Lisette's List

by Susan Vreeland

  I will host a veillée to celebrate Pascal’s paintings, and you above all will know their meaning and their worth. It will not be complete without you, so put your dark thoughts away. Forever, dear Max. They are not in accord with your true nature.

  A streak of impishness flashed through me, and I wrote,

  I can’t expect you to remember how to get here after nearly five long years—oh, I mean weeks. My mistake. With no letter from you, it only seems like years. So don’t forget that mine is the last house on rue de la Porte Heureuse. Engrave that street name in your heart. In case you’ve forgotten, the house is rosy ochre.

  I will not breathe until you arrive. Bring sugar—granulated and powdered.

  Lisette Irène

  I marched downhill with a purpose and strode into the post office.

  “Howdy, Madame Roux!” Théo took the letter from me and peered at it. “I can read a little now. I have been practicing so I can read your story someday.”

  Such a darling, eager child. “I haven’t written it yet, but when I do, it will have you in it toward the end.”

  He studied my envelope. “Oh là là!” he exclaimed, imitating his grandmother Odette. “This goes to Paris, so it must be very important.”

  “You are right, Théo. It is very important.”

  Holding my breath, I watched him slide the letter into the slot of the wooden box marked POSTE.

  “Are you sad today, madame?”

  “No, Théo. You make me happy.”

  “S’il vous plaît, will you make a promenade with me? Will you? Will you?”

  “A very short one. I am only going to the cemetery.” I glanced at Sandrine for her approval.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “He likes to pretend to read the names on the tombs, just like he does with letters here.”

  “I do not pretend! I know how, a little.”

  “And every day, you are learning more,” I said.

  I took his hand in mine, smooth as an eggshell, a hand that had not known the vineyard or the mine, or the evil coolness of slick gray steel. It was a privilege to hold that hand as we climbed the incline to the graveyard. I let him open the iron gate, which squeaked on its rusty hinges. He led me to his favorite monument, the one adorned with a graceful angel.

  “Anne-Marie—” he sounded out, then pinched his lips together for a B.

  My heart took a plunge. “Blanc.” I had never noticed.

  “What else does it say?”

  In hardly more than a whisper, I read, “ ‘Your loving spirit enchants me still.’ ”

  How hard it must be for Bernard to look down upon that angel. I wondered how he had managed his loneliness for twelve years. We had that in common, as well as an aching heart.

  Théo followed me to Pascal’s tomb and helped me pick off every oleander leaf. He looked at the engraving curiously. “Pascal Édouard Roux—1852 to 1939. Is that a long life?”

  “A very long life.”

  “Was he your grandpère?”

  “No. He was my husband’s grandpère. I wish he had been mine, but that doesn’t matter. What we are to each other is what matters.”

  I gazed at Théo with what I knew to be longing.

  He examined the tombs on both sides of Pascal’s, as though looking for someone’s, and then wandered through the aisles. His childlike voice sounded out a few one-syllable names, and in a few minutes I heard the squeak of the gate as he left.

  “Howdy, Pascal,” I said with a chuckle. “A dear little boy taught me that American word.

  “Are you listening? I have all the paintings back except the red roofs of Pontoise, even the Louveciennes painting. I know how important that one was to you. You were living in Paris then, and the family vegetable garden in the painting must have reminded you of your mother’s garden in Roussillon. The moment you noticed the yellow-ochre path and the mellow golden-ochre light bouncing off the cottages—the moment you recognized the ochre you mined—you must have felt elation, and a sense of purpose. That moment was the beginning of our story. All that has happened since then arose from that instant.

  “I found some of your notes and have been writing down what you told me of your memories. An art dealer in Paris thinks they are important to the patrimony of France. That should please you.”

  Saying any more than that would be a foolish fancy. He was not there. But someone else was.

  From the olive trees on the cliff I heard a baritone voice singing, slow and measured.

  “J’attendrai.

  Le jour et la nuit, j’attendrai toujours

  Ton retour.”

  Such longing descended delicately, and was aching in its repetition.

  “I will wait.

  Day and night, I will wait forever

  For your return.

  For the bird that flies away comes back

  To search for the one it left behind

  In the nest.”

  He was holding the branch of an olive tree above him, as if to steady himself as he looked down at me. Again and again the refrain of desire and yearning glided slowly down the cliff. We had heard it every night on the radio in the café during the war. Rina Ketty had sung it then, and the heart of every Frenchwoman had pulsed with hope to its slow, rhythmic promise.

  Now, hearing Bernard sing it to me so ardently, so sadly, I was overwhelmed beyond expression. At that fleeting moment, I thought that, under other circumstances—and without Maxime, of course—Bernard might have had a chance. As it was, all I could do was stand utterly still with my hand over my heart until he finished the song, turned, and disappeared into the orchard.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  TRUTH

  1948

  “BONJOUR!” CAME A JOYFUL CALL FROM THE STREET. “IS THIS the house of Madame Lisette Irène Roux? It’s salmon-colored, what oil painters would call cadmium orange, not rosy ochre, but it’s on rue de la Porte Heureuse. She will be happy today on the Street of the Happy Door because I am standing at that very door with a special delivery.”

  The voice, Maxime’s for sure, kept on talking to the closed door even though it took me a few moments to reach it.

  “Max! You’ve come!”

  He was burdened down with five bulging shopping bags, his valise of clothes, and a bouquet of white roses wrapped in damp newspaper held under his armpit.

  “What in the world …?”

  He let his packages fall to the floor, shook out his hands, and presented me with the bouquet, bowing a little on one leg and letting the other leg dangle behind him.

  “I couldn’t let that little man in Chagall’s painting outdo me. Do I have it right? His right leg dangling behind?”

  “Oh, Max. You’re perfect. The roses are perfect too,” I said, putting them in a pitcher.

  “I would fling a fish like a crescent moon into the sky like Chagall did if I knew some invisible hand were there to catch it.”

  “Where did you get such beautiful roses?”

  “From a flower stand at the Avignon station. I begged the vendor for fleurs-de-lis, telling her that lilies had all the glory and history of France’s fleur-de-lis. She said, ‘The truth is, young man, that the symbol of France is the fleur-de-lys, l-y-s, which has nothing to do with lilies, l-i-s. Fleurs-de-lys are yellow irises that grow on the banks of the River Lys in Flanders.’ ”

  I laughed. “André thought France’s flower was the lily, too, and that I was named after them.”

  “It’s too late for lilies or irises. I had to settle for roses, and then had to beg her for a little pail of water. I gave her a pitiful look and said how far the roses had to go to a lady with a complexion like rose petals. She was an old woman, and so she understood.”

  “But where’s the pail?”

  “In Maurice’s bus. I couldn’t carry it. Open the packages.”

  I felt a-twitter, like a little girl at a grand occasion. Each bag was from a different department store. From the Galeries Lafayette bag I pulled out a beautiful salmon-
colored brocade cushion and another, slightly different, in rose. From Printemps, there were two paisley cushions in golden ochre and bronze and cinnamon. From BHV, two embroidered cushions of yellow-ochre and pale orange flowers; from La Samaritaine, two with arabesques of burgundy and gold; and from Le Bon Marché, two broadly striped cushions in all the warm ochre hues of Roussillon.

  “I’m overwhelmed. I never—”

  His grin stretched wide across his perfect teeth. “If you’re going to have a veillée here, you can’t expect your friends to sit on those torturous wooden benches and chairs, which would bruise even Maurice’s sitting bones.”

  I ran my fingers over each cushion to feel its silky smoothness and played with the tassles, fringe, and tucking.

  “What rich fabrics. I can’t imagine what they must have cost.”

  “I located one of Monsieur Laforgue’s stolen paintings and arranged for its return, so he paid me a little extra.”

  “Wonderful, Max. I knew you would succeed. And you’ll find more.”

  I couldn’t stop admiring the cushions. “Each one is beautiful in its own individual way.”

  “It would be too common if they were all the same. Maman loved picking them out with me. They’re from both of us.”

  I set out three on the bench and three on the settee, with the striped ones in the middle, and one on each of the four chairs. The cushions, the paintings, and the roses all together made the room glorious.

  “I feel like I’m in Paris!”

  I threw myself into Maxime’s arms and thanked him. Ten little hello kisses traveled across my cheeks and nose, and down to my throat like moth wings, until he was out of breath and I was laughing.

  “They are for sitting, Lisette, so sit.”

  “On which one?”

  “Try them all.”

  I sat on one cushion after another, admitting that I had been resentful toward Pascal’s mother for not furnishing the house with cushions.

  “Riding here on Maurice’s bus for the first time, we witnessed a farmwife offering duck feathers to Maurice for Louise to make a pillow. At the time, I didn’t recognize the goodwill behind that act. Now, living here through the Occupation years, I see the kindness and generosity of her offering. It was made in the spirit of la Provence profonde, as Maurice would say.”

  I settled on a striped cushion on the settee, and Maxime sat down next to me.

  “So what do you notice about the room?” I asked.

  I had hung the study of heads by itself on the left side of the stairs and had moved the Chagall yet again, so that Girl with a Goat could have its rightful place as one of the two central paintings on the north wall. On the space beside it, once commanded by Pissarro’s Red Roofs, I had tacked my Chagall, where it would remain, its home at last.

  “Ah! Two more paintings! Tremendous! Tell me about them.”

  “The head study first. Maybe you know that André’s father, Jules, purchased it cheaply from the concierge of his Montmartre pension before the Great War. I remember André saying that as a small boy he liked to draw it.”

  That made me think that perhaps that was his favorite painting, a memento of his father and a reminder of his childhood. I cherished this glimpse of him as a boy drawing the outlines of those faces.

  “What did he tell you about it?”

  “Just that the concierge had said it was by some Spaniard who couldn’t pay his rent and left it as payment.”

  “It is a Picasso, Lisette. Just as we had thought. He did dozens of sketches and studies similar to this for a final painting called Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, depicting the prostitutes of a Barcelona street with the same name. Look at the women’s long, angular noses flattened to the side, their narrow faces and concave cheeks, their heavily lined oversized black eyes. Those distortions all appear in the final painting.”

  “Why did Picasso make them like that?”

  “For expression, I suppose. He may have thought that sharp angles suggested the sharp experiences of prostitution. Hard edges show how such a life hardens the human spirit.”

  “To me, those faces are harsh and ugly.”

  “Do you think the life of a harlot is anything other than harsh and ugly?”

  “All right, Max. Have it your way.” I winked at him. “I concede the anguish in that one misplaced, mismatched eye.”

  “Then his purpose worked. He was trying out two styles here.

  Cubism, which flattens shapes, gives them hard edges, and shows different angles of view all at once.”

  “And the other?”

  “Primitivism. The long, concave faces suggest African masks. His preliminary studies like this one surface from time to time in galleries and sell for high prices because they show him experimenting, working out the principles of new techniques. Maman was outraged when she saw one thrown onto a heap and burned in front of the Jeu de Paume.”

  “Would you feel outraged if I said that a little boy here found it in the dump?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “It’s the very truth.”

  “Then it might have been given to a German officer, who discarded it as degenerate art.”

  “More likely Gypsies took it from that windmill as they were scrounging the area for goods to sell along their way and, on second thought, threw it out as unsalable. We’ll never know.”

  “What about Pissarro’s Girl with a Goat?”

  “That’s a more complicated story.”

  Just for a moment, I considered hiding the truth. Its effect on Maxime would be unpredictable, and I had so much as promised Bernard that I would not reveal him. But Maxime had not lied to me about André’s death when he could have. Nor could I lie to him.

  “I didn’t find it. It was shown to me. You must not tell a soul.” I gave him a stern look. “This is no frivolous secret.”

  When he agreed, I took Bernard’s letter from the desk drawer and gave it to him to read.

  “ ‘Your devoted, Bernard’? ‘Devoted’?”

  I chewed on my lip. “He did come to care for me.”

  “And you?”

  “In his own rough, peculiar way, he has been kind to me.”

  That seemed to satisfy Maxime, at least for the moment.

  “Let me finish about the painting. So, out of contrition for bursting into my house, he begged me to let him apologize by an act. When I agreed, we took a walk, and he showed me the factory where the ochre was processed. It was interesting, and I’m glad I understand it now. Seeing where Pascal worked and the steps in processing, from ore to pigments, gave me an appreciation for what Roussillon is all about.

  “Bernard took me down a hill through an oak grove where the slurry of ochre and sand used to be piped down to canals that led to drying beds. He brought me to a particular pipe, about the diameter of a dinner plate, and told me to reach inside, and that was where the painting was.”

  “Had he found it there or put it there?”

  “Put it there. He was the one who took the paintings from the woodpile and hid them in different places. André told him to.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes, Max. So André wasn’t as careless about not telling someone where they were as we had thought.”

  “My speculation still could be correct. The constable’s intention must have been to offer them to some German officer to court his favor. Then after the Germans left, he could not reveal that he had them. In a village this small, people would figure out that he had been a collaborator, and that would put him in danger of losing his position, at the very least, or, at the worst, his life.”

  “You think so? Even now?”

  “Yes, even now.” He spoke harshly. “People don’t forget.”

  “So giving me the last painting was defying danger.”

  Maxime leaned forward, arms on his thighs, and didn’t say anything for a painfully long time.

  “He must love you. More than his own life.”

  “He says he’s been in despair for
years.”

  “And I haven’t been?”

  “Max.”

  He paced around the room. “And what can I sacrifice for you to compete with that?” He flung out his arm. “Cushions. How do they rate in comparison with the sacrifice of his reputation, his livelihood, and possibly his life?”

  “Please don’t compare. It’s you I invited to the Fête de la Saint-Jean, not him.”

  “He’ll be there anyway. And what should I do? Pretend that I don’t know?”

  “Yes. You must.”

  “Have you forgotten that it was collaborators like him who put men like me in prison camps?”

  “Max, stop. Please. He posed as a collaborator to save Roussillon.”

  He stormed out the door before I could finish explaining. I let him go. He had every reason to be upset.

  I looked again at every cushion, touched each one as though their colors could heal the rift between us, and then cast a glance at every painting. No matter how beautiful they were, no matter that they exhibited the movements in the history of French art of the last century, whatever it was that Maxime had said, were they worth the suffering they’d caused? Worth the sundering of the dearest friendship I had? Worth heartbreak?

  Should I have lied and said I found the last one myself? Was it cruel to have told him? To have shown him Bernard’s letter? Was truth really more valuable than love?

  Two men, both wounded, both suffering—I had betrayed both of them. Bernard by telling Maxime, and Maxime by accepting Bernard’s reason for collaboration. I had been disrespectful to both of them. In the harsh light of the truth, I felt as unworthy as a worm.

  I went out to the empty courtyard. With no one to comfort me, I sat at the base of the almond tree and leaned up against it. When Geneviève was young, she would have leaned against me and nudged my hand. Even Kooritzah Deux, gone now into Louise’s cook pot, would have helped by distracting me with some antic.

  I should have left Roussillon when I’d learned that André had died, should have left the paintings too and forgotten I had ever seen them. Let Bernard hide them in his house until he died. The people of Roussillon would have found him out then, and it would not have mattered, and the paintings would now belong to the village. That would be the story Théo would tell his children, and the tale would become part of the sad history of Roussillon. The villagers would have wondered about Bernard and me, and André, who went off to war and was killed, and some Parisian dandy who drifted in and out of the story. They would wonder all of this as they gazed at the paintings in the town hall as reminders of the beauty from the earth of the Vaucluse gone wrong.