Though I was being mouthy at the time, my assessment on that first day was not far off the mark. While the girls at the Folies Bergère are hardly the sickly creatures creeping out of the rue Le Peletier brothels on a nightly basis (God bless you, Aimée, Je t’adore!), they are not exactly virginal. There are special rooms. There are special women. There are not-so-special men who go with these women into these rooms and come out looking rather pleased.
I asked Émilie about this once. She demurred and pretended to not know. After baiting her multiple times (the dresses, they cannot afford those dresses on their wages, and what about the jewels? The rubies, the pearls, the diamonds!), she finally told me they were not prostitutes but instead demimondaines. Les demimondaines. I am not sure precisely what this means but I aim to find out. It is a rather lovely word, isn’t it? Demimondaine. It sounds almost regal.
Part Deux
Chapitre XIX
Though April knew she was running late, she was still surprised to find Olivier already at the apartment. In Paris, New York City, and many less glamorous locales, April was always the first one in the office. Not that Marthe’s was merely a place of business, but April was a first-to-arrive-last-to-leave kind of person. Then again, it was rare for her to have jet lag, a mild hangover, and a century-old journal on loan so maybe these were somewhat extenuating circumstances.
“Bonjour,” April said as she tottered in on too-high heels. Given her questionable physical state and the jittery sugar rush, April should’ve stuck with her trusty flats. “How is everyone this morning?”
April extracted a napkin from her bag and set it, and her third coffee of the morning, atop the least-special-looking table in the room.
“Bonjour, Madame Vogt,” Olivier said. “Comment allez-vous?”
“Bien, et vous?”
“Bien.”
April glanced around and somehow, in the light of a different day, with a full night’s sleep behind her, the apartment appeared even more unwieldy. Yesterday April saw boundless treasures. She still saw the treasures, but they were mired in an impossible amount of work. Marthe must’ve quickly learned what a demimondaine was and put the knowledge to good use. April was not standing in the apartment of a barmaid.
“You look alarmed, Madame Vogt.”
“April. Please. Alarmed, no. It’s all a bit overwhelming, though.”
“Yes,” Olivier said. “We have a lot to accomplish.”
“To say the least. When do you plan to transfer the items to your office?” April flipped open her notepad. “What delivery service do you use? There’s one I used years ago; they were top-notch. I’ll have to see if they’re still around.”
Olivier shook his head.
“We won’t move anything until just prior to the viewings. We haven’t the room. Quite an astronomical number of things have come in over the past few months, and we don’t have space for Madame Quatremer’s belongings, too.”
Marthe’s belongings, April wanted to say. These were Marthe’s things. Madame Quatremer never wanted them, not for a single moment in all of seventy years.
“All right,” April said, unsure if this was good news or bad. “I guess we work here.”
The flat was beautiful, but haunting, inspiring, yet distracting. April was probably better off in the basement of an auction house, a place that did not have chandeliers upon which her brain might project areolas. Still, inefficiencies notwithstanding, April found she wanted to stay in the apartment as long as she could.
“If we’ve not expressed it before,” Olivier said. “We are quite grateful you made the journey over. We value your help. You certainly understand Continental furniture better than anyone in our office.”
“Merci beaucoup.” April said. “I’m glad to be here.”
Despite the compliment, April frowned. Distraction whirred around her head like crickets. Something was off. April’s brain felt thick, muddled, confused.
“Is it just me,” she started. “Or is the flat weird in some way…”
April looked over her shoulder and realized the problem with a jolt. The Boldini. It was missing.
“Where’s the painting?!” she gasped. “What happened to it?”
Olivier shrugged. “That we took back to the offices for assessment.”
April clutched her stomach, her body swayed. The thought of not seeing the portrait again made her downright sick. It was only the chouquettes, she told herself. Consumption of ten pastries in a one-hour span was inadvisable no matter how strong one’s constitution.
“But it’s not yet been authenticated,” April said, her breathing labored, as if all the dust from the apartment was now inside her lungs. “We need a plan to determine provenance before we start staging. I have some documents loaned to us by the estate that may help in this regard.”
Bring her back. Bring the damn painting back.
“Ne vous inquiétez pas,” Olivier said. “It’s all but taken care of. As it turns out Boldini’s wife wrote a biography that was never published. In it, she mentions the portrait. Sounds as though we have provenance fairly well settled.”
“Wow,” April said. “Okay. That’s great news. About the verification. Terrific. Lucky.”
It was all these things: great, terrific, lucky. Still, April felt as if she was lying. So that was it then? No more Folies Bergère or demimondaines or nipple chandeliers? It was good news for the auction, not so good for Luc’s so-called curious auctioneer.
“Madame Vogt,” Olivier said. “Is everything all right? Vous-êtes stressée.”
“No. Not stressed.”
Except very stressed. She wanted the portrait. April wanted the room to stay exactly as it had been the day before.
“Madame Vogt?”
“I’m … uh … I’m thinking about the auction itself. Do you have a preliminary timetable? We need to calendar it soon.”
Schedules. Calendars. These were the things April was supposed to worry about—not courtesans, frothy gowns, or the swindling of prominent republican family members. But Marthe deserved to be on the calendar too. She was the schedule. That this was a Boldini meant thousands would see Marthe’s face. April wanted them to see the rest of her too.
“This has the opportunity to be a very special auction,” April continued, ideas coalescing in her mind.
Maybe they could build something around Marthe de Florian herself, lend the woman a certain kind of posthumous fame, notoriety comparable to Jeanne Hugo’s—preferably exceeding Jeanne’s—April thought with a smirk.
“I’m envisioning a multiday exhibit,” she said. “The history is quite rich. Though the woman is unknown, even to us auction-house types, she consorted with Proust and Montesquiou and even the Hugo family. And of course Boldini himself! Think of the stories our pieces could tell.”
“Ah! Quite clever you are,” Olivier said.
April started to beam.
“Alas. Non,” he said. “It is already decided.”
“Decided…”
“Most of the assets will go into ‘Important French Furniture, Sculptures, and Works of Art’ in September. The rest shall fit with ‘Important European Silver, Gold Boxes, and Vertu.’ Which is”—he checked his phone—“in October.”
“What? That can’t be right?” April said, confused. “Filler pieces? That doesn’t make sense.”
“We were a little lacking this upcoming season, to be honest. So these items will round everything out quite nicely.”
At once April’s hopes for the auction were pummeled. Marthe had been locked up and stashed away for over seventy years. They’d made this tremendous discovery but once her pieces were broken up and scattered amongst other half-baked lots, it’d be like they never found her in the first place.
“You look a little peaked,” Olivier noted. “Do you need to sit down? It can get quite stuffy in here.”
“Olivier.” April inhaled deeply. “I implore you to reconsider. You flew me to Paris for my expertise and—”
Without waiting for an answer, Olivier turned and strode toward the kitchen, leaving April slack-jawed and staggering in the hallway. They couldn’t do this to Marthe. If she showed Olivier the journals, perhaps he’d change his mind. Or, worse, perhaps he wouldn’t.
“This is not happening,” April said as she hugged her purse to her chest, feeling the weight of Marthe’s journals through the leather. “You’re getting your own auction. Important French Furniture? C’est merdique.”
Strong words but the right ones. C’est merdique: It was shitty indeed.
Chapitre XX
April hunted Olivier down an hour later, which felt like the minimum length of time before she could reasonably accost him again. In the fifty-seven minutes (fifty-eight, fifty-nine) since Olivier dismissed her auction ideas, April had accomplished little, her brain too congested with frustration, with the goddamn furniture and vertu.
“Important European Silver.” That’s what you called a random piece from a random home you didn’t know what to do with, a piece whose catalog copy was uninspired, untied to something greater. Or as Birdie once joked upon trying to describe a mangled fork from a crumbling British castle, “It’s silver, dude, and from a castle, isn’t that enough?”
“Olivier,” April said. “Can we chat?”
She approached the kitchen, where he stood, back toward the doorway and looking through a crate of sealed wine.
“Bonjour, April,” he said without turning around. “How’s it coming with the furniture? Not sure any of this wine is auctionable—”
“We need to discuss the apartment.”
“L’appartement?” He turned to face her. “What is there to discuss? It is a rental, non? It does not get transferred with the estate.”
“I don’t mean the apartment itself,” April said, trying to settle the pitch in her voice. “These aren’t filler pieces, Olivier. You can’t cram them into other auctions.”
He shrugged. “I disagree.”
“What about the Boldini? You can’t possibly—”
“The Impressionist and Modern Art Auction. A perfect fit.”
“Impressionist and Modern Art,” April repeated, dazed. “You can’t do that.”
Marc’s head popped around the corner.
“Ça va?” he said. “Is there a problem in here?”
“Yes, there’s a problem!” April said in anguish.
She suddenly pictured the two men running around the Paris auction house, sticking pieces of Marthe’s life into the empty, awkward spaces of other peoples’ broken estates. Together Madame de Florian’s things told a story, with the gilt and ostriches and all of it.
“This is not filler,” she said again, helplessly gesturing around the room, as if she’d known these belongings for decades instead of hours. “You can’t do this.”
Maybe if she said it enough times they’d agree.
“We see no reason to conduct an entirely different auction,” Olivier said. “It’s cost-prohibitive. Think of the catalogs and the dinners. We’d never make any money if we gave every interesting find its own auction. You know this, April. You’ve been in the business for years. This is not Contemporary Art.” He made a face. “It’s much more economical to place these assets with other properties.”
Properties, assets—that’s all the pieces represented to them, goods to be collected and monetized. It was, of course, the whole point to Sotheby’s, though not necessarily to April, at least not then.
“Olivier, Marc, I fully appreciate the need for conservatism,” she said. “But hear me out. I’m a little surprised you did not consult me, but it’s your office and I understand the dynamics. As you said, I’ve been in the business long enough, and I truly feel we’re being shortsighted. There are intangibles to realize. Together these pieces have that extra something, the provenance that made Rockefeller’s Rothko go for $73 million instead of $30 million, that je ne sais quoi that fetched several hundred thousand dollars for Jackie O’s fake plastic pearls.”
“Elisabetta Quatremer was no Jacqueline Onassis.” Olivier chuckled. “Unless you have an iconic photograph of Sean-Sean wrapping her belongings around his chin.”
“John-John.” April shook her head wearily. “Not Sean-Sean.”
“This is what I said, non? Either way, unless Madame Quatremer has progeny considered so-called American royalty, or is a long-lost Rockefeller, her name would not draw people to a separate auction. It’d be one more event, tens of thousands of euros wasted. It’s far easier to put her with the regularly scheduled auctions.”
“It’s Marthe de Florian who has the intrigue,” April said, picturing what was sure to be the catalog description—“Private Collection, Paris”—instead of what it should’ve said. Instead of Marthe’s full name in print. “It’s the woman in the Boldini people will care about, not Madame Quatremer.”
God, she’d have to show them the diaries sooner rather than later, wouldn’t she? April bristled at the thought.
“My research is only very preliminary,” she continued. “But based on what I’ve read, I truly believe if we marketed her auction in the right way we’d more than recoup the cost. If people came to know the woman in the painting, the lots would have the dual benefit of being a Boldini and featuring the artist’s lover, a woman with a fascinating background of her own. This goodwill would extend to the other objects, and raise the value across all and in total.”
“April—”
She was too far gone now to be stopped.
“Our entire job is to get bidders to see the value of the pieces beyond their physical description. The story we could tell with Marthe would net us at least double. I’m sure of it.”
“‘Marthe,’ is it?” Olivier smirked. “On a first-name basis?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, and if we play this wisely the entire art world will be on a first-name basis with her, too.”
“You pose a very convincing argument, but it’s too risky. I don’t know that I can line up enough buyers for this type of sale.”
“But these pieces themselves! Forget Marthe’s story. Every asset here is fresh to market! That’s its own selling point.”
“Ah, well. Blame the economy. And the department. This is what the team has decided. Je suis désolé. I’m sorry we did not include you in the discussions.”
“Oh it’s…” April mumbled. “Unnecessary.”
She was, after all, merely the American hired to look under desks and at the backsides of rugs.
April wondered if she could go above their heads. Marthe deserved her own spotlight even if, like everything else in this world, it boiled down to economics. Not much had changed. A hundred years ago Marthe didn’t have enough name to get her own show at the Folies. Instead Gérard relegated her to the bar, filling in where Émilie could not. April said it before and she’d say it again: Marthe was not filler.
“I do not mean to disappoint you,” Olivier said. He frowned almost imperceptibly, and for a second April believed him. “But I am glad you understand. In any case, it is time for me to go. I have a meeting in the office. Do you need anything before I leave?”
“I think I’m fine here. I’ll be working in the master bedroom today. I’ll ring your mobile later with an update.”
“Very well. We’ll speak this afternoon. Au ’voir, April.”
“Au ’voir.”
April pivoted on her heels and shuffled to the back of the flat, eyes hot with the threat of tears. Marthe de Florian. She was almost already gone.
Furniture, she reminded herself. You’re here for the furniture.
Olivier was right. This was business, and she would do well to treat it like the series of economic transactions it would soon become. No use getting attached to a woman in a painting. What did April care for a Belle Époque prostitute? It had nothing to do with walnut bookcases or mauve settees.
>
Unfortunately it was impossible to weed through Marthe’s boudoir without seeing the woman in it. Though the room was as jumbled as the rest of the flat, at the center was an imposing mahogany-and-gilt-bronze mounted Aux Nénuphars bed. It had a towering headboard sprung with golden cobras. Matching cobra-legged tables, also with the water lily motif, sat nearby. It was not enough to say the pieces were extravagant. A similar set was on display in the Musée d’Orsay.
Though April was there for the furniture (as she reminded herself six, seven, a dozen times), what she really wanted was the journals. Upstanding, bookish Continental furniture expert April Vogt was far more interested in what happened on the bed than who made it and in what year. This was a first.
Gloves on, April lifted the diaries from their folder. She poked her head around the wall to where Olivier and Marc stood squabbling in French about where to order sandwiches for their afternoon meeting. She had time for a few pages. It was the least April could do for the woman who once lived there, a woman whose life would soon be parceled off and sold to the highest bidder.
Chapitre XXI
Paris, 22 September 1891
I’ve found you can acquire things from the male species, valuable things.
A little flirtation and they are aflutter, tripping over themselves to compliment and dole out the treasures. Vous-êtes plus belle que les étoiles! More beautiful than the stars? Hardly, but I will take your candlesticks and lacquered boxes. Merci, Georges Hugo.
Thus far I’ve acquired: four gowns, two necklaces, one painting, and countless francs tucked into pockets and sleeves. I’ve already run out of room in my bed-sit and therefore have three pairs of candlesticks living with Aimée. She will likely sell them and claim theft. I don’t mind. It gives me an excuse to acquire something new!
A Paris Apartment Page 9