middle of the bay; the abbey stood tall at its centre. In the middle of the abbey, the church was nestled around its choir. A man was lying in the middle of the transept. The heart of this man held a sorrow so deep that the bay wasn’t enough to contain it.
He didn’t have faith, but the church didn’t hold that against him. There is suffering so great that it exempts you from believing. Sprawled on the flagstones, arms spread wide, Éloi was himself a cross.
At certain hours, the abbey is silent and the rooms deserted. Between matins and lauds, a blue light descends, time stops to catch its breath. This hour is not for ordinary mortals, snoring quietly: it belongs to the sick, the insane and the lovers. It is the hour when I would wake up at Anna’s side as she dozed, to listen to her light breath. She would sleep in the most unlikely positions: arms folded, legs crossed, as if sleep were amusing itself by having her pose for me in her dreams. Through the window, I would see the sea-blue sky grow darker again. A few minutes later it would grow brighter and day would begin for everyone, but this moment belonged to me.
I still wake up at that nebulous hour between night and day, and, over a year later, I still reach for her sleeping body near mine. Every time, it takes me a few seconds to recall the simple fact: she is no longer. I lose her again every morning before sunrise. One would think that feeling the same pain over and over every day would help it subside, like the blade of a knife losing its bite as it slices further into flesh, but that’s not what happens. Every day, I lose her for the first time. She never stops dying.
I am not a man of God, I am not a man of science. I was an artist and I am no longer. The little that I know of the world, I owe to accounts of those more learned than me. Here is what I know: I loved a woman and she is dead.
The woman in question was not mine. She was married to another, but she belonged to no one. She had jet-black hair and eyes of a colour I have never seen anywhere else, neither before nor since. Now she is in the ground, being eaten by worms. Robert answers grudgingly when I ask him where the dead dwell. I would like to believe, as he does, that she is with God the Father in his kingdom, surrounded by the just. I don’t know how to reconcile these two ideas. Is it possible that the kingdom of God is overrun with worms and that everyone just fumbles along, disfigured, eye sockets hollow? These questions are beyond me, and I try not to think about them, but they come to haunt me in my dreams. And then lauds is rung, the monks get up and head in a long line to the chapel, where they sing the dawn of the new day.
She was the daughter of a rich merchant, and I was the son of no one at all.
I have a middling talent as a painter: I apprenticed at an atelier where I was first assigned to filling in background landscapes on which those more seasoned sketched portraits of the rich and powerful, and then later I was allowed to create their likenesses. After a few years, I had built a large enough clientele to leave the atelier and receive buyers at my home. I quickly understood the advantage of giving the bourgeois the nobility that was lacking in their faces. They found themselves more pleasing in my paintings than in their mirrors, blamed the mirrors, and came back to see me when they wanted a portrait of their wives or mistresses.
I soon acquired a reputation, and it had become good form for notables to have their portrait painted by Éloi Leroux. I say this without vanity: the town had few portrait artists and none who worked as quickly as I did, so I was never short of commissions. For a while I could even afford the luxury of turning down work. Of the work I was offered, I preferred the sort that paid well and that gave me an opportunity for amusement. I had long since stopped painting notaries and bishops in their depressing robes. For pleasure, I instead did sketches of birds – in flight, pecking, building their nests or feeding their young. I liked their colours, and the fact that they didn’t stay still. I particularly liked that they were absolutely indifferent to my presence. I started drawing eggs, which gave me respite from the rest of it.
One particular week I had agreed, as a favour to a friend who in turn owed a favour to her family, to do the portrait of a young girl who was getting married. I had nevertheless taken pains to inquire as to whether she was pretty.
‘I don’t know,’ my friend replied. ‘But I know she is young.’
‘Well, that’s something at least,’ I answered, imagining one of those pale damsels whose likeness needed to be captured once it had been decided she would be given to a seigneur who was far away and far from convinced, and who wanted to get a look before committing.
The morning of the first sitting, as I was running my hand over a panel of poplar to make sure there were no splinters or slivers, I was already preparing to even out a ruddy complexion, soften the line of the chin or trim a long nose, and then she walked in, escorted by a governess. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was thin and dark-haired, but I didn’t turn right away, letting her examine the sheet she was to sit in front of, which depicted a roughly sketched winding country road. Over the years, I had noticed that people who were about to be captured in paint almost always felt awkward. In their embarrassment, they revealed something that they then tried to hide from me during the long hours of sitting and that in spite of them found its way into their portraits. The discomfort that made them unintentionally reveal something was like the background of the painting, invisible but there, and it coloured the rest. But when I finally turned, she was leaning on the faldstool I had set out for her, studying me calmly. Still today, I could not tell you what colour her eyes were. In my shock, I dropped the brush and, in moving to catch it, knocked over a bowl of water.
‘Don’t be nervous. It’ll be fine,’ she said, smiling a little.
If my life had depended on it, I would not have been able to say in that moment whether she was sincerely trying to put me at ease or mocking me.
The first day, I did only the shape of her face: drawn straight-on; three-quarters; bathed in the midday light streaming in through the window; in profile; curtains half-drawn, in the light of a candle that left part in shadow.
The second day, I drew the simple hairstyle that held back her black curls, sketched her high forehead and the arch of her eyebrows on her pale skin. The third day I spent sitting, watching her and examining my still virtually untouched wood panel, as if to measure the distance between one and the other. I drew closer to her, I held out my hand to arrange a strand of hair, but the governess stopped me and tucked the wayward curl behind her ear, while Anna remained immobile, staring straight ahead. The fourth day, I had to explain to her that it would take me at least another week to complete the portrait. As I said the words, I thought: one month, at the very least one month, maybe two.
‘You realize you won’t be paid any more,’ pointed out my friend, who had come at the family’s request to see how the portrait was progressing.
He seemed a little worried about the turn events were taking. I clicked my tongue to let him know it was of no importance.
She would arrive at my atelier mid-morning every day and stay until the light began to fade. The entire time, she remained seated, as still as a statue, a trace of a smile on her lips and in her eyes. She watched me with quiet curiosity, asking no questions. The first few days, she would not speak either, and all that could be heard in the room was the whish of the brush on the wood panel and the loud breathing of the governess.
When she left, I would remain seated in front of the unfinished painting, unable to leave her. The idea that she would stop coming to my atelier in a few days had become unbearable, as if I had been told that I would now have to live without the sun or my hands. I found comfort in the painting, which was like an imperfect little sister to her. But I would have to give up the portrait as well.
One evening, I set a second easel beside the one that held the painting I was working on. On this second easel I placed a smaller oak panel, which, when I ran my fingers over it, was as soft as a woman’s cheek. In the half-light, I started to paint a second Anna on it, drawn half from the first portrait and half from my imagination.
The face was a pale mask, framed by loose hair floating in dark waves. Lips slightly parted (had I ever seen her teeth?), forming a pout I had invented for her, between smile and malice. For the eyes, I mixed my most precious powders to create a thick, almost colourless