Madame Picasso. Anne Girard
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it at the exhibition here. That trash sold for four hundred francs, and an artist like me can barely make a decent sale,” Louis droned, doing his best to assert his knowledge and dampen the thrill she felt.
As they made their way to the next room, Eva wasn’t certain what she had expected to see but the new sensory barrage stunned her even more. The vast room, with its colored play of light and all of the people, suddenly made the space seem extremely warm. There were so many huge canvases covered with lines and angles. All of them seemed like sharp pallid cubes with human beings trapped inside trying to escape. Eva felt a shiver at the evocative paintings as she wondered what some of the artists might have been trying to say. There were too many people milling around her to pause long enough to hazard even a guess, but each one was oddly stirring to her.
“These are the damned artists who should be called the Wild Beasts, not the Fauvists. There’s not a thing artistically sacred to any of them. Just look at all of the nonsensical shapes,” Louis grumbled.
“One of them is actually making something of a name for himself at it, although apparently now he’s too much better than everyone else to exhibit his work here. Some Spaniard called Picasso. Wretched Spaniards.”
He rubbed his chin as he looked up at a huge canvas of gray and beige cubes. “I’d like to meet him, though. Maybe some of that dumb Spanish luck of his would rub off on me. At least I know I can paint better than a donkey’s tail!”
She’d heard the name Picasso, of course. Everyone who was anyone in Paris was talking about him, saying he was a true renegade. She had read recently that he had become known for leaving the style of Matisse, and for embracing this new linear style Louis despised. Eva knew nothing about art, but she knew that these paintings fascinated her.
When Louis was distracted and began speaking to a couple he seemed to know, Eva wandered alone back into the first room and to a corner adorned by a large canvas depicting a nude, recumbent woman. She leaned nearer. Henri Matisse, Blue Nude. There was no disguising how erotic it was. Beside it, a few feet away, The Joy of Living, also signed by Matisse. On that canvas there were naked people lounging everywhere painted in vibrant tones of yellow, red, pink and blue. One couple was even depicted... Oh, dear! Eva tried her best not to gasp.
It was at that moment that she saw him.
He gazed up at the vast canvas on the wall before him. He was a rough-looking sort. Like a hoodlum, she thought, a true shabby bohemian. He looked dangerous in his sensuality, not neat and proper like Louis. He wore a casual black corduroy jacket, black turtleneck sweater, wrinkled beige trousers, a slouchy blue cap and scuffed shoes. His thick fingers were stained with paint. He was tightly built and stocky, like a prizefighter.
And then she remembered.
It was the man from the Moulin Rouge last night. There was no mistaking those eyes; they were black as midnight and looked as though they could burn right through the painting. There was a brooding sensuality about him and she felt her body stir. He was looking at the same Matisse canvas, full of lounging nudes. To her horror, he turned sharply and caught her staring at him.
Eva’s heart vaulted into her throat, and suddenly she felt foolish. Then, as if they were the only two people in the room, his lips turned up just slightly in a casual smile and he nodded in acknowledgment of her.
Time lengthened as the energy between them flared. Her imagination betrayed her and as they assessed one another, Eva thought she could almost feel his hands running down the length of her back, drawing her against him. As she watched his gaze travel downward, she knew his thoughts were mirroring hers. His eyes were angling from her neck down along her torso with the skilled appreciation of a lover. Thankfully, no one in the crowded room seemed to notice how they had captivated one another, and Louis was still back in the room with the Cubist works.
Eva bravely returned his smile. She felt so brazen! She knew well enough that she was not a grand beauty—not like the dancers at the Moulin Rouge—but this stranger looked at her with desire.
“Curious art,” he casually remarked of the piece they both were observing. He spoke with an accent so thick that at first she wasn’t certain what he had said.
“I don’t understand it.”
“Do you suppose the artist does?”
“Well, Monsieur Matisse painted it, so he must.”
“What do you imagine he is trying to convey?” he asked.
“Chaos. Daring. Certainly a wild heart,” she said thoughtfully. “His mind must be a frenzy.”
“Along with his love life,” he replied, gazing back up at the piece.
She was as intrigued as she was embarrassed as he clamped his own chin with thumb and forefinger and she, too, looked back at the canvas with a restrained smile.
“What if it is his soul that has control of him when he paints, and not his mind at all?”
She couldn’t quite imagine what he meant and considered for a moment how to reply. “I just don’t see why he wouldn’t paint pictures like everyone else. Even like Toulouse-Lautrec did, or Monsieur Cézanne. They were innovative, and yet they were masters.”
“Not when they were alive, that’s for certain.
“Perhaps Monsieur Matisse craves the freedom to be defiant about how he sees the world.”
“How do you mean?”
“Perhaps he wishes to paint objects as he thinks or feels them, not as everyone else sees them.”
Suddenly she understood what he was saying. It was the very reason why she had run away from Vincennes, because she wanted the freedom to see the world differently than her parents did. Because she wanted to feel. She wanted to be like Apollinaire’s Gypsy.
“It is a terrible thing to be swallowed up by the world and be forced to see it as others do,” Eva finally said as their eyes met again. “Not to do what one feels.”
“I could not agree more—señorita. For many of us, conformity is impossible.”
“Picasso! ¡Aquí!” someone called, extinguishing their moment, and a young dark-haired man approached them. “You have been discovered here and there’s a photographer on his way to you!”
Eva felt a warm rush as they quickly left the room. He was Pablo Picasso? She had just flirted with a famous artist.
Needing a breath of fresh air, she made her way outside and leaned against a white stone pillar. Their little game of seduction had overwhelmed her. As much as she always said she was not an innocent, Eva was naive and out of her league with this man.
She stood still, trying to catch her breath as her mind swam with the potent mix of excitement and uncertainty. Eva had never felt so alive as she did at that moment. It really had been the most extraordinary couple of days and she did not dare to imagine what might lay ahead.
That mysterious, spirited young woman from the museum had captured Picasso’s imagination and he could not get her out of his mind. Since the Salon des Indépendants two days ago, he had become obsessed with her. He had not thought to ask her name, but her face and small frame were as deeply etched into his mind now as if he had already had her in his bed. Or painted her.
He had stood there staring at her, and as she looked back at him with those guileless blue eyes and such a rosebud of a mouth, he had wanted to devour her.
But he must stop this. He was not a single man. He loved Fernande, and he was trying to remain faithful to her. And anyway, that girl was not his type. Fernande was statuesque and elegant, with her mythic beauty and luxuriant mane of flaming auburn hair. She was a woman who commanded every room she entered and possessed every man’s ardor. Voluptuous, worldly.
That little nymph was