by M. J. Rose
“Don’t apologize. After seeing what you’ve been going through, I’m almost relieved I didn’t inherit what you did.”
His voice was light. I wanted to believe him. And I was glad to be talking about him for a change instead of me.
“That’s good news. You did look happy at the gallery. It was quite a show. I was impressed, Sebastian,” I said, changing the subject.
He smiled. “I didn’t expect the gallery to take off the way it has. You saw, we don’t just attract the crowd from Cannes and Nice. Duplessi’s is becoming a destination for art collectors who take the train down from Paris to see what I’m showing. I’m considering opening one in New York.”
“So you didn’t just come to America to rescue me?” I teased. “You had business to combine with displeasure?”
“I did take advantage of being there to set up some meetings, but I would have gone anywhere in the world to rescue you. And it would have been reason enough.”
His voice, so like my father’s, warmed me. My mother had once said she’d fallen in love with my father as soon as she’d heard his voice, that it was like fingers rubbing moss. Or smoke curling. That it sounded like wood worn and smoothed over time. I heard all those things when Sebastian spoke, too. I might have inherited my mother’s witching, but my twin had inherited all of my father’s handsomeness, polish, taste, and business acumen.
After fifteen minutes of driving, we turned onto the road into Mougins, a small medieval village. Like Cannes and most of the Riviera, Mougins had been untouched by the war. Favored by artists, its tiny streets were lined with ateliers, and seeing them again made me smile. As we were growing up, our mother had often brought us here to visit with some of her friends or to dine in one of the fine restaurants. The town, also a mecca for gourmet chefs, even boasted a hotel with a Michelin-recommended restaurant.
“Who are we visiting today?” I asked. “Why are you being so secretive?”
Sebastian laughed. “The things I always missed the most between visits with you in New York were your impatient questions. You really did stay away for too long, you know?”
“It was for the best.”
“You ran away. And still, after all this time, have never really told me why.”
“I told you, after getting that letter from the woman whose portrait I’d done, I needed a change.”
Sebastian pulled into the parking lot near the hotel. One couldn’t drive through the town. The streets were too narrow.
My twin got out of the car, came around to my side, and opened my door.
“The letter might have upset you but not sent you packing. Why did you really run away, Delphine?” In the sunlight, his dark green eyes shone like holly leaves.
“If I had stayed, I would have become embittered and destroyed what I cared about the most.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I saw it, Sebastian. I saw it with my blindfold on.”
“You said you never were going to draw yourself or me. You promised me and Maman. She told you there would always be the risk of you misunderstanding what you saw in those shadows and how dangerous it could be if you acted on a false premise.”
“I didn’t draw myself. I drew someone else, and I saw myself in the sketch.”
I didn’t want him to ask me any more questions that I’d have to lie in order to answer. I stepped away from him onto the panorama deck and looked out over the vista. From up there in the mountains, the entire valley was visible, all the way past my parents’ villa in La Californie, down to town and out to sea. As I watched, an eerily murky rain cloud moved swiftly across the sky, casting much of the land below in sudden shadow. I imagined trying to paint the view, but the scenery was too complex, and the idea exhausted me. I wasn’t as good as my mother at landscapes, which was a shame, since there would have been no need for my second sight in order to paint them. My best works were the complex, detailed, surrealistic shadow portraits of people in their homes. The books on a shelf behind a man turning into trees. A woman in her dining room, plates and cutlery and napkin turning into small animals and insects.
“Come, let’s go. What I have to show you is this way,” Sebastian said.
We walked toward the empty street. No one was out and about. Probably, the impending storm kept them inside. As we passed the hotel, I stopped at the fountain. I reached into my pocketbook, pulled out a centime, and threw it into the stone basin, listening for the plink as it hit the surface and then watching it sink and join the other coins.
My mother had always laughed at my insistence that I throw money into any fountain I passed. And now Sebastian repeated her words.
“You don’t wish for luck, you create it.”
I nodded. “But one shouldn’t tempt fate, either.”
We continued on, up a little incline and into the heart of the old village. Avenue du Commandant Lamy was lined with picturesque stone houses dating back to the 1400s, each only two rooms across and no more than two stories high. The front doors were either one step down or one step up from street level.
Everywhere you looked were explosions of colors against the muted stones. Window boxes overflowed with deep reds and shocking pinks, lime greens and lavenders. Doors and window frames were painted salmon pink, robin’s-egg blue, buttercup yellow, or pale green. Small lantana trees or rosebushes growing in cobalt or emerald glazed pots were gathered on the stoops. Fuchsia bougainvillea vines climbed the facades, some covering windows.
“Will you tell me who you were drawing when you saw yourself, Delphine?”
“You’re still thinking about that? I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m glad you did. We needn’t have secrets.”
“Then tell me about your latest conquest.” I prodded my twin, trying to change the subject once again.
He laughed. “That’s no secret. An American named Carlotta Simpson. She’s a painter studying with Juan Gris. Now will you tell me?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s a painter. You can’t get away from us, can you?”
“It’s all I know,” he said, and I detected a forlorn quality in his voice.
“How long has she lasted?”
“Two weeks.”
“And how much longer will she last?”
“One week.” He laughed again. “She’s going back to Paris. At just the right time. She’s starting to wear on me. Now, you tell me your secret.”
“Mine doesn’t matter anymore. It’s in the past. I escaped.”
“Yes, you went to America, but now you are back. Are you still afraid?”
“Not as long as I’m in the south. But I would be if I went back to Paris. Now, don’t ask me anything else, because I won’t tell you.”
After a few more minutes of traipsing through the twisting streets, we arrived at an intersection.
“This way,” Sebastian said, and turned onto rue des Lombards, yet another lane lined with ancient stone buildings and a profusion of flowers, bushes, and vines.
Sebastian finally stopped at number 102. Purple and pink trailing verbena overflowed from window boxes. The front door was painted a pale green, framed with a wisteria vine heavy with perfumed blossoms.
I expected my brother to use the bronze hand-of-fate door knocker that reminded me of the one at my great-grandmother’s house in Paris. Instead, he took a key out of his pocket and inserted it into the lock.
“You rented a house here?” I asked, confused.
Ignoring yet another of my questions, he twisted the doorknob and flung open the door. “After you,” he said, with a flourish.
I stepped down into a small, cool room with a low wood-beamed ceiling and a stone floor. It was outfitted as an artist’s studio; two easels stood by the window, and a stack of canvases leaned against the whitewashed walls. A wicker chair much like the one my mother used in her studio sat before one of the easels. Positioned beside it was a taboret holding two wooden palettes, dozens of silver-foiled tubes of paints from S
ennelier in Paris, and a plethora of fine sable brushes.
Fat brass hooks were spaced evenly on one of the bare walls, waiting for paintings to hang from them. The other wall housed floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with supplies and books. Books, I suddenly realized, that I recognized. They were my searching books. Why had Sebastian unpacked the trunk I’d stored at my parents’ house and brought all the occult, medieval, and mystical books here to someone else’s house?
“Now, come look upstairs.”
Sebastian took my hand and led me up a narrow, twisting staircase with a wooden rail worn smooth by hundreds of years of hands holding on to it.
The second floor contained a small but adequate kitchen with a round wooden table and four cane chairs, a bedroom just big enough for a bed and an armoire, and a bathroom with an old porcelain tub. Each room, including the bathroom, had a fireplace. The decor was whitewash with light blue accents, the same color as the Bugatti.
“What is all this?” I asked, turning to Sebastian.
“The color, Delphine, Don’t you know from the color?”
I focused on the color. Delphinium blue. My mother had told me the story so often. Usually, the tall bell-shaped flowers bloomed in June, but the year we were born, they’d bloomed early, in mid-May. She’d seen them in the garden that morning. Surprised and delighted, she bent over to cut some stalks and went into labor. And from the moment I’d seen them, I’d been obsessed with them, too. For a long time, I believed they had been named for me, not the other way around.
Understanding dawned. “The car, this studio, this all is for me?”
He held out the key. “To heal. To start anew. As your dealer”—he bowed—“I believe it’s time to get you painting again. As your brother, I know you can’t do it at home with Maman and Papa underfoot. This seemed perfect. And you’ll have the car to motor down to the sea or into town whenever you want.”
“Nothing will ever be perfect,” I said. I knew that wasn’t something I could expect, ever in my life. “But this is awfully close,” I told Sebastian, and kissed him on both cheeks.
Chapter 18
Book of Hours
June 27, 1920
With Mathieu’s invitation to visit my next secret spot—his workshop—I had visions of a windowless room somewhere in the bowels of the Librairie du Merveilleux. From the outside, the building hardly looked large enough to house a store, much less two apartments.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Uncle Pierre’s building was erected in the early eighteenth century, incorporating the remains of a small monastery,” Mathieu explained, as we climbed up and up the twisting spiral of worn stone steps. “We’re in the cloister that was once part of the original larger structure. All that remains was this aerie.”
We’d reached the first landing and started up the next twisting staircase.
“The first time I saw this place, I felt as if I’d finally found where I belonged,” he said, somewhat wistfully.
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen. I’d grown up in Rennes, where my parents owned a café,” he continued. “When I was twelve, my mother died, and without her, my father struggled. After a year of trying but failing to keep the business going, my father sold it, and we moved to Toulouse, where he had family. But he couldn’t find work, so we came here, to Paris, where my mother had family. My father had arranged a position at a restaurant, but he took sick and in less than six weeks died of influenza. That’s what the doctors said, but I think it was a broken heart. My father never recovered from my mother’s death. Never regained any of his joie de vivre, and without it, he was only half of himself. He was vulnerable to misery. If it hadn’t been influenza, it would have been something else. He had no reserves left.”
We’d reached the landing, which was almost too small for both of us to stand. In front of us was an imposing oak door, gnarled and stained. Mathieu withdrew a rusty key from his pocket and fit it inside the keyhole. The cylinders clicked, and as he pushed the heavy door inward, a loud creak sounded a kind of greeting.
Mathieu gestured to the room beyond, gave a little bow, and said, “Welcome to my refuge.”
I stepped inside. Light streamed in through dozens of leaded-glass windows that reached from the floor to the ceiling. Where there weren’t windows, there were shelves of books. Hundreds of volumes, lined up, like guardians protecting treasures.
“This room was once the monks’ scriptorium, and my uncle used it for storage until I came along,” Mathieu said.
“I can’t imagine anyone using a gem like this just for storage.”
Beneath my feet, a stunning mosaic sparkled in the sunlight. The design depicted a world map but one that bore little resemblance to our modern-day renditions. I didn’t recognize all the shapes, with some continents swollen, others shrunk. As I watched, gold, silver, lapis, and jade tiles glinted, and dust motes danced in the beams of sunlight. An unusual perfume wafted in the air. I smelled paper, glue, leather, paint, and what I thought must be myrrh or frankincense.
Mathieu noticed me sniffing. “It’s incense. I found a stash of it in the rubble and burn it routinely. I like to think of the monks who toiled here long before me and the continuity of us all working with books, smelling the same smells, keeping the same art alive.”
He walked over to the windows and opened first one and then another, letting in fresh air along with the soft cooing of birds.
“At first,” Mathieu continued, “I was just coming up here to explore and investigate, and then I was studying what I found and experimenting with all the ancient papers and inks that had been left behind. My brother wasn’t interested in any of this. He loved discovering the city and spent all his free time roaming through Paris and learning its history. So I had the scriptorium all to myself. And since my uncle both published and sold books and had no children of his own, he was delighted at my interest and encouraged me.”
As he talked, Mathieu began absentmindedly applying himself to an unfinished book cover in the middle of his table. I was mesmerized watching his hands work the leather and couldn’t help thinking of how those same fingers felt stroking my arm, caressing my neck.
To Mathieu’s right were shelves filled with supplies: papers, boards, leathers, and other fabrics all in a muted rainbow of blues, reds, browns, and greens. I noticed sheaves of gold leafing. Jars of silver and bronze and copper paint. Bottles of gem-colored ink. Sewing supplies. Pots of glue. There were several small printing presses that appeared to date back hundreds of years.
Off to the left, a small collection of finished books and journals sat on a bench. I was drawn to their glowing leathers, their gilt edges and elaborate art décoratif designs all reflecting Mathieu’s unique artistry.
“How did you learn to do this? Is there a school?”
“There are some classes now, but I studied bookbinding the old-fashioned way. While I was still at the lycée, Uncle arranged to have me meet Pierre Legrain for an apprenticeship. He’s been Paris’s master bookbinder for the last fifteen years. Several of his books were shown at the most recent Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“And he accepted you even though you were so young?” I’d pulled up a stool and watched, mesmerized, as Mathieu decorated the leather with gold leaf. Applying it and then brushing it off. Gold dust flying, catching the light, and then landing like tiny shooting stars on the wood table.
“Yes. And I worked with him until the war broke out and we all enlisted. Legrain tried to get me assigned to him—he had a desk job in charge of the secretarial service, which allowed him to draw for publications including L’Assiette au Beurre and Le Journal—but the army needed my brother and me in the trenches.”
Mathieu leaned down, noticing something that caused him to frown. I watched his fingers gently flick away a speck of gold on the corner of his work in progress.
The cover boasted intricate geo
metric circles cut in quarters, some sections filled in gold, others in black, some left as outlines.
“But it’s not just a pretty design. Is it?” I asked. I was getting an emotional feeling from the pattern.
Mathieu looked up and into my eyes. He seemed both surprised and delighted by my question. “No, it’s not. Like my mentor, I’m considered a modernist. That means eschewing a lot of the more affected and facile ornamentation of traditional bookbinding. I’m really trying to convey the character of the text with the form and color of the design in each book dressing. I search out sumptuousness with unusual materials. Rare skins and woods and leathers that have been tanned with special oils. Unique inks and uncommon metals that can be painted or leafed.”
He stopped to show me some of them. “This is yellow China shark, this is galuchat, this is a lacquered skin. This is bronze leafing. And this is pewter paint. I’ve been learning from the Cubists and the Expressionist school of painters about the arrangement of geometrical shapes in asymmetrical patterns to symbolize a mood or attitude. I’m striving to create objects that enhance the atmosphere of where they are placed. Whose rhythms and designs add harmony.”
I was fascinated by his work and his words, by the thought processes behind his designs.
“Legrain once said that a form appropriate to its use equals beauty. I believe that. I’m aware that I’m creating a tool and an object at the same time. Each book dressing has two purposes: to protect the pages within its covers and to give pleasure. Art for function’s sake.”
I was inhaling his words, breathing them in along with the perfumed and rarefied air, in awe of his dual talents—his design sense and his poetic way of describing his world.
“Do you consider your mother to be your mentor?” he asked me.
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Does she do portraits, too? I’ve only seen her landscapes.”
“Yes, but hers are not like mine. I—”
“Do you like it?” He’d finished the section of the cover he’d been working on and held it out to me for inspection.