Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  Giverny is a small village, as all the Givernois keep telling them: the Givernois all know each other. So what if they are all protecting a secret? That accident, for example, the drowning of that boy in 1937? Bénavides starts coming up with the most insane hypotheses. He even finds himself wondering if his boss is being completely open with him. Laurenç Sérénac sometimes has a strange way of approaching all this business relating to art. Sylvio doesn’t like that coincidence very much; the fact that his boss is such a lover of art that he hangs pictures up in his office, that he investigated the illegal art trade before he was transferred to Vernon and then, as if by chance, he finds himself having to deal with the murder of a collector… In Giverny! Not to mention his obsession with trying to pin everything on Jacques Dupain while flirting with the man’s wife. Sylvio has discussed it with Béatrice, but for some reason his wife adores Laurenç. They’ve only met that one evening, but still…

  Straight ahead of him, Sylvio sees a public garden running alongside an imposing gray building in a square. About ten people are waiting in front of the steps. He recognizes the entrance to the Musée des Beaux-Arts and quickens his pace. His mind is still whirring. Yes, Béatrice never stops telling him how charming, how interesting, how funny Laurenç is. She even said something like, “For a policeman he has an astonishing sensitivity, like some kind of female intuition.” Perhaps that is why, Sylvio thinks, he’s developing some reservations about his boss. How can Béatrice admire someone like Sérénac, who is so very different from him? Someone who is interested in nothing but art and the women Morval slept with. Or wanted to sleep with.

  Bénavides climbs the steps to the Musée des Beaux-Arts and, although he can’t say why, a question returns and lodges in his skull like an obsessive refrain: why do people, in the end, admire madmen? Especially women.

  Inspector Sylvio Bénavides has been waiting in the hall of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen for a few minutes. He feels slightly crushed by the height of the ceilings, the depth of the room, the gleam of the huge frescoes. Suddenly, as if emerging from a trapdoor in the marble, a little bald man covered in a pair of oversized overalls heads toward him and holds out a hand.

  “Inspector Bénavides? Achille Guillotin. Curator of the museum. Right, let’s go. I’m afraid I can’t give you very much time, not least because I don’t really understand what it is that you want.”

  A funny thought flashes through Sylvio’s mind. Guillotin reminds him of the art teacher he had at secondary school, Jean Bardon. A teacher who was twenty-five years old and looked as if he was forty. They would be about the same size, wear the same overalls, and have the same way of talking to him. For some strange reason, throughout his school years, Sylvio was always made the scapegoat by all of his teachers, particularly the ones who lacked authority. He reflects that Achille Guillotin must belong to the same caste: little bosses who are obsequious toward authority and tyrannical as soon as they meet anyone weaker than them.

  Guillotin is already far away, climbing the staircase like a little gray mouse. Sylvio imagines that with every step he could tread on his long overalls and go toppling backward.

  “Come on, then. What’s this about a murder?”

  Bénavides trots along behind the gray mouse.

  “Quite a wealthy man. An ophthalmologist from Giverny. Among other things he collected paintings. He was particularly interested in Monet, and the Water Lilies. That may even be the motive for the crime.”

  “And?”

  “I’d just like to know a bit more.”

  “And there’s no one in the force who deals with such matters?”

  “There is, in fact. The inspector coordinating the inquiry trained with the art division, but…”

  Guillotin looks at him as if he has just uttered the worst of heresies.

  “But…?”

  “But I’d like to do some of my own research on the subject.”

  As they reach the landing, it’s hard to tell whether Guillotin is sighing or whether he is just out of breath.

  “OK. So what do you want to know?”

  “We could start with the Water Lilies perhaps? I’d like to know how many of them Monet painted. Twenty? Thirty? Fifty?”

  “Fifty?”

  Achille Guillotin utters a strange cry of horror mixed with sardonic laughter, in a sound that possibly only hyenas should be capable of producing. If he had been holding a metal ruler, he would have brought it straight down on the fingers of the ignorant inspector. The severe portraits in the Renaissance room seem to turn toward Sylvio, covering him with the utmost shame. In spite of himself, Sylvio lowers his gaze, while Achille Guillotin gives a scornful shrug. Sylvio notices that the curator is wearing strange orange socks.

  “Are you serious, Inspector? Fifty Water Lilies? Let me tell you that specialists have identified at least one hundred and seventy-two Water Lilies by Claude Monet!”

  Sylvio rolls startled eyes.

  “We can also compute that into feet, if that means more to you. Monet painted about two thousand square feet of Water Lilies for the nation, at the end of the First World War, and these were put on show at the Orangerie. But if you add up all the works that Monet didn’t keep, the ones he painted when he was suffering from cataracts and half-blind, experts agree that there are over fifteen hundred square feet of ‘additional’ Water Lilies, exhibited around the four corners of the world, in New York, Zurich, London, Tokyo, Munich, Canberra, San Francisco, to name but a few. Not to mention around a hundred Water Lilies that belong to private collectors.”

  Sylvio doesn’t comment. It occurs to him that he must be wearing the idiotic expression of a child who has been told that behind the wave that has just lapped his feet on the beach there is the ocean. Guillotin continues striding down the corridors. Every time he enters a room the attendants, in a moment of panic, spring to attention.

  The European Baroque makes way for the Grand Siècle.

  “The Water Lilies,” Achille Guillotin continues without pausing for breath, “is a very strange collection, unlike anything else in the world. Over the last twenty-seven years of his life, Claude Monet painted nothing other than his lily pond. Gradually he would get rid of all the scenery surrounding it, the Japanese bridge, the willow branches, the sky, in order to concentrate entirely on the leaves, the water, the light. The last canvases, painted a few months before he died, seem almost abstract. Just marks on canvas. Tachism, the experts have called it. It was a style no one had ever seen before. And nobody, in Monet’s day, would understand. Everyone thought it was an old man’s whim… When he died, Monet’s Water Lilies were hidden away, particularly the later ones. People thought it was a moment of madness.”

  Sylvio doesn’t have time to ask what Guillotin means by “hidden away” as the curator carries on.

  “Except that a generation later it was those same, late canvases that would give rise, in the United States, to what the world would call abstract art… That’s the legacy of the father of Impressionism: the invention of modernity! Do you know Jackson Pollock?”

  Sylvio doesn’t dare say no. He doesn’t dare say yes either. Guillotin gives a weary-teacher sigh.

  “Too bad. He’s an abstract artist. Pollock and the others drew their inspiration from Monet’s Water Lilies. It was the same in France. I hope you remember what I said a moment ago. The largest Water Lilies were shown at the Orangerie, the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism, given by Monet to the French state in honor of the 1918 armistice. And that’s not all. If you think about the place where the Water Lilies were exhibited, there’s something else rather fabulous…”

  “Ah?”

  Sylvio can’t come up with anything more intelligent to say, but Guillotin doesn’t care.

  “The Water Lilies are enthroned along the triumphal axis. That is, the major axis that runs through Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Arche de la Défense. The Water Lilies behind the
walls of the Orangerie are precisely aligned along that axis, which symbolizes the whole of French history, extending from east to west, following the course of the sun. And, of course, Monet painted the water-lily pond at different times of day, from dawn till dusk, displaying the eternal course of the sun in the process. The course of the heavenly bodies, the triumphant history of France, the revolution in modern art… Now you understand why even the smallest square inch of these lilies is worth a fortune. This was the turning point in modern art. And it took place in Normandy, a few miles from Vernon, in an insignificant little pond.”

  In the paintings of the Grand Siècle, the fabrics worn by the saints, queens, and duchesses seem to fly in the breeze, as if stirred by the curator’s lyricism.

  “When you say a fortune, what do you mean exactly?”

  As if he hasn’t heard, Guillotin crosses the room and opens a window. Bénavides doesn’t move.

  “Shall we continue?”

  Sylvio understands that he is to follow the curator.

  “I’d like to give you an idea of what a Water Lilies is worth, going by the latest auctions in London or New York. So, for example, you see those grand nineteenth-century buildings facing us, along the Rue Jeanne d’Arc? Well, let’s say that a Monet Water Lilies, a normal-sized one, about a square yard, that would correspond, at the very least, to a good hundred apartments. If we assume that there are four stories per front door, that’s already a good portion of the street.”

  “One hundred apartments? Are you joking?”

  “No. And I think I could say they were worth twice that, without exaggerating. You’re still looking at the Rue Jeanne d’Arc? The cars waiting at the lights? I could also work it out like this. One canvas, on the basis of the most recent sales, might be worth between one and two thousand cars. New ones, I mean. Or almost the entire contents of the shops along the Rue du Gros Horloge, the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, and the Rue de la République all put together. What I’m trying to get through to you is that it’s incalculable. Do you see? And that’s just one Water Lilies!”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “The last Monet sold at auction at Christie’s in London went for twenty-five million pounds. And it was an early work. Twenty-five million pounds. Try converting that into apartments or cars!”

  Sylvio doesn’t have the time to recover, as the curator has already climbed to a new floor and reached the Impressionist rooms.

  Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, Caillebotte. And Monet, of course. The famous Rue Saint-Denis beneath a sea of tricolor flags; Rouen Cathedral on a cloudy day.

  “And… are there any Water Lilies still on the market?” Bénavides stammers.

  “What do you mean, ‘on the market’?”

  “Well. Any Water Lilies that have vanished,” the inspector explains shyly.

  “Vanished? What do you mean, ‘vanished’? Can’t you be any more precise than that, given you’re in the police force? Are you asking if there might be a Monet hanging around somewhere, is that it? Forgotten? In an attic in Giverny, or a cellar? You’re thinking to yourself that someone would probably kill for such a discovery, for such a fortune. Well, Inspector, do listen carefully to what I’m about to tell you…”

  39

  The stairs of the pantry in Claude Monet’s house creak beneath the feet of Inspector Laurenç Sérénac.

  He tries to banish from his mind the parasitical thoughts, the inner voice of a kind of guardian angel that keeps murmuring that he is climbing the steps, one by one, of a terrible trap; that this staircase leads to Monet’s bedrooms, and that there’s no reason for him to go there, following this girl, that he is no longer in control of anything. But it isn’t hard to silence that sensible voice inside him. He has only to think of the moment before, of Stéphanie’s laughter, of her legs swathed in that geisha dress as she bounded toward the first floor, like two playful animals, like an invitation to indiscretion.

  When Laurenç reaches the first floor, Stéphanie is standing in the doorway, in the corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom. As straight as a suited guide. Belted into her red dress, more precious and fragile than a porcelain vase.

  “Monet’s private apartments. More classical in style, I admit. More intimate. Laurenç, you don’t look very comfortable.”

  She walks into the first room and sits down on the bed. The enormous eiderdown engulfs her from her thighs to her chest.

  “Is it interrogation time? I’m at your mercy, Inspector.”

  Laurenç Sérénac takes an anxious glance around the room, the cream fabric stretched on the wall, the faded yellow of the bedspread, the marbled black of the chimney, the gold of the candlesticks, the mahogany of the bedside table.

  “Come on, Inspector, relax. You were more talkative with my husband yesterday evening, it would seem…”

  Laurenç doesn’t respond. They are silent for a moment. Sérénac hasn’t approached the bed. The joyful lanterns in Stéphanie’s eyes gradually grow dim. She sits up in a flurry of feathers.

  “Then I will begin, Inspector. Do you know the story of Louise, the dandelion-picker of Giverny?”

  Sérénac looks at her, surprised and curious.

  “No, of course you don’t,” Stéphanie says. “But it’s a lovely story. Louise is a bit like our very own Cinderella. Louise was the ravishingly beautiful daughter of a peasant family, or so they say. The prettiest girl in the village. Young. Fresh. Innocent. Around 1900 she posed in the fields for some artists—in particular Radinsky, a promising Czech painter who had come to join Monet and the American artists. Handsome Radinsky was also a famous pianist. He drove an incredible car for the time, a 222 Z. He fell in love with the little dandelion-picker, he married her, and he took her home. Radinsky is now his country’s most famous painter. Louise the little peasant girl became the Princess of Bohemia. It was Claude Monet himself who bought their car, the 222 Z, as a present for his son Michel, who would crash it, a few months later, into a tree on the Avenue Thiers in Vernon. Apart from the pitiful end of the poor car, it’s a beautiful story, don’t you think?”

  Laurenç resists the desire to walk over to her, to let himself be devoured in turn by the eiderdown. His forehead is burning.

  “Stéphanie, why are you telling me all this?”

  “Guess…”

  She shifts slowly on the eiderdown, as if swimming in a sea of feathers.

  “I’m going to let you in on a secret, Inspector. A curious secret. It’s been a long time since I’ve found myself alone in a room with a man other than my husband. It’s been a long time since I laughed while running up a staircase ahead of a man. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about landscapes, about painting, about the poems of Louis Aragon, to a male who is older than eleven and is capable of listening to me.”

  Sérénac thinks of Morval. He is careful not to interrupt Stéphanie.

  “Quite simply, I’ve been waiting a long time, Inspector, for this moment. All my life, I would say.”

  A silence.

  “Waiting for someone to come.”

  Stare at something, Sérénac thinks to himself quickly. The melted candles, the flaking paint on the wall, anything but Stéphanie’s eyes.

  She adds: “Not necessarily a Czech painter. Just someone.”

  Even her voice is mauve.

  “If anyone had told me it would be a policeman…”

  Stéphanie leaps to her feet, and grabs one of Laurenç Sérénac’s dangling arms.

  “Come on. I have to check on my pupils.”

  She pulls him toward the window, and gestures toward about a dozen children running around in the garden.

  “Look at this garden, Inspector, the roses, the flower beds, the pond. I’ll let you in on another secret. Giverny is a trap! A wonderful setting, certainly. Who could dream of living anywhere else? Such a pretty village. But I have to confess: the decor is frozen. Petrified. You’re not allowed to redecorate any of the houses in a different way, repaint a wall, pick so much
as a single flower. There are laws forbidding it. We live in a painting here. We’re walled in. We think we’re at the center of the world, that we’re worth the trip, as they say. But it’s the landscape, the decor, that ends up dripping all over you—like a kind of varnish that glues you to the setting. A daily varnish of resignation. Of renunciation… Louise, the dandelion-picker of Giverny, who became Princess of Bohemia, she’s a legend, Laurenç. It doesn’t happen anymore.”

  She suddenly calls out to three children walking across a flower bed: “Go around it!”

  Laurenç Sérénac feverishly seeks a diversion to stem the tide of Stéphanie’s melancholy, to fight back his own desire to hold her in his arms. Here. Now. He stares at the profusion of flowers in the garden. The harmony of the colors. He is overwhelmed by the incredible charm of the park.

  “Is it true,” he says suddenly, “what Aragon says in his book? That Monet couldn’t bear the sight of a wilting flower, so the gardeners changed them overnight, with a new color every morning, as if the whole garden had been repainted?”

  His ruse seems to have worked. Stéphanie smiles.

  “No, not at all, that’s an exaggeration on Aragon’s part. So you’ve read Aurélien, then?”

  “Of course… Read it and understood it, I think. The great novel on the impossibility of being a couple. There is no such thing as a happy love. Is that the message?”

  “That’s what Aragon thought when he wrote it. At that point in his life he must have thought there was no such thing as happy love. And yet he went on to experience the most beautiful, the longest, the most eternal love story that a poet has ever known. You know that. Le Fou d’Elsa!”

  Laurenç turns around. Stéphanie’s lips are still parted. He battles with the desire to bring his fingers to her quivering mouth, to stroke her delicate, porcelain profile.

  “You are a strange girl, Stéphanie…”

  “And you, Inspector, have a gift for inspiring confidences. I can tell you that in terms of questioning, you’re a great deal more subtle than my husband had me believe. No, Inspector, I’m going to disappoint you. There’s nothing strange about me; quite the contrary, I’m distressingly ordinary.”