The Collector's Apprentice

by B. A. Shapiro

  But even as she says this, she knows it will take much more than a simple reshaping. The mural he created is a product of the particular space it encompassed, or that encompassed it; they’re one and the same. If the space changes, then the mural must change with it. An artist with less integrity might attempt to simply reduce the size. But that artist is not Henri Matisse. For him, the new dimensions—which shorten the width of the three canvases relative to their height—will demand a completely new design. Vivienne’s heart hurts.

  Henri helps her to her feet as if it’s she who has suffered a misfortune. He kisses her on both cheeks and sits her back down. “No, ma chérie,” he says softly. “You know as well as I do that it will not be—how do you say? A quick fix.”

  She looks into his face, at the sorrow lining his every feature. “It won’t be easy, but you’ve always excelled at difficult things—and made them seem effortless in their final execution.”

  “Damn it!” Edwin roars. “Will you two cut this lovey-dovey crap and take a look at this mess we’ve got to clean up.”

  Vivienne jumps in her chair, and Henri steps back. She was so lost in Henri’s pain that she forgot about Edwin. It appears Henri did also.

  “You’ve made an error of monumental proportions, Matisse!” Edwin bellows. “You’re a fool. A reckless fool! And I never should have entrusted such an important commission to someone as sloppy as you.”

  Vivienne is speechless. Yes, Henri made an error, there’s no doubt of that, but the personal insults are uncalled for. No matter what else Henri might be, he isn’t sloppy.

  “Those templates are correct,” Edwin continues to rail. “I checked them myself before they were sent. More than once.” He points a finger at Henri. “Which is exactly what you should have done on your end.”

  “I take full—” Henry begins.

  “But no,” Edwin continues, “you were too caught up with being an artist to be bothered with something as mundane as correctly converting feet into meters! Instead of exercising a modicum of care, you let the canvases go up and then lost the templates in a corner of some crummy garage and never thought of them again!”

  “Edwin, you’re not being fair to him. It’s—”

  Edwin swings around to face Vivienne. “Your precious Henri has painted himself into a corner, and now he’s going to have to paint himself out of it.” He glowers at Henri. “And I demand to know exactly how you propose to do this.”

  Henri pulls himself to his full height, which is, regrettably, inches below Edwin’s. But even under these circumstances, Henri has a gravitas that lends him an air of dignity. “It is as you said, and I take full responsibility.”

  “As you should.” Edwin’s tone is terse, unrelenting. “But responsibility and completion of your commission to my satisfaction are two completely different things.”

  “Can you give him at least a few moments to digest what’s—”

  “This isn’t your problem, Vivienne,” Edwin interrupts her again. “It doesn’t concern you. As a matter of fact, there’s no reason for you to be here. You need to leave.” He points imperiously in the direction of the door. “Now.”

  “It does concern me, as you well know,” she snaps back at him. “I’m going nowhere.”

  “Edwin,” Henri says warily, “I am as distraught about this discovery as you are. And I apologize for not holding up my end of the bargain. But at the moment I do not have the wherewithal to find a solution. I will need time to—”

  “Time is something we don’t have,” Edwin roars, and begins to cough. “The mural is to be installed by the end of the year. The contract you signed stipulates that fact, and now you’re not going to be able to meet your commitment.”

  Henri refuses to be cowed. “That is true. Up to a point. I will meet my commitment, deliver a mural that meets your standards. That exceeds them. Unfortunately, as you say, it will be late.”

  “I don’t see how that’s meeting your commitment,” Edwin says disdainfully, wheezing slightly. “But I’m not going to argue semantics. What I will do is guarantee you that no more money will be coming. You’re going to fix this fiasco on your own dime. And you’re damn lucky I’m willing to let you do this instead of demanding my deposit back!”

  Vivienne gives him a withering look. Although Edwin is within his rights to withhold payment until the new mural is complete, he knows he’s Henri’s only source of funds at the moment. People don’t buy art in bad economic times, and few collectors have the money to purchase a single painting—let alone offer commissions. Plus the name-calling is shameful. The man is acting like a tyrant of the worst sort.

  “That is only fair.” Henri’s voice is calm, but she can see concern in his eyes.

  Henri’s wife, Amélie, is an invalid who lives in a separate residence with a full-time nurse, and some of his children still require his financial support. Then there’s the additional cost of materials for the new mural, as well as the salaries of his assistants for at least an additional six months, maybe more—not to mention the value of his own time.

  “You’re acting as if Henri did this on purpose,” Vivienne tells Edwin. “There were some miscalculations, unfortunate miscalculations to be sure, but hurling hurtful slurs injures you more than it does Henri. How’s he going to create a new mural without money?”

  “Vivienne,” Henri says, “this is not necessary.”

  “Oh yes, it is.” Her eyes don’t leave Edwin’s face. “You seem to want to punish him for punishment’s sake. To penalize him for something beyond his control.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she could call them back.

  “It was most certainly within his control,” Edwin corrects her. “He admitted it himself. And I don’t see why I should compensate him for his mistakes—mistakes that wouldn’t have occurred if he’d taken more time to make sure everything was in order. I did it on my end, why didn’t he do it on his?” He turns to Henri. “The mural won’t be completed in the time frame we agreed to, and therefore any lawyer will tell you I am on firm legal ground to withhold payment until it is.”

  “You make a valid point,” Henri tells Edwin. “I will manage.”

  But Henri will have great difficulty managing. Although Edwin might have an argument from a purely business point of view, this is more than a commercial transaction; it’s an agreement between a collector and an artist to produce a great work of art. For the ages, not for just one man—but this is something Edwin can’t understand. To him, whatever he pays for belongs to him alone.

  “I can’t believe you,” she says to Edwin. “You don’t give a damn about Henri, about his disappointment, about all the work he’s going to have to redo. He’s your friend—has been for years—and he’s producing a masterwork that’s going to enrich the Bradley forever. Enrich the world. But none of this matters to you. You care more about being right than you do about people! And I feel sorry for you because that’s a wretched way to go through life.”

  Edwin looks at her slack jawed, and Henri smiles for the first time since he found the templates.

  Vivienne refuses to speak to Edwin and takes the train back to Paris that evening. She slips a note to Henri explaining that abandoning Edwin might be the slap in the face that he needs to understand that he’s gone too far. She also gives Henri the name of the hotel to which she’ll be moving as soon as she arrives in the city.

  As she rides through the darkness, the train tracks clicking beneath her, she exults in her willingness to risk what she most desires to stand up against a grave injustice. Edwin’s insensitivity to Henri’s situation surprises her less than she’d like to admit, although the viciousness of his invective is truly alarming. Calling Henri a fool? Such tirades are one thing when aimed at Thomas Quinton or the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but against Henri Matisse they’re unconscionable.

  She arrives as dawn breaks, checks out of the hotel where she and Edwin had been staying, and checks into another. She leaves no forwarding address. Th
en she goes to see Gertrude, whose first response isn’t unexpected. “Oh, my poor Henri,” she cries. “What a disaster this is for him. I must send a telegram immediately.”

  Nor is her second. “Bradley is a cold bastard,” Gertrude declares. “Nasty and self-serving. You must leave him. Immediately.”

  Vivienne doesn’t disagree with Gertrude’s sentiments, but she has wrestled with the situation over the long, sleepless night, and now her feelings of virtue have ebbed and uncertainty has crawled in. She needs to rethink her position, talk it through. If anyone can help her with this dilemma, it’s Gertrude.

  “You should be with Henri right now,” Gertrude is saying. “He needs you. But I suppose you already know that.”

  Vivienne looks at Gertrude miserably. “Edwin made me his beneficiary.”

  Gertrude’s eyes widen. “Everything?”

  “His wife gets the house and gardens, I get everything else.”

  “Ah.” Gertrude leans back in her chair and rests her neck in her intertwined fingers. “That does gum up the works a bit now, doesn’t it?”

  “He won’t let anyone into the Bradley to see the artwork. It’s a crime.”

  “And you’d like the opportunity to correct that?”

  “Right now there’s a legal roadblock,” Vivienne says. “But it’s possible this won’t always be the case.”

  “And then you would own the whole kit and caboodle?”

  “You can’t tell anyone. You have to promise me. This is in the strictest confidence.”

  Gertrude places her hand on Vivienne’s arm, holding it there in a motherly way. “I may be known for my big mouth, but I also know how to keep a friend’s secrets.”

  Vivienne isn’t sure she believes Gertrude is capable of keeping that promise, although she believes Gertrude means what she’s saying at the moment. “It’s very important to me.”

  Gertrude lights one of her small cigars and gazes at a Picasso drawing on the door. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to get you what you want without losing what you have.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better.”

  “Are you and Bradley having relations?” Gertrude asks. Although this is a highly inappropriate question, given the source it isn’t startling.

  “No,” Vivienne tells her definitively. “Never.”

  “Good. So that’s not part of the bargain.”

  “It’s not a bargain. That’s not how it is with—”

  “Oh, don’t fool yourself, child. It’s a bargain. Everything in life is. Once you understand that—and admit it to yourself—you’ll be able to navigate the world much more successfully.”

  Vivienne snorts. “So cynical.”

  “Do you want to have relations with Henri?”

  Heat rises up Vivienne’s face, and Gertrude shrieks, “And neither of you told me? I heartily approve.”

  “It could also be a problem.”

  “So you’re willing to give up the man you love for a bunch of pictures?”

  “I don’t love him. It’s just a fling.”

  “Pretend you do.”

  “Would you give up Alice?”

  Gertrude looks around the art-covered walls, seriously considering the question. “I see your predicament.”

  “If Edwin finds out about Henri, it’s all gone. My job, the books, the collection . . .” Vivienne hesitates. “Edwin claims he loves me.”

  “Damn.”

  “He wants to marry me.”

  Gertrude covers her mouth with her hands and pretends to gag. “Don’t make me picture it. Don’t do that to me!” she cries in mock horror.

  “You’ll be relieved to hear that Ada won’t give him a divorce.”

  Gertrude uncovers her face. “You could continue with Henri and be very, very careful. As you know, people have gotten away with far worse.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “When you want more than most people want,” Gertrude tells her, “you’ve got to be willing to take more risks and make greater sacrifices to get it.”

  27

  Vivienne, 1926

  When Henri shows up at Vivienne’s hotel room that evening, she lets him in and locks the door behind her. They undress in seconds, and as he presses into her, she throws her legs around his waist and draws him in. That powerful, wonderful warmth spreads out in waves from her center. She hears nothing and sees nothing, rides the wave until it explodes, until Henri explodes. They crumble together on the bed. Then they do it again, much more slowly.

  No one knows where they are, no one even knows Henri is in Paris. He has to return to his mural in the morning, and she has to work things out with Edwin, so they stay awake, making love and talking deep into the early hours of the next day.

  Henri speaks about his difficult father, his sick wife, his horror at his mistake. He’s the first person to whom she reveals her past. Paulien and George, all that is and all that isn’t, who she is and who she isn’t. She cries when she tells him that Tante Natalie is the only one who might forgive her, but neither her aunt nor anyone else has responded to her letters. The relief is tremendous. Not only the confessing and Henri’s sympathy, but because Henri views her as the innocent victim of a ruthless criminal.

  “Where is this Everard now?” he demands.

  “I’ve no idea. He mentioned Australia, New Zealand, America, but he’s not the truthful type. He could be anywhere. Could be dead. Sometimes I think I see him, that he’s following me. Coming back to ensnare me again . . .”

  “Why would he do that? If you saw him, you would turn him over to the police. I believe this would be the last thing on his mind. He would want to find someone new.”

  She pulls his arms even more tightly around her. “You think that because you’re not capable of thinking the way a man like George does. To him, I was a sucker once, so I’m always a sucker, a potential mark. I bet he believes I’m still in love with him. Narcissist that he is.”

  They also talk of art, and she tells him about her post-Impressionist mapping, about her tussles to align the puzzle pieces.

  “This is because you are imposing categories on something that cannot be categorized,” Henri says. “Making it all black and white when it is gray. Is Van Gogh an Impressionist or a post-Impressionist? He is both, a part of other groups also. I have been called an Impressionist, a Fauvist, a Nabi, and a post-Impressionist. What matters is the work, not the name.”

  “But it’s a useful construct to understand influences,” she argues, enjoying the back-and-forth of ideas. “Of all the things about art that fascinate me, I’m completely taken with the idea of who’s standing on whose shoulders, who’s got one foot in one school and the other in a different one, who creates something completely new from the combinations. If Picasso and Braque are Cubists, are they post-Impressionists or Abstract artists? It matters because of what comes from them as well as how they got there.”

  “All I can tell you is that Paul Cézanne is the father of us all.”

  “More than Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat?”

  “Paul’s concept that objects exist only in relation to one another sets him apart. I use this idea every day. If you surround the subject with white space, the subject disappears. This is why I use the same vase or fabric or piece of furniture in many works. The object is changed by what surrounds it.”

  “But what about color? Isn’t that what’s central? Wasn’t he the first to say that sunlight couldn’t be reproduced? That it could be represented only by color?”

  Henri pulls her close. “You sound like a teacher.”

  “I am a teacher. But really I’m a student trying to understand the most magical of all magic. How with just a brush and paint and a canvas, you can make me feel what you feel.”

  “You are thoughtful and you are wise and I adore the way your mind works, but you are too damn serious.” He begins to trace a line of kisses down her stomach. “Let me show you how I can make you feel what I feel.”

  After Henri leav
es, Vivienne falls into a deep sleep and doesn’t wake until late afternoon. She takes a shower and goes out to find Edwin. This isn’t a problem, as she knows he likes to return to his hotel around seven to dress for dinner. She also knows his room number.

  When he sees her at the door, his face creases with relief and he beckons her inside. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  A flash of guilt, until she remembers how furious she is with him. Or how furious she was. She’s suddenly having trouble mustering up all that anger. “I moved to another hotel.”

  His features harden. “So I learned from the concierge.”

  “I was extremely angry at you.”

  “And I at you.”

  She grins at him. “Well, I’m glad we got that out in the open.”

  He frowns. “It’s a crushing blow. And Matisse is responsible for it. Whatever I said to him, he deserved. It was a reckless error. One that an artist of his caliber and maturity should never have made.”

  “It was a mistake, Edwin. I suppose you’ve never made one?”

  “Other than trusting Matisse with this commission? No.”

  Vivienne can’t help it. She starts to laugh and sits down in a chair.

  “I didn’t mean that as a joke.” He takes a seat opposite her, unsmiling. So different from what Henri’s reaction would have been. “I’m serious.”

  “And that’s why it’s so funny.” She offers him a cigarette, but he refuses it. She lights one and blows the smoke skyward.

  He begins to cough and has a hard time controlling it.

  Vivienne stubs her cigarette out and proffers her handkerchief, which he takes. When he stops wheezing, she says, “You saw Henri’s mural. It’s truly original, the perfect solution for an almost impossible space. It’s a masterpiece—and I’m not using the word lightly. Are you willing to jeopardize his ability to create another?”

  “He’ll find a way.”

  “And you want to make this as hard for him as possible?”