Permis de séjour

At the moment the pain knocked me to my knees, I was in the Musée Picasso, looking at his “Self-Portrait Facing Death.” I had experienced kidney stones before, so the title of the drawing didn’t alarm me. In fact, looking up from the floor, I found the work arresting.

I shared the hospital room with a man perhaps ten years younger than I who had undergone surgery to replace a heart valve and had spent five days in the ICU. His mood was cheerful, all day the television amused him, and he enjoyed conversing. Visited by his surgeon, he threw his arms around the doctor and thanked him for renewing his permit to keep living. Permis de séjour.

My roommate was a chemistry teacher at a lycée in Drancy. “You know, Picasso was superstitious about making self-portraits,” he told me. “He was shaving when his lover announced that Apollinaire was dead. During the Spanish flu contagion of 1918. Picasso saw the shadow of death pass over his own face — and from that moment, he would never paint an image of himself.”

I didn’t want to disturb his jovial mood, but that morning I had collapsed in front of a self-portrait painted in 1972 just a year before Picasso died. “On top of that,” he said, “Picasso hated mirrors for the rest of his life,” and then he chuckled for a moment. “You’re mistaken about this rejection of self-portrayal,” I said, “perhaps it’s just something he swore at the time.”

But some tacit understanding between those recovering from procedures had been violated. Picasso’s image was drawn with crayons on paper. One of the staring eyes is partially filled with red.