The Witch of Painted Sorrows (7 page)

I shivered. Something in the room shifted and altered.

I looked at Monsieur Duplessi. “Do you feel that?”

“What?” He didn’t seem surprised by my question. The expression
on his face suggested he might have felt what I felt, but first wanted to hear what I thought it was before he acknowledged it.

“As if . . . someone just flew in . . .”

“Or maybe flew out. Certain cultures used bells to chase away unwanted spirits and negative energies, especially from a place of worship.”

The bell’s last reverberations surrounded us, embracing us in a final melancholy echo.

“Do you believe in unwanted spirits?” I asked.

He had a faraway look in his eyes. “I don’t believe in spirits, wanted or unwanted, but fascination in the occult and the supernatural has exploded, and we hear about such things all the time. A few years ago more than forty thousand occultists attended a Congrès Spirite et Spiritualiste here in Paris. On the one hand it’s a phenomena. On the other, it’s nothing new. There have been mystics and Freemasons in France since the 1700s, but interest does seem to be greater than ever.”

“Do you think there’s a tangible reason?”

“I’ve read it’s not unusual for people to become overly superstitious and nervous at the end of a century—perhaps that’s all there is to it. Or perhaps we are experiencing a backlash against positivism, naturalism, and secularism. It’s possible the occult movement has escalated because we are searching for answers that we can’t find through science, reason, and facts. Sometimes I think this preoccupation with the supernatural demonstrates the real tensions wrestling for the soul of France.”

From his expression and the tone in his voice, even I, who didn’t know him well, knew that all this was troubling him.

“Let’s see what is under this dirt.” I picked up a rag and swiped the wall. “Aren’t you supposed to be here inspecting the rooms and making an inventory? This is definitely something that should be included in the museum.”

As I spoke, I felt a burst of chill air blow through the windows. It
seemed to reach down, as if it had arms, and press against me, almost as if it were trying to communicate.

“Yes, let’s see what we have,” he said as he grabbed another rag and began helping dust off the murals.

Under the layers of grime brilliant colors appeared, fresh and vibrant as if the fresco had been painted just weeks ago. The painting was High Renaissance, lush, evocative, colorful, and extremely eroticized, even more so than the Ingres, and I was embarrassed to be looking at it with a man I didn’t know.

“It’s the story of a woman . . . and a man with wings . . . ,” I said.

“It appears to be an illustration of the myth of Psyche and Cupid,” Monsieur Duplessi said in a faraway voice, as if transfixed by the beautiful and strange allegory we were uncovering.

“I think you’re right.”

Cupid had strong limbs, penetrating eyes, and was well endowed. Psyche was voluptuous and sensual. I could almost feel how soft her skin was, how seductive the perfume was that she was wearing.

We made our way around the room, revealing more of the story, until we eventually found the spot where, in a darkened bedroom, the artist had painted the doomed lovers in a deep embrace, coupling.

I was riveted to the lovers’ scene. I’d never known any desire that strong in my life.

“I wonder why the style changes here . . . and here,” Monsieur Duplessi said, in what I was sure was an effort to distract us, practically strangers, from the intimate nature of the paintings themselves.

We had reached the corner of the room where two tall objects loomed. Covered, it was impossible to guess what they might be. Pulling the sheet off the first, I exposed an easel holding a painting, its back to me. There was a brush on the shelf with dried ruby-red paint on its bristles. I picked it up. Holding it, I knew I’d found what I was looking for. I had no doubt. Here, right here, was the heart of the house.

I pulled off the other covering, revealing a second identical easel. Also with a painting on it, also with its back to the room.

Something occurred to me. I looked down at the tarp that had been protecting the first easel and then the second. There should have been more dust on them. There was dust everywhere else. How could these items have been spared the detritus of the years when everything else in the studio had not?

With trembling hands, I turned the canvas on the second easel around. I was staring at a portrait of a nude woman seated in front of an easel just like this one, in this room. She held a paintbrush. On its tip was ruby paint. Behind her was an untouched, clean canvas. This woman resembled Psyche in the mural, but here she wasn’t playing a part.

This was her, who she was, her very self naked for the viewer to examine.

There was a mixture of expressions on the woman’s face. Pleasure and pain at the same time. I’d certainly read enough about romantic entanglements to understand I was looking at a portrait of ­passionate longing.

When I’d been fifteen and thought I’d been falling in love with Leon, I had felt a child’s version of this, hadn’t I?

I remembered that last night again . . . my grandmother finding us, calling me ungrateful and willful as she dragged us apart and pulled Leon out of the servant’s room. I remembered how I had followed, running behind them, crying. And then that one terrible blow that had set off an asthma attack that sent Leon to his knees and finally to his death.

I’d gotten so sick afterward that my parents had been summoned from Morocco. And I remembered, too, listening to my grandmother talking in hushed tones to my father outside my bedroom.

“You have to protect her from love,” my grandmother warned.

I lay in bed, weeping, hiding under the covers, cowering and confused, delirious with fever, hearing the phrase like some verse repeated in a song.

Protect her from love. Protect her from love.

As if love were a disease that would destroy me.

My parents and I left for London once I recovered and spent several weeks seeing the sights and taking tea and visiting museums. Sometimes at night, when I was supposed to be asleep in the adjoining room of the suite, I overheard hushed and worried conversations between my parents.

What were the secrets they talked of?

It was all very vague until a letter arrived from my grandmother that I wasn’t supposed to read, but did.

Love is dangerous for Verlaine women. It leads to heartbreak. It leads to tragedy. We are too passionate, and it is like a poison for us. Don’t let it rule Sandrine’s life or it will ruin her. Teach her to rise above her instincts; marry her off to a man who will not incite or excite her but make her feel safe and calm. She can have a grand life, but it needs be a certain kind of life.

“There are initials here,” Monsieur Duplessi called out.

He had made his way around the room and finished wiping off the mural. It was still fairly dirty, but the whole myth was clear and beautifully rendered.

“ ‘CCLI,’ ” he called out.

I repeated them. Shook my head. “I don’t recognize them, do you? But that could be the date: CCLI is two hundred and fifty one in Roman numerals.”

“I might do some research at the library at the École des Beaux-Arts.”

“Look at what I found.” I pointed to the second easel, then walked around to the first and turned its painting around.

“It’s the same man who’s Cupid in the mural,” I said.

“But he’s a cartoon in the mural scenes compared to this.”

It is one thing to be with a man when you view a painting of a nude woman. We are inured to the female nude, even if she is flirta
tious or lascivious as painted by Rubens. Or voluptuous as painted by Renoir. She is still within the norm of what polite society sees as
art
. But it is quite another to be alone in a medieval tower with a stranger whose eyes seem to see through you while you’re looking at an erotic painting of a nude male.

I couldn’t stop gazing at the canvas. Who was the sitter? Who had captured him so feverishly?

The man was painted with passion that informed every stroke. He was not handsome—his nose appeared broken; a scar ran through his right eyebrow; his lips were too full and almost mean; his eyes were dark and hooded. Mysterious and driven, he was all energy, all excitement: a hungry satyr.

He was not only naked but also slightly erect. He appeared so real that I wouldn’t have been surprised had he stepped out of the canvas and I’d discovered it was one of those tableaus so popular at parties in the States, where hostesses have models pose as great paintings for the guests’ amusement.

I felt heat coming off me in waves and wondered if Monsieur Duplessi sensed it.

“Interesting . . .” Duplessi mused as he moved closer to the easel and me. So close I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. “The styles of these two portraits are the same. He’s created a dramatic effect using chiaroscuro—those heavy contrasts between dark and light—to achieve three-dimensional volume, hasn’t he?”

He stepped back. Looked at the woman’s portrait. “How do you think they compare?”

I studied one and then the other. “I think he’s more sure of himself painting the woman—bolder perhaps?”

“And there’s a sense of urgency in the woman’s portrait. As though every time the artist worked on it, he’d rush to finish his work for the day so he could bed the model.”

Obviously Monsieur Duplessi was less embarrassed to be standing here with me than I was with him. And also more comfortable
talking about what men and women did together than I was. And why shouldn’t he be? I was the granddaughter of one of the most famous courtesans in Paris. Who would guess at how naïve and unsophisticated I was when it came to matters of the heart and the bedroom?

I began describing the male portrait. “This one is painted more adoringly, as if the painter was lingering over each stroke, luxuriating in each curve and contour of the male form. As if she was loath to finish it.”

“Why do you say that?” Monsieur Duplessi asked.

“What?”

“That the painting of the man was done by a woman? I assumed the same painter painted both.” He gestured to the murals. “That one man painted everything here.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Monsieur Duplessi inspected the portrait of the female.

“There are initials here, the first two that are on the mural. ‘CC.’ ” He walked around to the portrait of the male nude. “You may be onto something. There are initials here, too—the last two in the mural—‘LI.’ ”

I walked over and inspected what he was looking at. Stared at it. The initials had a circle painted around them, and it seemed there was some kind of serpent or dragon’s head on the circle. “Not ‘LI.’ That’s an
L
. It’s ‘LL.’ ”

“Could be,” he said, peering at it.

I felt his wool jacket sleeve brush against my hand as he came close, and a rush of feeling began to flutter and gather inside me.

So intense and foreign was the experience, for a moment I thought for sure I was going to be unwell. And then I almost laughed as I comprehended that my reaction was anything but illness coming on.

“You are right,” he said. “CC and LL. Two painters sharing this studio . . . when? How long ago? This is a marvelous find. It could even be an important find.” His excitement was palpable and infectious.

“There’s a lesser-known Renaissance painter named Cherubino Cellini. I saw his work in the Louvre one day when I visited with my grandmother. It was a very dramatic painting of Judith beheading Holofernes, and I remember commenting on it. The model he’d used for Judith had oddly reminded me of my grandmother. She didn’t think it was much of a compliment.”

I turned to inspect the wall art. “Now that I think about it, this style matches the painting in the museum. And both use mythological themes. It was quite fashionable at the time, especially in Italy.”

“You’re well versed in art history,” Monsieur Duplessi said.

“My father collects”—I corrected myself—“
collected
art and gave me the unofficial job of curating for him. Some of the happiest times I’ve had were visiting galleries with him and buying art. Supposedly an ancestor of mine was—” I broke off. Of course. How could I not have put it all together?

“Listen, I know who LL is . . . I’m certain of it. One of my ancestors was a woman named Lunette Lumière. La Lune. This was her house.”

“Was she a painter?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know . . . She was a well-known courtesan, and there was a legend that she was the lover of a famous painter.”

“Surely these both could have been painted by the same man, and he put her initials on his self-portrait and his initials on hers. But that doesn’t really make sense. One painting is CC alone. The other is LL alone. Only the mural has both initials. Maybe they both painted the mural, and this is a portrait of La Lune painted by Cellini, and this is a portrait of Cellini painted by La Lune?”

“Let’s look at the rest of them.” I began to unstack the paintings that were against the far wall. One after another after another, I turned them face out. Each was of either him or her. All nudes or only slightly draped. Those of the woman were all signed “CC.” Those of the man, all signed “LL.”

The heat in the room seemed to grow more intense and oppressive as more and more of the erotic studies were exposed. We organized them with all the paintings of him leaning against one wall . . . staring at all those of her leaning against the other wall.

I looked from the portraits to Monsieur Duplessi. As he intently studied the artwork, I imagined him turning, walking to me, undressing me, and lying down with me on the daybed.

I glanced over at it now—not meaning to, but involuntarily staring at its silk coverlet and overstuffed pillows. Strangely there was no visible dust there either. Had it blown off when we opened the windows?

Then a sense of unreality came over me.

I was seeing myself there with Monsieur Duplessi, our bodies as naked as those of the man and the woman in the paintings on the easels. Our bodies intertwined. My hair fanned out on the pillow. His fingers gripping my shoulder.