Jerusalem Maiden by Talia Carner Page B

food basket. In the shade of an ancient fig tree, Pierre pushed away stones with the sides of his shoes, shifting rocks carelessly as he cleared space for the easels. Esther wished she could warn him that yellow scorpions shouldn’t be disturbed in their dens. Their upturned tails were deadly, worse than those of the black ones.
    Only when Pierre stopped kicking rocks did Esther relax. She stepped to a carob tree and picked a low-hanging pod whose bulging edges promised hidden delicious meat. Wiping the carob on her sleeve, she mumbled, “ Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who creates the fruit of the tree. ” Her molars bit into the hard edges, and the honeyed paste spread on her tongue. No wonder the prophets had been able to live in the Judean Desert on carobs and water alone.
    She didn’t offer the fruit to Mlle Thibaux; she couldn’t imagine her teacher’s graceful teeth crushing the tough carob. But Pierre came over and, imitating Esther, picked one and bit into it. His eyes shone with the delight of the discovery, searching Esther’s as if to signal a shared moment.
    She turned away. “May I set up the paint box?” she asked Mlle Thibaux, and before receiving an answer, released the folded legs and secured them with the leather strap.
    In her hands, the glass jars were cool, the engorged animal bladders supple. Esther cupped them, closing her hungry fingers around each one before setting it down. She uncorked the linseed oil and turpentine bottles, and as the mineral smells rose into her nostrils, pungent and delicious, the urge to paint took over, surging from the bottom of her stomach into the tip of each finger.
    â€œRemember.” Mlle Thibaux spoke to both Esther and Pierre, and her hand swept the world around them. “ En plein air also means no past or future, only the ‘now.’ As you take notice of depth and intersection of planes, of tension between shapes and colors abutting one another, experiment. No rules of what’s allowed, or how others painted before you. Oui? ”
    Esther sat on the farthest boulder. Intending to paint the landscape, she looked about her, but her attention was caught by her teacher.
    Mlle Thibaux had settled on a small cushion over a rock, her profile to Esther. Rapture illuminated her face. A curl that had escaped the pile on top of her head rested on her cheek, and her lips were slightly parted. Framing her head to the left was the end section of the wall, the barren rose-colored mountains behind it. To the right were the blooming almond trees and a patch of baby-blue sky. Against the large square stones of the wall, both eternal and vulnerable to time, the front of Mlle Thibaux’s neck was long and creamy.
    It took several trials to sketch the outline of her teacher. Then Esther picked up her smoothly sanded wooden palette and collected dollops of pigments. She selected her brushes, then began to fill in the white spaces, touching brush to paint, mixing hues, layering shades, dabbing on a bit more. . . .
    The folds of Mlle Thibaux’s full rust-colored skirt fanned over the rock in a play of textures, soft against hard. The green shirt disappeared under the deeper green, short Bavarian-style jacket trimmed with a woven ribbon of green and rust. Except for the blue of the sky, not one color slipped out of balance in the composition of rust, brown, green, beige and rose. Esther’s hand remained steady as it moved with feverish concentration. Drunk on fresh air, paint oil and the odor of dusty carob, she felt transported somewhere as near as inside herself and as far as God’s sky.
    Hours passed before Mlle Thibaux stretched with a lazy purr. Checking Pierre’s piece, she spoke softly to him. Esther dared not join the lesson even though she was curious to peek at his canvas. What subject had he selected? How did he use colors? The impatient boy in him, she imagined, couldn’t be