The Swan Thieves Part 33

"You said Beatrice left something with Esme?"

"I suppose she did, but Esme died, you know, soon after Beatrice. She had a sudden illness, and perhaps she simply did not manage to give to Aude whatever it was, from her mother. Aude always said that Esme died of a broken heart."

"Beatrice must have been a kind mistress."

"If she was at all like her daughter, then she was a wonderful presence." His face was growing sad.

"And Aude never knew what this proof of love was?"

"No, we never knew. Aude wanted so much to know. I searched for information on Esme, and discovered from a munic.i.p.al record that her full name was Esme Renard, and that she was born in, I think, 1859. But I could not find anything else. Aude's parents bought a house in the village from which Esme came, but it was sold when Yves died. I do not even remember the name of it."

"Then she was born eight years after Beatrice," I pointed out.

He shifted in his seat and shaded his eyes as if to see me more clearly. "You know so much about Beatrice," he said, with wonder in his voice. "Do you love her, too, like Robert Oliver?"

"I have a good memory for numbers." I was beginning to think I should leave the old man before he tired again.

"In any case, I found nothing. Just before Aude died, she said her mother had been the loveliest person in the world, except" -- he cleared a catch in his throat--"except for me. So perhaps she did not need to know more."

"Surely it was enough," I said, to comfort him.

"Would you like to see her portrait? Beatrice?"

"Yes, of course. I've seen the Olivier Vignot piece in the Metropolitan Museum."

"A good portrait. But I have a photograph, which is very rare-- Aude said her mother did not like to be photographed. Aude would never let anyone publish it. I keep it in my alb.u.m." He pushed 545.

himself up very slowly, before I could protest, and took a cane from the side of the chair. I offered my arm; he accepted, grudgingly, and we went across the room to a bookcase, where he pointed his cane. I took out the heavy leather alb.u.m he'd indicated--worn bald in spots, but still embossed with a gilt rectangle on the cover. I opened it on a nearby table. Inside were family photos from several eras, and I wished I could ask to see them all: small children staring straight ahead in frilly dresses, nineteenth-century brides like white peac.o.c.ks, gentlemanly brothers or friends in top hats and frock coats, hands on one another's shoulders. I wondered if Yves might be among them, perhaps that dark-bearded, bulky-shouldered man with the smile, or Aude, a little girl in a wide-skirted dress and b.u.t.toned boots. Even if they were there, or if any one of them was Olivier Vignot himself, Henri Robinson was skipping past them on his mission, and I didn't dare interrupt his fragile mind or hands. At last he stopped. "This is Beatrice," he said.

I would have known her anywhere; still, it was eerie to see her face from life. She was standing alone, one hand on a studio pedestal and the other holding back her skirt--the stiffest of poses, and yet her figure was full of energy. I knew the intensely dark eyes, the shape of her jaw, the slender neck, the abundance of curly hair swept up from her ears. She wore a long dark dress with a sort of shawl flaring around her shoulders. The sleeves of the dress were large at the top and narrowed to the wrists; her waist was small and tight, and her skirts trimmed at the bottom with a wide border of some lighter color, a cleverly geometric pattern. The lady of fashion, I thought: an artist in dress if not in practice.

The picture was professionally dated, 1895, and bore the name and street address of a Paris photographer's studio. Something veiled was pulling at me, a reminder, a figure from elsewhere, a melancholy I couldn't shake. For a long moment I thought that my memory was not much better than Henri Robinson's--far worse, in fact. Then I turned to him. "Monsieur, do you have a book of the works of--" What was it? Where was it? "I'm looking for a 546.

painting--I mean, a book of paintings by Sisley, if you happen to have one."

"Sisley?" He frowned as if I'd asked for a drink he didn't keep on hand. "I suppose I have something. It would be in that section." He jammed his cane in the air again, steadying himself on my arm. "Those are Impressionists, beginning with the original six."

I went to his shelves and began to look, slowly, and found nothing. There was a book on Impressionist landscapes, and this had Sisley in the index, but not what I was searching for. At last I found a volume of winter scenes.

"That is new." Henri Robinson was looking at it with surprising sharpness. "Robert Oliver gave it to me when he came the second time."

I held the volume--an expensive present. "Did you show him Beatrice's photograph?"

He thought for a moment. "I don't think so. I would remember that. Besides, if I had, he might have stolen that, too."

I had to admit it was a possibility. The Sisley painting was there, to my relief, as I remembered it from the National Gallery: a woman walking away down a high-walled village lane, snow under her feet, the bleakly dark branches of trees, a winter sunset. It was a stunning work, even in reproduction. The woman's dress swinging around her as she walked, the sense of urgency in her figure, the short dark cloak, the unusual blue border around the bottom of her skirt. I held the book up to Henri Robinson. "Does this look familiar to you?"

He examined it for long seconds, and then he shook his head. "Do you really think there is a connection?"

I brought the alb.u.m 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."

547.

I was reading the text under the painting. Alfred Sisley had painted it four years before his death, in Gremiere, 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 gla.s.s 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, 548.

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.

549.

C HAPTER 102 Marlow In the narrow hotel room, I lay down with Zoe's translation and located the pa.s.sage: 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, Esme, 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 Gremiere. 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 Beatrice would have recognized. But there were only three sleek, s.p.a.ce-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 Musee d'Orsay the day I arrived, including 550.

one by Sisley himself. I found Moret-sur-Loing, where he had died. Nearby, a speck--Gremiere. 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 cla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s and see the murals above Le Train Bleu, once the Buffet de la Gare de Lyon, the most fashionable station restaurant of Beatrice'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 Beatrice 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."

551.

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 Gremiere, which was where her maid came from. Henri told me that, when Beatrice's daughter, Aude, was dying, she told Henri--if you follow me-- that Beatrice 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 Gremiere 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 Esme--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, rea.s.suring, 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 etretat, 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."

552.

"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 something different. "And it's--" The door that opened in my mind at that moment seemed to hold a looming figure, although my phone booth stayed firmly shut.

"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 gla.s.s, 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.

553.

"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.

554.

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 Gremiere 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.

555.

Driving in Paris is a nightmare for the foreigner. Only Beatrice 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.