I Always Loved You (5 page)

My dear Mademoiselle Cassatt,

I have heard through the inevitable gossip that the Salon jury turned down your paintings this year. I propose something, or rather someone, to cheer you. May we call at your studio this afternoon, perhaps at three, which is early, but I hope after you have finished your work for the day? You will be pleased, I believe, though if you are not, forgive this admirer for hoping to lift your spirits by making a small offering to assuage your sadness. My wife says that I am being forward, but I am an old man now and believe I am permitted to take such liberties if it means the happiness of someone I hold dear. Don't forget that I promised your mother when we were all in Belgium that I would look after you.

Forgive my reticence about my gift, but I do love a surprise.

Respond by return post as to your acquiescence regarding my unforgivable cheek. It is well meant, my dear.

Amitiés

M. Tourny

W
hen the door opened to Mademoiselle Cassatt's studio and it was she who greeted him—the woman from the Salon, the one he had made a fool of himself over—Degas summoned his Parisian soul, relying on the French masculine misapprehension that women were, above all, expendable.

“Dear God,” he whispered to himself, enough to make Tourny glance at him and murmur, “Not today, Degas.”

Tourny
had warned him of his affection for this
américaine
, this foreigner whose accent he described as abominable, but whose artistry made up for the inexcusable deficit. It was Degas's duty as a friend, Tourny had said, to squelch his tendency toward mockery and find it in himself to be, for once, charming. Degas thought this preemptive remonstrance supremely unfair, given that he had agreed to come—was, in fact, eager to meet the woman who'd painted that stunning portrait he'd admired four years ago. He still did not know how she had found a way to convey in a pair of eyes, in the tilt of a head, in the rendering of flesh, an inner life of such profound sorrow and tenderness that he had felt envy upon looking at it. That she and the woman before him were one and the same seemed an impossible gift from the heavens, heavens he would never paint and didn't believe in, but a gift all the same, one he uttered silent thanks for now in case he was mistaken. Today, instead of the simple blouse and skirt she had work at the Salon, Mademoiselle Cassatt wore a viridian green dress of elegant cut and line; not a Worth, as far as Degas could tell, but an excellent copy nonetheless, one that highlighted her heavenly posture. Standing in her doorway, she held herself with the grace of a dancer onstage, an attitude so appealing that his hand instinctively searched his pocket for a pencil to sketch her.

“Here is my surprise for you, my dear,” Tourny said, taking Mary's hands and kissing her cheeks. “May I present Monsieur Degas? Monsieur Degas, Mademoiselle Cassatt.”

Rarely did such moments of pleasure occur for Tourny anymore. His age had crept up on him. He had met Mademoiselle Cassatt a few years ago in Antwerp, where she had spent several months copying Rubens in the museum there. Madame Tourny and Mary's mother, who had come to Europe to accompany Mary to the Belgian city, had become fast friends while Mary and Monsieur Tourny spent time in the museums refining their touch and sight. Then, he had felt young, but just a few evenings ago he had reached for a glass of wine and discovered that his hands, with decades of granite and marble flecks wedged into their crevices and cracks, were no longer deft but frail. Overnight, this had happened. He hadn't been paying attention to the wicked passage of time, its selfish stealth. So it was a pleasure now—a lark, really—to introduce these two artists, a moment reminiscent of his youth, when whim and not deliberation had connected lives. At dinner the other night, how alive he had felt when Degas insisted that he introduce him to the American artist. Yes, Tourny said, he would be thrilled to, and told Degas where Mademoiselle Cassatt lived, even as his wife glared at him across the table. His wife was fond of saying that Degas growled like a bear. They had known Degas since he was nineteen and lived with them while he copied the masters in Italy. That boy was now a man in his forties, more than capable of deciphering his wife's look, but Degas graciously ignored it and instead ruminated at the dinner table that it was odd that he and Mademoiselle Cassatt hadn't met before, considering that they lived so close, just a block apart. And Paris was a city of artists, he said; on the streets in the morning, wasn't it true that one saw nothing but art students in their rough blue suits hurrying in the dawn chill to their glass-roofed ateliers, their easels and paint boxes clasped under their arms, a kind of starving eagerness about them?

“Monsieur Degas?” Mary said now, her hand lingering in Monsieur Tourny's. “Monsieur Degas is my gift?”

“Mademoiselle Cassatt.” Degas dipped his head in an aristocratic bow. He would not reveal that he had seen her at the Salon. He would summon discipline; after a certain age, it was all one had left. “Monsieur Tourny says you are an admirer.”

“As am I,” Tourny interjected, wishing Degas could have at least said something more courteous, even if it was only a dull recitation of his pleasure at meeting her.

Outside, the clopping of the omnibus horses on the Boulevard de Clichy funneled down the narrow Rue de Laval. Mary tried to reconcile this commonplace noise with the surprise of Monsieur Degas in her living room. Degas was nothing like Mary had imagined. He had a narrow face, round, droopy eyes, receding brownish hair heavily streaked with gray, and pale cheeks blotched pink above a groomed white beard. He had a funny way of tilting his head and staring, too, as if he were concentrating very hard, though even with this particular affectation he could have passed by her at least a dozen times on the street and she wouldn't have noticed him. She was fairly certain that he was older than she by at least a decade.

Finally, Mary's Pennsylvanian upbringing emerged. Trying not to reveal the tidal wave of nervousness that washed over her, she said, “Do come inside.”

Degas thought her studio beautifully appointed. It seemed to be a combination of parlor and atelier: Turkish rugs carpeted the walls, four elegant chairs surrounded a dining table, two bergères of gilt and green were nestled in a far corner. In a drying stand, overlapping canvases in varying forms of finish composed a colored wainscot. An easel angled toward the window. Though crowded, the space was uncluttered, unlike Degas's rooms, in which he bobbed around like a cork, trying to find his work amid the piles of canvases and drawings. Here, only a chest of drawers betrayed any sense of disorder, spilling over with tubes of paint, numerous brushes, a tin of walnut oil, another of turpentine, a clean palette, and assorted jars, knives, and rags. It was a disciplined spill, though, of tidy proportions. On a coat tree hung her painter's white smock, barely streaked with color. Degas smelled turpentine in the room, though the windows were open to the narrow street. The sunny afternoon showed signs of promise that the dreary spring had finally ended, though one could never be certain in Paris. Degas had half a mind to flee to Italy, but then he remembered his money troubles and that he couldn't flee to Italy, and he felt again, for half a moment, how unfair the world was.

Tourny, who had removed his top hat, turned and took Degas's and handed them both to a hovering maid, who disappeared down a hallway with them, a small dog nipping at her heels. Tourny looked from one to the other of the new acquaintances, waiting, but the silence in the room confounded his expectations. Mary Cassatt was not her usual self-possessed self; she had not even offered them seats. Degas, ever the witty, clever man, had lost his tongue. Perhaps, Tourny thought, he had been too coy, but he had wanted to surprise her. Perhaps his wife had been right again.
Why keep Mademoiselle Cassatt in the dark?
she had asked.
She'll need armor to make it through tea with that man. You know how disagreeable he can be.

“Perhaps we should all sit?” Tourny said, drifting toward the round dining table set for tea, but Degas seemed not to hear. He remained as rigid as a peasant summoned to see the emperor, and Mademoiselle Cassatt, who always seemed empress-like to Tourny, displayed none of her smooth grace. Tourny wondered how he could have miscalculated so badly. The maid entered with the steaming teapot, but Mary still did not invite them to table.

“I saw your most recent exhibition on the Rue le Peletier, Monsieur Degas,” Mary said, speaking slowly. Lately she had become self-conscious about her French. Her vocabulary and grammar were excellent, but her accent seemed to make everyone cringe. Often she had to repeat things to be understood.

Degas shifted his gaze. “Then perhaps you would do me the honor of showing me some of your work? Anything you might wish to show me? Anything at all?”

“Why don't we begin instead by having tea?” Tourny said. Such a misguided beginning, though he ought to have known. Degas never behaved in the way one would wish. Tourny herded them both to the table and poured a cup for Mary, who took it from him and then set it down, while Degas ignored the cup Tourny held out to him. Tourny gave up and took it for himself.

“Your work,” Degas said. “The paintings the Salon rejected, perhaps.”

“I say now, Degas,” Tourny said. “How can you ask her this?”

Mary looked from one man to the other. “You told him, Monsieur Tourny?”

Tourny sighed. “It was well meant, my dear.”

“I have not come out of pity, Mademoiselle Cassatt,” Degas said. “I have little pity for anyone, least of all you.”

Mary had hardly slept in the past two weeks. She spent whole nights trying to decide whether or not to leave Paris, to give in to her father's desire that she renounce the life she had been hoping to live. Last night, rereading his letter one last time, she decided to book her steamship tickets this afternoon at the booking office in the Gare du Nord; she spent part of the morning calculating the price of the one-way ticket, first cabin, intending to drown herself in comfort. An added incentive was that the steamer
Mosul
was sailing, which she heard was more stable than some, and she was hoping its steadiness might stave off her usual debilitating seasickness, possibly alleviating the pangs of her failure. But then Tourny had written this morning and now Degas was standing before her, asking to see her work. Why was it that life's true moments never announced themselves? Why did they pounce dressed as a quotidian date for tea?

“Monsieur Degas, I need to ask you a question,” Mary said. “Do you believe that talent is a gift? That God bestows it on some artists and not on others?”

“Gift? Rubbish. What have those idiots on the jury done to you? Art does not arise from a well of imaginary skill, obtained by dint of native ability. The sublime is a result of discipline. Art is earned by hard work, by the study of form, by obsessive revision. Only then are you set free. Only then can you
see
.”

“Then you do not invoke the divine when you work?” Mary asked.

“The gift you speak of is nothing but your own devotion to attention, to deliberation, to study. Only this will help you transcend your own measly abilities and create something extraordinary, something that doesn't depend on you at all.”

Mary was suddenly aware of every bone in her body, the inexpert way she occupied space, the way she no longer fit in this room where she had lived and worked so hard. “But I have studied for years. I have never achieved transcendence.”

“Tell me the truth, Mademoiselle Cassatt. You indulge in doubt, but you have had such a moment. I know you have.”

Tourny was staring. He believed he could get up, put down his teacup, ask the maid for his hat, and leave, and neither of them would notice. He could even slam the door and they wouldn't hear it. Outside, a fishmonger was crying, “Haddock!” and a woman was calling to him from her open window across the street, but neither Degas nor Mademoiselle Cassatt seemed to notice.

“But the eye,” Mary said.

“The mind is the eye. It can be trained.” Degas turned his head then, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. His features, less impressive on first meeting, now seemed dignified and refined. Mary could see that he had not been a beautiful man in his youth. His eyes were too closely set above his long nose, but this defect was fleeting—registered, then forgotten.

Across the street, the woman leaned out of her window, her fleshy arms draped over the windowsill, the tall shutters rendering her in shade.

“
Combien?
” she called.

“
Un franc, madame
,” returned the bodiless voice.

The woman withdrew into her rooms, presumably to descend to the street to buy the expensive fish. Tourny marveled: the banal and the ethereal, juxtaposed, separated by only a narrow lane.

“We could argue forever, mademoiselle, or you could just let me see your work,” Degas said.

Degas was studying her—judging her—before he had even seen a thing; gauging, Mary thought, the quality of her mind not by her rejected canvases, but by whether or not she would expose herself to him. The canvases were still wrapped in their paper and secured with twine. The carter hired to fetch them from the Palais de l'Industrie had dumped them inside the front door of the building. She had returned from a date at Abigail Alcott's to discover them left for anyone to have carried away. She had hauled them up the stairs, set them in the corner, and tried to forget them.

She cut the twine with a pair of scissors, the tight weave fraying before it gave way with a snap. The subsequent tearing of the paper sounded like the earth opening beneath her feet. She turned away because she did not want to see Degas's reaction; she deserved at least this last protection. While he studied her canvases, she fixed her gaze out the window, where she could see her neighbor gutting a fish on the windowsill, throwing the offal into the gutter below.

“You hate these, don't you?” Degas said.

Tourny rose from his chair. His wife would have his head. “I apologize, my dear Mary.”

“Don't you see?” Degas said. “Of course she hates them. She has all the tricks right. She has confined her expression to the academic values. The background is dark, the figure classically beatific, the dimensions beautifully flat. In order to paint these, she laced her heart up in a tight Salon corset so that she couldn't even breathe.” He turned again to Mary. “You couldn't breathe, could you? You were afraid the whole time you were painting.”

Mary thought he might as well have said that he had seen her at her bath, had seen the imperfections of her figure, had spied the most personal things about her. Instead, he was undressing her mind and rummaging around in the pleats and folds of her brain, a voyeurism more intimately invasive than any physical violation would have been.