Lisette's List

by Susan Vreeland

  On a stone bench just outside the museum, Maxime and I had the same idea, and we enacted it instinctively, without words. My arm curled around his neck; his hand grasped my hip. We brought our faces close, our lips a breath away from touching, imitating the eternal love of Rodin’s lovers in our stillness. We held the pose, waiting for passersby to guess our play, which was not entirely playacting. An older couple coming out of the museum holding hands stopped and whispered, catching on, chuckling gently at first, then laughing outright, sending all four of us into gales of robust laughter. We were part of the theater that was Paris.

  In all the other things we did, André was our shadow companion, a gentle presence, neither raw nor guilt-inducing. I had Sister Marie Pierre and Maurice to thank for that. But our moment of playing Rodin’s lovers was ours alone.

  FOR OUR LAST NIGHT’S dinner, Héloïse took us to Café le Procope, in Saint-Germain, the oldest café in Paris. Countless times I had passed under its sign, which announced that it had opened in 1686, but I had never so much as rested one toe on its threshold. We walked through a red room floored in black and white tiles, past red upholstered antique chairs, up a sweeping marble staircase past portraits in carved oval frames, marble busts, tapestries, fireplaces, framed letters from famous writers and philosophers, all beneath chandeliers that threw a soft light onto the floor-to-ceiling gold-and-red striped drapery.

  “We have just stepped into the eighteenth century,” I said.

  “I adore this place. Robespierre and Marat ate here,” she said in a hushed voice, as though an emissary of Louis XVI might overhear. “See that red table? Voltaire used it as a writing desk. This place is history and theater and intrigue and philosophy. Despite the woes of Paris, despite suffering, to me it spells permanence.”

  Maxime rolled his eyes. “Enough, Maman. Think about what you want to eat.”

  “I don’t have to think. I already know. Truite meunière aux amandes. You must have it too, Lisette. It’s the fish of the gods.”

  I didn’t object. The trout arrived browned in butter under a scattering of toasted almond slices, complemented by white asparagus and potato sticks pont neuf, arranged like a bridge over a river, and garnished with a stuffed tomato and a radish tulip, dramatically composed, an art form framed by the wide gold embossed edge of the white china. Whenever she spoke during the rest of the evening, Héloïse cast a spell as alluring as the meal and the room itself. As a result, those were moments in which I did not think of Bella so sorrowfully.

  I recounted to Héloïse how cleverly Maxime had told Monsieur Laforgue to ask me about Chagall.

  “What was it that you were writing at his desk?” I asked.

  “Your name. So he wouldn’t forget when you come again.”

  “You have visited Maxime; now Maxime must visit you,” Héloïse said, glancing at him. “I’m sure Roussillon is lovely this time of year.”

  “Will you come to help me look in the bories? There are so many, and those stones are so-o-o heavy.” I said it with a touch of a whine, just how Maurice would have said it.

  “I would help you if they weighed only a feather, but not until I make a sale for Monsieur Laforgue or find one of his stolen paintings. I’m working on a good lead for one. Thousands are lost in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. It’s overwhelming. I’m determined to help him.”

  “When might that be?”

  “Impossible to say.”

  I slumped back in my chair.

  “You must understand it as my way to set things right.”

  I had to yield to that, his attempt to emerge from his dark journey by an irrefutable act. And I had to get on with my own search, my own resurrection of French art. Marc would have wanted me to.

  HÉLOÏSE LEFT US TO walk home alone through rain-washed streets glistening in the honey-yellow glow of the lantern-shaped streetlights. All of Paris seemed to belong to us, enchanting us, blessing us. Crossing back to the Right Bank on the ornate Pont Alexandre III, I felt so exquisitely joyful that if I did just a little hop there on the bridge, like Bella in Marc’s painting after the Russian Revolution, I might be carried up horizontally over the Seine, over the sculpted cherubs and nymphs on the bridge, over the double row of lampposts, their globes splendid with golden light, over the four Fames on pedestals, winged and victorious. Feeling Bella’s exultation allowed me to grieve for her less sharply. I dared to think she would have wanted it so. Was it being with Maxime or being in Paris or being with Maxime in Paris that did this to me?

  A beautiful thought winged its way to me on that bridge. In André’s dying cry of “Lisette!” he had given me to Maxime. So in Maxime, I still had André. There was no greater love than that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  YET

  1947

  AS SOON AS I ARRIVED HOME FROM PARIS, I BEGAN TO SEARCH the house for any more of Pascal’s notes. I dumped everything out of the desk and found notes of his encounter with Cézanne in Aix. I did the same with his dresser drawers and the pockets of every article of his clothing that was too tattered to give to the collection. I felt jubilant when I found in his satchel his account of what Pissarro had said about Pontoise. Certain lines struck me as significant:

  When a man finds a place he loves, he can endure the unspeakable.

  I suppose he meant the desecration of his home by Prussian soldiers or the women of Louveciennes wearing his paintings as aprons. What had I endured? The loss of André. Also isolation, deprivation, loneliness, heat, and cold, but I doubted if Pissarro would have even been conscious of those things in his passionate moments making art.

  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 akilter, even the pigeons dumping on the tile roofs—everything here moves me.

  Yes. I could imagine Pissarro thinking up that list. I found myself listing things in Roussillon and its surroundings that moved me—the panorama from the Castrum and the view from Bernard’s house as well, the humped rows of deep purple lavender in July, the grapevines heavy with fruit in September, the cooing of doves in pairs, the village after a rain when the colors of the buildings were intensified, the fragrance of fruit trees in blossom in spring, the times when I picked cherries and grapes, the calm after a mistral, even the quiet in autumn on the day each year when I realized that the cigales had stopped their scraping noise. And, of course, the people.

  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?

  Yes again. I felt the seed of that hunger growing. Listing those things I loved about Roussillon, as I had done once about Paris in a letter to Maxime, made me realize that I adored this village even though I had just come back from the only city I had once felt was worth inhabiting. Surely a woman, not just a painter, needs a place where she can nurture her individuality, where she can become.

  Pascal had told me more than what those scraps of notes revealed. I realized I would have to try to remember for myself all that he had said, so over the next days, I wrote down everything I could remember in whatever order the memories came to me. I sliced my pages into snippets, then put the slices in an approximate chronology and wrote them again, in order. Later, I found that I remembered more, so I went through the process once again, thinking often of Marc’s hope for the resurrection of French art, and my own longing that assembling Pascal’s memories would contribute to the art heritage of France. Finding my paintings was now more than a personal goal.

  I HAD TO FORCE MYSELF to wait through July and August, when the glaring sun made place de la Mairie into a heat trap, and the Sentier des Ocres a dangerous, scorching cauldron.

  But now, the first of September, I couldn’t wait any longer. Carrying Maxime’s battery torch and the pair of André’s shoes I had saved,
I left home in the morning coolness, wearing my old wooden soles as if it were any other day, except that I wore a pair of André’s work pants rolled up above my ankles, the pockets stuffed with socks. Now I did feel like a Parisienne disguised as a peasant, as Bernard had called me on the day of the flying sausages. Nevertheless, I walked with resolution down to the village center, up the incline at the other end, past the cemetery, to the Sentier des Ocres.

  This first time wearing trousers, I was annoyed by the itchy sensation of the seams rubbing against my inner thighs. I wondered if men felt that itchiness or if, like many things, one just grew used to minor irritations. But losing the paintings, part of the patrimony of France, was no minor irritation.

  I had very little to direct me in my search, except that the places where I had found two of them were essential to the character of Roussillon and its surroundings. The mine certainly was, as were the windmills that had once ground local wheat and olives. I wondered if a thief would have even considered the connection. Regardless of that, I went forward, since the ochre canyons made Roussillon unique.

  At the beginning of the treacherous descent I put on the two pairs of André’s socks to make his shoes fit and hid my own shoes under a purple sage bush. Not long after André and I had arrived in Roussillon, we’d explored a little way into the canyon, just as far as the wide basin, but I couldn’t remember seeing any obvious hiding places for paintings there. It was just a continuous sweep of rock. I knew I had to go deeper into the canyon than André and I had gone.

  It was early enough that the slant of light made the cliff appear to glow from within. The wide swirl of rock in the basin was grooved horizontally, the lowest part a swath of golden ochre, which became salmon-colored above that and was followed by a wide band of orange, red-orange, cinnamon, and maroon at the higher reaches. Occasionally there were splashes of bright, egg-yolk yellow, broad streaks of creamy white, and, for contrast, deep green pine and juniper foliage growing impossibly out of the rock. Was this modern art or ancient art? I stood and gawked, a tiny creature in this enormous, wavy bowl beholding its grandeur.

  I descended deeper where the canyon narrowed. A tall tapered pinnacle reminded me of the obelisk in the place de la Concorde. Quarrymen had scraped both sides of outcroppings, making them into thin, undulating walls, appearing sharp-edged at their tops.

  Farther down the canyon, openings in the cliffs could once have been mines. Some had iron grates across them. Others were too high for me to reach. I crawled up to one that I could reach by grabbing pine branches and trunks to pull myself up. I turned on the torch to peer in and it slipped out of my grasp and tumbled down to where I had stood. I had to slide down carefully to get it and crawl back up. I might as well have saved myself the effort. Nothing was inside.

  There was no single path for me to follow. Lesser paths and narrow passageways branched off to the sides. I went up each one as far as I could, shining the light into caves when I could get to them, and into vertical crevices of the fantasy formations, and then retraced my steps and pressed on. I lost track of time. The midday heat made me swoon, and the cigales making screeching noises in the hot air were jubilant about the headache they gave me. Rivulets of sweat ran in pathways through ochre dust along my bare arms. Would that they were a map leading me to a painting.

  Discouraged, I entered the mouth of a cave a little way up an incline just to rest in the coolness. Leaning against the rough wall, I dozed until the plaintive cooing of a mourning dove roused me. Just outside the cave opening, a pair of them were going about their sweet pecking business together, always aware of the whereabouts of each other. For a few moments, the world felt complete and harmonious. One flew off, and the other followed. Heartened, I proceeded with my search, crawling on hands and knees deeper into the cave.

  A pile of creamy rocks, either ochre or limestone, shone in the shaft of light from my torch. I crawled toward it and began to dismantle the pile. At the level of the ground, I touched rough cloth. A burlap sack! In it, the texture of a painting on canvas. I thought my chest would burst. I felt like shouting, like dancing, like flying. I chuckled at the absurdity that not only had I randomly wandered into the thief’s hiding place for shelter, but the evil thief had graciously provided a burlap sack. I brought it to the cave opening and took out the canvas. My ecstatic squeal brought bats flying out of the mouth of the cave. Cézanne’s Quarry of Bibémus hidden in a quarried canyon! How droll. Was this just blind coincidence, or was the thief teasing me?

  Clutching it against my chest in the sack, I slithered down the incline, landed on my derrière, and started off at a delirious trot. After some minutes, I stopped, bewildered. Nothing looked familiar.

  Retracing my steps, I couldn’t even find the opening to the cave. I wandered in one direction and another until I had to admit that I was utterly lost, confused, overheated, and frightened. The different angle of the sun had changed the colors and created unfamiliar shadows during the time I had been inside. The shadows of pinnacles now stretched across paths like grasping fingers. A dozen times I turned in a circle, panicked, feeling that stinging sensation behind my eyes that comes just before tears, and then I forced myself to stop and think. I would have to walk uphill to get out. With that logic, I took any opening between trees and rocks that was inclined uphill.

  The afternoon sun hammered on the top of my head, making me squint against its glare. Sweat dripped into my eyes and plastered my cotton blouse to my back. I rolled André’s trousers up above my knees for some relief from the heat. I felt nauseous, dizzy, on the verge of fainting. Then I saw only swirling gray shapes against black, and my mind went blank. I came to, sprawled on the ground, with my face buried in a clump of gray rockrose, not knowing how long I had been there. Slowly, colors emerged from the grayness of my vision, retreating, emerging again, pulsating. I put my head between my knees until the dizziness eventually cleared, and tried to swallow moisture to ease my parched throat, to no avail. What good was a painting when I could die of heatstroke?

  I remembered Pascal telling us to let the paintings care for us. All right. I would. I took the painting out of the sack to diminish the weight, held the stiff canvas over my head for shade, and rested until I felt steady enough to go on, stopping to catch my breath often, my upraised arms aching.

  Eventually, far ahead, the pinnacle that resembled an obelisk stood like a beacon. I let out a cry of relief.

  “Lisette!” I heard. Or was I hallucinating?

  “Lisette!”

  I kept climbing, holding the painting above my head.

  “Lisette!”

  Bernard came running downhill toward me, slipping and catching himself, holding an open umbrella and carrying an earthenware jug.

  “Oh, my darling!” he cried as he reached me and lowered me down onto a rock. “I saw your shoes and I hurried down. You should never have come here by yourself. Didn’t I warn you?”

  I set the painting aside while he poured water into the cup of his hand, and I slurped it up. He poured it over my face and head and throat and swished it down my arms, and I let him, vaguely conscious of a new intimacy.

  “I’ve been crazy with worry at the thought that you had come to harm.”

  I drank out of his palm again.

  “Not too much,” he warned. “You’ll need it as we go up.”

  “I found a painting,” I said weakly.

  “I see that.” He puffed out a breath and shook his head. “And I also see that you will go to extreme lengths—”

  “I have no choice.”

  “At least I get another look at those pretty knees.”

  Instinctively, I glanced down at them and found that bat guano had stuck to my knees and shins. “Ugh!” I cried, pulling my pant legs over them. His soft chuckle did not offend me. My exasperation with him was milder this time. In fact, I was grateful. When my breathing returned to normal and the water had cooled me, I let him pull me upright. He put the jug in my right hand and the umbrella i
n my left hand, closing my fingers around it. A memory of a man’s hand wrapping my fingers around the handle of another umbrella streaked across my mind, but I refused to allow myself to make a connection. Bernard carried the painting and took the liberty of putting his arm around my waist to help me walk uphill. I was too weak to resist.

  At the road up to his house I handed back the umbrella and jug.

  “Don’t think I’m going to let you walk home now. You’re coming to my house to rest and to eat something.”

  He let me wash in the bathroom sink. A working faucet! Warm water! Oh, what luxury. I saw myself in the mirror and shuddered. My hair was caked with orange powder, and dirt striped my cheeks and arms. A fresh bar of lavender soap lay in a saucer, making me suspicious that he had put it there especially for me. It was stamped with L’OCCITANE, just like the bar of soap he’d put in my lavender pot. I tried to reason what this might mean. If Occcitan was the former language of Provence, as Maurice had said, then occitane, ending with an e, might mean “woman of Occitania.” Was Bernard suggesting that I was that woman of Occitania? That he wanted me to see myself as such? That I belonged here?

  I soaped my face and legs and arms, filled the basin and dunked my head in, rinsing it as well as I could. But what to dry it on? It would stain his towel.

  “Don’t worry about the towel,” he said from the kitchen. “It will be my souvenir of today.”

  When I came into the dining room with wet hair and dirty clothes, he said, “You look radiant.” I felt myself blush, knowing full well that I looked bedraggled.

  He served us both poulet fricassée with small, whole onions, carrots, celery, and mushrooms in a lemon-and-nutmeg sauce. I ate ravenously.

  “My chicken never tastes this good. You are an excellent chef.”