Last Lovers. William Wharton
handling the street in the foreground and the bottom right-hand corner. I think of putting in a bus at the bus stop, but that’s against my idea of what I’m trying to paint. I don’t want to put in any cars either. What I’m trying to paint is a Paris that transcends time somehow, a Paris which will always seem to be; yet, in another way, never was. I don’t put in TV antennae, automobiles, or motorcycles, not even bicycles. When I paint in people I make them vague so there’s no problem with dated clothes.
Also, I’ve found, if I put in a figure, no matter how hard I’ve worked on the entire scope of the painting, people will see it only in relation to that figure. I noticed this with my watercolors. I’d do an entire composition of buildings with shadows cast upon them, shutters, chimney pots against the sky, a sense of space, then I’d make the mistake of putting in a woman hanging out some clothes from one of the windows. People’d look at it and call my painting The Woman Hanging Clothes out the Window. But they’d buy it, much more frequently than if there were no woman at the window.
I’ll probably have the same trouble with this painting. Nobody can resist ignoring the sky, the trees, the entire Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Les Deux Magots, Diderot, the entire composition; it’ll just be The Lady in the Red Suit with the Pigeons. So it goes. In this case, because of all that’s happened, I can live with it.
I more or less solve the lower right with shadows cast by the trees in the garden and by putting in cobblestones, the cobblestones that used to be there but have been smeared over with asphalt. It isn’t the best of solutions, but it’s the only one I can come up with.
I find, in my paintings, I have the most trouble composing the upper left and the lower right areas. I never even notice I’m going to have this same problem again until I get there. Sometimes I think I’ll never learn.
I scratch my signature and the date on the painting. It’s almost invisible, just a scratch using the top of my brush. Then I turn it over, title it Mirabelle with Diderot, date and sign it. Mirabelle really fits in the painting. It’s as if she’s always belonged there.
The sun is off the front of the church when I pack up and start for home. Tomorrow I’ll use another of my 25F canvases. I’m not sure just what subject I’ll paint but I know it will be near to where I’ve been painting. I found when I was doing drawings and watercolors that each little quartier has its particular quality and one painting tends to lead into another. I’m half thinking I might try the Place Furstenberg. It’s a beautiful Place and I’ve painted it three times with watercolors and drawn it at least four or five times. When things were desperate I could always sell a few watercolors or drawings of the Place, and it was fun doing them, it’s a real challenge in its simplicity. There are a fair number of tourists who go through there but at the same time it isn’t exactly a tourist trap.
I stop in at American Express just before it closes. There’s nothing. I pull a folded sheet of paper and an envelope out of my jacket and use my drawing pencil to write a reasonably long letter. I try describing the painting I’ve just finished, and also tell something about the blind old lady named Mirabelle. I finish by assuring them I’m fine but miss them all. I sign it with ‘all my love.’ I mail it to Lorrie at her new address.
The next morning, after my run, as I beat my way crosstown, I realize I’m looking forward to seeing Mirabelle, not just enjoying some more of her wonderful food, but spending time with her, absorbing her strength, vitality; feeling her concern, sensitivity, empathy.
The day is beautiful. More sun and fewer clouds, but there are still some soft, floating, spidery ones drifting quietly across the sky. Unless you stop and line them up with something on earth, it’s hard to tell they’re moving.
I’m wearing my usual painting outfit, a falling-apart, multi-stitched denim jacket I bought for twenty francs at the flea market. I didn’t put on the green check woolen shirt I usually wear under it. The shirt’s missing more than half its buttons but it’s warm. When I ran this morning I realized today I wouldn’t need it. I’m beginning to think I don’t even need the jacket. Paris is giving us a little taste of what spring will be, real spring, maybe with a touch of summer.
I get to the site and elect to paint the Place from the uphill side and to the left of the street leading into it. I set myself practically in the Place because I want the lamps in the middle to be the center of my painting, sort of a focus around which the rest will swing in three dimensions; I’d like something of a merry-go-round feeling.
I do a rather careful drawing, keeping in mind the painting as I go. It’s amazing how one can paint something several times and it’s always different. I’m about to start putting paint on my palette for the underpainting when I begin to think of time passing. I don’t have a watch. I forgot it, left it behind on the night table in our bedroom when I packed up, more than a year ago, so I ask the time from somebody passing by. It’s just five minutes to ten.
I break down the box, swing it onto my back, and move up behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the Place in front of the church. I look across the street and there she is sitting in her usual spot. I try to see how close I can creep up on her before she senses me. I walk carefully. If anybody was watching, they’d think I was some kind of Jack the Ripper with a specialty in old ladies, because I’m practically walking on tiptoe. Before I get within six feet, she turns to me, smiles.
‘I thought you might not come, Jacques. I knew you were not here and I was disappointed. It is so very good of you to come after all.’
‘It was the smell, wasn’t it. You smelled me coming. Is that it, Mirabelle?’
She smiles and pulls out her second inflatable cushion for me.
‘No, there is something on your painting box which jiggles when you walk, it sounds like metal hitting wood. I did not smell you until after.’
‘Do I smell that bad? What do I smell like, anyway?’
‘Oh, Jacques, you want to know all my secrets. All right. You smell like turpentine, of course, and you smell something of perspiration because you concentrate so hard. And you smell …’
She pauses.
‘You smell like a man. You have a special man smell about you. It is not the smell of tobacco as with my father or some other men, and it is not the smell of the different perfumes so many men wear these days. Sometimes it is hard for me to tell the men from women except for the sound of the shoes they wear, and even that is changing.
‘You have a very special smell. I cannot describe it but I like it. The closest thing I can think of is the smell of horses.’
I’ve finished blowing up my cushion and I sit beside her.
‘I’d better not sit too close, Mirabelle. I never realized I was so smelly.’
‘No, Jacques, I like you sitting close to me. Remember, I enjoy your smells. They are very healthy, hardy smells.
‘Now, are we ready for my test? I shall touch and feel my pigeons and then tell you how they look, is that right?’
‘That’s right. But I was only teasing, Mirabelle. It will be impossible.’
‘Let us see.’
She puts out her finger and one of the pigeons, which had been hovering around her, lands. She picks it up, turns it over, inspects it.
‘This one is a tannish brown with two brown stripes across the wings. It has yellower eyes than most and its legs are a nice persimmon red. You admired the look of this bird and said it was almost acceptable, even for a pigeon. Am I right?’
She’s right, all right. She’s so right she’s telling me things I don’t even remember telling her.
‘I don’t believe it, Mirabelle. Come on, try again.’
Another bird flies down. This time it’s a heavy, dark blue bird with stripes on its wings, an ordinary-looking pigeon. Mirabelle strokes its neck with her finger and massages the feet and legs. She looks at me.
‘This