The Lost Carousel of Provence

by Juliet Blackwell

  For now, all she can think to do is to carve. Maëlle returns to the job site and inspects the carousel figures for nicks and scratches sustained when they were mounted onto the mechanism. They are now speared through by their metal rods, which are then inserted through the floor and ceiling and attached to the cranks that will make them prance.

  As always, Maëlle hears the laughter of children in her mind as she works. But the Clements have no children. They have been married for years, without being so blessed.

  Who will ride this beautiful carousel, then?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  PRESENT DAY

  CHTEAU CLEMENT

  Cady

  All evening, Cady felt like the proverbial kid waiting for Christmas morning. She had never actually had that idyllic experience, but she was sure that if she had, it would have felt like this. She could hardly enjoy her meal, so excited was she to lay eyes on the carousel that Gustave Bayol had carved for Fabrice’s grandparents.

  Afraid to spook Fabrice, she was careful not to mention it as they savored their trout Provençal.

  “Did you enjoy it?” she asked, as Fabrice used a piece of bread to sop up the remaining sauce on his plate.

  “C’est pas mauvais,” he said with an inclination of his head.

  “From you that’s high praise indeed,” she said. “Fabrice, would you tell me more about your work with the Résistance during the war? I’m so interested in that period of time.”

  He looked into the depths of his white wine, which glimmered golden in the firelight.

  “I was just a kid, fooling around.”

  “A screwup?”

  “A screwup. It was like I was playing a game. Little did I realize . . .” He trailed off. When he declined to say anything more, Cady cleared the table, scraping the fish bones into the trash.

  “You should take the trash out so it doesn’t stink,” said Fabrice, standing and grabbing his crutch. “And if you still want, I’ll show you that carousel.”

  Cady slung her Leica around her neck.

  They went together to the garbage cans, and finally over to the building that housed whatever remained of the carousel. Fabrice struggled with the rusty padlock for a few minutes, and then asked Cady to step in and help.

  The large, barnlike door creaked as it opened. Inside, the pitch-black was interrupted only by the weak light of the moon struggling through a few high, dusty windows. There was a stench of old soot and rodents.

  “There’s no electricity out here,” Fabrice said, as he and Cady cast their flashlight beams around the interior.

  At first Cady saw nothing more than the hulking dark blobs she’d noted through the window. But then she realized that under and behind other junk—tarps and random pieces of lumber, a broken chair, an old wheelbarrow—were the remains of an antique carousel, damaged, dismantled, its parts scattered about the building.

  And sitting toward the rear of the building was the main mechanism, the running floor and overhead crown marred by several gaping, charred holes—but essentially intact.

  Only two carousel figures, a cat and a pig, still remained affixed to the floor, poles running through them. One was an outside stander—a figure that did not move—and the other an inner row jumper. Several other animals were scattered about the dusty building, their seams splitting, joints loosening. She also spotted something that must have been a spinning tub, and another piece that might have been a rocking carriage.

  Overhead, the flashlight illuminated a once-grand rounding board—the “crown” of the carousel—with alternating painted panels and carved shields. The center room, which traditionally housed part of the mechanism of the carousel and sometimes the band organ, was also covered in panels—some painted, others mirrored. All appeared to be nearly black with soot and dirt, any color lost to the elements and the night. The salon show front had been dismantled and the parts appeared to be leaning against opposite walls.

  Cady approached an intact portion of the carousel, reached out, and ran her hand over the pig. His sweet face tilted to look up at her, tongue sticking out, big floppy ears inviting a child’s touch. During the day, in good condition, it would have been charming; now, in the dark, encrusted with dirt and soot, it seemed almost nightmarish, as though it might come alive and give chase.

  She found the telltale brass shield on its saddle blanket: Bayol’s factory had made these figures.

  Cady had taken hundreds of photographs of carousels, and had seen plenty of the individual figures being repaired and worked on, but never had she seen a carousel dismantled and disassembled, charred and left to deteriorate like worthless junk. It hurt her heart.

  She lifted the Leica that hung around her neck and started snapping. She disliked using a flash, preferring natural light, but in case this was her one chance to take photos of this gravely wounded carousel, she wasn’t going to pass it up.

  “I’m telling you,” said Fabrice, shaking his head. “I had someone look at it a long time ago. It’s been looted, besides the fire damage, and there was water damage after that. It would cost more than it’s worth to have it restored. And there’s no way to get back all the original figures.”

  “Nonetheless, these are worth something,” Cady said, her voice low and reverent, as though they were in a church. This was history beneath her fingers. Sooty, grubby history.

  “Maybe they used to be, but look at them now. Just trash.”

  “No, Fabrice, they’re not. They just need a little—or a lot—of cleaning, and some basic repair. They’re worth the effort. They were carved by the House of Bayol, in Angers.”

  “So?”

  “Bayol is said to be France’s most famous carousel maker. He was a sculptor, an artist.”

  “Why should that matter to me?”

  “Because they’re valuable.”

  “Like I said about the signed books I have, I don’t care. I have what I need. I won’t be around much longer, anyway. Your boyfriend can cash these in, I guess, if that’s what he wants.”

  “My boyfriend?”

  “Jean-Paul.”

  “He isn’t my boyfriend.”

  “Not what it looks like to me. Anyway”—he turned around, casting the beam of his flashlight on the figures, but not entering beyond the threshold—“this just seems sad to me. It was all built for my father, Marc-Antoine.”

  “He was the only child of Yves and Josephine, right?”

  He nodded. “Sounds like you know my family history pretty well.”

  “Just trying to keep the characters straight.”

  “The way I heard it was that they had this thing built before my father was even born. I guess they wanted to fill it with kids, but it didn’t happen that way. And Yves spent a fortune on it, not realizing he would need the money later to maintain the château through an economic downturn and then World War I.”

  “But Marc-Antoine must have loved it. And the village children used to come here for festivals.”

  “You’ve been here, what, less than a week? This town loves to talk.” His beam rested on the old rocking carriage, a rose carved over its opening. “You really think you could do something with this old thing?”

  “It’s a job for a conservator. There are professionals who could—”

  “I don’t want any so-called professionals. If you want to clean this thing up, you can do it. Just you.”

  “I would need help, though. What about Johnny? It would be a perfect project for someone like him. And Jean-Paul, of course, if he would agree to help.”

  He snorted, but said: “Fine. You, the kid, and Jean-Paul. But I don’t want any more strangers around; if you want to call in ‘experts,’ then wait until I die. After that, you could probably talk Jean-Paul into letting you do whatever you want. But until then, no outsiders on my property.”

  “Fabrice, you
know Jean-Paul cares about you, right? And yes, he’s worried about what will happen to the château, but it’s really not his fault that he’s next in line to inherit. Or that his grandfather is a jerk.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just that . . . this carousel seems like a metaphor. Everything beautiful and innocent is ruined.”

  She photographed the pig, the cat, and the carriage from several angles, wondering what the harsh light of the flash would uncover when she developed the film. Often the camera revealed things that her naked eye did not notice.

  “How did it catch on fire, do you know?”

  Fabrice remained quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. But finally he said: “My father said his mother—my grandmother, Josephine—used to ride this machine at night. A lot of the people in the village thought Josephine had been unfaithful. . . .”

  Cady snapped a few photos of the spinning tub.

  “There was a problem with the steam engine, when the wrong kind of kerosene was used. Josephine’s body was found here, after the fire was put out.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cady said, snapping photos of the rounding board overhead. “What a tragic accident.”

  “Some said my grandfather went crazy with jealousy and lit the thing on fire while she was out here. They thought he killed her on purpose.”

  Cady froze. Slowly, she lowered her camera and looked at Fabrice. His face was sketched with strange, strong shadows and planes from the flashlight beams.

  “Did your father believe that?”

  “All I know is that this is what a dream looks like after it’s turned into a nightmare.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  PRESENT DAY

  CHTEAU CLEMENT

  Cady

  Cady was wide-awake at six, anxious for the light of day.

  She was excited to tell Jean-Paul that Fabrice had shown her the carousel, but her cell phone didn’t get reception, and she didn’t feel like she could chat freely on the telephone in the kitchen. Also, she was expecting Johnny to arrive early today for work. She would have to catch up with Jean-Paul later.

  At the crack of dawn she dressed warmly and brought her camera bag outdoors. She propped open the large doors of the building and assessed the remnants of the dream in the clarity of early morning, white light slanting in through the high, dust-caked windows.

  As usual, the daylight was better for her photography, but harder on the imagination. The haunted romance of the carousel had dissipated with the night; in its place was a complete and total mess. Cady felt a flicker of self-doubt. Maybe Fabrice was right; was there even anything to salvage under all this grime?

  She laid out her cameras, settled in behind the first lens, and started clicking.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Johnny arrived, Fabrice directed them to a storage closet where they found fans, masks, and gloves left over from his earlier repair efforts. They brought their supplies to the outbuilding, opened the windows, and positioned fans to create a cross-breeze.

  Johnny leaned against the outside of the building, brought a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket, and lit up.

  Cady gave him an exasperated look. “We just set up these fans to save our lungs, and now you’re going to smoke?”

  He shrugged and gestured toward the interior with his head. “It’s just a bunch of junk.”

  “That’s what it looks like at first, I know. But a lot of junk only needs a second chance. Put out that cigarette while we’re inside, please.”

  Grudgingly he did so, then followed her into the building.

  “Check this out,” Cady said, leading him across the floor of the carousel to one of the interior panels. She used a rag to wipe off a corner. “There’s a whole painting under all that soot. See it peeking through?”

  He squatted on the other side of the painting. “What do you want me to do, wash it off?”

  “No, unfortunately it’s not quite so simple. If you use soap and water it can actually get under the oil paint and cause it to flake off, or leave a foggy residue, called a ‘bloom.’” It had been a while since Cady had cleaned old oil paintings with Maxine. She didn’t want to do anything drastic, such as removing the varnish and risk removing original paint along with it. At first, at least, she wanted only to remove the soot to reveal the underlying painting. “We’ll need a special solvent. I don’t suppose there’s an art supply store in Saint-Véran?”

  He looked confused.

  “That’s a joke. I’m joking. Surely they’ll have something in Avignon. Is there an art school there?”

  “There’s a university, and the Académie des Arts d’Avignon.”

  “Perfect. Where there are students, there are supplies.”

  “Or you could ask the florist, in Saint-Véran,” Johnny suggested. “Her daughter does painting restorations for big museums; she trained at the Louvre.”

  “And she lives here in the village?”

  He nodded. “She split from her husband and has a young daughter, so they moved back in with her mom.”

  “And her mom’s the florist? What’s her name?”

  “La Toinon—she’s a Clement too, but her married name is Goselin. So, how do you know how to do this kind of thing?”

  “I learned it when I was about your age, actually. Help me bring these carousel figures over near the light of the windows. Very gently.” He did as he was told, and they started moving the menagerie. In total there were two rabbits, three dogs, a cat, and a pig. “I was a bad kid, like you. If you think Saint-Véran is bad, you should try being a delinquent on the streets of Oakland.”

  He stared at her.

  “Anyway, one day—actually, many days—I stole something from a shop owned by a woman named Maxine. She sold antiques, and a lot of plain old junk. For some reason she decided to put me to work instead of turning me over to the police.”

  She paused, hoping he was taking in the significance of her words. It was hard to tell. Johnny had the flat affect of a lot of troubled teens, the result of covering up emotions for so many years for fear of being vulnerable. Unfortunately, it was hard to distinguish this kind of self-defense from a basic lack of understanding or lack of intelligence.

  “So, anyway,” Cady continued, while handing Johnny a broom and dustpan, “Maxine taught me how to clean and repair antiques, and I worked for her for a long time. She also taught me how to read.”

  Johnny said something in French that Cady assumed meant something along the lines of “No way!”

  “It’s true. I had been moved around a lot in school, and I’d managed to slip by without ever learning to read. I was your age. Can you imagine? All I knew before meeting Maxine was how to stay alive, and how to fight.”

  “You fight?”

  “Not anymore. Learned to use my words instead. But if Maxine hadn’t helped me, I imagine I’d be in jail right now.”

  He looked around the soot-filled mess of the building. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, compared to this.”

  She laughed. “Oh yes, it would. This carousel has real potential, Johnny. It’s a part of French history, and your family’s history. Trust me. You’ll see. So, which university are you planning to attend? Are you thinking Avignon, or farther afield?”

  “What?”

  “You’re, what, fifteen? Doesn’t that mean university is coming up in a few years?”

  The expression on his face suggested she had said something insane.

  “Isn’t university free in France? Or at least subsidized? That’s a pretty sweet deal.”

  “Well, yeah, if you get in. But I’m not, like, a good student.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged.

  “Maxine always told me that it wasn’t a crime to need help, only to fail to ask for help when you need it.”

  “You
make her sound like some kind of saint.”

  She smiled as she thought of a “Saint Maxine,” realizing that for the first time since Maxine died, she didn’t have to fight the image of her dear friend and mentor falling, lying on the floor, the last breath leaving her body. The sensation of Maxine disappearing, abandoning Cady, right in front of her.

  Instead, the first image that came to mind was one of Maxine sitting behind her cash register, flipping through a magazine; then Cady thought of Maxine wearing her big apron as she stood behind the worktable, tilting her head back to look through the bottom lenses of her bifocals as she studied a project. She thought of the moment Maxine had asked Cady to come live with her.

  “I think maybe she was a saint, come to think of it,” Cady said. “She saved me, anyway. ‘Saint Maxine.’ Has a nice ring to it.”

  Johnny said nothing, merely fixed Cady with a cautious look, as though he was just figuring out she was totally insane.

  That’s exactly what Cady had thought of Maxine when the old woman made it clear that she was going to make Cady her next project. Cady might be in Provence for only a few more days, but sometimes that was enough time to throw someone like Johnny a lifeline, to change his perspective.

  It struck Cady that here she was willing to reach out and connect, whereas in Oakland she shrank from it. Olivia used to try to get her involved in the Big Sisters program or tutoring high school students, but Cady always had some excuse for not doing so, always thinking that “someday” in the future she would become a foster mother and make her mark. Or . . . have her own baby. Just as with Maxine, Cady realized she hadn’t thought about the miscarriage for . . . days?