Katherine Keenum (16 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Second Interlude: Switzerland

A
fter leaving Paris, the Murers went to London, then back through France to Zürich and on to the little town of Romanhorn on the Swiss side of Lake Constance. There, Edward kept Theodore company at a resort hotel while Sophie crossed the lake with Carl and Eddie to visit her native Bavaria. At the ferry dock, Theodore took his wife’s hands in his: “If you wish, Sophie, I will come with you, after all.”

“No, no, dearest. This will be an adventure for the boys and me. They are half Schlegel and should see where the Schlegels lived; but you full-blooded Murers, you stay here. A couple of days’ rest will do you both good.”

“You and I, we are as much Franck as my sons are Schlegel,” chuckled Theodore after the boat left, “but let a woman reason like a woman.”

The brothers found it liberating to wear straw hats and ramble together alongside the sparkling, white-capped water of the lake, free of skirts, offspring, and schedules; they sat at ease under umbrellas on the flower-decked hotel terrace. High summer in Cincinnati was hot and muggy. Here even on the brightest days, although the air might shimmer in the sun, it was always fresh and the breeze was cool. Eyes closed, Edward felt like a transparent glass retort filled with a gently volatilizing liquid.

“I can’t remember when I last felt this carefree,” said Theodore, scanning the sails of pleasure boats on the lake with satisfaction.

He lit a cigar. Edward wished he hadn’t. Its acrid pungency curled through the pure air, tainting the sweet smell of grass and flowers. It diminished ever so slightly his feeling of lightness. He opened his eyes.

“Will you go to Kiel, do you think?” asked Theodore, hunched over, puffing to set the tobacco burning evenly.

“
Jawohl
,” growled Edward.

Theodore chuckled and sat back, his cigar hand dangling away from Edward. After the boys and Sophie left, they had gone on speaking mostly English—Edward from second nature, Theodore out of a proud allegiance to his adopted country. English made them less self-conscious among the hotel staff and other guests; it also exempted them as Americans from any little frictions of region or class.

“It was strange to be in Paris again,” mused Theodore. “All the new boulevards, the Opéra at night as bright as day, all the clearances. I am all for progress,” he added quickly in a warning tone. (Asphalt! Electricity! Cincinnati Light and Power, thought Edward.) “Don’t get me wrong.”

“I won’t,” said Edward.

Theodore shot him a sidelong glance, snorted, and puffed on his cigar. He resumed his musing tone. “The first time I went to Paris, Papa and I paid a call on a distinguished colleague of his, a member of the Académie Française perhaps. Such men had apartments in the Louvre then.
Ja
, it is true, a privilege. I remember the place as vast, but not what you would call palatial—the opposite, if anything. Broken cornices, the gilding tarnished black, moldy tapestries to cover dampness in the walls—”

“Must have been hard on the books.”

“I don’t remember any books or bookcases. No, the French don’t read; they go to the theater. Of course, some wings of the building were better maintained than others. There were squatters on the worst floors and on the roof, too—under trees no less, spindly trees but trees. I remember their feathery leaves; they must have grown in cracks and gutters. Well, to get to where we were going, we had to wind our way through a maze of tall crumbling houses and dark little shops; here and there an old town house of some
grand seigneur
. All of it crammed between the Louvre and the Tuileries. Splendid squalor. Hard for me now to separate the jumble in the streets from the jumble in the hallways. But we found the right apartment. Papa was made welcome, and the professor led me to a tall window. So tall that window was, and glass all the way to the floor! I was afraid I would fall out if I moved an inch, but he pointed and said to me, ‘Observe closely the window over there,
mon petit
, and you may see the queen.’ I have forgotten his name, but while he and Papa talked revolution and chemistry, I kept watch for the queen of France.”

“And did you see her?”

“
Ja!
At least, I saw a lady come to her window and pull aside the curtain. She seemed to be looking down to where some boys were playing a noisy game on the cobblestones below. She watched them, and I watched her. She tossed them something—boiled sweets I have always thought, though I can’t remember why. Queen Marie Amalie.”

Edward studied his brother, who had fallen silent, one hand resting on his ample middle, the cigar hand dangling out of sight. Theodore’s eyes were following something inconsequential in the distance—a shorebird in flight, a sail on the lake—while his mind went in search of something else much farther away and far more elusive.

“You never told me that story before.”

“What?” said Theodore, coming to himself again. “No, well, hardly a story. Besides, it was chemistry and reform that won out. We Murers are republicans. Still, the old professor was right: All children are royalists; they love their kings and queens. And when we get old, we grow nostalgic. I do not mind that my first Paris has been swept away, but I should not like the same for Kiel.”

“Surely Kiel will not have changed so much as all that, not like Paris.”

“A seaport for the Prussian navy now? Fortifications, big warships under construction? Pah. Poor pretty little Kiel. And think of the effect of even subtle differences—the present obliterates not only the past, but memory. Can you really remember Walnut Street as it was when you were growing up?”

True. Edward had watched the old street fill up, improve; it was hard to recall it at any one stage. But their old house . . . “The house,” he said, with assurance.

“
Ja, ja.
Mutter never changed a thing, nor Papa after she was gone.” Theodore took a puff on the cigar. “But Kiel: all my old friends, all the old associations—gone or betrayed, or, worse, turned traitor. Graybeards! It is a golden time, youth. When is the world ever more real, eh? You measure the rest of your life by it.”

Edward huddled down into his chair. Youth, war, Mutter gone when he got back, Marie. He shut his mind against the abyss and looked out only at the clear light on the lake.

Theodore shifted uncomfortably. “I am tactless,” he said, but his guilt was laced with irritation.

“Oh, no, it’s real, all right, the past,” said Edward. “Nothing more so.”

He regretted the bitter outburst; at the same instant, a memory floated up, of a boat-building shed down at the wharves in Cincinnati. He and his friends—Cornelia among them—had monitored the construction of the big
Floating Circus Palace
showboat, right up to the day of its launch. “Do you know what was golden for me?” he said. “Not young manhood; earlier. Our second or third year in America. The summer when some of the boys and I went exploring everywhere. That was the summer Cornelia Mattocks played with us. I’m glad you looked up Marius Renick. It was good to see Cornelia again.”

It was, and he looked forward to seeing her the next time he was in Paris. First, he must go to Freiburg-im-Breisgau with Carl and settle in with Cousin Paul Murer and his wife, Anna, and yes, perhaps go north to Kiel; but eventually, soon, he would go back to Paris, alone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Breton Seas

T
o give Effie a break from cooking and keep in touch with the close-knit artistic community, the four women ate occasionally at the Voyageurs, where everyone gossiped and opinions were strong. The company was largely male, but Amy held her own. She would lean on her elbows and call out a jolly rejoinder to some comment down one of the long communal tables. Nor was she the only woman to hold forth. Most notably, there was a middle-aged Anglo-Irish lady, Miss Mabel Reade, who painted; her voice boomed. Her sprightly younger sister, Miss Isobel, kept house and worked intricate handcrafts with seashells and feathers. Miss Isobel soon adopted Effie as a fellow worker bee. “We’re toilers in the vineyard, cogs in the wheel, Miss Pendergrast, but the wheels couldn’t turn without us. A privilege, a privilege, to foster genius, but no need for us to miss out on a little
fun
.”

Midway through the month, the weather turned so uncharacteristically hot and sunny that one day they ate their breakfast outdoors. Amy leaned back and clasped her hands over her head behind her.

“A bright day should stimulate one, but I feel downright lazy.”

“All work and no play,” Jeanette quoted back to her, “makes Jill—”

“—as dull as Jack,” murmured Emily.

“Emily Dolson! I didn’t know you had it in you,” laughed Amy.

“What we all need is a day by the water,” said Jeanette. “Amy, what about that cove below the grain field?”

“Rather a long a walk in this heat,” said Amy. “Let’s go see what Rag-Tag and Bobtail are up to. If we feel like going on, there’s a footpath below the quays that leads on down the estuary. Will you join us, Miss P?”

Effie, of course, would. A half hour later, the four of them were in the village on the way down to the boats. As they passed by the Reade sisters’ lodgings, Miss Isobel was at an upstairs window. “Yoo-hoo!” she called, and waved. They waved back.

As expected, Ragland and Nagg were at easels on the low flats by the waterfront a few yards from the old building that they had rented. They had improvised a tent roof out of worn-out sails and broken spars to cut the glare on their canvases.

“Where’s Post?” asked Amy.

“Inside,” said Ragland, jerking his thumb toward the open door.

“You know how he abominates high contrast. Post!” shouted Nagg. “Are you decent, man? Ladies!”

“I fry in the fires of my genius or bake in this oven you call a home,” roared a voice from inside. “Where are the cracks and breezes that turn it frigid in winter, I ask, and do not know the answer. I burn, I burn. Do not waste my time with women unless they are sluts.”

“Charlie Post, you pest and bother, it’s Amy Richardson. I’m here to give you a crit, and you are going to give my friends—”

“Miss Richardson, is it? That’s different,” said Post. He appeared at the door, grinning. His filthy smock was open and his sweaty shirt unbuttoned. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Emily tugged at Amy’s sleeve and whispered, “Robbie wouldn’t . . .”

“Bosh,” muttered Amy, from the side of her mouth.

“Brava, carissima.”
Post leered at Emily, hiding behind Amy’s back. “I see you have brought
la dolce Dolson
with you.”

“And Jeanette Palmer. Good morning, Mr. Post,” said Jeanette, brightly, stepping forward to shield Emily. “This is my cousin, Miss Pendergrast.”

Mr. Post squinted menacingly at Effie. “Are you a genius or a duenna, Miss Pendergrast?”

Something she had been groping for ever since they arrived in Pont Aven fell into place for Effie. “Post,” she said, slowly, ignoring the unbuttoned shirt. “Why, I know who you are! You’re Mr. Moyer’s friend. You paint water.”

“Holy smokes—a clairvoyant. You can’t mean Frank Moyer?”

Effie nodded. “In New York.”

“Frank Moyer!” whooped Post. “Haven’t seen him in a donkey’s age. What’s he up to? Still hewing wood for his Hedleyship on Tenth Street? Come in, come in.”

“He’s engaged to Miss Whitmore,” said Effie.

“The blackguard. May the engagement be long or wisely broken.”

“Why?” asked Jeanette. “What’s wrong with Mr. Moyer?”

“Nothing, Miss Palmer, but Susan Whitmore is much too good an artist to be lost to wifery. Spare us Moyer babes mewling and puking in their mother’s arms.” He ushered her past him.

Jeanette involuntarily wrinkled her nose. Windows and a skylight installed by Ragland and Nagg provided light but not enough ventilation. The shed had once been a mackerel warehouse, and the smell had sunk into the boards. Over the fishy substratum floated a fresher brew of pipe smoke, dirty laundry, and turpentine. One cot was made up; another was not; the working space of each man was marked off by an easel and worktable; a carved chair in a corner was heaped with various props under a banner inscribed
Omnium Gatherum
. Dominating all the clutter and reek was a giant canvas, its back to the door, stretched and nailed to a braced wooden frame. On an easel at an angle to it stood a smaller canvas of the same proportions, longer than it was high. But what caught Jeanette’s full attention while the others talked was a third small canvas, smaller still, propped against the wall, face out: dark rocks and a pebble-strewn beach in the foreground with water curling around the base of a boulder. One long, low, crested wave spilled forward all across the middle ground. Near a distant horizon hung a sickle moon.

She moved to where she could see all three versions at once. Post’s prattle stopped while his eyes followed her. From talk at the Voyageurs, she knew that the larger tableau on the easel would depict the same subject, as would the huge work in progress: fanatical renditions of the same, the same, the same. The wonder was how he explored the scene anew each time. The breaking wave, the advancing flow, the white reflection of the moon in a pool so close to the picture plane as almost to spill out—in each redaction everything in the picture came forward, while all the yearning that gave it meaning was distilled into the retreat of the thin sickle moon.

When she looked up, Mr. Post was watching her silently. His face had come to rest in a precarious poise. A desolate, wintry pallor belied his sprinkle of summer freckles. When she met his eye, its gleam sharpened defensively to an ironic glint. No, this matters, her answering look told him; I see it, and it matters. She also saw that its pursuit could break a man’s heart.

“
Cherchez le demi-teinte!
” proclaimed a stentorian female voice from the doorway.

A spasm of irritation crossed Charlie Post’s face. Recovering, he thrust out his palette, held his paintbrush high behind him, and gave an exaggerated jump. “Carolus!” he cried. “Do I need to explain that Miss Reade is an acolyte of Carolus-Duran’s?”

“No, you don’t,” declared Miss Reade. “They’ve heard me praise him and seen my work. Could have saved myself twenty years of misguided effort if I’d known the master sooner. Well, he has put me on the right track now. Shan’t ever paint like you, Post, and don’t want to—but, you girls, pay attention to what this young dog does.
Post finds the halftone.
” Post bowed. “When Isobel saw you out the window, I told her ‘Isobel, your hat.’ And here we are.”

A half hour of shop talk followed as the ladies examined the men’s various canvases. Back outside, they gathered between Ragland’s and Nagg’s two very different takes on Pont Aven in the sun. Post looked at each moodily, with little interest. He pulled Jeanette aside. “If you could choose a vantage point this morning, Miss Palmer,” he asked in an undertone, “what would it be?”

A light answer would have sufficed, but an image half-formed in Jeanette’s mind. “An interior,” she said, “a corner of the studio. Rooms reveal so much, Mr. Post.”

“Thank you,” he murmured. He caught up her hand and with soft, moist lips kissed the palm.

Hastily, she pulled her hand free, hoping no one had noticed.

“Off you go now, girls,” ordered Miss Reade. “Isobel and I are poaching Miss Pendergrast for ourselves. Came after you for that very purpose.”

Gratified to be wanted, Effie went off with her new friends while Jeanette, Amy, and Emily continued down the river.

*   *   *

When they turned into a long inlet that wound a half mile or more, they lost sight of the wider estuary. It ended in a strip of gray sand, beyond which pebbles spread smoothly back through a band of boulders. The big stones were streaked with salty flood lines where tidal waters must rise during storm surges, but today all was calm and flat. Across the cove, steep cliffs were reflected almost perfectly.

“I think we’ve found it,” said Amy, and no one had to ask what. Of one accord, they deposited their things by a rock and took off their shoes.

As Jeanette peeled back her black stockings and looked at her feet in outdoor sunlight, she was shocked by their smooth, thin-skinned translucence. They always used to be brown by the middle of the summer, and the soles were thick and tough from going barefoot when she was out of her mother’s sight. Now on the pebbly beach, she wobbled. A stone jabbed painfully into her arch, but then her toes dug into wet sand and grasped. Holding her skirt and petticoats up, she took short, searching steps into the water. It was warmed by the sun; a tiny wavelet ran over the tops of her feet onto shore.

“I’ve never been in the ocean before,” she said, staring down in fascination.

Amy and Emily exchanged a look behind her back.

“This hardly counts as the open sea,” said Amy.

“Ohio is landlocked in a very
large
continent, where,” said Jeanette, turning around, “we do have swimming holes and boys who tease.” She kicked expertly, sending a low, well-aimed splash against their shins.

“Not again, damn you!” cried Amy, jumping back. “You have a mania for drenching people.”

Emily, who had been trudging against the water, pushing it to make it surge and swirl, stood very still. She looked around.

“There are no boys here to tease, and none likely to come.” She turned to them with her face glowing and whispered in low, wicked urgency, “Amy! Jeanette! Let’s
bathe
.” Without waiting for an answer, she waded splashily out of the water.

Jeanette looked at Amy. “Shall we?” she asked. She meant, yes.

“Emily, we don’t have any bathing togs,” called Amy.

“We can wear our shifts.” On the beach now, Emily beckoned them toward their deposited bundles.

“No,” said Jeanette. “Skinny-dipping!”

“Shameless American,” said Amy.

“Oh, come on. What could be worse than wet underwear on the way home? Emily’s right: No one can see up into this cove.” Jeanette was already unpinning her hat.

Despite being sure they could not be seen, they retreated behind the head-high boulders to take off their clothes. With mixed feelings of trepidation and daring, they helped each other undo buttons and laces in the back. “Don’t look,” they demanded, while egging each other on.

“All valuable combs should be carefully stowed,” warned Amy, taking down her braids.

“Hairpins and hatpins, too,” said Emily.

Covering themselves with their arms, they peered around the boulder one last time to make sure of their privacy and gave each other sidelong glances. They began at a tiptoe and then dashed around the rock, shrieking. Emily first: elfin, white, and pear-shaped. Amy’s waist was small, her thighs sleek. But what Jeanette was mainly aware of was her own thighs jiggling, of feeling silly and excited at the same time. When she uncrossed her arms to keep balance, her breasts bounced. She high-stepped into the water, her whole body free to bend and feel the air and sun and water against her skin. The warm shallow water sloshed and sprayed. She floundered to where it was deeper and fell forward. Her feet left the bottom just before the slope fell steeply away.

“Oh!” she panted. The frigid water stung; it knocked the breath out of her. “Oh, oh, help! Oh, I’ve never been in water so cold. Oh!”

She flailed wildly to get back into the warmer shallows. As soon as she could, she stood up, wildly chafing herself for warmth. Emily and Amy hooted.

“You should feel the water off Blackpool,” called Amy.

Amy waded out deeper and dived forward. She was a strong swimmer. Unlike many sailors, her seagoing father could swim; and unlike many fathers, he had taught his daughter the practical skills he would have taught a son. She struck out into the middle of the inlet. Jeanette had learned from other children only how to stay afloat and dog-paddle. As her feet and shins got used to the cold, she waded deeper again. With a shudder, she crouched to submerge herself, all but her head, and ventured into the deeper, colder water but quickly thought better of it. She rejoined Emily, who was floating on her back in the warmer water with her hands, palm out, beside her face. Her pale skin just below the surface of the water appeared brownish green. Her long hair floated out around her.

“Ophelia,” she said, rolling unseeing, blank eyes up to the sky. Her mouth was slack, half open.

“Don’t, Emily! That’s macabre!”

“It’s an allusion.”

“It’s still macabre. If you want to be weird, be enticing, be a mermaid.”