by M. J. Rose
One afternoon my mother found me in tears over a muddy watercolor and asked why I was so upset. I told her it was because I’d wanted to make Papa something that he would love as much as the paintings in the museums and on our walls at home.
After she’d soothed me, she brought my father in, showed him what I’d done, and told him what I’d said.
He tried to point out how good the painting was. No matter what he said, I objected that it was not good enough and that my effort was not great enough to create the kind of gift I wanted to present to him.
“But Sandrine, you are my gift—don’t you know you are the treasure? You don’t have to become something you aren’t to please me.”
But it was not just because the book was about a painter that my father gave me The Picture of Dorian Gray. He’d told me the occult aspects of the tale had stirred his imagination, and he was interested in discussing those with me, too. For a self-proclaimed rationalist, he found arcane and esoteric knowledge surprisingly fascinating and studied it with great interest. He wasn’t alone. From France to Russia to America, the occult was experiencing a major revival.
My father believed it was a reaction to rationalism, materialism, and the exciting but frightening scientific discoveries being reported almost daily. Explorers returning from the Far East with stories of strange lands and mystical customs also fueled everyone’s imagination. My father had funded several of those expeditions, as well as others, to find the fabled Hermetic books based on the ancient pagan prophet’s esoteric teachings. Our library was full of books of ancient lore and magick mysticism and the forbidden. For my father it was also personal; he once told me that he believed his mother was something of a psychic, although she protested vociferously.
At the end of the second week of my stay in Paris, Grand-mère changed the routine. When I came downstairs at ten, she was already dressed in her street clothes and preparing to leave. When I asked where she was going, she told me she was meeting an old friend who needed some advice and added she would be back in time for our lunch.
Indeed she was, and since it was raining, we went to the Louvre.
I had grown up in museums, but even compared to New York’s august Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre was so large as to be almost overwhelming.
“As with all wonderful things in life except jewels, it’s best to avoid gluttony when visiting here,” my grandmother said as we entered the ancient palace.
“When we went to the Metropolitan, Papa and I would always pick one small section, take it in, absorb it, and then leave. He always said moderation makes for finer appreciation.”
She smiled. “He learned that from me, mon ange.” But it was a sad smile, and I turned away so she wouldn’t see the tears that had sprung to my eyes. Her grief always triggered my own.
We wandered through the Denon wing, on the first floor, heading to room thirteen. “One of my favorite paintings is here,” my grandmother said as we entered, and she headed to a relatively small-sized, brightly colored painting of a voluptuous nude female and muscular male.
“This is Tiepolo’s marvelous Apollo and Daphne. It’s so lush and imaginative, don’t you think?” she asked.
Before I could inspect it, I was distracted by two men in blue smocks, each standing at easels in front of a dark, muted painting.
I inched closer. They were copying a complicated and disturbing tableau. I strained to see its name.
THE WITCH OF ENDOR
SALVATOR ROSA, 1668(?)
Stepping back, I studied the original, eight-foot tall vision of horror. The central figure, according to the legend beside the painting, was the spirit of Samuel, called forth by the witch to speak to Saul, who had come to her for advice.
Shrouded in a white hooded robe, the spirit was illuminated by a frenzied fire. Behind him his guards look stricken. And no wonder—the scene was filled with terrifying creatures, owls with supernaturally bright eyes, bloody horse heads, and bat-winged skeletons. The witch herself was a wrinkled old crone, repulsive and offensive. My reaction to her was one of anger, though I didn’t know why.
As I turned to step back so I could examine the foreboding work from a greater distance, one of the painters caught my eye and smiled at me.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” he asked.
At that moment an older man came into the gallery.
“Are you talking or painting, Gaston?” The man, who appeared to be in his sixties, had piercing brown eyes, and there was something very gentle about him. I watched as he stood behind Gaston’s canvas for a moment, inspecting the work. Then he pointed to the masterpiece on the wall.
“Look at the life in that painting. The way Saul cowers. You can feel his fear of the specter and of the witch. That’s what you need to put into your effort. That fear. Have you ever seen a witch? A ghost? In the dark? At night? Been afraid?”
My grandmother had come up beside me. Taking my arm, she walked me toward the exit of the salon. “I’m suddenly in great need of an espresso. There’s a lovely café here. Let’s go.”
Before we crossed the threshold, I looked back at the painter and his teacher, still talking, the teacher gesturing to the painting on the wall. The student appeared to be listening with all of his soul. I could see how he was trying to soak up every bit of knowledge the teacher was offering. Something about the moment struck me and stayed with me, and as I fell asleep that night, it was the painting teacher’s voice I heard, telling his student to put his fear into his painting.
How easy it would be, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, to be able to take all of my fear and put it into a painting. To rid myself of it like that. I wondered if it worked. If you could paint yourself sane.
The next morning my grandmother left the apartment early again but was back for lunch. The following day, Wednesday, our routine resumed. On Thursday, for the third time that week, she left at ten.
I’m not sure why I did what I did that day. Perhaps the sinister goings-on in The Picture of Dorian Gray were affecting my thinking. But I had become certain Grand-mère was hiding something. When she told me she was going on one of these excursions, she always looked away from me slightly.
Papa had the same affectation whenever he was telling me something not quite true.
That Thursday morning, I grabbed my overcoat and followed her out. I’d never tried to trail anyone before, but I’d read enough of the very popular Sherlock Holmes books—one of Papa’s favorite characters in literature—to know the basics.
Keep a good distance between you and the suspect.
Stay close to the buildings.
Watch for the subject’s sudden movements.
Hang back in the shadows if the suspect turns.
Papa appreciated Holmes’s deductive reasoning, and we often read the stories at the same time so we could try our hand at outguessing the master detective. My father was far better at it than I was.
Sometimes on the street, we’d follow the careful rules of observation Holmes engaged in, and we’d spot something—a curious scuff on someone’s shoes, an umbrella with a strange nick in the handle, a woman with a parcel of unusual proportions—and guess what might be behind these oddities.
By the time I reached the corner of our block, Grand-mère had turned right and was almost to the next corner. I watched her cross the street and turn right again. I followed, but by the time I got to the next corner, she was gone. How had she managed to disappear so quickly? I looked left. There was no one in sight with Grand-mère’s rust-colored coat. I glanced in the opposite direction, but there was no one to the right either—or was there? Did I see a flounce of her dress turning into the rue des Saints-Pères?
I ran for a few yards and reached rue des Saints-Pères in time to see her stop in front of our family home, Maison de la Lune. The house that she’d moved out of and closed down. What was Grand-mère doing
here? And why lie to me about it? Why invent a friend who needed advice, or an appointment with a hairdresser or glove maker, if she was just going home?
It was then I noticed a man step out of the shadows beside the porte cochère. He was quite tall and towered over her as he bent to kiss her hand. His profile was to me, so when he rose, I could not see his face, but his hair was dark, like the color of a raven’s wing. His long fingers curled around the portfolio case he was handling with ease. His black coat was stylishly cut. When he moved, it was with an effortless grace. He looked like the kind of man my father would have said was comfortable in his own skin.
Together, the man and my grandmother stepped inside the courtyard, and the street doors shut after them.
They might be inside for a long time. Should I leave? It was a cloudy day with a chill in the air. There wasn’t any point in waiting, was there? What would seeing them exit tell me? What did I want to know?
I turned and started to walk away when I experienced a moment of dizziness. I put my hand on the wall of the building and stood still for a moment. I was facing the Maison de la Lune again. Looking at her walls, her steps, her windows. I wanted to be inside her, enclosed within her walls, sitting on the green velvet couches in the parlor and looking at the colors the lovely stained glass windows cast on the floor.
Maison de la Lune was the palace of my dreams. The elusive magical enclave that I’d never stopped thinking of since I’d left it when I was fifteen.
The hôtel particulier, as houses like Maison de la Lune were called, dated back to the mid-eighteenth century and was a type very popular in Paris. Built by noblemen as retreats, most were constructed around an inner courtyard and boasted lavish and well-manicured gardens. Ours was on the smaller side, and half of it had been turned into an indoor orangerie with a fountain, hothouse orange trees, and orchids.
While I was still deciding whether to leave or to stay, the porte cochère opened, and my grandmother came out. Alone. I waited, but the gentleman didn’t follow. How odd. Why was she leaving him inside?
Without glancing around, my grandmother walked toward the corner and turned north. Probably, she was going home.
Grand-mère had been vague about why she’d shut down the house. She’d said there were ancient pipes and structural damage, and to stay there was dangerous . . . that repairs were costly, and finding the right people to work on it, who wouldn’t take advantage of her financially, would take time. She said she was too distracted with my father’s death to see to it now.
I didn’t find it strange she would be restoring this old house. It was her lie that interested me. Now that I had started telling them, I was more aware of other people’s.
As soon as my grandmother was out of sight, I ran across the street, hoping the heavy door still took a long time to shut and lock. I was in luck and managed to slip through before the door closed.
Once inside the courtyard, I walked up to the house. Standing in front of it, I looked up at its limestone facade. What was Grand-mère hiding here? Why had she lied?
I had an overwhelming sense of belonging here, of being welcome. The same sense I’d had two weeks before, standing in the rain when I first arrived.
I lifted the bronze hand of fate and let it drop. The knocker should have been cold—it was, after all, a cloudy winter day—but instead it was warm to the touch.
Behind me, I heard footsteps and glanced around. A man and a woman whom I didn’t recognize were heading my way. There were six separate houses inside the courtyard, and even though there were often people coming and going, it wasn’t smart for me to be standing here. What if the Ferres saw me? They might say something to my grandmother, and then she’d know I’d followed her. I had two choices: either walk away so that it appeared I’d been visiting someone, or—
I lifted the knocker again and let it drop. A few moments passed. I heard footsteps, and then the door opened.
At my back I felt an odd little gentle push of wind, as if even the winter breeze knew where I belonged and wanted to help me inside.
I took a step forward.
“Yes?” A man was looking at me curiously.
I once read that there can be meetings between kindred spirits with whom you are so simpatico, your blood and your bones know it before you do. You come upon someone, and your very chemistry alters. You shift. Realign. Your senses become alert to sights and sounds and scents that eluded you just moments before.
“Can I help you?” was what he said, but I heard something far more complicated, a kind of harmony of chords and tones that resonated within me, and I was confused.
I could smell his scent: a mixture of amber, honey, and apples mixed with his own skin’s oils and the brisk winter air. Something deep inside me responded to the fragrance. I felt as if I could lose myself in it. Wrap it around me like a cashmere shawl and be forever warmed.
I did not even slightly understand the rush of sensations I was feeling. I’d never experienced this before. If I had understood what actually was happening, I might have turned and run, or so I’d like to believe. If I had, everything would be so different now. But we don’t have the ability to retravel time and change our decisions. I knew then and know still that no matter what the price, I never wanted to stop peering into those clear evergreen eyes and inhaling that heady scent. It did not occur to me to turn and leave. I wanted to be right where I was, to go inside and revisit the house I had never stopped dreaming of for the last ten years.
“Is my grandmother here?” I asked. It was the one question I knew would allow me entry.
“Who is your grandmother?”
There was everything ordinary about this meeting and everything extraordinary about it at the same time. I felt as if I were in one of Jane Austen’s novels, which my father had always made a little bit of fun of me for reading over and over.
The stranger was waiting for an answer. I needed to act normal if I wanted him to let me inside.
“My grandmother is Eva Verlaine.”
“You just missed her.”
“She said to meet her here.” My first lie of the day. I often counted them. A good day had one lie or less. A bad day had four or five.
“But she just left.”
I lifted the chatelaine I wore on my neck that included a gold watch. A gift from my father. Glancing at it, I said, “She said to arrive at eleven.”
He was leaning on the door with an attitude of insouciance that I didn’t like but at the same time was drawn to. “She didn’t mention it to me.”
“Perhaps she’s coming back to meet me.”
“When she left, she didn’t mention it.”
“Should she have? Wouldn’t it have been strange for her to have told you her plans?” I challenged.
“Do you want to come in?” He smiled despite my tone. And then he bowed and performed a bit of a flourish with his hands as if offering entry. “I shouldn’t be asking that—after all, it is your house, isn’t it?”
How to describe his voice? What words to use to explain a sound? I felt his voice. Fingers rubbing moss. Smoke curling. Wood worn and smoothed over time. His voice had darkness in it that hovered close to the ground, like a mist hanging over a lake deep in a forest at dusk. A bolt of sea-green velvet. A sensation as much as a series of sounds. It reverberated inside me.
When I look back on that meeting now, I think I fell in love in that moment.
He was waiting for me to answer, peering at me intently as if trying to understand my hesitation.
“Yes, I’ll come in. I’m certain she’s coming back to meet me here.”
As I stepped over the threshold, I wondered who he was to her. A lover here for an assignation? No, he was too young. My grandmother was still an attractive woman, but too seasoned for a young man. He had something of the poet in his eyes and sensitive lips. Had he taken her for his muse? Several
famous courtesans had written books about their lives. I’d read one: Mémoires de Cora Pearl. Had my grandmother decided to tell her story? Was this man her biographer? Or maybe he was a painter. I remembered there were portraits of women in our family hanging on the wall going up the staircase. I used to love looking at those strange paintings, all done, it appeared, by the same artist. Except that would have been impossible. They covered centuries, from the first painting of La Lune herself, from 1609, to Grand-mère’s aunt painted in 1832.
What if she’d sold the house to this man? Maybe that’s why he was hesitant about letting me in. I wasn’t sure about my grandmother’s finances. Perhaps she was no longer the mistress of the count who filled her coffers and gave her enough jewels to open a shop. Every time she’d visited us in New York, she had more treasures to show us. Maybe she had decided to sell the mansion and lead a simpler lifestyle and had not yet wanted to tell me.
I walked up the steps as if it was totally natural for me to act the mistress of the manse. And without my grandmother in residence, I might as well be.
As I stepped into the foyer, I felt an overwhelming sense of finally being where I belonged. I hadn’t been inside since I was fifteen, but this house had been alive in my memory all this time. I felt as if the marble floor itself was elated to feel my weight. As if the antique mirrors on the walls were delighted to be filled with my image.
Was it my imagination, or did the Limoges china vases’ shine intensify, did the silver flower bowls gleam brighter, did the crystals in the chandelier twinkle more? It seemed as if all the inanimate objects recognized me and glowed in welcome, pleased that someone who loved them had returned to notice them and pay them homage again.
“Am I keeping you?” I asked, thinking that this way I might discover what he was doing here.
Another smile, slightly secretive, as if he knew something but was waiting until I figured it out. “It’s quite all right.”
