The Dream of Scipio (16 page)

“Why do you never ask me questions, or try to understand me? I always feel a bit of a failure with you. I try to be elusive and mysterious, and you seem quite uninterested.”

He shrugged.

“Don’t you find me fascinating? Strange? Wonderful? Quixotic? Exotic? Aren’t you concerned about where I come from, where I’m going? What makes me tick?”

He looked puzzled for a moment. “Not really,” he said eventually.

She sniffed. “I don’t know whether that is charming or the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“At least I haven’t said you’re hysterical.”

“That’s true. But I’ve never thrown a vase at you either.”

“You threw a vase at him?”

She nodded, an impish, childish look glinting in her eyes. “Missed him though,” she said. “Dammit.”

Their eyes met in mutual appreciation, and they started to laugh. It was a delightful meeting. And Julien was aware once more that he had never tried to charm or impress or compliment her. He was also aware, of course, that Claude Bronsen quite liked him.

 
 
 
HER REMARK was not true; not entirely true in any case. Julia had determined to become a painter at the age of ten, in 1913, when she had a tantrum two hundred yards from the family apartment in the boulevard Haussmann. She was with her nanny, an Englishwoman of the sort the wealthy Parisians preferred at that time, a kind woman but with the emotional subtlety of a cavalry officer, reluctant to admit what sort of family she worked for but who loved Julia after her fashion. She was not destined to remain long; she tried to impose order and discipline, but had to battle against Bronsen himself and his indulgent whims. Julia at that stage had spent only a short while in school, for her father was forever taking her with him on his voyages around Europe, sometimes for a month, once for six. They would go where his business took him, and while he knew he should settle her in some pension and give her proper schooling, he could not bear to be parted from her. He had, after all, worked hard to keep her from his wife and, having won her, would not easily let her go again.

Julia had many relations, but was brought up almost alone, for the way her father had ended his marriage had been bitterly criticized. His wife, thought sweet and obedient, known to be so gentle, had been clearly wronged, had been driven into illness trying to understand the fiery and aggressive man she had married, so given to titanic rages and bursts of angelic kindness, each as unpredictable as the other. All agreed that he was impossible, and in revenge for the condemnation, Bronsen had cast off much more. He never accepted his guilt; far from it, he believed he had defended his daughter from a woman whose dark moods and violence were insupportable. He never put forth his side of the case; he was either too proud or still too loyal to a woman he had once loved; never detailed the innumerable doctors, the times she went supposedly on holiday but in reality to clinics across Europe in a fruitless search for a cure that eluded even the most famous of psychiatrists. He never told of the screaming, the times she disappeared and he had to call the police to find her, the times he had to bundle Julia into her room and stand in front of the door to protect her from her mother’s rage over a trivial wrong. Only Julia knew; in her memory she kept those dark days hidden and spoke of them only once, when Julien came to her after her father’s death. But she remembered, and she remembered lying on the floor, the bruise growing on her cheek, and her brusque, rude, ill-mannered father kneeling by her to comfort her, stroke her hair, and carry her to her bed. He stayed with her all that night, to keep her company and to reassure her. The next day her mother left forever.

Claude Bronsen took the blame, but he also took his revenge on those who were quick to judge and condemn him. He walked away from his family, his religion, his entire society, eradicated all memory of the language he had spoken as a boy before he had left Germany to escape the cloying attentions of his parents. He knew, as early as ten, that he had to leave the hardworking, solemn atmosphere of their house, where his father labored as a commercial traveler and his mother kept a traditional Jewish home in a pinched and joyless fashion. He took pleasure in little that they—such respectable people, so timid and cautious, but also disapproving and demanding—found valuable in life. But he did his best to mollify and reassure them, tried not to make them ashamed of him when he was still poor and unsuccessful, guarded his tongue meticulously when they came to admire the life he had built for himself from his own labors and abilities in the sparkling world of Paris at the turn of the century. His wife, Rachel, was the prize of this hard work, a German-Jewish beauty, blonde and cultivated, with a haughty, almost aristocratic air.

His parents’ criticism, the way they assumed that his fine wife must have been unbalanced by his treatment of her, or by the birth of Julia—a difficult, painful birth, for she did not enter the world without a fight—was a betrayal of trust which he could never forgive. Even in the 1930s he refused to be reconciled with those who had, in his view, ostracized him so unjustly. Now they needed his help; they were being buffeted by economic chaos and political malevolence and they turned to him. He did not respond and felt little concern for their persecution. Bronsen indeed scarcely considered himself Jewish; he was French, naturalized many years before, and a man of business and of culture. That was all the identity he needed.

It was his greatest pleasure that Julia resembled him and had almost nothing of her mother in her, either in looks or in temperament. When she grew up to be both beautiful and accomplished, his pride and gratitude were so great he could barely contain them. His reward for her achievement was to offer her the world: He gave her books and museums and foreign cities and a sense of never-ending inquiry. He denied her ritual and offered her freedom in exchange. Anything she wanted was hers, and only once did he lose his temper with her, and that was when she said, at the age of fourteen, that she wanted to see her mother. They had their only serious fight, which Julia won. But she only did it once. The meeting was not a success; she had had an adolescent dream of making everything right, of healing injuries, and of having both her parents. It was not possible; her mother’s illness had grown rather than diminished and had turned into a deep and violent hatred of the man who, so everyone told her, had been so cruel, so heartless and so unjust. Julia, by then, had so many of her father’s mannerisms that even the way she stroked the side of her cheek when trying to think of something to say became a provocation. She was thrown out, told to leave and never come back. She obeyed completely and ran away crying into the arms of her father, who had been waiting, anxiously, at the end of the street. They never met again, and Julia learned only through a gruff comment from her father when she was eighteen that her mother had died. “Go to the funeral if you want,” he said.

And she had; she went alone and was confronted with the baleful glances of her family, none of whom offered her any consolation or understanding. It was her first and last brush with her religion, and from then on, she associated it with the disapproval that suffocated her in the synagogue that cold March afternoon.

In bringing her up, Claude Bronsen knew that Julia should learn to be more polite and refined than he was, cultivated in a way he could never be; his own appetites created in him a sort of disdain that he hoped Julia would share but learn to control better. He knew exactly what sort of child he wanted, could see her growing up in his mind, and the results of his labors bore their first fruit that day in the boulevard Haussmann. The nanny was completely perplexed by the outburst and smacked the child to make her hurry up. Julia screamed even more, and kept on screaming until her face was red with a mixture of outrage and despair. She was dragged back, still screaming, to the apartment, and sent to her room until she learned to behave. She never knew how much this frightened her father, how many nights he stayed awake, unable to sleep lest the affliction that had destroyed his wife had also been visited on his beloved daughter. Out of this terror came the overwhelming, stifling concern for her that too often turned into a swamping solicitude that allowed her little room to breathe.

Her performance that day, however, was mere petulance and rebellion, not a sign of incipient insanity. Julia did not behave; indeed it might be argued she never really behaved again; a moment transformed a polite, amenable girl into the paint-stained outcast she described (with some pride) to Julien much later. The outburst was triggered by a picture just visible through the window of a not particularly respectable art dealer; she wanted to stop and look, but the nanny was in a hurry and wanted to make tea. She made tea every afternoon, and Julia was expected to change her clothes, sit politely, and make proper conversation for thirty-five minutes about her day.

She had always done so; after that afternoon she never did again. The nanny left to go to a more civilized family a few months later. She refused Julia’s request to go into the little gallery and look at the picture that was not even in the window, but partially glimpsed on the wall on the left-hand side. Julia pointed to it. The nanny laughed. “Look at that thing; why, a monkey could do better.”

The incident opened the floodgates in Julia’s developing personality. Here was something around which she could organize all those confusing, confused thoughts and feelings that swirled through her mind. Here was a reason not to make polite conversations, not to change her clothes and sit with her knees touching. Here was a reason to disobey.

The next day she slipped out of the apartment when she should have been reading quietly in her room, tripping out of the maid’s entrance, then down the stairs, past the concierge and into the street. It was the first time she had ever been outside on her own, and she was frightened by her daring for the first dozen steps, and exhilarated thereafter. She walked brazenly into the gallery, affecting the manner of those grand women she had witnessed buying cosmetics in the faubourg Saint-Honoré, and went to look at her picture.

It was a pencil and wash of a woman with a firm mouth and chin, a streak of hair falling down the right side of her face from where it had been bundled up on top of her head. She looked tired, mournful even; Julia felt a pang of recognition.

In the background two men were talking, and their voices got louder and louder, so Julia could not help hearing as she stood entranced before the picture.

“You goddamned crook,” one was saying in heavily accented French. “You cheat. Why should I have anything to do with you?”

The unsuppressed rage was frightening; he was small, undistinguished-looking but with dark eyes and an air of compelling power.

“I do what I can. What do you expect? I keep this gallery, pay an assistant, pay the rent, give parties to try and drum up clients and get little in return for it. It is not as if these paintings are snapped up the moment I hang them on the wall, you know.”

“You don’t even try.”

The older man spoke softly, trying to conciliate. “I’m sorry. I do my best. And if you know a better dealer I will be happy to let you go. And wish you all the success you feel you deserve. But I speak the truth. And, if I may say so, your own attitude to the people who do think of buying your pictures does not help.”

“My attitude? My attitude? I am charm personified.”

“When you want to be. Which is not often. For the most part you are gratuitously offensive and overbearing. You talk about yourself without a break, and the first thing you ever do is inform your clients that you are a genius and you will first have to determine whether they are good enough to own one of your works.”

There was a long silence, then the little man burst out laughing and embraced the other. “And why not? It is all true.” Julia was thoroughly perplexed. She thought a punch on the nose might have been more appropriate. Then she noticed that both men were looking at her; she blushed and started to retreat.

“Stop, little one,” cried the painter. “You see, someone likes my paintings. She came in just to look at it. Did you see? Did you see the look on her face? I know that look. Ha!”

He walked over and knelt down beside her. “You do like it.”

She nodded, cautiously. The little painter put his arms around her and kissed her chastely, but full, on the lips; it was the first time anyone had ever done such a thing. She wished she could stop blushing.

“So? Tell me what you think.”

Julia panicked, then forced herself to respond, trying to think of something sophisticated and worldly to say. She could think of nothing at all.

“I think you must love her very much,” she said eventually, and felt ashamed of her reply.

But it delighted the painter, whose dark eyes bored into her in a way she found disturbing. She did not want him to take those eyes off her, ever.

“Yes,” he said. “I did.”

Julia looked sad. “Did she die?”

“In my heart, she did.” He cocked his head to one side and smiled impishly. “She was my mistress, some years ago. I gave her to someone else. She began to tire me.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said the dealer, appalled, “don’t talk so to a young girl. What a shocking thing to say.”

The painter laughed, but Julia looked at him very seriously. “I think she was unhappy already, when you painted this. You made her unhappy, then painted her sadness. That was cruel of you. You can love someone and make them unhappy, I know.”

“Do you now?” he replied uncomfortably. “Then maybe you know too much for someone of your age.”

The owner of the shop looked satisfied. He had never seen his most difficult client made uncomfortable, never heard him challenged so effectively. He would retell this story often.

“She was looking for something I could never give her.” Again his dark eyes bored into Julia’s mind. “You have something of the same about you, young woman. Take my advice: Don’t think you will find it in another person. You won’t. It’s not there. You must find it in yourself.” Then he stood up.