Daguerreotype: The Mystery of Frédéric Chopin

by Lucyna Olejniczak

  “Anything look different?” Claude asked, inviting us to a spot near the fire with a gesture.

  I looked around. Shelves tightly packed with volumes took up almost every wall, from floor to ceiling. I had often enjoyed sitting here in the evening, snuggled on a soft couch, listening to crackling logs.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Maybe there’s a few more books, if that’s even possible?”

  “You’re right, I did buy a few new books and paintings recently,” he replied. “Did you see the one in the hall? It’s a new acquisition. I spotted it at an auction in London. It’s so large that the hall was the only place we could hang it. I guess owning a chateau like this does have its advantages. Though, we do have some problems adequately heating all of the rooms,” he added with a sigh, then got up and added another log to the fire from a chest nearby. The wood was obviously a little damp and had just recently been brought in from the shed; sparks shot up, and the log began to squeak and hiss.

  For a while, the conversation lingered on the paintings at the auction, their prices, and number of forgeries cropping up on the market, then we moved on to planning our activities for next few days. The main attraction was, of course, looking over letters from the cherry wood desk’s secret compartment. We spent rest of the evening just reminiscing and enjoying the delicious red wine.

  It was quite late by the time we found ourselves in our room, slightly buzzed with alcohol and weary from travelling. The room was perhaps a little too modest to be called a suite, but it was still about as large as my entire apartment back home in Nowa Huta. ‘Chamber’ might have been more appropriate, but that sounded a little old-fashioned, so I decided to stick with just saying ‘room’. The room was dominated by a huge, canopied bed, and there was a fire was crackling in the hearth.

  “Wow, I can’t believe this place, it’s like a film set,” Tadeusz said, looking around with open admiration. “Or a museum. I had no idea anyone still lived like this. I think I need a smoke.”

  “Not in here, I hope?”

  “No, no,” he assured me hurriedly. “I’ll step out into the garden, but you’ll have to walk me there. I’m not sure I could find my way on my own. There are so many nooks and crannies and corridors…”

  “Of course,” I said with resignation. Tadeusz had been trying to quit smoking for some time now, but so far he’d been unsuccessful. “Put something on, it’s cold outside.”

  After several minutes of the usual annoying, “Maybe this? No, too warm. What about this sweater? Why did I even bring this jacket along, it’s still summer!” we snuck out and tip-toed along the dark corridors. Treacherous boards squeaked underfoot, but fortunately our hosts slept in the other wing. I led Tadeusz down the stairs to the kitchen, where a door let out into the gardens.

  Reasonably certain that he could find his way back without a problem, I returned to our room. I took a quick shower in the attached en suite bathroom, then slipped between the cool sheets with a long sigh of relief. The fire had died down, throwing a soft red glow over the decorative grille that shielded the room from sparks.

  My mind drifted back to Marie’s letters, and I found myself wondering whether we’d really find anything interesting in them. After a few minutes, I felt myself drifting off to sleep. The scent of wood smoke and the pleasant softness of the mattress blurred into a dream, wherein I lay on soft grass in a meadow beside a bonfire. The fire crackled merrily, the forest rustled, and birds sang.

  Suddenly, one of the birds began to screech loudly, raucously. Its relentless trill drilled my brain, and disturbed my blissful state. The forest disappeared, and the only fire was the embers in the hearth. Instead of grass, I was lying on a great canopied bed. My cellphone was ringing on the nightstand. I fumbled to pick it up and answer it.

  “Hello?” I mumbled, still only half-conscious, but the voice I heard brought me instantly awake.

  “Honey!” Tadeusz said in a strangled whisper. “Could you come down to the garden, please? Some crazy man is aiming a gun at me, and I can’t understand what he’s saying!”

  I jumped out of bed and ran barefoot to the window. In the garden below, illuminated by a patch of light radiating from the kitchen, stood two men. One of them was Tadeusz, and the other…

  Oh! It’s just Mr. Singh! I thought with a mixture of relief and amusement. Hari Singh acted as both gardener and guard for the house. I quickly threw on some clothes, and raced downstairs to defuse the situation.

  “Easy, Mr. Singh!” I cried in French when I arrived. “He’s with me!”

  Both men looked at me, and I saw clear relief in their eyes.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Hari put his weapon away, looking very embarrassed, and clumsily tried to explain himself. “It’s nice to see you, but I wish someone had told me earlier. They said you were bringing a friend but not who, so I assumed it would be your sister or one of the kids. I didn’t expect it to be a man.” He took a deep breath, looking overwhelmed. “He was acting pretty suspiciously, walking around the garden and peeking into the windows, then he tried to flee into the house when he saw me.”

  “I think he just wanted to finish his cigarette and go to bed,” I said, laughing softly.

  “I’m sorry for giving your friend a fright, but it’s my duty to—”

  “I know. It’s all right, nothing happened. Why don’t you explain it all to him in English, and let’s get back to sleep. It’s late.”

  “He speaks English?” Hari asked, startled.

  “He speaks English?” Tadeusz echoed, looking equally astonished.

  With the situation finally cleared up, Hari apologized again, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  Tadeusz glanced at the gun holstered on the man’s belt. “Would you really have shot me?”

  “If there was no other choice, yes. I have a firearms license. However, I’m trained to shoot to disable, not to kill, so I probably would have just shot you in the leg.”

  Tadeusz gulped nervously, but quickly pulled himself and gave him a playful smirk. “Well, that’s reassuring. I feel so much better.”

  We said goodnight to our brave guardian, and quietly went back upstairs. I just hoped we’d kept it down enough to avoid waking our sleeping hosts.

  I was almost asleep again when Tadeusz got out of the shower.

  “They have some kind of weird, cheap-looking grey soap in there,” he whispered, sounding surprised. “Surrounded by so much luxury, and yet they use cheap soap? Strange. Well, at least it smells nice.”

  “Honey,” I murmured sleepily. “That’s Martin de Candre soap. It’s extremely expensive. It’s handmade, based on a recipe from one of the monks up at the abbey in Marseille. It contains all natural ingredients, no chemicals at all.”

  “Really? Well, it looks pretty cheap,” Tadeusz replied as he settled down to sleep.

  I didn’t answer. I just snuggled up against his back and inhaled the pleasant scent of Martin de Candre soap as I fell back to sleep.

  My spot by the bonfire was waiting for me. This time, no noisy birds interrupted the tranquility.

  Chapter Six

  We were woken early by the sound of a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood, but we lolled in bed until nine, listening to the hustle and bustle downstairs and the birds singing in the garden. At breakfast, we decided that I would start going over Marie’s letters while Claude gave Tadeusz a tour and Sophie was busy organizing paperwork in her office. She was due to fly to New York for a conference in a week’s time, so she had to get ready.

  The sun appeared from behind a cloud, and turned the day quite warm and pleasant. I made myself a pot of tea, and took Marie’s letters out into the garden to sit under a tree and enjoy the weather. With careful fingers, I unfolded the yellowed paper and set the letters in my lap.

  The letter at the top of the pile looked to be the most badly damaged, probably due to moisture. The ink was so badly smudged in places that I could hardly read the date. The year
definitely said ‘1832’, but the month? I thought it said November, but it might have been December. Those two words shared the same last few letters in French, but the beginning of the word was smudged. Thankfully, the rest of the letter was mostly legible.

  My dear sister,

  I hope Papa has finally recovered from his cold? I was deeply worried to receive word of his illness. Please make sure that he dresses warmly and takes care of himself, or I will surely die from worry!

  The next line was too smeared to read. Had Marie been crying while she wrote this letter? I couldn’t tell what kind of moisture had caused the damage. All I could make out was a scattering of words, and one full sentence.

  Does he wear the lovely cashmere scarf I sent him?

  A few lines further on, the writing became legible again, though faded.

  Yesterday, I paid a visit to the Louvre on my own and spent a little time painting. Juliette went to visit her friend in the countryside. Auntie was terribly upset about it, but you know our cousin. Once she sets her mind to something, nobody can talk her out of it, no matter how mad it might be. And if I may tell you in confidence, I suspect it was not just a friend that she went to visit!

  Well, well. The plot thickens!

  I have heard that everyone is going out to the country lately, but there’s this painter that she’s quite fond of. Perhaps that’s who Juliette is meeting? They are so in love.

  Yeah, if I knew life, nothing good could come out of that. I read on, squinting at the faded ink further in the letter.

  You wouldn’t not believe, my dear, who I met at the Opera!

  I sat up a little straighter. Could it be?

  You remember, of course, the drunkard who accosted us in the street not too long ago? Well, it turns out that he’s a rather well-known foreign musician. Auntie invited him to dinner. I do hope he didn’t recognize me. My first impression of him was clearly quite wrong. A musician! And a rather handsome one, at that.

  I read on. There were some descriptions of a new gown she’d had made by a famous seamstress, with matching shoes and accessories, but nothing relevant. Interesting, but not what I was looking for.

  So, she had met him after all. It must have been Chopin. How many other young foreign musicians had made a name for themselves in Paris at the time? There were plenty of candidates, but my gut instinct said that it had to be him.

  “So? Have you found anything interesting?” Sophie called, leaning out of upstairs window.

  For a moment, I felt as if I’d moved backwards in time. The window set high in a thick wall, surrounded by vines already during red with autumn colors, looked somehow different. I saw a flash of a sad-looking young woman in a white dress who didn’t really resemble Sophie at all. I shook my head, and the vision disappeared.

  “Something wrong?” Sophie leaned further out.

  “No,” I replied. “But for a moment, I was somewhere else. I thought I saw Marie…”

  “Ah! You and your imagination!” Sophie waved her hand dismissively. “And here was me worrying that something was actually wrong. You just take everything far too seriously. I think you need a break from the letters; go take a walk before dinner, and watch the preparations for the harvest.”

  Sophie was right, I could use a break. I found myself suddenly overcome with an unexplainable sadness, completely out of keeping with the situation. A walk amongst the vineyards would do me good.

  The spot I usually visited with the boys looked almost identical to the last time I’d visited. There was a place where a few good days of rain washed fossils out of a small cliff at the edge of the vineyard, remnants of an ocean that had covered this part of Europe millions of years earlier. We’d spent a good deal of time there, digging out huge shells and stones containing the imprints of long-dead sea creatures. There were also treasures to be found under the trees, as well. One just had to reach between the roots in the right spot to pull out a handful of golden sand, filled with tiny spiral shells as delicate as bone china.

  Did Maria live in this house once? I wondered, gently blowing the sand off a handful of tiny seashells. The evidence said she probably had. So why was I seeing her now? I was so sure that it hadn’t been Sophie’s silhouette looming over me from that window. If so, then she must have had her studio up in the tower. But where were the paintings? I’d only seen two: the portrait of her sister, and her self-portrait in the apartment in Paris. What about the rest? I would have to ask about it at dinner.

  I glanced at my watch and gasped in surprise. Impossible! How had it gotten so late without me realizing?

  They’re probably worried about me, I thought, dusting the sand and tiny shells off my hands.

  A gentle breeze brought the rumble of an engine across the vineyards, as a tall harvesting machine moved between the rows of vines. The boys always loved watching them work.

  Too bad they’re gone, I thought sadly. I miss them.

  I quickened my pace, watching the harvesters as I walked. The vineyards looked like green carpets, carefully brushed into rows with a huge comb. The cliffs, which glistened where the sun sparkled off the white sand and fragments of ancient shells, were the only untidy part of the picture. A clump of trees clung to its slopes. Beyond that, the vines stretched out in neat, even rows all the way to the horizon.

  Far in the distance, I could see the buildings of the village.

  “You went somewhere?” Tadeusz asked, looking surprised when I arrived back at the house completely out of breath. “Wow, I didn’t even notice.”

  Well, that would have required you to pay attention to me, I thought bitterly, but I didn’t say anything out loud.

  As expected, the number one topic at dinner was Marie’s letters.

  “It sounds pretty clear,” Sophie said, placing her silverware on the edge of her plate and wiping her mouth with a napkin. “That Marie was quite a lively young thing, leading a rather carefree lifestyle within the artistic circles. It looks like the only person she told was her sister, and judging by the fact that the letters were hidden in a secret compartment, she probably didn’t tell the rest of her family. The implication is that her father was stern and probably wouldn’t have liked it at all. We know she was eventually discovered. The father was a wealthy winemaker, and he must have either intercepted one of the letters, or someone informed him of his daughter’s activities in Paris. We know that he went to Paris and dragged Marie back here by force.” She shuddered and glanced around, as if suddenly seeing the ghosts of the past. “Marie was very quickly married off to a wealthy local butcher, who was thirty years her senior and died shortly after she gave birth to a child, leaving her a rather sizeable fortune. She kept the shop but left the running of it to her husband’s family, and devoted herself to raising her son and painting.”

  “She lived here, in Trigny?” I interrupted, curious.

  “Yes, but that house is gone now. It’s just an empty lot. We’ll go see it some time.”

  “I already saw it,” Tadeusz said. “Claude showed me today, while we were out. Nothing special, just a lot.”

  Sophie took a sip of wine, and resumed her tale.

  “Apparently, Marie held exhibitions of her art, but it sold rather poorly. Only her sister’s portrait, the one you saw by the stairs, and the self-portrait in our apartment have survived. The rest have all disappeared. Perhaps Marie destroyed them herself, discouraged by her lack of success.”

  “And the boy?” Tadeusz’ eyes shone with excitement. It was evident that the topic interested him. “Did he inherit any abilities from either of his parents?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’d love me to tell you that he was an extraordinarily talent musician, wouldn’t you?” Sophie laughed. “Don’t deny it, I can see it on your face. Sadly, no. Apparently, the boy was a very ordinary child, neither exceptionally talented nor slow.”

  “What about later in life?”

  “We don’t know anything about it,” she admitted. “We know that after his uncle’s death,
he took over the shop and became a butcher, like his father.” She paused, and gave us a mysterious smile. “Or rather, the man who was presumed to be his father…”

  “Does it mean there were some doubts?” Tadeusz and I asked the question almost simultaneously, excited by the possibility.

  “Of course,” Claude said, reaching for a second portion of dessert. “According to the official version, the child was born prematurely, which always sets of a storm of gossip. Plus, Marie’s new husband was nearly fifty at the time of their wedding, morbidly obese, and had serious heart problems. So, it’s doubtful that he could have fathered the child, but you never know.” He shrugged.

  “What about Marie? Did she re-marry?”

  “No. She completely withdrew from social life, then she fell ill and died at the age of thirty-something, leaving her son in her sister’s care.”

  “What did she die of? Tuberculosis?”

  “We don’t know for sure. Family gossip said it was a combination of pneumonia and melancholy. The boy, Phillippe, was raised alongside Marie’s sister’s children, right here in this house.” Sophie made a circular motion with her hand, as if she wanted to emphasize which house she meant. “Part of the history regarding Marie’s marriage and her eventual fate, I only know from my grandmother’s stories. To her, Phillippe was a beloved uncle. She remembered him as being a very happy person, always joking around and entertaining adults and children alike. Gran used to tell me how much she loved his impressions of the other family members. When he died, leaving behind a young wife and three small children, crowds of people came to his funeral. That’s how well-liked he was. But nobody, at least not in front of me, has ever spoken about Marie’s past. I think it was considered a shameful family secret. I really hope we’ll be able to find out what happened.”