Madame Picasso. Anne Girard

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СКАЧАТЬ was even depicted... Oh, dear! Eva tried her best not to gasp.

      It was at that moment that she saw him.

      He gazed up at the vast canvas on the wall before him. He was a rough-looking sort. Like a hoodlum, she thought, a true shabby bohemian. He looked dangerous in his sensuality, not neat and proper like Louis. He wore a casual black corduroy jacket, black turtleneck sweater, wrinkled beige trousers, a slouchy blue cap and scuffed shoes. His thick fingers were stained with paint. He was tightly built and stocky, like a prizefighter.

      And then she remembered.

      It was the man from the Moulin Rouge last night. There was no mistaking those eyes; they were black as midnight and looked as though they could burn right through the painting. There was a brooding sensuality about him and she felt her body stir. He was looking at the same Matisse canvas, full of lounging nudes. To her horror, he turned sharply and caught her staring at him.

      Eva’s heart vaulted into her throat, and suddenly she felt foolish. Then, as if they were the only two people in the room, his lips turned up just slightly in a casual smile and he nodded in acknowledgment of her.

      Time lengthened as the energy between them flared. Her imagination betrayed her and as they assessed one another, Eva thought she could almost feel his hands running down the length of her back, drawing her against him. As she watched his gaze travel downward, she knew his thoughts were mirroring hers. His eyes were angling from her neck down along her torso with the skilled appreciation of a lover. Thankfully, no one in the crowded room seemed to notice how they had captivated one another, and Louis was still back in the room with the Cubist works.

      Eva bravely returned his smile. She felt so brazen! She knew well enough that she was not a grand beauty—not like the dancers at the Moulin Rouge—but this stranger looked at her with desire.

      “Curious art,” he casually remarked of the piece they both were observing. He spoke with an accent so thick that at first she wasn’t certain what he had said.

      “I don’t understand it.”

      “Do you suppose the artist does?”

      “Well, Monsieur Matisse painted it, so he must.”

      “What do you imagine he is trying to convey?” he asked.

      “Chaos. Daring. Certainly a wild heart,” she said thoughtfully. “His mind must be a frenzy.”

      “Along with his love life,” he replied, gazing back up at the piece.

      She was as intrigued as she was embarrassed as he clamped his own chin with thumb and forefinger and she, too, looked back at the canvas with a restrained smile.

      “What if it is his soul that has control of him when he paints, and not his mind at all?”

      She couldn’t quite imagine what he meant and considered for a moment how to reply. “I just don’t see why he wouldn’t paint pictures like everyone else. Even like Toulouse-Lautrec did, or Monsieur Cézanne. They were innovative, and yet they were masters.”

      “Not when they were alive, that’s for certain.

      “Perhaps Monsieur Matisse craves the freedom to be defiant about how he sees the world.”

      “How do you mean?”

      “Perhaps he wishes to paint objects as he thinks or feels them, not as everyone else sees them.”

      Suddenly she understood what he was saying. It was the very reason why she had run away from Vincennes, because she wanted the freedom to see the world differently than her parents did. Because she wanted to feel. She wanted to be like Apollinaire’s Gypsy.

      “It is a terrible thing to be swallowed up by the world and be forced to see it as others do,” Eva finally said as their eyes met again. “Not to do what one feels.”

      “I could not agree more—señorita. For many of us, conformity is impossible.”

      “Picasso! ¡Aquí!” someone called, extinguishing their moment, and a young dark-haired man approached them. “You have been discovered here and there’s a photographer on his way to you!”

      Eva felt a warm rush as they quickly left the room. He was Pablo Picasso? She had just flirted with a famous artist.

      Needing a breath of fresh air, she made her way outside and leaned against a white stone pillar. Their little game of seduction had overwhelmed her. As much as she always said she was not an innocent, Eva was naive and out of her league with this man.

      She stood still, trying to catch her breath as her mind swam with the potent mix of excitement and uncertainty. Eva had never felt so alive as she did at that moment. It really had been the most extraordinary couple of days and she did not dare to imagine what might lay ahead.

       Chapter 4

      That mysterious, spirited young woman from the museum had captured Picasso’s imagination and he could not get her out of his mind. Since the Salon des Indépendants two days ago, he had become obsessed with her. He had not thought to ask her name, but her face and small frame were as deeply etched into his mind now as if he had already had her in his bed. Or painted her.

      He had stood there staring at her, and as she looked back at him with those guileless blue eyes and such a rosebud of a mouth, he had wanted to devour her.

      But he must stop this. He was not a single man. He loved Fernande, and he was trying to remain faithful to her. And anyway, that girl was not his type. Fernande was statuesque and elegant, with her mythic beauty and luxuriant mane of flaming auburn hair. She was a woman who commanded every room she entered and possessed every man’s ardor. Voluptuous, worldly.

      That little nymph was none of those things.

      It made him smile to think how deliciously awkward the encounter at the exhibition had been. She was clearly not a sophisticated girl. By the look of her simple dress, she was probably from the countryside. Her eyes that flickered at him in the open light of the vast gallery were as bright and unassuming as a blue September sky. How refreshing simplicity did seem to him in the midst of the complicated world he lived in with Fernande. At the moment, he was questioning everything in his life.

      Picasso stood barefoot and shirtless—as he always did when he worked. He stared blankly at the unfinished painting on his easel, the scent of wet paint and turpentine filling the air.

      Fanny Tellier lay naked before him, posing on the bed beside his easel. She was a professional artist’s model and she had not moved for the better part of an hour. The painting should have been finished by now with such a compliant subject, but he could not stop thinking of the girl. He had felt sullen and unproductive for weeks, and this new distraction was not helping matters.

      What a good thing that his abstract style hid the things he was really painting because today that girl was working her way into every brushstroke.

      Cubism made him the master, with the power to represent people and objects as the sum total of their parts, and to place them in any order he liked. Picasso found it almost a Godlike power. He could have painted the status quo, kept on with his melancholy blue paintings, or his fascination СКАЧАТЬ