Mesmerised (12 page)

The Salon des
Refusés

May 17th

‘
Insults are pouring down on me thick as hail.’

Edouard Manet

Blanche moans and the sun slips behind a cloud. I stop kissing her to look at her face. She is wondrously abandoned upon our eiderdown bed that’s still on the floor. I am Hercules. The blood is pulsing through my veins. My heart is big and thumping. I am flying but one second later all my organs are lead weights. I sit on the end of the sheet she’d brought down last night for us and put my head in my hands. Blanche throws her arms around my neck from behind.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asks, with her lips so close to my skin she raises the hairs around my seventh cervical. I shake my head and turn around.

‘I’ve just remembered something. I didn’t turn up for G
eorges de Bellio last week. I’m sorry … I … just lost the moment.’

‘Go and see him,’ she says standing and handing me my underclothes.

‘Blanche, we still haven’t spoken about us and I have to know why the other night you told me you don’t want me, and now this, which has been wonderful, but … .’

‘We can’t do this here, not now, when you have to go.’

She has manoeuvred herself around and is kneeling in front of me.

‘Tonight then.’

‘I am playing at the Bade.’

‘Then when?’

Silence.

‘Blanche, last week we were practically engaged.’

‘Well, maybe that was the problem.’

I look to the tall ceiling, the decorative cornice of grapes on a vine and a square of soot above the mantelpiece.

‘Am I supposed to understand?’

‘Let’s just say it has something to do with the fact that I’m frightened.’

‘Of me? What have I ever done to make you feel frightened? Surely not the intimacy, you seem to enjoy that well enough.’

‘No Paul,’ she laughs. ‘I’ve had other lovers if that’s what you think.’

‘What are you frightened of Blanche?’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she says.

‘Please, I am not your enemy.’

‘Being left,’ she says, sweeping up the bed sheets, walking out and leaving a trail of crumbs in her wake.

It is still early morning. Blanche asked me to leave in the end.
I have no idea what happened to the envelope, or what was inside it. I looked for it before I went but it had mysteriously disappeared. I am a little angry that Blanche is so sensitive to being abandoned but not about abandoning me. I walked, of course. Through the damp air of an earlier rainfall that has shined the surface of things. And now, at home, I’m alone dragging out the bathtub from the cupboard again. Cold water will do. I carry bowlfuls from the tap to the bath. My emotions are in control of me. I hope I can wash them away.

I put a foot gingerly over the side. The water is shockingly iced but it feels
punishingly good. What must Georges de Bellio think of me? Thoughts come in waves through my mind about Blanche. What do I do with this need to constantly be with her? She doesn’t make it easy. If I’m honest with myself, she was coughing again. How can I be the objective observer? How can I treat her? She is frightened of losing me and I have a premonition that I will not only lose her but also my old friend Georges.

I sit on my knees in the bath. My genitals protest
. The water stuns, numbs. I splash it on my face. There’s a war in my guts and the feeling doesn’t go away.

‘Nooo
!’ I call out, disturbing the ghosts in the walls.

As I step out
of the bath, I notice the date on yesterday’s paper lying on the floor. The opening of the Salon des Refusés is already happening. I have been writing the date on patients’ notes all week and I hadn’t even realised it was approaching. I don’t usually forget things. Perhaps I need a remedy to balance out my energies. Or is it the Phosphorus having its way with me?

There are classes at Père Suisse but he won’t be expecting anyone, and as for Georges, my guess is that he will be one of the first visitors standing in line,
moustachios glistening.

It is barely
9am and I get dressed for the second time this morning. I must hurry to the Palais de l’Industrie, there’s no time to walk. Luckily, I manage to flag down an empty hansom. The coachman raises an eyebrow when I choose to sit next to him.

‘Fine morni
ng,’ he says, proudly as if this day is his creation.

‘The Palais de
l’Industrie,’ I say, willing the horse to move faster. Exhibition staff will be putting the finishing touches to the hangings. All our paintings are almost ready to show off.

‘Would you like me to go quickly?’ he asks.

‘Thank you,’ I say, drumming my fingers on my thigh.

I make my way through
the crowd milling on the lawn and up the steps to the entrance, sure that I must be the last exhibitor to arrive. The lobby is dark and sober but a ray of sunlight rushes in after me. I feel a lump form at the back of my throat as I walk through the majestic Salon exhibition that has been hung for two weeks and is now quiet and sombre; through brown and beige marble rooms with highly polished, pink granite columns inset with gold leaf, and a glass roof through which the light falls benignly onto the grateful canvases that cover the walls. Paintings of shipwrecks in thunderstruck seas; swirling grey skies that meet frothing white waves. Paintings of fables in forests, where cherubs fly and nymphs lie naked under the spell of the devil’s agent, half man and half goat. A shaft of light is God’s kiss upon the scene. Paintings like parables crafted to precision and framed to the fussy prescription of The Académie des Beaux-Arts, works by Ingres, Corot and Rousseau all hang here. And, finally I see it, the doorway and the turnstile that allows patrons to enter ‘The Emperor’s Salon.’

It is much darker in here, and immediately on entering my sight is obscured but I can
see we are many, making history, at the first ever
Salon des Refusés
on varnishing day
.
I estimate there are over two hundred of us perpetuating an air of expectancy in these grand palatial halls. The catalogue has listed 781 exhibits but already I can see that there are many more. Shoes clack on flagstones. Voices reverberate from the stone walls. Lamplights and chandeliers in every hall throw a measure of imperfect light around. Each painting has entered into a lottery of where they would be hung. An artist has to be lucky that his work is at a good height for the onlooker and that the lighting around his picture does not cast it in shadow, or the canvas deflect a beam.

T
he section where Camille exhibits half a dozen paintings is immersed in the warmth of sunny-yellow and apple-green farmlands where workers toil in simple clothing. In contrast to the rooms I have just walked through, these paintings are softer, less exacting and full of love.

Père Tanguy is talking to Paul Durand-
Ruel. They make an unlikely pair, Pére in his navy blue worker’s uniform and Paul formally attired in a black frock coat, but they are drawn together by their communal appreciation of art and their equally strong passion for pipe tobacco.

‘Ah,
Doctor Gachet,’ says Durand-Ruel. ‘I have standing next to me the real star of the show.’

A frame can determine how a painting falls upon the retina and many in this room are
Pères handiwork. Endless criticism from his wife, no doubt, over the months of sleepless nights, shaping wood with a scalpel, his paintbrush stained in gilt. He draws proudly on his clay pipe.

‘And which ones will you take in to sell?’ he asks Durand-
Ruel, as if his reward is simply knowing this piece of insider information.

The conversation makes my
alter ego, Paul van Ryssel, feel more like a commodity than one of the cogs that make a magical event like this one come to be. I move on to find my painting above that of an artist I have never heard of before. Durand-Ruel walks up behind me. ‘You’ve been “skyed”,’ he says.

‘I know,’ I reply. T
he light falls on my work plainly and if you look up, you can only see the texture of the canvas and black outlines – a style that until recently I thought quite odd and have now embraced. In the brochure it says
‘Le Haute-Seine’
, by Paul van Ryssel, but at this angle it is ‘
Le Haute-Rien
.’

There are at least a dozen Paul
Cézannes crowding out my work. His exhibits are vivid countryside landscapes. His reds are compelling. His yellows and greens are cooling flames. I remind myself that this is just a hobby for me. It is not my main profession. But it could have been, should have been. Forget it, it is not. I’m uprooted, all over the place, without the safety of home. I need to get some air.

‘Painting and homeopathy mixed with your passion is a blessing. You have more than most. The combination will reward you with great joy,’
Clemens once said. I can’t even complain. It is not as if he never mentioned frustration and disappointment, he did, constantly.
‘Everything costs in this life. The only thing you have to decide is whether you are willing to pay the price.’

My footsteps echo in my ears. Once outside, I pull my cap from my head, push it into my jacket pocket, run down the stone steps and start to walk briskly. The road is full
of carriages. Coachmen are arguing as they try to manoeuvre their vehicles to and from a space where their passengers can alight. Reined-in horses attempt to trot in distress amidst the chaos. They remind me of Bella the day she was arrested. There is a long queue, ten deep, snaking its way from as far as the Champs Elysees. There must be thousands of patrons waiting for the exhibition to open.

‘I’m expecting a chamber of horrors,’ one man sa
ys loudly, above chatter that sends a loud clamour up to the sky. At the back of the building I am thankfully alone. I place my back and one foot against the wall. My father was right to insist that I took on another career besides painting. I am not as insightful or as colourful as Camille and Edouard and even they find it hard to make a living. But I can’t help wondering if I devoted all my time to artistry whether it could have ever be something more than just a balm for my wounded soul.

The clip-clop of horses and indistinct voices
waft over to me, and with them a feeling of hopelessness like a premonition that I know only too well. Tears stab. I squat and allow myself to cry. Looking up at the clouds that mock and jeer, and swallows in perfect ‘V’ trailing across the sky. ‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ I let loose the curse-word to blow on a wind that slaps me around the ears.

Shunted through the crowd, I show my exhibitor’s pass to the attendant. The Salon is opening to the public now. A huge throng force their way forward to either side of me. In high, contemptuous spirit and a jaunty walk, they enter. In crinoline, frilled parasols, top hats, tailcoats, crystal tipped canes, they enter, the lay critics, the sharks. I am a fish pulled along by a wave through the foyer and the antechambers of the Salon with its forsaken art, through the turnstile to our exhibition. Past Degas, Renoirs, Pissaros and Monets. Past Cézannes, Fantin-Latours and one small, skyed, van Ryssel, through a gothic archway, to a room where an enormous painting occupies the length and breadth of the wall in front of me. Frosted windows in the panelled walls above encourage the light to hold it perfectly. It is a masterpiece. Foliage in velvetine dark greens, porcelain skin for a naked Victorine. She sits challenging me, the observer, with her expression. Chin cupped in hand, her brown eyes say, ‘So, Doctor Gachet, Paul, what do you really think?’

Gustave
and Eugène Manet are clothed to either side of her, one in a brown serge jacket and the other in an ebony coat. The perspectives are not quite accurate but its message is plain truth with a clarity that is powerful and completely modern. In the foreground a basket has tumbled over and with it go its contents, a baguette and fruit. A young woman in the background wades in a pool. She wears petticoats and her hair is unruly. I get close to the painting thinking it is Bella. Only when I am upon it can I see that it is not.

I sense someone watching me. Prising my eyes away, I look behind to see Edouard standing in the corner by the door like a guard. He leans on his walking stick and appears to be oblivious to the scene
. Elbows dig into him as people propel themselves forwards. Then I notice one of Victorine’s paintings: a dark portrait of a very young girl, defiant as a street urchin, in traditional style except for the subject matter. It has a very good, eye-level place on the wall, in this, the largest of the halls.

I catch a glimpse of Victorine
talking to Emile Zola. She has her hand on his forearm and he laughs at what she has just said. Taking his arm they both turn towards me, not looking at me, but past me to the Masterpiece. Then I notice that everyone
is focused on
Dejeuner sur l’Herbe
.

‘Outrageous,’ someone screams.

Cackles of laughter peel all around