Moonlight Over Paris(36)
Daisy’s voice, already faint, faded to a whisper. “Daniel—Captain Mancuso—went home, or I suppose he was sent home, while I was sick with the flu, and I had no way of finding him. I asked my father for help, but he got very upset. He said it was wrong of me to ask, and that I should just forget about Daniel.”
“Oh, Daisy,” Helena said, and gave her friend a handkerchief so she might wipe her eyes.
“And then, almost right away, Daddy hired Louisette. For his ‘peace of mind,’ he said.”
“It is rather odd,” Helena ventured. “Does he know that you dislike her? Won’t he consider someone else?”
“No. He says I’m meant to dislike her. That she’s there to protect me, and not to be my friend.”
“I thought my parents were strict, but this is terrible. Perhaps we can find a way . . .”
But Daisy was shaking her head. “I’m used to her now, and she can’t stop me from spending time with you and étienne and Mathilde. Only Daddy can do that, and ever since your aunt sent him that letter he hasn’t complained once about the studio or my going out from time to time. So, you see, I can’t really complain.”
HELENA CERTAINLY DIDN’T have cause to complain about anything, for her life in Paris was perfect in nearly every respect. The exception, the single stone in her shoe, was oil painting, for her initial elation at having been chosen for Ma?tre Czerny’s elite class was slowly dissolving into despair.
The difficulty lay in the gulf between her expectations and reality. Back in Antibes, happy in her little studio overlooking the sea, she had imagined that learning to paint in oils would be a straightforward affair, though naturally demanding. It would simply require patient application on her part, and practice would eventually make perfect.
She had assumed that she would have a natural flair for painting in oils. She could not have been more wrong.
Squeezed from the tube, gleaming and fresh on her palette, the oils were gorgeous, like little puddles of melted jewels. Every time, admiring them, she believed. This time the paint would behave. This time the colors would remain true. This time she would create something worth saving.
She failed. Again and again, she failed. The paints, so bright and perfect and new, turned dull at the touch of her brush, and the more she worked at them the worse they looked. Around her, the other students worked so confidently; some, like étienne, had been painting in oils for years. She was the only one who struggled. She alone was left to flounder with the desperation of an upended tortoise.
And always, always, the voice of the ma?tre, strident, methodical, and unrelenting.
“Fat on lean. Thick on thin. Warm on cold. Engrave these words on your heart—have them tattooed into the skin over your hearts—and forget everything else. These are your commandments. These are the laws I compel you to follow.”
She tried, harder than she’d ever tried at anything, but they were commandments, not habits, and they left her head so crammed full of technique there was no space left for inspiration. There were moments, rare ones, when she figured out the how, but the canvases she then produced were mannered, stiff, and lifeless.
Worst of all? It was impossible to hide from the ma?tre in a class of twelve. He took notice of her now, but only to lavish upon her the disdain he’d once reserved for Daisy.
“Again, Mademoiselle Parr. Again you make of your paint une pagaille upon your palette. I must conclude that you wish to paint with mud, or perhaps you wish to depict mud? En tout cas you are hopeless.”
At lunch and after class each day, étienne and Mathilde were endlessly patient, never complaining when she needed help working up her paints. From them she learned when to make the paint lean by thinning it with white spirits, and when to fatten it with linseed oil. At Mathilde’s suggestion she altered her brushwork, for the delicate manner she’d used with her watercolors led only to a bumpy mess of impasto on the canvas. At étienne’s direction she used fewer colors, combining them as needed on her palette.
“Monet often used only five or six,” he explained. “Here—I’ve given you yellow ochre, golden ochre, viridian, vermilion, cobalt blue, and chalk white. These are all you need.”
In the peace of the studio, helped by her friends, and freed from the simmering contempt of the ma?tre, she worked up several small canvases that showed some promise. Back in the grand salon, however, with the ma?tre pacing back and forth, muttering and tearing at his hair, her newfound knowledge and competence drained away like so much dirty bathwater.
“I need a rest,” she told étienne and Mathilde as they left class one afternoon; Daisy had gone home after the morning session. “It’s only been a week and my head is spinning.”
“It’s the fumes from the paint,” étienne said teasingly. “We’ll open a few more windows.”
“Ha. I need more than fresh air.”
“I wonder if perhaps you might like some company?” Mathilde asked. “I, too, feel in need of a short vacation from the studio.”
“I should like that very much. I was thinking of taking a walk through the Luxembourg Gardens, but if you—”
“No, that would be most pleasant.”
They bid adieu to étienne, who was going directly to the studio, and set out for the gardens. Walking side by side, they shared a comfortable silence, rather as if they were old friends who had already disclosed every possible thought, opinion, and secret to one another, and were simply content to be together.