Lisette's List

by Susan Vreeland

  “Camille took me outside to see the view from his house. What he told me was important, so I wrote it down.”

  Pascal read from his paper slowly, contemplating each thought. “He said, ‘When a man finds a place he loves, he can endure the unspeakable. Pontoise was designed especially for me. The random pattern of cultivated fields and wild patches, the orchards that have given their pears to generations, the rich smell of this earth, the windmills and water wheels and smokestacks, the stone houses all a-kilter, even the pigeons dumping on the tile roofs—everything here moves me. I belong here as much as that stream by my house which runs into the Oise and then to the Seine and on to the sea. Everything is connected here. That stream quenched the thirst of Romans, even of Celts before them. When I paint it, they are a part of me. When I walk this land, there is a painting waiting for me around every bend. Isn’t there a hunger in every human being to find a place in the world that gives to him so richly that he wants to honor it by giving back something of worth?’ ”

  Pascal stopped speaking and folded his paper. I wanted to tell him that I agreed with Pissarro, but I would be referring to Paris, and saying so might hurt his feelings.

  “So I want to give something back to Roussillon,” he said.

  I nodded my understanding. What was true for him about Roussillon didn’t make it true for me. But the principle, that I could embrace.

  “And now I’m going to tell you about the perfect gift Camille gave me. In his studio I took another look at a group of paintings of a sprawling factory with several smokestacks that dominated the plain directly across from the Hermitage, the quarter in Pontoise where he lived after he left Louveciennes. Those paintings didn’t have any relationship to me.

  “ ‘How about this?’ Camille asked, and pulled from the back of the stack a small painting of a factory built of stone. ‘It’s the Arneuil paint factory in Pontoise,’ he said.

  “Then I recognized it! I had sold ochre pigments there! ‘That’s the painting I want!’ I said.

  “Come back inside, Lisette, and really look at it with me.”

  He had given this painting a space by itself between the two south windows. He stood transfixed in front of it, and for some time, we were not in the house. He was there, in front of the factory.

  Nondescript was what I thought of it, a word Sister Marie Pierre had taught me. The painting showed a blocklike building with a peaked roof, taller than the nearby houses set against a hillside of trees. The creamy yellow stone of the smokestack and factory caught the light and made the whole scene mellow. That was all I could see in it.

  “I like the color of the building.”

  “Jaune vapeur, we called it. Inside that building, at long lines of tables, dozens of workers turned raw pigments into paint and filled the tubes Tanguy sold to Pissarro, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and others—the hues we made in the furnaces of the Usine Mathieu, our factory right here in Roussillon, as well as those made from other substances. Red roots of the garance plant cultivated here in the Vaucluse, sap from Turkish trees, powders of blue stones from Siberian and Afghani riverbanks, dried blood of South American beetles that fed on cactus—all the colors of the world on their way to become paintings. I saw it, those colors.

  “In the meadow, there, in front of the factory, see, Lisette? The tallest man? I imagine that it’s me calling upon the purchasing agent.” He lowered his chin, as though a little embarrassed to reveal this.

  Right then I understood why Pascal had chosen that painting. Despite its ordinariness, it spoke to him of his purpose, his participation in the world of art, the link in the chain from mine to majesty, and therefore it merited being hung alone.

  I looked around the salle at his seven paintings. Was there any one that spoke to me of my purpose? What was my purpose anyway? It had to be something greater than shelling peas. But today, and in the days to come, it was to absorb all that Pascal was telling me so that I might impress Monsieur Laforgue. Beyond that, I couldn’t see.

  “Someday, Lisette, the world will love the jaune vapeur on that building.”

  “He’s famous now, this Monsieur Pissarro, n’est-ce pas?”

  “By the time Camille was an old man, his paintings sold well for high prices. I could never buy one then. He had a framer from the guild carve intricate frames and cover them with real gold leaf. He was far beyond what I could make or trade for.”

  “So you treasure them all the more?”

  “No, Lisette!” he bellowed. “Not because they’re valuable. I treasured each one the day I acquired it, for what it meant to me.”

  “Oh.”

  “That isolated paint factory makes my heart swell even today. Every miner I ever knew, every sore back, every day they never saw the sun, every choking breath, and every tongue caked with ochre dust—Maurice, Aimé Bonhomme, my father, and I swinging our pickaxes in rhythm all day long—all of that is in this painting. And it’s in the painting of the girl walking up the ochre path with her goat. And the history of Roussillon is in this one of the tile roofs of the Hermitage in Pontoise. Those roofs are stained red-orange from Roussillon pigments. And the red ground and the row of bushes aflame—that’s Roussillon red-ochre. That may not mean anything to you now, but if you had lived here all your life and had seen those miners come home filthy and exhausted, it would.”

  I THOUGHT HE HAD finished talking for the day until I heard him murmur, “Red Roofs, Corner of a Village, Winter.” Then “Le Verger, Côtes Saint-Denis à Pontoise,” as if one title wasn’t enough. “Six roofs, ocre rouge. Five chimneys, jaune nankin clair. Six fields on the hillside behind—vert foncé, green so rich and dark it must have been spinach growing there; ocre de Ru, pale, like wheat; ocre rouge; vert de chou, the light green of a cabbage; rose earth; and the duller olive green, vert Véronèse.”

  He found another sheet of paper, sat down at the small desk, and wrote down the colors.

  “Why are the names of colors so important?” I asked.

  “Because God conceived of those colors, and we mined the ochres that made them! Because there is holiness in color. It’s the queen of art.” His voice exploded with exasperation. “Because I don’t want to forget when … when I go on.”

  Oh my, what I had caused him to think.

  We were quiet awhile, until I asked, “How many frames did you have to trade for Red Roofs?”

  His head sank slowly until he was looking at his lap. “The number didn’t matter.”

  The effort it had taken to make me understand had exhausted him, and he rose and grasped the railing to pull himself upstairs to bed.

  But I was understanding, at least a little. I remembered how much importance color held for Sister Marie Pierre. Once she sent me across place de la Concorde on some errand, and when I returned she asked me what was the color of the hollows of the hieroglyphics carved into the Egyptian obelisk.

  “I don’t know. Gray!”

  “Don’t just tell me gray. Gray is a noncolor. Strictly speaking, the Impressionists never used it.” She motioned with her arm that I should go back out.

  Fuming, I grabbed my coat and walked the distance again. When I got back, I reported, “Green-gray on the south side, yellow-gray on the west side, violet-gray on the north side, and blue-gray on the east side.” Then she was pleased, but I remember having taken secret delight in including the word gray in each color.

  ANDRÉ CAME IN THE door with his lips turned down at the corners and his eyes downcast as well.

  “What? No frame shop in Avignon?”

  “He doesn’t know of any. Maybe I can get some furniture repair work.” He took a weary breath. “I’ve been to the post office.” He held out an envelope, but he seemed painfully reluctant to let go of it.

  “Who could it be from? Maxime!”

  He had already opened it. I yanked it out of the envelope, skipped the salutation, and read:

  I hope you are well and enjoying the warm south. Without you here, I have been in a definite s
lump until early this week when I sold a painting in Galerie Laforgue. It was a dancing harlequin with a sad face by André Derain. Monsieur Laforgue had been away for a few days, and when I told him the news, he was elated. So elated that he took on a woman as an apprentice gallery attendant, I regret to say. That threw me back into a slump again. To celebrate the sale, he took me to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to see Josephine Baker dance wearing only a skirt made of bananas, but after having seen it before, I thought it had grown stale. I’m sure it was due to my mood. I had hoped he would hold off hiring anyone until you came back. She may not last long. She’s haughty, overbearing, and opinionated, though she does have a good eye. I’m dreadfully sorry, Lisette.

  I have hope for Pascal’s swift recovery and for your quick return.

  Your friend, Maxime

  André put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, too.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANDRÉ’S GIFT

  1937

  FOR DAYS, I COULD HEAR ANDRÉ SAWING, POUNDING, AND sanding in our courtyard, working until dark. He had told me not to come out there. He had even closed the shutters so I couldn’t look out the south windows. Even so, the aromatic scent of freshly cut pine told me what he was doing, and it wasn’t making a frame. Still feeling ashamed for creating trouble, yet full of pride in his grandson’s resourcefulness, Pascal knew too.

  “André loves you,” Pascal said.

  “I know.” Never for a moment did André let me feel unloved or taken for granted.

  “We want so much for you to be happy here.”

  “I know that too.” I arranged a plate of apricots and peaches on the table in front of him, but I felt compelled to offer him something more.

  “When I was seventeen and still living with the Daughters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a nun found a position for me in a fine pâtisserie. On that first day I was supremely happy learning the names of the pastries and smelling almond, vanilla, and cinnamon, but she told me two things that morning that I will never forget. ‘No matter where life takes you,’ she said, ‘the place where you stand at any moment is holy ground. Love hard and love wide and love long, and you will find the goodness in it.’ ”

  “She’s a wise woman. Camille would have agreed.”

  AFTER MORE THAN A WEEK, André invited us out to the courtyard. There it stood near the edge of the cliff, just what I had suspected but hadn’t dared to say in order not to spoil his joy in surprising me. An outhouse, complete with a peaked roof. The door, facing over the cliff, had a window and shutters, like a little cottage. André stood back proudly and gestured for me to open the door. Inside was a wide smooth bench attached to the side walls at about knee height, and a smoothly finished square wooden toilet seat, contoured with rounded corners and dovetailed joints, varnished. And square.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t make an oval.”

  “André! It’s beautiful. It’s like a frame!”

  “Well done, André,” Pascal said.

  André had hung a sprig of dried lavender under the roof beam for the unveiling. How thoughtful, this husband of mine.

  “Go in, go in,” André urged. “Just pretend.”

  I stepped in. Sticky tears of sap seeped out from the freshly milled pine, my tears of gratitude made solid. Then I looked down. The pit he had dug wasn’t very deep.

  André closed the door and said, “Turn around. Sit down.”

  He opened the shutters. Laid out before me was a valley of the Vaucluse, our département in Provence, cut by canals, dirt roads, and rows of cypress trees, France’s fertile Garden of Eden. There were vineyards and orchards on hillsides, and vegetable plots and rows of lavender in the valley. Beyond, the mountains of the Luberon. A grand panorama.

  “It’s like a painting in a frame.”

  I stepped out. “But what do you do with …?”

  “Dig it out. Or I’ll dig a trench, and we’ll use a bucket to wash it down the cliff once in a while.”

  “That is what we Roussillonnais do,” Pascal admitted.

  And do the Roussillonnais go outdoors to their outhouses during the monstrous thing called the mistral, or in the rain? Or at night? It wasn’t perfect. It would never be perfect here, but André had done what he could, and I loved him for it.

  “One more thing.” Grinning, André reached around the corner and presented me with a square board with a raised edge, the corners bisquited the way he joined them for his frames, a little larger than the seat and as smoothly sanded and varnished. He turned it over and set it on the seat like the lid of a box. “Voilà! A cover.”

  “Carved!”

  “A fleur-de-lis, for my Lise.”

  “Oh, André! How good of you. It’s exquisite.” He had carved away the wood around the fleur-de-lis so that the bloom was rounded and raised above it.

  I laughed. “I never thought I would ever say I loved a toilet, but this one, André, I do love.”

  “No one else in Roussillon has an outhouse as haut bourgeois as this,” Pascal said. “You could start a business here.”

  “Ah, how the mighty have fallen,” I said. “From making frames for the painters of Paris to framing village derrières.” I gave André a sympathetic look.

  “Let’s go to the épicerie before it closes. I want to buy a new roll of toilet paper.”

  We all set off. How straight I stood at the counter announcing proudly, “One plump roll of toilet paper, s’il vous plaît.” It felt marvelous to make the proprietor wonder why we were all grinning. A moment later, I blurted, “For our fine new outhouse.”

  “Ah! Oui! Certainement!” He pointed to one roll after another on the shelf, then held them up and turned them for my inspection as though they were works of art. We left the store laughing.

  As we approached the café on the way home, I said, “Let’s celebrate with a pastis. Maybe we’ll find Maurice there.” I pulled André along toward the door. Pascal looked alarmed.

  I parted the hanging beads and peeked in. There were no small round marble tables with black wrought iron bases like those in the cafés in Paris, only rustic wooden squares. There was no mirror behind the bar. And though the café was full, there was not a single woman. But there was music playing from a radio, Suzy Solidor’s deep voice singing a tango—the sound of Paris.

  “Lisette, we had better not,” Pascal said.

  Several men stood quietly at the bar. Others sat at the tables having lively conversations, drinking the rosé produced here or the milky pastis in tall slim glasses. Group by group, I realized, they were scowling at us. André tugged at my elbow, and I stepped away from the door. He turned me toward home.

  “Men only,” said Pascal. “Women don’t go to the café.”

  “Ever?”

  “On rare nights with their husbands when Monsieur Voisin shows a movie, or in the afternoon to refill a wine bottle for supper.”

  “Is there some law?”

  “Tradition.”

  “Well, it’s provincial. Primitive!” I cried in the most disgusted tone I could utter. All my earlier elation vanished.

  André looked stricken. “I’m sorry, Lisette. That’s the way it is here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PASCAL’S LIST

  1937, 1885

  I WOKE UP VIOLENTLY SCRATCHING A SPIDER BITE ON MY ANKLE.

  “Don’t scratch. It will only make it worse,” André murmured.

  Five minutes later I was sitting up and digging at it again. I shook out the sheets and quilt to try to find the culprit and pulverize it in retribution, but no luck. That black beastie was sly and would live to bite again.

  It was a Monday, so André was going in Maurice’s bus to scour Avignon again for any carved furniture repair work he could do at home. Except for a few rainy Mondays, he had been going every week throughout the summer, convinced that he would find something.

  Pascal had kept to his bed the day before, but he came downstairs when we heard Maurice call, “Adieu, mes chers amis!”<
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  I opened the door wide. “Adieu, Maurice.” I giggled self-consciously at what seemed so strange coming out of my mouth.

  Pascal said, “Come in. André has something to show you.”

  “Do you like our village, madame?”

  “It’s very quaint.”

  “Oui. C’est la Provence profonde.”

  I was amused. He had adapted the expression la France profonde, which referred to rural central France as the soul of the nation, to his own province, naming Roussillon as its soul and center.

  They all went out to the courtyard, and I followed, not wanting to miss the lift of Maurice’s exuberant eyebrows.

  “Merveilleux!” he cried.

  Pascal gave him a little push. “Look inside.”

  “Oh là là! Such a thing in Roussillon. A window too! A room with a view! And the symbol of France.”

  “With my Lise’s symbol,” André said.

  “Provence will have the last laugh over Paris. A stream of people will come to see. But madame my wife. Non, non, non.” He shook his head, his hands, his jowls. “We must not tell Louise.”

  In this gossipy village, she would find out sooner or later.

  He held up a chubby index finger. “Me, I must christen it, non? It is a long ride to Avignon. Ha-ha. As we say in Provence, madame, I had better change the water of the olives.” Nimbly, he stepped inside and pulled the door closed. “Quel trône! Fit for a king.”

  Pascal chuckled. “A throne. He called it a throne, André. The pope in Avignon would have been jealous.”

  Outside once again, Maurice let out a long, breathy “Ah.”

  Laughing, Maurice and André started downhill to the bus stop, smugly whistling.

  I EMBARKED ON A thorough housecleaning to get rid of any nests or hiding places for wicked little creatures. I swept up mouse droppings and grit from the last mistral. I carted buckets of water from the faucet in place de la Mairie and set to work scrubbing the red tile floor. On my hands and knees, I discovered a black widow spider’s thick web and her white egg sack within it on the underside of the kneading table. Furious, I chased the ugly little devil around the edge of the floor until I had smashed her flat, thinking of the she-devil with a good eye who had taken my position at Galerie Laforgue.