The Restoration Artist

by Lewis Desoto

  The first thing we saw was a white bandage wrapped around the boy’s throat. His face was pale. I brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, leaning over him, listening for his breath, just as I used to stand over Piero’s bed in the dark hours when he was small.

  “Why don’t you let him rest and come back in the morning?” the doctor said.

  “I don’t want him to wake up alone. He’s never been among strangers like this before.”

  “Monsieur Millar, I assure you he will be fine. Even if he did wake up in the next few hours I doubt very much whether he would be alert enough to recognize you. Come back tomorrow, as early as you like. I come on duty at seven. In fact, I don’t see why he can’t go home with you once I’ve checked him over tomorrow. The operation was less complicated than having one’s tonsils removed.”

  I reluctantly agreed.

  “We have to wait now. Until his throat heals. After that … well.” Dr. Dault shrugged. “After that we wait and see.”

  Darkness had fallen. We walked through the hospital gardens, past the tall cedars, which had receded into the gloom that comes after dusk, back to the entrance onto the boulevard. The lights of the shops and cafés seemed to beckon and offer a promise.

  “Are you hungry?” Lorca asked. “I didn’t have lunch.”

  “I am, yes.” I’d forgotten to eat too. I didn’t ask her where she’d been during the afternoon. I didn’t want to know.

  “Let’s go and find a restaurant. Do you know of a nice place nearby? I don’t know this part of Paris. Somewhere bright and busy.”

  I considered. I too wanted to be somewhere with people around, with the noise of life, drinking a glass of wine while sitting across a table from a beautiful woman. I wanted that sense of possibility that Paris always seemed to offer.

  “Les Belles Étoiles is nearby.”

  “Yes, I’ve been there. But it will be full of tourists at this time of year.”

  “There is a place near my apartment, where we used to go sometimes. On the quai de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. It’s called Le Trumilou. The food is good and simple. And the place has a nice ambience. It’s friendly and bright.”

  “Fine. I’d like to go somewhere that you know. I want to see something of your Paris. We can walk along the river.”

  As we made our way down to the Seine, I wondered if the choice of restaurants was wise. Would it have too many associations, too many reminders of the past?

  Le Trumilou had a bar in front and a dining room at the back with one long table down the centre and smaller booths around the edge. The patron greeted us and we followed him to a booth at the rear. Lorca ordered a whiskey-soda and I asked for a Pelforth beer. She lit a Lucky Strike and studied the dishes listed on the blackboard.

  “The plat du jour is usually good,” I said. It was blanquette de veau.

  “Steak frites and red wine,” she replied. “My favourite.”

  “I wonder if Tobias is still sleeping now,” I said.

  “I’m sure he is. The doctor said he would.”

  The waiter brought a basket of bread and cleared away our empty glasses. I ordered and he fetched the wine. I poured us each a half glass and buttered a piece of bread.

  “Did we make the right decision? What if it is all for nothing?” I asked.

  “This was the right thing to do. We had to at least try. Didn’t Père Caron tell us this was the best thing? And he knows Tobias better than we do.”

  “What if something goes wrong in the night? Anesthetics can have serious side effects. He’s just a small boy.” I brushed together the bread crumbs and arranged them into a little pile on the tablecloth. “And what if he can’t learn to talk anyway?”

  “You must have faith, Leo. Everyone who knows Tobias thinks you are offering him a chance at a new life. Père Caron, Victor and Linda, everyone.”

  “Do you think so too?”

  “Of course I do. Maybe more than anyone else. I know what Tobias means to you.”

  “You mean because of Piero?”

  “Your reasons for helping don’t matter. Your actions are what count.”

  I looked around the restaurant, at the familiar circus posters on the wall, then spoke quietly. “We used to come here. We all loved each other so much. I thought it would be forever.”

  “Oh, Leo.” She put her hand over mine.

  “You know, my childhood was really shitty. I grew up in an orphanage. People feel sorry for me when I tell them that, growing up without parents, not being loved and all the rest of it. But Claudine and Piero, they changed all that … and then …”

  The waiter arrived with Lorca’s steak and my veal stew in white sauce and slid the plates onto the table. He efficiently whisked away the bread crumbs into the palm of his hand, topped up the wineglasses and left us with a “Bon appétit.”

  I could not bear the look of pity on Lorca’s face, so I changed the subject. “Did you manage to get all your errands done?” I asked.

  “I didn’t go and see Armand. I didn’t see anyone. I went to Printemps to buy some cosmetics. Perfume.” She extended her wrist so that I could smell it. “Something new from Guerlain.”

  I touched her wrist with my lips, then looked up guiltily as the waiter passed, but his face, in the manner of Parisian waiters, remained impassive.

  Lorca said, “I also went to a music store on rue Saint-Jacques to get some manuscript paper and a metronome. It’s something I don’t have on La Mouche.”

  “So that you can continue with your composition. What did you call it, Nocturne?”

  “Nocturne for Lovers.” A tiny smile touched the corner of her mouth.

  We directed our attention to the food, our conversation casual, then I made a decision and plunged ahead. “Your friend Jeanette—I think she knows about us. I ran into her the day of the storm, and she told me a bit about … your past.”

  “It’s not anything I want to talk about, Leo. At least, not now.”

  The waiter came and asked if we wanted dessert or coffee.

  Lorca said, “I think I need a brandy.”

  “Two,” I told the waiter before he moved away.

  “Do you still love your husband?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love, not properly.” She gave me a frank look. “Maybe I only love my music.”

  I thought of my art. I thought of Claudine and Piero and the choices I’d made. “Does it have to be one or the other?”

  “A teacher of mine, who was trying to dissuade me from a career in music, once said to me that the artist should not love, because next to love, art pales by comparison. He said that if I fell in love I would lose my music, that true art demanded sacrifice and suffering, and a devotion to the exclusion of everything else.”

  “Do you think that is true?”

  “It’s true that you have to be something of a selfish bastard to make art.”

  “Without love, without family, I don’t see how an artist can have anything really worthwhile to say.”

  “I’m not sure. Sometimes it seems that unhappiness and suffering bring out the best in art. It’s like a flower growing in a desert. In spite of the desert. Or because of the desert.”

  “I’m not one of those,” I said. “I would rather love than make art.”

  Her smile was rueful in response. She lit another cigarette, saying no more.

  I paid the bill and said good night to the patron. The waiter held the door open for us. “Bonsoir, monsieur, madame.”

  Outside, the usually busy quai had finally emptied of traffic. We crossed and stood on the embankment above the luminous river. The white facade of Notre-Dame rose above the rooftops, white as the moon. A tour boat chugged past below, snatches of laughter and music coming across the water. Lorca linked her arm in mine and leaned against me as we strolled, just like any of the other lovers around us in the warm summer night.

  But as we turned onto rue du Figuier, and I said, “The apartment is just along here,” she let her arm
fall and moved away slightly. I sensed the tension in her body. On the top floor I unlocked the door and turned on the lights, then ushered her inside. There was furniture in the living room but little else, no ornaments, no photographs, no pictures on the walls.

  “I can’t offer you a drink or anything,” I said. “I emptied all the cupboards and the fridge the last time I was here.”

  “Have you lived in this apartment for a long time?”

  “More than ten years.”

  She looked past me. “Which room is your studio?”

  “Through here.”

  The studio was empty except for one large blank canvas on the easel. The paints and brushes were neatly arranged along the edge of the long table. The only pictures were the two on the corner of the table. Lorca leaned over without touching the drawings and studied them. The first was of a curly-headed boy sitting in three-quarter profile, his eyes in the act of turning to the viewer, his mouth just opening, as if he is about to say something.

  “I can see why Tobias reminds you of him,” she said, then, “He looks a lot like you too.”

  My voice started to tremble but I kept it steady. “I drew that picture in this same room, a couple of years ago.”

  “Is this your wife?” she asked, lightly touching the edge of the other drawing.

  I nodded and shoved my hands into my pockets. The drawing was done in a reddish chalk. The woman’s face was composed, serene. “I did that from a photograph,” I said. “Claudine didn’t like posing.”

  “Oh? Why not? She should have been flattered.”

  Lorca turned around and must have seen the bleak look on my face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you.”

  “I’m going to sell the apartment,” I said. “That’s why it looks this way. Everything has been packed up or given away to charity. I can’t stay here any more. The place is haunted. You can’t love ghosts.”

  “Or live with them,” she added.

  “It’s hard to forget. Wherever you are. I miss them both terribly. And for a long time I have blamed myself for what happened.” I folded my arms and stood in front of the bare canvas. “But sometimes … sometimes there are moments when I do forget. And then I understand that their deaths are absolute. Nothing I feel or think or do will make the slightest difference to that fact.”

  I sat down heavily in the single chair, leaning forward with my hands dangling between my knees.

  “Maybe it was a mistake for me to come here,” she said.

  I picked up the drawing of Claudine and studied it. “You said earlier you didn’t think you’d ever truly loved your husband. Well, I don’t know if I ever loved Claudine. Properly, I mean. I failed her in some way. I think, sometimes, that she could have been happier with someone else.”

  “What do you mean ‘properly’?”

  I sighed. “In the way that we all want to be loved. Utterly, completely, without reservation.”

  “Sometimes we can only love our art,” she said in a barely audible voice.

  I stood up. Neither of us spoke. Everything was in the look we exchanged, all the unspoken longing, the hope, the fear. We knew each other, and at the same time it was as if we had just met. I understood that I must go to her, I must take those few steps across the floor and kiss her. Unless I took those few steps, we would stand like this forever, like those two figures in “Love and the Pilgrim,” an unbridgeable chasm between us.

  A shadow seemed to flit through the room, just on the corner of my vision, and I turned, but of course there was nothing there. The drawing of Claudine was still in my hand. I put it back on the table.

  “It’s late,” I said. “I’ll make up a bed for you.”

  She came towards me, glanced into my eyes and lifted her hand to me, but I moved past her, close enough to touch, but not close enough.

  In the hall she collected her bag and carried it to the bathroom. I made up her bed in the main bedroom and left the door ajar. “Good night,” I called and went into Piero’s room.

  I lay there in the darkness, listening to the silence of the apartment and the faint sound of traffic from the direction of the quai along the river. Maybe Lorca was right. Art could not break your heart and fill you with loss the way love could. And my art was really all I had, all that I had ever had. It was the only thing real in this confusing life. Everything could be taken away from me except that. A part of me had always believed that, ever since I started drawing at the Guild.

  I must have dozed off, for a sound brought me awake, as if a voice had called. I got up from the bed to stand at the window. The moon was still bright. I turned away from the window and crossed to the door and went into the hall, walking with that dreamlike motion that is almost a floating, not quite knowing what place I was in yet knowing my destination. The hall was in darkness, but a thin band of white showed at the bottom of the bedroom door. With that same floating motion I saw my hand reach out and rest on the door handle. I hesitated, feeling a presence watching me. Looking over my shoulder, I glimpsed that shadow again, the same one I had sensed in the studio earlier. I waited. A strange feeling came over me, like a warm breath of air, familiar, comforting. And then it was gone. I turned the door handle.

  The room was filled with a soft warm glow, like the honeyed light of a harvest moon. She was sitting propped against the pillows with the edge of the sheet resting across her waist. Her hair was black against the white linen and her eyes were black against the paleness of her skin.

  “Lorca,” I said, to hear my own voice and know that this was not a dream.

  She had been waiting for me. I lay down on the bed and put my arms around her. This was what I wanted. Just this—the simple, essential fact of the two of us together. The wondrousness of it, me in her and she in me, and nothing else.

  When I wept afterwards, her lips kissed the tears away.

  CHAPTER 30

  I HAD MADE THE DECISION. I WAS GOING TO ABANDON the restoration. “Love and the Pilgrim” would remain in their landscape of shadows, the gap between them would never be breached; they would always be reaching for each other.

  After manoeuvring the picture back into its place above the doorway, I removed my palette and paints and brushes and all the other equipment from the makeshift table and moved everything to the far side of the chapel. There was a broom in the vestry, and I used it to sweep up any charcoal dust and bits of paper, then filled a bucket with sea water and gave the floor a good wipe-down.

  I turned my attention now to the large blank canvas on the opposite wall. Though I was forsaking those two figures in Asmodeus’s lost pastoral, whoever they were, that did not mean I was going to abandon the chapel, or my commitment and promise to Père Caron.

  Reassembling the table, I set out my equipment in an orderly arrangement. The palette had been wiped clean, the brushes had been washed. I had enough colours, having filled a suitcase with painting gear in the studio on rue du Figuier. I was ready.

  The morning was bright and clear, the blue air fresh with a breeze from the west, small puffy white clouds like bleached scallop shells hanging in the sky, the smells of beach and ocean and lavender coming in through the open door.

  I wanted a fresh start. The surface had been prepared with a priming of my own recipe, powdered calcium carbonate and titanium white pigment, mixed into an emulsion with oil, glue and some dammar varnish. I began by brushing a wash of raw umber, thinned to a liquid consistency with turpentine, over the whole canvas, covering the charcoal sketch of the two figures and the building. This was my usual procedure, since I never liked painting on a white surface. Tones were impossible to judge accurately against the brightness of white, and this way, any little patches that remained unpainted while I worked on the picture would not stand out as white holes. The umber would unify the whole surface.

  Because I was using so much turpentine the chapel filled with a powerful odour that made my eyes water. I opened both windows and the front door to let in a cross-breeze. An unusual so
und came to my ears, an engine burping and chugging in fits and starts, as if being coaxed along reluctantly. The sound was coming from inland. I laid down my brush and stepped over to the doors. A green tractor lumbered across the narrows, smoke belching from the exhaust, a low cart pulled behind. At the wheel, his laughter audible now, was Père Caron. Perched behind him, hands on his shoulders, Tobias stood balanced, shirtless and wearing his straw hat, his face crinkled in silent mirth. The bandage around his throat was bright against his browned skin.

  The tractor shuddered up to the door of the chapel, where the priest shut off the coughing engine. Tobias jumped down and ran over, taking my hand in his, beaming up at me, tugging me towards the tractor. I waved away a cloud of oily diesel smoke.

  “You’ve picked an unusual way to arrive, Père Caron.”

  “It’s a humble chariot, I admit,” he said, dismounting and rubbing his knees. “And not the most comfortable either. Since the tide was out we thought it would be best to come along the sands instead of trying to navigate the paths. It did the job.” He patted the tractor. “We’ve brought you a few things.”

  “Me?”

  The priest walked round to the trailer. “For your work.”

  In the little cart were two squat metal containers with the word Fioul printed on them.

  “Gasoline,” Père Caron said. “I also have three flood lamps for you and a little generator which will run on the gasoline. Now you will be able to paint no matter what the light conditions. At night too. I’ve noticed you sometimes work late, and that little oil lamp you’ve got isn’t much good.”

  Tobias was busy untying the rope holding the equipment and pulling down what looked like a battered but serviceable wicker rocking chair.

  “This is very generous of you.”

  “Thank Victor and Linda. The generator is theirs. The lamps are from Martin Levérrier at l’épicerie. The chair is something I found in my attic.”

  “This is all marvellous.” I lent a hand to Tobias, who was struggling to unload one of the fuel canisters.