She stared at me in disbelief. “Oh God. He was in prison!”
“He spent three decades in prison because he murdered Richard Quigley. I imagine he killed Billy, Joy Springtoe’s fiancé, too.”
She put her hand on my arm. “Oh God, Mischa. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Joy had read all about it in the local papers at the time, so when we got back I did some research myself. Coyote had another life. In fact he wasn’t even called Jack Magellan, he was called Lynton Shaw. I suspect he killed Billy during the war because he wanted to be sure that Billy wouldn’t come back and dig up that painting. Then, when the warehouse and our home were broken into, he knew who did it and what he was looking for. That’s why he left, to track Richard Quigley down and silence him. For a man so devious and clever, I’m surprised he got caught.”
“You’ve suspected for some time, haven’t you?”
I nodded and sighed. “It was the only plausible explanation. Why else would he not have come back? What baffles me, though, is why he never told us. We could have visited him in jail. At least I would have known. I wouldn’t have felt so let down.” She shuffled through the postcards, scanning every one.
“He might have been a terrible fraud, Mischa. But look at the postcards, they all say ‘tell Mischa.’ Every single one. I think the reason he didn’t tell you and your mother where he was is obvious. He didn’t want to disappoint you.” I picked them all up and began reading through them again. She was right. Every single postcard was written for me. “You had put him on a pedestal. He was this magical man who had given you back your voice and your self-belief. If he had told you the truth, you would have lost all trust. Maybe he thought you’d lose your voice again. I don’t know.”
“I loved him like he loved the Old Man of Virginia. He knew what it was like to love an illusion and probably what it was like to lose him, too. He didn’t come to my office for the Titian. He came for me.” I felt my stomach flip over with excitement. “He found me because of the painting. Because we had been in the papers. My mother held on to it for all those years, hoping he’d come back for it. That’s why it hurt her so much to give it away, because it meant that she was giving up hope he’d ever return to her. When he did, however, it wasn’t for the painting. He came back for me and my mother. Don’t you see?” I gripped her hand. “That was what he meant when he said he was ‘chasing rainbows.’ You can’t bring back the past. We had moved on. My mother had died. He’d rotted away for thirty years hoping to be reunited, but his dreams were nothing but rainbows. Christ! I turned him away.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Claudine reassured me.
“I thought he wanted money. But he wanted his son.” I put my head in my hands, my excitement turned to nausea. “How can I find him?”
“You can’t.” She shook her head. “Unless he finds you.”
That night I sat by the open window and played “Laredo.” I hoped by some magic the wind would take it to him so that he would know I had never stopped loving him. He had been Lynton Shaw, Jack Magellan, a thief, a fraud, and a murderer, but he had been Coyote to me. Coyote with the sharp blue eyes, the mischievous smile, the big loving heart, and the voice of an angel.
I was happy to move to New Jersey, for New York had grown into a city of hopelessness. In the face of every homeless man I searched for Coyote. Each time, my hope was ignited only to be snuffed out when the eyes of a stranger stared impassively back at me. We bought a pretty white clapboard house with a picket fence and set our roots down with the flowers we planted. I opened a shop and called it Captain Crumble’s Antique Store because I secretly hoped that he might come looking for me. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, that I always had. That, in spite of everything, my love was the only thing that had endured.
We settled down, bought a dog and got to know our neighbors. Then one windy August morning I received a package. It was large but light. I recognized the writing. It was from Esther. I tore open the brown paper and pulled out a guitar. My heart faltered a moment. It was Coyote’s guitar. With a palpitating heart I read her note:
Dear Mischa.
This came for you. God knows why you should want it. You don’t play, do you? It’s hell in New York, too hot, too crowded, too hurried, too lonesome without you. Cheer up!
Esther
I was too stunned to even smile. I searched among the paper for a letter, a note, anything from Coyote, but there appeared to be nothing. I sat down and started to tune the guitar. My fingers were trembling to such an extent that I could barely keep them on the strings. I could feel him in the notes it played. Hear him singing, his voice carried across the years on the wind that brought him to Maurilliac that late summer day. And then I saw the note, hidden in the body of the guitar. It was small, white, and written in a barely legible scrawl. “This once belonged to the Old Man of Virginia. Treasure it, Junior, for now it belongs to you.”
I felt my throat constrict and my eyes sting with tears. I strummed with emphasis and sang “Laredo,” just to prove to him that I could.
So we took him down
To the green valley
And played the death march
As we carried him along
Because we all love our comrades,
So brave, young, and handsome.
We all love our comrades
Even though they done wrong.
Touchstone
Reading Group Guide
The Gypsy Madonna
Introduction
“I expected to find the provenance of the Titian. I never expected to find myself.”
On her deathbed, Mischa Fontaine’s French mother, Anouk, reveals a momentous secret to her son. For more than three decades she has been in possession of an uncatalogued Titian painting known as The Gypsy Madonna, a priceless work that she is donating to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in their adopted home of New York City.
Anouk’s revelation sends Mischa on a journey into the past. Shadowed by memory, he recalls his childhood in a war-torn village in Bordeaux, the disappearance of his German father, the townspeople whose hatred of him and his mother escalated into a violent encounter that rendered him mute, and the sprawling château where Anouk worked as a hotel maid. He also remembers Coyote Magellan, an enigmatic American guest at the château, who fell in love with Anouk and freed Mischa from his silence. The three journeyed to Coyote’s home in America, where Anouk and Mischa began an enchanted new life…until the day Coyote mysteriously vanished.
Hoping to determine the provenance of The Gypsy Madonna, Mischa returns to Bordeaux in search of answers. Here he uncovers his mother’s closely guarded secrets, learns precious details about the two fathers who abandoned him, and rediscovers the one person who can free him from a cynical and lonely life.
Questions & Topics for Discussion
1.
In the Prologue, Mischa reveals that he is angry with his mother for never having told him about her Titian. Why does Anouk not share this secret — as well as several other important aspects about her past — with Mischa, especially in light of their close relationship? Does Mischa eventually come to understand what drove his mother to keep these secrets? Why do you think Anouk held on to The Gypsy Madonna for so many years?
2.
Discuss the novel’s narrative structure, which shifts between the present and the past. How does this technique allow the author to heighten the suspense in the story? In what ways does it offer further insight into the characters, Mischa in particular?
3.
Why do the townspeople of Maurilliac, including those at the château, treat Anouk and Mischa with such disdain? Is their behavior justified in any way? Why does Anouk insist on attending Mass even though it means enduring the hostility of the villagers and Père Abel-Louis?
4.
Why does Coyote’s presence in Maurilliac and his public support of Anouk and Mischa change their standing in the town? What is it about Coyote that has such a powerful effect on the people around him? Wha
t does Mischa derive from his relationship with Coyote?
5.
“It was a few moments before I realized that the angelic voice was my own,” recalls Mischa about once again being able to speak, an occurrence he attributes to Coyote’s “magic.” Why does Mischa get his voice back? How does he overcome the psychological factors that have rendered him mute for more than four years? What part does Coyote play in bringing this about?
6.
How does the behavior of the townspeople change once Mischa is able to speak? Why are they afraid of him, and how does Mischa use this fear to his advantage?
7.
Compare Anouk’s and Mischa’s lives in Maurilliac to how they are received and treated in Jupiter, New Jersey. Even as a six-year-old child, does Mischa understand that he has been given a chance to start a new life?
8.
Why does Coyote not reveal his whereabouts to Anouk and Mischa after he disappears? How does his disappearance compare to Dieter Schulz’s or other traumatic events such as their near murder in the Maurilliac town square? What is the significance of Anouk’s continuing to set a place for Coyote at the dinner table?
9.
“I took my mother’s love for granted, but I measured myself against his,” says Mischa. Why is his self-image so intertwined with his love for and reverence of Coyote?
10.
What is your overall impression of Coyote? Did your opinion change as the story progressed and more details about his character were revealed? Once he learns more details, does Mischa’s opinion of Coyote ultimately change? Why or why not?
11.
Why is Mischa unable (or unwilling) to sustain a committed romantic relationship? Why does it take him decades to realize that Claudine is the woman he loves? When Mischa arrives at Claudine’s house to collect her before leaving Maurilliac, he recalls, “I felt physically powerful but almost crippled with fear. I couldn’t tolerate life without her.” Are Mischa’s feelings for Claudine based on more than love? How so?
12.
What motivates Mischa to seek out Père Abel-Louis when he returns to Maurilliac? Is it a desire for revenge or something else? What does Mischa take away from the encounter?
13.
“I owed him nothing — he owed me an explanation and thirty years,” says Mischa about Coyote’s unexpected visit to his New York City office. Why does Mischa turn Coyote away without allowing him to explain where he has been for thirty years?
14.
Mischa’s quest to uncover the provenance of The Gypsy Madonna takes him on a journey into the past and leads him back to Maurilliac, where he relives his childhood and delves into his mother’s past. How does the power of memory play out in the novel, especially for Mischa?
15.
Strolling the streets of Maurilliac on his return, Mischa realizes that he is “a different person now, at least on the outside.” How does Mischa view the town and its inhabitants differently now that he is seeing them through the eyes of an adult? In what ways have both Mischa and the town not changed?
16.
Discuss the novel’s ending. Do you suppose Coyote comes back to visit Mischa? What is the significance of Coyote sending Mischa his beloved guitar?
A Conversation with
Santa Montefiore
What sparked the initial idea for The Gypsy Madonna? Did it start with a character, a scene, or something else?
I read an article in the British press during the D-day celebrations. It was called “The Forgotten Victims” (of the liberation of France), and it featured an interview with a man in his late sixties who was a boy during the war in a small town in Bordeaux. His mother fell in love with a German officer who fathered him, and at the end of the war his mother was paraded in the town square, shaved, branded with the swastika, and tortured. He described how he grew up in a climate of anger and disgust, bullied, tormented, and isolated. The interviewer commented that he still spoke with a stammer. That article broke my heart and compelled me to write about it. I have a three-year-old son, which made the story all the more distressing for me, as I identified with the mother. How could grown-ups inflict such pain on an innocent little boy?
You mention in the Acknowledgments that you take an annual holiday in France. What is your favorite part of the country? Have these trips inspired The Gypsy Madonna’s French locale?
I went to Bordeaux a lot as a child, but I’ve since been to the Riviera and Provence. I love the South of France in particular, and I find the French an intriguing lot. These trips made the book much easier to write, as I understand the French. I always base my books in places I know well, as I like to be able to get under the skin of the country I’m writing about.
Part of the story takes place during and following the German occupation of France in the 1940s. How did you make certain to not only capture factual details about World War II but also to convey less tangible aspects, such as the feelings and emotions of the townspeople in the postwar years?
It’s much easier to write about the war than one would imagine. For a start, there are plenty of people still around who lived through it, and they all have wonderful, colorful stories. There are shelves of books and videos based on the war, too, which are invaluable. However, I would say that the most useful film I saw was The Blue Bicycle, which is based on a book I also read, and a book called Wine and War, about how the wine families survived during occupation, which was fascinating.
Was it a challenge to write a novel with a male protagonist?
No. I thought it might be, but writing in the first person was so much fun after having written my previous five in the third person. I settled into Mischa’s shoes rather easily, actually. I don’t know why. I just felt him come alive as I wrote, and I began to think like a man. It must have helped having a son. I think I’ve always been able to empathize with characters in film, whether they are male or female. I have a rather overactive imagination! It was so easy writing Gypsy that I tried to write the following book in the first person, being a woman, and it didn’t work! It’s a one-off, I think.
How did you so skillfully render Mischa’s experiences as a child? Is this the first time you’ve told a story partly from a child’s perspective?
It’s the first story I’ve written in the first person, although I have written about children in all my other books. I love children and understand them. Now that I have my own, aged five and three, I think I have an even greater understanding and empathy. I wrote this book from Mischa’s point of view because I wanted to make Coyote enigmatic. If I had written it in the third person, I might have felt compelled to go into Coyote’s mind and that would have taken away his mystery. The reader sees Coyote only through Mischa’s eyes. In the garden with Madame Duval, does Coyote really see Pistou, or does Mischa believe he sees him because he wants him to? I enjoy a little magic, and writing from the little boy’s perspective allowed me to indulge. Pistou was very dear to me, as I have seen spirits all my life. They are around us all the time, and you’d be surprised how many children see them. The secret worlds of children fascinate me — at what stage do we lose our wonderfully vivid imaginations?
When constructing a plotline, do you generally think of a narrative as linear, or is it more like piecing together a puzzle? How about for The Gypsy Madonna in particular, which has a fair amount of twists and foreshadowing?
I would love to say I plan my novels down to the last twist — I don’t. I have my basic plotline, which is linear, and then I dive in. I do enjoy stories where you begin with a grown-up and then flash back to his past. This has been done a hundred times, like the film Titanic, for example, or The Man Who Would Be King. I then followed my nose. I had no idea when I started writing that Mischa would fall in love with Claudine. I put her in the childhood section, and then when I wanted Mischa to have a love story of his own, she seemed the logical person. It was fun to bring her back, especially married to the ghastly Laurent! I didn’t plan Captain Crumble’s Curiosity Store, n
or Mischa’s trip to Chile. I look on a book as an adventure, and I go down the most interesting path and see what I find. The fact that it all ties up together in the end is a fluke! The Laredo song was a big fluke. My husband has always sung it to our children, so I gave it to Coyote, as it’s wonderfully romantic and sad. Only at the end of the book did I realize how appropriate it was. The cowboy was Coyote, and I never saw it until that moment. “We all love our comrades even though they done wrong.”
Mischa tells Matias and Maria Elena, “I love old things. I like to feel the pasts that lie within them. They all echo with the vibrations of the people who owned them and the places they’ve sat in…. I love to run my hand over the wood and feel the heartbeat, because they do beat, you know, if you listen.” Do you share Mischa’s affinity for antiques? If so, do you ever imagine their stories — who owned them and where they’ve been?
I share Mischa’s belief that things vibrate with the energy of the people who owned them. I love old things because they all tell a story — like people with rich and extraordinary pasts. I heard a story once of a man who bought an antique desk at auction and when he got it home he discovered a secret drawer that contained a diary of the woman who once owned it. The diary was a jewel of adventure, intrigue, and skullduggery. I’m enchanted by secrets and mystery, as we all are.
Are you an admirer of Titian’s work? Which is your favorite painting?
I do like Titian, but I’m a Rafael girl at heart. I chose Titian because The Gypsy Madonna was such a great title and worked so well with the book. There was another Titian that I considered, Sacred and Profane Love, but its name was too long and complicated that I knew no one would ever remember it!
Is writing fiction a form of escapism for you? Do you write the kinds of books you also enjoy reading?
Writing is definitely a form of escapism. I dive into a world of which I have total control. I can allow my imagination to flow and take me to wonderful places. I do write the sort of books I enjoy reading, although my ability pales in the brilliance of some of the authors I admire, like Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. I read nonfiction, too, which I’d never be able to write, and historical fiction, like Philippa Gregory’s, which I love but couldn’t begin to do myself. I know my limitations. Ultimately I write for my own pleasure. The moment it becomes a bore, I’ll quit!
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