“My uncle was arrested,” she said with a calmness that surprised her. “He may have been taken there.”
“Who arrested him?” Mr. Fleishman straightened. “When did this happen?”
She once again explained what little she knew. “I was told it was a camp d’accueil. A reception camp? What does that mean?”
He played with the pen on his desk. “Never heard the term before.”
“So what would you call it? What kind of camp do you think it is?”
“An internment camp, I guess. More like a jail, but maybe this new name means they’re not keeping people there for as long. Our understanding is that the French government holds political prisoners there. Mostly people they suspect of being communists.”
“My uncle isn’t a communist.”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “I never thought of Call of the Wild as a communist manifesto, but I’m sure this didn’t happen because of the books. The word communist is a catch-all phrase they apply to anyone they want to detain.”
“Jews?”
“Sometimes. But we think it’s more about imprisoning political dissenters. Right now, they’re arresting anyone they think is anti-Nazi and charging them with being a communist.”
Oncle involved in politics? It didn’t seem possible of a man who loved nothing more than sitting on the couch with a novel in his hand. But he was a man of conviction. And he did have a passion for fairness.
“What’s your uncle’s name?” Mr. Fleishman picked up his pen. “Maybe I can get some information.”
“Benoit, Professor Edouard Benoit. In Arles.” She leaned forward and touched his hand. “Thank you. I don’t know how—”
“As before, I can’t promise you anything, but if he’s been taken to Drancy, we might be able to get him on our list.” He pulled out a file folder and began writing on the tab. “B-e-n-o-i-t?”
“Without the money?” she asked. “We wouldn’t have to pay for his visa?”
“Not for his. But the director’s still insisting that an individual paying for visas is not ERC’s mission and that it might even be ill—”
“The last time I was here you said it was possible—”
“I said it was possible, not that it would happen.”
Of course he was right.
She dug into the pocket of her coat and pulled out the cash. The pawnbroker had given her far less than the ring was worth, but it was enough to cover one visa and half of another. “For one,” she said, holding it out to him. “Three hundred dollars. For my cousin, Alain Benoit, also in Arles. His name and address are on the envelope. He’s just a boy.”
“I can’t take your money.” Mr. Fleishman held up his hands. “It wouldn’t be ethical. Not until the director agrees to it.”
“He needs a chance at a life.”
Mr. Fleishman hesitated, clearly wrestling with the dueling obligations of conscience and job, of wanting to help and not wanting to raise false hopes.
“Please.”
“I’m sorry, Alizée,” he said slowly. “Really I am, but—”
She placed the envelope on his desk. “Show this to the director. Please. Show him I’ve got the money. That I can do this. That I mean it.”
“That’s not the point.” Mr. Fleishman stood, tried to hand it back to her.
Alizée stood also, arms tight to her sides, fists clenched. “Alain’s fifteen years old.”
He slowly lowered the envelope. “This is indeed a terrible moment in time.”
“I guess I should be happy Oncle might get on the ERC list,” she said, her tone thick with sarcasm. “Such great news.”
Mark had come down to the pier to meet her for lunch, and they were in a small booth at a deli a block from the warehouse. “At least this Fleishman fellow seems willing to go to bat for you,” he said. “That’s something.”
She didn’t tell him about her equally futile conversation with Gideon. Neither Mark nor any of the others knew she was going to ANL meetings. The organization was perceived as fiercely interventionist, willing to do whatever was necessary to get America involved in the war, legally or illegally. Which wasn’t true. Aside from a few extremists, people there just wanted to help innocent European civilians who were getting caught up in the fighting. Although both Lee and Mark were Jewish, and Bill was from the Netherlands, they and pretty much everyone else she knew in New York insisted that America had no business in other countries’ disputes.
Mark pointed to the pastrami on rye in front of her. “Eat.”
She picked up the sandwich, but the rich, spicy smell turned her stomach. She knew she was losing weight she couldn’t afford to lose, so she took a bite, almost gagged, and dropped the sandwich back on the plate. “Goddamn bastards,” she sputtered. “Communist, my eye. Blatant anti-Semitism is more like it.” Putain.
Mark didn’t say anything. He’d told her he’d experienced anti-Semitism his whole life, claiming Hitler was nothing new. His family had emigrated from Russia out of fear of czarist pogroms; he’d been bullied and called a kike throughout his school years in Oregon, and he’d left Yale after two years because of the obstacles the university put in his way because he was Jewish. Whenever they passed one of the many restaurants in New York with a restricted sign in the front window, indicating that neither Negros nor Jews would be served, Mark was the first to say that he wasn’t interested in eating anywhere he wasn’t wanted. But there was always a particular set to his mouth, a hardness in his eyes, as they passed on.
“Throwing a man like Oncle in jail,” she continued to rail. “A good man. Locked in some tiny, filthy cell crawling with rats for no reason whatsoever. Who knows what they might be doing to him? Starvation, torture or even . . . Even . . .”
“This wouldn’t be so hard on you if you weren’t so damn creative,” Mark said with forced joviality. “You can’t help spinning all these bad possibilities and then pumping life into them.”
“Oncle is in prison,” she reminded him. “I’m not making that up.”
“Your brother said he could be home in a few days. Why don’t you picture that? How happy they all are to be together again?”
She knew she was being unkind, but she wished Mark would go back to work, leave her alone to imagine whatever she wanted.
He picked up the sandwich and held it up to her nose. “How can you resist that smell?”
“You eat it.”
“Zée, please . . .”
How could she eat? It’s not Germany, Gideon had said. At least not yet. She thought about Guernica, of the helpless people and animals lit by an evil eye with a lightbulb inside, of the ceiling pressing down on them all. This is what Hitler could do. What he’d already done. Was doing. This is indeed a terrible moment in time.
“You managed to get your uncle on the ERC list and found money for your cousin’s visa.” Mark cupped her chin in his palm. “Both of which are amazing. I know it’s tough to sit still and wait, but you’ve done everything you possibly can—and driving yourself crazy isn’t going to get your uncle home any faster.”
She twisted her face from his grasp. Guernica. She would start working on a painting about France. About Drancy and what it all might mean. Pour herself into the paint and canvas. Give the fear a place to go. An anti-Hitler painting like Picasso’s, but a notice of future danger rather than a picture of what had happened in the past. No, that was wrong. It would be about refugees struggling to get out of Europe, the international disinterest, the ships being turned away by county after country. She would call it Turned. She looked at Mark and smiled.
“That’s my girl. Flip it around, take it from the other side. Nothing bad has actually happened yet and most likely nothing will.” He leaned across the table and gave her a light kiss, closing the discussion. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
She didn’t want to talk about anything. She wanted to think about her new painting. About putting the fear to work.
He popped a pickle int
o his mouth. “I saw Edith the other day.”
“She’s okay?”
He sighed. “She’s like she always is.”
Alizée pictured a large canvas. She would create an homage to Guernica. But push beyond it. Like Hitler was pushing beyond Spain into the continent. Start with surrealist elements. Maybe even some Picassoesque imagery. Use the principle of her reversals, but turn it on its head. Pull the surrealistic representations into their natural abstraction. Build them back out into their new devastating reality. She could see it in its entirety. Ripping apart like war was ripping apart Europe. Seizing, slashing, reordering—
“Alizée,” Mark interrupted her thoughts. “This is important.”
Guilty for not listening when he’d listened to her, she forced her attention on him. “You and Edith had a fight . . .” This was a safe guess as every time Mark saw his wife they fought. And every time he told Alizée about their fights, she found herself hoping that this would be the last fight, that Mark was finally ready to let go of Edith. But it never was. Edith had a hold on him, and it wasn’t just guilt. Alizée feared it was love. And that fear uncoiled the snakes.
“I was saying that this time it was different . . .”
She caught her breath. Different. He was finally going to divorce Edith. No. She couldn’t start thinking like that. But he’d said different.
“It’s just that when I walked out of the apartment, I felt as if I was walking out for good. And I liked the feeling.”
He liked the feeling. This time was the last time. He was leaving Edith. Blood pulsed in her ears. He was going to ask if he could move in with her. Relief. Joy. Emotions she hadn’t experienced for so long she almost hardly recognized them.
“So I’m going to stay on with Phil and Grant.”
“Stay on with Phil and Grant,” she repeated, trying to take in his meaning. “But I thought maybe you would, you know, now that you’re actually leaving her, you could always move in with—”
“It’s best this way for now.” Mark took her hands in his. “I don’t want to be with her, I want to be with you. I love you, but Edith’s so fragile, and if she found out I was living at your apartment . . .”
Alizée untangled her fingers. “You’re not leaving her.”
“I will, I promise. But not just yet. You should have seen her face. She’s all alone. She’s only got me. I can’t ask for a divorce until she’s more stable. She’s not well, not well at all, and I don’t know what she might do if I told her it was over.”
Although Mark was directly across the table from her, no more than a foot or two away, it seemed as if his voice was coming from far off. No, not far off. It was more like there was a wall of glass between them. She could see his lips move, hear his reedy voice, but she couldn’t touch him. Nor could his words touch her.
20
DANIELLE, 2015
My first piece of hard evidence that Alizée had been a major player. In writing. In Lee Krasner’s own words. A true talent. A huge effect. I was thrilled. But when I showed the interview to George, he was much less impressed.
He pointed out that it proved nothing about Alizée’s relationship to the squares, although he did acknowledge it put her “among the circle.” He reminded me—as if I needed reminding—that I was not to pursue this on company time but conceded that if I had no other pending assignments, I should feel free to poke around. Big concession. In all the time I’d been at Christie’s, I’d never had fewer than a dozen pending assignments.
But the interview got me thinking about the whole Alizée-was-crazy angle, about the sanatorium where more than a few of the gang ended up. So I went back to Google. Aside from being famous, what do Beethoven, Mark Rothko, Hemingway, Francis Ford Coppola, Van Gogh, Alvin Ailey, Robin Williams, Sylvia Plath, Balzac, Jackson Pollock, Edgar Allan Poe, Axl Rose, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf have in common? They all suffered from some form of mental illness.
Even more interesting, there are those who believe this isn’t wholly a negative thing. Apparently, there’s a strong statistical association between what we consider the artistic soul and the disease: compared with the general population, creative people—writers, painters, dancers, musicians, actors, directors—are much more frequently diagnosed with a psychiatric condition. Some researchers even contend that genius and these ailments go hand in hand.
The most common “creative” diagnosis is bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depression, an illness the high-functioning can hide so well their closest friends may be unaware they have it—or at least unaware that it’s anything serious. The second is depersonalization/dissociative disorder, in which a person feels as though she’s an outside observer of her own thoughts and actions. Also difficult for a layperson to detect. Both tend to be sporadic, episodic, disappearing within long stints of normalcy then exploding outward, often for no objective reason.
The bipolar argument is that mania—high energy, increased productivity, speed of thought, willingness to experiment—is a key to inspiration. Unfortunately, these same traits often lead to addiction, screwed-up relationships, and suicide. And that isn’t counting the depressive piece, which can send you to your bed for weeks with lethargy, slowed thinking, apathy and a general all-around misery.
As far as depersonalization goes, it’s assumed that because the out-of-body experience produces an altered worldview it also enhances thinking outside the box. Symptoms include distortions in the appearance of things. Like looking in a mirror and seeing pieces of your own face but not all of it—or see someone else completely. One author wondered if this might explain Picasso’s work. Sounded a bit lame to me. Especially when I read depersonalization often stems from PTSD. I’m thinking not all of those traumatized vets and abused children end up as famous artists.
I was blown away when I stumbled on an article called “Mind and Mood and Modern Art,” which analyzed fifteen Abstract Expressionists who worked in New York City in the 1930s and ’40s. I’m not making this up. It concluded that more than half of the artists suffered from some kind of mood disorder, 40 percent ended up in mental institutions, two committed suicide—this had to refer to Mark Rothko and Arshile Gorky—and two were killed in single-car crashes while driving; clearly Jackson Pollock was one of these. It included a quote from a psychiatrist at Bloom Sanatorium in White Plains, New York, who had taken care of a number of them, explaining the positive effects he’d achieved using electroshock therapy on manic-depressive patients. I hated to think my aunt Alizée might have suffered like this.
I immediately searched for the hospital. Unfortunately, Bloom Sanatorium was no more; it had been transformed into Bloomingdale Farms, an over-fifty-five playground for the upper-middle-class tennis and golf set who summer in New York and winter in southern Florida. Fortunately, when the hospital was sold in 2005, the small number of remaining staff and patients were transferred to an inpatient psychiatric facility in Yonkers called Wellspring Ranch.
When I called Wellspring, the data coordinator explained that the Bloom records were in storage with Wellspring’s inactive files and that it would take up to a month and a notarized document attesting to my relationship to the patient before I could get access to any information—including whether or not my aunt had ever received treatment there. It took closer to six weeks, and it was late April by the time I was granted an appointment to review the records of Alizée Benoit.
Records was as much of a misnomer as was Ranch. Wellspring was housed in a concrete building at the end of a strip shopping center, and Alizée’s records consisted of two thin sheets of paper, one pink, one blue. The first was an admission form dated December 18, 1940, which contained her name, address, and a diagnosis of depersonalization, mania, melancholia, hysteria, paranoia, and delusions of grandeur. The other was a discharge form dated December 20, 1940—just two days after she’d arrived.
21
ALIZÉE, 1940
“I’ve been working on a new painting,” Alizée told Lee
. “A political.” It just popped out. She hadn’t planned on mentioning it, but she knew enough about Dr. Freud’s work to believe he’d think she had.
They were sitting next to each other in the chilly warehouse examining their partially completed murals, which were hanging side by side. The wind off the river blew through the rickety structure, freezing their exposed fingertips and making painting difficult.
Lee raised an eyebrow. “You are?”
Alizée hadn’t told anyone about Turned. She didn’t want to hear the arguments about art being emotional not political, rooted in the “always,” not in the specific state of now. But she needed to talk about her process and progress with another artist. “Yes.”
“Still no telegram?” Lee asked.
She shook her head. It had been two months since Henri’s letter about Oncle, three months since he’d written it. No wire from her aunt. Just silence.
“All sorts of things are buggered up over there,” Lee said. “Maybe she sent it but it just never got here.”
Alizée was all too aware there were a lot more things than just communication “buggered up” in Europe. “I’ve only sold one reversal in the last two months.” She shrugged. “Just wanted to try something new, I guess.”
“What’s the topic?”
“Refugees.”
Lee hesitated. “Abstract or representational?”
“Both. Like the murals. But more complicated.”
“I guess it’d be tough to do an abstract political.” Lee’s voice was a little too cheerful.
“Did you know a bill to allow more refugee children to come here was just voted down?” Alizée was sorry as soon as the words were out of her mouth but felt compelled to continue now that she’d started. “Congress thinks Americans don’t want to bring refugee children into the country. That they’re dangerous. Especially if they’re Jewish.”
“I know you want to help.” Lee shifted in her chair. “But what’s been going on forever isn’t likely to be changed. And definitely not by a painting.”
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