At another hut there are rows of uniforms, blue as the sky, with metal helmets stacked upside down like bowls next to them. Lee fingers the wool collars, the steel buttons. Man disappears and returns wearing a helmet and brandishing an épée, which he whirls in the air and jabs at her.
“En garde!” he shouts. Lee laughs out loud. Man looks so silly in the helmet, and his lack of inhibition is surprising and wonderful. She grabs her own épée and feints toward him, then pretends she’s been stabbed and staggers back against the uniforms. Man’s eyes are bright. He sets down the sword and picks up a rounded piece of metal mesh, lofting it above his head and admiring it. “Ah, now this,” he says, “this is coming home with us.”
The object is curved like the spine of a nautilus, two feet in diameter, its purpose a complete mystery. Lee already knows he likes things like this, meshes and grids of wire or metal that take the light and break it into patterns. Man holds it in both hands, looking thrilled.
“What is it?”
“I have no idea—a cast of some sort?”
From the back of the stall the owner tells them it is a saber guard, for fencing. Man buys it and stuffs it in another bag. “I love coming here,” he tells Lee as they move on, an acquisitive glint in his eyes. “You never know what you’re going to find. One time I got a whole skeleton—a real one, from a hospital. It was just hanging there at the back of one of the stalls.”
Soon they’ve made it to the Biron, where the road dust is brushed up with small bristle brooms and the shoppers’ clothes are more obviously expensive. It doesn’t take Man long to find the cabinet he needs—it seems everything is here, from console tables to butcher blocks to fainting couches—and he arranges quickly for it to be delivered the next day.
They pass a mother pushing a carriage and leading a small child by the hand. The child is whining loudly, his face sticky with what looks like syrup. Man and Lee both give a little shudder when they look at him, then catch each other’s eyes and smile. “Not so maternal, are you?” Man says.
“Not really.” The truth is Lee can’t imagine having children. Nothing seems further from what she wants to do with her life.
“Art and children aren’t a good mix, in my experience,” Man says.
Lee wonders if he’s cautioning her—does he see her as an artist? She doubts it. “You don’t want them either?”
Man pauses at another furniture hut, opens a secretary desk, and looks inside. “Never. It’s part of why my wife and I separated.” He moves ahead to the next hut and Lee falls behind him a few paces. She had no idea he had been married. She wonders if his wife is the K from the ledger book, and walks more quickly to catch up with him.
“Was this here—in Paris?”
“No, no. Years ago, back in the States. A different lifetime.”
“Where?” Lee hasn’t given much thought to his past before, and feels a sudden hunger to understand him.
“That was in New Jersey. It was easier than living in New York. Cheaper. We had a good time—” Man pauses, coughs. “It wasn’t really the question of children that made us separate.”
Lee is not sure if she should prompt him to keep talking or not, but then he continues.
“We were so young. I was—well, I didn’t even know what I wanted. I was supposed to be a tailor like my father, but I wanted to be an artist. My family supported me, to a point, but they never really understood me. My mother thought it was just a passing phase. A hobby. So I moved out of Brooklyn and rented a place in Ridgefield with a friend of mine. Have you ever been there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, why would you? It’s very small, very quiet. For a while my friend Halpert and I were really making something out there. We got a printing press and started a magazine, and I was painting every day. And then I met Adon, and she was interested in what we were doing—she wrote poetry, beautiful stuff, I had never met anyone like her—and we got married. But then when I needed to get even further away, to move to Paris, Adon—she wasn’t interested. She was getting quite known in the literary circles. I haven’t spoken to her in years.”
Adon. So not K. And years earlier. “I’m sorry,” Lee says.
Man shrugs and runs his hand through his hair. They have stopped walking and are standing at the edge of the market, where the crush of people is less intense.
“Well, no need to be sorry,” Man says. “I’m not even sure why I’m telling you all of this.” He shifts his bags so they’re higher on his shoulder, and after a few moments says, “What made you want to take pictures?”
Lee tucks her hair behind her ears. She thinks of the stereoscope picture she just bought, thinks of all the photos her father took of her over the years, and says, “Oh, my father, I suppose… and I was sick of modeling. Of being photographed. I wanted to go around the other side and see how it was done.”
Man nods, as if this makes sense to him, and then says, “Lately I think all the time about giving it up.”
“You do?”
“It’s not art. Not really. All I’ve ever really wanted to do is paint. Studio portraits—clients…” His voice trails off.
Lee thinks of the work of his she’s seen so far, the recent portrait of Dalí he just shot, Dalí’s face lit from beneath so that his eyebrows cast devilish spiked shadows on his forehead. She wants to tell Man how it made her feel, how it provoked her, made her simultaneously worry about all she does not know and eager for all she has to learn. It surprises her to hear him say he could give it up. If she had his talent she’d never stop taking pictures. “Your photography is so good, though,” she says, and then immediately feels the inadequacy of her words.
“Of course. But try getting critics interested. They have no respect for photography as art. And part of me agrees with them. Photography’s primary purpose isn’t art, it’s replication.”
Lee looks at him curiously. “I think that portrait you took of Barbette—the double exposure—I think that’s art.”
Man huffs air through his nose. “Maybe. But I do get tired of all the studio work, traveling to the dress houses, and all the rest. It’s such drudgery. If I had my way, I’d go back to painting full-time.”
“Well, why don’t you?”
He holds up one of his bulky shopping bags and smiles wryly. “Because painting does not pay for trips to the Vernaison.”
A few blocks later, Lee and Man descend into the Métro, a waft of stale air blowing leaves up the stairs and around them. Man waves her off when she goes to buy a ticket and pays for her. As they board the train, Man shifts his heavy bags to his other shoulder and takes her elbow. An older man and woman bundled up in coats sit on the train’s far side, watching them as they enter. To them, Lee and Man must seem like a married couple, he carrying her packages and leading her solicitously by the arm. There must be nothing odd about it to them, clearly old and married themselves. Man must have acted similarly with his wife, all those years ago. The thought of how she and Man look together is a strange one, and makes Lee strangely happy.
CHAPTER SIX
A few times a month Man pays student models a small stipend so he can work on pictures he is not being paid to take, and when he does he is always in a good mood. Today he’s using a new girl, Amélie, small and dark-haired like all the models Man hires. Lee hears him whistling as he sets up the studio.