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The damned pigeons have come back. They don’t seem to mind me, as if this old lady gives some kind of magic protection. She’s devoting herself to them now. I watch. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
She has a small leather roll-up kit, the kind a good mechanic might have to store his wrenches, only smaller. She has it open beside her on the bench, that’s on the other side from where I’m sitting. In the kit are small scissors, two pairs of tweezers, both large and small, various little metal picks, toothpicks, tiny sticks with cotton wrapped on the end like Q-tips, miniature bottles with the smell of alcohol, and several small files. There is also a bottle of antiseptic.
I don’t know how she manages, but she puts out a finger, no food on it, just a finger, and several of those crazy pigeons fly down to land on it. She selects one of the birds by putting her hand over its back, slowly, carefully. As it hunches down, she picks it up. She then gently spreads out a wing and runs her finger along its length, checking the feathers. If there’s a twisted feather, she tries to straighten it, or, if it’s badly twisted, she quickly pulls it, checking the feather socket with her sensitive fingers and with a Q-tip applying a touch of antiseptic.
She goes over the entire body of the pigeon that way: probing, feeling, adjusting. Each pigeon seems to enjoy this, like a Swedish massage. There’s no fluttering to get away, no panic, they just relax and let all this happen. She then checks the feet, feeling for scales, I think, smoothing or filing rough spots with one of her small files, clipping the toenails if they need it, cleaning out the space between nail and toe, washing the whole foot. I wish somebody would take care of me like that. I wouldn’t shit on their statues, either.
One bird has an infected joint, where the toe joins the leg. She cleans this thoroughly, gently, expertly touching, feeling for swelling, and puts both alcohol and antiseptic in the sore spot.
As she finishes with a pigeon, she deftly reaches into each of about ten little bags she has lined up close to her thigh. She chooses individual grains, as if they’re vitamin pills, and feeds them, one at a time, to the bird on which she’s just worked. The pigeon, meanwhile, is flutting out its feathers, doing a quick little inspection with its beak, checking any repair work that’s been done.
The pigeon takes the grains from her hand as she offers them, then she gracefully swings away the pigeon on which she’s been working, gently off her finger. They usually fly up, circle a few times, then land on the statue of Diderot for a quick rump-thumping crap. The favorite places seem to be the pen in his hand, his hand itself, and his head.
There are pigeons all over Diderot. He has even more pigeons on him than the old lady, but then he’s about ten times bigger. He has a patina of white pigeon shit over the dark green patina of his bronze to show for it, too.
I watch through about five or six pigeons. I’m too fascinated to even think about getting back to work. I’ve never seen anything like this. I had canaries when I was in high school and I loved to hear them sing. But pigeons only make that gargling noise all the time, could make you vomit just listening to them. However, I must admit, I’ve never seen anybody handle birds the way this old lady does.
While she works on the pigeons she talks to me, mostly asking questions. She never takes her mind from her work with the birds, but once in a while she ‘looks’ at me and smiles. I begin to realize she’s guessing at the location of my eyes from my voice, my smell, something. I feel she does it so I won’t be uncomfortable with her blindness. She’s pretending she can see, for me. But I am uncomfortable, I can’t help it, I still can’t figure how she can look directly into my eyes, read me. It’s weird.
‘Are you long here in Paris, Monsieur le Peintre?’
‘Yes, I’ve been here almost five years now.’
‘But you have such a heavy American accent. After so long in Paris you should speak better French.’
God, I think I only said about fifteen words to her in French. I didn’t know it was that bad.
‘I don’t seem to have a good ear for languages, madame. I try to learn French, but it is difficult. I speak much better now than I did a year ago, so that’s something.’
She’s concentrating on a flight feather which is dangling and must be removed. She could be a surgeon, her hands are so sure and quick.
‘So you have good eyes and I have good ears. Together we would know much about this world if we could share. Almost no one uses the gifts they have. Only when one loses one gift does one begin to find and appreciate the others.’
There’s a long pause as she carefully extracts the feather, puts antiseptic on the feather socket.
‘Now, Orlando, that will be much better. You will be able to fly faster away from the automobiles and soon a new feather will grow in.’
She turns to me again, smiles.
‘I hope you do not mind if I talk to my pigeons. I have a name for each of them and they are my only friends, my only family. Being an old, blind woman is sometimes quite lonely.’
‘I’ve talked to pigeons myself, also, madame, sometimes they are the only creatures with whom I can talk.’
I don’t tell her how mostly I’m cursing them when they make that sudden flurry of stiff feathers from behind me when I’m trying to concentrate on a painting. A person could have a heart attack when a flock of pigeons soars off in a bunch like that.
‘But I don’t know them the way you do, madame. When I talk to them it’s as if I’m talking to myself and seem to learn nothing. I’ve never been as close to pigeons as you are.’
‘Well, you see, monsieur, I have been coming here every day from about ten in the morning until the midday bells ring for thirty years, since the end of the second great war. The pigeons in the flock change but the flock itself remains. Even the young new ones, or a pigeon who joins this flock from another, know me. You see, pigeons are some of the kindest, most trusting, least hostile creatures on this earth. I am convinced they communicate with each other, can talk in a special way, but hard as I have listened, I have never learned their language. However, humans could learn much from them as to how we should live.’
Being out in the streets, I run into all kinds of loons, but this may be my prize catch, a blind old lady in a red suit who wants to talk to pigeons because maybe they can tell her how humans should live.
I’m beginning to feel I might be getting involved with another nut. I’ve developed a sort of sixth sense for sorting out the real crazies. But this woman seems different. Except for all the pigeon business and her blindness she seems more normal, more clear, intelligent, than anybody I’ve talked with in a long time.
But also, I’m beginning to feel itchy about getting on with my painting. I’ve decided to paint this woman in at the base of the statue. I definitely could use a strong color there in the foreground and red would go great against the green of the trees in the park next to the church. I’ve already decided to treat Monsieur Diderot loosely, with suggestions of the bronze, a few pigeons, and the thrust of his leaning toward the church across the street.
‘Well, I’d best get back to work, madame. The light is changing fast and I want to finish my underpainting today.’
‘What are you painting? Is it the church?’
I still can’t get used to her being blind. When she comes out with something like this I almost feel as if she’s kidding, but then I’ve had this happen often before, with people who can see. I’ll be sitting directly in front of something that interests me, making what I consider a fairly good representation of what I’m seeing, and they’ll stand there, looking all around, puzzled, and finally ask me what I’m painting. It can drive me up a wall, it also isn’t very good for my confidence.
I thought they were kidding at first, but no, it just isn’t what they’re good at, the way I can’t seem to learn French. But, of course, with this woman, she’s really blind. She only knows I’m beside the statue of Diderot. I could be painting the café or even the Hôtel Madison.
‘Yes, madame. It is the church, but much more. I have the statue of Diderot on the left side of my painting, then I’m looking up boulevard Saint-Germain with Le Drugstore, and across the street, Les Deux Magots, then the opening to rue Bonaparte. In the middle is the tower of the church, with the nave going across the painting to the fountain. In the foreground, I have the little garden where children play, and in front of that, le boulevard with the bus stop.’
She stops working on her pigeons and listens to me. She closes her blind eyes the way a person with sight would close theirs to picture something.
‘You describe it all very well, I can see it in my mind. I do wish I could see your painting. I have lived in this quarter all my life. I feel you are probably a very good painter because I think you are a good man. Thank you for cleaning my coat and then keeping me company. I hope you are happy with your painting when it is finished.’
As she speaks, the bells of Saint-Germain-des-Prés start their beautiful, hollow, hallowed gonging, ringing. The first few notes, then the crescendo as they pick up speed, are so comforting. The bells are one of the things I’ve learned to love in Paris. Not far away, I hear the deeper bells of Saint-Sulpice start their welcoming answer to noon, invitation to the important French déjeuner.
The old blind lady has been gathering her tools together and fastening them. She puts away her small sacks of feed, then pulls out a larger sack and strews some grains on the ground in front of her. She turns to me.
‘This way, they do not notice I am leaving and it is not so hard for them. Tell me, are there any small birds there with the pigeons?’
I look and there are sparrows darting in front of the pigeons, getting their share and more.
‘Yes, there are sparrows.’
‘Are any of the pigeons fighting them for the food?’
I look. Sure enough, they aren’t, they’re pushing each other to get to the grain but there is no pecking or fighting among themselves or against the small sparrows.
‘No. There’s no fighting. They allow the small birds to take what they want.’
‘You see, monsieur, the pigeons have much to teach us.’
With that, she picks up her cane, stands, and reaches out her hand toward me. We shake hands.
‘Will you be here tomorrow to work on your painting?’
‘Yes, if it isn’t raining or too cold.’
She lifts her head, turning it left and right like a pointer trying to get a scent.
‘No, tomorrow will be like today. I hope to see you then.’
I watch as she turns and walks away quickly, using her cane only occasionally, She said she’d ‘see’ me. It must be strange to be blind and still use the terms of seeing.
I go back to my painting. I block in where I’m going to paint her. I must consult her to see if it’s all right. There’s no way she could ever know, but it seems the right thing to do. It’s the kind of lesson I’m learning, slowly but surely. Something that might seem perfectly right and logical to one person can be a terrible violation to another; we’re all different. I wish I’d learned this earlier. I’ll ask tomorrow before I start painting her in seriously.
I work away at the underpainting for several hours. Usually I go more quickly, but in the few oil paintings I’ve tried so far, I’ve discovered that faults of drawing or composition which might be acceptable, even invisible, early on become glaring as the painting comes to conclusion. I’m trying to eliminate all such awkwardness.
Still, I can already feel I’m going to have the same trouble I’ve had with the others. Even if I manage the drawing right, not only accurate, but well designed; even if the selection of forms and colors for the underpainting seems vital, appropriate, there’s no excitement in the painting. I don’t seem able to incorporate, build into my paintings, the strong emotional feelings I have about my subject, about Paris, about life itself. There’s something missing, a wall of fear, of timidity, between me and what I want to say. Also, there’s an arrogance. I don’t seem willing to let go, to fall into the painting, become part of it. Perhaps it will come with practice, when I’m less concerned with technical problems; I hope so.
At about five o’clock, the light is too far gone. I feel the underpainting is finished and a night of drying will get the surface just right for my impasto tomorrow. I’ll start with the sky, make a stab at those constantly changing, magic clouds against the blending blue of the sky. It’s where my cerulean blue should come in handy.
Someday, I’d like to try wet-in-wet, go right from the underpainting to the impasto with no drying time between. Rembrandt did it and so did some other great Dutch painters, some of the Italians, too.
I pack up my box, hang the painting on the back of it, and start my walk home. I could take the number 86 bus almost directly to where I’m living, but I like walking in Paris. It’s what kept me together over the worst days. Also, at this time, the buses will be filled and it’s easy to smear a painting on someone, even if it’s only underpainting.
I walk down boulevard Saint-Germain, across the Pont Sully, up Henri IV to the Bastille. I go along Roquette and cut off down a narrow street called rue Keller. It’s about a forty-five-minute walk. The painting box is light enough so I hardly notice it. The walking helps keep me in shape, too. I’ll really enjoy my dinner tonight.
I come onto the passage des Taillandiers, the street where I live. It’s still early, so the buzzer to the door isn’t set. I slip past the loge de concierge without any trouble. I know the name of a painter in the building, and if the concierge ever asks anything, I’ve decided to say I’m going to visit him. Actually I’ve never met this artist and hope I never do.
I go up Escalier C, the least used of the staircases. At this time, most of the artisans, furniture builders, and carpenters have all gone home. I, quietly, but with a casual step, as if I belong here, jiggling a meaningless ring of keys in my hands, go to the very top, past the last legitimate door, up one more flight, and through a heavy fire door into the dark attic, le grenier.
There’s no light up here. I find my hidden flashlight, flick it on, and feel my way down the narrow hallway, between the individual attic rooms, to the one I consider my own, although I’m only a squatter. I reach for the key hidden over the door and let myself in.
The smell of old dust, of dry stored wood coated with sawdust, of stale air, is home to me. I stand my box with the painting at the far end of the room. There’s a skylight in the slanted ceiling with a metal brace. I push it open to air the room. I block the cracks in the door with an old curtain so no light will show through, and light two candles. I unhook my painting from the box and put it between the two candles. I look around and see nothing’s been disturbed. I think it’s been years since anyone other than me has come into this room. I don’t even know which of the carpenters’ workshops below uses it for storage.
I pull down my piece of foam rubber and my sleeping bag from up in the rafters where I hide them during the day. I get out my tiny butane cooker and one of the sealed one-liter mason jars with my supply of cooked vegetables. I take out my bottle of wine and the half a baguette I hoard over two days. I only eat once a day and I’m really hungry. I was about ready to snitch some of those grains from the pigeons.
I turn on the cooker and warm up my Mulligan-type stew in an old pot. I pull my spoon from behind a supporting post where I store it and pour myself the one small glass of wine I allow myself each day. The six-franc bottle of wine I drink has to last a week. Aside from the costs of my painting materials, this wine, the butane, my baguettes, and the candles are the bulk of my expenditures.
I sit in the gathering dusk with the candles for light and slowly eat my portion of stew. I, who all my life have been a meat and potatoes man, have, perforce, become a vegetarian. At first I bemoaned the fact, but now, after several months, I sometimes think I couldn’t face a steak, or even a well-done hamburger. I feel a lot better, too. But that could be from the running.
I look at the painting. In this light, away from the subject matter, it looks better. I probably won’t paint in my sleep tonight. The whole idea of me painting oil paintings, considering everything, especially the cost, is an insanity; but I’m hooked. I don’t know how I’ll ever sell these things for enough money to pay back the cost of paint and canvas, let alone make a few francs. If I have to return to drawing and watercolor again, I’ll feel as if my legs have been chopped off. But I’ll do it, to keep my freedom.
I bought the paint box for a song. It’s a genuine collapsible easel made with hardwood, dovetail joints, brass fittings. This box has to be at least fifty years old, older than I am. It doesn’t have a metal inner liner as the new ones do, nor a second drawer underneath, but it’s sturdy and light. It’s constructed so the legs fold out and can be tightened to give strength. It’s all there, storage for paints, palette, brushes, turp, varnish, oil, paint cloths, and it opens to hold the canvas, any canvas, up to size 25F. Also, it’s smeared with paint and the air of authenticity. Just going out to paint with it gives me a thrill. I walk along feeling in tune with Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Sisley, a real painter in the field.
I thought carefully when I bought my paints. I found a place called HMB near here. It’s not an art store but a real paint store for the artisans around this area. The paints and brushes are about half the price I’d pay anywhere else. I decided on Le Franc Bourgeois paints, because they’re not too expensive, yet aren’t packed with filler or too much oil. I bought studio-sized tubes. I tried to stay with the cheapest colors, colors listed 1 or 2 on a scale of 6. I bought titanium white and ivory black. Those I remembered as my favorites from when I was back in school at Penn, with dreams of being a painter.
Then I bought earth colors. If necessary, I’d paint with them and black and white only. I bought burnt and raw sienna, burnt umber, yellow ocher. Next I bought a tube of ultramarine light. That was seven colors. To fill out my spectrum, at not too great a cost, I bought ultramarine violet, the cheapest violet; the other violets were 5s or 6s. Next, chrome yellow, chrome orange, both substitutes for cadmiums, which are 6s. Then alizarine crimson. For green I bought sap green. It’s transparent and can be used in the underpainting and also added to the yellows and earth colors for foliage. Last, I splurged and bought cerulean blue as a thirteenth color. Painting skies in Paris without cerulean would be a real challenge.
For brushes I bought pig’s bristles numbers 4, 8, and 10 and, luxury of luxuries, a number 6 sable. That last brush alone cost 42 francs, enough for me to live two weeks.
I make my own varnish from Damaar crystals I buy at HMB. It’s there I also buy huge cans of white acrylic house paint for sizing canvas, also turpentine and linseed oil by the half gallon. I usually have some crystals soaking in turpentine inside a woman’s nylon stocking up here in the attic. I try for a five-pound cut, but it’s mostly by guess and luck.
It’s the canvas that’s expensive. I shot half my whole wad buying a roll of raw duck canvas at a shop where they sell canvas drop cloths for painters. I snitch boards from up here in the attic to make stretchers. I tack canvas to them with carpet tacks and a hammer. I found the hammer, with a broken handle, in a trash can down the street. The short handle is enough for me, short-handled hammer and now a short-handled brush.
I use my fingers to stretch the canvas. I can get it tight enough that way. One trouble for me was figuring out when I should hammer the canvas onto the stretchers and heat the glue for sizing. Since weekends practically no one’s around, also the concierge leaves Sundays, I decide that will be the best day. The hammering makes noise and the glue stinks to high heaven.
I worked all last Sunday, that is, after I’d gathered my vegetables and some fruit when they closed the market at the Marché d’Aligre. They just throw away anything that’s started to rot. I cooked up my weekly stew at the same time I stretched canvas and made glue; all the smells blended together.
I built five stretchers, sized and put two layers of acrylic paint on the canvases after I’d stretched them. I pulled them nice and tight and have them stored in the rafters. I built them to the standard French dimensions. Two were 15 Figure and the last three were 25 Figure, or about two feet by three feet. It’s the first of those bigger ones I’m working on now, after getting frustrated with the 15s; they were too small. I’m getting to be a real big-shot painter; I’m just not making any money.
Even with all these cheapo solutions it’s going to break me soon unless I can figure some way to sell these damned paintings. I calculate, materials included, but not my time or labor, that I’ve got a hundred francs in each canvas when it’s finished. This means I need to recoup at least three hundred francs a painting. There aren’t many people walking around with that kind of money in their pockets, especially to spend on paintings by some nobody. However, the tourist season is coming soon. Probably I’ll sell something during the summer. I’ve got to!
I’m not complaining, though. Things have worked out so far and I’m feeling great. I know it’ll all come around okay. I have the feeling my life is beginning to make some sense again, despite everything.
The worst thing is loneliness. I try fighting it off, but it keeps sneaking up on me. I also try to keep myself clean. Once a week I go to the public baths next to the police station near the Marché d’Aligre. I scrub the worst dirt off my body and stomp on my clothes to get them clean. I wring out those clothes, put them in a plastic bag, and hang them in the attic to dry. I have a second set of clothes I wear out of the bath. But I still look pretty much like a bum. Maybe it’s the beard. I try scissoring it so it’s sort of neat, but if you’re wearing foot-stomped clothes, not ironed, and a beard, even if you’re clean, you can’t help looking like a clochard. It’s tough shaving every morning with no warm water. Razors would increase expenses, and besides, I’ve begun to like my beard. It takes the MBI curse off me, aims me in the right direction, the direction I want to go the rest of my life.
Once every month or so, I take my clothes to a self-service laundry. I shove them all in one washer, except for a sweat suit I wash by hand, then put them in the little spinner for a franc a shot. Together it costs seventeen francs, with drying. But after that I smell like an angel for a few days. My T-shirts glisten and my jeans almost have creases.
After I finish eating, I blow out my candles and stare for a while through the attic window. I keep thinking I’ll climb up and clean the grime off so I can see out to the sky, but I’m afraid of tipping off whoever really owns this place to the idea I’m up here, so I don’t. The weather’s getting good enough now so I can leave the window pushed up at night and have a good look at the stars when there are any. I’ve discovered from experience just how far I can push it up and still not have rain come in.
Before I fall into a deep sleep, I remember that tomorrow I should stop at American Express to see if there are any letters from Lorrie or the kids. Also, I want to write and let them know I’m all right and how well my painting is coming along.
Blind Reverie
His smell is so different from that of most men, not only the turpentine. And his voice, sometimes calm when he answers me, but there is excitement in there. At the same time, this is a sad man, an alone man. I think he is probably a good painter.
He was kind to join me under the statue. The feet of Monsieur Diderot had a moldy smell today, could it be from the rain and the pigeons. It was stronger than usual.
I do not think Monsieur le Peintre cares for my pigeons. It was in his voice, in the way he sat, even with my pillow, I felt he was uncomfortable. I must teach him to love them as I do. I hope he comes back tomorrow. I can smell his turpentine in my coat all the way in the other room.
I hope I was not too brash. It is so rare to find someone with whom to talk, who is not always thinking about my blindness. That is their blindness. I so often feel sorry for those who must live inside the world and not outside it as I do. It must be so hard and cruel for them.
2
I wake with the first light. I slip on my running costume: a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and a sweat suit. The best thing I took with me when I left were my two pairs of running shoes. These running shoes I’d had at least three years and never ran in them. I dread to think of when they wear out. These things cost fifty bucks a pair. Now I use one pair for everyday, for painting, and the other for running only.
I sneak out the gate downstairs. Nobody is up at this time in the morning except garbage collectors and Algerian street sweepers. I start my usual warm-up, run down Ledru-Rollin and across the river to the Left Bank quai. I run through the little park there and the sculpture garden.
I stay with the quai even when I have to go up steps and down the other side. I take the steps quickly and two at a time. I want to make my blood really bubble. I run till I get to the Pont Alexandre III and cross it. Now the light is coming on stronger and traffic is picking up. I don’t like to run when there’s too much automobile smell.
I run along the street above the Right Bank quai. Sometimes I need to run up here along where the bouquiniste stands are, because of the road they’ve built along the quai. I cut in through the Marais to the Bastille. Traffic is picking up seriously. I go down the rue de la Roquette, the way I came home yesterday, and up rue Keller and home. It’s only about an hour’s run but it wakes me up. There’s no trouble getting through the gate, the concierge sleeps until seven-thirty or so. I’m dripping as I quietly run up the stairs, my usual two at a time, to my hideout.
I take off my sweat suit and hang it on a hook behind the door. I spread my soaking shorts and T-shirt on a piece of string along the back wall behind some long pieces of wood. I stretch out on the floor until I stop sweating. I have a little piece of rug I found in the trash by the rug store at the corner of rue de Charonne and avenue Ledru-Rollin. I’m flat out on it, getting my breath back and trying to relax.
After about five minutes, I start my one hundred, deep-breathing, sit-ups and then do a few yoga exercises. I finish with fifty slow push-ups, hands lifted off the floor each time.
I don’t think I’ve been in as good a shape in my life, not since high school. I’d better stay in condition, I have no backup, no social security from the French, no health plan, no MBI. I’ve got to stay healthy. The best part is it’s such fun staying in shape.
When I first started living in the streets, almost a year ago now, I was slowly going downhill. I didn’t eat right, I didn’t keep myself clean, I’d put down a bottle of red wine every night so I’d sleep, and then it’d be noon before I could shake my head without hurting. I was well on my way to becoming a real clochard. It’s hard to believe how quickly one can go down when one just doesn’t care enough.
I splurge this morning and give myself my usual Sunday treat, even though it’s only Thursday. At least, I think it’s Thursday. I still have the end of my baguette saved from yesterday and dunk it into a cup of coffee I brew on my stove. Real luxury. I sit against my bedroll and look across at the painting. I’m anxious to get into it again. From the look of the sky as I was running, that old, blind lady was right, we’re going to have another great day, another painting day.
I hide everything, tuck away my running clothes where they can’t be seen but will have room to dry, wash myself off quickly with the water I pack up in wine bottles. I don’t have any soap. I tuck my key and flashlight in place and quietly go down the staircase. Nobody really gets to work before eight, so I’m okay. The concierge’s door is still closed, too.
Out on the street, the sun is up, long slanting light making everything clear and shining. There are the usual morning Paris sounds of garbage trucks, water running in the gutters, pigeons gurgling and splashing in the dirty water as they’re just waking up. Then I watch as they glide against the sky. I guess the flock around here lives in the tower at Sainte-Marguerite’s. I think about the blind old lady and what she said about pigeons. What a nutty idea. I’ve got to admit, though, they look great against a sky, and I’m going to start using them to hold things together, tie the sky to the earth.
I decide to walk straight down Henri IV the way the bus goes, so I can get the long view of Notre-Dame from the back. It’s a special view from the bridge, with the little garden tucked on the end of the island.
I get to my painting spot at about eight-thirty. I put down my box and sit on the bench just soaking up what I’m going to be painting, trying my damnedest to let it happen to me. Letting it really come into me is something I’m trying to learn. I’m too aggressive, keep forcing the subject matter too much, not changing it but trying to make it mine instead of letting me become it. I breathe deeply, trying to relax, have confidence in things. I’ve had too many years where if you were caught relaxing, ‘goofing off,’ it was held against you. Every day it was a race to see who’d be first in the office and last to leave. I never even realized it was happening, either. And it wasn’t happening just to me, it was all of us.
When the bells ring nine, I’m into it. I’ve set up slightly to the left of where I was painting yesterday. There’s no chance anybody will be crashing into me and I can use the bench to store my varnish and turpentine bottles.
