The Model
The little town of Étretat, curved like the crescent moon, with its white cliffs, white pebbly strand and blue sea, drowsed under the sun of a day in mid-July. At the two points of the crescent, the two harbours, the small one on the right, the big one on the left, thrust out into the quiet water a dwarf foot and the foot of a colossus; and the needle, almost as high as the cliff, broad-based and tapering to the summit, reared its painted head towards the sky.
On the beach, beside the waves, a crowd of people sat watching the bathers. On the terrace of the Casino, more people sat or walked, spreading out under the brilliant sky into a garden of gay frocks blazing with red and blue umbrellas, embroidered on top with silken flowers.
On the promenade at the end of the terrace, other people, the quiet unassuming ones, sauntered, far from the smart mob.
A young man, a well-known, celebrated artist, Jean Summer by name, was walking gloomily beside a small invalid carriage in which a young woman was lying, his wife. A servant was gently pushing this sort of wheeled armchair, and the crippled woman gazed sadly at the joyful sky, the joyful day and the joyful crowd.
They did not speak. They did not look at each other.
“Let us stop a little,” said the young woman.
They stopped, and the painter seated himself on a folding chair, which the manservant produced for him.
People passing behind the still silent couple contemplated them with a sorrowful gaze. Gossip had created a whole legend of devotion. He had married her in spite of her infirmity, touched by her love, they said.
A little farther off, two young men were talking, sitting on a capstan, gazing into space.
“No, it’s not true. I tell you I know Jean Summer very well.”
“Well, but why did he marry her? She was already a cripple before her marriage, wasn’t she?”
“Exactly. He married her … he married her … as a man does marry, dammit, because he’s a fool!”
“But what else?”
“What else … what else, my friend? There is nothing else. A man is an ass because he’s an ass. And besides, you know very well that painters are particularly given to ridiculous marriages; almost all of them marry models, old mistresses, even women whose encounters with men have made them slightly shop-soiled. Why is it? Who knows? One would suppose, on the contrary, that the constant society of that flock of imbeciles called models ought to have filled men with a lasting disgust for that brand of female. Not at all. After making them pose, they marry them. Read Alphonse Daudet’s little book, which is so true, so cruel and so fine: Les Femmes d’Artistes.
“Fate, in a very special and terrible form, had its way with the couple you see there. The little woman staged a comedy, or rather a terrifying drama. She risked all to gain all, in short. Was she sincere? Did she love Jean? Can one ever be sure of that? Could anyone say for certain what is carefully planned and what is spontaneous in the things women do? Their sincerity reflects faithfully a constant change of mood. They are impassioned, wicked, devoted, admirable, depraved, in obedience to uncontrollable emotions. They lie the whole time, neither wishing it, knowing it, nor understanding that they are lying, and they have, with it and in spite of it, an absolute freshness of emotions and sentiments which they evidence in violent, unexpected, incomprehensible, crazy resolutions, that confound our reasoning, our customary calculations and our egoistic habits of thought. The abrupt and unpremeditated nature of their decisions makes them always for us undecipherable enigmas. We are always wondering: ‘Are they sincere? Are they false?’
“But, my friend, they are at once sincere and false, because it is their nature to be both to the utmost and to be neither the one nor the other.
“Think of the methods the most honest of them use to get what they want from us. Their methods are both complicated and simple. So complicated that we never guess them beforehand, so simple that after we have fallen victims we can’t help being surprised at it and saying to ourselves: ‘What, did she play a crude trick like that on me?’
“And they are always successful, my dear fellow, especially when it is marriage they are after.
“But listen to Summer’s story.
“The little woman is a model, of course. She posed for him. She was pretty, distinguished-looking too, and had, he thought, a divine figure. He fell in love with her, as a man does fall in love with a rather attractive woman whom he is constantly seeing. He imagined that he loved her with his whole heart. That’s an odd phenomenon. As soon as a man desires a woman, he is sincerely convinced that he could never tire of her for the rest of his life. He knows quite well that the thing has happened to him already; that disgust always follows possession; that the necessary condition of being able to spend the whole of one’s life with another being is not a brutish, physical appetite, quickly sated, but a similarity of mind, temperament and disposition. He must be able to decide whether the charm that holds him comes from the corporeal form, from a sort of drunkenness of the senses, or from a deeper spiritual beauty.
“Well, he imagined that he loved her; he made her a host of promises of faithfulness and he took her to live with him.
“She was really a nice little thing, and had that graceful puckish charm our Parisian little ladies so often have. She chattered like a magpie, she prattled, she said absurd things that seemed witty because of the droll way she uttered them. The gracious gestures she used every moment were well calculated to charm the eye of a painter. When she lifted her arms, when she stooped, when she stepped into a carriage, when she held out her hand to you, her movements were perfectly proportioned and harmonious.
“For three months, Jean never noticed that at bottom she was just like all other models.
“They rented a little house at Andrésy for the summer.
“I was there one evening, when the first doubts stirred in my friend’s mind.
“It was a radiant night, and we chose to walk along the river bank. The moon poured a rain of light on the rippling water, scattered its broken yellow rays over eddies and running water, and all the wide slow-moving reeds.
“We walked along the bank; the vague sense of exaltation born of such romantic nights had rather gone to our heads. We would have liked to achieve superhuman tasks, to love unknown creatures of rare poetic kind. We felt stirring in us ecstasies, desires, strange aspirations. And we were silent, filled with the serene living coolness of lovely night, with the cool beauty of the moon that seems to run through one’s body, filling it full, flooding the mind, lending it fragrance, drowning it in sweet content.
“All at once Joséphine (she was called Joséphine) uttered a cry:
“ ‘Oh, did you see the great big fish that jumped over there?’
“He answered carelessly, not looking:
“ ‘Yes, darling.’
“She was annoyed:
“ ‘No, you didn’t see it, seeing that you had your back to it.’
“He smiled:
“ ‘Yes, that’s true. It is so lovely that I am not thinking of anything.’
“She was silent; but a moment later she was seized with a desire to talk, and she asked:
“ ‘Shall you go to Paris tomorrow?’
“ ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ he said deliberately.
“She was irritated again:
“ ‘Do you think it’s amusing, walking with nothing to say? People talk, unless they’re idiots.’
“He did not answer. Then, well aware, thanks to her perverse woman’s instinct, that she would exasperate him, she began to sing that maddening air with which our ears and minds have been wearied for the last two years:
Je regardais en l’air.13
“He murmured:
“ ‘Please be quiet.’
“ ‘Why do you want me to be quiet?’ she demanded furiously.
“ ‘You’re spoiling the landscape,’ he answered.
“Then the scene began, the ugly idiotic scene, with its baseless reproaches, its misplaced recriminations, then tears. It came and went. They returned home. He had let her run on without replying to her, lulled by the beauty of the evening and stunned by her insane outburst.
“Three months later, he was struggling desperately in the strong unseen bonds which these affairs twist round our lives. She held him, exhausted him, tormented him. They quarrelled, insulted each other, and fought from morning until night.
“Finally, he decided to end it, to break with her at all costs. He sold all his canvases, borrowed some money from friends, realised twenty thousand francs (he was still hardly known) and one morning left them for her on the chimneypiece with a letter.
“He came and took refuge in my house.
“About three o’clock in the afternoon, there was a ring at the door. I went to open it. A woman leapt at me, pushed me aside, entered and penetrated to my studio; it was she.
“He had risen when he saw her enter.
“With a truly magnificent gesture, she threw the envelope containing the banknotes at his feet, and said shortly:
“ ‘There’s your money. I don’t want it.’
“She was very pale, trembling, and certainly ready for any folly. As for him, I saw him turn pale too, turn pale with anger and exasperation, ready, perhaps, for any violence.
“He asked:
“ ‘What is it you want?’
“She answered:
“ ‘I won’t be treated like a harlot. You implored me, you took me. I didn’t ask you for anything. Keep me with you.’
“He stamped his foot.
“ ‘No, this is too much. If you think you’re going to …’
“I seized him by the arm.
“ ‘Be quiet, Jean. Leave it to me.’
“I walked up to her, and gently, one step at a time, I tried to make her see reason, emptying out all the bagful of arguments one uses in such circumstances. She listened to me without moving, staring straight in front of her, obstinate.
“Finally, not knowing what else to say, and seeing that the scene could only end badly, I bethought myself of one last resort. I said deliberately:
“ ‘He still loves you, my dear; but his family want him to marry, and you realise …’
“She started:
“ ‘Oh … oh … I understand then …’
“She turned towards him:
“ ‘You’re going … you’re going … to be married?’
“He answered firmly:
“ ‘Yes.’
“She took a step forward:
“ ‘If you marry, I’ll kill myself … do you hear?’
“He shrugged his shoulders and said calmly:
“ ‘All right … kill yourself!’
“A frightful anguish clutched at her throat but she managed to get out two or three times:
“ ‘What did you say? … what did you say? … what did you say? Repeat it.’
“He repeated:
“ ‘All right, kill yourself, if it’ll amuse you.’
“She grew terrifyingly pale and replied:
“ ‘You’d better not drive me too far. I’ll throw myself out of the window.’
“He burst out laughing, walked across to the window, opened it, and bowing like a person politely making way for another to go first, said:
“ ‘The way is open. After you!’
“For a moment she stared at him with a wild distorted stare; then, taking off as if she were jumping a hedge in the country, she jumped past me, past him, cleared the railing and disappeared. …
“I shall never forget the effect that this open window made on me, after seeing that body leap past it and fall: in one moment it seemed in my sight wide as the sky and empty as space. I recoiled instinctively, not daring to look, as though I should fall myself.
“Jean, stunned, never moved.
“They picked up the poor girl with both legs broken. She will never walk again.
“Her lover, wild with remorse, and feeling perhaps a touch of gratitude, took her back and married her.
“There you are, my dear.”
The evening came. The young woman grew chilly and wished to go. The servant began to wheel the little invalid carriage towards the village. The painter walked beside his wife; they had not exchanged a single word for an hour past.