The Swan Thieves

When I had blown my nose and walked around the station for a few minutes, I dialed the number Henri had given me. "I'm going to rent a car and go out to Gremiere tomorrow morning. Would you like to come along?"

"I have been thinking about this, Andrew, and I don't believe you can learn anything, but perhaps it will be a satisfaction for you to go." I took a keen pleasure in hearing him use my first name.

"Then could you come, if that doesn't sound mad? I would make it as easy for you as possible."

He sighed. "I do not often leave the house now, except to go to the doctor. I would make you slow."

"I don't mind going slowly." I refrained from telling him about my father, who still drove and saw parishioners and went for walks. He was almost ten years younger--by that point a lifetime, in terms of agility.

"Ah." He was thinking over the phone. "I suppose the worst thing that can happen is that the trip will kill me. Then you can bring my body back to Paris and bury me next to Aude de Clerval. To die of fatigue in a beautiful village would not be the worst fate." I didn't know what to say, but he was chuckling, and I laughed, too. I wished I could tell him my news. It was dreadful that Mary couldn't meet this man, who might have been her grandfather, or even her great-grandfather, similar to her in his long thin legs and sly sense of humor.

"May I get you at nine tomorrow?"

"Yes. I will not sleep all night." He hung up.

Driving in Paris is a nightmare for the foreigner. Only Beatrice could have persuaded me to do it, and I had a sense of simply closing my eyes--and sometimes opening them wider than ever before--to survive the swerving traffic, the unfamiliar signs, and the one-way streets. I was in a sweat by the time I found Henri's building, and relieved to be able to park there, if illegally and with my blinkers on, for the twenty minutes it took me and Yvonne to help him down the stairs. If I'd been Robert Oliver, I would have been able to simply pick Henri up and carry him down, but I didn't dare suggest such a thing. He settled in the front seat, and his housekeeper put a folded wheelchair and an extra blanket in the trunk, to my further relief--we would be able to navigate at least some of the village safely.

We made it alive out of one of the main boulevards, Henri directing me with surprisingly good memory, and then through suburbs, a glimpse of the wide Seine, winding roads, woods, the first villages. Just west of Paris, the terrain grew more rugged; I had never been to this area. It was a mix of steep hills and slate roofs, mellowed churches and patrician trees, fences laden with the first wave of roses. I rolled down a window in the fresh air, and Henri looked steadily around him, silent, waxen-faced, sometimes smiling.

"Thank you," he said once.

We turned off the main road at Louveciennes and drove slowly through the town, so that Henri could show me where great painters had lived and worked. "This town was nearly destroyed in the Prussian invasion. Pissarro had a house here. He had to run away, with his family, and the Prussian soldiers who lived in it used his paintings as carpets. The town butchers used them for aprons. He lost more than a hundred paintings, years of work." He cleared his throat, coughed. "Salauds."

Beyond Louveciennes, the road dipped far down; we passed the gates of a small chateau, a flash of gray stone and big trees. The next town was Gremiere, and it was so tiny that I nearly missed the turn. I caught the sign as we entered the square, which was really just an expanse of cobblestones in front of a church. The church was very old, probably Norman, squat and heavy-towered, the beasts across the portal worn away by wind. I parked nearby, observed by a couple of old women with sensible rubber boots and shopping bags, and got the wheelchair and then Henri out of the car.

There was no need to hurry, because we didn't know why we were there. Henri seemed to enjoy our leisurely coffee in the one local cafe, where I parked his chair by a table outside and spread the blanket over his knees. It was a cool morning, but springlike in the sun; the chestnuts were blooming along a stretch of road to the right, towers of pink and white. I got the hang of pushing the chair--my father would probably need one of these someday-- and we went down the first walled lane to see if it was the right one. I steered around a broken cobblestone. My father would, in all likelihood, live to see his grandchild.

Henri had insisted on bringing the Sisley book; after a few tries we decided that one of these walled lanes matched the painting, and I took some photos. Cedars and plane trees hung over the wall, and at the end was a house, the one Beatrice--if it were she--was walking toward in the painting. The house had blue shutters and geraniums in pots by the front door; it was tidily restored, and perhaps the owners lived in Paris. I rang the bell in vain, with Henri sitting in his chair on the front walk. "No use," I said.

"No use," he echoed.

We went to the store and asked the grocer about a family named Renard, but he shrugged pleasantly and went on weighing sausages. We went into the church, finding a way around the steps. The interior was cold, unlit, a cavern. Henri shivered and asked me to take him into the aisle, where he sat for a while with bowed head--revisiting his spirits, I thought. Next we went into the mairie to see if there were any records of Esme Renard or her family. The lady behind the front desk was glad to help; she had clearly seen no one all morning and had tired of her typing, and when another official came out--I never entirely understood who he was, although in such a small place he could have been the mayor himself--they looked up some documents for us. They had files on the history of the village, and also a birth-and-death log that had originally been in the church but was now stored in a fireproof metal box. No Renards; perhaps they had not owned their home themselves but only rented it?

And then we were thanking them and leaving the building. In the entry, Henri signaled for us to stop and reached back to take my hand. "It does not matter," he said kindly. "Many things are never explained, you know. It is not really a bad thing."

"You said that yesterday, and I'm sure you're right," I said, and squeezed his hand gently; it was like a collection of warm sticks. What he said was true--my heart was already racing toward something else. He patted my arm.

It took me a moment to get the chair aimed toward the exit. When I looked up, it was there, the sketch. It hung, framed, on the old plaster wall of the entry, a bold fragment in graphite on paper: a swan, but not the victim of the painting I'd seen the day before; this one was rushing to land rather than struggling upward. Beneath it lay a human form, a graceful leg, a bit of drapery. I carefully engaged the brake on Henri's chair and took a step closer. The swan, the maiden's calf, the lovely foot, and the initials marked in one corner, hasty but recognizable, as I'd seen them against flowers and grass and near the foot of a heavy-booted thief. It was a familiar signature, more like a Chinese character than a set of Latin letters, her characteristic mark. She had made that mark a finite, too-short number of times and then stopped painting forever. The door to the office behind us was shut, and I carefully took the little frame off the wall and put it in Henri's lap, holding it so that he could not drop it by accident. He adjusted his glasses, looked closely. "Ah, mon Dieu," he said.

"Let's go back in." We stared our fill and I rehung it on the wall, my fingers shaking. "They will know something about this, or someone will."

We reversed our direction and returned to the office, where Henri asked in French for information on the drawing in the entry. The young mayor--or whoever he was--was again pleased to help us. They had several drawings like that one in a drawer--he had not been here when they had been found, in a house under restoration, but his predecessor had liked that one and had it framed. We asked to see them, and after some searching he found an envelope and handed it to us. He had a phone call to attend to in his office, but we were welcome to sit there under the secretary's eye and examine the drawings, if we liked.

I opened the envelope and handed the sketches to Henri one by one. They were studies, mostly on a heavy brown paper--wings, bushes, the swan's head and neck, the figure of the girl on the grass, a hand up close and digging into the earth. With them was a thick sheet of paper, which I unfolded and gave to Henri.

"It is a letter," he said. "Just sitting here, a letter."

I nodded, and he read, stumbling, translating for me, sometimes stopping when his voice broke.

September 1879

My beautiful one,

I am writing you from what feels like the greatest possible distance, in the greatest possible agony. I fear I am separated from you forever, and it is killing me. I write you in haste from my studio, to which you must not return. Come to the house instead. I do not know how to begin. After you left this afternoon, I continued my work on the figure; it was giving me trouble and I stayed longer than I intended. At about five, when the light began to Jail, a knock came; I thought it might be Esme, returning with my shawl. Instead it was Gilbert Thomas, whom you know. He came in bowing and shut the door. I was surprised but assumed he had heard that Yves had given me a studio.

He said he had stopped first at the house and learned that I was only a Jew steps away. He was polite -- he said he had wanted for some time to talk with me about my career, that, as I knew, his gallery was a great success and needed only new painters to make it even greater, that he had long admired my skill, etc. Bowing again, with his hat in front of him. Then he stepped up and studied our painting and asked JI had painted it by myself, with no assistance--here he gave a delicate gesture, acknowledging my condition, although I was still wearing my smock. I did not want to explain that I would finish soon and begin my confinement; I had no wish to embarrass him or myself, or mention your helping me, so I said nothing. He looked closely at the surface of the painting and said it was extraordinary and that I had blossomed under my mentor's tutelage. I began to feel uncomfortable, although he could not have known we have worked together. He asked what price I might put on it, and I said I did not intend to sell it until it had been judged by the Salon, and even then might want to keep it. Smiling pleasantly, he asked what price I might put on my reputation or that of my child.

I pretended to clean my brush in order to have a moment to think, then inquired as calmly as I could what he meant. He said I must be planning to submit the painting under the name Marie Riviere once again -- that was no secret to him, who looked at the work of painters every day. But neither Marie nor I would value her reputation less than that of a painting. He of course was open-minded about women's painting. In fact, on his trip to etretat in late May, he had seen a woman working en plein air, on the beach and cliffs, properly chaperoned by an older relative, and he had a note that she might have missed. He took it out of his pocket, held it up for me to read, and drew it away when I reached for it. I saw immediately that it was one you wrote me that morning, with a broken seal. I had never seen it before, but it was your hand, addressed to me, your words about us, about our night--he put it back in his jacket.

He said that it was wonderful how women were beginning to enter the profession, and my paintings could compete with those of any others he'd seen. But a woman may change her mind about painting after she becomes a mother, and certainly about any public scandal. Money was not sufficient reward for this superb painting, but if I would finish it to the best of my ability, he would honor it by putting his own name in the corner of it. The honor would be all his, actually, as it was already magnificent, a perfect combination of old and new, classical and natural painting -- the girl was especially fine, young and rendered beautifully enough to attract anyone -- and he would be happy to do the same for any future paintings, with the understanding that I would be spared any unpleasantness. He rambled on as if he had simply been commenting on the fittings of the studio or some interesting color I was using.

I couldn't look at him, nor speak. If you had been there, I fear you might have killed him, or he you. I wish indeed that he were dead, but he is not, and I have no doubt he is in earnest. Money cannot change his mind. Even f I deliver the painting to him when it is finished, he will not give us any peace. You must leave, my dearest. It is appalling, especially as the friendship that is the joy of my life and has brought my brush all this new skill is now completely pure. Tell me what to do and know that my heart will go with you whatever you decide, but spare Yves, only that, please, my love. I cannot have mercy on myself or you. Come to the house once and bring me all my letters, and I will think about what to do with them. And I will never paint for this monster after I finish, or f I do it will be only once, to record his infamy.

B.

Henri looked up at me from his chair.

"My God," I said. "We have to tell them. What they have here. And these drawings."

"No," he said. He tried to put it all back in the envelope, then indicated that I should help him. I obeyed, but slowly. He shook his head. "If they know something, there is no need for them to know more. It is better for them not to know. And if they know nothing, that is best of all."

"But no one understands--" I stopped.

"Yes--you do. You know all you need to. And I do, also. If only Aude were here. She would say the same thing." I thought he might cry, as he nearly had over the letters, but his face shone. "Take me out to the sunshine."