Chasing Cezanne

by Peter Mayle

  Two hours later, although a semblance of order had returned to the apartment, Lucy showed no signs of slowing down; nor of hunger or thirst, both of which were starting to distract Andre from his household duties. He stopped her as she came across the room balancing a stack of books that reached up to her chin.

  “Enough, Lulu, enough.” He took the books from her and put them down. “You said something about dinner, or are you having too much fun to stop?”

  Lucy put her hands on her hips and eased her back. “Well, it’ll do for tonight. Do you have a maid service?”

  “What?”

  “No, I thought not. I’ll get someone over tomorrow. The place could do with a good scrub. So could the windows. Have those windows ever been cleaned? And Andre? Yogurt doesn’t last forever, even in a fridge. When it starts to glow in the dark, you get rid of it, OK?”

  Andre suddenly had the feeling—a strange but pleasant feeling—that part of his personal life was coming under new management. He helped Lucy on with her coat. She picked up her beret and looked around the room. “You don’t have any mirrors here, do you?” She tucked her hair in the beret, tilting it steeply over one eye, and caught him smiling at her. “This isn’t how they wear them in France?”

  “No. But they should.”

  Lucy took him to what she called her local, a small, warm, noisy restaurant on Duane Street. Mount Gay rum, Red Stripe beer, a Jamaican chef with an Italian wife. Both sides of the marriage were represented on the short menu.

  Lucy sipped her rum. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “There’s something about it I don’t understand.” Andre leaned forward, looking into his glass while he spoke. “They weren’t interested in stuff they could sell on the street in five minutes. Just cameras—cameras and my shot files. My work. That’s all they wanted. And they were pros. Didn’t have to break the door down, knew how to cut off the alarm.” He looked up. “Pros, Lulu. But why me? I mean, photographs of houses, furniture, pictures—it’s not as if there’s anything they could sell to the Enquirer. The only nudes are in the paintings.”

  The chef’s wife squeezed her ample body through the tables to take their orders, kissing the tips of her fingers when Lucy ordered the jerk chicken and nodding with approval at Andre’s choice of seafood risotto. “I choose the wine for you, eh? A nice Jamaican Orvieto.” She cackled, and waddled off to the kitchen.

  Lucy grinned. “Don’t look so disapproving and French. Angelica knows best. Now go back a bit, tell me about your trip.”

  Andre went through it, trying his best to keep the account factual, watching Lucy’s face for reactions. She had that most attractive quality in a listener, complete and serious attention, and he barely noticed the arrival of Angelica with the food and wine. They sat back to give her space to put down the plates.

  “Basta,” said Angelica. “Enough romance. Eat.”

  For the first few minutes they ate in silence. Lucy paused to take some wine. “You’re right,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense, unless someone just wanted to make a mess of your work.” She shook her head. “Do you know anyone who has a grudge against you? You know, in business?”

  “Not that I can think of. But why would they want my old transparencies? There’s nothing they could sell. And why would they take the whole place apart?”

  “Looking for something, maybe. I don’t know … something you’d hidden.”

  Angelica loomed over them. “How is everything?” She picked up the wine bottle and filled their glasses. “Your first time here?” she said to Andre.

  He smiled at her and nodded. “Very good.”

  “Bene. Make sure she eats. She’s too thin.” Angelica moved away from the table, massaging her stomach with a chubby hand.

  They ate and talked, avoiding any more theories about the burglary, slipping gradually from business gossip into an exchange of likes and dislikes, hopes and ambitions, the small revelations of two people feeling their way toward knowing each other. The restaurant was almost empty by the time they finished coffee, and when they went out on the street there was a damp chill in the air. Lucy shivered, tucking a hand under Andre’s arm as they walked to the corner of Duane and West Broadway. He waved down a cab, and for the first time that evening there was a tentative, slightly awkward moment.

  Lucy opened the cab door. “Promise me you won’t do any housework when you get home.”

  “Thanks for everything, Lulu. Dinner was lovely. Almost worth getting robbed.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed the end of his nose. “Change your locks, OK?” And then she was gone.

  He stood watching the cab’s back lights blend into a hundred others, feeling surprisingly happy for a newly burgled man.

  7

  FLURRY reigned at the Madison Avenue offices of DQ, which were even more overwrought than usual as the latest issue was being put to bed. Camilla’s plans had been turned upside down—completely bouleversés, as she said—by the unsolicited submission of an article on decorative bidets of the famous, accompanied by some simply ravishing pictures taken by a promising young Parisian photographer. Rarely had hygienic porcelain looked so rich, so sculptural, so much a part of today’s well-dressed bathroom—and the end of winter was such a perfect time for readers to be reviewing their sanitary requirements. At the editorial conference, it was generally agreed that this was groundbreaking material, possibly even a first in magazine history. Also, as Camilla was quick to point out, there was the added cachet provided by the celebrated owners of the bidets. They were nowhere to be seen in the photographs, for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, they had granted permission for their names to be used. It was too good to pass up.

  But the issue was already full, and one of the scheduled features would have to be dropped. Camilla stalked back and forth in the conference room beside the long table on which the dummy page spreads were laid out. She was shadowed, as always, by her junior secretary, notepad poised, and watched by the art director, the fabrics editor, the furniture editor, the accessories editor, and a flock of young assistant editors, looking like a row of solemn black-clad pixies.

  Camilla came to a stop, nibbling her lower lip. She couldn’t bring herself to defer the piece on the Duchess of Pignolata-Strufoli’s medieval folly in Umbria, or the other major feature, which was the elaborate conversion by a dear little Swiss billionaire of a nunnery in the Dordogne. The social repercussions of a postponement might be awkward and could easily jeopardize the summer invitations that had been extended to her. Finally, she came to a decision. In the manner of a fairy exercising the vanishing powers of her wand, she tapped three of the dummy spreads with her Montblanc pen. “I hate to see these go,” she said, “but icons are completely timeless, and bidets are somehow such a spring thing. We’ll have the icons in the summer.”

  Amid much nodding and note taking—but not without some ritual sulking and tossing of curls from the art director, who would have to reassemble all his layouts—the meeting broke up. Camilla returned to her office, to find Noel on the phone in considerable distress.

  “You poor, poor boy,” he was saying. “One’s treasures picked over by those horrible people. I’d be in tears. It’s just too bad. Oh, here she is now. I’ll put you through.” He looked up at Camilla. “The most dreadful thing—Andre’s been robbed. I think he needs a shoulder to cry on.”

  Camilla went to her desk and sat down. Andre—the very mention of his name provoked a vague and most unusual emotion. Could it be guilt? Anyway, he was the last person she wanted to speak to, and she tried to think of some plausible crisis that might have occurred between Noel’s desk and her office that would allow her to avoid taking the call. The phone glared at her with a blinking red eye. She picked up, preparing herself to be shocked and sympathetic.

  “Sweetie! Whatever happened?”

  As Andre began to tell her, Camilla slipped off her shoe to ease the throbbing ache of her toe. The relief was instant and made her think that instead of
trying to squeeze her foot bravely into Chanel’s best, she might consider dressing the part of the injured editor—trousers, of course, and a pair of those cozy monogrammed velvet slippers. Perhaps an ivory-topped walking cane. Didn’t Coco herself use a cane in later years? Yes, definitely a cane. She started to make notes.

  “Camilla? Are you there?”

  “Of course, sweetie. Just stunned by the news. Absolutely distraught.”

  “I’ll survive. At least they didn’t get the icon shots. What do you think of them?”

  “Sublime, sweetie. Perfect.” Camilla took a deep breath. He was going to find out sooner or later. “But as a matter of fact, there’s been a tiny change in plan because of last-minute advertisers, and I’ve lost some pages. Too dreary for words. It means we’ve had to reschedule, and the icons won’t be in the next issue. I can’t tell you how desolated I am.”

  Camilla broke the disappointed silence by calling to an imaginary lackey. “Do stop hovering out there. I’m coming.” And then, to Andre: “Must fly, sweetie. I’ll talk to you soon. Ciao for now.” She put down the phone before he had time to answer and buzzed for the junior secretary, all traces of guilt forgotten, her thoughts already occupied with the details of her walking-wounded wardrobe.

  Andre’s week had started badly and became worse. His friends in need, in the time-honored way of insurance companies, were treating him like a mendacious crook, finding fresh obstacles to payment each time he called. The cost of replacing the equipment he was ordering had run into thousands of dollars. Camilla hadn’t mentioned any new assignments. And although Lucy was beating the bushes for new business, nothing had come up so far.

  Between calls, he spent his time picking up after the burglars. In a pile of old magazines, he came across the issue of DQ that had featured Denoyer’s house, and paused to flick through the pages. He felt a prickle of curiosity return as he came to a shot of the main salon. There was the Cézanne above the fireplace, luminous with the colors of Provence, the focal point of the room. Where was it now? According to Denoyer, hanging in a gallery in Cannes. He stared at the painting, trying to remember if he had ever seen an art gallery in Cannes. There couldn’t be many of them. It would be easy to check, and there would at least be some satisfaction in finding out. If the painting was where Denoyer said it was, the whole incident made some kind of sense, and he could forget about it.

  Early the following morning, he was on the phone to a friend in Paris. After a two-minute search on the Minitel, France’s electronic phone directory, the friend was able to give Andre the names and numbers of the handful of galleries in Cannes. One after the other, Andre called them; one after the other, with varying degrees of regret, they informed him that they had no Cézanne on the premises, nor did they know of any Monsieur Denoyer.

  So he had lied.

  “He lied, Lulu. Why would he do that if he wasn’t up to something?” Andre perched on the edge of her desk, watching Lucy eat an apple. Eyes wide, she shook her head as she finished chewing.

  “Andre, it’s his painting. He can do what he wants with it.”

  “But why would he lie? Actually, I’m glad he did. I don’t feel like quite such an idiot. There is something fishy going on.”

  Lucy held up both hands in surrender. “OK. Maybe you’re right. But that’s his problem. We’ve got our own.” She picked up a sheet of paper from her desk and passed it over to him. “These are the magazines I’ve called to see if they have something for us. None of them has called back. By the way, did you talk to Camilla? Has she got anything?”

  Andre shook his head. “You know what she’s like when she’s getting an issue ready: She can hardly think past lunchtime.” He glanced at Lucy’s list without great interest. “But she did tell me she’d dumped the icon feature. Too much advertising. So one way and another it’s been a pretty good week.” He looked as mournful as a caged hound.

  “Andre, we all have lousy weeks. Listen, why don’t you go and pick up your new equipment? You’re going to need it by the time I’ve finished.” She tilted her head and looked up at him. “And could we have a little less gloom? Please?”

  He left the office and was walking down West Broadway, when his eye was caught by a display in Rizzoli’s side window. A new Gauguin biography had come out, thick and bulging with scholarship, and behind the neat stacks of books was a poster showing the artist’s Woman with a Flower. Something about the posture of the woman and the angle at which she had been painted was familiar. Despite the differences in color and technique, there was an echo of the older, stouter woman in Denoyer’s Cézanne.

  Andre went into the store and browsed through every book he could find on the Impressionists until he came to what he was looking for. It had been given a full page and a brief caption: “Woman with Melons. Paul Cézanne, circa 1873. Once the property of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, now in a private collection.” Well, maybe it still was, thought Andre. Or maybe it was in the back of a plumber’s van. But certainly not in a gallery in Cannes. He paid for the book and walked back to his apartment, readying himself for another skirmish with Doubting Thomas, the man with a hundred excuses, his nemesis at the insurance company.

  The last pale wash of light from a dying sun left the tops of the buildings, and downtown Manhattan took on its evening glow. Andre consigned a final bundle of odds and ends to the trash and poured himself a glass of red wine. He looked around the apartment, now cleaner and more orderly than it had been since he moved in. The thought was crossing his mind that there is nothing quite like a good burglary to simplify one’s life, when the phone rang.

  “That’s a relief. You haven’t committed suicide yet.” Lucy laughed, and Andre found himself smiling. “I’ve been thinking about your mystery painting. Is it still bugging you?”

  “Well—yes, I suppose it is. Why?”

  “I have a friend who runs a gallery around the corner. You know, if you wanted to talk to someone in the business.” She hesitated. “We could drop by this evening and see him.”

  “Lulu, that’s sweet of you, but you’ve heard it all before. Wouldn’t you be bored?”

  “Boring comes later. My cousin and his wife are in town from Barbados, and they’ve landed me with their friend on a blind date. A computer purchasing agent for the Bajan government, first time in New York, and he’s very, very shy. Does that sound like a good time?”

  “You never know, Lulu. Us shy people have hidden depths. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.” Andre had a racing shower, put on a fresh shirt and too much aftershave, and left the apartment whistling.

  The gallery was one flight up, in a fine old building on Broome Street; blond wood floors, tinplate ceiling, subdued lighting, and a surprisingly young proprietor. “Daddy’s rich,” Lucy had said as they were going up the stairs, “but don’t let that put you off. David’s a nice guy, and he knows what he’s doing.”

  David waved at them from the end of the gallery, a slight, pale-faced figure in a dark suit and white T-shirt, standing behind a minimalist desk, with a phone tucked between an ear and his shoulder. Two other young men were propping canvases against the bare walls. The sound of Keith Jarrett’s concert in Cologne rippled from hidden speakers.

  David finished his call and came over to greet Lucy with a peck on the cheek, a soft handshake for Andre. “I’m sorry about the mess.” He gestured at the large, spotless space. “We’re getting ready for a new exhibition.” He led them through a door at the back, into a more human, untidy room, sparsely furnished with two office chairs and a scuffed leather couch, a computer and a fax squeezed in between piles of artbooks.

  “Lucy told me you’re looking for a Cézanne.” David grinned. “Me, too.”

  Andre went through his story, the young art dealer quiet and attentive, lifting one hand from time to time to finger a silver earring, his eyebrows going up as Andre described his series of phone calls to Cannes.

  “You’re taking it pretty seriously, aren’t you?”

  “I know
.” Andre shook his head. “And I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t seem to leave it alone.”

  David sucked in air against his teeth. “I wish I could help, but that kind of thing is out of my league. I’m just a kid dealer.” He scratched his head and frowned; his fingers paid another thoughtful visit to the earring. “Let’s see. You want somebody—ah, wait a minute.” He swiveled his chair around to face the computer. “I know who you want.” He carried on talking as he tapped the keys to open a file. “He’s one of the uptown dealers, a friend of my dad’s. He has one of those Fort Knox brownstones in the East Sixties.” He scrolled through a list of addresses on the screen. “There you go—Pine Art, his little joke. His name is Pine, Cyrus Pine.” David scribbled the address and number on a pad. “I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s a character, deals in Impressionists, plugged in to all the big collectors.” David stood up, passed the slip of paper to Andre, and looked at his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to go. The new show opens tomorrow. Say hello to Cyrus.”

  Back on the street, Andre took Lucy’s arm and steered her at a brisk pace toward West Broadway. “Lulu, you’re a jewel, and you deserve the best that life can offer. Do you have time for a glass of champagne?”

  Lucy smiled. It was good to see him cheerful again. “Not really.”

  “Great. We’ll go to Felix. I’d like them to see your beret.”

  They sat at one end of the small bar, surrounded by a hubbub of French voices. A patient, world-weary dog was tethered to a chair outside the men’s room in the corner, nose twitching at the smells coming from the kitchen. Overt smoking was taking place. On a night like this, you could almost believe you were in Paris. It was one of the reasons Andre liked to go there.

  Lucy was looking puzzled as she tried to pick out a familiar sound from the torrent of noise. “Do they always talk so fast?”

  “Always. There’s a wonderful line in one of Chekhov’s letters: ‘The Frenchman, until advanced senility sets in, is normally excited.’ ”