The Mistress(6)

By the time he met Maylis and fell in love with her, he had had four serious mistresses in the course of his lifetime, and seven children with them. He was fond of his children but was candid and unashamed that he lived for his work, and little else. He was a fiercely dedicated artist. He had privately acknowledged his children but never legitimized or helped to support them, and saw no reason to. He had never had money when they were young, and their mothers had never made demands of him, knowing he had nothing to give. All his children were grown by the time he met Maylis, and they visited him from time to time, and considered him more of a friend. None had become artists, nor had his talent, and they had little in common with him. Maylis was always kind to them when they came to visit, and all of them were older than she. Some were married and had children of their own.

Maylis had no urge to have children with him. All she wanted was to be with him, and Lorenzo had no desire for marriage or children either. He treated Maylis like a child much of the time, and she was happy to learn about art from him, but the only work she really cared about was his. He was fascinated with her face and body and sketched her in a thousand poses in the early years of their relationship, and did some very handsome paintings of her.

Lorenzo had been mercurial, alternately wonderful and difficult with her. He had the temperament of an artist, and of the genius she believed he was, and she was happy with him and carefree in her life in St. Paul de Vence, however shocked her family was by the existence she led and the partner she’d chosen, whom they considered unsuitable due to his lifestyle, career, and age. Lorenzo was respected as an enormous talent by his contemporaries, however unknown he was in the world, which he didn’t care about. He always managed to scrape up enough money for them to live on somehow, or borrowed from a friend, and Maylis worked as a waitress in a local restaurant a few nights a week when they were desperate for money. Money was never important to either of them, only his art, and the life they shared. He wasn’t easy—he was high-spirited, difficult, volatile, and temperamental. They had some fearsome arguments in their early years, which they resolved passionately in the bedroom upstairs. She never doubted that he loved her, as much as she loved him. He was the love of her life, and he said she was the light of his.

As Lorenzo got older, he got more cantankerous, and argued often with his friends, particularly if he thought they were selling out to the commercial world, and sacrificing their talent for money. He was just as happy giving away his work as selling it.

He was hostile and suspicious when a young art dealer came to meet him from Paris. He came to St. Paul de Vence several times before Lorenzo would agree to see him. Gabriel Ferrand had seen some of Lorenzo’s work, and recognized genius when he saw it. He begged Lorenzo to let him represent him at his gallery in Paris, and Lorenzo refused. Some of his friends tried to convince him otherwise, since Ferrand had an excellent reputation, but Lorenzo said he had no interest in being represented by some “money-hungry crook of an art dealer in Paris.” It took Gabriel three years to convince Lorenzo to let him show one of his paintings in Paris, which Gabriel sold immediately for a very respectable amount of money, though Lorenzo insisted it meant nothing to him.

It was Maylis who finally reasoned with Lorenzo to let Gabriel represent him, which proved increasingly lucrative while Lorenzo continued to call him a crook, much to Gabriel’s amusement. He had come to love the inordinately difficult genius he had discovered. Most of Gabriel’s communication with Lorenzo went through Maylis, and they became fast friends, conspiring with each other for Lorenzo’s benefit. By the time Maylis had been with him for ten years, and Lorenzo turned seventy, he had a very decent amount of money in the bank, which he claimed he didn’t want to know about. He insisted that he had no desire to “prostitute” his art, or be corrupted by Gabriel’s “venal intentions,” and he let Maylis and Gabriel handle his money. He wasn’t rich by any means, but he was no longer dirt poor. Nothing changed in their life, so as not to upset Lorenzo, and Maylis continued working as a waitress several times a week, and posing for him. He had declined to have a show of his work at Gabriel’s gallery in Paris, so Gabriel sold his work individually, as soon as buyers saw it. And at times, Lorenzo wouldn’t send him anything at all. It always depended on his mood, and he enjoyed his love/hate relationship with the young gallerist from Paris, whose only interest was in helping him achieve the recognition he deserved for his enormous talent. Maylis did her best to smooth the rocky road between them, without upsetting Lorenzo unduly. Most of the time, Lorenzo gave his paintings to Maylis, who had a huge collection of his work by then, but refused to sell any of the paintings he had given her, out of sentiment. Between the two of them, Gabriel had a hard time selling much of Lorenzo’s work, but he remained faithful to the cause, convinced that Lorenzo would be an artist of enormous stature one day, and he came to St. Paul de Vence to see them often, mostly for the pleasure of admiring Lorenzo’s new work, and of talking to Maylis, whom he adored. He thought she was the most remarkable woman he had ever met.

Gabriel had a wife and daughter in Paris, but he lost his wife to cancer after he had known Lorenzo for five years. After that he brought his little girl, Marie-Claude, with him to St. Paul de Vence occasionally, and Maylis would play with her while the two men talked. She felt sorry for her with no mother. She was a sweet, sunny child, and Gabriel obviously loved her deeply and appeared to be a good father. He took her everywhere with him, to visit artists in their studios and when he traveled, and she was a bright little girl.