The Collector's Apprentice

by B. A. Shapiro

  It works out better than she could have hoped. She tells Paul Guillaume that another dealer mentioned an estate sale somewhere outside Brussels that includes works by some of the post-Impressionists. She doesn’t go into specifics—for how would she know?—and is nonchalant about the whole affair. It doesn’t take long for Guillaume to discover who’s selling and what’s for sale. He’s intrigued by the possibilities.

  The day after Dr. Bradley returns from Italy, Guillaume whisks him off on a quick trip to Belgium. They return triumphant. The price was high but what they negotiated was fair, and all parties seem satisfied with the result. Seven paintings are on their way to Philadelphia, each a true masterpiece according to Dr. Bradley. He’s particularly pleased with The Music Lesson by his friend Henri Matisse.

  7

  Vivienne, 1922

  The colonnade seven are boxed in a bulky crate, rolling with the waves, sailing thousands of miles to the west, and Vivienne needs to be headed in the same direction. Since Dr. Bradley’s return she hasn’t had the opportunity to talk to him about a position in Philadelphia, and his invitation to join him at a dinner party at the home of the Americans Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas appears to be her last chance.

  Still, she hesitates to accept. Even though Léon’s friend identified her only because she was with George and they called each other by name, someone from her past knows what she looks like now. And he may have told others. But her misgivings are vanquished when Dr. Bradley mentions that Henri Matisse is also invited.

  How can she miss the opportunity to meet the man whose work touches her like no other? Who pushes beyond everything that came before him, turning color into so much more than just a hue, drenching it with substance and sensation? Using it as structure. What will it be like to stand in the same room as a man who can create such magic?

  She splurges on a silk dress she finds in a shop next to the millinery where she used to work. It’s secondhand, possibly third, and has a long rip at the back and waist, but at the rooming house Adélaïde easily mends it and the dress looks almost new. Rachelle and Odette admire Adélaïde’s handiwork as well as the way the dress hugs Vivienne’s trim figure. They tease her about how sexy she looks and wonder what man she has her eye on. Vivienne blushes, and her friends tease her even more.

  As they ride to “27,” which is what Dr. Bradley and apparently everyone else calls Gertrude Stein’s home, Vivienne can barely sit still. She’s heard all the stories. Over a decade ago, Gertrude and her brother Leo created what many consider the first museum of modern art at the house on the rue de Fleurus. But there was a falling-out—it’s rumored the rift was because of Alice, whom Leo apparently referred to as “a kind of abnormal vampire”—and Leo moved back to America.

  They divided their collection; she took all the Picassos while he secured most of the Renoirs and Cézannes. Apparently both were pleased with the distribution, and now they’re best buddies again. Vivienne can’t wait to see Gertrude’s artwork. And she can’t wait to meet Henri Matisse.

  It’s raining hard when they arrive, as it often does in Paris in December, and she doesn’t want to get her new dress wet while Dr. Bradley pays for the carriage, so she walks quickly up to the house and knocks on the door.

  Gertrude Stein yanks it open, looks her up and down, and demands, “De la part de qui venez-vous?” Who is your introducer?

  Vivienne wasn’t aware she needed an introducer, and she’s surprised by both Gertrude’s appearance and her question. This small woman with the huge reputation is shorter than she is—and a good bit wider. Gertrude looks like a miniature rotund man, with her large nose, cropped hair, and corduroy jacket.

  “Je m’appelle Vivienne Gregsby,” she responds. “Although I’d like to tell you I need no introduction, I suppose I do.” She turns to look for Dr. Bradley, who’s talking with the carriage driver.

  “Vous êtes française?” Gertrude asks. Are you French?

  “À moitié,” Vivienne answers, hoping Gertrude won’t press for details. Her narrative is that she has a French mother, an English father, and was raised outside London. But she’s hoping to use it as infrequently as possible.

  “And British?” Gertrude asks in English.

  “That’s the other half,” Vivienne responds with a strong London accent.

  Gertrude’s eyes are welcoming, but they grow cool when she sees Dr. Bradley come up behind Vivienne. “You’ve come with Bradley?”

  “I’m his translator. I’m helping him find art for his new museum.”

  Gertrude actually says, “Harrumph,” then ushers Vivienne into the house. “Entrez, Vivienne,” she adds. Dr. Bradley tips his hat and follows.

  Twenty-seven, rue de Fleurus, a house on a narrow street off the boulevard Raspail near the Jardin du Luxembourg, is a common enough Parisian building from the outside—white limestone with double wrought-iron doors topped by a carving of a bearded man—but inside it’s a riot of colorful people and paintings, filled with conversation and the scent of cigarettes, clove, and cinnamon.

  Vivienne stands in the entrance and gapes. She immediately snaps her mouth shut. Even with all her studies and travels, her museum and gallery visits, her work with Dr. Bradley, she’s never seen anything like this. She doesn’t want to appear unworldly, but she can’t stop gawking.

  The whitewashed walls are awash in paintings, alongside, above, and below one another, almost touching, reaching from the floor to the tall ceilings. This arbitrary jumble wraps around her and holds her tight. Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, Manet . . . if only Papa could see this. It’s what they imagined the Mertens collection might someday become, although not displayed in such a haphazard manner.

  Then she steps back into the foyer. She can’t merrily walk into a party like this. Anyone could be here. For a moment it seems that the rooms are filled with people she knows. Family friends, classmates from the Slade, cousins, even her Tante Natalie. But as she looks more carefully, she sees that it isn’t Bernice or Antoinette or Lannie or Scotty, and the woman she took for Tante Natalie is at least twice her aunt’s age.

  Dr. Bradley comes up behind her and points toward the back of the room. “I assume you’d like to meet my friend Henri.”

  Vivienne follows his finger. Henri Matisse is sitting in an armchair, talking intently with two men, one of whom Dr. Bradley tells her is the playwright Thornton Wilder. Matisse bursts out laughing, as does his audience.

  “He looks so . . . so boyish,” she says. And Matisse does, with his mussed hair and generous smile, his hand resting casually on Wilder’s arm, the sleeves of his jacket a tad too short. An irrepressible man-boy. “I thought he’d be more serious. Much older.”

  “Henri is only serious about his work.”

  As they walk toward Matisse, the artist breaks off his conversation and jumps from the chair. “Edwin!” he cries. “I did not know you had arrived.” He and Edwin pound each other on the back.

  Vivienne is amazed that Dr. Bradley comes so close to embracing Matisse. He usually conceals his emotions, and she often wonders how many he actually has. This is the first time she’s seen him touch another person other than to shake a hand.

  When Matisse sees her, he smiles widely, and she feels his delight in the pit of her stomach. He looks more like a handsome professor than a painter: full beard and round glasses, intelligence and good cheer writ large across his face. Henri Matisse is standing in front of her, taking her in with apparent interest. Vivienne can barely breathe.

  He kisses her hand and asks, “What kind of secrets have you been keeping from me, Dr. Edwin Bradley?” But he’s looking at her.

  As their eyes meet, a searing heat rises to Vivienne’s cheeks. She’s embarrassed by her reaction, which causes her face only to redden more. “Monsieur Matisse,” is all she can say. Her hand is holding the hand that created The Music Lesson. The Joy of Life.

  “Henri,” he corrects. “Please. Monsieur Matisse was my father, lo
ng dead.”

  “H-Henri,” she manages to stammer.

  “Meet Vivienne Gregsby,” she hears Dr. Bradley say in the distance. “My translator.”

  “Excellent choice.” Henri doesn’t release her hand. “You are stunning in that shade of red.”

  Dr. Bradley says something about their work, how she’s translating and assisting him, but it’s gibberish to her.

  Henri doesn’t appear to be listening either. He murmurs in her ear, “Enchanté.”

  She’s heard rumors that he’s a ladies’ man—a true French husband, who, as they say, is “faithful to his wife in the fashion of Montmartre,” meaning not faithful at all.

  Before she can respond, Dr. Bradley looks at the two of them and frowns. “Come, Miss Gregsby,” he says, taking her arm. “There are others here for you to meet.”

  Vivienne allows Dr. Bradley to lead her to the other side of the room. She dares a quick glance back at Henri, and he winks at her. It’s all she can do to keep from swooning.

  “This is Alice Toklas.” Dr. Bradley bows slightly toward a small, stooped creature almost lost within the upholstery of a large chair. “She lives here with Gertrude and watches after the girls brought here by the men. Why don’t you sit with her for a while? She’ll keep you occupied.” He turns to Alice. “This is my translator, Vivienne Gregsby.” Then he walks away.

  Alice and Vivienne look at each other. “Arrogant, isn’t he?” Alice remarks dryly.

  “He can be.” Vivienne lights a cigarette in an attempt to calm herself. Henri Matisse winked at her. Winked at her. She takes a long drag, struggles to remember Alice’s question, and then says, “He has his uses.”

  Gertrude swoops down and perches on the arm of Vivienne’s chair. “Frankly I can’t imagine what those might be.”

  “He pays well and introduces me to people like the two of you.”

  “Bradley waves his checkbook around too much,” Gertrude complains. “He and his kind are part of the reason I left the States. Maybe more than just a part.”

  “He’s got a great eye for art,” Vivienne points out. “I’ve learned so much working with him over the last two months. He’s smart—and charming when he wants to be.”

  “Those who are charming only when they want to be aren’t charming at all,” Gertrude grumbles.

  “All charming people are charming only when they want to be,” Vivienne says, knowing how true this is. “That’s why they’re so charming.”

  Gertrude looks at Alice and grins. “This young lass,” she says, grasping Vivienne’s hand and pulling her out of the chair, “is coming with me.”

  The dining room is lined with books, almost library-like, but its most astonishing feature is the Picasso sketches that cover its double doors. Perhaps two dozen of them, pinned willy-nilly to the wood as if they were children’s drawings instead of the work of the next great master. The room is small, though the high ceiling keeps it from feeling oppressive. As does the company: French intellectuals, English aristocrats, German students, American expats, Thornton Wilder sitting next to a young writer named Hemingway, Henri Matisse sitting next to her.

  Dr. Bradley is at the end of the table, alongside an older woman with a perfectly round face underscored by half a dozen chins, and he looks none too pleased with the arrangement. Although Vivienne had hoped to talk with Dr. Bradley about accompanying him to America, she’s more than pleased with her dinner companion. There will be time later.

  Henri fills her wineglass from the bottle on the table. “Hélène is an exemplary cook and you have many delights ahead of you.”

  “The evening has already been full of delights.”

  “I do hope one of them was meeting me.”

  Vivienne takes a sip of wine, luxuriating in the full body of the Bordeaux, a Château Latour that reminds her of childhood summers in Portofino. She rolls it around on her tongue, the taste particularly delicious after her months of penny-pinching. How could she ever explain to him what a delight meeting him is?

  “I see you appreciate a fine wine. You are French, no?”

  She gives him the answer she gave Gertrude. “À moitié,” she says with a hint of wistfulness for Paulien.

  “Why so sad, ma chérie? You have been away from France for a long time?”

  She forces a smile. “Not sad, not sad at all. The opposite actually.”

  “Homecomings are often bittersweet, no? Our memories play tricks, and the good ones can hurt even more than the bad ones.”

  “Yes,” she agrees after a pause to collect herself.

  Henri takes her hand, turns it over, and runs his finger along the curved line in her palm between her forefinger and thumb. She shivers. Henri Matisse is holding her hand, speaking to her as he would to a friend. Flirting with her perhaps.

  “You are too young and handsome to let the past haunt you,” he says. “It is time for you to make a new future.”

  Definitely flirting. And a charming and flirtatious man is not to be trusted, even if he is Henri Matisse rather than George Everard. She pulls her hand from his and asks what he’s working on.

  He describes his work in progress, Odalisque with Red Pants. “I am trying to create areas of pure, bright color that reflect the way I see the subject, the way I feel her. Not as she might look through a photographer’s lens.”

  “Like what you did in The Open Window?” Vivienne asks. “The red ships? The pink anchor and the patterned dots of the flowerpots?”

  “Yes and no,” Henri says thoughtfully. “I have moved away from the Pointillist dots. Too mechanical. I am working with the patterns of tapestries. Islamic designs. I want everything on all the planes of the picture to pull the eye equally. For the subject and background to have the same value so there’s no principle feature. Only pattern is important.”

  “Beyond the Fauves? No more wild beasts?”

  Henri appraises her frankly. “There is nothing more devastating than a beautiful woman with a great understanding of art.”

  “No,” she corrects him. “There is nothing more devastating than a man who creates great art.”

  They laugh, delighted with each other, and dive into a discussion about the interplay of Fauvism, Cubism, and what Henri is trying to achieve that’s different from the other two.

  Not long after Hélène serves the crème brûlée, Dr. Bradley appears at Vivienne’s side. She reluctantly breaks off her conversation with Henri. “Are you ready to leave?” she asks Dr. Bradley, remembering that she has a more pressing discussion to engage in this evening.

  Dr. Bradley grunts in the affirmative and motions to Hélène. “Please bring Mademoiselle’s coat.”

  There’s nothing Vivienne would like better than to stay and talk with Henri, but she puts her napkin on the table. Perhaps there will be another time. But before she can stand, a woman’s voice calls from the far side of the room, “Paulien! Paulien Mertens! Est-ce que c’est vous?” Is that you?

  Instinctively, Vivienne turns, then immediately twists her face back to Dr. Bradley. It’s Antoinette Lavigne, the youngest daughter of one of her mother’s friends. Or more correctly, the youngest daughter of the woman who’d once been one of her mother’s friends—and the youngest daughter of one of Papa’s largest distributors, the man whom Franck said had threatened to take the law into his own hands if she and Papa weren’t arrested.

  She thought she recognized Antoinette earlier, but dismissed the possibility because of Antoinette’s short skirt and heavy makeup. M. Lavigne wouldn’t approve of either, and Antoinette always followed her father’s dictates without a whimper of defiance. If the situation were different, Antoinette’s rebelliousness would have increased Vivienne’s appreciation for the girl who had finally stepped out of her father’s shadow.

  Vivienne tosses her hair in an exaggerated way and says to Dr. Bradley, “Just let me say good-bye to Gertrude and—”

  “Pardonnez-moi.” Antoinette is standing to Vivienne’s left, squinting down at her. “You
look so much like a girl I know . . .”

  Vivienne shrugs. “They claim everyone has a double,” she says, dropping her voice an octave and emphasizing the British vowels. Fortunately, at that moment, Hélène brings her coat, and Vivienne pretends to search for something in the pocket, keeping her head down, wishing her hair were long again. It was useful for hiding behind.

  “C’est dommage,” Antoinette finally says after a long, excruciating pause. “I can see now that you are not she.” She laughs awkwardly. “And it could not be. Paulien is no fool, and she would know better than to be waltzing around Paris.” Then she walks back to her seat.

  “Paulien?” Henri asks archly. “What is this all about?”

  “That she mistook me for someone else?” Vivienne opens her eyes wide, trying to appear unconcerned, but her stomach is a corkscrew of dread. “Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

  Henri leans back in his chair. “I cannot say that it has.”

  Vivienne stands. “Shall we go?” she asks Dr. Bradley.

  Henri stands, too, takes her hand, and kisses it one more time. “We will meet again, I am sure,” he says. “Otherwise I will die of a broken heart.”

  “That would be a tragedy for the art world,” she tells him as she removes her fingers from his. “So I do hope we see each other again.” But she knows this is not going to happen soon. And definitely not in Paris.

  The rain has stopped, and Vivienne tries to still her trembling hands as they climb into the carriage. Had Antoinette been fooled? Or is she on her way right now to the police station? Or to report to her father what she discovered? To tell him he should oil his shotgun?

  Dr. Bradley doesn’t appear to have taken any notice of her conversation with Antoinette, which is good, although strange. But she has no time for idle speculation. She’s been recognized, and Dr. Bradley is leaving within days. “I have a question for you,” she says.