Restoration

by John Ed Bradley

  In the afternoon I napped on the bench in the shade of the garden oak, oftentimes with a book open on my chest. I still liked an occasional murder mystery, but most of my reading these days went to southern art and the monographs, pamphlets, auction catalogs and books on the subject that I’d inherited from my father.

  I was particularly drawn to the coffee table tomes published by museums and individuals to promote their collections. In these Levette Asmore was often featured. The books tended to follow the same format: on the left page a brief biography of the artist and description of his work, on the right a color plate showing the painting in the collection. One publication, brought out in 1958, featured portraits from the Louisiana State Museum and showed an Asmore painting whose composition was strikingly similar to the one Patrick Marion owned. A young woman—Beloved Christine, she was called—stood before a fiery Louisiana river landscape, looking as if she’d just been ravaged. “Asmore, you horny dog,” I said when I encountered the image.

  The bulk of the artist’s bio added little to what I already knew about Asmore, but then came the last line:

  No artist ever to paint in the American South produced a more compelling story than Levette Asmore (1918–1941), an orphan raised by Catholic priests whose life was marked with tragedy from beginning to end. Asmore moved to New Orleans after his parents died in the Great Flood of 1927. A decade later, his teachers were calling him the most innovative and exciting artist then at work in the Vieux Carré. Asmore’s sexually frank portraits of young women have drawn comparisons to the provocative nudes of his idol, Amedeo Modigliani. Asmore’s apparent suicide ended a brief but brilliant career rife with controversy.

  Wiltz Lowenstein donated the portrait in the museum collection.

  “Wiltz Lowenstein,” I said out loud. “Wiltz Lowenstein? How do I know…?” When the name finally registered, I nearly fell off the bench. Lowenstein? The painting’s donor was named Lowenstein? I scrambled to the apartment to try to figure out what to do next. “Lowenstein,” I kept saying.

  My rent check went to High Life Realty, Patrick Marion’s company. I’d never thought to inquire about my landlord’s first name.

  In minutes I was standing at the front door of the main house, beating a fist against the whitewashed cypress that formed the frame. A woman appeared past the screen, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking as she approached on the high-polished parquet. “Hi, hate to disturb you, ma’am. My name is Jack Charbonnet. I rent the apartment in back and I was wondering if I could speak to Mr. Lowenstein, please?”

  She sniffed and brought her eyes together in a tight squint, then shook her head as if I’d asked the impossible. “Mr. Lowenstein expressly asks not to be disturbed today. I’m sorry, Jack. If there’s a message I’d be more than happy to deliver it.”

  “Are you his sitter?” I asked.

  She was wearing pale blue house pants and an oversized T-shirt advertising the Cat’s Meow, a Bourbon Street karaoke club. Even though I stood about six inches taller than she did, she outweighed me by no less than fifty pounds. “I’m his nurse,” she said.

  “Ma’am, would you by chance know Mr. Lowenstein’s first name?”

  “Charles.”

  “It isn’t Wiltz?”

  “It’s Charles. Charles Howard Lowenstein.”

  “Will you ask him if he’s related to Wiltz Lowenstein?”

  “Wiltz Lowenstein,” she repeated, then shuffled up closer, staring at me through the screen. She sniffed again. “Wait here, please.”

  After she left, I pressed my face up close to the screen and looked in the house. It had a large center hall holding an antique buffet. On both sides the walls were crowded with paintings, the space so thick with them that frames touched and in some instances overlapped. There were several dozen Drysdales, large and small, as well as five or six French Quarter courtyard scenes by Alberta Kinsey.

  The nurse came striding toward me. I gave a grateful smile as she approached, figuring an invitation was sure to be offered, but instead she checked the latch on the screen door. “Jack, I’m sorry but Mr. Lowenstein says he isn’t related to a Wiltz Lowenstein. Is there anything else?”

  I heard a clattering from behind her in the hall, and the metal wheel of a wheelchair poked out in the darkened doorway before creaking back out of view. The woman glanced over her shoulder.

  “Did you ask Mr. Lowenstein if he knows anyone named Wiltz Lowenstein?”

  “No, I did what you said and asked him if he and Wiltz Lowenstein were related. He said they weren’t. Jack, please, Mr. Lowenstein isn’t feeling well today. Why don’t you come back some other time when he’s doing better?” And with that she took a step back and closed the double French doors in my face.

  In the White Pages for Greater New Orleans there were three listings for Lowenstein. I immediately ruled out the first of them because it belonged to a suburban funeral home. A second listed Charles H. of Moss Street, and the other was Lawrence David, whose address wasn’t listed. I dialed the number for Lawrence David, using a French Quarter prefix, and asked for Mr. Lowenstein. “Speaking,” said the person who answered.

  “Sir, are you by chance related to someone named Wiltz Lowenstein?”

  “No, I’m not. Who the hell is Wiltz Lowenstein?”

  “What about Charles Howard Lowenstein?”

  “He’s my late father’s uncle, my great-uncle. Who is this?”

  I told him who I was and why I was calling, then added, “I found your name in the phone book. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all, Charbonnet. Uncle Charlie has kept a low profile for years, and so we don’t talk much. But I can’t recall his ever mentioning a Wiltz. Have you asked Uncle Charlie about this man?”

  “The nurse who sits with him spoke to Mr. Lowenstein on my behalf. He told her they weren’t related.”

  “Well, he would know. When he lived here in the Quarter he ran with that bohemian crowd—the writers and the artists and the gals with hairy armpits. Tell me, Charbonnet, how is Uncle Charlie? Treating you well, I hope?”

  “I’m enjoying the apartment. But to be honest I haven’t met your uncle yet. He doesn’t seem to want to leave the house.”

  “He can be a real pain in the ass, that’s for sure. I could blame the arthritis—you’ll notice it’s crippled him, disfiguring his feet and hands—but the truth is I never knew him to be very friendly, and he resigned from what you might call life long before he was ever diagnosed with the disease. Come to think of it, he resigned before I was even born. If he gives you any crap, don’t hesitate to call again, you hear?”

  “I’ll call again if there’s a problem.”

  “Well, all the best in your hunt for Wiltz Lowenstein.”

  Next I called Rhys Goudeau at the Guild’s studio. I didn’t mention our kiss the other day on Magazine Street, or any of what we’d talked about. Instead I told her about the odd coincidence connecting the name of my landlord to an Asmore portrait, a subject that I was sure would excite her. “They’ve got to be the same guy,” I said.

  “If you have any time today,” she said, “you should go by the Williams Research Center and see if they have an artist file for Wiltz Lowenstein. Maybe something will turn up. You might also visit the State Museum—the place you want is the Old U.S. Mint at the foot of Esplanade—and find out if they have Beloved Christine on display. While you’re there ask for Dr. Gilbert Perret, the curator. I’ve done some work for him and we have a good relationship. He’s a decent-enough fellow and he’s certain to have information about the painting’s provenance. Hey, look, Jack,” and now she paused, long enough to catch her breath, “are we still on tomorrow for your haircut?”

  “Oh, right. My haircut.”

  “Meet me here at the studio at four o’clock. There’s something I want to show you, something you need to see.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your boy Levette, would it?” I said.

  “Four o’clock,
” she said, and before I could respond, she put the phone down.

  Sorry, said the elderly docent, but I would need to schedule an appointment with the curator to view the Asmore portrait, and unfortunately Dr. Perret was traveling in Europe and wouldn’t be returning for two more weeks. Could I come back at a later date? Or perhaps call and arrange a meeting?

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “I’ll do that. Thank you.”

  “It’s a beautiful painting,” she said. “It’s in Gilbert’s office. I know you’ll be thrilled to see it. It gives me goose bumps every time I go in there. You know what else it does? It makes me smile. It really does. It makes me smile.”

  She was probably eighty years old but her voice sounded younger, almost like a girl’s. “Do we know each other?” I said. “You look familiar to me.”

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” she said. “I only know a few people under the age of fifty and we’re all related. Isn’t that terrible? Shows you how old I am.”

  “Any way you could show me the painting now, ma’am? I won’t touch it or anything. All I want is to have a look.”

  “Funny,” she said, “another gentleman asked me the same thing only about an hour ago.” She laughed and shook her head. “It’s not possible. Gilbert keeps his door locked.”

  Another man was there? I wondered about this person, this other seeker of secrets, this fool, as I walked up to Chartres Street and the Williams Research Center. Was he like me, someone with way too much time on his hands? Or did Rhys Goudeau and I have competition in our pursuit of Asmore?

  I checked in at the desk, climbed to the reading room on the second floor, and requested the files for Wiltz Lowenstein and Levette Asmore. The librarian returned with only the one for Asmore. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have anything for a Wiltz Lowenstein,” she said. “Are you sure you have the spelling right?”

  “Pretty sure,” I said, then wrote out the name on a slip of paper.

  She shook her head. “Nothing on that one.”

  I sat at the table near the big windows in front and spread out the clippings and photographs. Although I carefully read over every news account in the file, I could find no reference to Wiltz Lowenstein. A housemate of Asmore’s, who himself was identified as a former student at the New Orleans Art School, was mentioned in a couple of stories, but in none did his name appear. I studied the Laughlin photograph of the Saint Philip Street cottage the two men had shared, imagining the collection of paintings that must’ve once resided past the old doors and shuttered windows, and also imagining the life that Asmore and his housemate must’ve lived there. Before World War II rich young Americans from the East Coast journeyed to Paris for adventure in neighborhoods like the Latin Quarter, Montparnasse and Montmartre. But in the Deep South, where people had less money and fewer privileges, the young had sought their freedom in the bohemian district of old New Orleans. I quickly grew frustrated by my search for information about Wiltz Lowenstein. Had such a person really existed? In none of the photos was Asmore shown with a young man who might’ve qualified as a housemate. In fact, from the pictures one easily could have concluded that Asmore was a loner suffering from a social phobia. There were fewer than ten photographs, and in each of them he was the only figure in the frame. But then I recalled that there had been another, a small snapshot showing him painting on the street with Alberta Kinsey. I searched the file, turning over every page and scrap of paper, but the photo was nowhere to be found.

  “May I have your file on Alberta Kinsey?” I said to the librarian, as I filled out yet another request form. Perhaps, it had come to me, a duplicate of the photo was included in the information on Kinsey.

  Minutes later the librarian returned with an accordion file twice the size of the one for Asmore. I returned to my desk and sorted out the material, first examining the photos, none of which was the one showing her with Asmore, and then reading the newspaper and magazine profiles about the artist and reviews of her exhibitions.

  In a story published a year before her death in 1952, Kinsey had broken a long silence and spoken on the record about Asmore. “It’s very painful to talk about Levette,” she was quoted as saying. “I loved him so and I was hurt by his passing—I tell you, I’m still not recovered, ten years later. Levette told me once that he felt as though he was born in the wrong time, and although I argued with him then I believe it to be true now. Most of us dream about going back in time to when things were simpler. Levette dreamed of leaping forward. He thought the world would accept him there—not only his work but the kind of man he was.”

  I returned the file to the librarian and asked her to make copies of some of the stories. “They’re twenty cents for each sheet of copy paper,” she said. “This is at least ten dollars here.”

  “I’ll pay it.”

  “Fine, but I’ll need a few minutes.”

  She collected the material and left the reading room, disappearing past a door leading into a hallway. There was a window shaped like a diamond in the door and I watched her walk to the end of the hall and turn the corner. I looked back at the reading room. Only two people were there today, both of them seated at tables on the other end.

  The librarian’s station was neat and orderly, and squarely centered on the surface of her writing desk were a pair of index cards listing visitors who’d checked out the Kinsey and Asmore files. I glanced over at the door for another look at the hallway past the glass. Finding no one in sight, I stepped around the desk and read the short roster of names and dates chronicling when the material was checked out and returned. My name, penciled in like all the others, was the last on the card. And just ahead of mine was Rhys Goudeau’s, her most recent visit being the day before.

  “Rhys, you thief,” I mumbled under my breath.

  As I was walking back to the other side of the desk a name on one of the cards suddenly came clear in my consciousness. It hadn’t registered when I first looked, but it popped up now, as if to announce itself. One day last week, at ten o’clock in the morning, Tommy Smallwood had checked out the Asmore file.

  “All done,” the librarian said, cradling twice as many papers as she’d left with.

  “Oh, wonderful,” I replied.

  Next day at the studio of the Crescent City Conservation Guild, Joe Butler escorted me up the stairs to Rhys’s office. He was no friendlier than the first time I met him, but no ruder either. I tried to beguile him with small talk but he would have none of it. He didn’t even respond to my enthusiastic characterization of the day’s weather. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I said, pressing him for the smallest utterance.

  “Yeah, it’s all right.”

  “I don’t think it can get any prettier.”

  “That may be true.”

  I’d arrived half an hour early, intent on confronting Rhys about the missing photograph before we went for my haircut. But as usual she was way ahead of me. Joe shoved her office door open and poked his head inside. “Boss, it’s Mr. Charbonnet.”

  The overhead lights were off, the windows shuttered against the daylight. In the middle of the room Rhys was sitting on a swivel desk chair with all four casters missing, looking up at a large screen holding the image of Kinsey and Asmore painting on a French Quarter street. On a table next to her stood a projector of some kind, throwing light that replicated the photograph. “Come grab a chair, Jack.” She gave the one next to her a kick.

  I studied the picture on the wall.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “What do I think? I think you’ve lost your mind. That’s what I think.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You could’ve examined it under a loupe or a magnifying glass, Rhys. You didn’t have to walk out with the thing.”

  “What thing?” she said. “And walk out of where?”

  “Cut it out. You stole that picture.”

  “Stole it?” She looked back up at the image. “I did nothing of the kind. I had one of the librarians make m
e a photocopy. That’s why it’s so blurry. You think I’d steal from the HNOC? You’re full of shit, Jack. They’re good to me and they’re one of my best clients. I’d never do that.”

  I took a seat and told her about my visit to the Williams Research Center and the purloined photograph and seeing Smallwood’s name on the library card. “You think Smallwood stole it?” I said.

  “You’re making a leap in assuming it’s been stolen,” she answered. “Someone in the building, a staff member, might’ve been using it for research or some other purpose. Did you notice anything else missing from the files?”

  “No, just the photograph.”

  “I’d worry more if you’d been unable to find the old clippings about Levette’s mural. Did you notice if they were still there, by chance?”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t notice. But I wasn’t looking for them. What is that thing, Rhys?” I pointed to the contraption on the table.

  “Oh, it’s called an episcope. Basically what it does is let you project a positive image, like a photograph, without having to first reproduce it as a slide or a transparency. Ever see a movie called The Moderns? It’s about a struggling artist in Paris in the twenties who forges paintings—he makes fakes—and he does it with the aid of an episcope, just like this one. There’s a scene in which he copies a painting by Cézanne by projecting the image onto a canvas tacked to the wall. Even today a lot of portrait painters use episcopes. Photorealists, too.”

  “You’re not worried about Smallwood, Rhys?”