by Iain Pears
Only one person there was not in a rush, standing close by the entrance, faintly illuminated by the light coming out of the open doorway. Julien stiffened. That turn of the head, set of the shoulders, that manner of standing. The patience of the way the woman let the rain run down her body rather than trying to find cover. He could see little, but he would have recognized her in any light or in any weather.
He ran down the stairs, forgetting his soaking shoe, not taking a coat or umbrella, and ran as quickly as he could across the street, bounding up the steps two at a time.
“Julia!” he called out.
She turned and smiled, and held out her arms to him. When he finally let her go he was soaked to the skin once more.
And eventually, when she was warm and dry and clean, they began to talk. The room was in near darkness, and even though it was no longer cold they huddled close together, touching all the time. He could not bear not to be touching her, constantly reassuring himself that she was truly there.
“Why on earth are you here? Are you mad?”
In the intervening year her hair had become even more flecked with gray; she had lost weight and had acquired the gaunt, furtive look of the persecuted and the hunted. Her fingers fiddled constantly, and he realized that the calm and poise that had once been so much a part of her had gone. The clothes now hissing by the fire were a size or so too big, and threadbare; Julien realized for the first time how artful her previous simplicity had been. Only her eyes remained the same.
She was drinking as well; her third glass of homemade brandy—given to him by a farmer at Roaix, made in the man’s own still—sat in front of her, already empty.
“I remembered how much you shouted at me for not coming to you last time I got into a mess,” she said. “And I didn’t want to risk that again. I hadn’t anticipated that you’d be out so late.” She had a faint, ironic smile on her face—which highlighted the lines growing around her mouth and in her cheeks. “On the other hand, if you mean what am I doing in France, it’s a long story. But basically I discovered that going to America and being let into America are different things.”
“So where have you been for the last year?”
“On a boat, and in various ports. I seem to have spent months in waiting rooms, waiting to plead my case. Which was listened to sympathetically until a decision had to be made. Then it was short and simple. No. I was in Havana, much of the time. Nice place. The boat docked there and the American authorities intervened. They were determined to stop us getting to the United States. Quite simple really: the politicians have promised that all refugees who ask for asylum in America will be given it, so they stop as many people as possible from getting close enough to pop the question.”
She poured some more brandy. “Then back to Lisbon, and was thrown out of there, then into Spain, which was also too dangerous. So I thought that if I was going to be arrested, I would like it to happen at home. I missed you,” she concluded simply.
“Being arrested will happen very soon,” Julien said. “Nearly all Jews have been already.”
She smiled, reached into her handbag, and tossed an identity card at him.
“Where did you get this?”
“Another one of my artistic creations. I forged my way out of the country, I forged my way back in again. I find I have quite a skill at these things. Identity cards are quite easy. I have a friend in Lisbon who is an artist, and he let me use his press. I’m quite proud of it.”
“Madame Juliette de Valois?” he queried with a smile on his face. “Unnecessarily grand, isn’t it?”
“Someone I knew when I was young. She died of tuberculosis when she was eight. Her father was a member of the Action Française and a great anti-Semite. It made me smile when I thought of becoming her. So, if necessary I can call on a birth certificate, you see. I also made myself a passport, showing I have been in Vietnam for the past eight years, hence no records of me in France. Residence permits for Hanoi, entry visa for Lisbon, and from then on everything is stamped and sealed quite legitimately. She had no siblings, her parents are dead. Very hard to prove I am not her. My only concern is that all these papers are too much in order.”
“What about the death certificate?”
“She died in Saint Quentin, and the town hall was destroyed in the last war. I mean, she’s perfect, don’t you think? On the other hand, I am penniless, homeless, with only one change of clothes, nowhere to live, and have given away any possible source of income with my old identity. I can hardly sell paintings. Not that anyone would want to buy them, I imagine.”
“And I am not the only person in Avignon who could recognize you.”
“No. I wasn’t sure it was the best idea. But—here I am, well fed, warm, and unmolested. Besides, when I look in the mirror I scarcely recognize myself. I’m surprised you did. It must be love. But I suppose I must go somewhere else.”
“You will go to Roaix. You’ll be safe there. And I will be able to keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t get into any more trouble. As for the question of money . . .”
“Ah, yes.”
“Do you have any at all?”
“No,” she said in a curiously light way, as if acknowledging the irony of it all. “God only knows what I would have done if I hadn’t found you. It’s a strange feeling, being penniless. I suppose I should feel liberated from the material things of this world. In fact, it’s very annoying. I do not like poverty. I do not see its appeal.”
“I can let you have a little. But I don’t earn much and my father’s assets are largely useless and you can’t sell anything anymore. So I am also without much in the way of resources.”
“Come and live with me, then,” she said lightly. “We can starve together and lead a life of Rousseauian simplicity. You can shoot rabbits, I will cook them for you. You can sit and read in the evening while I darn your socks.”
“You can’t darn socks, can you?”
There was just enough of a hint of suppressed desire for Julia to burst out laughing. Everybody in France, probably, had holes in their socks. It was one of the small humiliations of subjection.
“No,” she said with a giggle. “I have never darned a sock in my life. But it can’t be so difficult, can it?”
“And I know you can’t cook.”
“Julien, are you refusing me?”
And now he laughed. He felt the life surging back through him, like a house being occupied after a long absence.
“Officially, I suppose, you’re not even married anymore.”
“No. An odd situation to be in, I must say. But I can live with it.”
“So marry me then. Now you have the chance.”
The good humor and merriment were suspended the moment the words came out of his mouth. She put down her glass, then gazed at him carefully. “You’re not even saying this because you feel sorry for me, are you?”
“You know perfectly well I’m not.”
“That’s good. I would have hated that.”
“Well?”
“I will, kind sir. I will marry you,” she said with a faint smile. “And do so with the greatest pleasure. But properly. Not under a pseudonym. When I can marry you as me, then I will do so.”
Julien grinned in a way he had not managed, he thought, since the war broke out. “War is a strange thing,” he said. “It makes people cut corners. Can we, perhaps, skip the marriage and get straight onto the honeymoon?” He went and got blankets and pillows from the bed, and they slept by the fire, Julien waking up periodically through the night to put on some more of the rapidly diminished bucket of coal. By the time morning had come there was none left. He would be living in the cold until the next supplies came through. And who knew when that might be?
The next morning Julien went to the railway station and collected her battered old case, brought it back, and strapped it to his bicycle. Then they began the long trek out to Roaix—pleasant enough in summer, much less so in winter, above all with the suitcase. Once
, about two hours on the road to Carpentras, they got themselves all tangled up and both fell over, the bike crashing to the ground and the suitcase bursting open. Julien hurried to pick up all the bits, the bedraggled pieces of clothing, a hairbrush. “It’s hardly worth it,” he said, then looked up and saw her lip was trembling as she fought back the tears. It was all she had in the world.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said vehemently when he realized. “Don’t cry. I was stupid. Don’t cry.” And he reassured her like he would a child, with all the tenderness he had, comforting, gentle, and loving.
“Leave it,” she said. “You’re right. It’s not worth it.”
“Absolutely not. It’s coming.”
They started arguing, a healthy, restorative dispute, were still fighting about it when there was a rumble behind them. It was a German truck, lumbering along the road. “I thought you said they didn’t come over this side of the river?” Julia said. “Isn’t this meant to be an Italian zone?”
“In theory,” he replied shortly. “Not in practice.”
The truck slowed, then halted beside them. A fair head poked out of the window and looked at them somberly. A young man, so far untouched by the war or any hardship. He smiled. “Where are you going?” Heavily accented but good French.
“Vaison.”
He thought, then shrugged. “I’ll take you to Camaret, if you can tell me how to get there.”
Julia was nervous, but Julien accepted and bundled the bicycle into the back, among all the ammunition the man was transporting. Then they got in. The young man talked all the way and fortunately didn’t require much in reply. No, he shouldn’t have picked them up, but don’t tell anyone, eh? A couple arguing over a bike didn’t seem much of a threat to him. It was their own fault for sending him off without a map. How was he expected to find his way . . .
A nice boy, eager to oblige, keen that the kindness be appreciated. When he dropped them off on the outskirts of Camaret, leaving them only twenty kilometers to walk, Julia said quietly, “Don’t ever do that to me again.” Julien looked at her. She was not joking.
Then, when he left, Julia began to find her way around. About a week later, she went on a walk and discovered the shrine of Saint Sophia.
Even for the atheist and the rationalist, there are places in the world that are special, for no reason that can be easily explained. The footsteps slow, the voice lowers and speaks more softly, an air of peace works its way into the soul. Each individual has his own place, it is true; what is holy to one will not be so necessarily to another, although the reverberations of some are all but universal. And the chapel was Julia’s place, every bit as much as Julien Barneuve’s was the phoenix villa; she realized this long before she reached the top of the hill, walking up on his advice. “Pretty place,” he told her. “Good view.” She felt the air of anticipation well up in her, the peculiar mixture of calm excitement of one who knows their life is about to change forever. She sensed the chapel long before she rounded the last bend in the track and saw it surrounded by a clump of trees with weeds and wildflowers growing around its crumbling walls. She had never seen it before, but it felt comfortingly familiar. This sentiment she put down to the sense of safety she had been wallowing in ever since she had found Julien again and come to this place.
The door was not locked; there was nothing to protect. Inside it was clear that sheep and goats were perhaps the most frequent visitors. A small altar remained, placed there in the nineteenth century, an ugly reject from another church, bulbous and inappropriate, but better than nothing. And it was dark, as well; the windows were tiny and high up on the walls and were so dirty they let in little light, just enough to see the dozen or so bits of paper on the altar. Julia picked up a few, took them to the door, and looked at them.
“Dear Lady, should I leave my parents and live on my own?” read one. “Blessed Saint Sophia, should I go and work in Avignon?” was a second. “Thank you for your warning,” a third. She was almost moved to smile, but there was something about the tidy peasant lettering, the way each missive had been folded carefully and neatly on good paper, the way each woman—for the writing suggested they were all women—must have toiled all the way up here, which made her refold each one carefully and put them all back in their place.
As she did so, she looked up and caught her breath as she saw what remained of Luca Pisano’s work. The paintings were dreadfully damaged, blistering off in places through the effects of long neglect, scrawled on lower down by what she later realized must have been the hatreds of the Revolution, darkened by the soot of half a millennium’s worth of candles, but still discernible; a saint reaching out to a man in a strange gesture, her hand over his eyes, something she had never seen before.
Instantly she was captivated; this was why she had come to this place, to see these pictures. This was the answer to her problem. She was ill equipped to study them closely; in her pocket she had only a box of matches, and even though she opened the door as wide as possible to let the thin winter sun stream in, she managed to see only part of the whole. But it was enough; the next day she returned, and set to work.
She became obsessive about paper, learning its feel and different properties. She bought up old books for the blank pages at the beginning and end, and eventually tried her hand at grinding up old cloths to try to make the sort of rag paper preferred in the sixteenth century. Her fingers were permanently stained black with ink she also made herself from a recipe Julien found in a book in the library—the municipal library, now happily ensconced in Cardinal Ceccani’s grand palace. She cut back her nails almost into the flesh, and soaked her hands in lemon juice for hours to clean them. The printing press she made herself—or rather she had the local blacksmith construct it for her out of an old mangle and a heavy iron frame that originally came from a bed.
She was proud of her creation; it produced results as good as any she had seen at the specialist printers in Paris, and the whole business delighted her artisanal inclinations. The unknown artist of the chapel, the master of Saint Sophia, as she called him, would have been proud of her, she thought. She had no money, but a good deal of time, and this she spent liberally, making meticulous drawings and drinking prodigious amounts of cheap red wine with the blacksmith, going over the design and the practicalities of construction. She began as supervisor to his work, and ended as his most menial assistant, filing off shards of metal, holding thick beams of iron as he beat and welded. And as he made the fine adjustments, she sat in his workshop with a plate of copper she had waxed herself and swiftly scratched out a study of Pierre Duveau at work, a serious man, slight for a blacksmith, with dark eyes and an intense stare.
He ended up with a respect for this overprivileged woman fallen on hard times, dressed in a man’s shirt, her sleeves rolled up, her thick dark hair flecked with gray held back out of her face with a piece of string. A beautiful woman, he thought as he hammered, and a noble name, though she looked like a Jew to him. Not that he cared, as he mentioned to his wife. But what was she doing living in Julien Barneuve’s house, turning up late one night and settling in to stay? His fiancée, didn’t he say? Not, as his wife commented, that it was any business of his.
Pierre was not a man to give affection easily. Her willingness to assist and watch and learn did not entirely win him over, however, for he thought her interest unwomanly; her obvious intelligence and penetrating questions about the practicalities of slippage and downward pressure alarmed him, especially as she would not be put off by easy answers. Her perfectionism irritated, as she returned time and again with minor modifications and insisted that they be done precisely. And yet he was proud of the result, as others gathered around to stare in awe at the bizarre contraption. Julia bought the entire village a round of drinks to celebrate the final completion of the project, and made a joking speech of thanks for building the most useless mangle in France.
He was, however, touched and even a little flattered by the first work to be drawn from his d
evice, though not nearly as pleased as Julia herself, as she inscribed, and presented it to him. “To Pierre, blacksmith extraordinaire, with thanks.” It was the sketch she had done while she watched him work, which she etched in the acid that Julien had found in a chemist’s shop in Avignon and brought to her one weekend, and then engraved with a dry-point to add fine detail to the face and arms. Not one of her most experimental works, almost traditional in honor of his calling. But still too abstracted and free for his wife, Elizabeth. “All that effort for such a thing,” she said sourly as they looked at it on the kitchen table.
He laughed. “I like it,” he replied. “I’ve even started to like her. A strange woman. Special, if you know what I mean. Educated. Intelligent. Accomplished. All the sort of things a woman would need if she was to keep Julien Barneuve. Permanently, that is.”
This said with an edge to his voice, a hardness as he put the print down. He had it framed and hung on the wall to act as a constant reminder to his wife of the difference between an ordinary woman and a special one. She tried to take it down, or move it, but every time he put it back again, and would comment on how much he was growing to like it. He said it many times.
A sought-after work, now, for those who collect French prints. Only six were ever drawn off the plate before Julia erased it for more dangerous work later on. And few of those found buyers. She sold little; the dealer who had previously taken her paintings was in Paris, and inaccessible. And initially no one else would stock her work. She was now unknown, after all. Most were too considerate, or too dishonest, to say why they refused her. It was only when one looked closely at her, studied her face, then stared at the ceiling and said, “I just don’t think I can sell cosmopolitan art at the moment, you see,” that she understood. For some reason, she never thought it would touch her; not there, not in her painting. She almost said, “But I’m not Jewish,” when she stopped, sensing that she had said those words too often already.
