The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne

by M. L. Longworth

  “I know,” she said. “Natalie Chazeau. I’ve seen you around Aix. Come in before you freeze to death; it’s a good evening for German food.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m getting for dinner.”

  “We’ll go upstairs to the conference room,” she said, ushering him inside. “I don’t want an examining magistrate to see the mess in my office. Julie, take messages for me.”

  “Oui, madame.”

  “I’ve always admired your agency,” Verlaque said as he walked up the stairs. “Very tasteful.”

  “Thank you,” Mme Chazeau said, opening the conference room door. She liked the look of Verlaque and did not hide the fact that she was taking her time looking at him. It was, sometimes, a privilege to be old.

  “How are sales since the crisis?” he asked.

  “Slow,” she answered, sitting down and motioning for Verlaque to do the same. “It’s one thing to list exclusive properties, and another to sell them.”

  “Which is why you run the syndicat at number twenty-three rue Boulegon?”

  “Exactly,” she answered. “We had a meeting just before M. Rouquet’s death.”

  “I know,” Verlaque said, taking out a notebook and pen. “My commissioner told me. Was there anything peculiar or unusual about that meeting?”

  “A few things,” she said. “We had two new owners present, Eric and Françoise Legendre. They own an apartment on the fourth floor. They told me after the meeting that they both worked in restaurants in New York before moving back here. They used their life savings to buy M. Millot’s apartment, but to them it was a steal, compared to New York.”

  “I can imagine. I’ve briefly met them. What are they like, in your opinion?”

  “He’s a bully,” she answered. “Françoise is sweet, but is under his thumb.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, Pierre Millot came, even though he’s already sold his apartment.”

  “That’s odd,” Verlaque said. “He didn’t tell me he was at the last meeting.”

  “There was a quarrel about a storage space on the ground floor. Everyone wants to use it, but M. Rouquet didn’t even seem to know it was his. He stormed out, and Pierre ran after him. I then saw them in the street, arguing.”

  “Thank you,” Verlaque said as he finished writing. Another detail his friend Pierre left out.

  “M. Rouquet definitely had something else on his mind that evening. Normally he argues about any raise in the monthly fees, but he just sat there, playing with his hat.”

  Verlaque put his notebook back in his jacket pocket. “You’ve been helpful, thank you. How is Christophe?”

  “He’s like anyone when they first move to Paris.”

  “He loves it?”

  “Yes, and soon he’ll hate it.”

  Verlaque laughed as he got up. He looked out at the plane trees just outside the office’s windows and looked down into the street. Mme Chazeau said nothing, letting him watch the comings and goings of her fellow Aixois. “It’s amazing, this view,” he finally said. “You can see everything: people walking and chatting, a little kid having a meltdown in front of Michaud’s, scooters racing up and down the Cours . . . but you can’t hear anything. It’s eerie.”

  “Triple-glazed windows,” Mme Chazeau said. She liked the judge more and more.

  • • •

  “Choucroute pour deux,” Verlaque said. “S’il vous plaît.”

  “With the usual sausages?” the deli’s owner asked.

  “Oui, deux saucisses de Morteau,” Verlaque said, pointing to the thin pink sausages. “And two Montbéliard, and a couple of frankfurters. And heaps of sauerkraut, please. Yours is proper sauerkraut, with juniper berries and peppercorns.”

  The owner scooped the cabbage into a large plastic container. “Thank you. It’s my grandfather’s recipe; he’d make it in the back shed with his brother every winter.”

  “One of my coworkers is from Alsace. He must come here. He’s a good-looking guy, young, tall, and blond. Quite fit.”

  “Oh yes, I know him. Jules. Yes, he comes with his fiancée.” The owner smiled. He knew that Verlaque was trying to be discreet about his profession, but he knew that Verlaque was a magistrate, and that Jules was a policeman.

  “Oh, so they’re getting married?” Verlaque asked. He knew that Jules was dating a cute brunette who worked at Aix’s only coffee-roasting house, but he had no idea that they were engaged.

  “He caught the bug,” the owner replied, smiling.

  “Disease, more like it,” Verlaque said, thinking of his parents. He walked over to the small wine selection. “Jules is far too young.”

  The owner shrugged. “He must be about twenty-five,” he said. “Maybe even close to thirty. I had two kids by then. Best thing I ever did.”

  “Some people do stay happily married, I suppose,” Verlaque mumbled.

  “Oh no, we divorced long ago,” the owner said, laughing.

  Verlaque laughed out loud.

  “But I love my daughters,” the owner went on. “That’s what I meant.”

  “Enough talk about marriage, then. Do you have any new Rieslings?” Verlaque asked. “I have a few in my cellar, but I’m always open to new suggestions. I love Riesling; so does my girlfriend.”

  “Ah, the world’s great undervalued wine,” the owner replied. “Here, I just got six bottles of this one. Small family production, organic. Domaine Bott-Geyl.”

  “I like the modern label.”

  “Ah, never judge—”

  “I know, I know,” Verlaque said, excited to be on one of his favorite topics. “But I have a theory about winemakers who pay a graphic artist real money to design their labels.”

  “Go on.”

  “I figure that if they care that much about the label, and are willing to pay for it, then they must have put a lot of care and thought into their wine.”

  “I agree.”

  “I’ll take two,” Verlaque said. “Luckily I live around the corner.”

  “Luckily for me,” the owner said. “Have a good evening.”

  Verlaque thanked him, paid the bill, and walked down the rue Gaston de Saporta, past the cathedral, turning left into the Place de l’Archevêché, which would take him to the tiny rue Adanson where he lived. Holding the food and wine in his right arm, he opened that building’s elaborately carved wooden doors with his left. He saw his mail sitting on the marble console in the hallway but his hands were too occupied to pick it up; he’d do it later. Walking up to his fourth-floor flat he came across Arnaud—a young student who lived with his widowed mother on the first floor—coming down the stairs.

  “Hey, Arnaud,” Verlaque said.

  Arnaud held up a drill. “Bonsoir, Juge,” he said. “Just finished hanging the plate.”

  “Thank you. How does it look?”

  “Funky.”

  “That means you don’t like it.”

  Arnaud laughed. “It’s not to my taste,” he said. “That Soulages painting, on the other hand, I love.”

  “Me, too,” Verlaque said. “Well, add your handiwork to my bill. And thanks.”

  “No problem. Have a nice night.”

  Verlaque opened his apartment door and set the bags on the kitchen counter. He quickly took out the wine and set the bottles in his wine fridge. He smiled, thinking of the conversation with the Alsatian shop owner, thankful that he could have interesting chats such as the one they had just had, with people he didn’t know intimately.

  He walked into his living room and pulled a thick Cézanne book off of his bookshelf. It had been a gift from his brother, Sébastien, when Verlaque had moved to Aix. He opened it to the first page and read Sébastien’s inscription: To my brother. Good luck in the South. You’ll need it. Love, Séb. Turning to the index, Verlaque scrolled down to look for Rebe
cca Schultz’s name; it appeared a half-dozen times, on pages 6, 23, 25, 67, 218, and 219. He was glad that Paulik was paying Dr. Schultz a visit, and not him. He didn’t have the time.

  He quickly lit a fire in the fireplace and took a small Partagas out of his humidor and lit it, sitting down in a worn club chair with the book on his lap. He flipped through the book, looking at some of the color plates, then turned to a chapter entitled “Portraits and Figures.” As Marine’s father had said, there were few female portraits save of Mme Cézanne, and no young redhead. He read that the painter had complained that Mme Cézanne pined for her mountains and only liked “Switzerland and lemonade.” Verlaque laughed, as he disliked both the drink and the country. He stared intently at the portraits, mesmerized by Man with a Pipe; the sitter’s brown clothes, painted in vertical lines of color, disappeared into the brown background. The man’s white pipe glowed, matching his bright-white shirt. The painting was in London, at the Courtauld, and Verlaque made a mental note to go and see it.

  The author wrote that Cézanne was at ease with the workers of Aix—Verlaque could see that in the man smoking the pipe—and that the painter, especially toward the end of his life, became a recluse, speaking mostly to his maid and gardener. The author went on: “These people had, for Cézanne, a bygone view of Time and Life.” Verlaque appreciated that the Time and Life were capitalized, and he sat back, smoking, thinking of his grandparents Emmeline and Charles, whom he had watched, despite their wealth and education, having remarkable conversations with their staff, and waiters, and shopkeepers. These sitters in the later portraits, the author wrote, were at harmony with nature and at peace with themselves. Much like Emmeline and Charles.

  Verlaque looked at a portrait that Dr. Bonnet had mentioned, of Vallier, the gardener, painted just before Cézanne died. The judge could see that here, despite having been a quarrelsome man his whole life, the painter was at peace. Verlaque’s cell phone beeped and he looked at it; it was Marine texting that she was on her way. He flipped to the back of the book, where a timeline of the painter’s life covered the last few pages. He turned to the year 1885: Cézanne had been in L’Estaque, near Marseille, in the spring. He visited Auguste Renoir with Hortense and Paul Jr. in the summer. Verlaque then let out a “C’est pas vrai!” and reread the passage out loud: “June and July: with Hortense and Paul chez Renoir at La Roche-Guyon, regaining his composure after a mysterious affair with an Aix woman.”

  Chapter Ten

  Manon and Cézanne

  • JANUARY 15, 1885 •

  Cézanne remembered Monet’s gentle words, and the judge’s wife’s kind “bonjours,” and so this time he forced himself to smile at Philippe’s sister, Manon. It was their second meeting, and all week he had hoped he would see her again. But before he could say something, she spoke.

  “Oh, M. Cézanne! Aix is changing so quickly,” she said, throwing her arms up and then letting them fall against her thick striped skirt. “First they put an ugly eight-sided spire on the cathedral, then the same year they tear down our walls!”

  He, too, had been saddened when the ancient walls that for centuries had surrounded and protected Aix were demolished. He was charmed that she referred to them as “our walls,” for he also thought of Aix as “his” town. He said, “They took the walls down so that people could build homes in the countryside. Better for their health.”

  Manon nodded but didn’t reply. Only rich families could move houses; her mother would always remain in her narrow four-room house on the rue des Guerriers. Her brother, Philippe, had always made fun of their street name, “the warriors.” “That’s the story of our parents’ life,” Philippe had recently told Manon. “They left Italy young to live; they came here and had to fight for survival; and then they die. The real life of a warrior.”

  “How long have you been painting outside, monsieur?” she finally asked.

  “Since this morning.”

  “Oh, I see,” Manon replied, biting her upper lip. He was as gruff as Philippe had said, but he hadn’t understood her question. She tried again, “What I meant was, have you always painted like this, standing outside?” She remembered seeing a painting in the Musée Granet of a white-haired man painting, and he was clearly doing so inside. Her father had worked outside; some of her sisters worked outside; farmers and vintners worked outside; but here was a banker’s son working outside. For there was one thing she knew: this was work for him, as it was for Philippe. It wasn’t a hobby.

  Cézanne found himself laughing. “Twenty years now. It’s something they don’t teach you in art school. I had to figure that out for myself. How long have you been walking outside?”

  Manon laughed. “Since I was a little girl.”

  “You’ve always liked plants, Mlle Solari?” he asked,

  “Oui,” she answered. “La nature. There’s more color here than in town.”

  “All the same, there is a lot of orange and yellow in Aix,” he said. “Paris is gray.”

  “Philippe told me that about Paris, too. But out here,” she said, looking at the scene before them, “there’s green.” She boldly walked toward his canvas and looked closely at it.

  Cézanne said nothing. He couldn’t help staring at her. Her curly red hair was tied back because of the wind, and her features were clear and strong. She had a long, thin nose, high cheekbones, and big blue eyes. Her face was scarred, but it didn’t make her ugly, only distinctive. He realized he was being rude by staring, but she hadn’t seemed to notice, so intently was she staring at the painting.

  She said, “You’ve taken the blue from the sky and put in the needles of the pine.”

  Cézanne looked at his work. “Nature isn’t just one flat color.” He hadn’t meant to mumble, but that was how it came out.

  “No, monsieur,” Manon replied. “It certainly isn’t.” She remembered as a young girl being fascinated by some dark purple flowers she had picked, later noticing that the same hue existed in the plants and the sky all around her. He thought like she did, this M. Cézanne, and she knew that he had been ridiculed in Paris, laughed at by the public, critics, and journalists. She, too, had been mocked, for her poverty, her scarred face, her enthusiasm for art.

  She glanced at the painter—who was looking at his painting, arms folded—and wondered if under his felt hat he had any hair. He wore a patterned handkerchief around his neck, bright red with tiny yellow bees on it. It was the same kind of handkerchief her brothers-in-law wore, for fêtes. She tried to imagine Cézanne wearing it in Paris, as the girls at Michaud’s gossiped he did, along with a bright-red flannel taiolo tied around his waist.

  Philippe had told her of a disastrous weekend Cézanne had spent at Zola’s mansion in Médan, outside of Paris. Zola had tried, in vain, to introduce his old friend to the “wide world”: successful writers, established painters, and wealthy collectors. There had even been a famous actress present. But Cézanne had stayed silent, fearful of being misunderstood, or ridiculed. Instead, Cézanne took Zola’s boat—Nana—out across the river to a small island, and from there he painted the scene of Zola’s bourgeois house and its neighbor, Médan’s castle. Philippe had loved the painting—he had seen it on display at the art supplier Tanguy’s—and another painter, Monsieur Gauguin, had purchased it. “That landscape shimmered,” Philippe had told Manon, trying to sketch it out for her with his hands. “Greens and ochres so intense they gleam like silk!” She looked down at the half-finished painting before her and now understood Philippe’s excitement. “When I saw your painting from the forest, it looked alive. As if it could jump off of the canvas,” she said. She then added a word that Philippe had taught her: “three-dimensional.”

  For the first time since they had begun speaking, Cézanne found himself smiling. “And when you look at it up close?”

  “It’s more flat, but that isn’t bad.” She bent to get a closer look. “The way you put the paint down,” she said,
pausing, “it reminds me of Bibémus.”

  “The quarries?” Cézanne asked.

  “Yes, the way the rocks are cut. My father was a stonemason. Those hatching marks in the rock are like your hatchings here.” She pointed to the brushstrokes.

  Cézanne couldn’t wait to write down what she had just said. Here was someone who understood his art. Zola still thought Cézanne was trying to be an Impressionist; his mother and sister, no matter how smothering their attention, did not understand his art. And his father, he knew, hated it. He’d write to Zola when he got home and tell him of Mlle Solari’s obeservations. Zola was furiously trying to finish a novel, so they hadn’t been writing as much as they usually did. It was Zola who had taught him the value of never giving up and working until exhausted.

  Manon looked at the bearded painter, who seemed to be lost in thought. She slapped her forehead and said, “I’ve interrupted your work. I’m so sorry, M. Cézanne.”

  “It’s fine—” He had wanted to add “I’m glad you came again,” but didn’t. After two meetings they had shared so much.

  “But the paint, it will dry, no?”

  “I can take a break, mademoiselle,” he said, trying to smile to put her at ease. “It’s not as if I can finish one of these in a day. It sometimes takes me months or years to finish—or to be content with—a canvas.”

  “Then how do you know that a painting is finished?”

  Cézanne looked at the scene before him, unable to meet her inquiring gaze. He finally said, still looking ahead at the giant green pine, “When I’m sure that I have conveyed not what I see, but what I believe in.”

  Chapter Eleven

  La Sale Peinture

  So you’ve done a bit of reading in a book on Cézanne and now you’re an expert?” Marine asked, dipping a piece of frankfurter into mustard.

  “Don’t you see?” Velaque asked, opening a second bottle of Riesling. “A mysterious woman. 1885. In Aix.”