknown in life that’s the best part,” Eva countered with a broad smile.

She was happy finally to merge then with the large crowd moving past the Grand Palais on the broad avenue Nicholas II, and up the dignified staircase into the great white stone Petit Palais, where the exhibition was being held. She could put her concern about Louis’s intentions aside for a while and allow herself to be excited about the artwork everyone was talking about. She tipped up her chin proudly as he handed the two tickets to the man at the entrance.

The building itself was magnificent, and inside there were massive murals covering the walls along with a soaring stained-glass rotunda. There were different rooms all dedicated to various styles of art, and Eva and Louis made their way steadily through the crowd into one of them. Eva noticed that the men and women were holding their gloved hands to their mouths. She quickly realized why and giggled with embarrassment. She had wandered into a room celebrating the work of Henri Matisse.

Eva’s senses were bombarded by bold color, crude styles and raw designs she could not have imagined. She had no idea what she was meant to think or feel about any of it, but some of it was shocking since his work lacked all convention. Several people openly laughed and pointed at a portrait called Woman with a Hat. Eva thought the work was a torrent of confusion with boldly colored brushstrokes slapped onto the canvas as if by a bricklayer’s trowel. It seemed wild and forbidden.

She was fascinated by the naked women in the other paintings around it—the bodies, the great sensual gobs of oil paint on canvas. Eva needed to catch her breath.

“This is the sort of thing artists are doing?” she asked, feeling her body stir as she gazed up at bare breasts, legs and torsos seemingly on every other canvas.

“This was the style a few years ago. They do this and much more that they would not dare to display here. Much of it far more blatantly erotic even than all of these nudes.” Louis sniffed reprovingly.

“You’ve seen worse?” she asked.

“Of course. But now that drivel they call Cubism is the new thing, leaving all this flesh to a retrospective collection in favor of something even more wild. Come, you’ll want to see it. It’s in the next room.” He took her hand and led her through the crowd. He was so stodgy, and his description was the perfect example of that. She hated his moist hand almost as much as how predictable he always was. But even that could not dampen the thrill of this moment. Being here, amid this elite crowd at such a glamorous exhibition, was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, and her heart was soaring.

“Last year a Parisian donkey made a painting with its tail and they showed it at the exhibition here. That trash sold for four hundred francs, and an artist like me can barely make a decent sale,” Louis droned, doing his best to assert his knowledge and dampen the thrill she felt.

As they made their way to the next room, Eva wasn’t certain what she had expected to see but the new sensory barrage stunned her even more. The vast room, with its colored play of light and all of the people, suddenly made the space seem extremely warm. There were so many huge canvases covered with lines and angles. All of them seemed like sharp pallid cubes with human beings trapped inside trying to escape. Eva felt a shiver at the evocative paintings as she wondered what some of the artists might have been trying to say. There were too many people milling around her to pause long enough to hazard even a guess, but each one was oddly stirring to her.

“These are the damned artists who should be called the Wild Beasts, not the Fauvists. There’s not a thing artistically sacred to any of them. Just look at all of the nonsensical shapes,” Louis grumbled.

“One of them is actually making something of a name for himself at it, although apparently now he’s too much better than everyone else to exhibit his work here. Some Spaniard called Picasso. Wretched Spaniards.”

He rubbed his chin as he looked up at a huge canvas of gray and beige cubes. “I’d like to meet him, though. Maybe some of that dumb Spanish luck of his would rub off on me. At least I know I can paint better than a donkey’s tail!”

She’d heard the name Picasso, of course. Everyone who was anyone in Paris was talking about him, saying he was a true renegade. She had read recently that he had become known for leaving the style of Matisse, and for embracing this new linear style Louis despised. Eva knew nothing about art, but she knew that these paintings fascinated her.

When Louis was distracted and began speaking to a couple he seemed to know, Eva wandered alone back into the first room and to a corner adorned by a large canvas depicting a nude, recumbent woman. She leaned nearer. Henri Matisse, Blue Nude. There was no disguising how erotic it was. Beside it, a few feet away, The Joy of Living, also signed by Matisse. On that canvas there were naked people lounging everywhere painted in vibrant tones of yellow, red, pink and blue. One couple was even depicted... Oh, dear! Eva tried her best not to gasp.

It was at that moment that she saw him.

He gazed up at the vast canvas on the wall before him. He was a rough-looking sort. Like a hoodlum, she thought, a true shabby bohemian. He looked dangerous in his sensuality, not neat and proper like Louis. He wore a casual black corduroy jacket, black turtleneck sweater, wrinkled beige trousers, a slouchy blue cap and scuffed shoes. His thick fingers were stained with paint. He was tightly built and stocky, like a prizefighter.

And then she remembered.

It was the man from the Moulin Rouge last night. There was no mistaking those eyes; they were black as midnight and looked as though they could burn right through the painting. There was a brooding sensuality about him and she felt her body stir. He was looking at the same Matisse canvas, full of lounging nudes. To her horror, he turned sharply and caught her staring at him.

Eva’s heart vaulted into her throat, and suddenly she felt foolish. Then, as if they were the only two people in the room, his lips turned up just slightly in a casual smile and he nodded in acknowledgment of her.

Time lengthened as the energy between them flared. Her imagination betrayed her and as they assessed one another, Eva thought she could almost feel his hands running down the length of her back, drawing her against him. As she watched his gaze travel downward, she knew his thoughts were mirroring hers. His eyes were angling from her neck down along her torso with the skilled appreciation of a lover. Thankfully, no one in the crowded room seemed to notice how they had captivated one another, and Louis was still back in the room with the Cubist works.

Eva bravely returned his smile. She felt so brazen! She knew well enough that she was not a grand beauty—not like the dancers at the Moulin Rouge—but this stranger looked at her with desire.

“Curious art,” he casually remarked of the piece they both were observing. He spoke with an accent so thick that at first she wasn’t certain what he had said.

“I don’t understand it.”

“Do you suppose the artist does?”

“Well, Monsieur Matisse painted it, so he must.”

“What do you imagine he is trying to convey?” he asked.