The Muralist: A Novel

by B. A. Shapiro

  “Everyone I know is here. There isn’t—” Except she did have family outside New York. And they were in a place no one would ever think to look for her. “I . . . I could go to France.”

  “That’s even more dangerous than staying here,” Mr. Fleishman said dryly. “I’m sure there are other solutions that don’t—”

  “I have money,” Alizée interrupted, her thoughts narrowing, growing focused. “Quite a lot actually. The three hundred you returned. The rest from the ring. Mrs. Roosevelt’s paintings. I can use it to bribe officials, for visas, to get us all back here. I can—”

  “Money doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. It’s almost impossible to get anything done over there—with or without it.”

  “You’re using money to get people out.”

  “Not easily and not in all cases. Plus the ERC’s an organization, not a lone individual.” He shook his head. “It’s too risky. Complete folly.”

  “Your Varian Fry’s in France, and he’s perfectly fine.”

  “He’s not a girl. Or a Jew.”

  Suddenly, everything took on a startling sharpness. The streetlight slicing between the edges of the venetian blinds was blindingly white. Conversations on the sidewalk outside fully audible. The bitter odor of old coffee lining Mr. Fleishman’s empty mug. This could work. With Varian Fry’s help, and some luck . . .

  “Varian’s having a lot of trouble,” Mr. Fleishman was saying. “The Vichy police watch him constantly. Often, they refuse to issue exit visas even when he has US entrance ones in hand. He’s hunkered down somewhere in Marseille, hiding people, trying to get them out of France legally or send them through Portugal and Martinique. The authorities harass him and wait for him to make a mistake so they can expel him from the country.” He gave her a steely look. “With you, it would be much worse.”

  All those months of indecision were gone in a flash of clarity: this was the heroine’s choice. “Tell me where he is and I’ll go to him. I have more money than I need for my family. I’ll share what’s left with him. With the ERC. We’ll all be able to help each other.”

  “He’s not going to be able to help you, and you’re not going to be able to help him,” Mr. Fleishman insisted. “All his visas are already assigned. And you’ve got no business running around a war zone on a fool’s mission.”

  “I’m fluent in both French and English. I can translate for him. I know the country. I’m sure he’ll find lots of ways I can be useful.”

  “That’s not the point. Varian’s got his hands full.” Mr. Fleishman crossed his arms over his chest. “And how exactly would you get to France anyway?”

  “How did he do it?”

  “He flew. On an American passport with Eleanor Roosevelt’s support.”

  “I have Eleanor Roosevelt’s support,” she said, although of course she didn’t anymore. “She bought two of my paintings. Invited me to Hyde Park.”

  “You know Eleanor Roosevelt?” He was clearly astonished. “Paintings?”

  “She came to my flat to buy them. I’m an artist.”

  “Can you contact her? Tell her what happened . . .” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Of course you can’t.”

  Of course she couldn’t. “But I have an American passport,” she persisted. “And enough money to take a ship.”

  “There aren’t many ships still carrying regular passengers.”

  “But it sounds like there are some.”

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he mumbled as he began to flip through files on his desk. “But I’ll make some calls. Find someone who can put you up for a few days. That way you can take some time to sort through all the options before you make any decisions about which one’s the best.”

  “This is the best option.”

  Mr. Fleishman looked at her, and she saw both sorrow and compassion in his eyes. “I’d like to help you, Alizée. I really would. What you did was wrong, but you’re just a kid. A desperate kid trying to make your way through an unendurable situation. But I promise you, this is going to be even more unendurable. And I’m begging you not to do it.”

  “My mind’s made up.”

  “It’s no way to protect yourself. And not the way to help your family.”

  She saw he was weakening. “It may be the only way left.”

  He sighed and stopped looking through his files.

  “I can do this,” she said. “And I’m going to do it with or without your help.”

  “Please think this through. Take a little more time.”

  She shook her head.

  Mr. Fleishman raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ve got to be out of my mind, but fine, okay. I’ll give you Varian’s information and some papers that should help you reach him. But only because if I don’t, you’ll have no chance at all.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll make it work.”

  He hesitated, clearly wanting to continue his warnings, holding himself back. “Gyyn myt g’át,” he finally said. Go with God.

  Within an hour, Mr. Fleishman had found a temporary apartment and someone, as he said, “to keep her safe.” Her guardian angel, a man named Sy Lubin, would periodically patrol both the building she was staying in and her flat, as well as accompany her anywhere she needed to go. Which was to be as few places as possible. Mr. Fleishman also told her that under no circumstances was she to let anyone know where she was or where she was going.

  The magnitude of his concern and the swift pace of the changes were disorienting. Mr. Fleishman confirmed that Breckinridge Long had taken a shot to his shoulder and was expected to make a full recovery, that Nathan had been arrested, that an assassination attempt on a federal official was a crime that would be pursued to the full extent of the law, perhaps even meriting the death penalty.

  And she was on the run, a fugitive, in hiding. On her way to France. Everything she’d done over the past three years, everyone she’d known, set aside. Left behind. Images of New York jumbled with those of Arles, Cambridge, the French countryside. A kaleidoscope of times and places. Faces. Which had come first? Which were real and which imagined? Had she dreamed a train ride through rolling green hills? Standing in an enormous room with a Persian rug and cobalt-blue curtains? Shooting a man in the head?

  She was still uncertain when Sy Lubin came to the ERC office to take her to the apartment. A man of few words, he didn’t tell her anything about himself and didn’t ask any questions. He was wide-shouldered, thick, with the look of a longshoreman, which for all she knew, he might be. The apartment was small and well furnished, the home of a vacationing colleague of Mr. Fleishman’s, a vast improvement on her own living situation. Then she wondered why she had thought this. Her bedroom in Arles with its French provincial furniture and bright yellow rug was nicer than this. As was Tante and Oncle’s big house.

  She gave Sy the key to her flat, and he returned with some clothes, her passport, the paint can containing her $573, and a corned-beef sandwich. She gulped it down, surprised she was so hungry. Tante had made a wonderful brisket that she’d devoured just a few hours ago at lunch.

  When he asked if she needed anything else, she hesitated. She desperately wanted to be alone and just as desperately didn’t want him to leave. She shook her head, and he walked out the door. She took a blanket and broom from a tidy closet and pressed herself into the alcove next to the front door, blanket across her shoulders, broom across her knees. If they came for her, they’d expect her to be in the bedroom. This way she’d see them first and smack them with the broom before they knew what hit them. A heroine’s plan. She stayed up all night, waiting.

  The next morning, Sy purchased her ticket. She put it in the paint can along with the rest of the money and the papers to help her find Varian Fry. But her movements were awkward and rigid, controlled by someone else. She heard Sy explaining that she was not to leave the apartment until he came back after his shift, but it was as if she were eavesdropping on another person’s distant conversation.
The words had nothing to do with her.

  As soon as she was alone, she called Mark. She couldn’t leave without seeing him one more time. She told him she was working at the flat and if he had a few free minutes she had an idea of how he might like to spend it. He said he’d be over in less than an hour. If she left now and hurried right back, Sy would never know she’d been gone.

  They made love, and it was incredibly pleasurable and incredibly sad. She watched them from above, but she lived within the sensation, the deep wetness of his kiss, the length of his body pressed along hers. She was of two states, split apart, splintered from her core. She loved him, and she was going to vanish from his world, disappear without warning. A cruelty of mammoth proportions. But she was actually doing him a favor. He deserved someone who was whole.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him even more tightly to her. She gasped and fell back into herself as he touched a spot deep within her. The sensation obliterated all sound, all thought.

  Mark groaned, shuddered, and then lay still. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I love you.”

  She jumped up and started to dress, as aware as she had been unaware only a moment before. She had to get back to the apartment. Fast. This had been a mistake. What if she’d been followed?

  “What is it?” Mark asked. “Why so jumpy?”

  “Not jumpy. Just busy.”

  Mark sat up and pulled on his pants. “I’ve got to get back to work, too,” he said. “But I need you to come by when you get a chance. I need a critique. I’m doing something new and need to talk it through.”

  Alizée buttoned her shirt, missed a button, started all over again, her fingers fumbling, not moving under her own volition, suddenly damp with sweat. She would not be coming by. Might never be coming by. “What new?”

  “The big canvas. Like yours. I wanted to give it a try, but something’s off.”

  She grabbed a pair of overalls from the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. What had she been thinking? They could be outside the door. “Your color blocks?” she asked vaguely.

  “I’m not using the scale to its best advantage.”

  “Scale, scale,” she repeated as she climbed into the overalls, trying to grab on to his meaning. “The thing is, the big canvas, well, it dwarfs the viewer. The image is all there is.”

  “Which is why it seemed perfect for my blocks. People want to dismiss them like that idiot at the Times who said they were something ‘a housepainter could do,’ but if the scale’s larger maybe people won’t be able to walk away as quickly. They’ll have to stay, even for an extra minute, and look. See the vibrancy. That it’s not static. That it’s alive.”

  “Yeah, that’s good.” She would use a different route back to the apartment. Wear a different coat. Then they wouldn’t know it was her. “You’ll hit them between the eyes.”

  “But I don’t think the painting’s as powerful as its size,” Mark said. “And I don’t know why.”

  She could do this last thing for him. She closed her eyes and visualized one of his color block paintings. She distorted the canvas into a taller and wider version of itself, then added more canvases that grew progressively bigger. She made them dance with each other so she could see them from all angles. “Are you keeping the shape of the blocks the same?”

  “Yes,” Mark said slowly.

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t.” She clicked the overalls shut and reached for her boots. A hat. The big floppy green hat. It would hide her face. She’d look completely different than when she came in. “Make them wider, maybe more square than rectangular.”

  “Or narrower . . .”

  “Try both.” She yanked her spring jacket off a hook, too light for December, but it would have to do. “See what happens.”

  He kissed the end of her nose. “You haven’t even seen the damn thing and you’ve got better ideas than I do about how to fix it.” He buried his face into her neck. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  She pulled away and pushed him toward the door. “Shoo,” she said. “I’ve got work to do and so do you.”

  But as with Mark, she couldn’t leave without a final good-bye to Montage. She turned in a semicircle, scanning the four canvases, taking in the elements that gave it power: the colorations, the juxtapositions, the fragments of style and imagery she’d put together in unusual combinations, the sand she’d mixed into the red paint. It was part of her. Her art. Her family. Her hopes. Her passion. Her doppelgänger.

  She grabbed a small pot, filled it with water, pulled the plug out of the Philco and put it into the hot plate, turned it on. She’d have a cup of tea, stay with Montage a moment longer, love it like she’d just loved Mark, let it go, too. It broke her heart, but she knew Mark and Lee would take good care of it until she got back. If no one got to it first. Merde.

  The mural was in danger just as she was.

  It needed protection. The police, Long’s people, the isolationists, who knew who else. They were going to come after it the same way they were coming after her. Perhaps kill it as they wanted to kill her.

  She grabbed a screwdriver and a bread knife. She approached #1, lifted it from its easel, stopped. How could she? How could she not? She was the heroine. She’d accepted the part. It was her responsibility to rescue everyone. It was her role.

  She quickly removed the canvas from its stretchers, taped the edges to the floor, lifted the knife. Better in pieces than dead. With a rapid slash of the blade, she sliced the canvas from top to bottom. She did it again in the opposite direction. She did the same to #2, #3, and #4. Sixteen two-by-two-foot squares. Fragmented, but still alive.

  Then she noticed her other politicals, her reversals. They thrust themselves at her, called to her, beseeched her: we are you, too.

  Her body of work. She couldn’t leave them here to die either. She took the two cloth bags she used for shopping and put eight squares in each, hefted them to her shoulders. Unwieldy, but she could make it to the ERC apartment. It was only thirty blocks. But it was all she could carry. She would drop these off and return for the others.

  45

  MARK

  Louise confided in Becky, who was so appalled at her friend’s revelation that she told her boyfriend, Phil, and it was Phil who informed Mark when he got back from Alizée’s. Mark was also appalled. He’d never liked Louise, no one but Becky seemed to, and even Becky was sure to avoid her after this. How could she do such a thing to a fellow artist? And how did she find out about the mural switch in the first place?

  He had no answers to these questions as he raced back to Alizée’s apartment. He’d been gone for almost an hour. What if someone was already there? Scaring her? Hurting her? Taking Montage away? But no, Phil said Louise hadn’t contacted anyone until this morning. There hadn’t been enough time. He slowed down, tried to figure out how to break the news.

  When he turned the corner, Alizée was hurrying away from her building. He ran to catch up with her. She had a bulging cloth bag over each shoulder, was slightly bent forward beneath the weight. And why was she wearing that ridiculous green hat? He grabbed her arm.

  Alizée spun around, her eyes full of fright. When she saw it was him, relief flooded her face, but the fear quickly returned. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s wrong?”

  Even though no one was in earshot, he pulled her closer. “I’ve got some bad news.”

  Alizée’s hand flew to her throat. “They found me? They know what we did?”

  “Found you? Who? No, it’s nothing like that. It’s about Montage.”

  “Oh, oh. Okay. Good.”

  “No, it’s not good.” Mark took a deep breath. “It’s Louise. Bothwell. Somehow she found out about Montage and the plan to swap it.”

  Oddly, Alizée appeared almost pleased by this news. “How could that be? Only the five of us know about it, and no one would ever say anything. Especially not to her.”

  “Maybe she overheard something. Put things—”
<
br />   “Jack,” Alizée said. “It had to be Jack.”

  “That occurred to me.”

  “It wasn’t Lee or Bill.”

  “He’d only have said something if he were drunk . . .”

  Alizée nodded.

  Mark hated to think this, but knew it was the most likely explanation. “What matters now is that Louise told someone high up at the WPA. And as wild as it sounds, whoever she talked to said he was going to call the police.”

  Alizée took both bags from her shoulders and held them out to him. “Here’s Montage,” she said. “I need you to hide it.”

  “What?” He looked in the bags, and it took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. No. She hadn’t. She had. “What the—”

  “It’ll be fine. Like Humpty Dumpty.”

  “Humpty Dumpty?” Mark repeated, his stomach clenching. This was bad. “Alizée, please, you’re not making sense.”

  She glanced behind her, behind him, across the street. “Just take them,” she hissed. “Give some to Lee, to Bill, to Jack. Split them up. Hide them. I’ll put them together when I come back.”

  “Come back?” Mark dropped the bags and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Come back from where?”

  “Pick up the bags!” Alizée twisted from his grasp. “If you let them go, even for a second, they’ll take them from you. Try to destroy them!”

  Mark did as she asked and tried to keep his voice soft and calming. “I’ll keep them safe. I promise. But where are you going?”

  “I’m, ah, I’m going to the WPA office. I never got my check this month. Too busy.” She looked over her shoulder again, up at the darkening sky. “It’s late. I have to get there before they close.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, no. You can’t. You have to go to your place. Hide the squares. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”

  “I can do that after we go to—”

  “No!” Her voice was shrill, on the edge of panic, or maybe already there. “You promised me, you promised. You need to do it now!”