The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
He examined it for long seconds, and then he shook his head. "Do you really think there is a connection?"
I brought the album over and rested the pictures side by side. The skirt was certainly the same. "Could this dress have been a popular model?"
Henri Robinson held my arm with tight fingers, and I thought again of my father. "I don't think that is possible. A lady would have her dresses made especially for her by a seamstress, at that time."
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I was reading the text under the painting. Alfred Sisley had painted it four years before his death, in Grémière, just west of his own village, Moret-sur-Loing. "May I sit and think for a moment?" I asked. "May I see your letters just for a second?"
Henri Robinson let me help him back to his chair and handed me the letters more reluctantly. No, I couldn't read the French well enough, the script. I would have to go through my own copy, Zoe's translation, back at the hotel room. I wished now I'd brought it with me--the obvious thing to do. Mary would have figured this out by now, I felt sure, with her jaunty, disrespectful "That's it, Sherlock." I handed them back in frustration. "Monsieur, I would like to call you this evening. May I? I'm thinking about what this connection between the photograph and Sisley's painting could mean."
"I will think, too," he told me kindly. "I doubt it can mean very much, even if the dress is similar, and when you are my age you will see that ultimately it does not matter. Now Yvonne is expecting us for lunch."
We sat across from each other at a polished dining room table, behind another closed green door. That room, too, was lined with paintings and with framed photographs of Paris between the wars, limpid, heartbreaking images: the river, the Eiffel Tower, people in dark coats and hats, a city I would never know. The chicken stewed with onions was delicious; Yvonne came out to ask how the meal tasted and stayed to drink half a glass of wine with us, wiping her brow with the back of one hand.
After lunch, Henri seemed so weary that I took my cue and prepared to leave, reminding him I would call. "And you must come to say good-bye," he told me. I helped him to his chair and sat with him a moment longer. When I got up to go, he tried to rise again, but I stopped him and shook his hand instead. He suddenly seemed to fall asleep. I rose quietly to my feet.
As I reached his sitting-room door, he called after me. "Did I mention to you that Aude was the child of Zeus?" His eyes shone,
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the young man looking out of the dazed old face. I should have known, I thought, that he would be the one to tell me aloud what I had thought for so long.
"Yes. Thank you, monsieur."
When I left him, his chin had sunk into his hands.
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C HAPTER 102 Marlow
In the narrow hotel room, I lay down with Zoe's translation and located the passage:
I am a little tired today myself, and can't settle down to anything but letter writing, although my painting went well yesterday because I have found a good model, Esmé, another of my maids; she once told me, shyly, when I asked her whether she knows your own beloved Louveciennes, that hers is the very next village, called Grémière. Yves says I shouldn't torment the servants by making them sit for me, but where else could I find such a patient model?
In the store next to the hotel, I was able to buy a phone card for the equivalent of twenty dollars--lots of conversation time to the United States--and a road map of France. I'd noticed several phone booths in the Gare de Lyon, across the street, and I strolled up there with the file of letters in my hand, feeling that tremendous building hovering above me, its external sculptures eaten by acid rain. I wished for a moment that I could walk inside and board a steam train, hear it whistle and gasp, ride it out of the station into some world Béatrice would have recognized. But there were only three sleek, space-age TGVs pulled up to the near end of the rail, and the interior echoed with unintelligible departure announcements.
I sat down on the first empty bench I could find and opened my map. Louveciennes was west of Paris, if you followed the Seine and the footsteps of the Impressionists; I'd seen several scenes from Louveciennes at the Musée d'Orsay the day I arrived, including
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one by Sisley himself. I found Moret-sur-Loing, where he had died. Nearby, a speck--Grémière. I shut myself into one of the phone booths and called Mary. It was afternoon at home, but she would be back by now, painting or getting ready for her evening class. To my relief, she answered after the second ring. "Andrew? Are you all right?"
"Of course. I'm in the Gare de Lyon. It's marvelous." From where I stood I could look up through the glass and see the murals above Le Train Bleu, once the Buffet de la Gare de Lyon, the most fashionable station restaurant of Béatrice's era, or Aude's, at least. It was still serving dinner after a century. I wished acutely that Mary were with me.
"I knew you'd call."
"How are you?"
"Oh, painting," she said. "Watercolors. I'm tired of my still life right now. We ought to go on a landscape excursion when you get back."
"Absolutely. You plan it."
"Is everything all right?"
"Yes, although I'm calling about a problem. Not a practical problem, exactly--more like a puzzle for Holmes."
"I can be your Watson, then," she said, laughing.
"No--you're my Holmes. Here's the question. Alfred Sisley painted a village landscape in 1895. ft shows a woman walking away down a road, wearing a dark dress with a special design around the bottom, sort of a Greek geometrical pattern. I saw it at the National Gallery, so maybe you know it."
"I don't remember that one."
"I think she's wearing Béatrice de Clerval's dress."
"What? How on earth do you know that?"
"Henri Robinson has a photograph of her in it. He's fabulous, by the way. And you were right about the letters. Robert got them in France. He took them from Henri, I'm very sorry to say."
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She was silent for a moment. "And you returned them?"
"Of course. Henri is very happy to have them back."
I thought she must be brooding over Robert and his multiplying crimes, but then she said, "Even if you're sure it's the same dress, what does that matter? Maybe they knew each other and she posed for him."
"The village where he painted her is called Grémière, which was where her maid came from. Henri told me that, when Béatrice's daughter, Aude, was dying, she told Henri--if you follow me-- that Béatrice gave her maid something important, some proof of her love for Aude. Aude could never figure out what it was."
"Do you want me to go to Grémière with you?"
"I wish you could. Is that what I should do?"
"I don't see how you could find anything in a whole village, and after so much time. Maybe one of them is buried there?"
"Possibly Esmé--I don't know. I suppose the Vignots would be buried in Paris."
"Yes."
"Am I doing this for Robert?" I wanted to hear her voice again, reassuring, warm, mocking.
"Don't be silly, Andrew. You're doing it for yourself--as you know perfectly well."
"And a little for you."
"And a little for me." She was silent along that endless Atlantic cable. Or was it satellite these days? It occurred to me that I should call my father while I was at it.
"Well, I'll take a quick trip up there, since it's close to Paris. It can't be too hard to drive to that area. I wish I could go to Étretat, too."
"Maybe we'll go there together someday, depending." Her voice sounded tight now, and she cleared her throat. "I was going to wait, but may I talk with you about something?"
"Yes, of course."
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"It's a little hard for me to know where to start, because," she said, "I found out yesterday that I'm pregnant."
I stood squeezing the receiver in my hand, conscious for a moment only of bodily sensation, a seismic registration of difference. "And it's--"
"It's certain."
I had meant s
"It's yours, if that's what you want to know."
"I--"
"It can't be Robert's." I could hear her resolution over the phone, her determination to tell me all this straight, the long fingers holding the receiver on the other side of an ocean. "Remember, I haven't seen Robert in months and months, or wanted to. You know full well I've never been to see him. And there is no one else. Only you. I was taking precautions, as you know, but there's a rate of failure with almost anything. I've never been pregnant before. In my life. I've always been so careful."
"But I--"
An impatient laugh. "Aren't you going to say something about it? Happiness? Horror? Disappointment?"
"Give me a moment, please."
I leaned against the inside of the booth, put my forehead on the glass, not caring what other heads had touched it in the last twenty-four hours. Then I began to cry. It had been years since I'd cried; once, a moment of hot and angry tears after a favorite patient had committed suicide--but, most important, years before that, when I'd sat at my mother's side, holding her warm, soft, dead hand and realizing after long minutes that she could not hear me anymore, so that she wouldn't mind my giving way, even if I had promised to prop up my father. Besides, it was he who had propped me up. We were both familiar with death, from our work; but he had comforted the bereaved all his life.
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"Andrew?" Mary's voice was searching over the line, anxious, hurt. "Are you that upset? You don't have to pretend--"
I rubbed my shirtsleeve over my face, catching my nose with the cuff links. "Then you won't mind marrying me?"
This time her laugh was familiar, if choked, the contagious mirth I had noticed in Robert Oliver. Had I noticed it myself? He had never laughed with me; I must have been thinking of someone else's description. I heard her grappling with her voice to steady it. "I won't mind, Andrew. I didn't think I'd ever feel like marrying anyone, but you aren't anyone. And it's not because of the baby."
At the moment I heard that phrase--the baby--my life divided itself in two, mitosis of love. One half was not even quite present yet; but those two small words, over the phone, had carved out another world for me, or doubled the one I knew.
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C HAPTER 103 Marlow
When I had blown my nose and walked around the station for a few minutes, I dialed the number Henri had given me. "I'm going to rent a car and go out to Grémière tomorrow morning. Would you like to come along?"
"I have been thinking about this, Andrew, and I don't believe you can learn anything, but perhaps it will be a satisfaction for you to go." I took a keen pleasure in hearing him use my first name.
"Then could you come, if that doesn't sound mad? I would make it as easy for you as possible."
He sighed. "I do not often leave the house now, except to go to the doctor. I would make you slow."
"I don't mind going slowly." I refrained from telling him about my father, who still drove and saw parishioners and went for walks. He was almost ten years younger--by that point a lifetime, in terms of agility.
"Ah." He was thinking over the phone. "I suppose the worst thing that can happen is that the trip will kill me. Then you can bring my body back to Paris and bury me next to Aude de Clerval. To die of fatigue in a beautiful village would not be the worst fate." I didn't know what to say, but he was chuckling, and I laughed, too. I wished I could tell him my news. It was dreadful that Mary couldn't meet this man, who might have been her grandfather, or even her great-grandfather, similar to her in his long thin legs and sly sense of humor.
"May I get you at nine tomorrow?"
"Yes. I will not sleep all night." He hung up.
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Driving in Paris is a nightmare for the foreigner. Only Béatrice could have persuaded me to do it, and I had a sense of simply closing my eyes--and sometimes opening them wider than ever before--to survive the swerving traffic, the unfamiliar signs, and the one-way streets. I was in a sweat by the time I found Henri's building, and relieved to be able to park there, if illegally and with my blinkers on, for the twenty minutes it took me and Yvonne to help him down the stairs. If I'd been Robert Oliver, I would have been able to simply pick Henri up and carry him down, but I didn't dare suggest such a thing. He settled in the front seat, and his housekeeper put a folded wheelchair and an extra blanket in the trunk, to my further relief--we would be able to navigate at least some of the village safely.
We made it alive out of one of the main boulevards, Henri directing me with surprisingly good memory, and then through suburbs, a glimpse of the wide Seine, winding roads, woods, the first villages. Just west of Paris, the terrain grew more rugged; I had never been to this area. It was a mix of steep hills and slate roofs, mellowed churches and patrician trees, fences laden with the first wave of roses. I rolled down a window in the fresh air, and Henri looked steadily around him, silent, waxen-faced, sometimes smiling.
"Thank you," he said once.
We turned off the main road at Louveciennes and drove slowly through the town, so that Henri could show me where great painters had lived and worked. "This town was nearly destroyed in the Prussian invasion. Pissarro had a house here. He had to run away, with his family, and the Prussian soldiers who lived in it used his paintings as carpets. The town butchers used them for aprons. He lost more than a hundred paintings, years of work." He cleared his throat, coughed. "Salauds."
Beyond Louveciennes, the road dipped far down; we passed the
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gates of a small chateau, a flash of gray stone and big trees. The next town was Grémière, and it was so tiny that I nearly missed the turn. I caught the sign as we entered the square, which was really just an expanse of cobblestones in front of a church. The church was very old, probably Norman, squat and heavy-towered, the beasts across the portal worn away by wind. I parked nearby, observed by a couple of old women with sensible rubber boots and shopping bags, and got the wheelchair and then Henri out of the car.
There was no need to hurry, because we didn't know why we were there. Henri seemed to enjoy our leisurely coffee in the one local café, where I parked his chair by a table outside and spread the blanket over his knees. It was a cool morning, but springlike in the sun; the chestnuts were blooming along a stretch of road to the right, towers of pink and white. I got the hang of pushing the chair--my father would probably need one of these someday-- and we went down the first walled lane to see if it was the right one. I steered around a broken cobblestone. My father would, in all likelihood, live to see his grandchild.
Henri had insisted on bringing the Sisley book; after a few tries we decided that one of these walled lanes matched the painting, and I took some photos. Cedars and plane trees hung over the wall, and at the end was a house, the one Béatrice--if it were she--was walking toward in the painting. The house had blue shutters and geraniums in pots by the front door; it was tidily restored, and perhaps the owners lived in Paris. I rang the bell in vain, with Henri sitting in his chair on the front walk. "No use," I said.
"No use," he echoed.
We went to the store and asked the grocer about a family named Renard, but he shrugged pleasantly and went on weighing sausages. We went into the church, finding a way around the steps. The interior was cold, unlit, a cavern. Henri shivered and asked me to take him into the aisle, where he sat for a while with bowed head--revisiting his spirits, I thought. Next we went into the mairie to see if there were any records of Esmé Renard or
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her family. The lady behind the front desk was glad to help; she had clearly seen no one all morning and had tired of her typing, and when another official came out--I never entirely understood who he was, although in such a small place he could have been the mayor himself--they looked up some documents for us. They had files on the history of the village, and also a birth-and-death l
And then we were thanking them and leaving the building. In the entry, Henri signaled for us to stop and reached back to take my hand. "It does not matter," he said kindly. "Many things are never explained, you know. It is not really a bad thing."
"You said that yesterday, and I'm sure you're right," I said, and squeezed his hand gently; it was like a collection of warm sticks. What he said was true--my heart was already racing toward something else. He patted my arm.
It took me a moment to get the chair aimed toward the exit. When I looked up, it was there, the sketch. It hung, framed, on the old plaster wall of the entry, a bold fragment in graphite on paper: a swan, but not the victim of the painting I'd seen the day before; this one was rushing to land rather than struggling upward. Beneath it lay a human form, a graceful leg, a bit of drapery. I carefully engaged the brake on Henri's chair and took a step closer. The swan, the maiden's calf, the lovely foot, and the initials marked in one corner, hasty but recognizable, as I'd seen them against flowers and grass and near the foot of a heavy-booted thief. It was a familiar signature, more like a Chinese character than a set of Latin letters, her characteristic mark. She had made that mark a finite, too-short number of times and then stopped painting forever. The door to the office behind us was shut, and I carefully took the little frame off the wall and put it in Henri's lap, holding it so that he could not drop it by accident. He adjusted his glasses, looked closely. "Ah, mon Dieu," he said.
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"Let's go back in." We stared our fill and I rehung it on the wall, my fingers shaking. "They will know something about this, or someone will."
We reversed our direction and returned to the office, where Henri asked in French for information on the drawing in the entry. The young mayor--or whoever he was--was again pleased to help us. They had several drawings like that one in a drawer--he had not been here when they had been found, in a house under restoration, but his predecessor had liked that one and had it framed. We asked to see them, and after some searching he found an envelope and handed it to us. He had a phone call to attend to in his office, but we were welcome to sit there under the secretary's eye and examine the drawings, if we liked.