Free Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland Page A

Aline, a seamstress with a Burgundian accent and a creamy complexion, and Géraldine, a pork butcher’s assistant with a meaty fragrance but with a silk rosebud pinned to her gray frock. There was no room at their table, so he sat with a plasterer downing a mazagran, cold black coffee and seltzer water, remedy for a hangover. His painting still hung on the wall. He drank his café slowly, planning. Colors, canvas, and Gustave.
    If he had to pay for his paints he wouldn’t be able to pay for his models. If he paid his models, how would he pay for Mère Fournaise’s luncheon and the wine that would make them relaxed and convivial, the mood he wanted to paint? If he paid them this Sunday, he couldn’t pay them the next Sunday. What would it cost to feed a dozen people and let the wine flow? Eighty francs? Ninety? He had seven weeks to do the painting, if he counted the Saturday before the Fêtes. Six hundred francs for their meals, eight hundred more in models’ fees, maybe three hundred in supplies. Impossible! He’d have to go to Tanguy for his colors even though Mullard’s colors were truer, but Mullard wouldn’t let him buy on credit.
    Aline giggled. “You look like a gander worrying after his goose.”
    “Better that than a porcupine cozying up to his porcupinette,” he said. Outside, he fell into step with Aline and Géraldine.
    • 50 •
    L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y
    “Where are you going this fine morning?” Aline asked.
    “To Père Tanguy’s on rue Clauzel.”
    “That funny little man in the painters’ store?” Géraldine asked.
    “Funny only on the surface. Julien Tanguy is the patron saint of every poor artist in Montmartre. You’re too young to know this, but Julien was on sentry duty up on the Butte during the Commune when a squadron of Versaillais descended on his post. He dropped his musket and held up his hands in surrender. He just couldn’t fire on another human being. He was imprisoned for treason for three years. That’s what gave him sad eyes and a soft heart.”
    “Who would have thought?” Without a hint of interest, Géraldine turned into the butcher’s narrow courtyard overgrown with Virginia creeper. A pig, still dripping, hung by its hind legs. Géraldine picked a sprig of yellow blossoms and poked it in the creature’s anus before she went into the butcher shop. Now, that was something Gustave would paint—an oddity of Parisian life.
    “It must have been awful, being in prison,” Aline said. “He’s always nice to us.” She dodged a troop of girls coming out of the school across from Julien Tanguy’s shop.
    Auguste said goodbye to her and opened the door. A bell jingled merrily. Tanguy turned toward him, buttons straining, and screwed up his puffy face. “Auguste! Whatever happened to you?”
    “I fell off my steam-cycle.” Auguste looked around the walls above the shelves hung with paintings edge to edge all the way to the ceiling.
    “I see Cézanne sent you some new paintings.”
    Julien pulled him deep into the narrow shop. “Look at this one!
    Montagne Sainte-Victoire on a spring morning. Magnifi cent. Cézanne’s a genius.”

“How many of his Sainte-Victoires do you have now?”
    “Four. One for each season of the year.” Tanguy spread his arms wide, and the furrows stretching down from his round nostrils curved into a euphoric smile above his stubby yellowish beard. “I have the best job in the world. How else would a poor man be able to live with paintings like these?”
    • 51 •
    S u s a n V r e e l a n d
    “Seven!” Madame Tanguy said, pushing aside the curtain of the
    back room. She yanked her crocheted shawl across her ample fi gure.
    “The man’s crazy.”
    “Who? Cézanne or Julien?”
    “Both of them. Grâce à Dieu, I only have to live with one of them.”
    “And a very fine man he is,” Auguste added, winking at Julien.
    “So there!” Tanguy gave a sharp nod to his wife and turned back to Auguste. “What