Lisette's List (48 page)

“Max! You’ve come!”

He was burdened down with five bulging shopping bags, his valise of clothes, and a bouquet of white roses wrapped in damp newspaper held under his armpit.

“What in the world …?”

He let his packages fall to the floor, shook out his hands, and presented me with the bouquet, bowing a little on one leg and letting the other leg dangle behind him.

“I couldn’t let that little man in Chagall’s painting outdo me. Do I have it right? His right leg dangling behind?”

“Oh, Max. You’re perfect. The roses are perfect too,” I said, putting them in a pitcher.

“I would fling a fish like a crescent moon into the sky like Chagall did if I knew some invisible hand were there to catch it.”

“Where did you get such beautiful roses?”

“From a flower stand at the Avignon station. I begged the vendor for fleurs-de-lis, telling her that lilies had all the glory and history of France’s fleur-de-lis. She said, ‘The truth is, young man, that the symbol of France is the fleur-de-lys,
l-y-s
, which has nothing to do with lilies,
l-i-s
. Fleurs-de-lys are yellow irises that grow on the banks of the River Lys in Flanders.’ ”

I laughed. “André thought France’s flower was the lily, too, and that I was named after them.”

“It’s too late for lilies or irises. I had to settle for roses, and then had to beg her for a little pail of water. I gave her a pitiful look and said how far the roses had to go to a lady with a complexion like rose petals. She was an old woman, and so she understood.”

“But where’s the pail?”

“In Maurice’s bus. I couldn’t carry it. Open the packages.”

I felt a-twitter, like a little girl at a grand occasion. Each bag was from a different department store. From the Galeries Lafayette bag I pulled out a beautiful salmon-colored brocade cushion and another, slightly different, in rose. From Printemps, there were two paisley cushions in golden ochre and bronze and cinnamon. From BHV, two embroidered cushions of yellow-ochre and pale orange flowers; from La Samaritaine, two with arabesques of burgundy and gold; and from Le Bon Marché, two broadly striped cushions in all the warm ochre hues of Roussillon.

“I’m overwhelmed. I never—”

His grin stretched wide across his perfect teeth. “If you’re going to have a
veillée
here, you can’t expect your friends to sit on those torturous wooden benches and chairs, which would bruise even Maurice’s sitting bones.”

I ran my fingers over each cushion to feel its silky smoothness and played with the tassles, fringe, and tucking.

“What rich fabrics. I can’t imagine what they must have cost.”

“I located one of Monsieur Laforgue’s stolen paintings and arranged for its return, so he paid me a little extra.”

“Wonderful, Max. I knew you would succeed. And you’ll find more.”

I couldn’t stop admiring the cushions. “Each one is beautiful in its own individual way.”

“It would be too common if they were all the same.
Maman
loved picking them out with me. They’re from both of us.”

I set out three on the bench and three on the settee, with the striped ones in the middle, and one on each of the four chairs. The cushions, the paintings, and the roses all together made the room glorious.

“I feel like I’m in Paris!”

I threw myself into Maxime’s arms and thanked him. Ten little hello kisses traveled across my cheeks and nose, and down to my throat like moth wings, until he was out of breath and I was laughing.

“They are for sitting, Lisette, so sit.”

“On which one?”

“Try them all.”

I sat on one cushion after another, admitting that I had been resentful toward Pascal’s mother for not furnishing the house with cushions.

“Riding here on Maurice’s bus for the first time, we witnessed a farmwife offering duck feathers to Maurice for Louise to make a pillow. At the time, I didn’t recognize the goodwill behind that act. Now, living here through the Occupation years, I see the kindness and generosity of her offering. It was made in the spirit of
la Provence profonde
, as Maurice would say.”

I settled on a striped cushion on the settee, and Maxime sat down next to me.

“So what do you notice about the room?” I asked.

I had hung the study of heads by itself on the left side of the stairs and had moved the Chagall yet again, so that
Girl with a
Goat
could have its rightful place as one of the two central paintings on the north wall. On the space beside it, once commanded by Pissarro’s
Red Roofs
, I had tacked my Chagall, where it would remain, its home at last.

“Ah! Two more paintings! Tremendous! Tell me about them.”

“The head study first. Maybe you know that André’s father, Jules, purchased it cheaply from the concierge of his Montmartre
pension
before the Great War. I remember André saying that as a small boy he liked to draw it.”

That made me think that perhaps that was his favorite painting, a memento of his father and a reminder of his childhood. I cherished this glimpse of him as a boy drawing the outlines of those faces.

“What did he tell you about it?”

“Just that the concierge had said it was by some Spaniard who couldn’t pay his rent and left it as payment.”

“It
is
a Picasso, Lisette. Just as we had thought. He did dozens of sketches and studies similar to this for a final painting called
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
, depicting the prostitutes of a Barcelona street with the same name. Look at the women’s long, angular noses flattened to the side, their narrow faces and concave cheeks, their heavily lined oversized black eyes. Those distortions all appear in the final painting.”

“Why did Picasso make them like that?”

“For expression, I suppose. He may have thought that sharp angles suggested the sharp experiences of prostitution. Hard edges show how such a life hardens the human spirit.”

“To me, those faces are harsh and ugly.”

“Do you think the life of a harlot is anything other than harsh and ugly?”

“All right, Max. Have it your way.” I winked at him. “I concede the anguish in that one misplaced, mismatched eye.”

“Then his purpose worked. He was trying out two styles here.

Cubism, which flattens shapes, gives them hard edges, and shows different angles of view all at once.”

“And the other?”

“Primitivism. The long, concave faces suggest African masks. His preliminary studies like this one surface from time to time in galleries and sell for high prices because they show him experimenting, working out the principles of new techniques.
Maman
was outraged when she saw one thrown onto a heap and burned in front of the Jeu de Paume.”

“Would you feel outraged if I said that a little boy here found it in the dump?”

“You’re joking.”

“It’s the very truth.”

“Then it might have been given to a German officer, who discarded it as degenerate art.”

“More likely Gypsies took it from that windmill as they were scrounging the area for goods to sell along their way and, on second thought, threw it out as unsalable. We’ll never know.”

“What about Pissarro’s
Girl with a Goat
?”

“That’s a more complicated story.”

Just for a moment, I considered hiding the truth. Its effect on Maxime would be unpredictable, and I had so much as promised Bernard that I would not reveal him. But Maxime had not lied to me about André’s death when he could have. Nor could I lie to him.

“I didn’t find it. It was
shown
to me. You must not tell a soul.” I gave him a stern look. “This is no frivolous secret.”

When he agreed, I took Bernard’s letter from the desk drawer and gave it to him to read.

“ ‘Your devoted, Bernard’? ‘Devoted’?”

I chewed on my lip. “He did come to care for me.”

“And you?”

“In his own rough, peculiar way, he has been kind to me.”

That seemed to satisfy Maxime, at least for the moment.

“Let me finish about the painting. So, out of contrition for bursting into my house, he begged me to let him apologize by an act. When I agreed, we took a walk, and he showed me the factory where the ochre was processed. It was interesting, and I’m glad I understand it now. Seeing where Pascal worked and the steps in processing, from ore to pigments, gave me an appreciation for what Roussillon is all about.

“Bernard took me down a hill through an oak grove where the slurry of ochre and sand used to be piped down to canals that led to drying beds. He brought me to a particular pipe, about the diameter of a dinner plate, and told me to reach inside, and that was where the painting was.”

“Had he found it there or put it there?”

“Put it there. He was the one who took the paintings from the woodpile and hid them in different places. André
told
him to.”

“Truly?”

“Yes, Max. So André wasn’t as careless about not telling someone where they were as we had thought.”

“My speculation still could be correct. The constable’s intention must have been to offer them to some German officer to court his favor. Then after the Germans left, he could not reveal that he had them. In a village this small, people would figure out that he had been a collaborator, and that would put him in danger of losing his position, at the very least, or, at the worst, his life.”

“You think so? Even now?”

“Yes, even now.” He spoke harshly. “People don’t forget.”

“So giving me the last painting was defying danger.”

Maxime leaned forward, arms on his thighs, and didn’t say anything for a painfully long time.

“He must love you. More than his own life.”

“He says he’s been in despair for years.”

“And I haven’t been?”

“Max.”

He paced around the room. “And what can I sacrifice for you to compete with that?” He flung out his arm. “Cushions. How do they rate in comparison with the sacrifice of his reputation, his livelihood, and possibly his life?”

“Please don’t compare. It’s you I invited to the Fête de la Saint-Jean, not him.”

“He’ll be there anyway. And what should I do? Pretend that I don’t know?”

“Yes. You must.”

“Have you forgotten that it was collaborators like him who put men like me in prison camps?”

“Max, stop. Please. He
posed
as a collaborator to save Roussillon.”

He stormed out the door before I could finish explaining. I let him go. He had every reason to be upset.

I looked again at every cushion, touched each one as though their colors could heal the rift between us, and then cast a glance at every painting. No matter how beautiful they were, no matter that they exhibited the movements in the history of French art of the last century, whatever it was that Maxime had said, were they worth the suffering they’d caused? Worth the sundering of the dearest friendship I had? Worth heartbreak?

Should I have lied and said I found the last one myself? Was it cruel to have told him? To have shown him Bernard’s letter? Was truth really more valuable than love?

Two men, both wounded, both suffering—I had betrayed both of them. Bernard by telling Maxime, and Maxime by accepting Bernard’s reason for collaboration. I had been disrespectful to both of them. In the harsh light of the truth, I felt as unworthy as a worm.

I went out to the empty courtyard. With no one to comfort me, I sat at the base of the almond tree and leaned up against it. When Geneviève was young, she would have leaned against me and
nudged my hand. Even Kooritzah Deux, gone now into Louise’s cook pot, would have helped by distracting me with some antic.

I should have left Roussillon when I’d learned that André had died, should have left the paintings too and forgotten I had ever seen them. Let Bernard hide them in his house until he died. The people of Roussillon would have found him out then, and it would not have mattered, and the paintings would now belong to the village. That would be the story Théo would tell his children, and the tale would become part of the sad history of Roussillon. The villagers would have wondered about Bernard and me, and André, who went off to war and was killed, and some Parisian dandy who drifted in and out of the story. They would wonder all of this as they gazed at the paintings in the town hall as reminders of the beauty from the earth of the Vaucluse gone wrong.

I
HEARD A KNOCK
on the door. It was Maurice, swinging a little red pail with a red rosebud in it from Louise’s rosebush and singing a children’s song about love and a rose:

“
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime
.

Jamais je ne t’oublierai.
”

Any other time I would have sung it back to him.
I have loved you for a long time. Never will I forget you
. It was a bittersweet song about a sad little girl who had lost her boyfriend. Its irony landed heavily.

“Do you like the roses and the cushions?
Oh là là
, there they are! Don’t let madame my wife see them. She’ll complain that I never buy her anything in Avignon.”

He finally looked at my face. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Maurice, I’ve ruined everything. I told Maxime that Bernard had led me to the last painting, and that confirmed for Maxime that Bernard had been a collaborator.”

Maurice spread his arms wide and folded me in them. “
Non, non, non, ma petite
. There is nothing that can’t be rectified.”

“I should not have told even you right now,” I whimpered.

“Shh. You didn’t have to.”

I pulled back. “You knew?”

“I suspected it. Even during the Occupation. We all did. Otherwise he would have been operating with Aimé and me. The night Cherbourg was liberated, he poured champagne for you and sat at your table in the café. He knew the tide was turning. By being seen with a war widow, he was proclaiming that he was not a collaborator.”

“It was a ruse, then? He was using me?”