The Painted Girls Read online

  “Don’t know.”

  “Don’t know?”

  I shake my head, feel that pocketed button heavy upon my thigh.

  Monsieur Guiot examines the buttons still on the shirt, looks me hard in the face. “It’s a week’s wages, Mademoiselle Antoinette, to repair the hole, to replace the missing button, the burned shirt.”

  “At least,” the bearded woman says.

  I keep my eyes on my boots, knowing a single glimpse of her gloating face is enough to set me off. It is not a bit usual, me keeping my trap shut, not with all those eyes watching. Just ask old Pluque. But no way am I getting unjustly sacked again, not without first collecting what I am properly owed. I nod my agreement to Monsieur Guiot and a feeling comes over me, almost prideful, like I won a spat. He dismisses me from the ironing table, tells me to wipe down the wringing machine while the others finish up. “Thank you for your kindness,” I say, making a little bow.

  With Monsieur Guiot back in his booth and those laundresses who did not bother explaining a single thing back to work, I sidle past the ironing table, giving the bearded hag a look fierce enough that her eyes dart away. I pick up a bucket, and on my way to the spigot, I pluck, from the linens awaiting delivery, three shirts and a camisole with openwork and ribbon and lace. Émile won’t mind me being a little sour beneath all the trimming, the silk.

  It is nothing to unload those pinched items from my bucket into the alleyway out back of the washhouse, not when the only spigot is on the far side of the boiler, not when that sweltering cauldron blocks old Guiot’s view of the alleyway door. And if he guesses it was me took his linens and, Monday morning, sends me into the street, I could not care less. There will be the weight of coins in my pocket, coins put into my hands at the pawnbroker after passing the shirts across the countertop, more than enough to make up for those wages old Guiot is keeping from me. I turn my mind from Marie, the way her face lit up when I said about going to the washhouse with Maman, the way it would fall if I were to get myself sacked.

  Late, I gallop the five blocks between the rue de Douai and the Brasserie des Martyrs where Émile is waiting for me. With the night so brisk and the lacy camisole like cold water on my skin, I see silk underclothes are not useful, not when it comes to warmth. Their worth don’t go beyond rousing a boy, rousing Émile. Oh, how I miss the old chaise at the Ambigu, the comfort of a warm spot, the padding beneath my back, the hour between tableaux three and seven. Nowadays I see my share of alleyways and stairwells and once the toilet of a dance hall up near the place Pigalle. It is strange, the way it is easier to appreciate what you had once it is gone from your life. Émile says not to fuss, that soon enough he will show me the greenery, the waterfall of the Bois de Boulogne. It will be the soft grass of springtime tickling my naked flesh.

  Before I reach the brasserie doors, I see his back, also those of Colette and Pierre Gille, heading away. “Émile,” I call out, feeling the sting of him not waiting for me. He turns around, lopes back. Casting an arm around my neck, he pulls me in tight to his chest, and I feel the warmth of his mouth against my hair, smell the beer and tobacco on his breath. “You were leaving?” I say.

  “Been waiting more than an hour.” He staggers back a step, gives a tiny smirk at showing his drunkenness.

  “The overseer kept me late.”

  “It’s only a washhouse, Antoinette.” What he means is that I should’ve plunked down my iron and marched on out the door. “He owed me a week’s wages,” I say. I don’t explain about not collecting a single sou. No, instead, I tell about the bearded lady, hoping for a laugh, and when that don’t work, I say, “Look here,” and open up my shawl, showing off my bit of fancy lace.

  He puts a hand upon my breast, groping, and then his mouth is upon my own. His breathing changes, growing ragged, and feeling the hold I have on that boy, the drudgery of the week falls away and I open up my lips.

  “We aren’t waiting.” It is Pierre Gille hollering from down the street.

  He grabs Colette by the arm, but she shakes him off and calls out, “You lovebirds coming?”

  Then Émile is yanking my arm, and I wonder if he would not heel and roll over if it was what Pierre Gille said to do.

  We set out for the Élysée Montmartre, a dance hall not too far from the place Pigalle. The three of them are knocking into one another and talking nonsense, and Colette is lifting up her skirt and doing a little jig for no reason except to taunt Pierre Gille, who I can see is turning sour. Cannot say I blame him, with those pretty calves of hers flashing before his eyes, those heaving breasts only sometimes missing his arm, and then those dainty hands shoving him away. She holds her shawl high up, over her head, and spinning wildly, she hollers up to the nighttime sky. “It isn’t free, Pierre Gille. Not for the likes of you. Not for the likes of Pierre Gille.”

  “Shut your trap,” he says.

  She moves her pouty lips to a fingerbreadth from his own. “You want some, Pierre Gille,” she says, her voice velvety like the blackness of a sweltering night.

  He leans in, his lips parting. She slaps his face, and then she is off, running down the pavement, howling, doubling over at the joke of it.

  We catch up outside the shuttered-up stall of a fishmonger, where she is muttering to a scrawny, sniffing dog with a tawny belly and a grey snout. “Sit,” she says and that old dog moves to his haunches, his ears lying back against the black fur encircling his face and reaching down his back almost like a hooded cape. He lifts one skinny paw up in front, awaiting a little pat. Colette stoops, taking up that skinny paw. With her other hand she rakes the fur of his back, and that dog, he arches his neck, half shuts his eyes, like the attention of that girl is the greatest pleasure in all the world.

  Then it is the boot of Pierre Gille smashing into the arching neck of that dog. There is a single yelp, paws skittering backward, and a dog lying still on the pavement with his neck twisted in an unnatural way and blood running from his mouth.

  In a flicker, Colette is standing straight, screaming, “Scum. Blackguard. Son of a whore.” Her fists fly, striking the chest of Pierre Gille, his face, until he gives her the shove that sends her toppling to her rump.

  “Murderer.” I lunge, spit the word in the face of Pierre Gille.

  He slaps me then, hard, my head jerking sideways, the skin of my cheek numb and then aflame, prickling with heat. I look to Émile, fearful of blows, smashed bones between boys with the hotness and bluster of liquor in their blood. But Émile, he don’t move, not a speck, no charging, no fist thrust in defense of a stinging cheek. And my racing heart, it don’t settle, not a bit. No, the slow, steady breath of Émile, it lights my fear like a bellows does a flame. Those whispered words—my most precious, my dearest sweetheart, my best darling—are none of them true? I slap Pierre Gille, wait for him to return the blow, for the salty taste of a split lip when it comes. I strike, again, because Pierre Gille is going to hit back and Émile is going to stir. He will pick me over Pierre Gille.

  Then Émile is upon me, holding my flailing arms tight to my sides, saying, “Christ, Antoinette, stop with the show.” Pierre Gille smirks, fishes in his pocket for matches and a home roll, and I send the heel of my boot, hard, into the shin of Émile. He drops his arms from holding me, and Colette whimpers, her face in the coat of the dog.

  Pierre Gille lights up, leans his back against a shutter of the fishmonger, his foot propped beneath him like he is lapping up the sunshine of a summer’s day. He takes a puff, holds out the smoke to Émile, and I remember a story Marie told me, one she knew from Sister Evangeline about a dove returning to an ark with an olive branch gripped in its beak. When Noah saw that olive branch, he took it as an offering from God, a sign of disappearing waters, a promise of peace. I told Marie I would be hurling that old olive branch back in God’s face. Imagine, drowning the whole world, all except a lone family and the pigs and goats lucky enough to find themselves upon that boat.

  Émile takes the smoke offered by Pierre Gille, mov
es it to his lips.

  “Let’s go,” says Pierre Gille. “Had about enough of this pair of whores.”

  Émile takes a single step away from me, from Colette, the dead dog. Then he takes another and another, keeping pace with Pierre Gille as they shrink to nothing in the street.

  LE FIGARO

  26 MARCH 1880

  CONCERNING THE NEW PAINTING EXHIBITED AT THE GALLERY OF DURAND-RUEL

  BY EDMOND DURANTY

  From the trunk of the old tree of art a new branch emerges, an art that is wholly modern. The new painters on display at the gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel—Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir—have forsaken the tradition of painting scenes from history. Instead they seek to capture moments of everyday life in our modern age.

  Along with fresh subject matter, there is a new focus on truthfulness. The new painters have said farewell to the body treated like a vase, with an eye for the pretty curve. They seek to know and to embrace the character of a subject, to portray it faultlessly. A back makes known temperament, age and social position. A hand reveals the magistrate or the merchant. A face’s features tell us with certainty that a man is dry, orderly and meticulous, rather than the epitome of carelessness and disorder. As the new painter strives to reveal character, the neutral or vague background disappears. The trappings that surround a subject indicate his wealth, class and profession. A figure sits at the piano, irons at a worktable, dodges a carriage while crossing the street or waits in the wings for the moment to enter the stage. The new painter’s pencil is infused with the essence of life, and his artworks capture the true story of a heart and a body.

  Let us hope the slender limbs of this new branch of art thicken, that tender leaves multiply to a lush canopy.

  Marie

  Today it feels like the connection between my brain and my feet was cleaved with an ax. Antoinette did not come home Saturday night, and of course I worried and dreamt up the worst. A second woman, a tavern owner, was murdered, stabbed to death, a week ago. Antoinette knew all about it, and even if she ordered me and Charlotte to be off the streets by ten o’clock, it did not keep her from stumbling home in the black of night. I lay there amid a tangle of linens, filled up with fear about Antoinette being bludgeoned with a hammer or pierced full of holes. This, after a day of kneading bread and my regular class at the Opéra and my private one with Madame Théodore, then laundered linens to deliver late in the evening, some as far away as the third arrondissement, when Maman’s carrying on and knocking into furniture made it clear she could not do it herself.

  Nothing was improved by the light of day. Charlotte was feverish and crying for Antoinette, who showed up at midday, looking greener than pea soup and with her lips still carrying the stain of tint. I could not bring myself to ask, could not bear the answer I feared—that the lure of staying out with Émile Abadie was greater than the lure of coming home to Charlotte and me. I thought of the hundred ways Antoinette looked after us, how she mended our stockings and brought us eggs and arranged our hair and rouged our cheeks and managed to get us past Madame Legat at the Opéra door, all in the hours before she showed us to Monsieur Pluque. She accompanied me to Monsieur Degas’s workshop that time I was afraid and made sure I was not late. She said a hundred reassuring things—L’Assommoir was nothing more than a story, my forehead was no different from that of anyone else, no chance would I not be elevated to the quadrille. She climbed the stairs to the practice room and saw the unsteadiness of my fouettés en tournant and afterward taught me the trick of picturing a taut string pulling me up taller from the crown of my head. She paid the rent owed to Monsieur LeBlanc, put meat in our bellies, knew what to pawn when they went empty too long. And I felt ashamed that I did nothing nice in return and made a promise to myself that I would, soon. Most of all, though, I was scared. Staying out overnight was more evidence we were losing Antoinette.

  The next night was no better. For endless hours I held a cloth to Charlotte’s brow, until she finally said, “I’m hungrier than a goat,” and gobbled up the pork cutlet somehow produced by Antoinette. Charlotte drifted off after that, without a word of thanks, and it made me think again about how ungrateful I was myself. By then midnight was come and gone, and I worried I would slumber too deeply and not wake up in time for my eighty loaves. I looked into blackness, and wondered about Antoinette and the pork cutlet and where she had spent the night, and waited for the clickety-click of cartwheels on cobblestones that would tell me it was time to get up.

  So far I have managed to muddle my way through the barre and three adagios without drawing attention to my faltering, my heavy legs, my absence of heart. I was first in the practice room this morning, which is not often the case, not with the bakery. Sometimes I stayed a few minutes extra because the macaroons were not yet cool and the baker’s son, Alphonse, wanted my opinion on the cocoa or pistachios he had added to the egg whites. Were the macaroons too bitter now? Too dry? Would I like a second? He wanted me to be sure. I did my best to answer honestly—he had been so gentle and patient in teaching me about the baguettes. But always, I knew the barre awaited, that Madame Dominique closed the door on any girl arriving late.

  All alone, I lifted the watering can and sprinkled the floorboards closest to the barre and then, like always, I placed my feet in fifth position and began to limber up by bending forward from the waist, my free arm moving from à la seconde to sweep the floor and then overhead as I lifted myself through standing tall to arching backward. But as I returned to standing straight, the scene before me turned grey at the edges and then the grey swelled inward till there was but a pinprick of brightness left. I was wondering about the clamminess of my forehead and the way the roots of my hair seemed to stand on end, when my knees gave way.

  It was the other girls, noisy on the stairs outside the practice room door, who snapped me back awake. I picked myself up off the floor and found myself a place at the back of the barre and then in the last row once we moved to center. They were not my usual spots, but Madame Dominique said not a word.

  As she calls out the first of the day’s allegro combinations, my tired brain flits to a chance meeting in the rue Blanche the other day. On my way home from the Opéra, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and turned to see none other than Monsieur Degas. “Mademoiselle van Goethem,” he said, “a word with you.” But he did not ask me to go to his workshop the following day or the next week. No, he just stood there, not at all himself, rolling one hand over the other like he was washing up. “Monsieur Lefebvre came back,” he finally said. “He wanted a picture of you.”

  There were a hundred pictures, some left on the floor for Sabine to sweep up, most only a few charcoal lines. Only once had I seen myself in a larger artwork, the kind of painting an abonné such as Monsieur Lefebvre might want to hang upon a wall. It was an oil of a dancing lesson—ballet girls stretching at the barre, others resting upon a bench, and in the middle, me, skinny and exhausted, cooling myself off. I remembered posing for the work, the toil of holding up the fan.

  Monsieur Degas looked grave, and I touched my fingertips to the stone wall of the apothecary where we stood. “The oil of the dancing lesson?” I said.

  “No.” His eyes fell. “A charcoal drawing, three views of you posing for the statuette.”

  “A statuette?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, batting the air clear of my words. “You know the drawing?”

  “A statuette of me?”

  He nodded, curt. “For the fifth exposition of the independent artists next month.”

  My hands gripped together, and I pulled them tight against my heart. Monsieur Degas—the painter of dancers, the painter of Eugénie Fiocre—he was making a statuette of me.

  “It was the one he took his glove off to touch,” he said, looking hard into my eyes, wanting to know that I understood. “He put his finger upon your spine.”

  Of course I remembered flinching from the touch, but that was a hundred years ago, nothing in the face of th
is news about a statuette, a statuette of me. “Oh, Monsieur Degas,” I said, shrugging away the worries collecting on his face. “I’m as happy as a finch.” I was more than a figure in a painting of a dozen girls. I was a ballet girl singled out, singled out for chiseling from marble, for casting in bronze.

  His shoulders rose and fell heavily, as a great sigh escaped his nose and mouth. His eyes fluttered shut, settled closed. His fingers, brought to the bridge of his nose, parted, traveling the width of his brow. “I told him he couldn’t have it,” he said, his voice trailing off.

  We lingered there in the rue Blanche, his gaze upon me still. Was I to feel grateful? Relieved? I did not. Whatever shame, whatever fear had come with baring my flesh and then the finger of Monsieur Lefebvre tracing my spine was gone, chased off by my swelling pride. Monsieur Degas shrugged away the worry of me, lifting a shoulder up only the smallest bit, but I saw it all the same.

  Now I feel panic rising—I cannot remember the steps of the allegro combination that Madame Dominique only just finished calling out. She goes off to the corner to discuss the music with the violinist for our class. The rest of us are meant to be marking the combination, preparing for the moment when he lifts his violin from his knees to beneath his chin. Blanche’s feet are still, but, as is the habit of most ballet girls, she is using her hands to mimic her feet while she works out the glissades, the jetés, the entrechats. I move closer, close enough that she cannot pretend I am not there, but still, without glancing up, she goes about the business of marking the steps. “Blanche,” I whisper.

  She shows me the annoyance upon her face, moves a shushing finger quick to her lips.

  “Please,” I say.

  “Sissonne de côté, entrechat quatre, glissade, two brisés, jeté, assemblé, changement.” She turns, giving me a view of her back, and goes back to marking the steps.