It is never difficult to discover the whereabouts of famous men. “Renoir is at Essoyes,” I said. “That’s a small town about one hundred and twenty miles south-east of Paris, between Champagne and Burgundy. He is now seventyeight, and I’m told he’s in a wheel-chair.”
“Jesus Christ, Oswald, I’m not going to feed Blister Beetle to some poor old bastard in a wheel-chair!” Yasmin said.
“He’ll love it,” I told her. “There’s nothing wrong with him except a bit of arthritis. He’s still painting. He is easily the most celebrated painter alive today, and I’ll tell you another thing. No living painter in the history of art has ever received such high prices for his pictures during his lifetime as Renoir. He’s a giant. In ten years’ time we’ll be selling his straws for a fortune.”
“Where’s his wife?”
“Dead. He’s a lonely old man. You’ll cheer him up no end. When he sees you, he’ll probably want to paint you in the nude on the spot.”
“I’d like that.”
“On the other hand, he has a model called Dedée he’s absolutely mad about.”
“I’ll soon fix her,” Yasmin said.
“Play your cards right and he might even give you a picture.”
“Hey, I’d like that, too.”
“Work on it,” I said.
“What about Monet?” she asked.
“He is also a lonely old man. He’s seventy-nine, a year older than Renoir, and he’s living the life of a recluse at Giverny. That’s not far from here. Just outside Paris. Very few people visit him now. Clemenceau drops in occasionally, so I’m told, but almost no one else. You’ll be a little sunbeam in his life. And another canvas perhaps? A Monet landscape? Those things are going to be worth hundreds of thousands later on. They’re worth thousands already.”
The possibility of getting a picture from one or both of these great artists excited Yasmin a good deal. “You’ll be visiting lots of other painters before we’re finished,” I said. “You could form a collection.”
“That’s a pretty good idea,” she said. “Renoir, Monet, Matisse, Bonnard, Munch, Braque, and all the rest of them. Yes, it’s a very good idea. I must remember that.”
The lobsters were huge and delicious, with enormous claws. The Chablis was good, too–a Grand Cru Bourgros. I have a passion for fine Chablis, not only for the steely-dry Grands Crus but also for some of the Premiers Crus, where the fruit is a little closer to the surface. This particular Bourgros was as steely as any I had ever tasted. Yasmin and I discussed strategy while we ate and drank. It was my contention that no man was going to turn away a young lady who possessed the charm and the devastating beauty of Yasmin. No male, however ancient, was capable of treating her with indifference. Wherever we went I kept seeing evidence of this. Even the suave, marble-faced receptionist downstairs had gone all over queer when he caught sight of Yasmin standing before him. I had been watching him closely and I had seen that famous old spark flashing in the very centre of the pupil of each of his jet-black eyes, and then his tongue had poked out and had begun sliding over his upper lip, and his fingers had fumbled inanely with our registration forms, and at the end of it all he had given us the wrong keys. A scintillating and sex-soaked creature our Yasmin was, a kind of human Blister Beetle all on her own, and as I say, no man on earth was going to send her packing.
But none of this sexual chemistry was going to help us one bit unless the girl was able actually to present herself to the customer. Formidable housekeepers and equally formidable wives could well be a problem. My optimism, however, was based on the fact that the fellows we were after were nearly all painters or musicians or writers. They were artists. And artists are probably the most approachable people you can find. Even the very great ones are never guarded, as businessmen are, by iron-mouthed secretaries and amateur gangsters in black suits. Big businessmen and their like live in caves that can be reached only by passing through long tunnels and many rooms with a Cerberus around every corner. Artists are loners, and more often than not they open the front door themselves when you ring the bell.