Madame Picasso. Anne Girard

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СКАЧАТЬ minutes, Mistinguett! Two minutes till your next act!” someone called out.

      “Sylvette! Where the deuce are you?”

      Her harsh tone turned heads and, an instant later, Eva’s roommate dashed forward, clearly mid costume change herself, but bearing a full glass of ruby wine.

      “I’m sorry, mademoiselle, I was just in the middle—”

      “Sylvette, I don’t give a rat’s tail what you were in the middle of.”

      Eva did not move or speak as she watched her roommate reduced to blanch-faced subservience. When the moment passed, she lowered her eyes and, feeling a bit shaken, went back to her needle and thread.

      The performance went on, and Eva continued to make costume repairs. A torn sleeve, a popped button. But in the end it was Mistinguett, not Louise Balthy, who split her drawers in a high kick. She stormed off the stage and cast an angry glare at Eva.

      “And what are you staring at?”

      The sudden question hung accusingly between them. Oh, dear. She hadn’t been staring, had she? Eva could not be certain. Mistinguett glowered at her as a young wardrobe assistant held her hand so she could slip the torn drawers down over her lace-up black shoes.

      “Forgive me. I was only waiting,” Eva replied meekly.

      “Waiting for what?”

      “For your drawers, mademoiselle. So that I can mend them.”

      “You? I’ve never seen you here before!”

      “I may be new here, mademoiselle, but I am experienced with a needle and thread.”

      Mistinguett’s fox-colored eyes widened. “Are you mocking me?”

      “No, certainly not, Mademoiselle Mistinguett.”

      Eva could feel the heavy weight of stares from some of the other performers, in their many varied costumes and headpieces, as they passed by her. They knew better than to stop, however, when the temperamental star was angry.

      “Well, see that you don’t!”

      Mistinguett pivoted away sharply. “Do be quick about it. I have my big number in the second half.”

      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.

       Chapter 2

      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 СКАЧАТЬ