Page 9 of The Velvet Hours
It was a delicacy to walk around with little clothing and not feel the cold breath of air. Her bathwater was sometimes so hot that she had to lower herself slowly and carefully—knees first with her arms propped on the sides—until her body was completely submerged.
The tub was porcelain with a sloped back on which she reclined. It was nothing like the barrel she bathed in when she had lived at home with her mother.
Afterward, when her hair was tucked underneath a cloth turban, she would sit down at her vanity and gaze at herself in disbelief at how much her life had changed since she joined the theater and metCharles. Looking at her reflection, she saw the face, the familiar blue eyes, the sharp nose, and pink mouth. These features had all remained the same. But around her there were comforts and luxuries that she still had to blink twice to believe were now hers to savor.
She saw herself in the many gilded mirrors in her new home. Her new narrative cast in glass, a beautiful girl that floated through the light and dark of her own memory, and the chiaroscuro of the floating world.
3.
Marthe
Paris 1888
She named her canary Fauchon. She took a housemaid, an able and bright-eyed girl named Giselle.
Her mornings were spent in a succession of baths. One in milk, then one in lime blossom, and a third in scented water using either almond oil or rose petals.
The linens, too, were washed in aromatic water. So that not only were her tangles with Charles accompanied by the perfume of flowers, her subsequent dreams were as well.
She considered preparing herself for this new lifestyle to be her full-time job. She lined her vanity table with face creams made from orchid petals and dusting powder made of crushed pearls, investing part of her monthly allowance from Charles for her own beautification and care.
As a child she had scrubbed her face with a lump of soap and a rag that was twisted and torn. But now she paid attention to everyadvertisement and searched the shelves at the apothecaries for salves and elixirs that would one day help her defy the passage of time.
But aside from her beauty regimen, Marthe allowed a few hours a day just to daydream. To imagine different ways of pleasing Charles. She had enough experience in life to realize that she would always have to keep things fresh for him. For the same reason women had come into the Gouget Brothers’ store looking for a new dress, Marthe believed if she were to continue to keep Charles’s interest, she would have to maintain a repertoire of skills, the more creative the better, for giving him pleasure.
She looked for inspiration in the places she knew the best. With Giselle, she searched the fabric stalls of the bustling market of the Carreau du Temple for materials she could use to create a special architecture for their bed. She caressed the fabric between her fingers, imagining how it felt against bare skin. It was one thing to lie against a downy white pillow, but quite another to arch one’s back over a velvet bolster piped in satin ribbon. Marthe imagined every detail. Colors and textures became yet another sensual language in which one could communicate in the theater of pleasure. And, still, she continued to expand her knowledge and skills.
She learned not only to secure her hair with combs, but also how to use her mane when it came undone. To sweep it against his bare chest or to use it when she kissed him, a decadent and playful veil.
But, most importantly, she learned that curiosity was never to be harnessed; it was hers to lead. She might feel uncomfortable sitting at a formal dinner, but in her butterfly bed, she was free to touch anything. To caress him with the softness of her thighs. To spread open her wings.
***
Marthe’s own curiosity grew, like a thirst or a hunger that needed to be fed. She became fascinated with the objets d’art that wereflooding Paris from the Far East. The delicate ceramics with their semitransparent glazes held a mysterious allure. She soon began to collect them.
The rooms that at first held one or two Asian porcelains, soon had ten or twelve on the shelves. She found a small shop near the Rue de Seine where the owner pulled out the long, slender vases from wooden crates lined in tea paper and straw.
Just walking into the shop brought her into a small frenzy. The air smelled of jasmine, and the interior walls were dark teak. The owner, a small, wizened man who was quiet as a crane, would cup each piece in his hands, then lift them gently for Marthe to admire, showing her how they shifted and changed in the light.
She began to collect the Kangxi blue and white porcelains that soothed her and reminded her of water and sky. She loved their inky landscapes of bamboo and pagodas. She admired the soft feathering of the artist’s brush. The glazes in celestial colors like celadon and moonlight blue.
She was attracted to the contrast, the way the porcelains appeared one way in the light and another in the shadow, for it mirrored the half-world she occupied, captured in her very hands.
She purchased with increasing frequency so that Ichiro-san, the owner of the store, soon sensed Marthe’s tastes and preferences. One afternoon, after he had shown her a precious vessel in the shape of a calabash gourd, its sensual hourglass shape meant to hold the liquor of immortality, he asked Marthe if she’d be interested in seeing something he reserved for only his best customers.
“Would I?” A smile flashed across her face. “What have you been keeping from me?”
“A collection of secret prints meant to inspire,” he whispered. “To delight.”
Her eyes grew wide as he fed her the smallest bits of information.
“Come this way, Madame de Florian,” Ichiro said, gesturing forher to follow him behind the curtain that separated the storefront to his personal quarters. As she passed through the curtain, she found herself in a small room with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Already, she could recognize most of the shapes and periods of the pottery. The Edo-period Imari, the yellow-glazed Tang horses, and the decorative Kangxi enamels that she so loved. But he did not reach for anything on the shelves. Instead he pulled out a portfolio and began to unwrap ties of silken cord.
What he revealed enthralled her.
“These are our images of the floating world,” he told her. “The art ofshunga.” His eyes floated downward. “Literally, the pictures of spring.”
There on rice paper were images of men and women in half-open kimonos, engaged in the many different acts of love.
