The Muralist: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro

  The long years in the political spotlight had taught her to hold her tongue, and the long years of being married to a politician had taught her not to upset his opinion of himself. But these lessons were vanquished by her fury. “What I know is that you’re not willing to take the political risk of standing up to them. That that’s what this is all about!”

  “That’s quite enough, Eleanor!” Franklin roared.

  “It’s inhumane, and you’re not an inhumane man. You’re going to live to regret this—and so am I.”

  “You are to say nothing about this memo to anyone,” the president ordered. “Nothing. And you will not have any more contact with whomever gave you the damn thing in the first place. Do you understand me?”

  Rage surged through her, and heat flushed her face. But she recognized her rage was futile. As futile as it was for her to continue the argument. It wasn’t only the citizenry of the United States who had to go along with whatever the president wanted. She had to also. No matter how wrong she believed he was.

  35

  ALIZÉE

  When a week passed with no announcement out of Washington, Alizée’s optimism began to wane and dread to wax. Gideon was even more worried than she, frantically checking in with every contact he had. There were no rumors, no gossip, no nothing. Alizée and Gideon constantly reassured each other it was just the bureaucracy, that the government was a large ship that turned slowly. They heard nothing from Hiram Bingham.

  She wished she hadn’t told her committee. Initially they’d been all over her with questions, but at the last meeting, she’d been forced to silence their inquires with a shake of the head. William said he would pray about it, a comment Nathan growled at, and both Aarone and Bertha had turned away, hiding anxious expressions. Alizée, of course, couldn’t talk about any of this with her friends, and Gideon was such a wreck, talking to him was worse than talking to nobody.

  When the letter arrived from Mrs. Roosevelt, apologizing profusely for her inability to sway the president and explaining that they couldn’t be in contact anymore, Alizée observed herself reading it from above the icebox, just as she’d watched herself reading Henri’s last letter. She gazed down with equanimity as the girl shook her fist at the god she didn’t believe in. As the girl cried out her fury to the ceiling. As she pounded the walls.

  Alizée stared into the mirror, searching for herself, but what she saw was a Picassoesque collage: a nose, an eye, a cheekbone. She knew this wasn’t her true reflection, yet it resonated. Her doppelgänger, her fractured, frightened other. A tear rolled from the eye.

  She dragged herself to the next ANL meeting. Gideon said nothing about her failure to the larger group, none of whom knew of the attempt, but she had to give the bad news to her committee, whom she suspected knew the truth already. This time the silence was stunned. This time it was Bertha who cried.

  Nathan jumped up from his chair. “No!” he yelled. “We’re not going to sit around and let this happen. That man has got to be stopped!”

  Alizée watched him dispassionately, said nothing. The anger and sadness had depleted her, as had her doppelgänger, and now she didn’t feel much beyond exhaustion, a deep, profound tiredness.

  Bertha dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “Where will they all go?” she asked softly, almost to herself. “What will become of them?”

  “These are our people we are talking about,” Aarone said. “So many people. We are having to get rid of him.”

  “Yeah.” Nathan, who was none too fond of Aarone, scowled at him. “We know that.”

  “That is not what I am meaning. He will be killing many, many people, and he is only one man.”

  “We’ll just continue on with what we’ve been doing,” Alizée said dully. “We’ll find something else, I’m sure.”

  Aarone shook his head. “I do not believe this way is working so we must be doing it a different way.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Nathan asked with more respect than he’d ever shown toward Aarone.

  “We cannot break God’s commandments,” William said. “Even in a case like this.”

  “It is one death exchanging so many thousand can live,” Aarone declared. “In this situation God would be thinking twice. He knows that it is what is in the end that is important.”

  “That’s not up to us to decide,” William argued. “If it’s his will—”

  “You said you have guns?” Aarone asked Nathan.

  Nathan puffed out his chest. “I was a sharpshooter in the Great War.”

  “We’re not shooting anyone,” Alizée said. “ANL isn’t an organization that—”

  “It’s like Aarone said, thousands of lives are at stake,” Nathan interrupted. “This is bigger than ANL. Bigger than just about everything.”

  “I think we should at least talk about it,” Bertha said.

  Alizée stared at Bertha. “You think we should talk about shooting Breckinridge Long?” She looked at the others. “Have you all lost your marbles?”

  “My grandmother, my aunt, and all my cousins are dead. My mother’s out of her mind with grief.” Bertha folded her hands. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”

  Alizée couldn’t believe the conversation. Couldn’t believe they were actually considering such a thing. There had to be another way. “There’s something else we can try,” she said, surprised her brain was still capable of making logical connections. “Gideon has the duplicate of Long’s memo, and he’s got friends at the Times. He can get it to them. We’ll go around the president without any guns.”

  They grudgingly acquiesced, but it was not to be. It turned out that Gideon, fearing retribution, had destroyed the copy after she’d brought the original to Mrs. Roosevelt. Alizée refused to allow the committee to continue the discussion of Aarone’s proposition at the next meeting, but she knew Aarone, Nathan, and Bertha were discussing it without her.

  15 August 1940

  Antwerp

  Ma Ali,

  I have no idea if this letter will reach you, but I am writing because I need to feel we are still linked together, although I know we are linked always in our hearts. I also wanted to let you know we are alive. And that that is all I want for us.

  How things have changed! No thoughts of clothes or parties or mathematics, only of survival. I cannot imagine I once worried about my haircut or my inability to solve the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture. We are living with three other St. Louis families in a small apartment in the western part of the city. One family is nice. From the roof I can see a bit of the sea.

  Sophie and Gabby are good little troupers, especially Sophie, who tries very hard to make us laugh. She is kind to her little sister. Much kinder than I was to you! Pierre is having a difficult time because he is not able to work or to make anything better for us. I am taken up with the children and household tasks so it is not so hard for me.

  We do not know what the future holds, and I try not to think beyond the present. Which is easier than you might think as just finding enough food and water—or soap—can take an entire day. But we are alive. We are together, and we are safe for now.

  I have not heard from my mother in over a month but assume she and Alain are out of harm’s way on the coast. Perhaps my father is with them. We can only hope the same for Henri.

  It helps to know you are in America, far from this insanity. I daydream of you painting in your warehouse, drinking with your friends, walking freely down the sidewalks of New York. This makes me very happy.

  The agency is working hard on our visas, but the Germans have been here for almost four months now, and things grow more difficult by the day. They have imposed their so-called anti-Jewish regulations, including yellow stars, curfews, and the unimpeded looting of shops. The police, the royal prosecutor, and the citizens of Antwerp stand by and do nothing. Cowards all. It is hard to believe that we so recently lived in Berlin, had friends and associates there who thought nothing of our being Jewis
h. Or so we supposed.

  I look at my beautiful girls and know they have full lives ahead of them, that this ugliness is a momentary hiccup, not a forever. For who could hate such sweet little faces? Who could look in their eyes and then do them harm?

  So please, try not to worry, for I believe we will be together soon. I will wire when we have our visas in hand and are steaming toward you!

  Je t’embrasse fort,

  Babette

  36

  ALIZÉE

  She stared at the huge, unfinished panels headed to the library to be fêted in front of hundreds, covered by major newspapers: Light in America. The library rotunda was a subdued, although elegant space, and she’d used deep reds and earth tones with small splashes of green to complement this. The mural told the story of the triumph of public education in a previously unschooled land, a theme and subject matter best suited to a more literal, surrealistic style combined with a bit of abstraction.

  It consisted of four panels, each four feet high and four feet wide, each representing a different century, the seventeenth at one end and the twentieth at the other. She’d used recognizable objects, books and desks, students and teachers, but slightly abstracted and juxtaposed them in unexpected ways. Some of these odd combinations were strewn across all four panels, depicting the evolution of knowledge through time, while others were singular and stationary, rooted in their own century.

  It was good, she was proud of it, but only four months remained until the installation, and she was falling behind. Far behind. But even the time pressure couldn’t move her brush any faster. Her hand felt heavy, her head and heart heavier still.

  It was deep into afternoon, and as was all too common lately, she’d barely made any progress all day. It often felt as if she were living inside a dream: slices of images, voices, smells, juxtaposing in ways that made little sense. And then there was the inverse: when she wasn’t sure whether the things she remembered, the memories that made her who she was, had actually happened or were part of last night’s nightmare. Maybe hers. Maybe someone else’s. Her fingernails dug into her arm, a habit now, but like her memories, they seemed to belong to someone else.

  She glanced over at Lee, who was completely absorbed in her own mural. It was impossible that Lee hadn’t noticed her lack of forward motion, but Lee was too kind to mention it. Which Alizée greatly appreciated. In an attempt to get herself back to work, she pictured the library event, the dignitaries, literati, and celebrities all in attendance, champagne circulating, flashbulbs popping. But all she could think about was Babette’s little girls. Tante, Alain, Oncle. Henri. About how she’d let them all down.

  And then she saw it, fully formed, just as Turned had first come to her. Instead of Light in America’s four panels hanging in the library rotunda, in front of her hung four canvases depicting life for victims of Hitler’s megalomania: refugees, soldiers, Arles and Antwerp, ships, Tante and Babette, horses, cows, crops. Jews. Gypsies. Sophie and Gabby’s eyes. Abstract, surreal, and realistic images flowing from one to the other. Compelling, riveting and horrifying, yet touched with compassion for lives lost, for innocence lost, pleading for help.

  “Sit,” Lee ordered Alizée. “You’re white as a ghost.”

  She sat, a kaleidoscope of colors swirling around her.

  “Are you okay? Are you sick?”

  “I’ll switch them.” Swap. Exchange. Substitute.

  “Switch what?” Lee demanded.

  “I’m going to paint another mural!” she said jubilantly. “A political. About Hitler and war and the refugees. I’ll hang it in the library instead of this one.”

  Lee knelt at her desk; they were face-to-face. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but if it’s what I think it is, you’ve got to talk about it more quietly.”

  “Something has to be done. And I’m going to do it!” Babette might believe the face of a little girl would sway the Nazis, but Alizée did not.

  Lee grabbed her hands. “Take a deep breath and lower your voice.”

  “They’ll all be there,” she said more quietly but with no less urgency. “Politicians, press, photographers. They’ll report on it, take pictures, and everyone will see it. Then people will understand how terrible the situation is. And like Mrs. Roosevelt said, they’ll respond from the heart. They’ll demand more visas. We’ll get around Long.”

  “Around what?” Lee asked, her face flushed with concern. “What’s long? Wrong? You’re not making any sense.”

  Focus, Alizée ordered herself. Merde. She had to stay focused.

  “You said you didn’t agree with Mrs. Roosevelt,” Lee continued. “That a painting couldn’t do that. Plus how can you complete a whole mural in just four months? And even if you could, they’ll take it down as soon as you get it up.”

  “The point will be made.”

  “But how will you switch them?” Lee pushed her hands downward to indicate Alizée should whisper. “It’s a bad idea. It’s wild, dangerous, reckless. There are so many—”

  “It’s a good idea.” Alizée slapped her palm on her desk, and it shuddered. “A great idea.”

  Lee shifted backward, her eyes filled with compassion. “Think about it, doll. Think about the difficulties. Technical and otherwise. The danger. Do you really believe this can work? That it would actually make a difference?”

  Alizée didn’t bother to answer. She’d been searching for a solution that didn’t involve murder, and suddenly it had appeared right before her eyes. What more proof did she need?

  She decided to call the mural Montage, which was exactly what it was: a mosaic of war created through a medley of her own evolving techniques. She planned to use the deep red underpainting and overlays of the first series of politicals, the transformative motion of Turned, the advancing panels of Light in America, and the pull from nonfigurative to figurative of her reversals.

  The ideas flowed from her fingers as if by sorcery, and she worked feverishly on colors and composition, sketches and mock-ups. It had to dig deep, bring the viewer into the center of the heartbreak, focus on more than just the victims, include the perpetrators—who would ultimately became victims themselves—and on those who stood apart from the melee, sanctioning with their indifference. As she worked, she became Babette and the little girls, Henri, Tante and Oncle and Alain. Aarone’s sisters. Nathan’s brothers. Bertha’s mother. She was inside them, and Montage was inside her. She would bring it to life, give it life. Give them life.

  She only had four months, but Montage wouldn’t take as long as Light in America. No more planning was necessary, no approvals, no bureaucracies, no meetings, no lazy assistants coming in late or developing sudden stomach ailments on Fridays. Still, she couldn’t do all the work by herself.

  She could hire assistants, but whom could she trust? Mark and Lee were the only people she’d told about the switch, and both were adamantly against it. Even after they’d finally accepted she was going to replace the mural whether they liked it or not, they continued to question the plan’s practicality and legality as well as point out its futility. So, just as she’d done when faced with their disapproval of ANL, she stopped talking about it.

  But they were the only ones she could count on not to betray her. She needed their help, and she needed Jack and Bill, too. Although both of them were against political art, Bill would have trouble saying no to her and Jack would be tickled by the intrigue.

  So she told them all she wanted their take on the preliminary drawings for her new project, and although she wanted to save as much money as possible, she sprang for some bread, cheese, and beer to put them in a more receptive mood. And indeed, the four of them gobbled up the food, were happy to drink the beer, and their reactions to her sketches and mock-ups were very positive. They all knew about her family. Understood her passions. But once Alizée explained about switching the murals silence filled the flat.

  “Even though I like the whole switcheroo thing on principle,” Jack said, “it’s .
. . I don’t know . . . fraudulent to use art this way.”

  “You sound like those people horrified by naked statues.” Alizée kept her voice light. “Or the ones who hate abstract art. Should artists stop creating these things because someone thinks they’re inappropriate? Fraudulent even? No one has the right to make those kinds of decisions for someone else.”

  Jack laughed. “Ouch.”

  “As I told you before, you could easily end up in a lot of trouble with nothing to show for it,” Lee said. “At the least, you’d be thrown off the project. And what about Light in America? What will happen to it? You can’t just destroy—”

  “I’m not going to destroy it.” Alizee was actually quite proud of this. “I found a type of mild glue that will be strong enough to hold Montage for a short time and won’t hurt Light at all. They take one down, the other will still be intact.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just paint it,” Mark said. “Show it without all this switching nonsense. You’ll still make your point.”

  “Does seem kind of crazy to take the risk,” Bill agreed.

  Alizée winked at Mark. “Aren’t we of the craft all crazy?”

  “Not this crazy,” Mark grumbled.

  Jack blew smoke rings, feigning an indifference his movements were too exaggerated to support. Mark paced the perimeter of the room, thumbs locked behind his back. Lee watched the mock-up as if it might suddenly grow to full size.

  Only Bill met her eye. “Just so you know, I think it’s a terrific project, kiddo. More than terrific. Virtuoso. But Mark’s got a good argument: let it stand on its own. It’s more than strong enough.”

  If this was the way they felt about the idea, how were they going respond to her request for help? Without their assistance there could be no Montage. So she plunged on. “None of this is why I wanted you to come here. I’ve got a huge favor to ask you. All of you. And I mean really huge. As in: I’ve got a lot of nerve.”