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I start with that sky, working from the top, buttering it between the trees, around the tops of buildings. I like having the sky established before I start lighting the rest of the painting. I’ll let the other parts of the painting happen to the sky, later. Also, the sky’s up where it doesn’t get in the way, doesn’t get smeared as I work.
I’m lighting the top of the tower when she sneaks up behind me. I actually jump. I didn’t hear or feel her near me at all.
‘Ah, Monsieur le Peintre, you are here. That is good. Are you happy with your painting this beautiful day?’
She’s holding out her hand to shake. My hands are relatively clean but with some dabs of blue and yellow ocher. I quickly wipe them on my paint rag and shake with her.
‘Oh, it does not matter if you get paint on my hands from yours, monsieur. I could feel it and wipe it off with a tissue.’
She smiles. I try to think how she knew. Of course, it was the slight delay before I shook hands with her, she knew I was painting. She’s a regular Sherlock Holmes.
‘Yes, madame, so far the painting is going well. I am just now painting the tower of the church against the sky.’
‘It must make you feel like a pigeon flying up there. Sometimes, as I am falling asleep, I try to imagine myself as a pigeon in the open air, close to the bells, the sky, above the trees, the streets. It is lovely.’
She pauses.
‘Do you know, often I dream of it. In my dreams I can see. I see all of Paris below me, glowing, glistening in magic light. I am never blind in my dreams. Is that not interesting?’
It tells me something. It tells me she hasn’t always been blind. The company-trained psychologist strikes. Or else it tells me she likes to lie, also interesting. I start painting again. She stays beside me.
‘Monsieur le Peintre, is it possible that I could make an arrangement with you?’
Oh boy, what’s coming next. I step back from the painting but I keep my brush in hand. I’m ready to take the en garde position. I can just see it spread on the front page of Le Soir:
American artist arrested
for attacking old, blind woman
with paintbrush
This would be in French, of course.
‘You see, I know each of the birds in my flock, all forty-six of them, but only by feel; I should like very much to know how they look: what color they are, how they are marked, striped, checked. Since you are an artist, trained to see, truly, clearly, you could describe them to me.’
She pauses. I wait. What’s next? She said something about an arrangement. Is she going to offer money?
‘If you will do this for me, monsieur, I shall prepare for you a very good meal today at midday. I assure you I am an excellent cook. I like to eat. As I said, when we lose one gift, other senses become stronger. My senses of taste and smell are very strong. I think you would like my food.’
How can I say no? It means I won’t get much painting done, but I’m in no hurry. I’m for sure not going anywhere. She can’t live too far from here if she’s blind.
‘I live just there, behind the statue of Monsieur Diderot just past where the Italian restaurant is. It is called the rue des Ciseaux. I live at number 5 and on the second floor. There is only one door on that floor. If you come, you need only knock.’
My God, maybe she has a sixth sense as well. She seems to read my mind.
She stops and now she waits. I know the rue des Ciseaux. It’s a street of restaurants. I never thought of anyone living there.
‘Of course, madame. It would be a joy for me to watch you with your birds again and, if you will have me, I should very much enjoy my déjeuner with you. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, monsieur. I hope you do not think I am being too forward, but it means much to me, also I shall enjoy having someone dine with me to whom I can speak in English.’
I start painting again. I think I’m taking advantage of her blindness, that she won’t know, but she knows immediately. It’s probably the direction of my movements or even the sound of the brushes.
‘Yes, you keep painting until it is a good time for you to stop, perhaps when you have caught the beautiful light on the tower against the sky. I shall wait for you.’
With that, she turns away. I continue painting the steeple and heavy stone of the massive tower. Her comments about being a pigeon, flying up there, the openness of the sky, the strength of the tower, all seem to flow into me. I’m painting it with much more force and at the same time a new sensitivity. It’s amazing how an idea can affect the way you see.
I paint for perhaps fifteen minutes or half an hour more and it’s good painting, some of the best I’ve done. I put down my brushes and walk over to sit next to the old lady.
She turns toward me, smiles her quiet, not quite sad smile.
‘I hope I have not interrupted you at an important point. I do very much appreciate this help you are giving me. I have not yet worked on any of the birds, but as you can see, they are waiting for me.’
Sure enough, there are pigeons all over the place, all over her. It’s amazing no sparrows or any other birds come. But then, come to think of it, only pigeons seem tame enough, friendly enough with humans to come close. They’re either very stupid, or very trusting, as she insists.
She opens her little satchel and unfolds her kit. This is some kind of signal. She holds out her finger and two birds fly down; one lands first, so the other veers away. She puts her hand over it.
This is a really peculiar-looking bird for a pigeon, smoky-dark, with some remnants of checks on the back. It’s slightly lighter on the chest, with a few almost white feathers on the thighs. Its beak is yellowish, with a streak of blue or violet, and its legs are a dark yellowish pink, almost salmon color. I describe all this to the blind lady while she does her inspection and files off a few scales from one leg.
‘This hen is not young, she must be more than five years old. Her name is Nicole. She has been in the flock a long time. She has had at least fifteen nests and most of her young have grown. Some of her sons have left the flock. She is becoming thin and I do not think she will have more than one nest this year. From the way you describe her, she is not a very beautiful bird, is she? I had always thought she would be one of the most lovely. I imagine what we think is beautiful in a pigeon is not necessarily what pigeons might feel. Perhaps sometimes it is best to be blind, so one can see the way things really are, and not be blinded by the way they look.’
She gently launches Nicole away and another bird flies down to her hand. This bird is almost pure white but has irregular blue-gray markings. It is big, with a tinge of iridescent color around its neck. It has beautiful pink, almost scaleless legs with bluish nails. I describe this one as best I can.
‘Oh yes. I always felt he must be white. He is so bossy, even though he is only from one of last year’s nests.
‘Almost always he is one of the first to come to me, not because there is anything wrong with him. He only wants the grains I give.’
She’s started feeding him his individual grains and he picks them quickly from between her fingers. She more brusquely lofts him off into flight.
I sit and describe each of the birds as they come. It takes more than an hour. I’m enjoying myself, enjoy trying to describe the birds accurately. There’s something in it of the careful seeing one does while painting. But I’m also wanting to get back into my own work.
‘Well, Monsieur le Peintre, I suspect that is all we are going to have today. There are two who did not come, perhaps they are with another flock or perhaps something has happened to them. It is terrible the number of pigeons killed by speeding automobiles in this city. The automobiles never stop, so the pigeons are smashed into the street and are totally destroyed. There should be a law against it.’
I don’t tell her how they seem to lose their color, how the feathers become spread under the tires so that, in the end, the pigeon disappears into the asphalt. In one day, on a busy street, a pigeon can turn into nothing.
‘Well, I shall go prepare our meal. If you stop painting when the bells start ringing, I shall expect you about ten minutes later. You can bring your box with you and place it on the palier or in the vestibule. It is at your disposition.’
She bows her head slightly in dismissal and begins to gather up her equipment. I go back to my painting. The work I’ve just finished is even better than I remember it. I start painting across the long façade of the nave, trying to vary the color of the stone with the shadows, with the staining of age, with the flashes of light through the trees, at the same time fighting to make it all hold together. I also begin working the foliage of the trees against this light. When I have a color I feel would be good in another place, I put it there. The statue of Diderot takes careful but loose painting, as I bring the color of the sky down into the color of the pigeon shit, as it blends to the color of the oxidized bronze. I’m beginning to feel that, in parts at least, I’m entering the painting and being inside it. Time seems to fly.
Then I hear the bells of the church ringing. I don’t remember hearing them start, I was that much out of things. I quickly pack up my box. I put the bottles of turp and varnish into my pockets, rapidly clean paint off the brushes. I’m packed in no time. I look around to see if I’m forgetting anything. I have it all. I start off behind Diderot, to the mouth of the rue des Ciseaux, and down the hill of that small street toward the rue du Four.
On the left, I find number 5. It’s an old building with walls slanted in from the time when mortar wasn’t strong enough to support straight-up walls. The stairway is narrow, so I need to take the painting off the easel on my back to maneuver the tight corners. At the second floor, I put down my box and painting. There’s a place under the electric box for me to store them. I knock.
Almost immediately the door is opened.
‘I heard you coming up the steps. You had to stop because the painting was too big to come around the corner, am I right?’
I nod, then realize I must speak. It takes time getting accustomed to a blind person.
‘That’s right. I almost knocked the corners off the walls.’
I go inside. It’s a nice apartment but dark. It opens onto the court. Of course, for her, the darkness would be no disadvantage. Although it’s neatly kept up, no disorder, everything in its place, the plaster is hanging from the ceiling, the wallpaper is loosened from the walls, hanging in strips, and the woodwork is unpainted, dirt-stained from constant handling.
The rugs are worn. It’s a strange contrast between this wellkept woman, her carefully set table, the general order of the room, and the overall squalor of the apartment.
Also, to make it worse, on the two windows opening onto the dark court are hanging ragged green curtains, faded with age into yellowish stripes. I see five doors I imagine enter into other rooms. The old lady is wearing an apron and she’s smiling.
‘Please, if you would like to wash up or if you have any needs, the water closet and the salle d’eau are over there.’
I actually am awfully filthy, both from the way I live generally and because I’ve just come in from painting. I bow (invisible), smile (invisible), then, to compensate, say thank you. I move toward the door where she’s pointed.
I go in, close the door to find it totally dark in the toilet room. I open the door again to look for the light switch and find it. I flick the switch, but no light. I look up and find the light bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling with a green metal shade. I screw out the bulb, classic, French, old-fashioned, bayonet bulb. I can see through the clear glass that it’s burned out.
I get myself oriented, close the door, lift the toilet seat, and, lining myself up with the toilet by my knees, let fly. Knowing her supersensitive ears, I pee against the side of the toilet so I won’t make any noise. I hope I’m not peeing over the side onto the floor. I flush and open the door. I inspect. Luckily, I managed to get it all inside the bowl.
Then I go to the salle d’eau, a room with a basin for washing hands, cold water only, and with a bathtub, one of those tubs made from enameled metal and standing on lion’s feet.
Again, the light switch doesn’t work. I don’t even climb up on the side of the tub to check the bulb. I imagine after years of someone blind living alone in a place, either all the bulbs get burned out by being left on with nobody to see them, or the thin wire in the bulbs goes bad and burns out the first time somebody happens to switch one on. French electricity tends to have surges which burn out light bulbs anyway, no matter how careful you are.
This time I leave the door open while I wash my hands. The tub has hot water as well as cold and there’s an old-fashioned water heater hanging over it. I’d give a medium-sized watercolor just to soak for half an hour in sudsy water filled to the top of this tub. Instead, I do my best, washing up at the sink. The mirror above the sink has a layer of grime and flyspecks over it, so there’s no way I can see myself. I’m not all that interested anyway. I just want to check and see if I have paint on my face. I often hold brushes in my teeth, not very professional, but I do it often, and paint smears on my cheeks.
I come out. The old lady is bustling about from the kitchen corner where she cooks, to the table where we’re to eat. It’s as if she never knew what it was to be blind. I wonder if the light bulbs work in this room. I’m willing to bet there’s not a functioning light bulb in the entire apartment.
She indicates where I’m to sit and I do. There are clean cloth napkins and an hors d’oeuvre of coquilles Saint-Jacques, hot in the shell. This is the kind of haute cuisine I used to get at all those business lunches. Of course, when we were dealing with the French, it would be almost absurd, the food would be so good, and the prices were impossible, but I wasn’t paying. OPM, other people’s money, was what we were all spending.
There was one place called the Coq Hardi, about a fifteen-minute drive from my office, where we’d eat often, and they’d practically hand-feed us, a waiter standing beside each of us, passing different cutlery, different goodies. The bill after all that cosseting would be enough to keep me for six months now.
But this, right here, in this dark dingy room, is a good start toward one of those fancy meals. The old lady has taken off her red costume and is dressed in a dark blue sweater with a white collar showing and a dark blue skirt. The dull light is coming through the window behind her and shining through her hair. She wears it in braids tied tight around her head almost like a crown.
‘Bon appétit, Monsieur le Peintre. I hope you like the coquilles.’
‘Bon appétit to you, too, madame. I’m sure I will. This is one of my favorite hors d’oeuvre.’
‘I am mademoiselle.’
‘Okay, mademoiselle. Bon appétit.’
We eat slowly, carefully. These are some of the best coquilles I’ve ever had. It’s a mixture of scallops, a white sauce, mushrooms, and Armagnac. There are also small shrimp, each about the size of a fingernail. I wonder how she manages.
‘Have you been painting for a long time, monsieur?’
‘It’s a complicated story, mademoiselle. I studied painting a long time ago and then was in a large American corporation doing business, first in America, then here in France. Now I am back to painting again.’
‘Have you retired?’
‘Yes, probably one could say I’ve retired, but I actually feel as if I’ve just started my work after a long interruption.’
She’s quiet. I don’t really want to go into all of it. It’s still damned painful. I remember I want to stop to check for mail at American Express, and write a letter. I’ll stop by before they close.
To change the subject, I figure it might be time to bring up the idea of including her in my painting, at the foot of Diderot. For some reason, I’ve been putting it off.
‘Mademoiselle, I hope you don’t object, but I would like to paint you in my picture. I’d like to have you sitting with your pigeons on the stone bench at the base of Monsieur Diderot’s statue.’
She stops with her fork halfway to her mouth. She puts it down and wipes her mouth carefully with her napkin. She looks me directly in the eyes and I can see the beginnings of tears in hers.
‘Thank you very much. I would be most happy to be in your painting. One of the worst things about being blind is the sensation, the conviction, that no one sees you. Most of the time I feel terribly invisible.
‘Monsieur, it will give me great pleasure to know I am there in your painting, in the world I can no longer see, to be visible to all.’
She looks down at the table and wipes her eyes gently at each corner with her napkin.
I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal. Normally, I’d start to get nervous. Sometimes when I was doing a watercolor people would ask me to put them in and I was always sure it would ruin the picture. Painting people isn’t really my thing. Mostly, I guess I just haven’t had much practice. But since she can’t see, she’ll never know, I can relax. No matter how I might botch her, it won’t matter. I can even paint her out if it’s too bad. Only the painting will know, and it’s part of me. But I’m glad I mentioned it.
She stands up, comes over, and faultlessly takes my dish with the eaten coquilles and the small three-pronged fork, then moves into the kitchen corner. I can smell something delicious that’s been simmering in a frying pan there. I’m hoping it won’t be some half-raw red meat cooked the way most French insist these things must be done. I’m not sure I could handle it after all my vegetarianism.
But no, it’s one of my favorites again. She must be a mind reader. It’s escalope à la crème champignons and beautifully done, the cream sauce lightly flavored with the same Armagnac as the coquilles, blending the two together. She brings some pommes frites allumettes to go with it, and thin white asparagus. I’m really getting the best of this deal. At this rate, I’ll describe every pigeon in Paris for her if she wants.
And it’s pleasant being with her, eating such good food in such a civilized manner. We eat, comment on the food, talk about pigeons, something about my painting, nothing too serious. I know she’s curious concerning me, but she’s a real lady, no probing questions. It can be hard with women sometimes, especially American women. They’ll ask about anything, before you even get to know them. This is a wonderful woman of the old school, a true lady.
After we’re finished with the escalope, she brings on fruit and cheese. Again, everything is perfect. How will I ever go back to my Mulligan stew again?
Finally, there’s coffee, and she goes to another tall cupboard, climbs on a small stool, and pulls down a dusty bottle. She wipes it off, then puts it in the center of the table.
The coffee, of course, is outstanding. We sip at it. She looks, if she can look, over the edge of her cup at me.
‘Tell me, monsieur. Is there really a pear inside that bottle?’
It’s one of those fancy bottles of Poire William. It looks as if it might be the original bottle, it’s so dusty, faded.
‘Yes, there’s a pear inside.’
‘It is the last thing my father sent home to us before he was killed. My sister, Rolande, insisted we never drink it, that we keep it there, locked in the closet, in honor of his memory.’
‘That was very thoughtful of her.’
‘Monsieur, I should like to drink from this bottle with you today. It has been too long; it is time.’
It’s her decision. I really enjoy this particular liqueur, one can actually taste the gritty, pithy quality of the pear when it is properly aged, and this liqueur is certainly aged, in fact, I think it has even evaporated a bit.
‘That would be very kind, mademoiselle. But are you sure you want to drink it after all these years?’
‘Yes, I am quite positive.’
She looks at me with those clear, sightless eyes again.
‘Do you know how the pear gets into the bottle, monsieur?’
I’d never really thought about it. I know one can soak an egg in vinegar and then, when it’s soft, slide it through the neck of a bottle, where it will harden, but I’ve never tried it. I guess I just wasn’t curious enough. I don’t imagine one could do that with a pear, anyway.
