Lisette's List

by Susan Vreeland

  “But you will keep searching.”

  “Of course. It may not mean much to anyone else, but to me, the Louveciennes is a painting of Geneviève and me.”

  “Ah. You think it’s personal now, just from memory? Believe me, when you find it, the more you study it face-to-face, and the more private, the more personal, the more singular the experience becomes, the deeper it will enter your soul. You watch. It can’t be forced, but if you are patient, it will happen to you, and you will awaken in front of that painting with new eyes and with unexpected appreciations. When that happens, it transcends the personal. That’s when you will know that it’s a great painting.”

  “Oh, Maxime, I can hardly wait to see it.”

  “Does that mean you won’t come to Paris again until you find it?”

  I hesitated a moment too long, and Maxime pulled his bottom lip behind his new front teeth.

  “I don’t know. It’s possible that I won’t come permanently even after I find it.” My words surprised me. I had to continue gently. “It’s complicated. You remember Josephine Baker’s song ‘J’Ai Deux Amours,’ don’t you? ‘Mon pays et Paris’? My countryside is Provence. My people are not just Parisians anymore. They are Provençaux too. I have expanded, Max. Now I can sing, ‘I have two loves, my village and Paris.’ I’m not ready to choose. I may never be ready.”

  A shadow passed over his eyes and darkened them into some unidentifiable, watery, frightening color of hurt.

  ON MAXIME’S LAST EVENING we walked up to the Castrum, the highest point at the north end of the village, just as Bernard’s house was the highest point south of the village. Our conversation grew quiet in preparation for the spectacle to come. In the foothills below, not a leaf fluttered in Émile Vernet’s cherry orchard, but high above us, the wispy wave of a silken Parisian scarf, all peachy and rose, gave evidence of subtle currents of air.

  Lingering as long as it could, sunset’s sad joy filmed over the day with a delicate blush as our dear earth turned and the mighty sphere slipped below our sight behind Gordes to astonish the Azores. We squeezed each other’s hand, knowing we had no choice but to let it go, and stood very still until the western sky exploded in tangerine fire and slowly settled itself to mauve, and finally to a dusk of great beauty, soft as eiderdown. If anything could heal, it was such a dusk after a day of glory. Holding each other, we dallied until the sky became unfathomable ink. With our faces up, we watched the universe wheel, dazzling us with its immensity. A shooting star took us by surprise.

  “Did you see that?” I cried.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you feel it?”

  “Yes.”

  That a spark of the universe had leapt for joy at that exact instant was beyond our wildest expectations, but for now, that we had both witnessed it together in a moment of unity—that was enough. We turned for home.

  AS WE CLIMBED THE STAIRS, Maxime’s hands clasping my hips behind me, he chuckled and said, “Like Monsieur et Madame Borieman.”

  “Like Rodin’s lovers,” I said.

  “Like Maxime and Lisette.”

  He followed me into my bedrooom. There was no question of what we would do.

  We indulged our shy curiosities, greeting each bared revelation of each other with kisses and light caresses, coaxing the landscape of our bodies to reveal their secrets in their hills and folds. Always asking with a look and a pause, we delighted in our findings, uttering soft, grateful noises, answering them with tender advances. Need carried us on, moving us as one. From first touch to peaceful sleep, all was harmony, all solicitude, all love.

  A NOISE DOWNSTAIRS JOLTED us awake, and we lay frozen for a moment, all of our muscles tense. We heard it again, as though an intruder had bumped into a chair. Instantly Maxime pulled on his trousers and lunged toward the stairs. I quickly lit an oil lamp, ran downstairs, and saw Maxime sock Bernard in the face, ribs, stomach. Punches flew, arms flailed, legs thrashed in a tangle.

  “Stop, both of you!” I screamed. “Maxime, Bernard, stop!”

  Bernard let loose one last defensive blow to Maxime’s jaw, caught sight of me, and went limp, while Maxime kept pummeling him in wild fury. Bernard lay still on the floor, staring at me with glazed eyes, even when Maxime went for his throat.

  “Maxime, stop!” I yanked his shoulder away, and he let go.

  “Bernard, leave! Please!”

  He gasped, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Lisette. I didn’t know. I did wrong.” Hunched and holding his ribs, he staggered out the door.

  Maxime collapsed on the bottom stair, breathing heavily, his head in his hands. I knelt before him. His single muffled sob rent my heart in two.

  “Now do you understand? This is what happens when you see cruelty for five years. It becomes … instinctive.”

  “But you did the right thing, protecting me. He would have come upstairs. What if you hadn’t been here? I’m grateful to you, Max. He won’t come back now.”

  “I got carried away. I should have stopped when he stopped fighting back. I didn’t need to strangle him. That’s the instinct that was drummed into us—fight to the death.”

  I laid my hand on the scar just below his knuckles. What could I say to wipe away instinct?

  “You may have swallowed that training, but you can spit it out.”

  Maxime turned from me, a gesture as hurtful as a blow. He pulled himself up the stairs by the handrail, padded barefoot into Pascal’s bedroom, and closed the door in my face.

  HE LEFT THE NEXT morning, silent in what I took to be his hatred of the violence that had been unleashed in him, waving me back into the house when I stepped out to walk with him to Maurice’s bus, his swollen jaw glowing purple as new lavender.

  I ached for a word of affection.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THÉO’S NEGOTIATION

  1948

  ALL DAY AFTER MAXIME LEFT I DID NOTHING BUT WALK IN circles in the courtyard, devastated by his gloom. I hated to think what he would tell Héloïse. Thinking about Bernard was just as agonizing.

  When Maurice returned from Avignon the following day, he knocked on my door, came right in, and held out his arms for me. Gratefully, I stepped into his comfort, and stayed in his embrace until I was able to ask him how Maxime had been during the trip.

  “Morose. He stared down at his bruised knuckles and didn’t tell me what had happened until we were approaching Avignon.”

  “Did he ask about Bernard?”

  “Yes. I told him Bernard has been pursuing you. He asked if you cared for him. I said I didn’t know but probably not. I told him you adored him—Maxime—and that you were excited before each of his visits.”

  “Did he think Bernard broke into the house to take the paintings or to get to me?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “If Maxime hadn’t been there, Bernard would have come right up the stairs.”

  “To molest you?”

  “To try to seduce me. At least that’s how I’m sure he sees it. But how could he even think I would want him to after he broke into my house like that? And why would he want the paintings now? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. He has never been the same since his wife died.”

  “That doesn’t account for what he did.” I chewed on my thumbnail, trying to puzzle it out. “What should I do?”

  I thought I was only thinking the question, not saying it out loud, but Maurice responded, “You should write to Maxime. He’s suffering.”

  “Yes. I know. We all are.”

  “You’re the only one who can make it right.”

  THAT EVENING, I WROTE,

  5 APRIL 1948

  Dearest Maxime,

  You must not feel remorse for what you did. You were only protecting me or the paintings. I realize that you think you were being excessive. It was only the heat of the moment that made you keep fighting after he had stopped. Try to forgive yourself for that. I like to think of forgiveness as a dove alighting on
your shoulder and clearing the air with a wave of her wings. Maybe that picture will help you to put the event behind you. Remember that I’m grateful to you for saving me from an unpleasant, unwanted encounter. Bernard has been an erratic presence—kind and chivalrous one moment and inappropriate and rude the next. Maurice says he hasn’t been the same since his wife died. That doesn’t excuse his behavior, though it might explain it. Don’t let it spoil the joy we felt earlier. Please allow yourself to let my affection lift you from undeserved self-reproach. Please come again when you are ready. I love you, Max.

  Your Lisette

  I waited a week for a response and then went to the post office, where Sandrine’s son, Théo, greeted me proudly.

  “Howdy, Madame Roux. I’m an American cowboy today. American cowboys say howdy.”

  “Adieu, Théo. Cowboys in our Camargue region say adieu.”

  “Maman lets me be in charge here,” he chirped. “No letters today, Madame Roux, so you can play with me.” His impish grin was irresistible. He ducked under the post office counter, his knobby knees sticking out of his short pants, and skipped toward me.

  “Bilboquet. I want to play bilboquet.”

  “Where is the ball and cup I gave you?”

  With chest thrust forward, he reached around to his back pocket and whipped out the little wooden cup on a stick.

  “D’accord!”

  “No, madame. American cowboys say okay.”

  We went outside to place du Pasquier.

  “You first,” I said. “Three catches in a row wins.”

  He swung the ball, attached by a string to the handle, and caught it in the cup. It made a little clunking sound. “Un.” He did it again. “Deux.” The third time he missed.

  “You missed on purpose, just so I would have to play.”

  He didn’t deny my accusation. I took the stick from him and swung the ball neatly into the cup.

  “Un,” he said, his choirboy voice making the word into two rising syllables. “Deux,” he shouted.

  I missed the third try too.

  “You have to practice, madame. Practice. Come back tomorrow, and I will teach you.” He galloped back into the post office, slapping his side like an overzealous cowboy on horseback.

  THE NEXT DAY HE knocked at my door in tears.

  “I lost my bilboquet ball.”

  “Oh, no, Théo.”

  Through sobs he explained that he had been playing with it on place du Pasquier and the ball had broken loose and had flown off down the cliff, perhaps far below.

  “And you came all the way up here to tell me?”

  I brought him inside, and we sat together on the wooden settee, my arm around his narrow shoulders.

  “Losing something is hard to get over. I’ve lost some things that were very important to me. I’ve even lost a person. Maybe two people.”

  “I never knew you were sad.”

  “Oh, sometimes. But we can’t sink into our sadness, or we may not find a way to get out.”

  “Sink like in the sea?”

  “Sink like in the mud.”

  “Ugh.”

  “There is a nun in Paris, Sister Marie Pierre, who raised me. Oh, how I love her. Just before I left the city to come here, I told her I would miss her and miss Paris. She said that as long as we grumble over some loss, we won’t be able to open ourselves to anything new.”

  “Like a new bilboquet ball?”

  “Yes, or like a completely new game.”

  “What can we play without a toy?”

  “We can play Sister Marie Pierre.”

  He tipped his head, intrigued but skeptical.

  “I did errands for her, and afterward she always asked me what I saw. I had to tell her precisely, with picture words.

  “ ‘What did you see along the river?’ she often asked me, and I told her that I saw a tugboat pulling a barge. ‘What was it carrying?’ ‘Coal.’ ‘What is coal like?’ ‘It’s like itself.’ ‘But what other thing is it like?’ She always demanded a comparison. ‘Like chunks of midnight when there is no moon.’ ‘Ah.’ Then she was satisfied.

  “But on the next errand she would surprise me and ask what I heard along the street. When I could distinguish in words the sound of a lorry’s horn as different from a boat’s whistle on a particular kind of boat, she tricked me and asked, ‘What did boulevard Saint-Germain smell like?’ ”

  “Why that street?” asked Théo.

  “Because there are bakeries and cafés there and a shop that sells perfume and soap. I had to say whether the aroma coming from the bakery was cinnamon or vanilla or almond, and whether the fragrance coming out of the open boutique door was like carnations or roses or lavender. Practice that in your grandparents’ bakery, okay, cowboy? Does your maman let you walk through the whole village?”

  “Yes, unless it’s cold or raining.”

  “Good. You are a smart boy, so you can do this. I want you to walk from one end of the village to the other very slowly tomorrow, as many times as you like, and then tell me everything you saw and smelled and heard. See if you can remember their colors, and tell me what each thing was like.”

  I drew him close so that he snuggled against me, which felt indescribably good.

  My mind swirled with remembrances of that dear nun. I thought of one Christmas in particular, before I had learned that my parents had died, when I’d burst out, “I hate my parents for abandoning me here.”

  “That’s not hate. That’s loss,” she’d said. “Be precise when you use words. Hate comes from a different place in the heart than loss. Now think about it for a week, and on New Year’s Day, tell me what you have gained from that loss.”

  That had seemed impossible, and I’d complained that she wasn’t being fair. We’d eyed each other sullenly for a week. On the first day of the year I’d managed to say, in a begrudging tone, that had they not left to do their missionary work and died somewhere, they would still have been so involved with it in Paris that they would not have given me the time and education I’d received at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. In that way, she had taught me to substitute gratitude and forgiveness for hatred and loss.

  And now I had to learn even more about forgiveness and loss. Would it never end?

  I felt Théo tugging on my sleeve.

  “I’ve been asking and asking, madame. What was the thing that you lost?”

  “Three pictures.”

  “How did you lose them?”

  “It’s a long story.” I gave his shoulder a squeeze.

  “I can draw you a picture,” he offered. “What would you like?”

  “A picture of a girl and a goat walking on a path.”

  “I’ll draw that picture if you write the long story to go with it.”

  “Maybe someday. When I know how the story ends.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, THÉO knocked on my door, jubilant.

  “Did you find your bilboquet ball?”

  “No, madame. I found something better.”

  “A new game?”

  “A picture!”

  “A picture? Where?”

  “In the dump. I went all the way down there to look for my bilboquet ball, and I found a picture. Maybe you will like it.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “No, madame. It wasn’t mine.”

  I was already putting on André’s shoes. “Take me there.”

  He skipped and ran the whole way, so eager he was to show me. The dump was far down the road that led up to Roussillon, in a clearing hidden behind a forested area.

  “How did you know how to get here?”

  “I went with my papa once.”

  In among the remains of animal carcasses, broken wine bottles, sardine tins, and other refuse, there it was, partially covered by greasy rags—the study of heads.

  “Théo! It’s mine! One of the lost ones!”

  He let out a squeal and climbed over the mound of trash to retrieve it.

  “Why don’t they have any bodies?” />
  “I suppose the artist was only practicing on heads.”

  “They’re ugly.”

  “Maybe that’s why someone threw it away.”

  I grabbed him and swung him around, thanking him a dozen times at the top of my lungs.

  “If I ever get to have a son, I want him to be a hero just like you!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  FOR BETTER OR WORSE

  1948

  TWO WEEKS PASSED WITHOUT A LETTER. EVERY TIME I WENT to the post office, Théo said, in his high-pitched voice, “No letter today, madame. Have you written the story yet?”

  “No, Théo. Not yet. I still don’t know how it will end.”

  I avoided Louise and Maurice. I went to the post office less frequently because Sandrine would see my disappointment and would tell Odette. I didn’t want to be the object of pity.

  Spring proved to be wet and long. Cigales spread themselves on rocks, waiting for the summer’s warmth to signal to the males that it was time to vibrate their stomachs to make their mating call. How ironic. A mating call. Waiting. Also ironic that I longed to hear their jagged cacophony.

  Once, when overwhelmed with the weight of Maxime’s last night, I crawled into the bed he had slept in and hugged the pillow to my chest. He was cruel not to answer my letter. He must have known by now that I loved him. I had shown him in every way, besides telling him outright in my letter. How could a relationship so whole and lovely end like this? And if it were to dissolve, who would be at fault? Bernard? Me? What should I have said to either of them that I had failed to say?

  THE RAINS OF APRIL persisted for days on end, even into the beginning of May. When it wasn’t raining, it was misting, and when it wasn’t misting, it was damp. I ate only what I had in the house and in the root cellar. My war widow’s check was probably waiting for me at the post office, and I needed the money for food. On Thursday, market day in Roussillon, it was barely drizzling. I put on a coat and head scarf and headed downhill with my market basket.

  “Two letters, madame!” Théo shouted in a voice bursting with victory. He handed them over the post office counter—my government check in his right hand and an envelope with no return address in his left.