Madame Picasso. Anne Girard

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      Yet lately he had begun to question whether that was enough; and his ambivalence about their relationship was extending to other things in his life. In the increasingly looming shadow of his thirtieth birthday, he felt deeply that something was missing. Perhaps it was only that he felt this concerned him.

      Picasso picked up a smaller paintbrush and plunged it into a pot of yellow paint. Beyond the smudged windows, the sun was shining. He focused for a moment on the grazing sheep that made the little corner of Montmartre seem like countryside. He thought suddenly of Barcelona, where his mother remained, worrying about him every day.

      Thoughts of family, and the simplicity of childhood wound themselves like thread in his mind. He thought of his little sister Conchita, with her wide blue eyes and precious innocence. Even after all these years, Picasso missed her so dearly, but forcefully he pressed the memory away and urged himself to think of something else. He could not change what had happened. All it ever did was bring him pain laced heavily with guilt.

      The sound of someone knocking sent the memories skittering into the back of his mind. The door opened and two young men staggered inside. They were his good friends Guillaume Apollinare and Max Jacob. They were laughing, their arms draped fraternally around each other, and they carried the strong scent of alcohol.

      “So much for Pablo’s promises,” Apollinaire slurred, and his flamboyant gesture filled the room. “You said you would meet us at Au Lapin Agile last night right after the Moulin Rouge show.”

      “I say a lot of things, amigos,” he grumbled, and returned to his painting. But as annoyed as he was by the interruption, he was relieved that it was his friends who had come and not Fernande.

      Picasso loved these two misfit poets as if they were his own brothers. They stimulated his interest in ideas, in poetry, in thought—and that encouraged him always with his art. They talked together, drank, argued wildly and had built a deep trust that Picasso greatly valued now that he was beginning to find the first hint of real fame. He was not always certain any longer who he could depend upon to like him for himself. But Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire were beyond reproach.

      Max, the smaller of the two men, was the trim, well-read and exceedingly witty son of a Quimper tailor. He had been Picasso’s first friend in Paris. That winter, ten years ago, Picasso was so destitute that he had been reduced to burning his own paintings as firewood just to keep warm. Max had given him a place to sleep, the two of them taking turns in a single bed in eight-hour shifts. Max slept at night while Picasso worked, and Picasso slept during the day. Max had little but he always shared with Picasso what he had.

      It was generally assumed that Max led Apollinaire in their flights of fancy, but that was no longer true. Max’s addictions to opium and ether set him at a disadvantage to the charming and clever Guillaume Apollinaire, who now ruled their social engagements.

      “Where’s your whiskey?” Max slurred.

      “Haven’t got any,” Picasso grunted in reply.

      “Fernande drank it all?” Apollinaire asked.

      “As a matter of fact, she did.”

      “Oh, bollocks, that’s a lie. She rarely comes slumming up here anymore now that you’ve gotten her that elegant place on the boulevard de Clichy, and we know it,” Max countered.

      “Well, she came yesterday. We fought, so she drank the whiskey because I had no wine,” Picasso replied in French, but with a voice thickly laced with the melody of his Andalusian roots. Everyone always told him that his French was a dreadful mess of improper verbs and tenses and he knew it, but so early in the morning like this, he didn’t care.

      “Ah,” Apollinaire said blandly, dabbing a single long finger at the canvas to check for wet paint. He did not always believe Picasso’s stories. “That does explain a multitude of things.”

      “Well, whatever she’s done, you will forgive her. You always do,” Max said.

      Pablo felt the squeeze of anxiety make a hard knot in his chest. It was all starting to feel like an inescapable cycle. Best just to work and not to think. Of her, of the futility, of the wild restlessness that was invading his heart more strongly every day. He must bury it just as he did his thoughts of his sister, and how she’d died.

      Max looked around the studio, taking stock of the new canvases. Then he paused at the two rough-hewn Iberian stone heads sitting just behind the little drapery that hid his single bed. “You still have these?”

      “Why wouldn’t I have them? They were a gift,” Picasso snapped of the antiquarian busts he used in the studies for several pieces of his work.

      “A peculiar gift, I always thought. They always looked to me like something from a museum,” Max dryly observed. He ran a finger over the throat of one bust and touched the head of the other. “Where on earth does one find something like these? Legally, that is,” he asked.

      Apollinaire replied. “How would I know? I got them from my secretary who was trying to bribe me to introduce him around Paris. Apparently, he thought they would impress me. I gave two of them to Pablo. Simple as that. It has never been my habit to question where gifts come from.”

      “Or where the women come from,” Max quipped with a smirk and a clever flourish. “And yet, they do come to our dear Picasso—and both rather generously.”

      “Are the two of you quite finished?” Picasso growled as a stubborn black lock of hair fell into his eyes.

      “What, pray tell, is this meant to be?” Apollinaire asked, changing the subject. He was looking at the wet canvas on Picasso’s easel.

      Picasso rolled his eyes. “Why must art always be something?” he snapped.

      “That circle there reminds me of a cello,” Max said playfully. He was rubbing his neatly bearded chin between his thumb and forefinger as he and Apollinaire looked at the painting and then exchanged a glance.

      “It reminds me more aptly of a lady’s derrière,” Apollinaire offered with a devilish little smirk.

      “Not that you have actually ever seen one, Apo, my good man,” Max quipped, using the endearing nickname they all had adopted for him.

      “Well, you most certainly haven’t.”

      “Do you not feel things when you look at the painting, or do you only see with your eyes?” Picasso asked, annoyed that they had disturbed him at this sacred hour, and irritated that now they were poking fun at his work. “Dios mío, sometimes I feel as if I am surrounded by a gang of idiots!”

      “What I feel is confused.” Apollinaire chuckled, pretending to further inspect the canvas. “Pablo, your mind is a mystery.”

      “I feel thirsty just talking about it. Shall we all go find a drink?” Max asked.

      “It’s not even noon,” Picasso snapped.

      “Morning is always a fine time for a beer. It will set your day to rights,” Apollinaire answered as he loomed over the two of them like a lovable, slump-shouldered giant.

      “You two go ahead. I’m going to work a while longer, then I am going to take a nap.” Picasso nodded toward the little iron-frame bed in the corner of the СКАЧАТЬ