“Do you want to talk about it?”
“That won’t help.” She felt the tears fall and then dry on her cheeks. She did not bother to wipe them away. There was a quiet stillness between them after that for a time.
The small room they shared was lit by a moonbeam. Both girls lay on their backs looking up at the ceiling, and Eva could hear Sylvette’s rhythmic breathing. It was soothing, she thought, and the assurance of it calmed her. She looked across the little wooden dresser with porcelain knobs that separated their two beds. A moment later, Sylvette tried to lighten the mood between them.
“Did you see Mistinguett’s face when you said that you were going to mend her drawers?” Sylvette asked, beginning to chuckle. The sound reminded Eva of the tinkle of bells.
Eva felt herself smile and then they both laughed.
“She hates me.” Eva groaned.
“She hates all women who are a threat to her.”
“I’m not at all beautiful, or talented like her, so I should be no threat.”
“But you do have a certain quality. People can feel it. And men look at you differently than they do a woman like her. You are sweet and innocent. They want to protect you.”
“I’m not so innocent. Certainly not all that sweet.”
Sylvette giggled. “Oh, believe me, yes, you are!”
Images of how she had left home crept back into her mind. Her defiance with her family haunted her. A week after the argument with her parents, Eva had summoned the courage to buy a Métro ticket to Paris, and she did not even tell her parents she was going. She was too terrified that they would change her mind.
Her parents were not terrible people. She knew her mother had struggled to find a way out of the poverty she had known in Warsaw, and she dreamed of marrying and having a child in the peaceful suburbs of France. But Eva did not share the same dream. Eva had dried her tears as she’d stepped onto the Métro car in her only pair of button shoes. She knew how badly she was hurting her parents, but she had craved excitement. And the powerful hope for something more than she could find at home.
“Sylvette?”
“Hmm?”
“What happened to the seamstress before me?”
“Mistinguett didn’t like her,” Sylvette answered after another small silence.
“She is so awfully intimidating.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it might make you feel better. Mistinguett’s real name is Jeanne, but no one dares to call her that.”
“Why not?”
“Because her own mother was a seamstress. I think she wants to distance herself from her past, as you do. Throwing her weight around helps her do that. It is her one weakness, I think, that those days still can wound her and she flares up in defense.”
“Sylvette?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for helping me get the job,” Eva said, feeding the next little silence.
“It was nothing. I only told you about the opening. You got the job all on your own,” Sylvette replied with a yawn. “Besides, you will be able to repay me one day. I feel certain of it.”
* * *
The next afternoon, Eva and Louis made their way together along the busy quai d’Orsay beneath a wonderfully warming spring sun. Everyone in Paris seemed to be out enjoying the lovely weather—parasols open, wide-brimmed hats, their plumes fluttering in the breeze. The sidewalks were ornamented by shabby little bookstalls filled with ragged leather-bound treasures. Brightly painted boats bobbed on the shimmering Seine beyond.
This was her favorite part of the city, and today, with the sunlight playing through the Tour Eiffel and the Parisian rooftops on the horizon, it all looked positively magical.
Ah, how she loved the vibrance of this city!
Next, they cut through the shaded luxury of the Luxembourg Gardens, with its broad sun-dappled walkways, manicured lawns, Grecian urns and magnificent fountains luring them beneath its lush bower of trees. Young bourgeois couples strolled hand in hand casually with them past the Medici Fountain, the ladies twirling their parasols, the men in high cravats and bowler hats or crisp boaters, and fashionable walking sticks. Other couples sat on green park benches scattered along the walkways, some of them feeding the pigeons.
As they walked, they spoke of the latest news. Everyone was talking about what the newspapers called the World’s Largest Ocean Liner, being nearly completed across the channel in Ireland. They were going to call it the Titanic, excitedly heralding it unsinkable.
Now that seemed a sure way to tempt fate, Louis said. The prospect of going all the way from England to America on her maiden voyage seemed absolutely terrifying. Yet, was life not really all about doing the things that frightened one the most?
The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Ironically, it was her father who had always said that. “Would you take a voyage if you had the fare?”
“Not in a million years.” Louis laughed. “I despise the ocean. It’s too big and black and unknown!”
“It’s the unknown in life that’s the best part,” Eva countered with a broad smile.
She was happy finally to merge then with the large crowd moving past the Grand Palais on the broad avenue Nicholas II, and up the dignified staircase into the great white stone Petit Palais, where the exhibition was being held. She could put her concern about Louis’s intentions aside for a while and allow herself to be excited about the artwork everyone was talking about. She tipped up her chin proudly as he handed the two tickets to the man at the entrance.
The building itself was magnificent, and inside there were massive murals covering the walls along with a soaring stained-glass rotunda. There were different rooms all dedicated to various styles of art, and Eva and Louis made their way steadily through the crowd into one of them. Eva noticed that the men and women were holding their gloved hands to their mouths. She quickly realized why and giggled with embarrassment. She had wandered into a room celebrating the work of Henri Matisse.
Eva’s senses were bombarded by bold color, crude styles and raw designs she could not have imagined. She had no idea what she was meant to think or feel about any of it, but some of it was shocking since his work lacked all convention. Several people openly laughed and pointed at a portrait called Woman with a Hat. Eva thought the work was a torrent of confusion with boldly colored brushstrokes slapped onto the canvas as if by a bricklayer’s trowel. It seemed wild and forbidden.
She was fascinated by the naked women in the other paintings around it—the bodies, the great sensual gobs of oil paint on canvas. Eva needed to catch her breath.
“This is the sort of thing artists are doing?” she asked, feeling her body stir as she gazed up at bare breasts, legs and torsos seemingly on every other canvas.
“This was the style a few years ago. They do this and much more that they would not dare to display here. Much of it far more blatantly erotic even than all of these nudes.” Louis sniffed reprovingly.
“You’ve seen worse?” she asked.
“Of course. But now that drivel they call Cubism is the new thing, leaving all this flesh to a retrospective collection in favor of something even more wild. Come, you’ll want to see it. It’s in the next room.” He took her hand and led her through the crowd. He was so stodgy, and his description was the perfect example of that. She hated his moist hand almost as much as how predictable he always was. But even that could not dampen the thrill of this moment. Being here, amid this elite crowd at such a glamorous exhibition, was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, and her heart