Last Lovers. William Wharton
I go inside. It’s a nice apartment but dark. It opens onto the court. Of course, for her, the darkness would be no disadvantage. Although it’s neatly kept up, no disorder, everything in its place, the plaster is hanging from the ceiling, the wallpaper is loosened from the walls, hanging in strips, and the woodwork is unpainted, dirt-stained from constant handling.
The rugs are worn. It’s a strange contrast between this wellkept woman, her carefully set table, the general order of the room, and the overall squalor of the apartment.
Also, to make it worse, on the two windows opening onto the dark court are hanging ragged green curtains, faded with age into yellowish stripes. I see five doors I imagine enter into other rooms. The old lady is wearing an apron and she’s smiling.
‘Please, if you would like to wash up or if you have any needs, the water closet and the salle d’eau are over there.’
I actually am awfully filthy, both from the way I live generally and because I’ve just come in from painting. I bow (invisible), smile (invisible), then, to compensate, say thank you. I move toward the door where she’s pointed.
I go in, close the door to find it totally dark in the toilet room. I open the door again to look for the light switch and find it. I flick the switch, but no light. I look up and find the light bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling with a green metal shade. I screw out the bulb, classic, French, old-fashioned, bayonet bulb. I can see through the clear glass that it’s burned out.
I get myself oriented, close the door, lift the toilet seat, and, lining myself up with the toilet by my knees, let fly. Knowing her supersensitive ears, I pee against the side of the toilet so I won’t make any noise. I hope I’m not peeing over the side onto the floor. I flush and open the door. I inspect. Luckily, I managed to get it all inside the bowl.
Then I go to the salle d’eau, a room with a basin for washing hands, cold water only, and with a bathtub, one of those tubs made from enameled metal and standing on lion’s feet.
Again, the light switch doesn’t work. I don’t even climb up on the side of the tub to check the bulb. I imagine after years of someone blind living alone in a place, either all the bulbs get burned out by being left on with nobody to see them, or the thin wire in the bulbs goes bad and burns out the first time somebody happens to switch one on. French electricity tends to have surges which burn out light bulbs anyway, no matter how careful you are.
This time I leave the door open while I wash my hands. The tub has hot water as well as cold and there’s an old-fashioned water heater hanging over it. I’d give a medium-sized watercolor just to soak for half an hour in sudsy water filled to the top of this tub. Instead, I do my best, washing up at the sink. The mirror above the sink has a layer of grime and flyspecks over it, so there’s no way I can see myself. I’m not all that interested anyway. I just want to check and see if I have paint on my face. I often hold brushes in my teeth, not very professional, but I do it often, and paint smears on my cheeks.
I come out. The old lady is bustling about from the kitchen corner where she cooks, to the table where we’re to eat. It’s as if she never knew what it was to be blind. I wonder if the light bulbs work in this room. I’m willing to bet there’s not a functioning light bulb in the entire apartment.
She indicates where I’m to sit and I do. There are clean cloth napkins and an hors d’oeuvre of coquilles Saint-Jacques, hot in the shell. This is the kind of haute cuisine I used to get at all those business lunches. Of course, when we were dealing with the French, it would be almost absurd, the food would be so good, and the prices were impossible, but I wasn’t paying. OPM, other people’s money, was what we were all spending.
There was one place called the Coq Hardi, about a fifteen-minute drive from my office, where we’d eat often, and they’d practically hand-feed us, a waiter standing beside each of us, passing different cutlery, different goodies. The bill after all that cosseting would be enough to keep me for six months now.
But this, right here, in this dark dingy room, is a good start toward one of those fancy meals. The old lady has taken off her red costume and is dressed in a dark blue sweater with a white collar showing and a dark blue skirt. The dull light is coming through the window behind her and shining through her hair. She wears it in braids tied tight around her head almost like a crown.
‘Bon appétit, Monsieur le Peintre. I hope you like the coquilles.’
‘Bon appétit to you, too, madame. I’m sure I will. This is one of my favorite hors d’oeuvre.’
‘I am mademoiselle.’
‘Okay, mademoiselle. Bon appétit.’
We eat slowly, carefully. These are some of the best coquilles I’ve ever had. It’s a mixture of scallops, a white sauce, mushrooms, and Armagnac. There are also small shrimp, each about the size of a fingernail. I wonder how she manages.
‘Have you been painting for a long time, monsieur?’
‘It’s a complicated story, mademoiselle. I studied painting a long time ago and then was in a large American corporation doing business, first in America, then here in France. Now I am back to painting again.’
‘Have you retired?’
‘Yes, probably one could say I’ve retired, but I actually feel as if I’ve just started my work after a long interruption.’
She’s quiet. I don’t really want to go into all of it. It’s still damned painful. I remember I want to stop to check for mail at American Express, and write a letter. I’ll stop by before they close.
To change the subject, I figure it might be time to bring up the idea of including her in my painting, at the foot of Diderot. For some reason, I’ve been putting it off.
‘Mademoiselle, I hope you don’t object, but I would like to paint you in my picture. I’d like to have you sitting with your pigeons on the stone bench at the base of Monsieur Diderot’s statue.’
She stops with her fork halfway to her mouth. She puts it down and wipes her mouth carefully with her napkin. She looks me directly in the eyes and I can see the beginnings of tears in hers.
‘Thank you very much. I would be most happy to be in your painting. One of the worst things about being blind is the sensation, the conviction, that no one sees you. Most of the time I feel terribly invisible.
‘Monsieur, it will give me great pleasure to know I am there in your painting, in the world I can no longer see, to be visible to all.’
She looks down at the table and wipes her eyes gently at each corner with her napkin.
I had no idea it was going to be such a big deal. Normally, I’d start to get nervous. Sometimes when I was doing a watercolor people would ask me to put them in and I was always sure it would ruin the picture. Painting people isn’t really my thing. Mostly, I guess I just haven’t had much practice. But since she can’t see, she’ll never know, I can relax. No matter how I might botch her, it won’t matter. I can even paint her out if it’s too bad. Only the painting will know, and it’s part of me. But I’m glad I mentioned it.
She stands up, comes over, and faultlessly takes my dish with the eaten coquilles and the small three-pronged fork, then moves into the kitchen corner. I can smell something delicious that’s been simmering in a frying pan there. I’m hoping it won’t be some half-raw red meat cooked the way most French insist these things must be done. I’m not sure I could handle it after all my vegetarianism.
But no, it’s one of my favorites again. She must be a mind reader. It’s escalope à la crème champignons and beautifully done, the cream sauce lightly flavored with the same Armagnac as the coquilles, blending the two together. She brings some pommes frites allumettes to go with it, and thin white asparagus. I’m really getting the best of this deal. At this rate, I’ll describe every pigeon in Paris for her if she wants.
And it’s pleasant being with her, eating such good food in such a civilized manner. We eat,