Shadows of Paris

by Eric D. Lehman

  Finally, after a lonely, rainy time at that station, and the next, and a tense moment when through inattention I almost missed my final stop, I walked from the small, deserted station into the empty town. I found the village map and slouched my way down the main street to the Auberge Ravoux, which was transformed into the “Maison du Van Gogh.” The metal gates were padlocked and the charming tavern, which Cygne had assured me “served authentic French food” was dark. I cursed and thought of other ways I could be spending the day. Reading Montaigne’s Essais, or walking the Tulieries with her…

  I wandered up the narrow side street to the Musée Daubigny, which was also closed. The tourist office was open, though, and they cheerfully offered me the chance to buy postcards of scenes that Van Gogh painted of the town and surrounding area. I declined and stomped down the concrete stairs, past an old rick converted to picnic area, and up the long hill in a pouring rain. The Église Notre Dame Auvers appeared at the top of another staircase. It was covered with wet, olive moss and abandoned scaffolding. I hunched inside, shaking off my black wool coat. The transept was empty, and a small old woman praying in the nave was the only sound. I sat down in one of the wobbly wooden chairs, throwing my coat over another.

  What was I doing here? Why did I think this would be an escape? Nothing I did let me off the hook, no matter what Lucy said. I did not deserve her sympathy, her advice, or her friendship. And the idea that I could be happy, an idea that had secretly bloomed in me these last weeks, fed on literature and art, on food and camaraderie? Well, that was the most selfish idea of all. My mind ran on like this, and I sat there for nearly an hour, long after the old woman had hobbled out into the rain. Slowly, my brain cleared, emptying of all memory, all analysis, all questioning. Only the hum of the church’s heating system mattered.

  The bells tolled fifteen hundred hours. I walked out, prepared to leave Auvers-sur-Oise, but as I opened the door, a splash of sunlight brushed in. I looked back, and the stained glass was glowing like a basket of fruit. How had I not noticed? Now, I had no excuse, really, not to follow the signs, past the fallow winter wheat fields, past the murder of crows that picked through the muddy earth. At the top of another long hill was a cemetery, surrounded by a pitted stone wall. Inside it was an enormous square, full of ordinary graves instead of magnificent vaults. Strangely, it didn’t bother me as much this time. Only a few twinges of fear ran through my stomach as I walked around the edge of the burying ground to his grave. Or rather, two graves, because I had forgotten that his brother broke down only a few months after Vincent perished. Someone had placed plastic sunflowers by the tombstones, and I could see that behind them along the wall, real ones waited patiently for spring. Small trinkets and postcards lay buried in the bed of ivy that grew over both graves like a warm blanket. I pulled one out of the dirt. The writing was Korean, a language even more indecipherable to me than French.

  People all over the world connected with Van Gogh. Why? His painting, of course. But it wasn’t just that. There were many painters, even at his level of excellence. No, it was also his story, I supposed. It contained all the things that made literature interesting: insanity, genius, tragedy, failure, but also friendship, integrity, loyalty, heroism… People connected with the story, because it was their own. People connected…

  As I stood there on that upland of the crows, alone on a winter day with the two brothers, my mind followed two tracks. The first was the simple one: that I must absolutely convince Lucy to paint, that it was my duty to encourage her as Theo encouraged Vincent, that the only way that sunflowers grow is if someone plants them. Such effort was probably futile, and most likely would have the opposite effect. But that didn’t matter.

  The second was of another grave, one that I had never returned to. That was my duty, too. I needed to ask forgiveness, and maybe to say goodbye. It might have been obvious to everyone else, and obvious to me now, but at the time, well, it was a bit of a shock. Lucy’s words leaving Le Saint Amour came back to me, and sunk in. I must stop selfishly playing my melancholy lyre, and letting the Furies tear me apart. These two metaphors, brothers, soaked into my body, came together, apart, and together again, until I realized they were the same thought.

  “I may not deserve happiness,” I said to the silent Van Goghs. “But she does.”

  At the moss-grown church, a cloud of pigeons wheeled from the tower, dipped toward me, and then flew back to their perches. I detoured inside and dropped Ann Marie’s platinum ring into the donation box. A few other pilgrims passed me on the way up the hill, looking hopeful. On the way to the station, I passed the Otto Zadkine sculpture of Auvers’ beloved artist. He looked gaunt and harried, but faced directly at the fading winter sun.

  ****

  Two days later, I stopped by the Rose after class. Lucy was sitting at the front counter. “Catch,” I said, and tossed her a furry ball. Startled, she grabbed it out of the air.

  “For your cats.” I smiled. “And nice catch, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy said primly, inspecting the toy. “The cats say thank you.”

  I continued my assault. “I mean, I’ve seen you shelve those books, too. You could be a professional juggler.”

  “Ha, ha.” Lucy tossed the toy back at me. I missed it, and one of the cats sprang out of nowhere, batting it between the stacks.

  “Guess I need to work on my hand-eye coordination.”

  Lucy said nothing, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Listen, I wanted to apologize for what I said after the cemetery. I had no right to attack you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” She considered. “But it must be difficult for you.”

  “There you go again, taking my side. I was an emperor-sized jerk.”

  Lucy blushed, something I had never seen. “Yes…okay. You were. But…”

  “But,” I interrupted. “That’s over now. Can we be friends again?”

  She smiled, and then I heard that throaty chuckle. “Monsieur Byrnes, you never cease to surprise me.”

  “Well, the reason I’m here is not a surprise. I’m looking for a book.”

  “You’ve come to the right place.”

  “Could you find me the second volume of the Goncourt Brothers’ journals? I find them hilarious.”

  “I know right where that is. Back in a jiff.”

  While she disappeared downstairs, I rifled through the papers behind the counter. There was a “to-do” list Lucy had written out that was checked off. I pocketed it. She brought the book upstairs, I paid for it, and gave her a cheery goodbye.

  On Thursday afternoon I returned. When I poked my head inside, she wasn’t there. Downstairs, then? No, after a quick circuit of the cramped but strangely comforting area, I only found a tortoiseshell cat wrapped around the catnip toy I had brought. I petted her and creaked back up the stairs, just as Lucy was emerging from a door behind the counter, which with my usual denseness I had never noticed.

  “Whoops!” We said at the same time, both startled at the entrance of the other. She chuckled, and I smiled.

  “Hello, Ms. Doubleday. I have something for you today, and I need you to promise not to be mad.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Promise?”

  “Absolutely not.” She chuckled again. “You’ve got a bad reputation with me now, pal.” But then, perhaps thinking how this could be misinterpreted, said, “But I promise to pretend not to be mad. How’s that?”

  I considered. “Very well.” Laying the folder I was carrying down on the counter, I tried to smile brightly, actually terrified at how this could all backfire on me. Luckily, the black cat jumped onto the counter, apparently thinking I had brought another toy. Lucy stroked the cat, and opened the folder. It contained the “to-do” sheet I had stolen from her earlier that week, and a signed letter, which was in very formal French.

  “You’ll have to translate, I’m afraid.” I knew the gist of what it contained, but wanted her to get it from the letter, not from me.


  “This says.” She held up the letter. “William, what…”

  “Just read it. And since I couldn’t read most of it, maybe you’d better tell me.”

  “It is a letter from a Monsieur Haineau. It states some credentials…”

  “Haineau teaches at the École, but he’s also a professional handwriting expert of some sort. I think he works for the government. Read the second paragraph.”

  “It says something like, this handwriting sample comes from a woman with excellent hand muscle skills. It is my professional opinion that she has no damage to her nerves. It also has some scientific information, and then says…oh, William, why?”

  “I’ve seen you do things, and I didn’t think you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “What the letter says…that any damage you sustained has been healed.”

  Lucy was almost crying. “I can’t believe…”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. I had to tell Haineau a little about you, but I didn’t tell him about the accident until after he examined the writing. He said he would have never known.”

  “I don’t…”

  “He said that often steady work with the hands can completely heal the sort of damage you sustained. Something about restructuring neural pathways.” I waved at the bookstore. “You’ve been in rehab all this time, and you didn’t even know.” I petted the black cat. “And I’m sure the demanding petting schedule helped, too.”

  Lucy nodded, choking a laugh out. “You really are a jerk, you know.”

  “I know,” I said, smiling. But I decided that was enough for that day, leaving with a friendly wave. Let it sink in. When I returned to the apartment at Rue Tiquetonne, I hung the Louis Armstrong picture back up on the wall. What had I ever had against it?

  ****

  On Saturday we met at the Fontaine des Innocents without either of us mentioning it. She had two café crèmes and croissants, which, to my surprise, were filled with ham and cheese instead of chocolate.

  “I’m hungry today,” she explained.

  “Excellent. Well, we can eat them on the metro,” I said, leading her toward the Les Halles station.

  “What, are you sick of walking?” She chuckled, mouth full of pastry.

  “We’ll walk back. But I’d like to go somewhere this morning before it gets too crowded.”

  “How mysterious,” Lucy mumbled.

  “Careful there, don’t choke.” I smiled, and led her to the Porte d’Orléans platform. The train pulled up seconds later, and we boarded, sitting down on the folding seats and finishing breakfast. At the Montparnasse Bienvenue stop, I lunged out like a sprinter, and Lucy followed, snorting and chuckling.

  “Sorry…my last experience on the trains was not so good.” I led her through the passage and up the stairs to daylight.

  She blinked as I led her up the hill toward the skyscraper. “Are we going up the tower? I must warn you that Paul took me up there for a date.” She laughed.

  I cringed, but shook my head. “No, not at all.”

  At the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet, I turned her to the left, and she saw where I was taking her. Her feet slowed, and before she could say anything, I smiled. “We’re going to the cemetery,” I lied. “Don’t panic.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, and followed me into the marché de la creation, an outdoor art market forming an alley in the wide central island of the street. The sun was out, and the green awnings had been rolled back. A few artists were still setting up their paintings and objets d’art, placing them on folding tables and hanging them on wires that led along the cloth panels which separated the stalls.

  “Maybe you can help me out here,” I said in an offhand way. “I can’t tell which of these artists are good, and which are just dabblers.”

  “Well, I think they’re all good. I’m sure they have to apply to display here.”

  “Right, but there’s obviously a range of quality. Like this one here.” I pointed to a stall full of landscapes. “Are these any good?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Well…”

  “Be honest.” I wagged a finger.

  “They are not very good,” she whispered. “I don’t know if he understands English, though.”

  “Ha…well, let’s talk about each one at the next stall, then?”

  We moved to the next pair of booths. “Okay, well, he seemed like he was trying too hard to make his paintings look like Monet.”

  “Was he?”

  “Yes, maybe. But he’s just copying someone else’s style. He’s not an artist, he’s an impersonator.”

  I nodded. “What about these two?” We inspected both stalls and moved to the next.

  “The woman on the right is making very nice little pottery, even though it is obviously geared toward the tourist trade rather than display in a museum. The man on the right is just splashing paint on the canvas.”

  I smiled broadly at this. “That seems like a lot of modern art to me.”

  “No!” Lucy protested, then recanted. “Well, okay, much of it is that. But some of it may look like that, but to a trained eye, it is pure genius.”

  “Pure genius, eh?” I nodded sagely. “Well, let’s continue.”

  We walked slowly down the rows of artists, past line drawings, handmade jewelry, and cartoons, playing critic. Near the end, almost at the walls of Cimetière Montparnasse, Lucy stopped in front of a stall full of portraits. They seemed little different than some of the others to me, but she had a rapt expression on her face.

  “Bonjour, madame,” the gray-bearded artist said, sipping a coffee.

  “Bonjour, monsieur. Votre art est très bon.”

  “Merci!” The old man seemed quite pleased. They began chatting in French, and I faded into the background, pretending to scrutinize a stall of cat paintings. As the minutes wore on, I walked quickly back along the row to where I had seen something inexpensive to purchase. When I returned, Lucy was shaking the man’s hand and taking a business card. “Au revoir.”

  “Au revoir, madame.”

  We continued browsing, and once we had gone a sufficient distance, I asked, “Well, please tell me why his art was so much better than the others.”

  “Oh!” Lucy seemed surprised. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me.” I shrugged. “I’m a barbarian, remember.”

  She laughed. “Well, the lines, the colors, the strokes of his brush, the way the faces burst from the canvas. It’s inspiring. Look at this one.” She pointed to another painter’s canvas. “The weakness of the lines, the uncertain tones. In the other, well, the spirit given to us through color and light…quite extraordinary.”

  I nodded and smiled. “By the way, while you were chatting with le artiste, I got you a present.”

  “No! William, you shouldn’t have…” She peered into the bag, and pulled out a children’s art set, complete with tiny pastels, brushes, and watercolor cakes.

  “I figured you could start small.” I grinned, praying to Van Gogh that she would take it the right way.

  Mercifully, she dissolved in snorts and chuckles. “You are a barbarian.”

  We walked to La Rotonde for lunch. Lucy ordered a goat cheese, prune, and apricot pastry with salad, and I got a tower of leeks with beet sauce and a hard-boiled egg on top. We talked for three hours straight without stopping, during which I noticed that she either didn’t remember or didn’t mention that I had said we were going to the cemetery.

  “Thank you for today’s lecture, Ms. Doubleday,” I said, as we tramped down the long hill of the Boulevard St. Michel.

  “Now it is my turn to remind you to call me Lucy,” she returned softly, her hand brushing against my glove lightly.

  I spent that entire night lying awake in the tiny bedroom, listening to traffic on Rue de Turbigo. I deserved it, I tried to tell myself. I deserved every torture in the book.

  ****

  I wasn’t able to get out of the École that week before seven due to midterm examinations. The tea
chers seemed restless, and the administrative work I had let pile up needed to be done. So, I arrived at the Rose on Saturday, early, feeling like I had not been there in a year. Lucy greeted me cheerily. “How were the little monsters this week?”

  “The usual. Do you have the French lesson book you mentioned last time?”

  “Upstairs somewhere.” Lucy stood up and opened the door behind the counter. “Come on up while I find it.”

  “Okay…” I followed her up the narrow, turning staircase. At the top, another door opened into the apartment, which I reminded myself Lucy shared with Navarre. It was furnished with an eclectic mix of art deco and Swedish thrift, and I realized I had been expecting some sort of Second Empire hôtel. I could see Lucy inspecting one of at least ten jammed bookcases with a frown.

  On the table was a sketchbook, not the kiddy one I had bought her, but a real one. It was unfortunately closed, but a used charcoal pencil lay on top. I began to smile, and then I saw the cradle. It was leaning against the wall by the front windows, half in the sunlight, but at first I didn’t realize what it might mean.

  “I’ve got it,” Lucy said, beaming triumphantly. “Come on.”

  I turned and edged down the steep stairs, feeling her following. As I emerged into the warm belly of the Librairie, I began to think terrible thoughts. But then, as I stopped to pet the black tabby, I felt Lucy’s slim hand on my shoulder and those thoughts fled.

  “Let’s take a walk along the river,” Lucy suggested. I nodded and we wandered down to the Pont de Sully, where we crossed the Ile Saint-Louis, and ducked down to the wide quais. The massive stone walls with their ancient iron rings seemed to enclose us in a private world. A woman passed us, walking a dog, and an old man and his grandson tottered ahead of us, until we overtook them near Notre Dame. The cobbles were wet with recent rain, and a few times I caught Lucy’s arm as she began to slip. She smiled, and continued regaling me with a tale of her childhood in Massachusetts, walking the Freedom Trail in Boston. When she was finished, I told her about exploring Philadelphia with a school group, and my college graduation dinner at the City Tavern, drinking George Washington’s beer. As we crossed the Seine at the pedestrian Pont des Arts, heading towards the Louvre, I actually stopped and spun around, taking in the grandeur of the city.