“So how does he know she’s in the south of France?” Serafina asked.
“I’m getting to that. He told her the best thing for her would be to get away from Paris, go someplace where she wouldn’t be distracted, and paint. ‘Paint, paint, paint, until your eyeballs drop out of your head. Then paint some more’-his words. He suggested the south of France, perhaps Arles or Aix. She thought she might just do that, leave everything and disappear for a year. The canvas was signed Elena Loffredo.”
Serafina was silent for a while. “And you didn’t press him? Did he seem to withhold, know more than he told?”
“Perhaps,” Carmela said, “but I’m not like you. I don’t have the art of drawing people out.”
“Nonsense.” Serafina looked out at the scene below in the Place du Palais Royal but saw only the thoughts in her head. If Elena were alive, she had disappeared, left a kitten in her apartment to starve. If that was the case, how depraved had she become? If she disappeared, it would be to change her life in a major way, not as a lizard changes his skin, but a change from the inside out. Would she do that? Could she do that? What had caused her to think this way? How would she fare without her friends? Did any of them know about this plan, other than Cezanne? If she was in the south of France, how would Serafina find her? How could Elena have gone there without all of her friends knowing?
“What did you think of her painting?”
Carmela shrugged. “I’m not the one to ask. I can’t criticize another’s work. Tessa called it muddy. The composition was beautiful, but the overall impression was… of someone just beginning to paint.”
“What do you think we ought to do?”
“Tessa began talking to him about her work and he invited all of us to attend a salon this evening. He called it ‘ Les Mardistes ’ because it meets on Tuesdays at the home of Stephane Mallarme on the Rue de Rome. He thought if she were still in town, Elena would be there, and if she wasn’t there, perhaps someone else would know her whereabouts. He said the salon this evening would be well-attended because Pissarro and his wife planned to be there, an attraction, especially for the group of painters he formed.
“Will Cezanne be there?”
“Of course. And he thinks that many musicians will attend. Mallarme is a symbolist.”
Whatever that was.
“What should we wear?” Carmela asked.
“One of your new dresses, of course, the indigo would suit your eyes and hair. You’d stand out in the crowd, I believe,” Serafina said.
“I don’t want to stand out. I want to blend in. From our visits to the artists’ studios and to the exhibit, from the dress of women in their work, I think the women’s outfits will be unique, colorful, stylish without being slaves to the latest fashion. I think the clothes we wore on the trip with a tuck here, a slight change there-they’d be more appropriate than the new dresses Giulia created for us.”
Rosa walked in. “Wear what you want and make it unique, a reflection of your soul, and don’t make such a fuss.”
Serafina sent a note to Loffredo telling them where they’d be that evening and asking him to please join them, but he declined, saying he’d wait for their return in the hotel lobby because he had something important to discuss.
In the end, they dressed the way they wanted, but with help from Giulia who was summoned at the last minute. The daughter who had come to Paris to work at the heart of high fashion altered this, tucked that, changed the jewelry they chose to wear and created unique costumes. They looked like free spirits. Well, almost.
An hour later, Serafina’s group stood in the middle of a high-ceilinged room with large windows on one wall overlooking a park. They huddled together, and as they looked around, they found all kinds of attire, all of it interesting. Most of the furniture had been pushed aside to accommodate the large crowd. Guests stood in small clusters or sat on the floor conversing, or pushed seats into a corner, sitting close to one another. The talk was earnest, the mood ebullient. A few windows had been opened to freshen the smoke-filled air, and a spring breeze wafted inside, along with sounds from the street, the clomp of horses, the belch of a train.
Most of the guests were artists, that was clear. All were scrubbed for the event and in their finest clothes, ready to absorb the program they knew would be a part of the evening.
“My daughter is a painter and longs to study in Paris,” Rosa said to the man with a long white beard. He and his wife had just been introduced to them by their host, Stephane Mallarme, a small man with a goatee and warm, intense eyes.
“Then she should ask to join l’atelier Julian, just for the basics you understand,” Camille Pissarro said, turning to Tessa. “There you’ll learn proportion and perspective, how to mix color. All theory, no art. But don’t stay more than a year. It will ruin your soul if you try to ape the classics. That’s what the Salon does not understand. We love the classics, Rembrandt, David, Ingres, but we reject convention. The world has moved on, thanks to us. It is by concentrating on line and color, the quality of the light, by drawing the edges of what you see, the shape of the objects that you wish to paint, mademoiselle-this is how to become a painter.” His wife nodded and smiled.
“I love your work, the peace of the country, the quality of the brush strokes. It’s as if I’m inside the frame, breathing in the scent of apple blossoms, or wiping the snow off my boots.”
Cezanne joined them. “Listen to what this man says. Pontoise, indeed: all of France has changed because of him. Our movement, you will see, will revolutionize art and thought.”
Serafina was lost in the meaning of his words, but listened to the emotion behind them. She wondered how she might change the subject to something more, what to say, more earthbound and practical, like where to find Elena. The man the others called Camille and his wife broke away with a smile and were engulfed in a knot of artists waiting to greet them.
Serafina and her group were interrupted by a woman with a tray of canapes and deviled eggs. She directed them to a table filled with other hors d’oeuvres and drinks-more trays heaped with crudites, trays with a selection of cheeses and fruits, and of course bottles of beer and wine. Visitors swarmed the table.
“Get some food now before it’s gone. This is a hungry crowd,” their host said.
“Hungry for words, you mean,” someone said.
“Hungry for meaning.”
“Hungry to feed our souls.”
“Hungry to attain the highest perfection.”
“Hungry for music.”
There was no way to change the subject, unless she made it happen, Serafina realized and was about to ask someone, anyone about Elena when Carmela broke in.
“Excuse me, but we came to the party not only to be at the heart of artistic thought, but to search for a friend of ours from our home town. I wonder if you know her, Elena Loffredo,” she said to a group gathered around them.
No one replied until a painter said, “I’d love to paint you, your hair, such golden reds, your skin, so lovely.”
Serafina frowned at his threadbare jacket, the smudge of paint on the collar of his shirt and his purple nose. She heard a few others reply to Carmela but couldn’t catch the words, except for the pleading man in painter’s smock.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Arcangelo, somehow separated from Teo, bending toward a woman who was trying to talk to him, the woman stumbling slightly and sipping from a wine glass, refilling it herself from the bottle she held in her hand. She touched Arcangelo on the cheek with full lips and watched as he pulled at his sleeves. Serafina grabbed Carmela and the two went over to rescue him.
“I asked her if she knew Elena,” Arcangelo said, rouge smeared on his cheek. His face was flushed, his eyes, pleading.