Ed Lacy - Enter Without Desire

Mary wrote me faithful, insipid letters, sent me packages of stale cookies every week. I sent her perfume, sent Kimball a bottle, and one to my mother—all purchased with packs of cigarettes.

In a sense, Paris was a school for me, with Bonard my teacher. And I studied hard—read everything I could about Rodin, buying pictures of his works, going over them with Bonard.

I imagine Bonard was more amused by Sid and myself than really interested in our work. He could drink two or three quarts of wine at a bull session, and he had a secret supply of wine which he flatly refused to share with us.

“Waste of time, waste of wine. You Americans and your hard liquor—always in a hurry. Wine is a slow sensation, a long delight. Hard liquor, that's for idiots who receive no sensation unless hit over the head. Like I see your soldiers running after the girls on the Pigalle... push, push, and it's over.”

“We're a very sexy bunch,” Sid said, kidding him. Both Sid and myself were so damn scared of getting a dose we left the street-walkers alone.

“Americans understand sex the way you understand wine. You get no satisfaction. In the old days a man went with a woman, even an ugly man and a dumpy woman, and they enjoyed each other. But today the movies have ruined young people. In France too, but especially in America, where the movies are more a part of life.”

“What's movies got to do with it?” I asked.

Bonard fixed his watery eyes on me. “You go with a woman but are you thinking of her? Bah! Her arms are around you and her eyes are closed, but she is seeing Clark Gable, Boyer. And in your mind you are with a Jean Harlow, Mary Pickford, Rita Hayworth or...”

“I don't know about Mary Pickford,” Sid said, winking at me.

“I saw you wink!” Bonard roared. “A wink—shallow as your work, you have not the heart or understanding for art! For you art is like a woman. You Americans, always chasing, hoping in the next woman to find the full enjoyment you do not have with this one—and only because you are thinking of the next, instead of the woman you have.”

“That's too complicated for me,” Sid said. “Bet you were hell with the gals in your day.”

Bonard kissed his fingertips. “Ah, my youth, when there was true love! The dancing of Avril and La Goule in the Moulin Rouge, the singing of pale Yvette Guilbert. Or sitting at the Chat Noir, with Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec... the lucky ones, the sons of the rich.”

“Stop it, old man,” Sid said. “That was about 1880, make you at least eighty now.”

“You dare call me the liar?” Bonard screamed, clutching his wine bottle, but looking around for something to throw.

It was a wonderful way of sitting out the war, working hard during the day and believing the maps, your work, was important... spending all my spare time with Bonard. For a time Sid was cool to me. I think he was jealous of Bonard's interest in my work. Sid had reached his art level long ago, a mediocre level, and while he was still the better sculptor, I was progressing and he was standing still. He started hanging out with the other GI's, which was okay with me, since I had Bonard all to myself. One evening the old man asked, “When will you have a free week-end?”

“Get a three-day pass most any time, I think.”

“Good. It is time you work from a model.”

“You mean a live model?”

Bonard groaned, pulled his beard, said in French I had the sense of a mule's rear, then added in English, “The purpose of a model is to get the breath of life into your work. For a death mask we need the lifeless, for now you need the living—a nude woman.” The old man puffed on a cigarette, waited for me to say something.

I didn't know what to say. Finally I said, “Okay.”

Bonard banged his big hands together. “The croak of the idiot... okay, okay, okay! Mon Dieu, you show no interest. I, an old man, am wasting precious time with you!”

“Sure I'm excited. How do we get a model?”

“I will bring the model, a great-grandchild of mine, Yvonne. Her face leaves much to be desired, but the lines of youth are in her body. Three days of intense work in my studio. Of course, it will not be cheap.”

“How much?”

“One carton of cigarettes for her mother. At least two cartons for Yvonne—she needs clothes. As for myself, I only ask two cartons—and some cans of rations, so we may eat as we work.”

Bonard had been smoking (and selling) my butts for months. I shook my head, said, “Take me a month to save that many. Can't we do it for less?”

“Yvonne has never posed before, it will take much pleading for her mother to trust the child in my care. Your friend Sidney, it would do him no harm to stir his lazy soul, strain his small talent—join us for a week-end of work.”

I told Sid about it that night, and at first he wasn't interested. But after a lot of sales talk on my part, he agreed. We went through our outfit borrowing cigarettes, telling everybody we had a terrific “shack job” coming up, mortgaging our PX rations for the next two months.

We arrived at Bonard's barn on a Thursday night with the butts, cans of C rations and boxes of K rations, candy bars, a couple bottles of coke, plus a bottle whose label claimed it was cognac.

Bonard soon had a hot meal going and, as usual, his bottle of wine. Yvonne was disappointing: a sullen, horse-faced thin kid about IS years old, she was dressed in her worn best, ate greedily, and never spoke.

After supper, she immediately went to sleep in a room at one end of the barn as Bonard showed us our straw beds, set up the work tables, helped us make two small wire armatures. He had managed to get fifteen pounds of raw clay, which was wrapped in a dirty, wet cloth.

The old man was in one of his talkative moods. For the tenth time he told us about his true love—a laundress who'd been the best can-can dancer in the Montmartre. He went into modest details about his ability in bed, the firm body of the laundress... while Sid and I numbed ourselves with cognac, which tasted like a poor-grade shellac. When Sid began to yawn, Bonard shouted, “Sleep, idiot, it is a waste of air to talk to this generation! Sleep may give cleverness to your fingers tomorrow—surely nothing else will!”

Sid stood up, a little angry. “Time magnifies everything, even your sex life. Bet you couldn't even pay your way into that laundress' bed.”

Bonard staggered to his feet, looking around madly for something to throw. As he reached for the armature on my table, I grabbed him, said, “Easy, he only jokes.”

“Jokes!” Bonard slapped his flowing beard, suddenly pointed a fat finger at us. “I tell you one thing that is no joke—I have never been a pimp!”

“You've had too much wine, old man,” I said. “Nobody said you...”

He pointed toward Yvonne's stall-like room. “I will stand no funny business with her, understand? She is in my trust.”

Sid burst out laughing. “You have no reason to worry, not with her.”

I grinned. “As you said yourself, she is only a child with a face that leaves much to be desired.”

“I warn you, for your sakes, the little one is well able to protect her honor.” Bonard took a last swig of wine, staining his beard and killing the bottle. “Now we sleep the good sleep.”

Sid and I lay on our straw beds, listening to the old man snoring, the running of mice—sorry we hadn't thought to bring mattress covers along. To my surprise I slept well, without battling any bugs.

The morning was muggy and after a quick breakfast, we started working the clay. At a nod from Bonard, Yvonne mounted a box, fumbled with her dress, let it slip to her feet.

She stood there, blushing a bit, and she was still a scrawny kid, but the lines of her thighs were soft, and her tiny breasts two delicate buds. Stepping out of her dress, she told Bonard to fold it neatly, then he had her move about till she found a relaxed pose she was able to hold for five or ten minutes at a time.