I know this story isn't my usual fare; I wrote it one afternoon while in a rather odd mood and although that was some time ago, I keep coming back to this short tale. Perhaps, like the narrator's painting, I can't quite let it go. It has been begging me to post it for months now and so I have finally given in. And just so I am spared emails from art aficionados, the title refers to the narrator, not any of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings of the same name. Thank you ~ firstkiss
Paris: 1949
The canvas was enormous: six feet by nearly four and sprawled across which was a female nude of the lushly generous proportions. I had seen it before and I knew it well. So she had put it up for auction then. Alonso's widow had always hated that painting and made little effort to hide the fact from him as he so often told me. He'd been so proud of it while his wife hated it, resented it perhaps because Alonso seemed to care for it more than he did her. He found both the painting and his wife's attitude towards it amusing.
The nude was larger than life, of course, while in his telling of her Alonso's widow always seemed to come across lacking the same vitality. I always wondered who the model for the painting was. Alonso certainly spoke of the canvas with a fondness never found in his regard for his wife. I often thought he might have once known the model but never had the courage to ask him.
The canvas was priced ridiculously high. She would ask for as much as she thought she could possibly get and I was not surprised. His millions still weren't enough for her. They never had been. Or perhaps the years since the war had been difficult for her without him there to manage the estate. I'd already mourned Alonso's death, but seeing his beloved painting again, knowing that it would fall into some stranger's hands, hurt me more than I would have thought. Just the total surprise of seeing it when I had not been expecting to made my chest ache.
I could remember clearly the first time I saw her, the blatant expanse of pale thigh across the canvas, the verdantly rounded hips and breasts. There was no head, no feet, just a body twisting in obvious pleasure. I'd been in awe of her, of course, because in my youth I lacked such womanly generosity myself. I was barely twenty. Alonso was forty-two. That summer was spent mostly in his bed, in his villa not far from Valencia. He was my first affair and for many years my only one.
His wife knew of me, I gather, although she never saw me and probably never knew my name. She chose to spend her summers in Barcelona where the weather was not so warm and never came to Valencia while I was there. Alonso seemed to take pleasure in the heat and I, in my silly inexperience, used to joke that he did not even sweat. Summers in Valencia were blessedly quiet, the locals preferring to escape to less humid climes. For my part, I enjoyed the weather; it was such a change from the English summers of my dreary childhood. I do not remember suffering under the temperatures of those months, for there was always a cold drink at hand, a cool linen dress to wear, and the quiet dark of Alonso's rooms.
I regret a little now that I am older that I did not see more of Valencia while I was there. My whole world was filled with him and his beautiful home, of which I had free reign. The staff were perfectly invisible, Alonso sweetly munificent, and in my innocence I'm certain I took dreadful advantage of them all. He denied me nothing in those months and in return I gave every bit of myself to him. His appetite for me could be voracious and non-existent at turns, and I learned quickly not to be hurt when days would pass between his visits to my bed.
I spent most of my days in Alonso's library where he had a stunning selection of English books, novels which would have been off-limits to me in my parents' home and I devoured them hungrily. The painting of the nude hung there and kept me company when Alonso did not. I would stare at her for hours, both intrigued and attracted by her sensuous curves. She was precisely what I felt a woman should be, and as opposite from my school-girl angles as could be imagined. Still, I felt a friendly sort of camaraderie with her. She was luxuriant and sensuous as I was longing to be.
Inevitably Alonso would find me there when he came looking. I would be curled on the settee with a glass of sweet Valencia water or
granizada
at hand and a book on my lap. He would sit at my feet with his head on my knee and I would run my fingers through his dark hair and pluck teasingly at the strands of grey.
"
Querido
," Alonso would murmur every afternoon without fail. "What are you reading
mi querido
?"
And so I would lecture him, my wealthy Spanish lover, on things he more than likely already knew about, on wines and world travel, on history and humanity, on every topic I absorbed from his books, those both mundane and profound. He never stopped me or corrected me, although I'm certain now that I made mistakes. He only sat patiently at my feet and let me speak until the maid came to announce dinner and we would make our way to the terrace which overlooked the sea.
In my own way I loved Alonso fiercely, although I never said it. He more than likely guessed though, in the way my eyes would follow him, in how I hung on every word he spoke, on how tightly I clung to him in the darkness and cried his name. Years later I would realize he was not the most skilled of lovers, but as my first I knew no different, and anyway it was the novelty of the sensations which pleased me most.
In a way I think that was why I liked the painting so much, because deep inside of myself I felt as if my affair with him were a delightful little secret which she alone could understand. Like me the woman in the painting knew lust and pleasure. At a time when these things were not spoken of, she was silent in her understanding. She felt like a friend to me because of it, which was why it broke my heart to see her, all those years later, hanging on the wall of a Paris auction house when she should have been hanging in his library in Valencia still.
I felt very strongly that she should be mine. There was a space on my bedroom wall which would suit her perfectly. The price in the auction catalogue mocked me terribly though, and I went away distraught that I could never have her.
~*~
"You are not yourself,
cherie
," my lover murmured into the damp skin of my neck. His arm was a heavy weight across my chest, his hand cupped possessively around my breast. "You are a million miles away, I think."
I brushed absent-mindedly at his smooth, hard shoulder. "I beg your pardon, Gerard. My mind is elsewhere tonight."
"Another man?" he teased as he nipped at the lobe of my ear. "You tire of me already?"
I laughed. "Hardly. It's with a woman this time."
His lean body tensed and I could feel him harden against my thigh. I smiled into the darkness. Once I'd had a taste for older men, but as I aged they themselves grew bitter, useless, and unappealing. The war had stolen the souls of the men of my own generation and left them broken. The pieces left behind only made me sad and a little hateful. Instead I sought out the young now, fresh and tireless, always enthusiastic and just eager enough to made me feel falsely young myself.
"Anyone I know?" Gerard growled hungrily against my flesh.
I surprised myself by telling him of the painting. I'd never told anyone before about that summer in Valencia. About Alonso. About her. Gerard was a playboy, a young university student with more money than sense, but I knew he would understand about my draw to that particular canvas. If it was hedonistic, he seemed instinctively to know.
