Daguerreotype: The Mystery of Frédéric Chopin

by Lucyna Olejniczak

  “Marie,” Auntie whispered. “In future, kindly watch your tongue. You just set us up for a flood of gossip!”

  “But—”

  “Shut up. Whatever the reasons, you should not speak unless spoken to. You must watch what you say, especially in front of someone like Potignac. You can be certain he will have his eye on you now, so you’d best be careful what you do and who you meet with. People like that can destroy your social standing completely.”

  “But—”

  Auntie cut her protests short with an impatient wave. “Enough about this. Please just remember this lesson for the future. I cannot introduce you to polite company if I can’t trust you to hold your tongue.” She sighed theatrically, then glanced at Marie out of the corner of her eye. Marie thought she caught a glimpse of a mischievous twinkle. “Though, he certainly did deserve that lashing you gave him!”

  The opera hall was filled almost to the brim. Here and there, binocular glass flashed in the light of the gas lamps hung from the walls and ceiling. People searched for friends or friendly acquaintances worth inviting to their box during intermission. Most of the ladies were focused on admiring and discussing the fancy costumes and jewelry of their neighbors. Some of them waited until the last moment to take their seat, so that they could bedazzle the other women of high society with their outfits, which often sparkled like Christmas trees as they moved.

  The curtain rose, and the hall filled with the sound of applause, whistles, and stomping from the claque, who seemed to take their duties very seriously. Marie had grown accustomed to such behavior, and paid them no mind. The first time Auntie had brought her to the opera, she’d been startled to see such lively reactions from the audience: loud laughter during not-so-funny scenes, wailing when one of the characters died on stage, and prompt, enthusiastic applause at all the right moments. Auntie had quickly explained the behavior to her.

  “Those are claquers, my dear,” she’d explained during one of the shows. “They’re paid by the actors, or sometimes the playwright himself. They act as a guide for the audience, so we know how we’re supposed to feel at any given point. Though, they have occasionally been known to take a bribe from the competition to completely ruin a show instead!”

  This time, she paid no attention to the noise and focused on the newly-revealed set. At the back of the stage, cottages had been painted on a huge stretched canvas, surrounded by golden wheat fields and silhouetted against the azure of the sky.

  Suddenly, the lights dimmed, as if covered by thick clouds, then they began to flicker, giving the impression of lightning. Powerful thunder rolled across the hall, drawing gasps and cries from the audience. The trees on the set swayed dangerously, and then suddenly the main tenor appeared, dressed as a peasant, and began his aria.

  Marie felt a flush of excitement as she absorbed everything happening on stage. The actors sang or shouted their lines in clear voices, their performances lively and flawless. Every so often, the scenery changed with a grinding and creaking of old machinery, but that didn’t bother her at all. She loved the opera, and everything about it.

  When the curtain fell after first act, Marie was nearly disappointed, because that meant the show was one act closer to being over.

  She took her small binoculars out of their pearl-embroidered pouch, and watched the crowd as it began to move. Some people rose and went to the lobby or their private boxes, while others stayed to exchange comments with their neighbors about the show and the actors playing in it.

  A strangely familiar silhouette caught her eye, that of a young man dressed in a dapper black tuxedo with a white silk collar at the neck. She adjusted the focus and peered in his direction again.

  “Who have you seen over there, my dear?” Nothing escaped her aunt’s attention.

  “Er…” Marie hesitated, embarrassed. “I thought saw someone I know, but I think he just looks similar, that’s all.”

  “Which one?” Auntie took the binoculars from Marie’s hand. “The slim young man in the tuxedo? Well, he does look rather smart, doesn’t he? I could be mistaken, but I do believe that is one of the new musicians in town. Russian, Polish, I’m not sure – from somewhere in the east, anyway. Countess Montand told me about him. Apparently, he’s a very talented young man.”

  “A musician? Are you sure, Auntie?” Marie looked at him with a bit more interest.

  “Do you know him, my dear?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before…”

  The binoculars found their way back to the countess.

  “An interesting young man, I have to admit,” she murmured, studying him through the binoculars. “Though a bit too long in the nose, don’t you think? And those weak shoulders…. But, he is an artist, and they are usually like that: pale and underfed. Perhaps…” She fell silent for a moment, and handed the binoculars back to Marie. “Perhaps we should invite him to dinner. Who knows? It might be worth knowing him personally sometime in the not-so-distant future. I hear he’s already giving concerts in Paris, and there’s quite a bit of talk about him in the places that matter. I’ve heard,” Auntie lowered her voice, and glanced around discreetly, “that he’s sneakily clever, and quite proficient at handling his own affairs…”

  “I see you’ve been listening to the gossip, Auntie.” Marie grimaced disdainfully. “People will say anything if they think they’ll be believed. I despise gossip.”

  “But it does sound plausible. The countess told me that he played dirty with his publisher - or cleverly, depending on how you look at it. Apparently, since he wasn’t able to get out of his contract, he took so long with amendments and deadlines that the publisher was offended and did it for him!”

  “But why would he want to do such a thing?” Marie asked, shaking her head. “Doesn’t an artist depend on publishing his work for his livelihood?”

  “That’s true, my dearest,” Auntie replied with a patient smile. “But what if he’d found another publisher, one better known and offering more money? You understand… well, perhaps not. You are terribly young.”

  “Age has nothing to do with it.” Marie tried to be polite, though her aunt’s tone irritated her. “I’m fully capable of understanding that someone would want to advance their career in such a fashion. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

  “Neither do I, my child. Neither do I.” Her aunt clearly wanted to end the subject. She went silent for a while, thinking something over. Finally, she gestured to her servant, and pointed her folded fan at the young musician down below. “Julian, go down and invite that man to our box.”

  Julian hurried off, and they spent the next few minutes watching him struggling to squeeze his way between the milling patrons. When he finally reached the young man’s side, he leaned down to whisper something in his ear. The man looked up, following Julian’s finger to locate them up above. He bowed, seeing the women observing him through the binoculars, then excused himself from his current company and followed Julian.

  He reached the box a few minutes later, looking flustered as he bowed over Auntie’s hand and introduced himself. They were first and foremost touched by the young man’s charm and grace. Marie, hidden deep in the box, suddenly felt a wave of heat trickle from her blushing face, all the way down to her feet.

  That face… that voice… No, it was impossible…

  She felt a sudden desire to run away as fast as she could, but just at that very moment her aunt grabbed her hand to introduce her to the young man.

  “This is my niece, Marie. She’s studying painting in Paris, and is very talented.”

  “I’m honored to meet you.” The young man bowed to her very seriously, but she could have sworn she saw flicker of amusement in his eyes.

  “So you are a musician, are you not?” Auntie didn’t seem to notice her embarrassment at all.

  “Yes, madam. I am.” He nodded and smiled shyly. “I just arrived in Paris recently, and I plan to stay here for a while. I have grown ver
y fond of your city.”

  Though his French was technically flawless, there was a thick accent in his voice, that she found inexplicably fascinating.

  “In that case, you simply must visit us,” Auntie said. Intermission was about to end, and the people below were returning to their seats. “Perhaps dinner on Thursday? Please don’t disappoint us…”

  Just as the second act was about to start, the musician took a business card from Marie’s uncle and hurried back to his seat. Marie found herself unable to relax afterwards. There was no doubt about it: that young, talented musician was none other than the same drunkard she’d accidentally met on the street a few evenings earlier.

  What must he think of me? she wondered. A high-society girl, wandering the streets at night. Or, maybe he didn’t recognize me? No, he musn’t have. At least, I don’t think so…

  Juliette is going to be so surprised when I tell her who is coming to dinner on Thursday! she thought, and that cheered her greatly. She’s going to regret not coming to the Opera with us today!

  Marie couldn’t concentrate on what was happening on the stage anymore. Even when the lead tenor burst out onto the stage through a trap door, she barely noticed.

  Chapter Seven

  Tadeusz had to return to Kraków, and his editor wouldn’t even consider extending his vacation, but after some careful consideration I decided that I wanted to stay a little longer. A little time apart would probably do our relationship some good, and I could use the time to look over Marie’s letters in peace. Tadeusz was not happy about the idea, and wanted me to return with him.

  “We came together, and we should leave together,” he said, with an expression that I didn’t like.

  “But what if I’m on the trail to a great story? You’re a journalist, you understand that,” I pointed out, trying to convince him to change his mind.

  “Or maybe you just want a break from me?”

  “Do you actually want a truthful answer, or should I just tell you what you want to hear?” I snapped, growing angrier by the moment. He was being completely unreasonable, and I didn’t like it. If he had been a woman, I would have thought he might have had a bad case of PMS.

  “Fine, don’t answer,” he grumbled, waving his hand dismissively. “You’ll do whatever you want to do anyway.”

  In the end, we managed to reach an agreement, though it was a somewhat fragile one. Everything seemed to be fragile about our relationship right now. Still, as grumpy as he was, Tadeusz was fully aware of the gravity of what the letters might uncover, and that was probably what convinced him to agree to let me stay. We decided to use those last few days to search for clues together.

  Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get much done at first. There were so many letters, and some of them required a lot more effort than others to decipher, due to the extent of the damage they’d suffered. It would take much more time and quiet to translate them, which was hard when we had such… enthusiastic and welcoming hosts as Claude and Sophie.

  We spent many hours talking at the table, mainly about the boys, their progress at school, their behavior and their talents. Like any mother, Sophie was very proud of them and wanted to boast about every achievement. There were huge photo albums dedicated to the children, capturing every moment of their lives from the moment they’d arrived in Paris – that is, their re-birth in France as Sophie’s babies. I’d already seen most of the pictures, but it was new to Tadeusz and he looked genuinely interested in every single one of them.

  There were so many pictures. There were pictures of them as babies in strollers, then toddlers crawling on the chateau’s wooden floors. A few years later, they were covered in chocolate and looking very over-stimulated as they raced around the garden hunting for hidden Easter eggs, clutching baskets fill of sweets they’d found already. Later came pictures of the boys on their bikes when they were older, and pictures from all the trips abroad they’d taken with their parents. Nicholas watching buffalo in Thailand, in a rickshaw at the Great Wall of China, both boys in the hotel swimming pool in Java, and red-faced from excitement and the cold on the ski slopes in the Swiss Alps.

  I smiled fondly as I looked over the photos from our vacation together on the island of Yeu, off the west coast of France. Sophie’s brother had a small house there, near town of Saint Sauveur.

  “Do you remember our morning trips to the harbor to buy the fresh fish and shrimp that had been caught overnight?” Sophie asked, looking as excited by the memories as I felt. “And the mussels, which are unique to those waters? Weren’t they delicious?”

  Time passed quickly. Taking advantage of the beautiful September weather, we took long walks in the vineyards, where the preparations for the harvest were in full swing. Tadeusz was obviously disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to stay for the harvest and once again tried to convince me to go back with him, but he did so without any real conviction. He’d already heard me promise Sophie and Claude that I’d be staying for some time, and he knew that I was excited by the prospect of uncovering the secrets of the letters. We made a deal that I’d stay as long as necessary, and that he would try to return in two weeks, if that was how long the search for ‘my Chopin’ took me. Still, the tension returned when the day of his departure arrived.

  “We’ll be in touch by phone,” he said coolly by way of a goodbye, and I felt tears sting under my eyelids. I hugged him tight, trying not to notices his tense muscles and reluctant stance. He was upset, and I felt guilty. If he’d asked me right then to return with him, I probably would have agreed. But he didn’t. I was relieved when the goodbyes were over and Tadeusz left. Sophie left soon after for her conference in New York.

  Claude only got home from work late in the afternoons, so I finally found time to focus on the letters. From the ones I’d already reviewed, it appeared that the young musician had begun to visit Marie’s aunt more and more frequently, and the girl had developed quite an interest in him. It was hard to tell from the text whether she simply felt admiration for his talents, or if she was developing romantic feelings for him.

  The letters implied she had romantic feelings for someone, certainly – but was it him? And who, exactly, was he?

  Marie had become more and more secretive. She wrote cautiously about her feelings, and there was no way to determine whether she was talking about the musician or someone else. She didn’t mention his name anywhere. In the letters, she referred to him obliquely, as “he”, “my angel”, or “my love”. She spoke about attending concerts, how delighted she was with the music, and then she wrote about “her love” as if he were someone attending the concert with her rather than the one performing.

  I grew more and more confused. Perhaps the information about her lover’s identity was there, but in one of the letters I didn’t have. Judging by the dates, some of them had been written months apart, which seemed unlikely given Marie’s chatty temperament and her affection for her sister. It seemed like she told her sister about everything that happened to her in Paris, and the letters were almost like a diary. So where were the rest of them? Had they been lost in the post? Or perhaps the father had intercepted them, and decided the situation was becoming too dangerous for him to let it continue as it was?

  Sophie had left me the keys to their Paris apartment, so I decided to spend a couple of days there, to see if I could ‘catch the wind in my sails’, so to speak. Maybe if I followed in Chopin’s footsteps, I could find a sign of where I should look next.

  I’d always felt that Sophie and Claude’s chateau hid more secrets than just the one they’d found in the desk. After all, Marie had lived there for at least part of her life, so there should have been some of her paintings around, maybe some personal effects or mementos. Something. The estate was huge, so there was no reason to throw anything away due to lack of space. So, what had happened to all of Marie’s things? Perhaps she’d taken them when she moved into her husband’s house? That seemed likely, but surely she couldn’t have taken everything. Some tr
ace of her must have lingered in the family home after she’d left.

  When I told Claude I planned to return to Paris, he approved.

  “Good idea,” he said. “Ask Mr. Singh to drop you off at the train station in Reims; I’m going to be home rather late tonight. Oh, try searching the bookshelves in the living room, maybe you’ll find something interesting there. You know, the ones up so high we could never reach them?” He laughed and shook his head. “I finally bought a ladder long enough, so you can be the one to try it out. Just take care, make sure you don’t fall off.”

  I laughed as well. Claude wasn’t short, but sometimes it seemed like the apartment had been built for giants. It was impossible for just about anyone to reach the highest bookshelves without a ladder.

  When I asked Hari to drop me at the train station he agreed willingly, but asked for some time to finish the work he was doing out in the rose garden. That left me with some time to kill before we departed, so I sat on the huge terrace and stared at the chateau’s walls, deep in thought.

  “Yeah,” I murmured, trailing my finger through the air. “The kitchen is here, the living room across the hall, and above it is the ‘royal suite’, as Tadeusz called it.”

  The attic, then? The attic stretched along the length of the building, and if I remembered it correctly there were no hidden corners or small room. At least, not that I was aware of…

  I shielded my eyes from the wind and looked up at the tower. Claude’s office, and once Marie’s studio, or so we were told. No, that was definitely too small to hide another room. It was small and low, relatively speaking. There was only a tall, cone-shaped roof above it…

  “Shall we go?” Hari’s voice shattered my reverie.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” I said absently. “I’ll just go get my stuff.”

  I glanced up at the tower again. What was bothering me? The tower was just a tower, right? After all, I’d been inside, and there were windows all around the circumference. It was pretty spacious, but there was no room to hide anything in there, especially not something as large as paintings. No, that couldn’t be it. Could it?