The Swan Thieves

by Elizabeth Kostova

  I sat down in Robert's creaking desk chair. I was sharply aware, especially as I looked at the little girl in the meadow, with her dress

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  and hat and cloud of curly dark hair, that I must not leave Ingrid awake and alone in her crib below much longer. There was one bare corner still, one slanting area of the ceiling that Robert had not yet covered. The rest was filled, bursting, ripe with color and beauty, overflowing with the presence of this woman. The partly finished canvases on Robert's easels also depicted her: in one, she sat shrouded in dark fabric he had only half painted--a cloak, a shawl--her face shadowed, her eyes full of--what? Love? Dread? She gazed at me, and I looked away. The other canvas was even more frightening. It showed her face next to another face, that of a dead woman who lay limp against her shoulder. The dead woman had gray hair, a similar studio costume, a red wound in the center of her forehead--one dark hole, deep, small, somehow more gruesome than any gory gash could have been. That was the first time I saw that image.

  I sat there for another long minute. Attic, canvases--I knew it was the best work from his brush I'd ever encountered. It was transcendent, focused, but the effect was also of a passion filled to bursting, a wild attempt at containment. It had taken days, nights, weeks, probably months. I thought of the purple crescents under Robert's eyes, the way the skin on his cheeks and forehead was beginning to crease with strain. He had told me a couple of times how full of purpose he felt, how he wanted only to paint and paint and didn't seem to need sleep these days, and I had been envious--I felt half asleep all day, after nursing Ingrid at night. We could not sell the attic, with its overwhelming decoration, although perhaps he could show the two paintings. In fact, I prayed no one else would ever see this appalling extravaganza. How could we explain it to the college? No, he would have to paint over the whole thing someday, certainly before we ever left the place. The thought of blotting out all that overflowing, radiant work hurt my stomach. No one else would ever understand it.

  Worst of all, whoever she was, she was not me. And she had a child, apparently, with curly dark hair like Ingrid's. Robert's

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  hair--inherited? It was unreasonable, a ridiculous thought. I was more exhausted than I'd realized. After all, the woman herself had curly dark hair, rather like Robert's own. An even worse possibility occurred to me. Perhaps Robert somehow wished he was this woman--perhaps this was a portrait of himself as the woman he wanted to be. What did I know about my husband, really? But Robert was and had always been so hugely male that I couldn't believe this hypothesis for more than a second. I didn't know which alarmed me more--the unrelenting work that filled nearly every square inch of all that space closing in on me, or the fact that he had never talked with me voluntarily about the woman who dominated his days.

  I got up and made a quick search of the room, my hands trembling as I shook out the blankets on the sofa where Robert apparently no longer slept much. What did I expect to find there? There was no other woman sleeping with him, at least not in my house. No love letter fell out--nothing but Robert's watch, which he'd been looking for. I rummaged through the pile on the table, the papers--sketches, some of them, for the portraits and borders around me. I did come upon his keys on the ring with the brass coins I'd given him a few years before. I put them in my jeans pocket.

  By the sofa were several stacks of library books, slipping into an avalanche, mainly large art books. He was always bringing books and photographs into the house, so this, at least, was no surprise. But there were so many of them now, and almost all of them chronicled French Impressionism, something I hadn't known him to find this compelling, apart from his preoccupation with Degas when we were living in New York. There were books on the movement's great artists and their predecessors--Manet, Boudin, Courbet, Corot. Some had been borrowed from distant universities. There were also books about the history of Paris, books about the coast of Normandy, books about Monet's gardens at Giverny, about nineteenth-century women's clothing, about the

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  Paris Commune, about the emperor Louis-Napoleon, the reshaping of Paris by Baron Haussmann, the Paris Opera, French chateaus and hunting, ladies' fans and bouquets in the history of painting. Why had Robert never discussed these interests with me? When had all these books crept into our house? Had he read all of them simply to decorate an attic? Robert was no historian--as far as I knew, he read art catalogs and the occasional crime novel.

  I sat holding a biography of Mary Cassatt. This must all be for his show, somehow, some inspiration, some project he had neglected to tell me about. Had I been busy with the baby and neglected to ask? Or was this project so entwined with his feelings about the model he had never mentioned that he couldn't bring himself to talk with me about it? I looked around the attic again, at the tidal wave of images, splintered pieces of a mirror held up to one striking woman. He had dressed her meticulously in the fashions from these books--shoe, glove, ruffled white undergarments. But to him she was clearly a real person, a living part of his life. I heard Ingrid's wail and realized that only a few minutes had elapsed since I'd mounted the stairs to the attic, the brief passage of a nightmare.

  Ingrid and I drove to town, and I pushed her stroller around among the retirees and tourists and people on lunch break. At the library, I checked out Where the Wild Things Are for her so that I could have the pleasure of reading it aloud--the cover made me feel like a child again every time I saw it. I checked out a biography of Van Gogh that was on display. It was time for me to go on with my education, and I didn't know anything about him except the public legends. I bought a summer dress at one of the boutiques. At least it was on sale, violets on cream-colored cotton, old-fashioned, unlike my usual jeans and solid-colored T-shirts. I thought of asking Robert to paint me in it on our porch, or in the meadow behind the faculty houses, and then had to struggle not to remember the dark-haired child on his attic wall. "Anything

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  else for you today?" the clerk asked me, wrapping up a couple of free sticks of incense to put in the bag.

  "No, no, thanks. That's all I need." I straightened Ingrid in her stroller because bending over helped control the prickling behind my eyes.

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  December 22, 1877

  Mon cher oncle et ami:

  Thank you for your lovely note, which I hardly deserve but will treasure whenever my small attempts at work need encouragement. A gray day indeed, and I thought I might beguile a little of it by writing you. We expect you, of course, on Christmas, and will look forward to that, whichever day or hour you can come in, and Yves hopes to return for several days then, although his having a reprieve for a longer holiday is far from certain, and he will have to go back to the South to finish his work in the New Year. I think we shall celebrate rather soberly; Papa has a cold again--nothing alarming, I assure you, but he tires easily and his eyes are more painful than usual. I have helped him lie down in his sitting room with warm compresses just now, and when I last glanced in, the fire was cozy and he had fallen asleep. I am a little tired today myself, and can't settle down to anything but letter writing, although my painting went well

  yesterday because I have found a good model, Esmé, another of my maids; she once told me, shyly, when I asked her whether she knows your own beloved Louveciennes, that hers is the very next village, called Grémière. Yves says I shouldn't torment the servants by making them sit for me, but where else could I find such a patient model? Today, however, she is out on errands and I must listen for Papa while I sit to write you.

  You, who have seen my studio, know that it contains not only easel and worktable but also this desk, which I have had since childhood; it belonged to my mother, who painted its panels herself. I always do my correspondence here, looking out the window. You can picture, I'm sure, how sodden the garden is

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  this morning -- I can hardly believe it the same little paradise where I painted several scenes last summer. But it is beautiful even now, if
stark. Imagine this garden, my winter consolation, mon ami -- imagine it for me, if you will.

  With affection,

  Béatrice de Clerval

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  CHAPTER 24 Kate

  When Robert came home, I didn't mention the attic to him. He was tired from a day of teaching, and we sat in silence over the lentil soup I'd cooked, with Ingrid bubbling applesauce and carrots cheerfully down her front. I fed her and wiped her mouth over and over with a damp washcloth and tried to get up the courage to ask Robert something about his work, but I couldn't. He sat with his head propped on one hand, deep rings under his eyes, and I sensed that something had changed for him, although I didn't know what it was or how it was different from anything else. Every now and then he glanced past me to the kitchen doorway, his eyes flickering hopelessly, as if he expected someone who never arrived there, and I felt again that shiver of confusion, apprehension, and willed myself not to follow his gaze.

  After dinner he went to bed and slept for fourteen hours. I cleaned up the kitchen, got Ingrid to sleep, got up with her in the night, got up with her in the morning. I thought about inviting Robert for a walk, but when I came back from my stroll to the campus post office, he was gone, the bed unmade, a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the table. I went up to the blossoming attic to be sure and caught a glimpse again of the kaleidoscope woman, but no Robert.

  The third day I couldn't bear it any longer, and I saw to it that Ingrid was down for her nap when Robert came home from his afternoon classes. It would make her sleep too late and stay up too long in the evening, but that was a small price to pay for the chance to set the world back on its feet again. When Robert

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  came in, I had some tea waiting for him and he sat at the table. His face was weary, gray, one side of it drooping a little as if he might be about to sleep, or cry, or have a mild stroke. I knew he must be tired and I wondered at my own selfishness in putting him through a big discussion. Of course, it was partly for his own good--something was really wrong, and I had to help him.

  I put our cups on the table and sat down as calmly as I could. "Robert," I began, "I know you're tired, but could we talk for a few minutes?"

  He glanced at me across the tea, his hair partly on end, his face sullen. I realized now that he hadn't been bathing--he looked greasy as well as tired. I would have to remonstrate with him about overwork, whether it was teaching or painting attic walls. He was simply overtiring himself. He set his cup down. "What have I done now?"

  "Nothing," I said, but the lump in my throat was already growing. "Nothing at all. I'm just worried about you."

  "Don't worry about me," he said. "Why should you worry about me?"

  "You're exhausted," I said, keeping the lump in place. "You're working so hard that you seem exhausted, and we hardly see you."

  "That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" he growled. "You wanted me to work a good job and support you."

  My eyes began to fill despite my best efforts at composure. "I want you to be happy, and I see how tired you are. You sleep all day and you paint all night."

  "When am I supposed to paint except at night? Anyway, I'm usually asleep then, too." He ran his hand angrily through the front of his hair. "Do you think I get any real work done?"

  Suddenly the sight of that unkempt, greasy hair made me angry, too. After all, I was working just as hard. I never slept more than a few hours at a time, I did all the dull work of keeping the household going, I had no chance to paint unless I skipped

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  even more sleep, and I couldn't do that, so I didn't paint. I made it possible for him to do whatever work he did get done. He never had to do the dishes or clean a toilet or make a meal--I had freed him. And I managed to wash my hair now and then anyway, thinking that might make some difference to him. "There's another thing," I said, more curtly than I'd planned to. "I went up in the attic. What is that all about?"

  He leaned back and fixed his eyes on me, then sat very still, straightening his powerful shoulders. For the first time in our years together, I felt afraid of him--not afraid of his brilliance or his talent or his ability to hurt my feelings, but simply afraid, in a subtle, animal way. "The attic?" he said.

  "You've been painting a lot up there," I tried more cautiously. "But not on your canvases."

  He was silent for a moment, and then he spread one of his hands on the table. "So?"

  I had wanted above all to ask him about the woman herself, but instead I said, "I just thought you were getting ready for your show."

  "I am."

  "But you've done only a canvas and a half," I pointed out. This was not what I'd wanted to discuss. My voice was beginning to tremble again.

  "So now you have to keep track of my work as well? Do you want to tell me what to paint while you're at it?" He was suddenly sitting bolt upright in the small kitchen chair, his presence filling the room.

  "No, no," I said, and the cruelty of his words, and the cruelty of my own self-betrayal, made tears spill down my cheeks. "I don't want to tell you what to paint. I know you have to paint whatever you need to. I'm just worried about you. I miss you. I'm scared to see you look so exhausted."

  "Well, save your worry," he said. "And stay out of my space. I don't need someone spying on me, on top of everything else." He

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  took a sip of his tea, then put it down as if the taste disgusted him, and left the kitchen.

  Somehow his refusal to stay and talk shattered me as nothing else had. The sense of a bad dream broke over me in one bitter wave. I thrashed my way through it and found myself jumping up after him. "Robert--stop! Don't just walk out!" I caught him in the hall and grabbed his arm.

  He shook me off. "Get away from me."

  My self-control gave way completely. "Who is she?" I wailed.

  "Who is who?" he asked, and then his brow darkened and he pulled away and went into our bedroom. I stood in the doorway, watching, my face running with tears, my nose dripping, my sobs humiliatingly audible, while he lay down on the bed I had made that morning and covered himself with a quilt. He shut his eyes. "Leave me alone," he said without opening them again. "Leave me alone." To my horror, he fell asleep as I stood there. I stayed in the doorway, muting my weeping and watching as his breath slowed and then became soft and even. He slept like a baby, and upstairs Ingrid woke with a cry.

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  CHAPTER 25 Marlow

  I imagined Béatrice's garden. It would have been small and rectangular--the book I found of paintings of Paris in the late nineteenth century didn't include any by Clerval, but there was an intimate scene by Berthe Morisot showing her husband and daughter on a shady bench. The text explained that Morisot and her family lived in Passy, a grand new suburb. I pictured Béatrice's garden at the end of autumn, the leaves already brown and yellow, some plastered onto the slate walk by a heavy rain, the ivy on the back wall the color of burgundy-- vigne vierge, one caption noted beside a painting of a similar wall: the original Virginia creeper. There would be a few roses--now stark brown stems, scarlet rose hips-- around a sundial. I considered all this, mentally discarding the sundial. Instead I concentrated on the soggy flower beds, the corpses of chrysanthemums or some other heavy flower darkened by rain, and in the center a small formal arrangement of bushes and a bench.

  The woman sitting at her desk looking out at all this would be twenty-six years old, a mature age for the era, married for five years but childless--that lack, a secret anguish, judging from her love for her nieces. I saw her at the desk painted by her mother, the full, pale-gray skirts of her dress--didn't ladies wear different dresses for morning and afternoon? -- billowing against the chair, lace at her neck and wrists, a silver ribbon around the knot of her heavy hair. She herself would be anything but gray, her face strong-featured and clear even in the dull light, her hair dark but also bright, her lips red, her eyes bent wistfully to the page that was already her favorite company, this wet morning.

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; CHAPTER 26 Kate

  All that summer Robert slept off and on, taught, painted at odd hours, and held me at arm's length. After a while I stopped crying in secret and began to get used to it. I hardened myself a little, in the midst of my love for him, and waited.

  In September the rhythm of the school year resumed. When I took Ingrid for tea and conversation with faculty-wife friends, I listened to them chat about their husbands and contributed innocuous tidbits myself, to show how normal things were at home. Robert was teaching three studio classes this term. Robert liked chili. I should get that recipe.

  I secretly gathered information, too, for comparison. Their husbands apparently got up in the morning when they did--or earlier, to go out running. One of them had a husband who cooked on Wednesday nights, since he had fewer classes to teach that day. When I heard that, I wondered if Robert had ever noticed which night was Wednesday and which was any other day of the week. He had certainly never cooked a meal, unless you counted opening cans. One of my friends swapped off child care with her husband two evenings a week, so that she could have a little time to herself. I had seen him swooping in at just the right hour to pick up their two-year-old. How did he know what time it was, where he was supposed to be? I kept myself to myself and smiled with the rest of them about their husbands' little foibles. He doesn't pick up his clothes? I wanted to say. That's nothing. And for the first time I wondered how the women who were actually on the faculty managed their lives--I knew one who was also a single