The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne

by M. L. Longworth

  “Me, too!” Marine’s mother said from the living room.

  “Florence, you’re not helping,” Anatole Bonnet called to his wife.

  “So . . . ,” Anatole Bonnet said, “you think that Antoine should loan the Pompidou the Soulages.”

  “Papa,” Marine said. “This has nothing to do with Soulages!”

  “Right, sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Marine said, taking her father’s hands in hers and looking again at the age spots. “Look at the state of me,” she said. “I’m being irrational for the first time in my life and it’s killing me. I can’t stand myself. He brings out the best and worst in me.”

  Anatole smiled and motioned with a nod of the head toward the living room, where Florence was simultaneously finishing the Le Monde crossword, listening to a play on the radio, and eavesdropping on their conversation.

  Marine smiled and dried her eyes.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you?” Anatole asked his daughter. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Marine sighed and said, “I’m not even sure myself, but the other night, we were at the Pauliks’ house—”

  “The commissioner who looks like a thug?”

  “Right,” Marine said. “He’s a teddy bear, actually. Well, there we all are, laughing our heads off as Léa—she’s their ten-year-old—sits under the table and calls out who gets which piece of galette. And I see that Antoine is having the time of his life. He adores that kid—” She stopped and took a breath. “And I got jealous, not of Léa, but of the Pauliks and their cute family of three.” She stopped speaking and looked at her father.

  “I always loved our cute family of three,” Anatole said quietly, not wanting Florence to hear. Their son, born a few years earlier than Marine, had died of infant crib death. He and Florence, in their seventies, were only now speaking to a therapist about it. He hadn’t told Marine about the therapy sessions, twice weekly on the Cours Mirabeau.

  “I realized that evening that I want to have a family,” Marine said. She then loudly added for her mother’s benefit, “Yes, with Antoine Verlaque.”

  “Shouldn’t you be speaking to Antoine about this?” Anatole asked, with a puzzled look on his face.

  “Of course I should,” Marine said. “If I can stay Zen long enough. Why is this subject making me so crazy?” She slapped the wooden table. “Why am I embarrassed about this wish?”

  “Because you’ve always thought out your life so rationally,” Anatole said. “At age six you reorganized our kitchen, and at age nine you were campaigning for Mitterrand for president.” Dr. Bonnet smiled and added, “I’m sure the Verlaques were not looking forward to having a Socialist run the country.”

  “No, they weren’t,” Marine said. “They took one of their only trips together as a family just before the elections, to Montréal, to see about getting Canadian passports in the event of Mitterrand winning. Which he did, so they just hid their money in Luxembourg.”

  Anatole Bonnet tried not to frown. “So it seems to you that now, at age thirty-five, you’re acting instinctively, following your heart, and that scares you.”

  Marine looked at her father and smiled.

  “And it shouldn’t,” Anatole went on. “Your mother and I drew up a list of pros and cons before deciding to have children. It seems stupid now, but back in the early ’70s all of our friends were reproducing like rabbits without giving it a thought. Or that’s how it seemed to us. And then when it happened it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. We were over the moon.”

  “But Antoine had such a lousy childhood.”

  “All the more reason to talk to him about your feelings,” Anatole said.

  “Goddamn crossword!” Florence Bonnet yelled. “Who cares about movie stars? Nine letters. Who played Cyrano—”

  “Depardieu!” Marine and her father answered in unison.

  “You’re not being fair to Antoine, Marine,” Anatole said. “He’s being selfish about the Soulages, I agree. But his opinions about children and marriage may surprise you.” He wasn’t sure why Marine had come to him with these questions, but he was glad. He wished that he could have spoken to his own parents about life’s big decisions. No doubt Sylvie had given Marine advice, and although he liked Sylvie, he would never wish his daughter to have a child without a partner as Sylvie had done.

  Florence Bonnet came into the kitchen and set her coffee cup in the sink. “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  Marine and her father laughed. “Whatever you do, chérie,” Florence said, kissing her daughter on the forehead, “we support you one hundred percent. And now I’m off for choir practice before Mass starts. Philomène will have my head if I’m late. I’ll see you there, Anatole.”

  “Oui, oui,” Anatole Bonnet mumbled.

  They heard Florence put on her coat and hat and rush out the front door. Marine reached up and touched her forehead where her mother had uncharacteristically kissed it. “Well, I should be going, too,” Marine said.

  “Will you go to Antoine’s?”

  “Yes, I think so. At least to tell him that he should loan the Soulages. Should we walk into town together?”

  Anatole shrugged.

  “What’s wrong, Papa?”

  “I’m not going to Mass.”

  “Aren’t you feeling well?” Marine asked.

  He paused. “I’m not sure I believe in it anymore.”

  “Oh mon dieu!”

  “You can say that again,” Anatole said, trying to smile.

  “How long have you been feeling this way?” Marine asked, reaching once again for her father’s hands.

  Anatole thought about her question. He wasn’t sure, but his doubts began surfacing after their first few appointments with the therapist on the Cours Mirabeau. As a medical man he had never questioned the death of their baby boy. Thomas had stopped breathing in his crib, for whatever reasons. “A few months now,” he answered.

  “And Maman doesn’t know.”

  Anatole laughed. “It’s not like I’m afraid of your mother—”

  “But you don’t want the conflict,” Marine said. “I’m a bit like that with Antoine. We have to be sure, you and I, before we start tipping the bottle and letting out all our fears and questions and demands.”

  “Exactly.”

  Marine’s cell phone rang and she saw that the caller was Antoine. “Do you mind if I pick up the phone, Papa? It’s Antoine.”

  “Go right ahead. I’ll make more coffee.”

  “Hello, Marine the Magnificent,” Verlaque said. “Don’t say anything until I say this: I love you, and I’m going to loan the Soulages to the Pompidou. I’ll even take you to the opening night.”

  “I’d love that,” Marine said.

  “And we’ll stay in one of the many spare bedrooms at my parents’ place. It’s around the corner from the Pompidou. It’s time you got to know them.”

  Marine held out the phone in disbelief. “Okay.”

  “I just had a call from my father this morning,” Verlaque went on. “He was being his usual vague self, but finally managed to tell me that my mother is sick, and in a hospital.”

  “Antoine! That’s awful! What’s wrong?”

  Anatole Bonnet turned around from making coffee.

  “I think it’s the eating disorder she’s had all her life,” Verlaque said. “I’m going to go up to Paris in the next few days.”

  “As you should,” Marine said.

  “In the meantime,” Verlaque continued, “I was wondering if you, and your father, would be available for a lunch date today, in the Luberon.”

  “Just a second and I’ll ask him. Lunch in the Luberon, Papa?” Marine asked her father.

  “Since I’m not going to Mass, I guess I’m available,” Anatole answered. “Your mother is having lunch
with Philomène Joubert and some other people from the choir.”

  “Yes,” Marine said to Verlaque. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a retired art auctioneer, a Cézanne expert, who lives up there. I just called him and he invited us up for lunch. It’s a bit weird, I know, but he lost his license driving drunk so can’t come to us. René Rouquet had also called him; we found the phone number written down on a piece of paper in Rouquet’s flat.”

  “We’ll pick you up,” Marine said. “This is exciting. We may get some answers about the painting. What’s this man’s name?”

  “Lydgate. Edmund Lydgate,” Verlaque said. “You can ask your father if he’s heard of him. He’s English but I think he must speak French.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Marine said.

  “I’d invite your mother but I know she hates me.”

  “She’s at Saint Jean de Malte,” Marine said, smiling. “And she doesn’t hate you. She has a hard time with the cigars.”

  “And my family money.”

  “And the antique Porsche,” Marine said, laughing.

  “The list goes on and on!”

  “She’ll eventually come around. But we do need to talk. I want to explain what happened the other night, after the Pauliks’.”

  “Okay,” Verlaque said. “But first, we eat.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Beauty Is a Complex Subject

  • JANUARY 23, 1885 •

  It’s so beautiful here, even in winter,” Manon said, looking at the vista before them. “Don’t you think so, M. Cézanne?” She passed him a dried fig. They had already passed the time speaking of the weather (warm and sunny, with no wind) and the painter had suggested they sit and share their lunches. He was every bit as awkward as her brother, Philippe, had described him, and yet she liked his company, and she was intrigued by his art.

  “Beauty is a complex subject,” he answered, carefully tearing the fig in two and slowly eating half. “It’s the hills and mountains of Provence, fields in sun, pine forests, villages clinging to craggy slopes, the sea . . . But I’m not interested in the specific features of the landscape.”

  Manon looked over at his half-finished painting and said, “You’re making it complicated, monsieur,” she said, smiling. Philippe had told her that a peasant once saw Cézanne throw a rock into the middle of a landscape he had been working on. “So, what is beauty for you?”

  Cézanne looked at her, surprised and slightly annoyed by her audacity. He shrugged. “A better painter can show you the detail of the pine tree, or the petals of a flower.”

  She pressed on, having been taught by her brother to question art. “Mais pour vous, monsieur—”

  Cézanne looked at her. “Mlle Solari, you can be very . . . persistent.” He looked straight ahead, but he could feel her eyes on him. Why not answer her questions? Isn’t that what was missing with Hortense? “Bon, mademoiselle,” he began. “Beauty for me is in the form, and color, of a natural object. That other painter, the traditional one, he’s painting reality for you. I’m questioning it. At least I’m trying to. There, you’ve made me answer your question. Thank you for the fig.” He reached over and patted Manon’s shoulder, then quickly drew his hand away.

  “Figs are a treat,” Manon said, as if she hadn’t even noticed his touch. “We eat a lot of soup at home.”

  “Soup is one of the best things we can put in our bodies.”

  “Well, M. Cézanne,” Manon said, laughing, “ours is mostly broth, with a little bread. You’re still hungry after you’ve had a bowl.”

  Cézanne drew his legs up to his chest, embarrassed by his family’s wealth. “How do you find working at Michaud’s?” he asked, coughing. “Is Mme Michaud kind to you girls?”

  “Oh yes,” Manon answered, feeling the painter’s awkwardness, so answering with a half lie. “She lets us take home leftover desserts. Not at all good for Maman’s sweet tooth.”

  Cézanne laughed. “Your brother, Philippe, and I once met a woman in Paris—a rich woman who is a patron of the arts. She ate only sweets. You should have seen her!” He held out his hand in front of him, imitating a giant stomach, and blew out his cheeks. Manon laughed and he spoke on, encouraged. “She never walked. Anywhere! Walking, and eating soup every day, like a Provençal, that’s a good life.”

  “But Paris,” Manon said. “To be able to buy art, and live in Paris.”

  “I’m surprised you’re interested in Paris, Manon. May I call you that?”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied. He hadn’t given her the permission to call him Paul, but she didn’t think she could ever call him that. He was much older than she, came from a wealthy family, and as a painter had traveled in circles she could only dream about. She said, “But who isn’t interested in the capital, especially if you’ve never been there?”

  Cézanne laughed. “Yes, you’ve never heard the trains blasting through the night, or the drunk men and women in Montmartre—”

  “Women, too?”

  “Yes, sadly,” he said. “And so many of the old neighborhoods are gone now, just like your old wall in Aix. Baron Haussmann tore them down to build grand boulevards; they’re vast and straight, all right, but for the rich, lined with luxury shops and cafés.”

  Manon smiled. “Your rich patron must waddle to them.”

  Cézanne laughed and slapped his knee. He had been intrigued by Manon’s sensitivity, but she was funny, too. Her southern accent was charming, and it reminded him of his own life in Paris, of things he wouldn’t tell her. He just said, “And Parisians can be unkind.” He thought of the laughter that rang through the Salon des Refusés in 1870 when he had been barely thirty years old and terrified of Paris. Fifteen years had already passed since that night, and yet he still cringed when remembering the art critic Monsieur Stock’s words: “Such a shocking Southern accent!” Monet had tried to cheer him up. “Chin up, Paul. Stock said that I painted with a spatula, or a scrubbing brush—”

  “And I with a broom,” Edouard Manet had chimed in, patting Cézanne on the back.

  “A spatula works quite well, actually,” Cézanne had said quite seriously, and his friends broke into laughter.

  Manon saw that Cézanne was smiling and she said, “There must be some good things about Paris, M. Cézanne.”

  “Yes,” he answered. “There are your fellow painters in Paris, your comrades, and that’s a good thing.”

  “And M. Zola.”

  “Oui, lui aussi. But I prefer Provence and its countryside and villages. What do you do out here, anyway? Besides walking.”

  “I collect plants,” Manon said, lifting up her cloth bag.

  “To use in cooking?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “I gather everything we need for a bouquet garni . . . thyme, rosemary—”

  “I know, I know,” Cézanne said, getting impatient. Even if his family now had a cook, he did know what went into a bouquet garni. “Bay leaf, marjoram—”

  “Finding marjoram is the hardest part.”

  “Ah, what I wouldn’t give for a good ratatouille right now,” Cézanne said. “But of course it’s not the season.”

  “We call it caponata chez nous,” Manon said. “It’s better than Provençal ratatouille.”

  “Oh, indeed?”

  Manon laughed at the painter’s sarcasm. “Yes, indeed. We add capers and vinegar. It’s a special dish for us, of course. We made it when my sisters were married.”

  Cézanne tried to think back on his childhood and remember a day when eggplants and red peppers were considered a luxury. He looked down at his pants and played with a loose wool thread. Manon remembered Philippe telling her that Cézanne had a child and a mistress but his family didn’t approve of her, and so they were never married. “I not only collect plants for cooking,” she said, trying to cheer him up.

  “Rea
lly?” he asked, turning toward her. “Are you a medicine woman, too?”

  “Maman and my sister Clara are the guérisseurs in the family. I use plants to make scents.”

  “Really? Do you mean lavender oil?”

  “That’s just one of the scents that I love. Verbena is one of my favorites.”

  Cézanne said, “We have some large ones at the Jas de Bouffan.” He stopped there, doubtful that he could ever invite her to the family home to pick verbena blossoms. Besides, his sisters guarded it for their tea. “Do you make the oils for yourself?”

  “It started that way,” Manon said. “And then I made them for my sisters and friends, as gifts, and now, at Michaud’s, I sell a few to the girls, and Madame and her daughter.”

  Cézanne smiled. “Quelle entrepreneuse!”

  “But that’s not all,” Manon said, her voice excited. “I’d like to make other products.”

  “Like what?”

  “Creams.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Manon rubbed her face and arms with her hands.

  “Beauty creams?” Cézanne asked.

  “I’m not sure they make you more beautiful,” Manon replied, laughing. “But they certainly would make your skin feel softer. More fresh.”

  Cézanne had seen fancy creams in glass and porcelain pots at the druggist’s. Did his sisters Rose and Marie use these creams? They certainly had the money to buy them. “Why on earth would you want to rub some concoction over your face?” he asked.

  Manon smiled, unperturbed, as if she had already thought out her answer. “Look up at our sun,” she said. “Even in January it shines. You’ve seen what it does to grass, or to the paint on a house’s shutters. Imagine what it does to your skin.”

  Cézanne looked up to the sun, shielding his eyes.

  She went on, “And in Provence, to top things off, we have—”