Lisette's List

by Susan Vreeland

  “Why not now? What does a bicycle have to do to get ready?”

  “I need to prepare her.” He wore that silly grin of his and put his right hand over his breast. “Trust the chevalier of the roads.”

  It wasn’t ready the next day, but two days later he puffed out his chest in two mounds and said, “She is ready for you now. She needed tires, but there is no rubber for tires, so …” He wheeled the bicycle out of the shed in his courtyard and made an extravagant bowing gesture to the wheels. “Voilà!”

  “Corks!”

  “Forty-eight corks per wheel. I got them from Mélanie and Émile and strung them together with baling wire like beads on a string. More useful than a pearl necklace.”

  “Where did you get the wire?”

  “From a farmer. A crying shame that here in Roussillon, where ochre is extracted to be used as a thickening agent in making rubber, and with so much ochre still underground, there is no rubber. Look. It works.”

  Maurice got on the bicycle, his bottom hanging down in two large country loaves, one on each side of the seat, his knees splayed out, and rode it around in a wobbly circle, saying, “See? Just like in the circus.” He laughed, his belly jiggling, and pedaled faster, picking up speed, then holding his feet out to the sides away from the pedals, shouting, “Oh là là! Attention, Lisette! Here I come!”

  His clowning around had been subdued during the war. It was heartening to see it again.

  He hit a stone and nearly tipped over, then managed to skid to a stop just in front of me.

  “Now you try it. Watch out for stones.”

  I wobbled just as he had. Every time the twist of the wire ends touched the ground, I felt a bump. The faster I went, the bumpier the ride.

  “Perfect, Maurice! I love you for doing this!”

  He held the gate open, and out I went, glimpsing Louise with both her hands on her cheeks, then concentrating on the narrow, rutted lane between houses, trying to keep from scraping my shoulder along a stucco wall, turning a successful corner onto rue de la Porte Heureuse, bumping along on the cobblestones, my teeth chattering, biting my tongue, going downhill faster and faster past a blur of red geraniums, steering through the Gothic arch, passing shouts on the boules court, down and down through Roussillon, scared to death.

  I TOOK ONE-LANE COUNTRY roads lined with cypress wind buffers that marked the edges of farms. Aimé had been right about cabanons for another reason too—the thief had hidden two paintings in places that were characteristic of the Vaucluse. Judging from that, others just might be hidden in a cabanon or a pigeonnier. I stopped and looked in every one. If a cabanon was being used from time to time, it often had a rustic table, a single wooden chair, a string bed with a straw mattress, and a cooking pot. The pigeonniers smelled foul, and the floors were covered with droppings that would be shoveled out as fertilizer come spring. I couldn’t imagine anyone who valued my paintings putting one in such a place. Despite that, I didn’t overlook them. The least likely location would probably make the best hiding place.

  I was getting farther and farther from the village, and I had taken so many turns between vineyards and wheat fields that I wasn’t quite sure how to get back. When I spotted a tall, narrow cabanon that was probably right on the border between village and commune, I pedaled toward it. The inside was as rustic as the others, but on the small eating table there was a dusty pickle jar of dried lavender. I took this as a good sign of the sort of man who appreciated beauty, or at least nature.

  Upstairs, a straw mattress lay on the floor with a rough woolen blanket spread neatly and tucked in. I lifted both. Nothing.

  I pedaled toward home, made a wrong turn, was lost for a while, and had to double back. The light was fading on this short day of winter, and it was dark when I arrived in the village, exhausted, sore, despondent.

  But I still had Paris ahead of me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  PARIS AFTER ALL

  1947

  MAURICE WALKED WITH ME TO THE PLATFORM FOR THE train from Avignon to Paris, carrying my carpetbag and valise.

  “Louise and I want to make sure you have a fine time,” he said, pressing some folded francs into my hand.

  “Oh, no, I can’t accept this.”

  “Madame my wife will be upset with me if I bring it back. You don’t want her to beat me with her skillet, do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Or skin me alive and boil me like a potato?”

  “No, but—”

  “Or lock me outside in a mistral with only my underlinen on, making me do a polka to keep warm?”

  The image of his frontal flesh heaving up and down was too much. I didn’t want to hear any details.

  “Stop. All right. I’ll take it.”

  “And this too.”

  He handed me a folded piece of paper containing, I presumed, some more francs, because he had written on it, Buy something pretty for Louise.

  “A scarf,” he said, “or something else you think she will like. To show her that I love her.”

  “How sweet you are, Maurice.” It was an aspect of him I hadn’t recognized. So was his precaution to keep the three paintings in his house while I was gone.

  On the platform, I stole sideways glances at what the women of Avignon were wearing. Some wore Dior’s New Look, but others were still wearing dowdy mid-calf straight skirts and military shoulder pads. I was glad Odette had insisted that the skirt she made from André’s trousers come to just below the knee.

  “One more thing.” Maurice held me by the shoulders and gave me a serious look, no longer playing the jester. “Do not hold back. Let yourself love. One note is not a song. It is only music when it combines with other notes.”

  I nodded and quickly got on board.

  After the train pulled out, I unfolded the francs. One bill was the same one-hundred-franc note with the torn right corner that I had given Louise in payment for my haircut the week before.

  Riding through the countryside, I saw, or imagined I saw, a white goat in every farmyard. Maurice had offered to take Geneviève to Apt while I was gone. He hadn’t named the place, but I’d known what he meant. The slaughterhouse. I had aquiesced. The day before, I’d made sure she had enough water in her basin. I wanted her to be happy in the courtyard during her last days. Fresh spring grass had come up, along with the dandelions she loved.

  We had a good conversation. I thanked her for providing all that milk for cheese, and for being a good companion. She promised with a soft look in her eyes that she wouldn’t give Maurice any trouble along the way. I caressed her neck and head, and she leaned up against me and accepted my affection. I think she knew. When I thanked her for providing the means for me to go to Paris, she bleated in a sad sort of way.

  I didn’t like the idea of using my war widow’s bank draft, intended for food and property taxes, for my train ticket, but I would replace that money with what Maurice would get for Geneviève. With that and my small marzipan income, I could check off vow number fourteen on my list: Earn my way to Paris. I had earned it by milking Geneviève and selling her cheese, thus saving what I would have spent on seven years’ worth of cheese for myself.

  MY EVERY MUSCLE TIGHTENED as the train pulled into the Gare de Lyon. I spotted Maxime from the train before he saw me. He held a nosegay of violets and was looking anxiously to the right and left. While he faced the other way, I walked within a meter of him and said, “Might I be the person you’re searching for?”

  He embraced me instantly, kissed me on both cheeks amid a stream of people hurrying by. Was it my imagination that the kisses contained more feeling and were more tenderly placed than the quick customary greetings between friends?

  “You know you are. I’ve waited too long. We’ve waited too long.”

  I felt moth wings flutter in my throat, thinking he meant the two of us, but he said, “My mother insists that I bring you home right away.” He remembered what was in his hand and pinned the nosegay to my lapel. “
These are from her.”

  “They’re lovely, Max, but what is from you?” I ventured.

  “Only my heart,” he murmured to the violets.

  EVEN THE DANK SMELL of grease and soot in the métro excited me. I was back in Paris! We took the green line to Les Halles, where we had to walk through the interminable tunnel to Châtelet, which made my wooden soles echo embarrassingly. When we came out at Opéra, Maxime explained that his mother worked as a costumer at the Opéra. I stood a minute to take in the building’s ornate façade, the row of entry arches, the slim columns between pilasters, the medallions, and, on the corners of the roof, the gold statues of winged muses. I sighed out my relief in seeing it intact in all its glory.

  We walked along boulevard des Capucines, and I practically drooled as we passed café after café. “Oh, can’t we just sit and have a café crème?” I asked. “I want to watch Paris promenade in front of me.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, his hand pressing the small of my back. “I promised her I would bring you directly.”

  Turning left, onto rue Laffitte, gave us an odd view up to la basilique du Sacré-Coeur, which looked from here as though it were sitting on top of l’église Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. We crossed boulevard Haussmann and turned right at rue Rossini, a narrow street of apartment buildings.

  Going up the stairwell to the fourth floor, I was embarrassed again by the clackety-clack of my wooden soles and knew that the sound would be even louder on the way down. The first thing I needed to buy, maybe the only thing I could afford, was a pair of shoes with leather soles.

  Madame Legrand met us in the parlor. She held out her arms as she came toward me, balancing on very high heels, and kissed me sweetly on both cheeks. She had dressed for my coming in a white silk blouse with long lapels edged in black and a black skirt, semi-full. Her dark hair, pulled back from her forehead into a dancer’s chignon at the base of her long neck; her hands, as creamy as a fresh bar of soap; her cheeks, as luminious as the petal of a sweet pea when light passes through it; her ears, adorned with large pearl studs—everything about her was purely classique. Compared to her elegance, I knew I appeared young and flippant with my Kiki cut. Her instant casting away of ceremony, asking me to call her Héloïse, rendered me as butter in her hands.

  Maxime carried my bags down the narrow corridor, while Héloïse and I followed. “You will have Maxime’s room. He will be on the fifth floor. We haven’t had a servant up there since my husband died.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly, almost casually, that it made me wonder if I could ever refer to André’s death in a similar fashion.

  The walls of Maxime’s room were covered by art prints. I was fascinated by a Cubist print of Sacré-Coeur above a jumble of buildings at unnatural angles in shades of gray. A single peach-colored rose in a crystal vase sat on the dresser. The quilt on his narrow bed was a blue-on-blue paisley.

  “The blue of the Mediterranean on a cloudless day in June,” I said, “complete with wavelets. At least as I imagine it.”

  Héloïse murmured, “It’s only a matter of time—a matter of time, and you will bathe in that silky water the color of a caress.”

  I was surprised to hear her utter something so evocative.

  She served us café crèmes and madeleines, arranged as a daisy on a white china plate. The aroma of vanilla took me back to the days when I’d laid the shell-shaped tea cakes in a shingle pattern below the glass counter at Maison Gérard Mulot.

  I admired the beautiful old china cabinet made of highly polished dark wood. André would have been able to identify the wood and appreciate its deep and intricate carving. I tried to examine discreetly the pair of amber crackle-glass sconces above the black marble fireplace. Feeling transported to another world, I sat as delicately as I could on the edge of a tufted sofa upholstered in a tapestry of gold roses against pale green leaves. I didn’t want to be seduced by what Héloïse owned, but I had no problem allowing myself to be seduced by who she was.

  Héloïse asked me about my trip; Maxime asked about Maurice and Louise. I was hoping he wouldn’t ask about Geneviève, but he did. My voice quavered when I explained.

  Héloïse deftly changed the subject by announcing that she was taking us to Au Petit Riche, a small bistro at the corner frequented by the backstage crews and the Opéra seamstresses. After the coffee and madeleines, and after Héloïse showed me photographs of Maxime in every year of his life, to his infinite embarrassment, off we went to the bistro. A surprise! There were paintings on the walls of scenes from operas. We ate tournedos à la Rossini, small beef tenderloins topped with slices of artichoke hearts covered with sauce béarnaise and garnished with a round of butter-fried goose liver. I hadn’t eaten anything so rich since I had left Paris.

  I asked her about her work at the Opéra, and she replied that she wasn’t a première, so she designed only for the chorus. I asked if operas had been produced during the war.

  “Yes. Wagner’s Ring Cycle.” She lowered her voice. “To see all the galleries in the theater packed with German uniforms was almost more than I could bear. Was I contributing to saving French culture by keeping the Opéra going, or was I betraying France by producing only operas with Nazi approval? Later we produced Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Backstage, we were secretly thrilled by the French soprano singing Isolde.

  “That was only monumental self-delusion. Ray Ventura’s song should have alerted us. Remember, Max? We thought it funny.”

  He recited the words: “ ‘All is well, Madame la Marquise. The horses died, the stables and château were burned, your husband committed suicide, but don’t worry. All is well.’ ”

  “They performed it in cabarets,” Héloïse said. “A sort of comic Résistance. In truth, my friends and I were heartsick at the destruction in Montmartre, even up to the very walls of Sacré-Coeur. Despite that, we had to believe we could resist the occupiers.”

  “How?”

  “In subversive ways.” She reflected a moment. “We wore yellow-and-black handkerchiefs in our breast pockets to mock the order for Jews to wear yellow stars. It was the rage among seamstresses.”

  I began to understand that Paris had been no peaceful haven.

  “Countless times,” I said, “I wished I had been here rather than in the south. If you don’t mind, tell me what it was really like.”

  “Nightmarish. Puffed-up Prussian military bands marching down the Champs-Élysées, pounding defeat into our hearts in 4/4 time. Nightmarish, too, the exodus, whole neighborhoods fleeing south, clogging the roads.”

  “Did you consider going?”

  “Not for an instant. Maxime might find his way back. Also, for his sake, I considered it my duty to keep track of the art business. Oh, Lisette, the stream of trucks arriving at the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume to deliver paintings from across France to be sorted, sold, or destroyed, other trucks leaving with paintings to be loaded into freight cars headed for Germany. My sister and I stood helpless and horrified, watching paintings by Klee, Ernst, Picasso, Léger, so many, go up in flames in the garden of the Jeu de Paume. Without its art, Paris, all of France, would never be the same.”

  “I would have cried on the street.”

  “We did not allow ourselves that indulgence. We kept our heartache private and held our heads high in flamboyant hats made from absent husbands’ or sons’ fedoras, in order to give the impression that we were gaie. Denied the freedom of words in public, we spoke our resistance with feathers and bows and silk flowers, but behind our doors, we struggled to keep warm and fed. In spite of our awkward wooden-soled gait, we walked proudly past Nazi soldiers in a cloud of French perfume.”

  How subtle. How indomitable. “You made the streets of Paris into theater.”

  “Oh, chérie, the couturiers performed such miracles of grace and invention despite shortages and rationing, despite restrictions, despite the disappearance of foreign clientele. We gladly complied with government regulations that hemlines be raised to forty-five centim
eters above the ground because we held to the belief that every saved meter of fabric might contribute to a quicker victory.

  “Meanwhile, interminable ranks of German soldiers goose-stepped down the boulevard, and SS men rounded up vast numbers of Jews, no one knows how many. Our own French police, under German orders, grabbed young men coming out of métro stations for forced work across the border. Our grand hotels, the Crillon, the Majestic, the Lutetia, were taken over by the Nazis. But on Liberation Day, we were actually willing to see the Majestic burn to the ground if it took that to drive out the Nazis hiding there.

  “Then came the reactionary executions of collaborators and black marketeers and miliciens who had tortured résistants. Nine thousand quick executions.”

  “That’s hard to believe, or to stomach.”

  “We were inebriated with liberty in those days, and that sudden freedom was the seedbed for extremism. The shaving of women’s heads for their collaboration horizontale, sleeping with the enemy, exposed their shame, but people had private shames as well.” She waved her hand as if at gnats. “Enough of this. Let me tell you what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

  “Unfortunately, I have to work tomorrow,” Maxime said. “Monsieur Laforgue wants me to meet with someone who may have a lead about finding a painting.”

  “So I’m going to take you to Galeries Lafayette. Imagine! Christian Dior is designing ready-to-wear, and selling it there. The endless restrictions on numbers of buttons, pockets, skirt lengths, and the bans on double-breasted jackets, embroidery, and lace are—poof! Gone! By this time tomorrow, you will be dressed anew. It will be my pleasure to give you an ensemble.”

  “Oh, my goodness! You hardly know me.”

  “Oh, yes I do. Maxime tells me everything.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Beyond kindness.”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Maxime said with anticipatory buoyancy, “you and I will promenade the Seine, and I will introduce you to Monsieur Laforgue, and we will go to the Jeu de Paume, to see if—”