Lisette's List (20 page)

“It’s a picture of your leave-taking from Russia, isn’t it?”

“You might call it that, yes. I can show you only one more, because last time you were here, Marc was disappointed that I had taken you away for so long.”

When she uncovered it, my breath escaped in a long, trailing sigh. Whereas the others showed exuberant, shout-it-to-the-sky love, this was quiet, private, exquisitely loving, an intimate portrait of an embrace. Marc’s half-open mouth pressed against her shoulder, his eyes nearly closed, his forehead against the side of her
cheek. He looked as though he felt himself in heaven; and in a lace collar and a dark dress, her deep eyes open, her small, three-pointed mouth closed, Bella was loving the moment. All was gratitude, all surrender.

I surrendered to the enchantment of this painting as well. I only wished that Marc had painted André and me in such a state of perfect love.

D
OWNSTAIRS
, I
STAMMERED
my appreciation. He asked me how I had come to love art. I told him of the Madonna and Child in the orphanage chapel, of the many paintings André and I saw on our gallery walks; and I explained how Pascal had acquired his collection, who the painters were, and how much he loved them.

“They are very important painters. How many did he have?”

“Three of each, plus a study of heads with one woman’s face all stretched taut and disarranged with one eye higher than the other. His son bought it cheaply from a concierge. I don’t know who painted it.”

“That could be either Modigliani or Picasso. What you have is a progression. Cézanne learned from Pissarro, and Picasso learned from Cézanne. A very important collection. Maybe you’ll let me see them.”

“I would if I could. They’re hidden now. I don’t know when I can recover them.”

The next part was hard to say, but I explained it all. Except for telling Pascal at the cemetery, this was the first time I’d had to tell anyone about André’s death. My world was so small in Roussillon that everyone knew. Marc and Bella instantly enfolded me in their arms, murmuring words of comfort.

Marc drew back, looked at me seriously, and gave my shoulders a little shake. “You must retrieve those paintings. They are too important to the world.”

“To the world? I had only considered them important to me!”

“Think larger, Lisette. Promise us that when the time is right, you will dedicate yourself to retrieving them.”

“I have already promised myself.”

In the kitchen, Bella cored an apple, cut it crosswise and arranged the discs in a circle, overlapping them slightly, like the petals of a flower around a dollop of the soft cheese. I wished I had cut an apple like that for André. Having no coffee, we drank hot water. The atmosphere was so homey that I asked what I had been burning to know.

“Were you ever acquainted with a young art dealer in Paris named Maxime Legrand? He worked at the Galerie Laforgue.”

Marc thought for a moment and shook his head. “A friend of yours?”

“My husband’s longtime friend. He was in my husband’s platoon. I don’t know if …”

Instantly they shared the same impulse, to lay their hands on my wrists.

I
WAS FULL TO
bursting on the way home. In careful handwriting, I added one more line to my List of Hungers and Vows.

10. Try not to be envious.

T
HAT EVENING,
I
SAT
at the table staring at my empty walls. Perhaps it was a higher art to invent a painting by assembling elements from one’s heart, like Marc did, rather than painting what one actually saw. I wasn’t sure. I had to think about it.

If I were to create a painting of my own, what would it contain? Like Marc, I could put anything I wanted in it. In my mind’s eye, I saw a couple, André and me, floating close together between the girders of the Eiffel Tower, held aloft by his open umbrella; a shorthaired
lady drifting alone in a rowboat without oars in a lake of the Bois de Boulogne; a row of small beds, one of them upside down; the sewn-together man resting his one hand on his son’s shoulder; a nun whose starched white headdress wings waved to me; a calendar with 13 May 1940 completely blackened; a narrow outhouse with a window and shutters; a white goat in profile wearing André’s wool cap and shedding a blue tear.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE MARTYR, THE GOAT, AND THE CHICKEN

1941

G
LORIOUS SPRING HAD DECKED THE ORCHARDS WITH PINK
and white apricot, plum, and cherry blossoms—enough to give a woman hope, if she hadn’t lost someone already. I could hardly reconcile myself to the thought that André wasn’t here to enjoy their fragrances.

The hillsides on the way to Gordes were deep yellow with broom—beautiful, until I remembered the edict from Vichy that broom, wild or cultivated, was to be appropriated for the making of fabric. But tractors for the harvest sat in the fields, unused because of the gasoline shortage. All farm work had to be done with horse and plow.

In the spirit of getting by, Maurice told me, his bus would be inoperative while the engine was rebuilt to run on gasogene, a fuel extracted from smoldering wood chips. This would be his last trip before the work of installing the apparatus would begin. In the same spirit of making do, I told him that by selling Geneviève’s cheese to René, I had been able to buy a live chicken already laying from a farmer at the Thursday market. I felt uncomfortable about it, since the chicken was worth more than what I had paid him, but I was happy to bring eggs as well as cheese to the Chagalls.

Maurice dropped me at the outskirts of Gordes, so he could go about his business quickly. I gathered that it was for the
Résistance
, maybe to collect some dropped ammunition. He was, after all, a patriot, a true
chevalier de Provence
, delivering ducks and ladies in distress and grenades.

That left me to discover alone the trunks and packing cases on the ground floor of the school. Bella’s lips were tight with resolve when she explained apologetically, “We’ve been advised.”

It took a moment for me to comprehend what she didn’t say.

“We saw the treatment of Jews in Poland half a dozen years ago. It was unspeakable then, and we suspect it’s worse now.”

“But here, in France?”

“Yes. Paris is not immune to a bully. Come upstairs.”

My fear for their safety suddenly loomed large. “Where will you go?”

“Come see Marc.”

It was a measure of his nature to welcome me in such a situation as warmly as he had done on my previous visits. He asked after Geneviève, remembering her name, and I told him about the chicken and presented him with eight eggs.

He opened the box and admired their soft color. “Like
café crème
. A shame to crack them open. Have you named your hen?”

“Not yet.”

“All animals who serve us deserve a name.”

“What is the Russian word for hen?”

He chuckled. “
Kooritzah
. Same as for chicken.”

“Kooritzah?”

“Kooritzah.”

“From this moment, her name is Kooritzah. She will remind me of the chicken that bore the two of you on her back in Paris.”

“May she support you as well.”

He had been working on a painting he called
The Martyr
. Against the background of a village aflame, a man wearing a Russian cap and partially covered by a fringed cloth was tied to a stake.

I felt outrage at that. When I questioned Bella about what the cloth was, she explained that it was a Jewish prayer shawl. Now I recalled seeing similar shawls hanging below men’s coats in the Marais district. Although the figure’s skin had turned yellow, his face was strangely peaceful. Below him, a suppliant woman leaned against his leg. The figures made me think of Christ and Mary Magdalene. Around him a crimson creature, half cow, half man, and a frightened chicken were tumbling in the sky. A soldier was ransacking a house, throwing chairs out an upper window, while a bearded Jew appeared to be reading verses from an open book and a fiddler was playing out his sorrow.

Beyond Marc’s innocent, childlike paintings of village life, here was what his art could do—mirror the blast of barbarity now happening in Europe. A painting such as this, seen by enough people, could get them to feel my outrage. It could get people to act, to resist, to march willingly to war, as André had done. With this single painting, I realized that art wasn’t just about love and beauty. It could also be a strong political force.

Marc had stopped working to talk to me, but I motioned to his brush. “Continue.” Watching would put me in the very heart of the art world, seeing an important painting in the making.

He laid down a worm of deep blue on his palette, flattened it into a circle, and worked black into it from the edges. “The most important aspect of a composition can be accentuated by the brightest color, or by the strongest value contrast,” he said.

With that, he painted two diagonal blue-black stripes on the figure’s white prayer shawl, using the flat of his brush. Then with the same pigment, he painted narrow straps on the man’s arms, using the edge of the brush.

“There is delight at the edge as well as at the end of a brush. Now there is no question that he is a Jew. And if you outline something, that draws attention to it.” He outlined the man-cow in the same hue.

“Are you suggesting that chaos and cruelty affect man and beast alike?”

“Oh-ho, aren’t you a quick study!”

He wiped the brush dry and touched it lightly to the roofs of the houses. As if by magic, the painting was coming together. Although it depicted conflict and cruelty, all of its elements were in harmony. He stepped away from his easel and asked if I had retrieved my paintings.

“No. It’s still not safe to have them in my house.”

He looked straight at me. “You’re right, but you must never give them up.”

I nodded. Vow number eleven would be
Retrieve the paintings
. Why hadn’t I put that on my list earlier? Only because it was so obvious that it didn’t require being written.

It was a privilege to help Bella lay some canvases in a crate and to wrap the portrait of lovers in a sheet. “I will never forget the tenderness of this one,” I told her.

“I postponed packing it in case you came again.”

“Thank you.” I couldn’t say that I needed this vision of love to offset the evidences of hatred in Marc’s martyrdom painting, but perhaps she understood that.

“May I ask you something? If I find the paintings and return to Paris, my deepest yearning is to be a part of the art world in some way. I was hoping for a position in a gallery, but I have no education. Do you know any kindly gallery owner who might take me on as an apprentice, just on the strength of my longing?”

“I’ll ask Marc. Maybe he can write to someone.”

“I know it was impulsive, but I offered myself as a washerwoman in the Louvre.”

“Lisette! That’s much too humble for you.”

“No, it isn’t. I would be happy doing that. Maybe you know a painter whose studio I could clean.”

She smiled. “I’ll ask Marc that too.”

They were preoccupied, so I didn’t stay long. At the door, I asked the question that had been distressing me: “Will you be safe?”

“If we act quickly,” Marc said. “Good health and long life,
lapushka.
”

“It’s Russian. It means something affectionate, soft as a kitten’s paw—something like ‘darling.’ ”

“I’ll come again before you leave.”

An embrace, and I stepped outside, feeling anxious for their safety. I hurried on in the spring drizzle to the place Maurice had left me, trying to hold on to those two words,
kooritzah
and
lapushka
.

T
HE MEN IN THE CAFÉ
had begrudgingly become accustomed to women coming in at the
apéritif
hour. I had stopped going during the cold weather of January and February, but Odette and I resumed our visits in April. A Vichy broadcast blamed the defeat of France on American bars, the English weekend, Russian choirs, Argentine tangos. “Absurd,” “ridiculous,” “shameful” were the muttered reactions. More serious was the proclamation that all previous French culture was decadent and only Aryan culture was pure. It was hideous to hear that said by a French announcer.

Would this mean that if my paintings were found by someone other than me, they could be turned over to the Germans to be destroyed? That made me anxious to retrieve them, but where else could I put them? For a moment, I was glad André had hidden them so well. No one would think to look in a woodpile. But what if they found Marc’s whole life’s work before he could get it out of France? The Germans would certainly burn every one of his paintings as degenerate. And what if they found Marc and Bella?

Soon after that, we heard the announcement that Pétain’s government had established a Department for Jewish Affairs, which had made the anti-Jewish laws already in place more strict and added new ones. Now I was all the more anxious to get to Gordes
again. I went to Henri’s forge to see how the conversion of Maurice’s bus was coming along. I found Maurice sawing wood into small cubes while Henri welded a platform onto the front of the bus for a canister as large as a trash can to sit on. “It’s a fi-fi-firebox,” Henri explained. “Th-th-the wood is p-put in here, and the f-f-fumes come out the bottom into a fi-filter, and then th-through a pipe to the engine.” It was good of him to make the effort to explain it to me—apparently it was that important to him—but if he stopped work to explain the workings of the gasogene device to everyone who asked, the bus would never be ready.

It had been nearly three weeks. I couldn’t wait any longer. Pascal had gone to Aix to buy
The Card Players
too late. I didn’t want to make a similar mistake. I made a batch of cheese, collected eggs, and set out on foot for the nine-kilometer journey. This time, it wasn’t to see the paintings. It was to see Marc and Bella.

A
LTHOUGH THE MORNING WAS CLEAR
, by the time I got to Gordes, two and a half hours later, the sky in the distance was turning the color of plums, and the heavy air bore the acrid odor of approaching rain. Birds cried out in single syllables their complaints about the wetness to come. I picked up almond blossoms that had blown off their branches to give to Bella, their creamy white petals cupping yellow centers that sprouted pink filaments—as beautiful as any cultivated orchid in a Paris florist’s shop.