After the wine, we have a wonderful soufflé. To think of all I’ve heard about how hard it is to make a soufflé properly and here this elderly blind woman has pulled off one to match any I’ve ever had in my life. Mirabelle is a constant wonder. I find myself sneaking glances at her. In my mind I’m already starting to paint her portrait.
We finish off with our usual Poire William. We’re coming close to the bottom of the bottle. I wonder what Mirabelle will want to do with the pear when it’s all that’s left.
She clears the table and pours two cups of coffee. Again, she makes some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. Perhaps this is partly because I have the chance to drink coffee so infrequently. I’ve heard it said that the best way to ensure yourself compliments as a cook is to keep your guests waiting until they’re practically starved, and I’m sure in my past I’ve been victim to this theory, but with Mirabelle, everything seems to arrive just at the appropriate moment.
I watch as she so efficiently, gracefully, removes the dishes from our table, slides them into soapy water, rinses them, stacks them in a rack. It’s like music, calming, just to watch her. I know I could never dance to her dance, so I stay seated, talk to her about the people who came up to me and bought the painting. I tell it with the kind of detached elation I felt, and it comes out as so funny, we’re both laughing. Mirabelle comes over from the kitchen, drying her hands.
‘Now, Jacques, are you ready to paint my portrait?’
‘Yes. First I’ll bring in my box and the new canvas from the palier. I think I’ll paint you by the windows so I have enough light on the canvas.’
I move toward the door. I struggle the canvas and box inside, closing the door behind me. There are only two windows in the room, both opening onto the court, so there isn’t much light. But worst of all are the raggedy drapes, three-quarters drawn across the windows. They block just about any light that might come in.
‘Mirabelle, would it be all right if I take down the drapes on the windows, or pull them back? I need more light to see.’
‘Oh yes, please do. I had completely forgotten they were there. You must have been sitting here with me in the dark. Why did you not say something?’
For the first time, including when she’d bumped into me and fallen, she seems generally nonplussed, embarrassed.
‘Oh, I could see enough to eat. But if I’m going to paint you, I must have more light.’
‘Please take them down. There is no one to peer in at me and I would like it if they did, at least somebody would be seeing me. We had those drapes up for Rolande.’
I use the stool she’s been using to reach up into the cupboard. I stand on it and find that the mechanism for moving the drapes is completely jammed. I lift the entire contraption off its hooks, lower the curtain, and step down onto the floor again. The drapes are coated with dust and so fragile they tear in my hand.
‘I think these drapes are finished, Mirabelle. Do you want me to save them?’
‘No. Please throw them away. The smell of the dust makes me feel as if I am dead already. Put them out on the palier. Later, I shall take them down to the poubelle.’
I climb to lift down the other set of drapes. Same thing: jammed, rusty, dusty drapes, faded, falling apart. I lower them as I come down from the stool, wrap them around the valence. I take both of them to the door and shove them out onto the landing, the palier, where my paint box had been.
‘I’ll take them downstairs when I go home, Mirabelle.’
Now I look at the windows. They’re as filthy as the mirror had been. But I’m not going to clean them now. The weather is mild, maybe I can open them.
‘Do you mind if I open the windows, Mirabelle? It will clear the air. If you feel cold you can wear another sweater, perhaps.’
‘Oh yes. That will be fine. What would you like me to wear for this portrait?’
‘I think just what you are wearing now, your dark blue sweater with the collar.’
‘Is my hair in order?’
She feels over her head, shifting bobby pins and maybe hairpins over and around her head.
‘You look wonderful.’
I move one of the chairs from the table and place it so I have a three-quarter light falling on her face. It gives enough penumbra, but not too much. I can pick up the features on the shaded section, even in this limited light.
‘Shall I sit in the chair now?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps you can finish cleaning the pots and pans from our wonderful meal, if you want, while I open my box and prepare myself.’
I’d noticed that in her cleanup she’d left some pans soaking in the sink.
I wedge the long back leg of my box under the window. I want to have enough light on the canvas and still not have the canvas block my view of Mirabelle. I want the eye level of the portrait at my eye level and at just about the same eye level as Mirabelle. I’m going to paint her one and a half times life size. Painting on the vertical dimension, this should fill a 20F just fine.
I’m all settled in when Mirabelle sits in the chair. I need her head turned more to the light with her sightless eyes seeming to look at me. I want the dynamic of the two directions. I wonder if when I paint her, her eyes will seem empty, they don’t seem that way to me at all. I have the other chair set up in front of my paint box. I stand and go over to where she’s sitting. I put my hands on each side of her face and turn it so the light is just right. I think it’s the first time I touch her face.
Usually, from the little experience I’ve had with painting portraiture, one asks models, after they’ve been posed, to pick something and fix their eyes on it. But this is obviously impossible in this case. She does the mind-reading trick on me again.
‘I can hold my head still like this because I know where you are and I can feel the open window.’
I start my pencil sketch with a 3B pencil. I’ll move up to 6B later on when I’m more sure. I really don’t like working the drawing with charcoal and then blowing fixative on it the way they taught me those long years ago at school. I draw with the pencil and correct with a soft eraser. I begin drawing and concentrate for at least fifteen minutes, getting her placed on the canvas, having the right relationship between head, body, and negative space. I want her placed up high on the canvas but not too dominant. I make quite a few erasures before I get the proportions and angles I want.
‘Please tell me, Jacques, how I look. No one seems to look at me, or, if they do, they have never told me. Many times I would ask Rolande how I looked but she would only say I was quite presentable, or sometimes when she was cross, that I was too pretty for my own good. But that was a long time ago.
‘I can feel with my fingers that I am getting older. There seems nothing one can do to stop that. It is only natural, is it not?’
She pauses. I’m trying to concentrate, get it right, what’s she talking about now?
‘Do I have gray hair, Jacques?’
This is going to be hard but I want to be truthful. I look away from the painting, up at her.
‘White, Mirabelle, you have white hair. There are some dark hairs in your eyebrows, but the hair on your head is practically white.’
‘Oh dear! I have begun to think so. At first, twenty years ago, I could tell some of the hairs were stiffer and were hard to manage. I imagine they were the white ones. They were not like the kind of hair usually growing on my head. Now they are all the same, all stiff and straight. You know, it is hard for me to think of myself with white hair. Is that not silly? Here I am, seventy-one years old, and I actually almost did not believe I had even gray hair. I feel like such a fool.’
‘None