by Alex George
With a sigh, he put down his pen. “I’m afraid it has begun,” he said somberly.
“What has begun?”
“My slow shuffle off this mortal coil, Camille. There can be no more doubt.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m dying, Camille. I’m terribly, terribly sick. Can’t you see?”
“You seem perfectly healthy to me, monsieur.”
“Well, I can assure you that I am not,” retorted Proust, a little huffily. “My whole life I’ve been battling one illness and affliction after another. But this time, alas, I fear I am done for. I’m a condemned man.”
“Whatever is the matter?”
“My lungs. Or my heart. Or perhaps my liver. It doesn’t matter. All I know is that life is ebbing away. I feel it in my bones.”
“Come, surely it’s not as bad as that!”
He didn’t seem to have heard her. “Do you know what I fear most in the world?” he asked.
“What, monsieur?”
He gestured to the papers on the bed in front of him. “I’m terrified of dying before I finish this book. That’s all that matters now. My legacy.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with—”
“But there’s so much still to do! I have so much more to write.” He looked up at her. “That’s why I’m so grateful for you, Camille! Without you, all this would be hopeless. I’m in a race against time, but at least I have you on my side. You look after me so beautifully. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
She smiled. “Ce n’est rien.”
“It might be nothing to you, Camille, but it’s everything to me. Nothing else matters but that I finish this book before it finishes me.”
And so her devotion to her employer grew. Marcel Proust locked himself away in his cork-lined prison cell, and with Olivier away at the front, Camille was a willing inmate with him. She committed herself to looking after his every need while he spent all his energies on completing his book.
The war did not result in the rapid French victory that many had predicted. It soon became clear that the troops would be locked in murderous stalemate for months, perhaps years. Camille missed her husband terribly, and worried constantly about his safety, but at least her work was a refuge from the slaughter on the battlefields to the north. In that strange, cluttered apartment on Boulevard Haussmann, she was discovering new worlds.
21
Vaucluse, 1917: The Suitcase Under the Bed
ON THE SHELF ABOVE the fireplace in Philippe and Françoise’s kitchen there was a framed photograph of a boy. He had fair hair, neatly trimmed and brushed. He wore a white shirt, buttoned up to the neck. He was staring directly into the camera, a solemn look in his eye. He looked about fifteen years old. One day Souren pointed at the photograph. “Who is that?” he asked.
“That is Antoine,” replied Françoise. “Our son.”
“Where is he?”
“He volunteered to go and fight in the war. We begged him not to, but he was determined to serve his country. He was killed in Belgium. At Ypres.” Françoise put a hand on Souren’s shoulder. “He would be about your age now,” she said.
* * *
Souren was sleeping in the dead boy’s bed. He was wearing the dead boy’s clothes.
He began to explore Antoine’s room. Philippe and Françoise had not thrown anything away; it was as if they were still expecting their son to return one day. His books were neatly arranged on a small bookcase. Beneath the bed were two wooden crates, brimming with forgotten trophies of childhood: a bow and arrow, parts of a wooden train set, an old bear with cracked buttons for eyes. Souren fingered these treasures in silent wonderment, as if he could conjure up the boy who played with them like a genie from a lamp.
Next to the crates there was an old suitcase. One afternoon Souren pulled it into the middle of the floor. The brass clasps popped open with a satisfying click. He lifted up the lid.
Inside was a troupe of hand puppets. He reached in and pulled one out. It was a round-faced man, a perfect circle of red paint on each of his fat wooden cheeks. Souren put his hand inside the puppet. The puppet looked at him quizzically, and then performed a deep bow. Souren reached back into the suitcase and took out a young girl with long, blond braids. He held the puppets up in front of him, and watched as they began to talk to each other. They were having an argument. The girl was singing, and the man wanted her to stop.
“Don’t you like my voice?” asked the girl.
“No,” snapped the man. “It’s giving me a headache.”
The girl put her head into her little wooden hands and burst into tears.
“There, there,” said the man, patting her on the back. “Don’t cry. Your voice is perfectly fine.”
Souren could not take his eyes off them.
* * *
Over the days that followed, he worked his way through the suitcase, bringing the other puppets to life, one by one. A policeman declared his love for a buxom, rosy-cheeked cook, who pretended not to hear him, because she was busy making soup—although she was secretly delighted, and that day’s soup was the most delicious she had ever produced. Two brothers staged a mock sword fight with twigs and were magically transformed into mighty warriors. An old woman said good-bye to her son as he left to seek his fortune in faraway lands, believing she would never see him again. Years later she discovered that she could fly, and immediately set off, swooping over seas and mountain ranges, to the new country where her son now lived. Souren watched their reunion with tears in his eyes.
The stories poured out of him.
He was building a time machine. With the puppets on his hands he could rewind the clock, back to a time of hope and happy endings.
* * *
In the house next door lived a couple with a little girl. Souren guessed she was six or seven years old. He often saw her playing with dolls in front of her house, chattering quietly to herself. Souren waved to her, and she waved shyly back, but they had never spoken.
One afternoon he closed up the suitcase and carried it across the grass to where the little girl was sitting. He put the suitcase down in front of him.
“Hello,” said Souren in his best French.
“You live next door.”
“That’s right.”
“My name is Amandine Nouvel,” the girl told him.
“I am Souren.”
She looked at him in frank appraisal. “My parents say you’re a German soldier.”
He grinned. “Would you like to see some puppets?” The French word, fantoches, sounded heavy on his tongue.
Amandine brightened at this. “J’adore les fantoches!” she declared.
Souren bent down and clicked open the suitcase. He pulled out a girl with red pigtails, and an old witch. Using the open lid of the suitcase as a rudimentary stage, Souren performed a story: the witch had turned her back on a life of evildoing and was trying to be nice to everyone. She offered the girl some candy, but the little redhead was very rude and ungrateful. It was all the witch could do to restrain herself from turning the horrible child into a toad, just to teach her a lesson. Instead she just smiled her crooked smile, scratched her huge, warty chin, and walked away.
Amandine watched in silence. When Souren lowered the puppets behind the lid of the suitcase, she raised her hand as if she were at school.
“Yes?” said Souren.
“What language were the puppets speaking?” asked Amandine.
“They were speaking in my language.”
“Not German?” she guessed.
He shook his head.
Amandine smiled. “I liked it.”
After that, Souren and Amandine met every afternoon on the front steps of her house, and he told her a different story with the puppets. The little girl watched each performance in complete silence, never taking her eyes off Souren’s hands as they flitted back and forth along the top of the suitcase lid. Not once did she glance up at him: he was i
nvisible to her. She listened closely as the puppets chattered to each other in Armenian, and Souren was sure that she understood every word.
* * *
One evening a few weeks later, Souren was about to push open the kitchen door when he heard Philippe and Françoise speaking inside. There was something about their tone, urgent and different, that made him pause. He stopped and listened from the other side of the door.
“Are you quite sure?” said Françoise.
“You know Nouvel,” muttered Philippe. “As blunt as always. He left very little room for doubt.”
“But Souren would never hurt a fly!”
“The man thinks we’re harboring the enemy, Françoise. He’s convinced that Souren is going to murder us all in our beds, Amandine included.”
“Oh, this is too absurd! That little girl is his only friend.”
“She’s also Nouvel’s only daughter,” said Philippe.
“Yes, and Souren is performing puppet shows for her!”
“In a foreign language. Nouvel and his wife are beside themselves.” Philippe paused. “Françoise, listen to me. They want Souren out of the village. Others feel the same way. The whole town wants him gone.”
“I don’t care what the town wants!” cried Françoise. “This is our house! This is our family!”
Souren held his breath.
“Françoise,” said Philippe quietly. “Souren is not Antoine.”
The silence that followed was amplified by the leathery tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway. Souren imagined the pendulum swinging precisely in its narrow, unchanging parabola, hidden within the clock’s tall body like a beating heart, driving time on. The seconds knotted themselves into minutes, and still there was no sound from the other side of the door. Souren leaned against the wall. The silence breathed, exhaled, and expanded, obliterating everything except this:
Souren is not Antoine.
* * *
Later that evening, once he was sure that Philippe and Françoise were asleep, Souren tiptoed down the stairs. A note lay on his bed, one hastily scrawled word: merci. He had packed Antoine’s suitcase with some of the dead boy’s clothes and his puppets. At the bottom of the stairs he stopped, listening to the old house as it performed its nightly chorus of creaks and groans.
What a fool he had been.
He knew what he heard in Françoise’s voice from the other side of the kitchen door earlier that evening: the despairing cadences of loss. The mourning couple and the hungry boy: they were bound together by nothing but mutual need. And such need had its limits.
Souren is not Antoine.
His instinct for survival had been dulled by comfort. The only way for him to be safe was to be invisible, and nobody could be invisible in so small a village. Clean sheets against his skin, delicious food, the delight on Amandine’s face as the puppets weaved back and forth—these things had held him in place for too long.
The blue-white glow of the full moon fell through the kitchen window, bright enough to cast long shadows into the room. He crossed the flagstones to the back door, and reached for the iron key in the lock. He held his breath as he twisted it, waiting for the heavy click of release. When it came, the sound thundered through the room. He waited for a moment, blood pulsing in his ears. Then he turned the handle, pushed open the door, and stepped out into the night.
22
Best Served Cold
GUILLAUME WALKS AWAY FROM Rue des Abbesses, still feeling the insolent gaze of Thérèse’s pimp between his shoulder blades. He puts his hands in his pockets and turns toward Boulevard de Clichy. The sun is high in the cloudless sky. Its brilliance provides a measure of clarity that cuts through the fog of his lingering hangover.
He is disappointed but not surprised by Thérèse’s refusal to see Emile Brataille again. He does not blame her. She is a survivor. She does what she needs to do.
Guillaume wonders idly how many times he has painted Thérèse over the years. He probably knows that voluptuous body as well as her most devoted customers, but he has never touched her. He does not want her the way these other men want her. They may possess her for a fleeting moment—or be possessed, perhaps—but Guillaume is looking for something different. For him, Thérèse’s body is where the story starts, not where it ends. They have spent hours together in his studio, the tableau never changing over the years. He is on one side of the easel; she is on the other. He is fully clothed; she is quite naked. He works; she watches. She stares out from every canvas with the same frank gaze, and the knowledge in that look eclipses the sensuous actuality of her nakedness. Guillaume has spent his life watching other people, but only when he is with Thérèse does he feel seen.
His pace slows until his feet stop moving. He is standing in front of a shop window, and considers his reflection in the glass. He is gaunt, unshaven, and looks exhausted. He thinks about the empty wall in his studio where Suzanne’s painting used to be, the whispered threats through the door in the dead of night, the six hundred francs beneath his mattress, and the six hundred francs he still needs.
The train to La Rochelle is waiting at the platform, ready to take him to safety, and away from all that he loves.
As he walks south into the heart of the city, he contemplates the delicate encounter ahead. Brataille will be desperate for news about Thérèse, but Guillaume has to keep him in good humor long enough to ask him for a loan. Finally he reaches Montparnasse. There is none of the affable squalor of Montmartre down here. The streets are wider, emptier, and swept clean, both of trash and character. Lines of well-manicured trees punctuate the sterile sidewalks at precisely measured intervals. Well-preserved women parade up and down with small dogs. Guillaume arrives in front of Emile Brataille’s gallery. There is just one painting in the window. On the left-hand side of the canvas is a crudely rendered terracotta vase, or rather, half of one. Opposite the vase is half a blue rabbit’s head. An ornate Doric column is emerging out of the top of the head, next to the rabbit’s ear. Guillaume peers at the painting. There is an embossed card next to the easel. It says:
FERNAND LÉGER
blue guitar and vase
Guillaume looks back at the painting again. So, a guitar, not a rabbit. He shakes his head and pushes open the door to the gallery.
Inside the walls are adorned with more childlike paintings. The colors are bright and stupid. Guillaume has no idea what he is supposed to be looking at. There is a large wooden desk at the back of the room. Brataille sits behind it, smoking a cigarette. His tie is askew, his hair uncombed. He is a picture of elegant dishevelment.
“Good lord, it’s a miracle,” drawls the art dealer. “I didn’t think it was possible, but you look worse than I feel.” Brataille stubs out his cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray on the desk and looks at Guillaume with keen interest. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon, mon ami. Perhaps you have news of a certain deliciously proportioned whore from Rue des Abbesses?”
“Actually,” says Guillaume, “I’ve just come from there.”
“And?”
“She and I talked about you for some time.”
“Oh yes? What did she say?”
“She told me your cock is the size of a peanut.”
Brataille stares at him, and then bursts out laughing. After a moment, Guillaume starts laughing, too. The art dealer gestures at him to sit down, and he sinks into the soft leather chair in front of the desk. Both men are still giggling.
“Seriously,” says Brataille after a moment. “What did she say?”
“Well,” says Guillaume. “She knows who you are, of course.” Brataille nods. Of course. Guillaume looks around at the overpriced paintings. “I reminded her, several times, that you own one of the most successful art galleries in Paris.”
“Aha. She liked that?”
“Oh yes. I laid it on pretty thick, mon vieux.”
“That’s magnificent news. So, will she see me again?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how
it went with Gertrude Stein this morning?” asks Guillaume.
“What? Oh yes, of course.” Brataille doesn’t bother to conceal his impatience. “How did it go? She’s a funny old fish, isn’t she?”
“She is quite,” agrees Guillaume.
“Alice came too, I suppose?”
“Alice came too.”
“And did she buy something?”
“As a matter of fact,” says Guillaume, “she did.”
Brataille beams at him. “Alors, félicitations. You know what this means, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure that I do,” says Guillaume.
“It means you’ve arrived. Everything will change for you now. Gertrude Stein bought your work!”
“Actually, she didn’t so much buy it as steal it.”
“What do you mean?”
“She beat me down on price. Gave me half what I asked for. She was merciless.”
Brataille leans his elbows on the desk and temples the tips of his fingers. “Ah, yes,” he says thoughtfully. “You have to watch the Americans. They do love a bargain.” His tone suggests that of course he would never have agreed to such a deal.
“Here’s the thing, Emile,” says Guillaume. “If Gertrude Stein had paid what I’d asked for, I wouldn’t mention it. But as it is, I’m in a difficult situation right now.”
“Oh?” Brataille’s eyes narrow. “Difficult how?”
“I need some money.”
“Some money.”
“Just a short-term loan,” says Guillaume affably.
“How much?”
“Six hundred. If I don’t repay it today, I’m done for.”
“Done for? What do you mean?”
“They’re going to kill me.”
“Nobody’s going to kill you for six hundred francs,” scoffs the art dealer with a chuckle.
“I’d prefer not to risk it,” says Guillaume tightly.
“What did you do, for heaven’s sake? Borrow money from Le Miroir?”