La Belle Dame Sans Merci

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.

"Then buy her, cherie. If you want her so much. Hang her here so she can watch us make love."

"Two thousand pounds is a great deal of money," I admitted. "If I sold every trinket I own it would not be enough."

"I'll give it you then," he offered. "My father has always approved of investing in art. He can spare two thousand pounds ten times over."

I shook my head, bumping my cheek against the soft, dark nest of his hair. "It's too much."

He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at me. In the gloom I could not make out the caramel colour of his eyes, but I knew he watched me just the same. "If she means that much to you, you shall have her."

I laughed to myself. It was how it had always been for me, since the days of Alonso and that summer in Valencia. If I wanted something there had always been a man to buy it and in the past I never baulked from that. Indeed, it was how I'd chosen to live my life, to make my way through the years that had followed. Even the lean years of the war, when I'd fled to New York, even then there had been someone to take up the cost of my rooms, my clothing, my needs.

"I cannot," I murmured. I could feel myself blush and I silently thanked the darkness. I hadn't blushed since I was a schoolgirl. I did not know how to make him understand it was something I had to do for myself.

"But I want to," Gerard replied. His hand closed again around my breast and my nipple hardened against his palm. "I know my gifts never bring you happiness. You care nothing for trinkets. This you would love. You would remember the giving of that painting forever. I would not be forgotten in your heart."

I had to bit back my sigh. There were advantages to the young and there were disadvantages. That they tended to get attached was definitely a disadvantage.

"No, Gerard."

His noise of disappointment made him sound like the schoolboy he practically was. He pouted in the darkness. "You truly are La Belle Dame Sans Merci. They call you that you know, the fellows."

I knew. Even before Gerard, I had known what my reputation was amongst them. The beautiful lady without pity. There was truth to it, I suppose, only strengthened by the fact that I felt nothing over the moniker. It neither surprised nor hurt me. It was unerringly accurate. I hadn't cared for a man since the days of Alonso. It was an act of self-preservation at first, until the years wore away at what little heart there had been in me. I could admit to possessing a small, jovial fondness for them, but never love. I could look back on my affairs with nostalgia, but never with devotion and rarely with regret.

"Tell me what she is like," Gerard whispered as he lowered his mouth to my breast. My spine came off the mattress with inevitable pleasure as he suckled. "I want to hear about your beautiful lady."

So I told him, and when he finally came in to me and I reached my end, it was not Gerard I was thinking of, but her.

~*~

I fell in to the habit of lingering in the auction house. Occasionally I would fool myself into pretending to browse the other items offered, but always my eyes were drawn to her. I'd kept her ever in my mind over the years, but in rediscovering her she seemed to be brighter to me, more alive than she had fifteen years earlier in Valencia. I wanted desperately for her to be real, to be mine.

Gerard found me there one afternoon, held in her thrall.

"She's beautiful," he admitted as he stood at my shoulder. "As I knew she would be. She looks a little like you, actually."

I clenched my forgotten gloves in my fist. "You should not make jokes," I chided nastily.

"It is no joke," my French student assured me. "It's in the curve of her hip, the upward thrust of her breast, the ripe raspberry of her nipple. You look the same in our bed."

I brushed off his attempt at a compliment. She was all lush and rounded, the breathtaking sinuous lines I remembered her to be, and beside her I would always be the awkward, gangly youth of that summer in Valencia.

"You are wanted, ma belle dame, by every man in Paris for a reason," Gerard reminded me. "I am beginning to think that it is you in that painting. Your Spanish lover had it made of you."

I shook my head. "She was before me and she will be after me. I grow old. She remains the same. And anyway it does not matter. The auction is tomorrow and she will go into some other man's home and I will forget about her once more."

Gerard shot me a look which I could almost have sworn was knowing, if I didn't suspect him to be incapable of the act.

"If you say so, cherie," he capitulated. "Come. Let me buy you a drink and then I will take you home and make you forget her."

I forgave him his hubris because he was young and he did not know any better.

~*~

I should have known. I should have known that when I returned to my rooms two days later Gerard would be sitting, half clothed on my bed, and that she would be leaning against my wall. It did not surprise me the way he had hoped it would. I should never have told him about the painting.

"She is perfect," Gerard crowed. He rose and pulled me towards the canvas, propped up against the southern wall where she would be out of the direct sunlight. "Don't you think she's perfect?"

I'd never been this close to her before. In Alonso's library she'd hung high above the fireplace mantel, in the auction house above furniture and other pictures. In my rooms though I could make out every brush stroke across her flesh, every flawless inch could be reached by my hands. It made me want to weep.

"I've given her to you," Gerard continued. Pride tinged every syllable and I could feel a small knot of anger form in my gut. "She is finally yours."

"Go." My voice came out cold and hard.

Gerard looked boyishly astounded. "You-you want me to leave?"

I nodded, unable to trust myself to words. The anger rose up my throat and blocked out all the air.

He reached for his shirt and pasted an almost condescending look on his handsome face. I knew then I would never see him again.

"I understand," he drawled. "You want to be alone with her."

He kissed me but I did not feel it. I suppose I murmured a word of thanks for he left with a smile.

I was not alone when the door closed though. She was there, six feet tall and larger than life. I wondered vaguely how Gerard had managed to get her up the stairs.

I reached for her then, letting my fingers trail over the Braille of brushstrokes which composed her, moving close enough to see each swirl of colour, to smell the sharp tinge of old varnish on her surface.

She was beautiful. She was perfect. It was just as Gerard had said, just as I'd always felt, as I'd always known Alonso too had felt. The nude sprawled wantonly across the canvas was more alive than I'd ever been at any time. Only those few summer months in Valencia had ever had the power to come close and even then it had been because of her.

I understood then what Alonso's widow felt, why she had finally parted with his beloved painting. The hatred that I had was not for Gerard's foolishness, nor for the faded sting of a failed affair with my Spanish lover, not even for his cold and distant wife. It was for her. For her damn perfect, faceless body. For her lush, eternal youth. For the sensual joy she knew so clearly that the artist had been able to capture it. I hated her because Alonso had loved her, as he'd never loved me.

The first rip of the knife through the canvas sounded like a machine-gun in the silent room. When I was done it was little more than a frame and a pile of shredded canvas at my feet. That night, for the first time in fifteen years, I slept without dreaming of her, or of him.