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Overview
"A fantasia of a double tale skimming through the art capitals of Europe with double muses, double love pursuits, double Raphaels, even double authors, a tale dripping with idealized romantic settings, mystery, art, and a touch of magic, The Sidewalk Artist will keep readers wondering what is real and what is artifice--as fine paintings always do."
--Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue
While in Europe researching her next novel, twenty-something American Tulia Rose falls headlong into a romance with a handsome sidewalk artist. As he takes her on a tour of Europe's artistic treasures, she begins writing the story of the painter Raphael and his secret lover.
Yet as her own affair grows deeper, Tulia's sidewalk artist grows more mysterious. Why does he seem so familiar? And what is his connection to the great Renaissance painter?
Set in Paris and Italy, this lyrical first novel interweaves two parallel love stories, offering readers a unique view on the research and inspiration that goes into creating historical novels such as The Girl with the Pearl Earring and The Birth of Venus.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429902458 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 230 |
| Sales rank: | 530,354 |
| File size: | 438 KB |
About the Author
GINA BUONAGURO was born in New Jersey and now resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. JANICE KIRK was born and lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The Sidewalk Artist is their first novel.
Read an Excerpt
The Sidewalk Artist
By Gina Buonaguro, Janice Kirk
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2006 Gina Buonaguro and Janice KirkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0245-8
CHAPTER 1
This story begins with the rain
What truly moves Tulia is not the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral or any of the wonderful sights. It is the little things. A windowsill with a pot of geraniums and a glimpse of lace curtain, the way the sun glances off a puddle, the echo of her heels as she walks down a narrow cobblestone street, the taste of coffee at an outdoor café, the sound of children calling out to each other in French.
And this, this brief moment of rain, a sun shower. Sunlight spinning raindrops into gold. She raises her face to the blue sky, and the drops are cool against her skin. For her, rain has always held the memory of sadness, of loss — although she has never been able to determine why, or what it is she remembers.
The shower is over almost as soon as it starts, but its clean scent lingers in the air, and the sense of sadness is replaced by an equally mysterious sense of promise and renewal. She closes her eyes, the sun drying the raindrops like tears on her cheeks. She stores this moment close to her heart to bring out again on a gray autumn day in New York.
This sprinkle of rain like a blessing.
Smoke rings like afternoon halos
She almost missed the angels. She doesn't know how. But they are there when she opens her eyes. Cool and unruffled beneath the dappled shade of a sycamore, untouched by this short burst of rain, the angels surprise her. She would not expect them here among the vendors with their displays of T-shirts, postcards, and miniature Eiffel Towers.
The angels are enough to make her forget her aching feet and the gingko tree she just fell in love with in the botanical gardens. She has seen gingkos before but not one so magnificent, and she wishes not for the first time that her claim to a garden was more than a few pots on a concrete balcony Not that she has the hundred years it takes to grow a tree so grand, but to start one from a little seedling would be quite a legacy
Instead she will content herself with the pods of seeds she gathered from the garden's poppies in coral shades of pink, orange, and yellow. Already she can picture them, blooming among her cherry tomatoes and geraniums. Will she be allowed to take the seeds through customs? She wonders what harm could come if she did. Unleash a plague of poppies on New York? Hardly the thing disaster films are made of.
She loves Paris. With its wide tree-lined avenues, narrow streets of cobblestones, and parks and gardens, it is extremely walkable — and without the tall buildings of Manhattan, one can see the sky. She has come to like New York, her adopted city, but Paris has a less claustrophobic feeling — a sense that its link with the countryside has not been completely severed.
Until the sun shower, until the angels, she was looking for a bench where she could rest. She needed to decide whether to continue to the Louvre as planned or go back to the hotel and change her shoes. The cream-colored, square-heeled 1930s-style Mary Janes — an impulsive purchase the day before near the place Vendôme — were not made for hours of sightseeing. Ethan, for whom appearances are everything, would tell her to work through the pain as if she were running a marathon, but Tulia prefers comfortable shoes — and she thinks this is another difference between them that is irreconcilable.
The angels are familiar. Chins resting on plump hands, they look pensively toward an ochre-colored heaven. She stares at them again, reconsidering. Maybe pensively is the wrong word. Perhaps it should be contritely. With their mussed hair, it is possible these little angels have been up to no good.
This is no ordinary sidewalk scribbling. Rich layers of colored chalk have transformed this gray patch of pavement into a luminous masterpiece. It is the product of someone with real talent, genius perhaps, someone able to render a flat surface into something akin to flesh and blood — or in this case the divine.
His back to her, the artist kneels, adding clouds to the heavens with rapid strokes. A black beret bulging with coins sits next to the painting, and a man tosses some change into it as he walks by, his steps not even slowing. The painting is all the more fascinating for its fragility. In a few hours, the cherubs' delicate faces will be scuffed by uncaring feet, and a little rain is all it will take to return the sidewalk to drab concrete.
Tulia places a euro in the beret. She can't explain it, but it seems like the most important thing in the world that she let him know how much she admires his chalk painting. "C'est très jolie," she says, addressing the thick, dark ponytail that falls just below his shoulder blades. He wears black jeans and a black shirt, both soft-looking and faded with wear. Over his shirt is a tapestry vest embroidered with a wild tangle of birds, suns, and flowers. Its colors too have mellowed with time, but it is still beautiful.
"Thank you," he replies in accented English, not falling for her French for a moment and not looking up from his work either.
"You speak English?" she asks with relief.
"I will speak anything you like," he says, turning his head slightly and addressing her new shoes.
"Except for the little French I learned in high school, I'm afraid I only speak English."
"Your French is fine," he says, and while she appreciates his desire to be kind, she also knows he is lying. Still, she thanks him as a few more coins clink into the hat.
"It's Raphael, isn't it?" she asks. "The painting, I mean."
"That is correct. And it is kind of you to stop and notice," he says without pausing in his work. His fingertips are a mélange of chalky color.
"You must've been worried when it started to rain."
"It was just a sun shower, not even enough to penetrate the leaves." He blends the colors of the clouds with the side of his hand, and they become soft and full under his touch. "I saw you," he continues. "While everyone else kept walking, you stopped. There, I said to myself, is a woman who appreciates beauty. Do you know a lot about art?"
"I wish I did," she says, feeling a little self-conscious that he'd been watching her. "But except for one art-history class, my knowledge is pretty limited." There were of course the openings she'd attended with Ethan in SoHo, the memory of which always conjures up the image of a giant ball of human hair that looked like something a very large cat coughed up.
She only recognized the angels because they've been reproduced everywhere — on coffee mugs, Christmas cards, microwave popcorn boxes, even on the sign of a pool hall near the bookstore where she works, cues clasped between chubby fingers. In fact, they have been reduced entirely to cliché. But not these angels before her, vibrant as stained glass, seemingly as fresh and inspired as the originals Raphael painted five hundred years ago.
"Are there any Raphaels in the Louvre?" she asks. "I'm going this afternoon."
"There are a few. If you sit down, I will tell you about them. I am almost finished here, and some conversation would be very welcome. Besides, those shoes look lovely on you, but they must be killing your feet."
She laughs. "They are. I was looking for a place to sit when I saw your angels." Already the sun has dried the sidewalk, and the sun shower is only a memory.
"My coat is under the tree," he says. "Spread it out and rest there. I will be done in just a moment."
She accepts his offer gladly, sinking gratefully onto the outstretched coat. It is nice to have someone to talk to. Except for the desk clerk at her little hotel on the boulevard Port-Royal, she has hardly spoken to anyone in the three days she's been in Paris.
She slips off her shoes before pulling a water bottle from her shoulder bag and taking a sip. The water is warm and tastes of plastic. She watches the artist for a moment. His back is still toward her, and apart from his long, dark hair, she has yet to get a good look at him. What she can see is a well-sculpted, olive-hued cheek, a slender frame, strong chalky hands, and the glow of the embroidered vest that is almost as fascinating as the angels. The light draws out a galaxy of moons and stars and suns before a subtle shift makes them retreat into the background and a garden of flowers and birds takes precedence. She would love such a vest, but in all the hours she has spent perusing the thrift shops and markets of the Lower East Side, she has never seen anything quite so wonderful.
Lately Ethan has been critical of her clothes — her finds, she calls them — like the antique white lace blouse and short black velvet skirt she is wearing. In the midst of one of their arguments, he told her she looked like a Dickensian waif and wasn't impressed when she told him that was exactly the look she was after. She knows he would prefer it if she dressed more like her friend Jasmine. But she is not like Jasmine, who inherited her almost-supermodel looks from her mother, a Brazilian actress. On Tulia, petite and with all the curves Ethan once professed to enjoy, designer clothes only look wrinkled. Besides, she likes her old clothes for their comfort, softness, and sense of history and doesn't care if she looks out of place among Ethan's Wall Street friends.
It occurs to her now that she could have invited Jasmine along to Paris once it became obvious she wasn't going to persuade Ethan to come. Jasmine would like the shopping, galleries, and clubs, and it would have made for a less lonely start to her trip.
She lifts her heavy brown hair from her shoulders and lets the slight breeze cool her neck. She twists her hair and draws it over her shoulder, wishing she had put it up that morning. Another lesson learned, like the shoes. Sometimes she thinks the expression about hindsight being twenty-twenty was written just for her.
To her left is the busy street. Beyond the press of cars and pedestrians she can see the cafés and buildings that mark this edge of the Latin Quarter. A man begs at a street corner. He holds out his hat and keeps his eyes lowered. A girl drops a coin into his hat, but he does not look up, nodding his thanks almost imperceptibly.
On Tulia's right, a section of the wall that borders the sidewalk is missing, perhaps under repair, a piece of yellow police tape warning pedestrians of the drop to the walkway below. Perhaps that is why the artist has chosen this spot. From her place on his coat, she sees a barge making its slow passage along the river as if reluctant to leave Paris behind. Beyond is the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, its dark Gothic beauty an almost-absurd contrast with the brightness of the day. She has already been up its towers and seen its delightfully hideous gargoyles — maybe even looked out on the very spot where she is sitting now.
The artist is still working, an occasional merci punctuating his silence. She is not in a hurry for him to finish. She is content simply to rest and share his shade. She leans against the base of the tree and looks up, admiring the perfection of translucent green against blue sky, when a shaft of sunlight pierces the leaves and blinds her with its brilliance.
It is an echo of the sun shower. A moment of hope and promise. But more too, she thinks — a moment of belonging. Of being completely at peace with herself and the world around her. This feeling that has eluded her so often in the past now comes to her as she sits on a stranger's coat on the edge of the Seine. The light is so strong that she is forced to close her eyes, but she savors this strange and joyous sensation of light penetrating her closed eyelids. She breathes deeply, feeling the warmth of the sun deep inside her.
When she opens her eyes at last, she finds the artist watching her, and he too gets drawn into the moment. And as seconds ago she never thought the sky could be so beautiful, now she thinks she has never seen a man so beautiful. Eyes so dark, she sees herself not so much reflected in them as lost in them — and she is powerless to look away.
It is the sound of coins falling into the hat and bouncing out on the sidewalk that breaks the spell. She looks away, feeling awkward. "I am sorry," the artist is saying. "I did not mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I was just thinking how I would like to paint you. You have very lovely eyes, you know. Blue and smoky, like the morning sky."
Even more embarrassed, she looks up just in time to catch the glance of a pedestrian. He smiles at her and drops some change into the hat.
"You see," the sidewalk artist says triumphantly. "Everyone thinks you are beautiful."
She laughs at this ridiculous conclusion but blushes all the same. "It's not me," she says, gesturing toward the chalk painting. "It's your angels."
"Nonsense. It is you. They are just a couple of foolish chalk cherubs." The artist reaches for his pack, an old green army surplus one. "Now you must eat. You must be tired from walking, and you will need strength for the Louvre." He unfastens the straps and produces from its depths a bottle of rosé, a baguette, a piece of cheese wrapped in brown paper, and, most surprising, two stemmed wineglasses. He smooths out a white linen napkin, his chalky fingers turning their makeshift tablecloth into an Impressionist's canvas.
"Can you do the Mona Lisa?" A very large man with a smile to match addresses them through the viewfinder of his video camera.
The artist opens the bottle with a Swiss Army knife, and the cork comes out with a satisfied pop. "You need to talk to Leonardo," he says helpfully. "He is on the other side of the bridge."
The man laughs a little uncertainly and without leaving a coin moves on, navigating his way through the camera's viewfinder.
Tulia is pondering the artist's curious response as he pours the wine. It is cold, and condensation forms on the outside of the glasses. "I am glad you are here," he says. She likes the sound of his voice, rich and polished like old wood. "I was beginning to think you were not coming."
She shifts her attention from the sound of his voice to his actual words. "I'm sorry," she says, alarmed by this colossal error. "I think you've mistaken me for someone else. I'm Tulia Rose."
He is unfazed. "Tulia Rose," he repeats as if savoring the syllables. "Tulia. Very unusual. From the Latin meaning strong rain."
"My parents are a little unusual," she explains, surprised he should know the origins of her peculiar name.
"It is a beautiful name for a beautiful woman." He holds out a glass of wine. "Je suis très heureux de faire votre connaissance," he says carefully, so even she can understand.
She is even more confused now, but she takes the wine all the same. Did he mistake her for someone else? No, he couldn't have. He just said he was happy to meet her. Perhaps it was just a problem with the language. Maybe he meant to say something more like, I was beginning to think no one was coming, meaning he wouldn't have anyone to talk to. Still, it is a strange misunderstanding.
"Salut," he says with a smile as he touches his glass to hers.
"I'm pleased to meet you too," she says, taking a sip and thinking what a very nice smile he has. And if he is beginning to seem a bit odd, she doesn't care. She appreciates having someone to share a bottle of wine with, a chance to forget for a while why she is in Paris alone in the first place. She tries to guess the artist's age. Thirty? Forty? She can't tell, but she is sure he is older than her own twenty-five years.
"Des fleurs!" the artist exclaims, startling her out of her thoughts. "We need some flowers!" He sets down his glass on the napkin, looks up his left shirtsleeve, then his right. "Voilà! "he announces, looking back to her. Then, giving his sleeve a tug, he pulls out an enormous bouquet of perfectly formed red poppies.
"How on earth did you do that?" she asks, taking the proffered bouquet. The blooms are so fresh, she wouldn't be surprised if drops of dew still clung to the petals.
He shakes his head slowly. "If I told you that, chérie," he says very solemnly, "it would not be magic."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Sidewalk Artist by Gina Buonaguro, Janice Kirk. Copyright © 2006 Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Reading Group Guide
1) The chapter titles form a poem (see below). What does the poem mean? From whose point of view is it written? When are they speaking?
2) Tulia's present story influences the past story/her novel. Give examples of this. Also, how does the past story influence the present? Provide examples of this as well.
3) How does the sidewalk artist influence and steer Tulia's novel?
4) Find examples of how clues to the ending can be found right from the beginning of the novel.
5) What are the various incarnations of Raphael? Do you think one is more proven and/or truer than any other? Give examples.
6) What is the role of italics in the novel? Look especially at the love scene at the Tuscan villa as well as the epilogue.
**********************
This story begins with the rain
Smoke rings like afternoon halos
Drifting across rosy skiesAnd there you were
I almost forgot
The poor little angels
On the day balloons filled the sky
And then you were gone
Trying to fly
Lost in a maze of water and stone
I almost forgot
Angels rest in quiet places
Saying prayers
Singing songs too ancient to remember
I thought it was the end
On an island of wild roses
A new story begins
Hoping to reach you
I almost forgot
Where it all began
And begins again
Passing by vineyards
Where the sun sleeps
And dreams awake
Beneath Italian skies
Not soon shall I forget the day
I almost forgot
How I wept when I remembered
That summer died
The last time
We said goodbye
And tears fall
On the wings of angels
I'll never forget
Love
This story begins with the rain