At the Edge of Summer полностью

I have learned his technique and, with the Red Cross, am setting up a studio here in Paris to help French soldiers in similar circumstances (called here mutilés). I’ve made some adjustments to the process—enamel paint offers more lifelike tones of color—but follow Lt. Wood’s general method in sketching, casting, sculpting, hammering, and finally electroplating the copper mask.

I have been looking for artists who pay great attention to life detail and who have the compassion to work amongst disfigured soldiers. I have seen your pencil drawings in La Galerie Porte d’Or and, Miss Ross, I believe you have both qualities.

I will be in London next Tuesday. Would you do me the honor of meeting with me? I would like to speak to you more about the opportunity to assist me in my work. Helping these soldiers is such a small thing for us to do, but for them, it is anything but small.

Sincerely, etc.

These days it was hard to feel like art mattered. When men were giving themselves, giving their youth, giving their life, when women were waiting and praying, I was painting. I was sculpting and drawing and creating, as though there wasn’t a war, as though my creation could counter all of that destruction. None of what I was doing signified outside of the art school. Anna Coleman Ladd was doing something that did.

I remembered the soldier I used to see waiting in the hospital, self-conscious with his ill-fitting rubber nose. If he’d had the chance to instead wear a work of art, would it change things for him? Would his world seem a fraction less dim?

“You’re meant to do this, Clare,” Finlay said. “You’re more than an artist. You’re a warrior.”

“You’re the one who’s been to battle,” I pointed out.

“And you’re the one who’s saved me.” He kissed me on the forehead. “Now, go. Go bring another man back to himself.”

The soldier stood in the threshold of the Studio for Portrait Masks. The room was bright, but he kept to the shadows.

Mrs. Ladd tried to keep the soldiers at ease and the studio cheerful. The phonograph in the corner, the sun-streaked windows and skylights, the little vases of peonies tucked here and there, warmed the room. Posters and flags were tacked between the windows—a large American flag, for her, and smaller British and French flags, for the rest of us working in the studio. It was a bright spot in an otherwise somber city. Three months after the war ended, Paris was still recovering.

Usually, the soldiers sat in little groups, laughing, smoking, playing checkers and drinking wine. Some were waiting for appointments. Others had nowhere else to go. Since being demobilized, too many lived on the streets. They begged for food, drink, a place to warm up. Here, at least for part of the day, they had all three. But, more than that, here they found people who understood. They found other soldiers just as broken.

This new one, though, he came alone, lurking in the shadows of the hall, not quite stepping into the room. They all did on their first visit. Once fearless in the face of a trench wall, they were now afraid to even step in the light. Light revealed what had become of their dreams of glory.

“May I help you?” I asked in French. Not Parisian French, but the French I’d learned in Africa, tinged with the warm, open sounds of Arabic.

He didn’t answer. The way he kept tugging on the brim of his calot, keeping a hand near his face, the way he kept his head down—he was a man used to shadows.

I couldn’t see his face, but it had to be shattered. Here, they all were. These soldiers who came to the studio, they were missing ears, eyes, parts of their faces. More than that, they were missing parts of their souls.

“Are you here for a mask?” Behind me, sculptors bustled about with plasticine and brushes and tins of enamel paint. A soldier lay back with his head resting on a table as Mrs. Ladd carefully coated his face with white plaster. Another stood in front of the mirror, looking, for the first time, at the copper mask covering the ruined half of his face. “Let me show you our work.” The phonograph played “La Madelon.”