by Lewis Desoto
Something about his silent scrutiny made me nervous and I blurted out, “Let’s just say I am running from the past.”
“And your ‘accident’ on the cliff?” He accented the word, but without irony.
I put an olive in my mouth and chewed it before dropping the pit into the saucer. I took a sip of pastis. “It was misty. I lost my footing.”
“Those things you said earlier,” the priest continued, “the questions you asked, about the dead communicating with us. What was behind them?”
“I would rather not talk about my personal life.”
“Of course, I understand. As you wish.” He smiled kindly. “But if you ever want to talk, I am here.”
Emptying his glass, he peered towards the kitchen. “Where has our dinner gotten to? Let me go and see if they have opened the wine.” He stood up and brushed cigarette ashes from his trousers. He was wearing his habitual blue linen jacket but had put on a clean white shirt for the occasion. His floppy beret sat on the table.
I was left alone in the gathering dusk. The moon had come up behind the trees, almost full, white and gleaming. Of course I could talk to Père Caron, I knew that, sensing his kindness and genuine desire to help, and perhaps I should confide in him, or at least tell him about Piero and Claudine. On the other hand, better not to open up old wounds. As for the boy, well, I would find him myself.
A glow of light threw itself across the grass as Linda appeared bearing two candelabra, followed by Père Caron cradling a wine bottle.
“A few more minutes,” Linda said. “I’m just waiting for the haricots to finish cooking. Victor is carving the lamb now.”
The priest resumed his seat and poured wine into our glasses. As I reached for mine, he held up a halting finger. “Not just yet. Give it five minutes of the night air.” Pushing the bread basket across the table he said, “Eat a piece of this and clear your palate of the anise taste.”
I waited. Finally, he took a swallow of his wine and leaned back with his eyes closed, pursing his lips. When he opened his eyes he said, “Délicieux. Truly. What do you think?”
I tasted from my glass. The scent of black currant wafted up to my nostrils. I was no wine connoisseur, but after all these years in France I knew a very good wine when I tasted it.
I thought of Serge Bruneau, my friend, who ran the gallery where I used to show my paintings. He often used to take me out for lunches to restaurants he’d discovered, and he always had his little rituals with wine. He would have enjoyed an evening like this. I missed him suddenly. But if I thought of Serge then I thought of my old life in Paris, and I didn’t want to remember it, I didn’t want to know it continued to exist. Better to be here on this island, where I knew no one and nobody knew me.
“I have a proposal for you, Leo. If you agree to clean the painting, I will provide a cottage for you, rent free, over in LeBec, and any materials you need. You can take your meals here at the hotel if you don’t cook. It won’t cost you anything.”
“I have money. More than I need.” Serge had been selling my work steadily over the past couple of years, and without Claudine and Piero there was nothing to spend the money on.
“Well then?”
“Why is it so important to you that the painting is cleaned, Père?”
“Perhaps it is more important for you, Leo.” He looked down to the darkening harbour, holding his wineglass to his nose, swirling the liquid back and forth.
I thought about this statement as I watched the white moon slowly rising over the sea. Below it on the calm dark water a long carpet of shimmering reflection stretched towards me. The night was warm, the air was pleasant. What reason did I have to leave this place?
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll stay on, here on the island, until it is finished?”
I shrugged. “I have nowhere else to be.”
“Très bien. Very good. I am glad, for both of us.” He leaned across the table and squeezed my arm. “I’ll make the arrangements first thing in the morning. And I have just the cottage in mind. Sheltered from the wind but with a view of the sea. Perfect for a painter.”
I was going to ask him about the woman I’d seen in the chapel, if he knew who she was. But I’d already made him suspicious with my questions, and anyway, just then the kitchen door opened and Victor and Linda emerged bearing platters of food.
“Voilà!” said the priest. “Now to the pleasure of food and wine and good company.”
CHAPTER 10
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, AFTER A breakfast of goat’s milk yogourt, and fresh crusty bread, along with the usual cup of strong café au lait, I was walking along the path from the hotel with an oversized brass key in my pocket, on my way to the village of LeBec. I intended to take a look at the cottage that Père Caron had offered me.
He had described it as having two large rooms, suitable for a studio, and although I didn’t plan on doing any painting, just the thought of having a place of my own, a new place without memories, appealed to me. I wanted routines, habits, a job to go to—like cleaning the painting in the chapel—and a place to which I could come home at the end of the day. Inspecting the cottage was really just a formality. I already knew I would take it, whatever its condition.
I hadn’t walked for very long before I came upon a lane marked LE CHEMIN DES SIRÈNES. Earlier, before leaving the hotel, I’d made a quick copy of the island map, and I consulted it now, then followed the lane. This took me through a wooded area that soon opened onto a view of a small house. The windows on the upper floors were closed with blue wooden shutters but the lower shutters had been fastened back. A blue clematis grew up the facade and hydrangeas thick with pink flowers clustered beneath the windows. A low stone wall with an iron gate enclosed the front garden. On the gate was a sign, LA MAISON DU PARADIS. It was a pretty place, and romantic, situated with the sea behind it and the sunlight on its walls.
A figure moved through the interior of the house; it was only a glimpse, a shape, but something about that shape made me think of the woman I had seen in the chapel. I hadn’t mentioned her to anyone, nor did I know if she was still on the island. Did she live here alone? And what about that bruised eye? I was curious. More than curious, but I didn’t want to be seen snooping, so I cut back inland.
I climbed a low hill on the slopes of which brown cows grazed, their flanks glowing in the yellow morning light. On the other side of the hill the sea was visible across the fields, pale cerulean blue under a sky thick with puffy banks of cumulus clouds. Once I had descended the hill and crossed a narrow stone bridge below which sheep paused in their cropping of the grass to watch me pass, I arrived at the dunes. I clambered up the shifting sands and slid down to the beach on the other side.
The sun had been up for a couple of hours already but it still sat low in the sky, and my shadow stretched down to the pale morning blue of the sea where the waves were lapping on the sand. The village was not yet in sight, but far down the beach I could make out a stationary white shape, perhaps a small boat beached on the shore. The usual flocks of seabirds were not around today and I was quite alone.
As I walked, my attention was caught by the oyster shells littering the sand, bright and bleached white in the raking morning light, their shapes like abstract sculptures. When I was an art student I’d been fascinated for a period by the challenges of painting all-white objects and I’d done countless still-lifes of jugs and cups and white flowers, even snow, learning to see colour where others saw only its absence. Looking at the shells now I could make out violets and greens in the shaded sides and pinks and yellows in the illuminated parts. For a painter, the task was always to convince the viewers it was a white object, even though the only touches of pure white pigment were the highlights.
When we used to go to Montmartin in the summers, Piero always collected shells, often deciding to look for only one type at a time, generally something hard to find like razor clams or the very small pink ones tha
t resemble a baby’s fingernails. He’d surprised me once, back in Paris, by using some white modelling clay to make a copy of an oyster shell, which I’d mistaken for the genuine article. What had become of that little sculpture? He’d been so proud of it.
I picked up a couple of the shells and put them in my pocket. By now I was closer to what I’d thought was a white rowboat on the shoreline, but it struck me that the shape was wrong, and it was too small to be a boat. A person, I thought. But, coming closer, I could see it was a large dog, a Labrador breed, its colour somewhere between the beige of the sand and the white of the oyster shells. It was standing immobile, staring straight ahead.
I veered away up the beach, keeping a cautious eye on the dog until I was on the other side of it. I’m not afraid of dogs, but a past experience had made me wary of them.
As a boy of ten, I’d once been riding down a quiet street lined with houses behind leafy gardens—I can’t recollect the circumstances or who the bike had belonged to, maybe it was one of those unsuccessful occasions when the Guild had tried to place me in a foster home—when a large Doberman had come streaking out from an open gate and charged at me. There had been no time to react or register anything other than the bared teeth and the low rumbling growl in the dog’s throat as it leaped up and fastened its jaws on my thigh, pulling me from the bike. Before I knew it the bike was skidding across the sidewalk, I was on my back and the dog was standing over me. I could smell its foul breath and in its eyes I saw a kind of insane rage that terrified me.
In the next instant a man was there, swinging a garden rake down across the dog’s back. With a howl the dog raced off down the street. I was basically unhurt, but so shaken that I couldn’t speak. The man took me into the house and gave me a glass of milk and calmed me down. I don’t remember anything else from that day. Just the dog and the man and the glass of milk.
Now I stopped some distance away and looked back at the dog, intrigued by its behaviour. It hadn’t even looked at me. The waves were washing around its legs yet it seemed planted in the sand, not even lifting its chin when a crest of foam surged up around its chest, all its attention focused out to sea.
I followed the direction of the dog’s fixed stare, but saw nothing, no bird nor boat nor swimmer, not even a piece of driftwood. Just the ocean and the sky and clouds. What had caught the dog’s attention? I clapped my hands together and whistled. The dog ignored me. Its peculiar intensity and stillness was unsettling, eerie.
It barked, once, like a shout of recognition. And there, from behind a break in the clouds, the moon was suddenly visible in the blueness of the sky, almost full, low and white and crisp as the bleached oyster shells on the beach. The dog and the moon brought back a memory, of a Corot painting in the Musée Dubourg. La Bête it was called. A white bull standing on a riverbank in the morning light with its head raised to the dawning day. I remembered how the painting had touched me, as if it showed some spark of self-consciousness in the animal, some yearning after the mystery that is in all things.
The day I’d first seen that painting was also the day I met Claudine. Ironically, it was also two days before I was scheduled to leave Paris.
Paris had been a failure, I’d realized by then. I had no gallery, no friends—even my neighbour from the Hôtel Mistral had gone on to better things—no prospects, and if I was honest with myself, the paintings I was doing were not very good. So I’d bought my ticket back to New York on the SS Volendam. From there I would take a train across the country to Vancouver and try to start over. Maybe look for a real job.
The visit to see the Corot was a farewell of sorts. After all, it was through his paintings that I’d come to Paris in the first place. A light drizzle had filled the September air as I made my way from La Muette station. Under the leafy chestnuts of Jardin du Ranelagh the drizzle became rain, heavy drops rattling the leaves above me, penetrating my thin jacket and shirt as I ran the last block to the museum entrance.
When I located the little Corot painting, two young women were standing directly in front of it, engaged in conversation and evidently not in any hurry to move on. Despite the wet shoes pinching my feet and a trickle of rainwater sliding down the back of my neck, I was conscious of the beauty of one of the women. When she turned to her friend, I glimpsed large grey eyes and a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her wheat-coloured hair was pulled back from her oval face into a ponytail. She looked very French—the expressive pouts of her mouth, the way her hands moved in the air as she talked.
At last they became aware of my presence, and moved off. At the doorway the woman with the ponytail looked back at me, with a frank, assessing interest and a hint of flirtation in her eyes. A mischievous smile flitted across her lips.
I had looked at the painting for a long time, lost in that particular mood that Corot’s pictures always evoked, as if I had found a long-lost place. But you could not live inside a painting, no matter how much more preferable than real life it seemed. And art was not life. I’d learned that much in Paris.
I went down to the cafeteria and sat near the window, waiting for the rain to stop, already feeling a nostalgia for Paris, as if it were in the past already.
When I had finished my coffee and was about to leave, I noticed at a table nearby the woman who had been in the Corot room. She was sitting with her chin on her hand, gazing out through the rain-streaked window to the soft blur of the street outside. I reached into my pocket for my sketchbook and pencil and began to draw rapidly. The profile and the ponytail were easy, but I struggled to get the mouth right, that expressive pout of the lips.
The next time I glanced up, she had turned in her seat and was looking directly at me. Our eyes met briefly before I looked down, embarrassed to be caught staring. Abruptly, she rose and walked straight over to my table. I quickly covered the sketch with my hand.
“Since you have been sketching me for the last twenty minutes,” she said, “I think it is only fair that I at least get to see the drawing.”
Caught unawares, I could do nothing but remove my hand from the page. She leaned over and studied the drawing, her ponytail brushing across my cheek.
“Not bad,” she said, tracing a fingernail over the drawing. “But you flatter me. It’s a little idealized. You idealize women, perhaps?” She said it as a challenge, with an amused smile.
I found myself tongue-tied and could only shrug. She closed the sketchbook and slid it back across the table and turned as if to leave. Somehow I managed to gather my wits about me and I asked her to sit down. She did.
Her name was Claudine Jourdan. I ended up not leaving Paris. I married her instead.
NOW, REMEMBERING THAT DAY also brought back a reminder of everything that I had lost. The hollowness was still inside my heart. I turned away, leaving the dog and the sea and the moon to themselves.
LeBec was unchanged since my visit the other day, a couple of boats in the tiny harbour, a handful of cottages in a row opposite, the same heaps of netting and lobster pots on the quay, but instead of being deserted this time, there were two men in denim overalls bent over an engine on blocks, a little cloud of smoke drifting above their heads from the cigarettes both of them had clamped in the corners of their mouths. They looked up at my approach and I waved as I walked down the quay.
“Bonjour, I’m looking for the cottage called La Minerve.”
“You must be the painter,” the older one said—they appeared to be brothers.
“Yes. Leo Millar.” I extended a hand to each and they introduced themselves as Benjamin and Simon Grente.
“Père Caron told us you’d be coming. The cottage is the last one along the lane.” Simon pointed out the direction.
I’d been told that all the cottages were named after Corsair ships, and I passed La Belle Poule, La Lutine, La Junon, La Jolie Brise, before reaching La Minerve, each one with its name painted on a tile embedded in the stone next to the front doors. The big key Père Caron had given me slipped neatly into t
he lock. The door opened into a spacious square room. By the light from the doorway I located the windows and unlatched the wooden shutters, flooding the room with sunlight.
I had expected to find something rather ramshackle, but the room was clean and tidy. A much-scrubbed wooden table with four chairs stood in the centre, an armoire in the corner, a chest of drawers beneath the window and a long wooden bench with lumpy cushions in front of a large fireplace. A sink and simple stove were situated against the far wall.
A narrow staircase led up to a bedroom: bare wooden floors, another armoire and a big wooden bed with a night-stand. I opened the windows and shutters, which gave a view onto the sea. Leaving the windows open, for the room was a little musty and would benefit from an airing, I went back downstairs and opened a second door, which led to a long walled garden. I guessed that the small stone hut at the far end was the privy. There were pink and red roses climbing one of the walls and a row of espaliered apple trees, much neglected, against the other.
A big leafy fig tree dominated the end of the garden and for a moment the sight of it made me sad. It was a vivid reminder of rue du Figuier. After Claudine and I got married we moved to an apartment on the top floor of a building between the Seine and rue de Rivoli. An old fig tree stood in the courtyard below our windows, a remnant of the orchard that had grown there when the Marais was just a village. I decided to take the presence of this tree at La Minerve as a good omen, confirming my decision to move into the cottage.
Back in the main room I stood for a moment, savouring the atmosphere. The cottage felt sturdy, safe, welcoming. A refuge.
“Will it do?” Simon was at the door. “Père Caron says you will be using it as your painting studio.”
“It’s perfect,” I answered.
“It’s been empty for a couple of years. My wife gives it a cleaning in the spring. Dust and cobwebs and such.”
“She did a very good job. I can probably move in tomorrow.”