I Always Loved You by Robin Oliveira Page A

need and head to the Gare Saint Lazare, where they could easily find a hack to whisk them to the more convivial Zola’s.
    â€œOh no you don’t, Émile!” Degas roared. He turned to Berthe. “What time is it, Madame Morisot?”
    â€œNine o'clock,” she said, consulting the clock on the table that Degas could just as easily have consulted, but hadn’t, to make his point.
    Degas raised his eyebrows at Zola.
    Zola feigned nonchalance and secreted his watch back inside his vest pocket. “One must eat, as you well know, Degas, and they pay me for those articles, and in my defense, and to my visionary credit, I insist you admit that I have defended this group when everyone else has attacked you. Where is your gratitude? Besides, have you never decorated a fan, say, to feed yourself?”
    â€œYou know I have, but I don’t paint a critique of your writing to make money.”
    â€œHere is the difference between writers and painters. You are handicapped by your medium, paint, whereas a writer is a savant of sorts, using our more facile medium of words to inquire about and observe any subject. In fiction, we present a mirror; in critique, an opinion. The medium is the same: words. Just try to use paint to present an opinion. Our medium encompasses everything. Words reign.”
    â€œAs in poetry,” Mallarmé said, but neither Zola nor Degas paid him any attention, and Mallarmé sank into his chair, usurped.
    â€œ
My
medium is words,” Zola continued, pressing his point. “Yours is paint. Your medium is more limited than mine.”
    â€œ
My
media are paint and pastel, clay and copper, ink and press, a far more extensive arsenal than yours,” Degas said. “I look. I observe. I create. Opinion and mirror, both, about any subject I should wish to expose. What is my painting
In a Café
if not an opinion about the same people you write about in
L’Assommoir?
Or Édouard’s
Nana
, named after your character? The downtrodden workers, seduced by absinthe? But if you claim yourself a savant, I therefore declare
In a Café
a critique of
L’Assommoir
.”
    â€œThat’s absurd. You painted that picture first. And I’ll have you know I think a great deal of that picture. Truth incarnate.”
    Degas leapt up and made a sweeping motion with his hands. “
Messieurs et mesdames
, may I present Émile Zola, the most intelligent art critic in France,” he said, bowing as laughter filled the parlor, pleased with himself for having extracted a compliment that Zola had had no intention of bestowing, and even more pleased that he had confounded Mallarmé, whom he liked very much, but who could bore.
    So this, Mary thought, was what it was to be a woman at a party in Paris. One either fed the men or was consulted about the time, but was not expected to speak beyond pleasantries. And now she was a
stray
.
    She rose. “Messieurs Degas and Zola. I pose a question.”
    Silk and spring wool rippled in the room as everyone turned to stare at Mary. Berthe touched Mary’s hand, but Mary folded her hands in a deliberate parody of acquiescing womanhood.
    â€œIsn’t it true that to parse mediums like this is to claim territory? How different is your argument than the one the Salon uses to exclude my art or Monsieur Monet’s or even Monsieur Manet’s? If you examine what you think are your moral positions, you will see that they are probably no different from what goes on in the Salon hanging committee.”
    Degas said, “I only said that Zola claims the impossible when he says he is sovereign of both writing and art.”
    â€œMonsieur Zola has achieved fame for his novel
L’Assommoir
, while you, Monsieur Degas, were reviled by the critics for your
In a
Café
, even though both novel and picture addressed the same subject. Each was accepted differently by the public. In my opinion, Monsieur Degas, your portrayal