The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne

by M. L. Longworth

  His father put his spoon down and looked up.

  “Did your friend Enrique ever have a painting stolen?” Antoine asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “Not in his Paris home,” his father answered. “But he did tell me the crazy story of his Empire-era eagle being stolen out of his Monte Carlo apartment.”

  “A gold eagle?”

  “Yes, it was atop a dresser. Enrique was something of an amateur historian, with a keen interest in Napoleon. It was a former servant—a Corsican—who broke in one night. With all that art on the walls, some of it very pricey, the chauffeur took the eagle. Only that. He wanted to take it ‘back home,’ as he said, to Corsica.”

  “So not all art theft is done in order to make money,” Antoine said.

  “Honor. Ownership. Status,” M. Verlaque said. “For some people, that kind of power can outweigh any monetary value.” He looked past Antoine at the crowd that was waiting to be seated next. “There’s quite a rush at the door. They do a second service here; I was told that when I called for a reservation. What’s this country coming to?”

  Antoine turned around and looked at the hungry clients waiting for a table. Some looked desperate, others tired, and a few joked among themselves, trying to make the best of it. Many of them were wet; it had started raining again. Others strained their necks, surveying the other diners who had booked earlier, trying to see which ones were already eating dessert, or having coffee.

  “Not again! I don’t believe it . . .” The restaurant’s noise level was suddenly unbearable. “Papa, there’s someone at the door whom I know,” he said, pushing his chair back and wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I’ll be right back.”

  • • •

  From where M. Verlaque was sitting, he could see that his son was scolding the woman. The woman protested, throwing her hands in the air, and looked behind her, out the window. Antoine said something and put his hands on her shoulders, and they turned and walked toward the table.

  “Father,” Antoine said, “I’d like you to meet Dr. Rebecca Schultz. She teaches art history at Yale.”

  M. Verlaque quickly got up and shook Rebecca’s hand. “Enchanté.”

  “I’ll get a chair,” Verlaque said. “We’ll squeeze you in, Rebecca. Father, Dr. Schultz speaks excellent French.”

  “But I’ll never manage to lose my American accent,” Rebecca said.

  Antoine returned with a chair and Rebecca quickly sat down, not taking off her coat.

  “Ah, like our charming Jane Birkin,” M. Verlaque said. “She’s lived in France for more than forty years and still has her accent. So, you’re a university professor—” He stopped himself from continuing. Another professor? He had met Marine Bonnet only once, and was charmed by her. What was his son up to? He went on, “Some say that Ms. Birkin even fakes the accent a bit—” He stopped speaking, as he could see Ms. Schultz’s face change from one of nervousness to one of fear.

  “What is it, Rebecca?” Antoine asked, taking her hand.

  “He’s there,” she sputtered. “I can see his red motorcycle helmet.”

  “Who?” Antoine asked, turning around to look out of the restaurant’s wet, foggy windows.

  “He’s gone—”

  “Rebecca, thousands of Parisians ride motorcycles.”

  “I’m scared—”

  Antoine leaned in. “How did you find us?”

  “You left me your parents’ home phone number, remember?” she said.

  “Yes—” He realized that he had put his cell phone on silent, so that this rare dinner with his father wouldn’t be interrupted.

  Rebecca played with her scarf, twisting the two ends around each other. “He was following me, but you didn’t pick up your cell phone. So I called your house, from a taxi. Your maid told me where you were.”

  Thank you once again, Hortense. Antoine said, “I was followed onto the TGV in Aix by a motorcycle driver. Is that him?”

  A couple who had been waiting for a table walked behind Rebecca, the woman’s oversize purse bumping the back of Rebecca’s head. “Can we go somewhere?” Rebecca asked, pulling in her chair. She turned to the elder M. Verlaque. “I’m so sorry to ruin your dinner.”

  “Nonsense,” he answered. “But what is wrong?”

  “Rebecca, does the motorcycle man have the painting?” Antoine asked, getting impatient.

  “Is that what those questions were all about?” his father asked.

  “Partly—” Antoine answered.

  “No. I have it,” Rebecca said. “Under my coat.”

  “What? Have you had it all this time?” Antoine hissed.

  “Let’s go back to the house,” the elder Verlaque said, motioning for the bill, “if one of these tattooed youths they call staff can manage to call us a taxi.”

  “But the motorycle man will follow,” Rebecca said, shivering.

  “No; I have a good idea,” Verlaque’s father said, pulling a cell phone out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll call Jamel, my usual taxi man. This will be his idea of fun.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Jamel à la Conduite

  Take rue de la Roquette,” Antoine said, looking behind through the rear window. In the nighttime drizzle he could see a single light following them.

  “One-way the wrong way,” Jamel barked.

  “Wait a minute,” Antoine said, turning around to talk to Rebecca, who was in the backseat with his father. “Didn’t motorcycle man follow me to my parents’ house the other night? When I got off the train?”

  “No, no,” answered Rebecca. “He followed me, because I had your leather bag.”

  “Of course you did—” What an idiot I am, he thought.

  Antoine looked over at Jamel, who was driving dangerously fast and talking on his iPhone. He was about to say something about safe driving when Jamel set his cell phone down in the cup holder between them and said, “I’ve just sent out a request for help to some other taxi drivers. I’m going to head south of the river to confuse this guy, and my buddies are going to try to separate us from him.”

  “Excellent notion, Jamel,” M. Verlaque said. “Now you can stop giving directions, Antoine.”

  Antoine turned around, and in the dark he could just make out his father’s smile. “So, if you were on the train in car eleven and I was in car thirteen, how did you get past me to take my bag?” Antoine asked Rebecca. “I would have seen you.”

  “I had no idea you were on the train; that part was the truth,” she said. “But toward the end of the trip I wanted a coffee, so I got up to go to the bar car. I walked through my car, then through car twelve, and when I got into car thirteen I saw you get up from your seat and walk toward the bar. I froze.”

  Jamel raced to make a green light. The car swerved to the left, into a lane that would take them onto Pont d’Austerlitz, and Rebecca fell into the elder Verlaque’s arms. “Sorry, sir,” Rebecca said, sitting back up.

  “Not at all, dear, not at all . . .”

  “And then what?” Antoine asked. He turned around and saw the single light behind them, as Jamel looked in his rearview mirror and muttered, “Merde.”

  “I was going to try to catch up with you. I wanted to talk. And then I saw your bag,” Rebecca said. “On the luggage rack. I knew that you had the painting—”

  “Because you had been upstairs at Lydgate’s.”

  “Yes. And I figured you were taking it to Paris, for an estimation. I saw my chance to grab the bag. When I got up close to it I saw your monogrammed initials in the leather.”

  “I know that bag,” M. Verlaque said. “I think I gave it to you—”

  “Oui, Papa,” Antoine replied.

  The car swerved to the right, heading west onto the multilane Quai de la Tournelle that hugged the Seine. At each intersection two or three other taxis turned onto the Quai, and
by the time they had passed Notre Dame there were at least a dozen taxis beside and in front of them. “Here we go,” Jamel calmly said as he picked up speed. “This is where we lose this moto guy.”

  “Hold on to your hats!” M. Verlaque called out in heavily accented English.

  The car sped along, faster and faster, as the other taxis slowed down and got behind Jamel’s car, cutting the motorcycle man off. Antoine turned around and could see only a blur of lights.

  Verlaque’s cell phone rang and he saw that the caller was Jean-Marc. “Oui, Jean-Marc,” he said into the receiver.

  “Are you free to talk?” Jean-Marc asked. “We need to talk about the next cigar club meeting. It’s at your place.”

  “Actually, I’m in a taxi in Paris being chased by a maniacal motorcycle driver. Can it wait?”

  “I’ll let you go,” Jean-Marc said, laughing. “When I first met Pierre I told him that I’d date him under one condition: he stop driving his motorcycle! Say hello to Paris for me. Ciao.”

  Jamel turned right onto the Pont Royal and soon the car’s tires made a repetitive thudding noise as they made their way over the cobblestones in the Louvre’s courtyard. “Mademoiselle, le Jardin des Tuileries,” Jamel announced, slowing down the car.

  Rebecca laughed, appreciating the taxi driver’s humor. “The pyramid is loveliest at night,” she said, looking toward her right.

  “Mmm. I’ve always liked it,” M. Verlaque said.

  Antoine swung around to challenge him; he distinctly remembered getting into arguments with his father when I. M. Pei had unveiled his drawings: M. Verlaque had railed against its daring modernity while his sons had argued in favor of the Chinese-born architect’s plans. But he let it go and smiled. “Home again, home again,” he said in English, trying to remember the next bit of the rhyme that Emmeline had sung to him while she played with his toes.

  “Jiggety-jig,” Rebecca finished.

  • • •

  “You’ll have to thank Jamel for us,” Antoine said, handing his father a whiskey.

  “Oh, I will,” he said. “I also gave him a handsome tip, which I’m taking out of your birthday present fund.”

  Antoine laughed; had he forgotten that his father had a sense of humor? Or was it newly acquired? Was his father—now that his mother was in a hospital—finally at ease, after all these years? He had been having such a good time with his father that he had almost confided in him, but Verlaque Senior’s comment about the children in the restaurant had stopped him. Rebecca coughed and both men turned to her. She was sitting beside the lit fireplace, wearing camel-colored leather pants and a tight gold sweater. “Sorry; I’m not used to whiskey,” she said, “but this is good.”

  “Liquid sunshine,” Antoine said.

  “Even on a rainy Parisian night,” Rebecca said, holding the glass up.

  “Especially on a rainy Parisian night,” M. Verlaque said.

  “Yes,” she said, “you’re right.” She looked at the judge’s father; she liked his fine gray hair and thin nose and lips but most of all his dull blue eyes. They were wise, and could be funny, and were very different in shape and color than his son’s big puppy-dog brown eyes.

  “Once we’ve all warmed up and gotten over Jamel’s Formula One racing tryout, we’ll look at the painting,” Antoine said. “In the meantime, Hortense is preparing us some snacks, and she’s found you, Rebecca, a nightgown and some toiletries, since you don’t have your suitcase with you.”

  “I forgot my bag in a café,” Rebecca said. “I was terrified of the motorcycle man. I saw that he was outside, watching me, waiting—”

  “It’s all right now,” M. Verlaque said. “You’ll be safe here.”

  “And my leather bag?” Antoine asked.

  Rebecca grimaced. “In the hotel in Boulogne. Sorry.”

  “I’ll have Jamel pick it up tomorrow,” M. Verlaque said, “after he takes you two to the Gare de Lyon.”

  “Merci, Papa. About the motorcycle man,” Antoine said, getting up and walking across the room toward Rebecca, “did he follow you to the park?”

  Rebecca shook her head back and forth. “No,” she said. “But he was waiting at my hotel after our lunch. He had taken his helmet off because he was talking on his cell phone, so I could see his face better and I recognized him as someone I had seen in Aix, but I still can’t remember where. I ran upstairs and double-locked the door. In the morning I paid the bill and then slipped out a back door, via the kitchen. Luckily a taxi was idling on the corner, and so I jumped in, but he must have seen me, because by the time the taxi dropped me off at the Café de Flore, he was there, across the street.” She looked at Antoine and said, “You’re probably wondering why I chose the Café de Flore.”

  “It is a little obvious,” Antoine said, smiling. “Not exactly a hidden spot.”

  “An ex-boyfriend,” Rebecca said, taking a sip of whiskey. “Funny, it doesn’t burn anymore,” she added, looking at the gold liquid. “Anyway, I fell in love with a French exchange student when I was in my early twenties—”

  “That’s why your French is so good,” M. Verlaque said, smiling.

  “It’s the best way to learn a language,” she said, winking at him.

  “And you were meeting your old boyfriend there?” Antoine asked.

  “No, good Lord, no,” she answered. “He’s married with three kids. I just went because I felt so . . . lonely. It felt safe; he used to take me there and we’d spend all our money on two cafés crèmes and one overpriced croque-monsieur. My parents may have collected Cézannes, but I was on a strict student budget, even when traveling.”

  The elder Verlaque’s eyes lit up. “Are you serious? Cézannes?”

  She nodded and smiled. “We even had a still life in the kitchen.”

  Antoine said, “We’ll fill you in later, Papa, if that’s okay with you, Rebecca?”

  “My family history is no secret,” she said. “That would be fine. But now I think you both want to look at the painting.”

  M. Verlaque set his empty glass down and got up. He walked across the room and reached out his hand to Rebecca, who took his hand and got up. “Merci, gentil monsieur.”

  “I’m eager to look at this painting,” M. Verlaque said as they walked arm and arm. “But I’m more curious to get your opinion of it, especially from someone who ate—what are they called . . . peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?—under Cézanne’s apples and pears.”

  They moved to stand beside Antoine, who had his hands in his corduroy pants pockets and was looking down at the portrait, lost in thought.

  “Elle est magnifique,” the elder Verlaque said, looking at the painting and then looking at Rebecca.

  “But is she the real thing?” Antoine asked, looking at Rebecca.

  “Oh yes,” Rebecca said. “Edmund Lydgate told me it wasn’t, but I didn’t believe him. And having spent a full twenty-four hours with her, now I’m convinced he was lying. Why, I don’t know.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Antoine said. “He could have been hoping to get his hands on it one day. But it would have been locked up at the Palais de Justice for years.” He made a mental note to tell his secretary to see about hiring a law student as an intern to organize the room.

  “So, how much do you know about Cézanne?” Rebecca asked, looking at father and son, her hands on her hips.

  “His wife was named Hortense, like our maid,” Antoine said, smiling.

  “Yes, I noticed the coincidence right away,” Rebecca said. “And he painted his wife very unlike this woman. Hortense was stern, with crossed arms, pining for her native Jura. Cézanne was uncomfortable with women; even those monumental nudes he did were all about form and color. The women are distorted, like his trees, like his apples.”

  “Wouldn’t that fact make this painting not a Cézanne?” M. Verlaque asked. “Thi
s one is so realistic. The woman is of central importance.”

  “Good point. But Cézanne had an affair in 1885, with an Aixoise,” Rebecca said. “It comes up a few times in correspondence, but nobody knows who that woman was. I think we’re looking at her. It’s realistic, yes, and different than his other portraits, yes, but he was in love. And it’s definitely a Cézanne. Here, look—” She pointed at the young woman’s bright-blue blouse. “Look at the careful, parallel brushstrokes. Some of the canvas is even left bare; it’s all about artifice. As if Cézanne is telling us, ‘This is not real.’ My parents used to say that forgers—and they saw a few in their day—would never leave bare bits of canvas; they would have filled it all in. They weren’t looking closely enough at Cézanne.”

  “Horror vacui,” the elder Verlaque said.

  “Right,” Rebecca said, trying not to look around the medieval-inspired room. “The compulsion to fill everything in; Cézanne didn’t have that. Now, you two, please stand back about two meters.” Antoine and his father followed her order, and stepped back. Rebecca picked up two clean linen napkins that Hortense had just delivered with their snacks, and using them as makeshift gloves she picked up the canvas. “This is what my dad called ‘The Judy Test,’ named after my mother,” she said. “Look at the colors; and the rhythm of curves, horizontals, and verticals. Keep looking, keep looking—” She then flipped the canvas upside down. “It works better with landscapes,” she said, as if to apologize.

  Antoine gasped, as did his father. “It’s beautiful, even upside down,” he said.

  “There’s still an incredible energy,” M. Verlaque said. “It’s full of patterns and shapes, dancing all over the canvas.”

  Rebecca poked her head around the canvas and beamed. “When you look at a Cézanne with fresh eyes, even upside down, you see all of the abstract elements at work: bands of color, warm and cool colors that bump up against each other. The whole thing vibrates. C’est de la musique.”

  “You sound pretty convinced of its authenticity,” Antoine said.