The beginnings of a collection
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Montdevergues, 7th of December 1943
A great deal of time had passed since I had recovered Camille’s last three pieces from my bribery with the guards, and in this sparse collection of five little sculptures I found more anguish than satisfaction. It was not that I had tired of them, but rather I had admired them with such spellbound fascination that I knew each of their tiny intricacies almost off by heart, and I needed something new to quench my soul, thirsty for fresh artistic demonstrations of similar calibre. Just like a collector who is fanatical about his hobby, I would neurotically go behind my house near to where the guards would carry out their wicked deed. But the weeks went by and there was no sign of them. Perhaps the most obvious thing to do would have been to go to them first, but I did not dare. Not only was I ashamed of my actions, bordering on the immoral, but I was also aware that my new position as highest authority at Montdevergues had seriously limited the permissions I could grant myself. Worse still, every time I bumped into one of the guards, especially the older one, I was sure I could detect a hint of disapproval and fear in his eyes. They certainly condemned my improper behaviour, much more so now I was the Medical Director of the asylum, and they probably felt slightly uncomfortable with being the only ones who knew about my slippery cowardice. So there was no other solution but to go straight to the creator herself, now that I had my private consultations with her again. Without frills, I went straight to the point as I suspected that Camille would be unlikely to swallow my coated remarks. She was too intelligent a woman to try to pull the wool over her eyes with just any old ploy.
-“It’s been a while since you last sculpted clay,” I said suddenly during one of our routine meetings, trying to bring it up casually.
Camille squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists in unison, as though she was using all her strength to unravel the meaning of my words. Her reflex time was surprising, and was surely down to her natural state of alertness that almost never left her.
-“What do you mean by that?” she asked, disgruntled, with her eyes still closed.
-“Well, it’s just it’s been a while since you made a figurine,” I stammered, already afraid I had chosen the wrong strategy.
-“How did you find out I make them?”
I let a few seconds go by before answering, now certain that I had done the wrong thing, and that going to the guards would not have been such a bad idea after all. Now I had no choice but to continue.
-“I saw a couple of guards smashing them behind my house,” I replied, truthfully, as I did not want her to find out I was lying about such a delicate matter.
Camille played distractedly with her dishevelled, brittle hair, taking a few steps away and turned her back on me.
-“They got rid of them...” she muttered, as if she was asking a question, or perhaps wanting me to answer with some kind of prophetic affirmation.
-“Yes,” I lied.
-“Everything’s alright then!” she exclaimed, turning to look at me again, almost radiant, and probably wanting to change the subject.
-“Why have you stopped sculpting?” I asked, fully aware that I was touching on an extremely uncomfortable topic for Camille, but impetuously indulging myself in my own infatuation.
-“I’m not allowed to. Perhaps Mathieu never mentioned it to you before he left?”
Camille turned to look at me in a defiant way. There was no doubt she suspected what my real motives were, then more than ever. I had to tread more carefully.
-“Yes he did. He told me everything. But the thing is even though you were forbidden, you carried on doing it...” I said in a quiet, shrewd voice.
-“Are you planning to make security even tighter so I am forced to comply with that wretched rule?
I did not speak for a few seconds. Camille was getting more and more infuriated. The conversation had gone down a very different path from the one I had envisaged, although I had known all along that her reaction was not going to be exactly good-natured.
-“Absolutely not, Camille, on the contrary, I want to encourage it. I would love to be able to watch you as you work, if I may,” I said, completely backing down.
Camille frowned and came at me violently as though she was about to attack me, or to spit right in my face. Instinctively, I cowered to protect myself like a frightened child.
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-“What do you want?! What are you trying to do?! Haven’t you all had enough! Wasn’t it enough to first exploit my studio, then my demise, and now my confinement in this prison!” she screamed furiously, waving her right fist in front of my face, using the “we” form that included me in the group I surely felt most comfortable in.
-“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to, I just...”
Camille turned her back on me again and withdrew to the small barred window, from which you could barely see the world outside. Her loneliness and listlessness had penetrated me to the very depths of my bones.
-“I sculpt the filthy clay that comes from the ground here just when and as I please. What a sin to try to imitate what I did when I was only a little girl! Just a couple of figures a year...” she garbled, not making much sense, as though talking to herself.
-“I will never, ever talk about the matter again, I am truly very sorry. I only wanted for you to feel well, to be able to help you. No one has to know that you sculpt; it would just be our little secret. This was all I meant by it, I promise,” I said, concealing the fact that I intended to enjoy the new figures for myself, the fruits of her imagination, and that I needed unlimited access to her unrivalled art now I had a taste of it.
-“I remember my first figures. Simple busts of my father, of my brother or of someone in Villeneuve. I remember the excitement and giddy delight I felt as I finished them and put them out in the sun. Only then...”
Camille’s voice was drowned out by a strange sort of sigh. She was talking aloud to herself, perhaps in the same way she had done a thousand times before, as she hardly left her room or talked with anybody.
-“Go on Camille, I’m listening.”
-“Then my father would look at them and stared at them wide-eyed for hours, and would tell me I was gifted, and that I would go far and that I was someone special. I went to bed with those words in my head, sobbing with emotion.”
-“Your father must have been a great man, I’m sure of it,” I said, trying to rebuild the friendly relationship between us again, as things had certainly gone off track a little.
Camille stayed transfixed at her small window, perhaps scanning the horizon in search of a place that still held on to a piece of her childhood that she remembered so fondly.
-“They only waited a week after his death to put me away. They waited patiently until he’d gone before they began cowardly scheming to lock me up. He would never have allowed it, he would never have tolerated such humiliation, such abuse of his favourite daughter,” she said in a quiet, crestfallen whisper.
I went towards Camille and, ever so delicately put my right hand on her shoulder. She stirred slightly, as though resisting my friendly gesture.
-“I can try and improve the situation for you here,” I said, just as Mathieu’s words flashed again in my mind. “Seeing as for now you have no choice but to stay in the asylum, it might not be such a bad idea to spend a little time on your favourite hobby. I don’t think it would do you any harm.”
-“No! No, no and no! You’re the same as Mr. Rodin and all his good-for-nothing entourage. You want me to work so you can steal my figures, to give them to God knows who and to sign them under a different name. I have had enough stolen from me already. I can’t create art in this hell, and when I spend an afternoon sculpting, it’s more like purging myself, nothing more. See to it, Mr. Faret, that every single one of my pieces are destroyed, or I’ll report it myself to my family,” said Camille lividly, enraged and menacingly.
I was terribly annoyed. My plan had failed, Camille for the first time did seem like a sick woman, and worse still, even if it was on purpose and slightly forced, she’d called me by my last name.
-“I understand, Miss Claudel,” I said dryly, and I left her room, shutting the door sharply after me without giving her chance to react. As I walked the galleries of the asylum, getting further away from Camille, I felt my heart beating wildly out of control.