Lawless (11 page)

All at once a door crashed open. Fochet stormed in to break up the fight. “Louts!
Farmers!”
He flailed about him, boxing ears. “Get to work or get out of here!”

The three brawlers separated, called him all sorts of filthy names, then went placidly back to their easels. Fochet shook his head in disgust and moved on, stopping here to observe, there to deliver a scathing critique. He lectured one pupil for five minutes, seized the brush from another’s hand and made a few swift corrections. No matter how harsh his criticism or how brusque his manner, the pupils didn’t complain. He was fierce, but he was respected.

Étienne Fochet had come from Limoges, the home city of a member of the Batignolles group, Auguste Renoir. Fochet had served an apprenticeship in the decorating rooms of a Limoges pottery factory, painting eighteenth-century swains and shepherdesses on an endless array of plates, jugs and cups. Renoir, coincidentally, had held a similar job as a boy, though in Paris. Renoir, however, was still a year shy of thirty. Fochet would never see fifty again.

As a much younger man just come up to Paris with ambition but no training, Fochet had studied with Courbet, who was almost exactly his own age and already doing revolutionary work. Courbet had rid his own painting of literary and mythological elements, and taught his pupils to do the same. He had forever changed the direction of contemporary art by painting subjects from everyday life. In fact, Fochet claimed to be one of the people depicted in what was perhaps Courbet’s most famous work—
The Painter’s Studio,
his 1855 canvas showing the artist at work in his crowded atelier. Fochet said he was the bearded man seated next to a pair of dogs at the extreme left. Matt had seen the picture several times and didn’t consider the resemblance pronounced.

Courbet had emphasized traditional technique blended with fidelity to observed detail. Fochet’s theory and practice went one more step. Slavish adherence to old-fashioned rules of technique was entirely secondary to what the artist observed. Only that which was optically apparent should be included in a painting. As he often put it, “The impression, only the visual impression matters! Nothing else is reality!”

A powerful smell told Matt the teacher was coming up behind him. Fochet constantly munched bits of stale red onion which he carried in a pocket of his paint-spotted blouse. His pupils called him
l’oignon
half derisively, half affectionately—but always behind his back. He was a short man, barely five feet, with an immense belly, kinky gray hair and lively brown eyes that could be fiercely intimidating. In his youth he’d worn a beard, but it was gone now, revealing heavily pitted cheeks.

“Well, Kent!” he exclaimed. “A picture in work at last! Good, good. You haven’t done much of anything for the last six months. In fact I was planning to ask you to move out so I could replace you with someone actually
interested
in painting. I had reached the conclusion that you continued to rent space here merely so you wouldn’t have to spend a hard winter on the streets.”

Matt was too excited about the new painting to let the sarcasm bother him. Fochet took notice of the huge frame, circumscribed it with choppy motions of one hand as he went on: “Ambitious. I doubt your talent’s up to handling anything that large, but I’m glad you’re trying. What’s it to be?”

Matt put his palette aside and wiped his hands with a rag dipped in diluent. “A café in Mexico.”

Fochet brightened perceptibly. “Something you’ve seen firsthand?”

“Yes, I drank there quite often when we took cargo up the Rio Grande river during the war.”

“Capital! I’ve always thought you were an idiot to ignore all the fascinating subject matter in your personal experience. Not to mention that in your homeland. When I was younger, Captain Catlin and his Indians convinced me America was a veritable trove of colorful subjects.”

“You mean George Catlin?”

“That’s right, the fellow who traveled and painted the western part of your country twenty or thirty years ago. He came to Paris in the forties. Exhibited his canvases and a band of Iowa Indians. My sister was a chambermaid at the Hotel Victoria, where he kept the savages. She smuggled me in so I could observe them. The beds were removed so the Indians could sleep on the floor. The sight of their sharp teeth gave my poor sister nightmares about cannibals. But Catlin made quite an impression over here. Quite an impression on me, too. I sometimes think Frenchmen are more appreciative of your country than you are, Kent.”

“I agree.” Matt grinned. “I don’t care if I never see it again.”

“Stupid attitude.”

Matt stopped smiling, red-faced.

The teacher gestured at the linen half covered with the sand-colored ground. “Tell me more about what you’re planning.”

“The central figure’s to be a young Mexican dancing girl with combs in her hair. Here, I did a few preliminary studies—”

Fochet popped bits of onion in his mouth. He chewed while he examined the sketches. Presently he uttered a few monosyllabic grunts. Matt felt almost delirious with pleasure. Fochet’s grunts were virtually his highest form of compliment.

The tutor handed the drawings back, picked a speck of onion from the corner of his mouth and said with mock innocence, “Then I really needn’t concern myself with renting your space to someone else?”

“Oh, yes, you still may have to think about that. I don’t know how smoothly this is going to proceed. Dolly’s given me something besides work to worry about.”

Fochet frowned. “Is there trouble between you and your young lady?”

“Yes, I guess you’d call it trouble.”

“I can’t imagine that. She’s always seemed to be a fine sort—for a woman, that is.”

“She is a fine woman.” Matt nodded. “You know how I feel about her—”

“Don’t get too fond of her, Kent! I keep telling you that’s very bad for a painter. Sometime, if you wish, you may tell me the nature of your problem.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter much. That was his usual way of inviting a student to pour out his deepest woes.

Matt lost no time. “The trouble is, we’re going to have a child.”

“Unexpected?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re certain?”

“Dolly says she is.”

“Hmmm. Well, I suppose congratulations are in order.” He sounded dubious. “Just don’t spend too many hours dandling the infant on your knee”—pieces of onion flew as Fochet waved at the oversized frame—“not if you really plan to complete a painting the size of one of Manet’s.”

“I do. But Dolly wants the child to have a legal name. She wants us to get married.”

The teacher’s hand stopped halfway to his lips. Then, abruptly, he flung the onion away. “What the devil is the
matter
with women? Do they not understand that it’s very difficult to serve the easel and the hearth at the same time? No, not difficult—impossible! Some few seem able to do both, I know. Manet, for instance. On the other hand, you wouldn’t call his courtship exactly conventional. He met that Dutch girl, Miss Leenhoff, in 1852—eleven years before the death of his father made it possible for him to ignore family objections and marry her. Someone knocked her up eleven years before the ceremony, too. Very mysterious. Well, at least she wasn’t hounding him to surrender to domesticity for all that time. Most women would have reminded him of his moral obligation every hour on the hour—God, some characteristics of the female species are just insufferable!”

Matt was astonished at the vehemence of the little teacher, and even more astonished when Fochet blurted, “I know what I’m talking about! I’ve had five wives. Did I ever mention that?”

Dumbfounded, Matt shook his head.

“Well, I meant to do so, but you know how my thoughts wander—” That was true enough; Fochet was notoriously absentminded. Again this morning he’d forgotten to button his trousers.

He went on. “Each of the five wanted me to spend more and more time with them, which meant less and less time in the studio. Of course they all launched their campaigns
after
we left the altar. Beforehand, they were very solicitous about my chosen vocation—oh, I tell you they’re clever, Kent. When you’re courting, they pretend the two of you can reach an accommodation in any disagreement. But after you have stood up before a droning priest, and after the lady has revealed her little treasures in the marriage bed, it’s you and you alone who do the accommodating. I’m not blaming them. I believe such tactics are part of their nature. But a man must learn to be wary. Especially a man in this profession. Five times I failed to heed that same advice which other unfortunates had given me. Four times hope triumphed over the warnings of personal experience. And wouldn’t you know it? Every one of the bitches loathed onions, too.”

After a rueful laugh, Fochet spoke with more kindness than Matt had ever heard from him—and he pitched his voice low so nearby students couldn’t possibly eavesdrop. “Has Miss Dolly confronted you with a request that you marry her? Or is it a demand?”

He pondered a moment. “No matter what you call it, the end result’s the same, isn’t it?”

Fochet nodded in a grave way. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. How do you feel about her wishes?”

“Independence is the last thing I want to give up.”

“Splendid!”

“But I don’t want to give her up, either.”

At that, the teacher looked downcast. “Well, I do hope you can work things out without surrendering your freedom. If at all possible, I would like you to be spared the kind of painful choice many painters cannot avoid.”

“Paul calls it choosing between two mistresses,” Matt said quietly.

“I’m not sure I like your crazy friend’s metaphor. It smacks of the vulgar. It’s degrading, in fact. Art is a high calling. A priesthood whose members are privileged to show mere humans their common traits instead of their differences. Privileged to show them beauty in a world that has made them weary with its ugliness. Privileged, in short, to help them endure. And you know as well as I do—priests are celibate. For a very good reason. They know they can’t successfully serve both God and the flesh. Obviously that’s what Cézanne is getting at with his prattle about mistresses. But he’s right about one thing. You don’t
want
to make a choice between a girl and your career. I’ve seen such a choice tear many a talented fellow apart. Ruin his composure and his work for months—years—sometimes forever. The secret of avoiding that is to find a young woman who loves to copulate but who is also basically stupid and slovenly. One of those very rare and precious girls who not only don’t give a fig for respectability but don’t even know what it is.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Fochet. I love her.”

“And you don’t think she would be content to bear the child out of wedlock?”

He remembered the chilling threat about certain women who could
solve the problem.
“No. Once I thought she might, but over the past few months, she’s changed. I think she’s started to consider the future. When she found out she was pregnant, that convinced her to do something decisive”—a rueful smile—“and so she has. We either marry or”—he hid the worst—“or separate. You know she’s a strong-minded girl.”

“Yes, I have gotten that impression.” The teacher sighed, scratched the tip of his nose. “Let me talk to her. Let me see whether I can convince her it’s disastrous to try to fetter someone in this crazy profession—why are you smiling?”

“Because I meant to get around to asking you to do exactly that.”

“Of course! Why not? It’s logical. I’m older. I know much more of the world than you do. You’re just a callow boy—”

“She respects you too.”

Fochet bunked. “She does?”

“Very much so.”

The teacher swelled visibly. “I’ll definitely speak to her. Just don’t get your hopes too high. Women are difficult. However, I can certainly make the effort. And if she does respect me, as you say—”

“She does! You can convince her if anyone can. How can I thank you, Fochet?”

“Very simple. By doing some work for a change.”

The moment of sympathy was gone; the tutor was on the attack. “I say again—I believe your ambition exceeds your ability. Prove me wrong if you can. Show me your talent is as big as that”—he waved at the canvas—“expression of your confidence in it. In other words, as big as your ego.”

Having thrust the spear in, he turned and walked away, regal as any king. Suddenly his jaw jutted. He broke into a waddling run, headed for the other side of the studio where another fight had erupted.

Matt went back to work, hoping that the teacher might indeed be able to persuade Dolly to change her decision. Soften her attitude.

At least the problem was temporarily out of his hands. He could turn to the Matamoras painting with all his concentration and energy—which was the only way a painter could accomplish anything decent. Dolly had to hear that again.

Hear it and
accept
it—so their son could live.

B
Y MIDWEEK
, Matt’s work on the Matamoras picture had almost reached a state of frenzy. He was painting for fourteen or fifteen hours at a stretch, sustained only by his young man’s strength. But even that flagged eventually, and after the long sessions he went limping back to the Rue Saint-Vincent, totally spent.

Dolly grew short tempered because he wanted to do little more than eat and fall asleep when he got home. He wasn’t eager to hear the day’s happenings at the English school, or a lengthy account of her first visit to the doctor who’d been recommended to her, a peppery young physician named Clemenceau. He had returned from a stay in Connecticut the preceding year, brought an American wife with him, and set up a Parisian practice. Matt listened with a frown as Dolly took ten minutes to describe how Dr. Georges Clemenceau had examined her and pronounced her pregnant.

She recognized his annoyance and voiced hers. “I should think you’d be interested in the welfare of your own child.”

“I am, Dolly. But your sawbones hasn’t told us anything we don’t already know.”

“I suppose you don’t worry about poor Sime, either.”