Eva thought, for just a moment, that she should sew the drawers loosely so that Mistinguett would split them a second time in the same evening. But she quickly decided against the clever tactic. She needed this chance too desperately. For now, a reprisal would have to wait.
Once the crisis had been averted, Mistinguett went off with a tall young man with thick, thick blond hair that was slicked back from his face in a wave. “Who is that?” Eva asked Sylvette as she waited to go on for her second number.
“His name is Maurice Chevalier. He dances the tango with her late in the second half. But talent certainly isn’t how he got the job.” She winked and Eva bit back a smile.
There was so much happening in this glorious place. So many acts, so many personalities and so many names to memorize. For the moment, Eva was holding her own. All of the sewing mishaps had been seen to for the moment.
As the performers filed backstage to relax during intermission, Eva dared to steal a peek around the heavy velvet stage curtain.
Her heart quickened to see such a huge audience crowded into the theater. She looked over a sea of silk top hats, stiff bowlers and fedoras. There wasn’t an empty seat in the place.
As Eva scanned the well-dressed crowd, her gaze was drawn to a group of dark-haired young men, exotic looking and dressed in varying shades of black and gray. They were seated prominently at the table nearest the stage. The tabletop was littered with wine and whiskey bottles and a collection of glasses, and she could hear from their animated conversation that the group was Spanish. They slouched in their chairs, periodically whispering, drinking heavily and trying, like errant boys, to behave themselves until the show resumed. There was a heated air of something tempestuous about them.
But one stood out boldly from the others. He was a powerful presence, with his long, messy crow-black hair hanging into large eyes that were black and piercing. He was tightly built with broad shoulders, and he wore wrinkled beige trousers and a rumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled past his elbows, revealing his tan, muscular arms. His jacket was slung over the back of his chair. He was incredibly attractive.
Surely the man was someone important since he was sitting at the front of the dance hall. As she turned away from the curtain, Eva thought how interesting it was that there was no beautiful woman beside him. A man who possessed such a powerfully sensual aura, and such penetrating eyes, must have a wife. A mistress, at least.
She almost asked Sylvette if she knew his name, but then suddenly the orchestra music flared for the second half of the show, and she heard Madame Léautaud shouting for her. Fanciful thoughts would have to wait since there was work to do, and Eva was determined to make a success of this job.
He stood barefoot and shirtless before the easel wearing only beige, paint-splashed trousers rolled up over his ankles and holding a paintbrush in one hand. Morning light streamed into the soaring artist’s studio in the ramshackle Bateau-Lavoir. There was an easel planted in front of a window that overlooked a sloping vineyard where sheep grazed. Beyond it lay a sweeping vista dotted with the slate-gray rooftops and chimneys of the city.
In the humble space, the cold tile floors were littered with rags and jars of paint and brushes. The plaster walls were papered with art. Here, Pablo Picasso was free to be much more than a painter. Here he was like a great Spanish matador, the wet canvas like a bull to be finessed into submission.
The act of painting was all about seduction and submission.
Finally now when the private thoughts were put aside, the canvas yielded at last. Once he knew he had won control, Picasso was humbled before his opponent. It opened to him like a lover, took hold of him—possessed him as a sensual woman would. The comparisons always mixed freely in his mind. The work after the surrender, once his challenger, became his most exotic mistress.
Paint stained his fingers, his trousers, the inky dark coils of chest hair, his hands and his feet. There was a streak of crimson slashed across his cheek, and another across a swath of his long black hair.
It was quiet in his studio at this early hour and there was a hazy stillness around him. Picasso savored moments like these. He gazed at the wet canvas, the cubes and lines speaking to him like poetry. And yet the quiet brought thoughts of other things, too.
Fernande had drunk too much again last night after their quarrel, so he had gone off to the Moulin Rouge, taking solace in the predictable company of his Spanish friends. Feeling increasingly celebrated here in Paris eased a little of his disquiet. But he knew that when the night was over, Fernande would be at home in their new apartment, and last night he was still too angry to return to her. So he had come to his studio.
He loved Fernande. He did not doubt that. She’d had a difficult life before him, married to an abusive husband from whom she had escaped, and who she was still too afraid, even now, to divorce, and Picasso always had an overwhelming need to protect her because of it. They had been together through the hungry years, living the life of an unknown and struggling artist in Paris, which had strengthened their bond in spite of their ongoing inability to marry.
Yet lately he had begun to question whether that was enough; and his ambivalence about their relationship was extending to other things in his life. In the increasingly looming shadow of his thirtieth birthday, he felt deeply that something was missing. Perhaps it was only that he felt this concerned him.
Picasso picked up a smaller paintbrush and plunged it into a pot of yellow paint. Beyond the smudged windows, the sun was shining. He focused for a moment on the grazing sheep that made the little corner of Montmartre seem like countryside. He thought suddenly of Barcelona, where his mother remained, worrying about him every day.
Thoughts of family, and the simplicity of childhood wound themselves like thread in his mind. He thought of his little sister Conchita, with her wide blue eyes and precious innocence. Even after all these years, Picasso missed her so dearly, but forcefully he pressed the memory away and urged himself to think of something else. He could not change what had happened. All it ever did was bring him pain laced heavily with guilt.
The sound of someone knocking sent the memories skittering into the back of his mind. The door opened and two young men staggered inside. They were his good friends Guillaume Apollinare and Max Jacob. They were laughing, their arms draped fraternally around each other, and they carried the strong scent of alcohol.
“So much for Pablo’s promises,” Apollinaire slurred, and his flamboyant gesture filled the room. “You said you would meet us at Au Lapin Agile last night right after the Moulin Rouge show.”
“I say a lot of things, amigos,” he grumbled, and returned to his painting. But as annoyed as he was by the interruption, he was relieved that it was his friends who had come and not Fernande.
Picasso loved these two misfit poets as if they were his own brothers. They stimulated his interest in ideas, in poetry, in thought—and that encouraged him always with his art. They talked together, drank, argued wildly and had built a deep trust that Picasso greatly valued now that he was beginning to find the first hint of real fame. He was not always certain any longer who he could depend upon to like him for himself. But Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire were beyond reproach.
Max, the smaller of the two men, was the trim, well-read and exceedingly witty son of a Quimper tailor. He had been Picasso’s first friend in Paris. That winter, ten years ago, Picasso was so destitute that he had been reduced to burning his own paintings as firewood just to keep warm. Max had given him a place to sleep, the two of them taking turns in a single bed in eight-hour shifts. Max slept at night while Picasso worked, and Picasso slept during the day. Max had little but he always shared with Picasso what he had.
It was generally assumed that Max led Apollinaire in their flights of fancy, but that was no longer true. Max’s addictions to opium and ether set him at a disadvantage to the charming and clever Guillaume Apollinaire, who now ruled their social engagements.