I Looked for the One My Heart Loves (6 page)

9

The engagement party
took
place in Paris, with both families present. François slipped a sapphire mounted with diamonds onto her finger, and Anne looked at the ring with circumspection. When the wedding band followed, she felt like she had been sleepwalking.

During their honeymoon in Nice, she went along with her husband, who liked to have a good time. Between sea excursions and walks on the beach, she abandoned herself to the simple pleasure of being loved. François would have moved mountains to please her! When they were alone, he knew how to whisper words that aroused her. Nothing was more exhilarating than feeling beautiful and wanted. Once they overcame their timidity, she discovered that the novelists she had read hadn't been lying about the importance of sexual desire and lovemaking. Their sleepless nights made her giddy and light!

Back in Paris, they settled in a furnished apartment on Rue des Petits-Champs. They had to walk five flights of stairs to get there, but their windows opened onto the Opéra Garnier's
roof. Since they weren't exactly rolling in money, they were glad the apartment was furnished. A bed with built-in bookshelves, a table, four chairs, and a couch with floral cretonne upholstery. Anne added her bookcase to the furniture; François, a filing cabinet. The kitchen was tiny, but it contained a good refrigerator and an oven. The bathroom offered a tiny bathtub that they filled with hot water and splashed around in. After four years in a home crammed with women, Anne was thrilled to be in her own place. She was home!

In the early summer of 1957, she could have said without any hesitation that she was happy. Each morning, she lazed about while drinking the coffee that François made for her before heading to the office. With the windows opened, she could hear the buzzing of the city. Though the war had ended twelve years ago, she still couldn't forget the suffering caused by hunger and the cold. And so she reveled in life's small pleasures: drying her hair in the sun, eating bread that tasted like what she had enjoyed during her childhood, savoring cherries or chocolate.

The gallery was only a seven-minute walk from her apartment. She began work at ten. Anne took care of the place during the day since Amanda Kircher only showed up after suppertime. At fifty-two, her vitality was surprising. Petite, chatty, speaking with an accent unlike any other, she was second to none when it came to launching artists. More than once, Anne saw her pack up in record time and jump on a train or board a ship, on her way to meet a promising artist. She had lived in New York during the Occupation, so she still had a lot of contacts in America. She inherited a great flair from her father, who had befriended Amedeo Modigliani, André Derain, Kees van Dongen, and many others. Her husband, who died of peritonitis just before they were to come back from the United States, had instilled his business acumen in her. Those two qualities made her one of Paris's top art dealers.

“You always have to trust your intuition,” she kept telling Anne.

“You have to have one first. …”

“I've been watching you! Your tastes aren't like everybody else's. You're not wearing blinders.”

Anne, it was true, was trying to distance herself from the formal education she had received at the École du Louvre. Working for Amanda Kircher had freed her from the old concepts she had learned and opened her eyes to an art world that was in full transformation. Nothing scared Amanda: she had experienced exile, the loss of her privileges, the premature death of her husband. When she came back to France, she had to fight for her rights. An unscrupulous manager tried to rob her of her property. He had underestimated her determination and social skills. In 1951, after a long legal battle, she retook possession of her gallery. She didn't have any children of her own, and she looked after her godson like he was her own. His name was Roland, and he wanted to become a veterinarian. He was the one taking care of Kircher's cats, Laurel and Hardy.

When her boss went on business trips, Anne sometimes fed the cats. As soon as she walked into the apartment above the gallery, she could smell the Amanda's Miss Dior perfume. Thick carpeting muffled her steps as she crossed the vestibule, where a statue of Buddha greeted visitors. In the living room, furniture by Marcel Coard and Jean-Michel Frank sat next to sculptures by Alberto Giacometti. The walls were very sparingly lined with art. Drawings by Henri Matisse gave way to watercolors by Raoul Dufy, but Joan Miró sketches were sent back to her private storeroom, along with some Picassos and other pieces. Many photos showed her at La Coupole, talking and laughing with Fernand Léger, Elsa Triolet, Louis Aragon. Other pictures were from the French Riviera and in New York. When she stood next to her husband, Daniel Kircher, she always wore extravagant hats.

“My father introduced me to Fauvism,” she told Anne. “My husband made me understand that abstract art's time was going to be up soon. He was right!”

Most of the time, the Parisian artists sent their work to the gallery. But one morning, Anne's assignment was to pick up a series of watercolors from a studio in Montmartre.

She hadn't gone back to her old neighborhood since her parents left Paris. Especially since Agnès now lived in Passy! As the taxi drove up Rue Lepic, she felt overwhelmed with emotion. Before reaching the top of the hill, she asked the driver to stop, and she paid the fare. With autumn's arrival, dead leaves covered the sidewalks. Ignoring Place du Tertre, she headed toward Rue Gabrielle. Once in front of the apartment building where she had lived, she raised her eyes to the third floor. Everything seemed more dilapidated to her … sadder. The building's facade was covered with soot, and some of the windows were cracked. A woman with a scarf on her head was sweeping the sidewalk. It wasn't the landlady of her childhood. Anne started walking toward the square. Seeing young boys playing marbles, she remembered that today was Thursday, which meant that her old school was closed. It also meant that catechism classes were being taught to children. A slew of images and sounds came back to her. She saw herself wearing her school uniform, carrying her schoolbag and extra apron that, in spite of all the washings, still had ink stains all over it. A popular Dalida tune wafted through the opened door of a café. She'd already walked down a stretch of Rue Lamarck when she realized that she was making her way to Rue Becquerel. A black iron gate stood in place of the old green gate. As Anne neared it, a dog began to bark. An old man opened his front door.

“What are you looking for?” he said.

“Madame Messager. She used to live here. …”

“Never heard of her.”

Walking away from Rue Becquerel, Anne realized that once again she had hoped for a miracle. And what if it had taken place? What would she have done? She was overwhelmed with guilt, telling herself over and over again that she was married and that she shouldn't stir up the past. Out of breath, she headed for Rue Norvins, where the painter lived.

He greeted her in a studio that reeked of old tobacco.

“You're here for my watercolors?” he asked.

The studio was spotless and white canvases hung on the walls. A finished watercolor was drying on a wooden easel. As soon as she saw it, Anne was captivated by its luminosity. The abstract painting featured a sort of iridescent and translucent cloud. It was breathtakingly beautiful. She would have loved to comment on the painting, but she was too shy to do so—she wasn't always comfortable with artists. How do you talk about their creation in the appropriate terms, without being boring or sounding ridiculous? She envied Amanda Kircher's ease. Amanda could express exactly how she felt in a few brilliant sentences.

Nonchalantly, her host ambled toward a bulky package.

“Everything is ready,” he said. “You came in a cab?”

“I let it go.”

“It's heavy!”

“I'm used to it.”

Knowing that most artists didn't like to be disturbed, she hurried around a table overflowing with fixatives, brushes, and tubes to grab the paintings.

“I can walk you to the taxi stand if you'd like. …”

“No, no! Everything is fine!”

In reality, nothing was fine after Anne went to Rue Becquerel. All day long, she was overcome with nostalgia and guilt, to the point where she couldn't concentrate during her driving lesson that evening.

“You're not listening to me,” her instructor said as he tried to give her a few pointers before entering a traffic circle.

“You're right,” Anne said. “I have a migraine.”

Once home, she took a painkiller and then collapsed on the couch. A few piano notes floated up from the downstairs apartment. What had possessed her to try to reconnect with the past? All around her, photographs served as reminders of all the happy days she had shared with François: swimming in the Indre River, a classic car rally they had participated in, a charity ball they had attended. How much time passed before she heard the key? Her husband's silhouette appeared in the entrance hall lit by a ceiling fixture. She saw him take off his coat and head for their bedroom.

“I'm here,” she said.

At the sound of her voice, he turned toward the dark living room.

“What's going on? Are you sick?”

“Just a little tired. Nothing to worry about.”

François walked over to Anne and put a hand on her forehead.

“You should go to bed,” he said.

After she put on a nightgown, he pulled down the sheets and blankets so she could slip into bed. Anne knew that no one else would ever have taken such good care of her. She shut her eyes. It was so easy to allow yourself to be loved.

“Sit next to me,” she whispered.

François propped up a pillow and leaned his back against it.

Examining Anne's face, he said, “You don't look as pale as you did when I first came into the house.”

“It's your presence,” she said with a smile. “You have a soothing effect on me.”

10

As soon as they
arrived
at the site of Expo 58, François couldn't contain his enthusiasm. Just like a kid, he gawked at the flags of the forty-nine countries that had signed on to present their technical knowledge and latest advances. King Baudouin officially inaugurated the world's fair on April 17, 1958. Two months later, Anne and François made the trip to Brussels. In the early afternoon, they dropped their luggage at the hotel, and then took the train to the town of Heysel, where avant-garde buildings had been constructed, including the famous Atomium, a structure 335 feet tall that weighed more than 2,400 tons.

In the midst of the Cold War era, the event was meant to be humanistic and pacifist. The fair's theme was “A World View: A New Humanism.” In that vein, the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to have their pavilions set up face to face. The other countries shared a territory crisscrossed by cable lifts, motorized rickshaws, and the Expo train.

Once they passed the entrance gates, Anne and François entered a futuristic universe that surpassed their expectations. Going along with the flow of the crowd, they walked along paths lined with fountains, ponds, and statues. Everywhere, the fair's flag flapped in the wind: a five-pointed star and the planet Earth.

François wanted to see the Soviet pavilion. The previous fall, the launch of Sputnik had kept him awake for many nights. As he lingered in front the exhibits on space exploration, Anne sat on a bench. Six months pregnant, she couldn't stay on her feet very long before her back started to ache. Her pregnancy had been confirmed just before Christmas. Since then, all she could think about was the birth of their child. Would it be a boy? A girl? What name would they give the baby? François liked Thierry, Bruno, Sophie, or Caroline. She preferred Aurélie or Olivier. If all went well, she would give birth mid-September.

“Let's go see the Americans!” she said when her husband was back.

They stood in line for a long time before finally walking into the circular temple of the “American Way of Life.”

The huge crowd prevented her from staying in front of the movie sets as long as she'd wished. But she was able to enjoy °a color documentary of a plane gliding above the Grand Canyon projected onto a giant 360. All throughout the exhibit, you could drink Coca-Cola and eat over-sweetened ice cream. But it proved all but impossible to get into the room where Ford, Cadillac, and Studebaker were presenting their latest models. Wave after wave of visitors lined up to admire the new fancy American automobiles.

Anne and François decided to leave the pavilion. All around them, people spoke a variety of languages. Hostesses in uniforms directed exhausted visitors to rest areas. After a stop in the Dutch pavilion, they headed for Guillaume Gillet's bold structure, the French pavilion. When they left the stand where fine wines and other local products could be sampled, the sun was beginning to set. They walked toward the Atomium, with its nine shining chrome spheres. An elevator was taking visitors to the top.

“In my state,” Anne said, “I'd rather just take it easy. I'll wait for you in the garden. Right over there, near the kiosk.”

“No way,” François said. “I'm not leaving you all by yourself!”

“Go on. I don't want you to miss out on that. The view from up there must be incredible.”

Finally, François gave in and stood in the long line leading up to the building. As she took a narrow path that snaked around bushes, Anne took deep breaths, enjoying the smell given off by the flowers. She was about to stop to remove a pebble stuck in her sandal when a group of students caught her attention. Crowding around a water fountain, they were goofing off. To the side, their chaperone poured over a map. Anne shuddered. No! This couldn't be! Without thinking, she walked over to him.

“Excuse me …” she said. “Aren't you Alexis? Alexis Messager?”

The man looked at her before answering, with some wariness, “That's right.”

“Alexis! It's me … Anne.”

“I'm sorry … but …”

“Anne Chastel. Bernard's sister. We used to live in Montmartre.”

“Yes! I remember you! You played a ghost in that play! I can't believe you recognized me. I've really changed so little?”

Not being able to say that his features had remained etched in her memory, Anne said, “I'm very observant.”

“Still! Tell me … What's become of Bernard?”

“He took over our grandfather's carpentry shop, in Touraine. It was his dream.”

“What about you? Are you still in Montmartre?”

“No, I live near the Opéra.” Seeing his eyes land on her stomach, she added, “With my husband.”

As Alexis folded his map, Anne felt her throat constrict. Was she going to wake up or had she really just run into him, right here, right now? She had thought about him so much throughout the years … His hair was darker now, but just as disheveled as before. She noticed his slender wrists, his long hands. He must be about thirty, she thought.

“Where did your family stay after the exodus?”

“On Lake Geneva.”

Lake Geneva!

“One of my aunts lives in Evian. She put us up during the war. Everything would've been fine if the Germans hadn't arrested my father, in 1943, near Digne. He had joined the Résistance. We never saw him again after that.”

Alexis' expression darkened.

“After the Liberation, my mother settled in Lyon. I stayed with her until the end of my studies. Then I taught literature at the Lycée Français in Cairo. Unfortunately, there was the Suez Canal crisis, and I had to flee Egypt in a hurry. For the past two years, I've been teaching in a private school. But I just found another job in Montreal. …”

Even though the question was burning on her lips, she didn't dare ask if he was married. She noticed that he wasn't wearing a ring.

“What have you been doing all this time?” he asked.

“I studied at the École du Louvre.”

He didn't react. Had he forgotten all about the treasures of ancient Egypt?

“I work in an art gallery,” Anne said. Then, turning to the boys a few yards away, she asked, “Are those your students?”

Alexis nodded.

“We've been here since morning,” he said. “They want to see everything! Test every single thing they see! They're tireless.”

Spotting her husband, who was out of the Atomium and looking for her, Anne was annoyed. As soon as he spotted Anne, François hurried over to her.

“François, let me introduce you to Alexis … a childhood friend.”

The two men shook hands. They couldn't possibly have been more different. Compared to Alexis, François looked bland. In a few sentences, she told her husband about the old Montmartre neighborhood where she and Alexis grew up.

Suddenly, two of the boys began shoving each other. A fight was going to break out.

“Excuse me,” Alexis muttered.

As Alexis tried to break up the fight, François glanced at his watch, and then put his arm under Anne's.

“We have to hurry if we don't want to miss the eight thirty shuttle.”

As soon as he turned off the bedside lamp, François fell asleep. Anne, on the other hand, couldn't keep her eyes shut. The light from the streetlamps outside slithered through the slits between the shutters, creating moving shadows on the bedroom's walls. Lying on her back, she relived her encounter with Alexis. It had taken eighteen years for her dearest wish to be fulfilled. Eighteen years during which he had never thought about her. Anne teetered back and forth between confusion and mortification. She was sad to think she had been deluding herself, and hurt at having been forgotten so easily. At the same time, she couldn't blame him for turning his back on the past. The many uprootings, his father's death, his mother's grief and widowhood had overshadowed everything. Mouth dry, she relived their conversation and kicked herself for having been so stupid. Why didn't she ask for Alexis's contact information under the pretense that she'd pass it on to Bernard? What an idiot! But wasn't it better this way? Anne believed in signs. This encounter took place while she was pregnant. Didn't that mean that Alexis had to disappear completely from her life? She tried to convince herself of that, but seeing him again had shaken her to the core. A man had replaced the young adolescent: a stranger, almost, with his own life story, his secrets, his virtues as well as his foibles. What were his motivations, his hopes, his tastes? She had no idea. On the other hand, she knew that he had forgotten about her as soon as he left Montmartre. “I'll protect you.” As soon as he had uttered those tantalizing words, he had promptly forgotten about them! She longed to free herself from this unreasonable attachment, but she still felt the pain eating at her. Outside, drunken pedestrians laughed and talked loudly. Disturbed by the noise, François mumbled a few unintelligible words before falling back asleep. Anne got up and stepped onto the balcony. Leaning against the railing, she tried to imagine her future, hoping that it would peaceful.