Moonlight Over Paris(69)

SHE SAT FOR étienne three more times that week. He didn’t show her his preliminary sketches, nor the painting as he worked on it, and she didn’t ask. The composition was on a grand scale, larger than life-size, and while she was curious to see what he had created she was also a trifle apprehensive.

After Helena had finished posing for étienne, he worked steadily on the portrait for another week, and only then was he ready to share it with her and Mathilde. He made a great ceremony of the moment, insisting that they close their eyes until he had arranged the canvas on an easel and unveiled it properly.

At last the command came. “Open your eyes,” he called out.

Helena had thought she would know what to expect. She had assumed the painting would be of a woman, dressed in gold, seated on a chair. The painting did depict one woman; but it also, astonishingly, encompassed two portraits.

An invisible line ran vertically through the middle of the canvas, and while the left half of the woman was depicted in a neoclassical and entirely realist manner, her right half was an entirely abstract exercise in Cubist forms and shapes. It was at once a technical tour de force and an exposition of the strengths and limitations of two vastly different schools of expression.

“Well? What do you think?” étienne looked so nervous, so uncertain. Did he truly not see the brilliance of his creation?

“With this painting, you will set this world on fire,” she said, willing him to believe. “It will be the talk of the Salon.”

“Mathilde?” he asked.

“I agree with Helena. This painting will change everything for you. It is magnifique.”

He smiled shyly, then shrugged, affecting a nonchalance that Helena was sure he didn’t feel. “Nothing is certain until Czerny agrees to submit it to the Salon. Until then, all we can do is hope. And drink champagne.”

“But it’s only three in the afternoon,” Helena protested.

“You English and your rules. In Paris, dear girl, it’s never too early for champagne.”





Chapter 25


“You look awful, ma belle. Have you eaten anything this morning?” Etienne asked.

Helena shook her head. It was nine o’clock in the morning, she had been awake for at least five hours, and her insides were as hollow as a drum. But hungry was better than nauseous, and if she’d tried to eat even a scrap of breakfast she would have been sick to her stomach.

Any minute now, Ma?tre Czerny would enter the academy’s grand salon, and he would begin to select the paintings for submission to the Salon des Indépendants. All her work, everything she had done over the past year—it had all led to this moment. Before the hour was out, the ma?tre would see Le train bleu, would pass judgment on it, and she would know, once and for all, if she was an artist.

Etienne had already set La femme dorée on his easel, and their fellow students had gathered around, shaking his hand and congratulating him, a few looking to Helena as they recognized her features from the painting. It was past time that she removed her own canvas from its fabric wrapping and set it on her easel, but she couldn’t bring herself to reveal it to the rest of the class. It would look so amateurish next to étienne’s masterpiece. It would look wrong.

“Good morning,” came the ma?tre’s booming voice from the doorway.

“What are you doing?” étienne whispered frantically. “Put Le train bleu on your easel. He’s about to begin.”

She nodded. Swallowed back the tide of fear that threatened to choke her.

Crouching down, she drew out the canvas she sought, unwrapped it carefully, and then she set her portrait of the farmer’s wife upon the easel.

“Hélène, no. What are you thinking? Change it while you—”

“Eh bien, Monsieur Moreau. I knew you would not disappoint me.” The ma?tre stood between her and étienne, and he was smiling, something he did so rarely that it looked quite wrong on his face. “How have you titled this work?”

“La femme dorée.”

“It is exceptional. Painted in haste, I see, but that adds a certain charm. A boldness that I like very much.”

“Thank you, Ma?tre Czerny.”

“On to Mademoiselle Parr. The subject of La femme dorée, I believe?”

“Yes, ma?tre,” she answered.

“He has immortalized you,” he said, his eyes flickering over the painting on her easel. “What do you call this?”

“I, ah . . . Femme de fermier, ma?tre.”

“Very well. If that is all you can manage. A sentimental pastiche, but I suppose it will look well enough in some bourgeois sitting room. Ah—Monsieur Goodwin. What do you have for me?”

She stood there and waited for her pulse to slow and the tightness in her chest to loosen, and when she could breathe again she turned and tried to smile at étienne.

“Why?” her friend asked, and he sounded nearly as heartbroken as she felt.

“Not now,” she whispered. Pleaded.

“I will go to him. I will explain there has been a mistake.”

“No. No, it’s fine. I wasn’t ready, that’s all.”

He reached out and grasped her near hand. “Courage. One day you will show Le train bleu to the world, and the world will take notice. Of this I am certain.”