Read Online White Truffles in Winter by N. M. Kelby - Free Book Online Page A

window: the sun appeared to be damp and the sunrise was merely vapors. It was haunting in a way Escoffier could not explain.
    â€œThankfully, he let me rename them,” the man said. “ Impression, Sunrise —is that not the perfect name?”
    It was. Escoffier gave the man fifty centimes.
    â€œMerci.”
    The brother entered the transaction neatly in a small ledger book. Escoffier could see that there were few entries on the income side. Notoriety had not brought profitability.
    If this were a restaurant, the man would be rich.
    Even though it was late, inside the studio the exhibit was crowded, although not many appeared to be from the “working class,” as the organizers had hoped. The majority of the crowd was composed of artists, none particularly well known, along with courtesans and actors. They were the type of people Escoffier often allowed to eat as guests at Le Petit Moulin Rouge—the “decorative people,” as he thought of them. Bohemians—gypsies of sorts—witty, attractive, charming and unconventional. They were amusing and essential to setting a tone in any dining room, especially the women. Without these women the restaurant would be filled with unhappy men. Respectable women were not willing to be seen dining publicly. At least, not yet. Escoffier was trying to convince the owners to add rose-colored lighting in the dining rooms. It would be flattering and soon all women would come to Le Petit Moulin Rouge. And come again. He knew that the civilizing presence of women, even Bohemian women, was key to success.
    At the exhibit, however, they seemed slightly menacing. Most of them were drinking. All of them were loud and boisterous. The walls of the room were painted deep red, like a pomegranate. People were even arguing over that. “Blood,” a man shouted. “The walls soaked in blood.”
    It all seemed rather ridiculous. They are their own theater, he thought.
    Whatever the shade was called, however, it provided the perfect backdrop for the work. Each painting, and there were many, stood in sharp relief to the color of the walls. Each stroke, each illumination, each intent and every nuance seemed heightened, like the sun rising in an angry sky.
    Escoffier, exhausted, made his way tentatively through the jumble of canvases and people. The rooms smelled of wet wool and sweat. The work astonished him. There was a wall of oils and pastels all hung at eye level by Renoir; ten works by Degas; five by Pissarro; three by Cézanne and so many by Monet that he clearly understood Renior’s brother’s plight.
    But he had never seen such beauty. Not even the most elegant woman cast in the rose-hued gaslight of a café could rival it. When he arrived at Impression: Sunrise , it was infinitely more breathtaking in real life than it was in the catalogue. He thought for a moment that he had fallen into a dream, a lonely dreamscape in orange and gray. It was everything Doré had told him Impressionist paintings would be. It was not like reality at all but more real somehow. It did not have a distinguishable line or form. And the color was not true to any color in life but its vibrant sun set against the dawn seemed to pulsate like the real sun in a universe yet to be discovered.
    The work took Escoffier back to those moments when he first came to Paris as a young man and sat along the river and waited for the morning to come. The painting made him feel as if the world was still filled with promise, as if he was at the exact moment when everything would change.
    It was as if Monet had harnessed the power of the sun itself.
    Impossible, he thought, but the more Escoffier looked at the painting, the more it seemed alive. After a time, a voice behind him, a woman’s voice, silvered and shining, said, “The secret is that there is no contrast in colors. The sun has nearly the same luminance as the grayish clouds. If Monet had painted the sun brighter