The Restoration Artist (7 page)

“Thank you.”

“If you like, I can have my boat at the harbour on the other side tomorrow afternoon and bring you over with your stuff. There is a tractor at Le Port, but it is much faster by boat.”

“That would be great. I appreciate the offer. I’ll pay you for your time, of course, and for the wood.”

“Not to worry. It will be good to have someone living here again. Too many have left the village and gone over to the mainland to work. Maybe you will have time to make a little painting for us one day. My Maria would like that.”

“It’s a deal.” I shook Simon’s hand before he left, pleased at the welcome I’d received.

I turned and surveyed the room again. For most of my life home had been the dormitory at the Guild—my bed, the cupboard where I hung my clothes, the little bedside locker for my few belongings. After the Guild, I’d had a scholarship to art school and I’d lived in a rooming house on Haro Street in Vancouver, then I’d moved into a studio in one of the old buildings on Powell Street in Japantown. There’d been a string of studios over the years, in Vancouver, then New York and then in Paris. Rooms for work, for painting in, with a bed in a corner behind a curtain, second- or third-hand furniture, a hotplate for cooking, usually a bathroom down the hall. I hadn’t minded. I was a painter and that was how artists lived. Until I met Claudine.

In the beginning, after we were married and started living on rue du Figuier, it had taken me quite some time to settle in, to be comfortable in any of the rooms except the studio. I’d never had a dining room, or sitting room, much less a proper bedroom. We owned the apartment, bought with an inheritance from Claudine’s father, but it still took a couple of years
for me to get rid of the feeling of impermanence. I think it was only after Piero was born that I allowed myself to believe that I had a home and a family, that finally I was at home.

And then how quickly it had all changed.

On an impulse, I reached into my jacket pocket for the bleached oyster shells I’d collected on the beach, and arranged them in the sunlight on the windowsill.

R
ATHER THAN GO BACK TO THE HÔTEL DES ÎLES THE
same way I had come, along the route des Matelots, I decided to follow the shoreline towards the headland marked on my map as Le Colombier—the dovecote—where I had seen the house called La Maison du Paradis.

The tide had risen higher while I was seeing to my new cottage and the waves now came right up to the dunes. The white dog was nowhere in sight, and the moon was high in the sky, looking much smaller and less impressive.

The track meandered left, away from the dunes and across a heath, where a flock of crows rose into the sky protesting my presence, black flutterings on blue. Just visible through a dense grove of pines on the far side of the heath was a rooftop, and I made my way in that direction. It was immediately quieter in the trees, away from the breeze and the sound of the waves. Underfoot lay a carpet of dried pine needles. The house I had glimpsed was no longer visible and there was no path here, but I guessed I was heading in the right direction.

I hadn’t walked very far when I heard a peculiar sound, a quick squawk, like the choked-off call of a gull. I assumed it was some kind of bird. The sound came again, like a voice, but not a voice, and not a bird either. I stopped. The breeze sighed in the pines softly. Then the sounds came rapidly, from some sort of musical instrument, a clarinet maybe.

Yet these jumbled sounds could hardly be called music. Only once had I heard music remotely similar to this cacophony, and that was on Tenth Street in New York, at a party in a loft belonging to some musicians. They had played what they called “free jazz.” Try as I might to be hip, I had heard only a noisy confusion of sounds. It was like looking at the abstract expressionism everybody was painting—I saw no meaning, just a tangle of colours and shapes. Since then, I’d been a few times with Claudine to musical recitals at churches in Paris—Mozart, Vivaldi, that kind of thing—but my tastes ran more to the Mississippi blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Fred McDowell that I’d first heard in a coffeehouse in Vancouver.

I moved forward, almost tiptoeing, my steps cushioned by the pine needles. But when I stepped on a dried branch the crack of the snapping wood was as loud as a gunshot. The sounds stopped immediately. I remained motionless, holding my breath, peering into the shadows. All was silence.

The afternoon heat rose in waves from the ground at my feet, the resinous smell of the pines thick. I waited. Then the strange otherworldly sounds filled the grove again. Half a dozen goats came into view, foraging among the rocks or stretching their necks to nibble the leaves at the tips of branches. Just past them, a figure was perched on the rocks, holding a clarinet. The boy! He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of
tattered shorts. The afternoon light fell upon his dark curls and his bare browned shoulders and touched the clarinet so that it shone like gold.

He played on, unaware of my presence. It was a crude and strange music, but music nevertheless. He seemed to be learning as he played, inventing and repeating sequences, finding tones, mostly off-key, but hitting the right notes frequently. Then, for some reason, the goats all raised their heads at the same time and stared across the clearing. The boy stopped playing. He looked directly at me, calmly, confidently, but his expression was inscrutable. Then, with two quick leaps he sprang from the rocks to the floor of the clearing, still watching me.

“Wait,” I called.

I went forward a few paces, raising my hand, reaching out. The boy moved farther away.

“Wait, please.” I reached into my pocket and my fingers closed around Piero’s silver whistle. I raised it to my mouth. I blew softly, pursing my lips, so that the ball inside the chamber barely revolved, and the sound that came was not the shrill metallic signal that Piero liked, but something like the cooing of a dove.

The boy looked at me with curiosity, his eyes moving from my face to the gleaming silver whistle. He took a couple of tentative steps towards me, and his features become more clearly visible. I stared into his face. He resembled Piero, the thick unruly hair, his manner of moving, something about the alert way he held his head. But the eyes that looked back at me were not those of my son.

Holding the whistle on the flat of my palm I extended my hand to the boy. “Here. Take it. Try it. You can have it.”

Flecks of grass and pine needles were caught in his dark curls. On his neck there was a welt of lighter skin, a scar, encircling his throat like a necklace. Slowly he came closer and his hand stretched up, tentatively, hovering, reaching for the gleaming silver whistle on my palm.

“Take it,” I whispered. His forefinger touched the metal surface.

As his hand opened to grasp the whistle, I reached out and clasped my fingers around his wrist. Without warning he bent his head and sank his teeth into my hand. A sharp nip, as quick as a fox. With a cry, I released him, and he sprang away, bounding towards the trees. The goats scattered and dashed after him.

For a long while I stood there, alone in the silence, in the emptiness, rubbing my fingertips back and forth along the skin of my wrist. Then I bent down and retrieved the whistle from the pine needles where it had fallen.

I
HAD NOTHING,
I
REALIZED, AS
I
STOOD OUTSIDE A
cluster of buildings near the harbour. On the nearest building, stone walls and slate roof like all the others on the island, a sign with a painting of a loaf of bread hung over the door. Below it was written A
LIMENTATION
G
ÉNÉRALE
. This was the local
épicerie
, to which I had been directed by Simon Grente, who was down at the quay on his boat, the
Stella Tilda
, ready to transport me back to LeBec. In my hand I had a list of everything I would need to provision the cottage.

I opened the door and entered, to be greeted by a man wearing a baker’s jacket of rough cotton and trousers dusted with flour.

“Bonjour
. Monsieur Millar?”

“Yes. Hello.” I assumed that everyone on the island must know who I was by now.

The man smoothed his neat beard with one hand, streaking it with flour. “My name is Martin Levérrier,” he said in a friendly voice, glancing at the paper in my hand. “We sell a
bit of everything here, whatever you need.” Gesturing at his floured jacket, he added, “And of course, as you see, fresh bread, croissants and
gâteaux.”

The crowded interior of the shop was part hardware store, part grocery store and part everything else. On one wall fishing equipment of various purposes hung from floor to ceiling; there were oilcloth raincoats and rubber boots, shovels and pickaxes, newspapers and wine, oil lamps and canned tomatoes.

“I have to check the breads,” Martin said. “Let me know when you are ready.” He disappeared into the back.

I started to collect my provisions, piling them on the counter: Coffee, a chunk of Comté cheese, rice, sugar and salt, cooking oil, canned sardines, garlic. From a basket near the door I selected potatoes, carrots with the soil still clinging to them, thick leeks and some small yellow apples. The wine and spirits section was well stocked, and I was in the act of reaching for a bottle of cognac when I let my hand fall. Did I need it? Since arriving on the island I had not felt the same need to find oblivion every night. The last item I selected was a woven basket with sturdy handles.

Martin returned with a half dozen loaves in his arms just as I was pensively walking around the store, trying to think if there was anything I had forgotten. I reached for some cans of evaporated milk.

“You won’t really need that. Ester Chauvin supplies us from her farm, just chickens and a few cows, but she provides many of the islanders with eggs and milk and butter. Her duck is very good.” He went into the back and came back with a glass bottle of milk. “Stop off at her place anytime. It’s called Manoir de Soulles; you can see it from the route des Matelots.”

From the basket of fresh bread on the counter, I chose a thick crusty loaf while Martin began to total up my purchases on a scrap of paper. Looking up, pencil poised, he said, “Cooking gas?”

“I forgot that. And matches.”

As I was paying him I said, “I passed a house earlier, on the other side, a pretty little place called La Maison du Paradis.”

“Ah yes, that belongs to Madame DuPlessis.”

“I think I might have met her the other day. Black hair, a few years older than me?”

“Non
, Madame DuPlessis has not been here for some time. She is an older lady who lives in Paris.”

“But the cottage is inhabited? I thought I saw someone there.”

“Yes, another lady is staying there. A musician.”

That explained the clarinet. “I saw her son too, a boy of about ten?”

He shook his head as he handed me my change.
“Non
, that lady is alone. She doesn’t have any children with her.”

Outside, Simon Grente was waiting with a handcart, smoking a cigarette. I loaded my bulging basket onto the cart and Martin lifted up the cylinder of gas.

“Bonne chance,”
he said and shook my hand. “Remember, the bread is fresh every morning.”

T
HAT EVENING
, I
COOKED A MEAL
of boiled potatoes, fried onions and grilled mackarel that came courtesy of Simon. It wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, but at least I was actually making a meal for myself again. For so long I’d eaten in
cafés or made do with sandwiches or just spooned something out of a can.

I washed the dishes in water drawn from the well and left them to dry on the counter before going back outside to the garden. The fading sun had covered the east wall in a slanting light that bathed the walls in an orange glow. I sat down on the stone bench near the fig tree, turned my face to the sun and slipped my shoes off, settling my toes into the grass, feeling the warmth of the earth on my soles.

I thought over the encounter with the boy yesterday. I hoped that I hadn’t frightened him away completely. What was his relation to the woman? Was it her clarinet that he was playing? I supposed he could be her pupil. No doubt I could have asked Simon or Martin Levérrier if they knew anything about him. But I wanted it to be a sort of secret. I had a sense we would meet again.

All around me was the golden sunset light. The walls of the garden were like an embrace, arms reaching out from the sturdy presence of the house to hold and guard me. I felt alone, but not lonely.

As I sat there, a tiny rust-brown bird landed on the wall a few feet away. It cocked an eye in my direction, then puffed itself up and turned towards the sun. To my delight, it launched into song, its tail wagging up and down as a rapid stream of notes trilled forth from the little body:
chit chit chit cher, chit, chit, chit cher
.

The white breast glowed orange in the falling light, so that the little bird seemed lit up from within. It seemed to sing for no reason other than that it was there, in the warm light, alive. The innocent music of its song took me out of myself, so that I forgot my sadness and felt a brief and unexpected moment
of joy. Happiness still existed in the world. It had just lost a place in my heart. In a few minutes the sun dipped below the edge of the wall and suddenly the garden was cast into evening shadow. The glow and the colour faded from the roses. The sparrow ruffled its wings, lifted off and flew away, as if following the sun.

I went back into the house. It felt chilly and dark, so I lit the kindling in the fireplace, then added wood as the flames grew. I perched on the edge of the couch in front of the fireplace with my hands stretched towards the warmth. The shutters were still open and the light framed in the windows was now a deep velvety blue. All was silent, except for the crackle of the fire. Every now and then a gust of sea wind blew over the house and the shutters creaked softly.

Here I am, I thought, an artist with his own little seaside cottage on a picturesque island. This is everything a landscape painter could want. But would I ever paint again? That long-ago day in Vancouver when Brother Adams had taken me to see the Corot had been a moment of revelation, and I had been a disciple ever since. Art had been not only a home and a refuge, but a path that I had always believed I could follow.

I looked over at the two oyster shells on the windowsill. Earlier, they had seemed icons of promise, glowing with light. But now, in the shadows, their brightness was gone and they were just dead objects, and suddenly the notion that beauty meant something seemed a foolish illusion. The old despair came over me again. My selfish absorption in my painting, my attempts to re-create beauty, had led to the death of my wife and child.

A couple of weeks before I’d quit Paris, Serge Bruneau, my friend and dealer, had convinced me to come to lunch with him.
He always had some new discovery, some little out-of-the-way bistro that he wanted to share. The place was south of Place de la République, just near Cirque d’hiver. I don’t remember what we ate. I drank quite a few martinis. Serge had sold one of my paintings, a view of the ruined Roman bridge at Pont de la Roque, for quite a lot of money, and the buyer wanted more in the same vein. I told Serge that I hadn’t painted since Cyprus and I was not going to take it up again.

He protested that I surely couldn’t be serious. No matter how much I’d suffered. It would come back to me.

I said to him, “You know, for me, painting has always been a kind of spiritual activity, and now I’ve lost my faith. Or seen it for the illusion it always was. In the end a picture is simply a picture, pleasing to the eye. Or not, as the case may be. The rest is just bullshit.”

“But my dear Leo,” Serge replied, trying for a jovial tone, “of course people like you and I make a religion out of art. What else is there?”

“Only darkness. I can’t see the point of art any more.”

“I will not agree with you,” Serge said emphatically. “I’ve based my whole career as an art dealer on the belief, the faith you talk about, that art gives something to the world.”

“Really?” I said angrily. “Did the Nazis who swarmed through the Louvre gawking at the paintings during the war change their ways? Those bastards who killed my wife and son, did Art matter to them? Art is a sideshow, an entertainment. Nothing more.”

“This is your grief talking,” Serge said. “You are someone who has been blessed with a special gift. Your paintings give a great deal to people—pleasure, poetry, beauty. Even faith in
life. You express what is in all of us, who cannot express it. Are you willing to discard that gift?”

I was faithless now, like a believer who sees that his God was only a shape on a wall, his own shadow cast by a fading light.

I’d always thought of Serge as a sensualist and I told him so. “You enjoy life easily,” I said. “All this—the food, the wine, this place, the paintings you surround yourself with. I envy you.”

“You think I’m nothing but a hedonist?”

“The appreciation of beauty comes naturally to you. I’ve always had to struggle to find it.”

“And you have found it, Leo. People like me are the ones who struggle to know beauty. We rely on you, the artists, to show it to us.”

But now it was I who needed someone to show me the way.

An owl hooted in the gathering darkness. I was very far away from everything, but I was used to being alone. Even as a kid, lying at night in a dormitory full of other boys, I had known that I was alone. Sometimes one of the smaller boys would whimper in the darkness, or sob quietly, crying for something lost. But I never cried, and I wanted to tell that boy that it wouldn’t do any good. I never cried. Not even when I wanted to. Not even now.

Remembering those nights at the Guild made me think of Brother Adams. I suppose he was the closest person to a father that I had ever had.

When I left Vancouver, heading to New York to try my hand at being an artist there, I’d gone to say goodbye to Brother Adams and he had given me a little going-away present, a book. It was obviously old. The title was embossed in faded
gold letters on the worn leather cover.
The Ideal View
. The pages were yellowed and the illustrations were in black and white, pictures of landscape paintings. By then I knew some of the names: Corot of course, Poussin, Claude Lorain, John Constable, Cézanne and Pissarro. Facing each picture was a line or two of text. I read the words opposite a painting by Corot. “The most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw. All is lovely, all amiable, all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart.”

“Now that is something to make a picture of, eh?” Brother Adams had said. “‘The calm sunshine of the heart.’”

Would he have been disappointed with the way I’d turned out? Of course I’d suffered, maybe more than most people, and he would have understood. But now I had given up art and everything he’d hoped I would become. Would he have understood that?

My thoughts turned to the chapel, to the painting there, and to Père Caron. Something about him reminded me of Brother Adams. He had that same masculine warmth and steadiness that I had longed for so much when I was a boy.

Was I going to disappoint him too?