France, 1940
Chaim Soutine wakes with the sun, feeling awful. His joints are stiff, his guts wound tight about the crucible of his belly. The seething crucible has come close to boiling over from his anger at his lover Marie-Berthe and his abiding sense of dread. His condition is not helped by Monsieur Crochard’s sulfuric coffee, which he sips lest he insult his host. Otherwise, he has a flaming itch to be painting again. He thanks Crochard and, leaving the cottage, is reminded of the roll of charitable souls who have given him shelter over the years. Sadly, his gratitude flickers out before it’s properly set alight. Still, Chaim remembers that his friend Garde once called him fortunate, and Garde was never wrong. “I am a fortunate man,” he says aloud, catechizing himself as he steps out into the bright new morning, but saying doesn’t make it so.
What is truly fortunate is that Chaim has left his materials for the sake of convenience in Monsieur Crochard’s hay barn. He sets up his easel outside a fold wherein the cabinetmaker has penned his single lamb, Desirée. Chaim has never understood the French habit of naming animals you plan to eat. He has also left unanswered the question as to when and why his own preference in beasts has shifted from the dead to the quick. In any case, by offering her a succession of the dried butter beans he scooped from a jar in the barn, he induces Desirée to hold an approximate pose...
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