Bel followed Fabiana and Carla inside the house, seeing how the housekeeper had a maternal arm around Carla’s shoulder, and breathed a sigh of relief. Having borne the worry of her mother’s care alone, she knew that Fabiana would now assume the responsibility. As Fabiana took Carla to her bedroom to unpack and get her settled, Bel walked across the wide-planked wooden floor of the drawing room, filled with heavy mahogany and rosewood furniture, and opened the door to her own childhood bedroom.
The sash windows were drawn up and the exterior shutters thrown open. A wonderful cool breeze blew in as she leant her elbows upon the sill and gazed at her favourite view. Below her in the paddock were Loty, her pony, and Luppa, her father’s stallion, grazing peacefully. Beyond rose a gentle hill, still dotted with old coffee bushes that had somehow managed to survive despite years of being untended. A herd of white oxen peppered the hillside, the odd barren patch revealing the deep red soil beneath the wiry grass.
She walked back through the drawing room and stood at the front door, flanked by two of the majestic, ancient palm trees from which the area took its name. Sitting down on the stone bench outside on the terrace, and smelling the sweet scent of the hibiscus that grew abundantly here, she gazed across the gardens to the freshwater lake in which she had swum every day as a child. As she listened to the steady drone of dragonflies hovering over the flower beds and watched two yellow butterflies dance playfully in front of her eyes, Bel felt some of her inner tension fall away.
Laurent would love it here, she thought to herself wistfully, and despite her determination not to think of him, tears sprang to her eyes. Even though she’d known when she took the decision to walk away from him in Paris that it signalled the end, the girlish, imaginative part of her had wondered if he’d attempt to make contact. Every morning, when she’d seen the post on its silver tray at the breakfast table, she’d imagined receiving a letter from him, begging her to return to him, telling her he couldn’t live without her.
But of course, that hadn’t happened. And as the weeks had passed, she’d begun to ponder whether his declarations of love had been as Margarida had suggested: simply part of a plan to seduce her. She wondered if Laurent ever thought of her now, or whether the short time they’d spent together had passed through his mind like flotsam and was now forgotten.
Whichever the true answer, what did it matter? She was the one who had drawn the line in the sand, chosen to return to Brazil and her forthcoming marriage. The atmosphere of La Closerie des Lilas and the sensation of Laurent’s lips on hers were now a memory, a brief dance with another world that she had chosen to end. And no amount of wishing and hoping could change the course of the life which she herself had decided on.
31
Paris, November 1928
‘So, at last the statue is finished.’ Professor Landowski thumped his workbench in relief. ‘But now the crazy Brazilian needs me to make a scale model of his Christ’s head and hands. The head will be nearly four metres high, so it will only just fit into the studio. The fingers too will almost reach the rafters. All of us here in the atelier will, in the most literal sense, experience Christ’s hand upon us,’ Landowski joked. ‘Then, so da Silva Costa tells me, once I have finished this, he will carve my creations up like joints of beef in order to ship them over to Rio de Janeiro. Never before have I worked liked this. But,’ he sighed, ‘perhaps I should trust to his madness.’
‘Perhaps you have no choice,’ agreed Laurent.
‘Well, it pays the bills, Brouilly, although I can accept no more commissions until Our Lord’s head and hands are gone from my atelier. There would simply be no room. So, we begin. Bring me the casts you made of the two ladies’ hands some weeks ago. I must have something to work with.’
Laurent went to retrieve the casts from the storeroom and placed them in front of Landowski. The two men studied them intently.
‘They both have beautiful, sensitive fingers, but I must think how they will look when each hand stretches for more than three metres,’ Landowski commented. ‘Now, Brouilly, don’t you have a home to go to?’
This was the signal that Landowski wished to be left alone. ‘Of course, professor. I will see you tomorrow.’
On his way out of the atelier, Laurent found the young boy sitting on the stone bench on the terrace outside. The evening was chilly but clear, and the stars formed a perfect canopy above them. Laurent sat down next to him, watching him gazing up to the heavens.
‘You like stars?’ Laurent ventured, although he had long ago accepted he would never receive a reply.
The boy gave a short smile and nodded.
‘There is the belt of Orion.’ Laurent pointed to it. ‘And close by are The Seven Sisters in a cluster together. With their parents, Atlas and Pleione, watching over them.’
Laurent saw the boy was following his finger and listening intently. ‘My father was interested in astronomy, and kept a telescope in one of the attic rooms on the top floor of our chateau. Sometimes, he would take it up to the roof on clear nights and teach me about the stars. I once saw a shooting star, and thought it the most magical thing I had ever seen.’ He looked at the young boy. ‘Do you have parents?’
The boy pretended not to hear him, and simply continued to gaze upwards.
‘Ah well, I must be going.’ He patted the boy on the head. ‘Goodnight.’
Laurent managed to hitch a lift on the back of a motorcycle for part of the journey back to Montparnasse. When he arrived in his attic room, he saw a shape huddled in his bed. Another body lay asleep on a mattress on the floor. This wasn’t unusual, especially as these days he so often stayed at Landowski’s atelier.
Normally, he would leave the sleeper alone for a few hours longer while he joined his friends in the bars of Montparnasse, returning later to remove the body from his bed and climb into it himself. But tonight he felt unusually tired and not in the mood for socialising.
In fact, his general joie de vivre seemed to have deserted him completely since the moment Izabela Bonifacio boarded her ship back to Brazil.
Even Landowski had noticed that he was quieter than usual and had commented on it.
‘Are you sick, Brouilly? Or perhaps pining?’ he’d asked him with a knowing glint in his eye.
‘Neither,’ Laurent had replied defensively.
‘Well, whichever kind of sickness it is, remember that these things always pass.’
Laurent had taken comfort from Landowski’s perceptive and sympathetic words. Often he thought the professor lived so much in his own world he hardly noticed Laurent’s presence, let alone his mood. Currently, he felt as though someone had gouged his heart out and then trampled it underfoot for good measure.
Walking towards his bed he shook the body in it, but the man simply groaned, opened his mouth and let out a whistle of stale alcohol before rolling over. Laurent knew there’d be no rousing him, so with a heavy sigh, he decided to give him a couple of further hours to sleep off his drunkenness while he went in search of supper.
The narrow streets of Montparnasse were as vibrant as usual, with the sound of the gay chatter of people glad to be alive. Even though it was a cold night, the pavement cafés were overflowing and a cacophony of different music from inside the bars assaulted Laurent’s senses. Normally Montparnasse and its vivacity exhilarated him, but lately it had irritated him. How could everyone be so happy when he himself seemed unable to rise from the torpor and misery of his affliction?
Avoiding La Closerie des Lilas, as there would be too many acquaintances who would drag him into witless conversation, Laurent made his way to a quieter establishment, sat down on a stool at the bar and ordered himself an absinthe, knocking it back in one. He looked around at the tables, and immediately noticed a dusky brunette who reminded him of Izabela. Of course, when he looked closer, he saw the girl’s features were not as fine, and that her eyes were hard. But these days, it seemed that everywhere he went, he saw her.
Ordering another absinthe, Laurent
pondered his situation. In the past, he’d been known as a Casanova, a charming, attractive man envied by his friends, as it seemed that with the merest blink of an eye he could have any woman he chose to warm his bed. And yes, he’d made the most of it, for he enjoyed women. Not only for their bodies, but for their minds.
As for love . . . he had thought on a couple of occasions in the past that he was perhaps experiencing what all the great writers and artists spent their lives describing. But both times the feeling had passed quickly enough and Laurent had begun to convince himself that he would never truly know how it felt.
Until Izabela . . .
When he’d first met her, he’d used all his usual tricks to seduce her, and had enjoyed watching her blush as she slowly fell under his spell. Sure enough, it had been a game he’d excelled at playing many times in the past. But usually, once the fish was hooked and was dangling on his line to do with as he wished, the novelty would wear off and he’d become bored and move on.
And then, when he’d realised Izabela was leaving, and that, perhaps for the first time, what he felt for her was genuine, he’d made his first and only heartfelt declaration of love and asked her to stay on in Paris.
And she had refused him.
In those first few days after she’d left France, he’d put his misery down to the fact that it was the first time a woman had not succumbed to him. Perhaps the fact she was unattainable made the idea of her even more provocative, and the thought that she was sailing across the sea to be chained to a man she didn’t love for the rest of her life heightened the drama of the situation.
But no . . . it seemed it had been none of these things. Because eight weeks on, despite taking other women to his bed to see if that helped – which it hadn’t – and getting so drunk that he’d managed to sleep through the entire following day – which had incurred the wrath of Landowski – he felt no different.
He still thought of Izabela every waking moment. At the atelier, he found himself staring into space, remembering when she had sat so serenely in front of him and he’d been able to feast his eyes on her day after day, for hours at a time . . . why had he not appreciated it more? She was unlike any woman he had ever met, so innocent, so good . . . Yet, as he’d discovered when he’d questioned her that first day as he sketched her, she was also so full of passion and eagerness to discover all that life could hold. And her kindness that night, when she’d so tenderly carried the young boy in her arms, brooking no discussion about the rights and wrongs of her actions . . .
As Laurent drained his glass and ordered another, he decided she was truly a goddess.
At night in bed, he’d often go over their conversations, mentally kicking himself for ever playing with her emotions, wishing he could take back any of the outrageous doubles entendres he’d embarrassed her with in the beginning. She hadn’t deserved them.
And now she was gone forever. And it was too late.
Besides, he thought morosely, what had he to offer a woman like her? A dirty shared attic where even the bed was rented out by the hour, no form of steady income and a reputation with women that she must surely have heard of any time she had visited Montparnasse. He had seen Margarida Lopes de Almeida watching him knowingly, and Laurent was sure she’d have commented to Izabela on what she thought of him.
Calling for some soup before the absinthe overwhelmed his brain cells and he fell off the bar stool, Laurent pondered for the thousandth time whether he should send the letter he’d written in his head every hour since she’d left. But of course, he knew that if he did, it might fall into the wrong hands and compromise her.
He tortured himself constantly about whether she was already married and all was lost. He wanted to ask Margarida, but she was no longer at the atelier, her two-month internship there now at an end. He’d heard on the Montparnasse grapevine that she and her mother had gone to Saint-Paul de Vence for the warmer weather.
‘Brouilly.’
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned his bloodshot eyes towards the voice.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m well, Marius,’ he replied. ‘You?’
‘The same as always: poor, drunk and in need of a woman. But instead, you will have to do. Drink?’
Laurent watched as Marius pulled up a bar stool next to him. Just another unknown artist in Montparnasse getting through his life on cheap alcohol, sex and the dream of a glittering future. He thought of the body in his bed in the filthy attic and decided in favour of rolling out of the bar at dawn and sleeping where he fell in the street.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Another absinthe.’
That night was the start of a weekend during which Laurent drowned his sorrows. And of which, as he staggered bleary-eyed into Landowski’s atelier, he had little recollection.
‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ remarked Landowski to the young boy, who sat on a stool, avidly watching the professor working.
‘Mon Dieu, professor, you’ve done so much already!’ Laurent stared at the enormous hand of Christ and could only believe Landowski had spent the past forty-eight hours working continuously on the structure.
‘Well, you have been away from us for five days, so someone had to continue the work. The boy and I were about to send out a search party to trawl the gutters of Montparnasse to find you,’ he added.
‘Are you saying it’s Wednesday?’ queried Laurent in shock.
‘Correct,’ said Landowski, turning his attention back to the vast white shape and taking a scalpel to the still wet plaster of Paris. ‘Now, I will shape the fingernails of Our Lord,’ he said, addressing the boy and pointedly ignoring Laurent.
When Laurent returned from the kitchen, having splashed his face with water and gulped down two glasses of it in an attempt to relieve his aching head, Landowski glanced at him.
‘As you can see, I’ve found myself a new assistant.’ He winked at the boy. ‘At least he doesn’t disappear for five days and arrive back still drunk from the night before.’
‘My apologies, professor, I—’
‘Enough! Understand I won’t tolerate any further behaviour such as this, Brouilly. I needed you to help me with this and you weren’t here. Now, before you dare to touch my Christ’s hands, you will go to my wife in the house and tell her I have ordered you to sleep off your hangover.’
‘Yes, professor.’
Red-faced, Laurent left the atelier, berating himself for allowing this to happen, and was put to bed by Landowski’s ever-understanding wife, Amélie.
He woke four hours later, took a cold shower and ate a bowl of soup that Amélie offered him, arriving back at the atelier much restored.
‘That is better,’ nodded the professor, sweeping his eyes over Laurent. ‘Now you are fit to work.’
The giant hand now had an index finger, and the boy still sat where Laurent had last seen him on the stool, intently watching Landowski work.
‘So, we start now on the ring finger. There is the model I’m working from.’ Landowski pointed to one of the moulds Laurent had taken of Izabela’s and Margarida’s hands.
Walking towards it, Laurent asked, ‘Which set of hands did you choose in the end?’
‘I have no idea, for they were unnamed. And perhaps that is how it should be. After all, they are Christ’s hands and only His.’
Laurent studied the mould, looking for the telltale crack in the little finger that he’d glued carefully back together when he’d removed it from Mademoiselle Margarida’s hand. There was no such fissure.
With a jolt of pleasure, Laurent knew without doubt that Landowski had chosen Izabela’s hands to be those of the Rio Christ.
32
Paty do Alferes, Brazil, November 1928
In the two weeks that Bel had been up in the mountains at the fazenda, she had watched her mother’s strength begin to return. Whether it was the clean mountain air, the beauty and serenity of the setting, or Fabiana’s nursing, Bel didn’t know. But Carla had put on a little weight and w
as able to find the energy to take short walks around the glorious gardens unsupported.
Everything they ate was grown either on the farm itself, or sourced from the surrounding district: meat from their cattle, cheese and milk from the goats on the lower land, and vegetables and fruit from the local farms. The region was famous for the production of tomatoes and Fabiana swore by their healing qualities, chopping, mincing and sieving them into all manner of foodstuffs.
And Bel began to feel that she too was healing. Waking up every morning, donning her bathing costume and taking a refreshing dip in the lake before sitting down to a breakfast of the delicious pound cake Fabiana made was therapeutic. There was a waterfall on their land, where the fresh water fell in a cascade from the mountains above. Bel would often sit under it, staring out at the mountains, feeling the icy-cold ripples massage her back.
During the day, if her mother was resting, she would lie on the cool veranda and read, preferring books on philosophy and the art of being at peace with oneself, rather than the romantic stories she’d once favoured when she was younger. She understood now that they were fiction, and that in real life love did not always have a happy ending.
Most afternoons, she would saddle Loty and ride up the rough tracks and across the slopes, coming to rest on a hilltop, where horse and rider would pause and take a moment to enjoy the marvellous view.
Evenings were spent playing cards with her mother and Bel would retire to her room peaceful and sleepy. Before she closed her eyes, she’d say her prayers, asking God to restore her mother to good health, to grant her father success in his business dealings and to ensure that Laurent – so far away from her physically, yet still nurtured in her heart – found happiness in the future.
It was the only gift she could give him. And she tried to offer it freely and without remorse.
It didn’t help that she’d often find Loen and Bruno out together for an evening stroll, completely wrapped up in each other. She once saw them sneaking a surreptitious kiss by the lake and her heart had burned with envy.
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