“Have you ever seen so much honey? She certainly had a sweet tooth. I suppose it’s what happens to every woman without a man.”
Why suppose that?
“Ah, there they are. The baskets.”
The flashlight beam went to the top shelf. Sure enough, there were three baskets in a neat row, all exactly like the one upstairs. I climbed up on the shelves and handed the baskets down to my host, who managed to almost drop them in the dim light. I brought them up the slippery stairs.
With all the baskets piled in my arms I stood in Louise’s living room. I thanked my host. He wasn’t bad. He had given me something of Louise’s, although I had no idea what to do with four baskets. He allowed me to walk outside onto the terrace for a final look.
“You know what I think?”
As I gazed across the valley to Mont Ventoux I had no idea what my host thought.
“I think it was a game between them.”
A game between Louise and Zermano?
“I think in the end the game played them.”
I think you are a foolish fellow. I think you never understood one thing about them. No one did.
I left Reigne and drove back to Nice.
MY PLANE TO America was not scheduled to leave Nice until the following morning so I remained overnight. I could not resist staying in the same hotel where Zermano and Louise spent their last week together. The hotel was on a twisting alley, halfway up the hill to where a fortress once stood. Nothing seemed to have changed in the back streets of Nice. There was still a swaggering air of dilapidation, sun-colored walls closing in on each other. Behind shuttered windows secrets lingered in bedrooms, while inside cafés long-silent shouts of accusation and denial still clung to the air. Everywhere disoriented tourists walked reverentially, careful not to disturb the town’s private reveries.
My small hotel room seemed crowded with an oversized bed and decorative armoire. Perhaps it was the same room where Zermano and Louise had stayed. Humidity breathed through the window’s open shutters; outside, the palms along the curve of the bay swayed in salty air. It was a summer evening on the French Riviera, the perfect time to take a walk. I joined the disoriented tourists in the narrow streets. Because of the day’s events and the long drive from Reigne, I was feeling light-headed myself. The emotion of having been inside Louise’s actual home, of making contact with her, left me with a strange sense of daring. On a whim I took one of her baskets along on the walk. It was like having her with me. I followed the snaking street in front of the hotel, up past the excavated Roman ruins, where a steep staircase led to the top of the hill. Below me all of Nice spread out around the Baie des Anges, basking in a burnished light reflected from the sea’s surface. Across the town’s red-tile rooftops time was caught in a memory of sunsets past, blending into each other. My mind was overrun, without enough space to contain everything, going blank like the pages of Louise’s diary, shimmering white.
I waited at the summit until darkness fell before descending the circuitous route to the hotel. I lost my way, wandering for more than an hour. I stopped where a man-made waterfall cascaded from rocks above and sat with welcome relief on a bench. Lovers, hand in hand, glided by me in the dusk. What an odd sight I made, a man alone on the French Riviera on a summer night with a twig basket balanced on his knees. It even seemed odd to me.
Peering into the well of the basket I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. I could make out the shape of a once bright metal hinge, now dulled to a muted color the same as the wood surrounding it. I remembered my aunt who, when on holiday at our home, seemed always to be knitting. She was a lawyer who found her relaxation in the simple rhythm of gliding needles. She had a special place at the bottom of her basket where she kept needles and scissors safely hidden from adventurous children. There was a hinged trap door that she could lift to expose a hollow space under the basket’s false bottom.
I pried at the trap door of Louise’s basket. My fingernails scraped against wood. The door was tenacious, probably not having been opened for decades. The old hinge creaked. The door sprang up. I stared in disbelief. Bundled neatly and bound by blue ribbons were letters, arranged carefully, filling the entire bottom of the basket. I lifted one of the packets and untied its ribbon, freeing the letters. I could barely make out the handwriting on the envelopes in the dim light. There was a pale moon over the pine trees on the slope above me. The handwriting shimmered into focus. I knew it well. I knew it because I had read many journals written in that hand, journals I had researched for my books and articles—the journals of Francisco Zermano.
I looked quickly through the rest of the letters. Disappointingly, none were from Louise. But of course there were no letters from Louise, she would have mailed hers to Zermano, they wouldn’t be in the basket. What had he done with her letters? No letters from her have ever been mentioned in his journals or made available for publication. Perhaps he burned them. In any event they were lost to history, so what was hidden in the basket was a true treasure. Louise had kept it safe, entrusting it to no one.
I made my way in the dark to the hotel, guarding Louise’s treasure. She could have sold Zermano’s letters for a king’s ransom. Instead they remained locked in her heart, tucked cleverly into the bottom of a simple knitting basket. As I came closer to the lights of the hotel I realized there were more baskets, three more. What if she had filled them all with letters? I ran as quickly as I have ever run in my life.
In the hotel room I grabbed one of the remaining baskets and pried its trap door open. A rain of letters tumbled out, scattering across the bed. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was the first to touch these letters since Louise. If there were guests in the next room they must have thought my room was occupied by a newly-wed couple, for as I upended each basket I shouted with pleasure, each shout louder than the last, until all of the baskets were emptied, their contents covering the bed.
I pulled one of the envelopes out from the pile. Looking at the address I was surprised. The letter was not in Zermano’s hand. The still bright white envelope was addressed to Zermano and bore Louise’s exquisite handwriting. I quickly examined each letter in the pile. Here were Louise’s letters that had never been mailed, the letters Zermano never saw.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. I had become part of Louise’s plan, led to her cellar, to the baskets set among the preserved fruits of Provence, waiting decades for the right person to harvest them.
I now submit these letters for examination. Since Louise did not date hers, the precise times when they were written are unknown. She may have responded immediately to Zermano’s letters, or composed her answers years later. The utmost care has been taken to marry Louise’s thoughts and responses to Zermano’s letters. Sometimes this presented difficulties, as Louise was not only responding to Zermano, but also presenting her emotions within the context of dangerous wartime realities.
It is impossible to ascertain if Louise received all of Zermano’s letters. Some might have been seized by government censors, others may have been lost in transit as war spread across Europe. Louise herself may have destroyed the more intensely intimate ones, although what remains is intimate enough. The political contents of some could have condemned Louise to death had they been discovered at the time. In an attempt to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together I have held nothing back.
Professor of Art History
Department of Art
University of California
PART TWO
Journey to Reigne
Villa Trône-sur-Mer
Côte d’Azur
Louise. I look at my hands. Are these the hands of a creator or a strangler? What is the difference now that my life is cut off from yours? What am I in the end without you? A chest-pounder, a grandstander, a carnival magician. It is more rare in this universe to find a true love than to make a great piece of art. Why won’t you write? You promised in the hotel in Nice that you would write. This was our agreement. You can’t
walk away from it. I must find the truth. How can you tear the face off such recent memory?
I have gone to Ville Rouge at noon every Friday. We were to meet in front of the Roman Fountain, that was part of the agreement. You are never there. I inquire if anyone has seen you. No one has. Not the butcher, the baker, not even Monsieur Royer at the post office. The room above the café, where you were to stay until you found a safe home—they say you left there immediately. It’s as if you were never in Ville Rouge, that I dreamed it, driving with you there just two weeks ago. But I can’t stay in Ville Rouge to find you, things are too dangerous for that.
The exhibition of my paintings in London has been canceled. Things everywhere are falling into confusion. It is all I can do to keep working, trying to paint my way out of this crazy corner the world has painted me into. I must continue to paint through this confusion of borders falling and countries crumbling. Who could have foreseen this? I suppose I did and that is why I made a plan to spare you from it all. Trust me, I said. You said you would, and now you have broken the trust, disappeared.
I don’t want to close Villa Trône, it’s like closing our life together, but I might be forced to leave and go back to Paris. It seems my absence in Paris is taken by some as cowardice, abandoning a sinking ship. I prefer to return to Spain, but that is impossible. Things in Spain are even more confused than here and it would put me too far away from you. I must go on painting to find form, then I can bend the rules in order to escape this terrible present. The problem now is that there are no rules, only chaos. Our personal chaos is so slight in the storm that surrounds us. But what seems slight to others is a mortal wound to me.
I send this letter to you care of the post office in Ville Rouge. I have no idea if you will get it. My sweet Louise, you said we would be together for eternity, and now you won’t write. Do I have to wait until the next lifetime for you to answer me? Who am I speaking to? A ghost of love? My worst fear is that something unspeakable has already happened to you.
I try to console myself with a vision of you that day in the cherry orchard, light showering through leaves over your head, the smile on your face. The sun of that summer splits a path of hope through this darkness that separates us. I lay my brush down at the end of each day, remembering our last drive to Ville Rouge. Don’t let me think that I will never see you again. Hold on my dearest woman, wherever you are.
FRANCISCO
Village of Reigne
Darling Francisco,
I have nothing to hide now except myself. Our agreement? It wasn’t our agreement, it was your plan. You seem to think that who you are would put me at risk. Where else should a woman stand in time of risk but next to the one she loves? Could you not see in my eyes the sadness of parting from you? No. You were crazy with protecting me, sending me far from harm’s way. If bombs are to fall why shouldn’t I be a target as well? Why should I be saved? What life is left after separation from the one you love? No matter how I pleaded you could not hear my side. Your Spanish temper raged. You got your way but you didn’t get me.
When you came looking for me in Ville Rouge I was there. I saw you hobbling on your cane, your knees still not healed from what happened last summer. I wanted to run to you, to tell you what I now know. But if I had confessed the truth you would have been more emphatic at keeping me hidden. You said you knew of cruelty in men that I could never understand, that no woman could understand. Tell me, is there a greater cruelty in the world than a mother losing her child? What makes you think women know less of pain than men? When the trigger is pulled the bullet is blind to its target. Your nature is to protect those you love, but in this instance it is your own tragedy. You should have let me make the choice.
It was all about choice from the very beginning…. I remember everything as if it were yesterday.
I don’t think any woman was ever seduced by a man the way I was seduced by you. I had gone to a gallery opening in Paris. The gallery was not displaying your work, but the paintings of another artist. People thought you might be there because the artist being shown was one of your disciples. So people came, a large crowd. I had not come for you. I happened to be with a man of the antiquarian trade whom you knew quite well. I thought I could never be attracted to a man like you. I did not want what you had, I did not want who you were in public. I could not help but recognize you; even in Paris you stood out. Accomplished as you were, you still looked unfinished, restless, hungry. Yet you were already more than famous, more than rich. What good was any of it to me, a woman who had no interest unless there was love? But as a young girl I had learned Aunt Mimi’s lesson of the belt. Without that lesson I would have missed the essential in you. Without that lesson I never would have gone the first time to Cathedral Sainte-Chapelle on that rainy Sunday morning.
In the crowded art gallery the antiquarian pushed me forward, offering me to you as his calling card. You paid no attention to me, which is always the first thing a woman notices, a man pretending not to notice, a tired trick. A man would never ignore another man who was standing right before him, under his nose. But let it be a woman a man is interested in and suddenly there is a disinterested glaze over the eyes, the spot on the ceiling becomes more fascinating than she. I thought you were smarter than that. You were just as small as the rest. In the crush of admirers and fawning critics you offhandedly thanked me for coming. It was then I noticed your nose. Some men have noses like that if they are boxers but were lucky enough to have deflected the major blows aimed at their face, avoiding a broken nose yet displaying the imprint of many blows. Your nose looked as if God had put a hand on it, holding you back at birth because you were running too fast at life, rushing into it, pushing against all hesitancy. I noticed the flat line of your nose, and then the crowd encircled you.
When you awakened me early the next morning I was not surprised. I had been called by married men before. I had never gone to any of them. You were not telephoning me for a normal meeting, one that could be carried out virtuously in the eye of the public. You did not say, for example: Let’s meet for tea in the Luxembourg Gardens. You did not say: Let’s meet in the square with the fountain of Neptune. Nor did you offer me anything improper by saying: Let’s meet at the small hotel at number five off the Carrefour Odéon. You simply said: Go to nine o’clock mass this morning in the upper sanctuary of Cathedral Sainte-Chapelle, where they keep a holy vial of the Virgin Mary’s milk. Hurtling through the static of the phone line your words came into me, slicing a new wound.
After your phone call the rain beat on the roof above my head. There was a gray tinge outside my window. I arose to dress for you. I thought only black should be worn against my pale skin, but somehow that was wrong. I should go as a bride. Under my dress would be garters and stockings, cinching legs and thighs. I slipped these on but their silken lightness was uncomfortable. This was not the bride you wanted, too ephemeral. I took everything off, standing with my bare feet on the cold floor. What were you expecting? What was it you knew would be waiting for you, exactly as it was meant to be?
Listening to the cathedral bells tolling in the distance I opened my bottom dresser drawer, pulling out piles of clothes. I found what I had not worn for years, folded and white—a schoolgirl’s cotton underpants. They fit high on the waist, low on the thighs, the taut fabric smooth against me. Over this I wore a sensible dress buttoned to the neck. With a hat on my head and rubbers over my shoes, I made my way beneath an umbrella to the cathedral.
On rain-slick streets I was coming to you. I would never be the same again. The people I passed were unaware of what was under my coat. What was hidden was what you wanted. You were going to make me yours, offer me no exit. In cold air the breath rose from my lips, a misty ghost kissing this virgin for the last time.
I crossed the bridge over the Seine as rain slashed at the river. Ahead loomed the cathedral. The twelve stone apostles guarding from atop its towering spire gazed down upon me. I climbed the cathedral steps and pushed open the br
onze doors, stepping out of the wet into a vaulted hush. My eyes blurred, trying to adjust to the dim light. The singsong Latin chant of a priest echoed through the shadows. I was late. The mass had already begun. I failed your first command: Go to nine o’clock mass. It was to be our mass, our celebration. I had ruined it by taking too much time deciding what to wear. My eyes sought you out in the rows of pews leading to the distant altar. All I saw were the backs of worshippers kneeling in prayer, steam rising from their damp clothes. Along the walls candles illuminated the stares of plaster saints. Where were you? Gone? The priest at the altar swung his censer of smoking incense, blue smoke filled the air. How could I have walked so easily into your trap? The animal in you knew instinctively how to hunt my kind, the sophisticated Parisian woman. You planned to take me back to when I was just a dreaming girl, before the woman awoke, before there were any other men, even a father, back to original sin. You were offering me the heaven before the hell.
The worshippers in the pews shunned me with their curved backs. I pushed on the heavy door to get away, but the wind on the outside pushed back. I pushed harder. The wind was strong as a man, trapping me. The vial. You had said to meet you in the upper sanctuary where the holy vial of the Virgin’s milk is kept. I turned, my eyes searched through the forest of stone pillars. In a distant corner a staircase spiraled into the heights.
I ascended the staircase. Stained-glass windows surrounded me, illuminating vivid scenes from the Old and New Testaments: the parting of the Red Sea, Noah’s animals boarding the ark, dead men walking, sermons and miracles, baptism and ultimate crucifixion. The illuminated world swirled, my head spun. The floor rumbled from the moan of a wind organ below. I stumbled forward, pushed by the organ’s escalating notes. I came face to face with the Virgin Mary, her graceful life-sized statue standing guard at the entrance to a marble grotto. She held her baby Jesus toward me in the cradle of her arm. A sweetly dank odor seeped from the grotto. What was it? The centuries-old musk of misspent passion from fervent pilgrims? The dusty feathers of fallen angels? The scent pulled me in.
The Day of the Bees Page 3