Black Water Lilies

by Michel Bussi

  The teacher hesitates and then her words rush out in one go, as if she were throwing herself out of the window.

  “Ordinary, I tell you. I would love to bring up a child, my own child, but I think that my husband can’t give me one. Is that why I don’t love him anymore? I don’t think so. I think that, as far back as I can remember, I have never loved him. He was just there. No worse than anyone else. Available. Loving. I fell on my feet. So you see, Inspector, I’m an ordinary woman. Trapped, like so many others. The fact that I’m pretty, I believe, that I was born in Giverny, and that I adore the children in my class doesn’t change that…”

  Laurenç’s hand rests on Stéphanie’s. They wrap their fingers around the green cast-iron balustrade.

  “Why admit that to me? Why me?”

  Stéphanie stares at him and laughs.

  Isn’t she aware that even her eyes are unique?

  “Don’t be under any illusion, Inspector. And don’t get any ideas… If I’ve told you all this, it isn’t because of your roguish smile, or the fact that your shirt is open by a button or two too many, or because your hazel eyes give away even the tiniest of your emotions. And above all, don’t believe for one moment that I find you charming, Inspector… It’s just…”

  The hand pulls away and drifts toward the horizon. Stéphanie lets the suspense hover in the air.

  “Just as Louise, the dandelion-picker, succumbed to the charm of the 222 Z, it’s your Tiger Triumph that I’ve fallen in love with!”

  She laughs.

  “And perhaps also the way you always stop to stroke Neptune.”

  She comes closer.

  “One last thing, Inspector, but it’s important. The fact that I no longer love my husband doesn’t make him a murderer. Quite the contrary.”

  Sérénac doesn’t reply. He notices only that now, fifty yards in front of them, the passengers in the cars driving along the Chemin du Roy are systematically turning their heads toward Monet’s house and spotting them, like lovers on a balcony.

  Are they mad?

  Is he mad?

  “I think I should go and look after the children,” she whispers.

  Standing on his own, Sérénac hears the teacher’s footsteps fading away. His heart thumps furiously beneath his open shirt, and his thoughts explode against his skull.

  Who is Stéphanie?

  A femme fatale? Or a lost girl?

  40

  In the Impressionist hall of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, Inspector Sylvio Bénavides opens owlish eyes. Achille Guillotin has moved again. The curator has taken out a handkerchief, and is rubbing an invisible speck of dust beside a painting by Sisley. Flood at Port-Marly, says the caption beneath the painting. Just as Sylvio is wondering whether Guillotin has forgotten his question, the curator turns around. He dabs a corner of his handkerchief against his forehead.

  “Paintings by Monet that have disappeared, not been found, but which might come to light again, is that what you’re asking me about, Inspector? OK, let’s go. I can play a guessing game with you if you like… We know that Claude Monet’s studios in Giverny contained dozens of paintings, including sketches, early works, large panels of unfinished Water Lilies… Not to mention gifts from his friends, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro, Boudin, Manet, more than thirty canvases… Do you see? That fortune, that colossal fortune, more precious than the collection of any museum in the world, was all looked after by no one other than an eighty-year-old man and his gardener, protected only by a door that barely closed, windows that were merely pushed shut, walls that were cracking. Anyone could have helped themselves. Any Givernois with an ounce of wit could have made more money by engaging in a spot of petty theft than by robbing twenty banks.”

  The handkerchief wipes his face again and ends up in a ball in his palm.

  “A fortune like that, just within reach, I can’t imagine a similar temptation…”

  Sylvio is beginning to understand. Around him he observes the ten or so canvases hanging on the walls. The Rouen Museum, which is supposed to house the finest provincial collection of Impressionist work, has only a quarter of the paintings that Monet’s studios contained. He presses on.

  “Might there still be paintings by great artists hidden somewhere in Monet’s studios in Giverny?”

  Achille Guillotin hesitates for a moment before replying.

  “Well, Claude Monet died in 1926. Michel Monet, his son and heir, doubtless went to great lengths to look for any paintings by his father that hadn’t been given to museums, and to make sure they were safe. So, to answer your question, I think it’s very unlikely that we’re going to find any new paintings in the pink house in Giverny today. But in the end, you never know.”

  “And beyond the question of theft,” the inspector says with a little more confidence, “might Monet have actually distributed some of his paintings, given them away?”

  “The local press records the gift of a painting to a tombola stall that was raising money for the hospital in Vernon. Someone must have won that painting, at fifty centimes a ticket… Otherwise, we can only guess. We know that the inhabitants of Giverny didn’t make life easy for Claude Monet. He had to negotiate for every aspect of his passion, for the purchase of his property, to preserve the landscapes as he painted them, and above all to divert the water from the brook toward his lily pond. Monet paid money, a lot of money, to the village. He paid to prevent a starch factory being built right next to his garden. He paid to freeze his little bit of landscape, away from any kind of progress. There again, any clever fellow, a municipal councilor or a wily peasant, could have got hold of one of the master’s paintings for five hundred francs. I’m aware that specialists don’t generally believe in that kind of arrangement between artists and local people, but can we really rule it out? The possibility that one of the inhabitants of Giverny might have been capable of taking an interest in a painting, or at least in its salable value? Monet would have handed the painting over, of course. He had no choice. Take that strange mill, for example, beside Monet’s gardens—the Chennevières. Every time I go to Giverny I think about it, because of that painting by Theodore Robinson, the famous Père Trognon. Well, the countryfolk who lived in that mill had every opportunity to blackmail Monet. The brook ran right through their property. No agreement with them, no water lilies!”

  Sylvio Bénavides hasn’t time to note everything down, so he tries to memorize the flow of information.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Do I seem like I’m joking, young man? Let me tell you, there are idiotic treasure seekers who travel the world in search of three pieces of gold. If they were just a little smarter, they would visit the attics of the houses in Giverny and the nearby villages. I know what people say. Claude Monet destroyed the paintings he wasn’t satisfied with, along with his early works. He was so worried that dealers would pounce on his unfinished canvases and sketches that he burned everything he didn’t like in his studio, in 1921. But in spite of all the master’s precautions, it’s not impossible that there’s another Monet hidden somewhere. Just some old, forgotten painting. But enough to buy you an island in the Pacific!”

  The curator moves on to another room, and glances darkly at an attendant who seems to be more interested in the red of her nail polish than the red robe of the cardinal questioning Joan of Arc in Delaroche’s painting.

  “One more thing,” the inspector says. “You mentioned Theodore Robinson, the painter and friend of Claude Monet. What do you think of the foundation that his inheritors set up?”

  Guillotin opens his eyes wide.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “The foundation keeps cropping up in our investigation. A lot of people involved in the case seem to have some connection with it, albeit indirectly.”

  “And what do you want to know?”

  “I have no idea. Just what you think of it.”

  The curator hesitates, as if trying to find the right words.

  “What can I t
ell you, Inspector? Foundations are complicated things. That kind of association is officially as altruistic and impartial as they come. I’ll try to find an analogy for you. OK, imagine an association that takes care of poor people. Well, the paradox is that if the number of poor people declines, the association’s reason for existence diminishes. In other words, the better it works, the more it does itself in. It would be the same for a foundation that campaigns against war. Peace would mean the death of that organization.”

  “Like a doctor who is so good at treating his patients he puts himself out of a job?”

  “Exactly, Inspector.”

  “I understand, but what does that have to do with the Robinson Foundation?”

  “They have a motto, I believe. The three ‘pros’ as they call them. Prospection, protection, promotion. The motto works as well in French as it does in English. By and large, it means that they look for paintings all over the world, they buy and sell them, but also they invest in young artists, even very young ones; they buy their work, they sell it…”

  “And then?”

  “One talent follows another, Inspector. A painting isn’t a record or a book; an artist’s fortune isn’t based on the largest number of sales. It’s quite the opposite, in fact, and that’s what the whole system is based on. A painting is worth a lot because the other paintings are worth much less, or nothing at all. If there is a level playing field, if there is true competition among critics, schools, and galleries, in the end everything is fine. But if a foundation finds itself in a monopoly situation, or almost, do you see?”

  “Not really…”

  Guillotin can’t conceal a twitch.

  “Well, if you have a monopoly, the more new talent this foundation discovers, the more it renews art—the ‘pro’ from ‘prospection’ if you like—the more it undercuts the sales value of its other paintings, the ‘pro’ of ‘protection’… Do you see?”

  “More or less…” Bénavides scratches his head. “I’d like to ask you a more concrete question: if a Monet painting had vanished, would the Robinson Foundation be in a position to find it?”

  The answer comes quickly. “Without a doubt. More than anyone else! And probably by any means possible.”

  “Well,” Bénavides continues, having adopted a slow and somewhat ponderous demeanor, which the curator seems to appreciate, “I have one last question. It may surprise you. Are there any undiscovered paintings by Monet? I don’t know, paintings that are particularly rare, or shocking, anything that could be linked to a murder?”

  Achille Guillotin smiles, as if he has been expecting this question. The apotheosis of this conversation.

  “Come with me,” he whispers conspiratorially.

  He takes Sylvio over toward the opposite wall, to a tortured painting in which four naked men, clearly Roman slaves, are attempting to tame a wild horse.

  “Observe these bodies painted by Géricault, yes, the famous Théodore Géricault. The greatest painter born in Rouen. Observe the bodies. The movement. Painters have a strange relationship with death, Inspector. We know that in order to make his Raft of the Medusa realistic, Théodore Géricault went to hospitals and collected amputated arms and feet, decapitated heads. His studio stank of corpses. At the end of his life, to treat his own madness, he would paint ten portraits of the insane from the Salpêtrière, ten monomaniacs who represent all the torments of the human soul…”

  Sylvio is worried that the curator is going to lose himself in a new digression.

  “But Monet wasn’t mad. He didn’t paint corpses.”

  Achille Guillotin’s hidden side seems to be coming to light. His sparse hair stands up on the lunar landscape of his head, like atrophied satanic horns.

  The eleventh monomaniac?

  “Come and see, Inspector.”

  Guillotin dashes down the stairs, two flights, and into the museum shop, picks up a huge book, and tears the transparent plastic cover with his teeth. He turns the pages, as if possessed.

  “Monet didn’t paint death? Monet didn’t paint corpses, only nature? Ah, look now, Inspector. Look!”

  Bénavides can’t help recoiling.

  A specter. Filling the entire page.

  The painting is a portrait of a woman. Her eyes are closed. She seems wrapped in a shroud of ice, a swirl of frozen brushstrokes, as if imprisoned by a white spider’s web that devours the model’s pale face.

  Death…

  “Allow me to introduce you to Camille Monet,” Guillotin says coldly. “His first wife. His prettiest model. The girl with the parasol amid the poppies, his radiant companion on Sundays in the country. Dead at the age of thirty-two. Monet painted this accursed portrait at his wife’s deathbed; for the rest of his life he would reproach himself for being unable to resist the temptation to capture on canvas the colors of her ebbing life, for treating his love in her death throes as a vulgar object of study. Like Géricault and his fascination with dismembered bodies. As if the painter had taken possession of the lover. Monet later said that, by his wife’s fresh corpse, he had fallen victim to a kind of automatic painting, as if he were hypnotized. What do you think, Inspector?”

  Sylvio Bénavides has never felt such emotion in viewing a painting.

  “Are there any other works like this? By Monet, I mean…”

  Achille Guillotin’s round face reddens again, as if a slumbering devil has woken within him.

  “What could be more fascinating than painting his wife’s death, Inspector? Have you thought about that? Nothing, of course.”

  The red color rises to his temples.

  “Nothing, except being able to paint his own death. During the last months of his life, Monet painted incomplete Water Lilies, the equivalent of the score of Mozart’s Requiem… Crazed brushstrokes, a race against death, against exhaustion, against blindness. Hermetic, painful, tortured canvases, as if Monet had plunged inside his own brain. Water Lilies have been discovered where the paint was hurled urgently onto the canvas in every color, fiery red, monochrome blue, corpse green… Dreams and nightmares merged together. Only one color was missing…”

  Sylvio would like to reply, but nothing comes out. He feels that the investigation is veering off course.

  “The color that Monet had banished from his canvases forever. The one he refused to use. The absence of color, but also the union of them all.”

  A silence. Sylvio gives up trying to reply, and instead scribbles nervously on his notepad.

  “Black, Inspector. Black! It is said that during the last days before his death, in early December 1926, when Claude Monet understood that he was about to pass away, he painted it.”

  “Wh… what?” Bénavides stutters.

  Guillotin isn’t listening anymore.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Inspector? Monet observed his own death in the reflection of the water lilies and immortalized it on canvas. The Water Lilies. In black!”

  Sylvio’s pen dangles from his hand. He is incapable of taking any notes whatsoever.

  “What do you think, Inspector?” the curator asks, his elation fading. “The Water Lilies in black. Like the dahlia.”

  “Is it definitely true, this story about the black Water Lilies?”

  “No. Certainly not. Of course, no one has ever found that canvas, the famous Black Water Lilies… As you may imagine, it’s a legend, just a legend.”

  Sylvio doesn’t know what to say anymore. He asks the first question that comes to mind.

  “And children… Did Monet ever paint children?”

  41

  I watch Stéphanie at the window of Monet’s pink house. She looks like the mistress of a colonial home, overseeing a swarm of servants.

  Laurenç has come back down.

  They are completely mad. I’m sure you agree with me this time, that you’re thinking the same. The idiots, making a spectacle of themselves like that! On the balcony of Monet’s house, overlooking the garden, facing the Chemin du Roy, in full view of everyone.
They’re asking for it!

  I listen to the sound of the Tiger Triumph setting off. Stéphanie hears it too, but she doesn’t have the courage to turn her head. She remains thoughtful, watching the children playing in the garden. It’s true that she’s ravishing, the little schoolteacher. It’s also true that she knows how to use it, with her geisha dress clinging to her wasp waist and her dewy eyes. Trust me, she has all it takes to turn the head of any boy who comes too close to her, whether he’s a policeman or a doctor, married or not. Pretty as a picture.

  Enjoy it, my pretty. It won’t last.

  Some boys are running about in the middle of the flowers. The teacher tells them off gently. Her mind is elsewhere.

  You’re lost, aren’t you, my dear?

  This is the moment when your whole life is going to change, you’ve understood that, and through the most unlikely of saviors. A policeman. Charming. Funny. Cultured. Prepared to do anything—even free you from your chains. From your husband.

  This is the moment. So what’s holding you back?

  Nothing?

  Ah, if it were only up to you… If only death wasn’t prowling around you; as if you attracted it, my darling. As if, in the end, you were only reaping what you had sowed.

  Children’s laughter pierces my evil thoughts. Boys running after girls.

  Typical.

  Make the most of it, little ones. Enjoy it. Trample the lawns and the flowers. Pluck the roses. Throw stones and sticks into the pond. Tear holes in the water lilies. Desecrate the temple of romanticism. But don’t have any delusions. It’s only a garden, after all. Just because a bunch of credulous fools come from the other end of the world to pray here, it’s still nothing but a pool of stagnant water.

  I know, I’m wicked. Forgive me. Those two idiots have annoyed me this morning, Stéphanie Dupain and her policeman. You have to understand me too. I want to play the mute witness, the invisible black mouse, but it isn’t always so easy to remain detached. You don’t understand me anymore? You’re still wondering what part I play in this whole story? Let me reassure you, I don’t have any sophisticated antennae to pick up the conversation of those two fools through the walls of the Monet house, all the details of their loving display. Oh, no. It’s much simpler than that. Dramatically simple.