Corpus Christmas (10 page)

Five minutes later, her eyes were expertly lined and shadowed, the planes of her cheeks subtly enhanced with blusher, her
lips—

“My lip gloss is wrong for you,” Elaine frowned. “I’m blond, you’re brunette. You need something richer than anything I have
here.”

Sigrid brought out her own lipstick. “Will this do?” Elaine uncapped it, examined it critically and handed it back with approval.
“Perfect for you. How did you stumble—” She caught herself. “I mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Sigrid said dryly as she leaned toward the mirror on the door of Albee’s locker and applied the lipstick.
“It was the woman who cut my hair last month. She picked it out. I’ve just tried to follow her directions.”

She capped the lipstick and looked at the finished result as impersonally as if her face belonged to someone else.

“Uh, Lieutenant?” “Yes?”

Elaine reached into her locker for a plastic bag with the name of a dress shop located on the next block. “I picked this up
on my lunch hour today. It was on sale and looked like something that might come in handy during the holidays. You can borrow
it, if you want.”

It was a scoop-necked shell of gold sequins that glittered and sparkled like Christmas lights when Elaine lifted it from the
bag.

Sigrid made one weak protest, then shucked off her jacket and sweater, remembering just in time not to smear her lipstick.
The sequinned top fit fine. Albee was curvier, but she was taller, so it balanced. With her jacket left unbuttoned, she looked
almost glamorous.

Elaine was getting into the sport of it now and pulled out some gold-colored costume jewelry: bracelets and a pair of earrings.

Sigrid accepted the bracelets but regretfully confessed, “My ears aren’t pierced.”

“You have to have earrings.”

Another woman entered, greeted Albee by name, then gave Sigrid a formal nod and a curious glance.

“I’m late,” Sigrid said, looking at the clock on the end wall, but Albee was lost in thought. “Quaranto!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“In Records. She keeps a wad of costume jewelry in her desk.”

“I have to go,” Sigrid objected. “Not without earrings,” Albee told her firmly and neither woman noticed that in this area
it was now Albee who commanded. “I’ll meet you by the elevators on the first floor in two minutes.”

She sprinted for the door. Sigrid folded her turtleneck and left it in her own locker, put on her heavy coat, then took an
elevator downstairs.

True to her word, it wasn’t much more than two minutes later that Elaine Albee raced down the stairs with a glittery dangling
earring in each determined hand. Without a shred of self-consciousness, she stood on tiptoe to clip them on Sigrid’s ears,
then fluffed her hair and stepped back to look at what she’d wrought.

“Your coat!” she cried. “I think I know someone—” “No!” Sigrid protested, clutching her camel hair topcoat protectively.

“Well—” said Elaine. “But take it off the minute you get there, okay?”

“Okay.” Sigrid hesitated and awkwardly held out her hand. “Thanks, Albee.”

“Any time, Lieutenant.” Feeling almost maternal, the younger woman watched as her boss hurried out into the winter night,
earrings swinging with each long stride.

“There you are,” said Jim Lowry when she returned to the squad room. “What’s funny, Lainey?”

“Nothing,” she grinned. “Except that now I know how the fairy godmother felt when she sent Cinderella off to the ball.”

“Huh?” “Skip it. Didn’t you want to make the early movie?”

The cabbie had bent the speed limit, and Sigrid, who normally hated fast driving, gratefully added a little extra to her tip
as he let her out in Sussex Square. It was only nineteen minutes past seven. Fashionably late, she told herself and hurried
up the brick walk.

Remembering her promise to Elaine Albee, she slipped her coat off as soon as she entered the Erich Breul House. There she
was greeted by a dignified gray-haired woman in a red jacket and beautiful pearls.

“Welcome to the Erich Breul House,” said the woman, directing her to the cloakroom. “I’m Eloise Beardsley, senior docent.”

“Sigrid Harald,” she responded and handed her coat over to an attendant. “I think Oscar Nauman’s expecting me?”

“Ah, yes.” Mrs. Beardsley led her past an ornate Christmas tree and gestured toward the arched doorway near a wide marble
staircase. “There he is now.”

Suddenly all the silly panic over her clothes and makeup seemed worth it for the look in Nauman’s eyes as he crossed the hall
to her.

“Very nice,” he said, handing her a bourbon-and-Coke. “I was afraid you might not come.”

“Not come?” she asked. “Why would you think that?”

Seated at the desk in his makeshift office up on the fourth floor, Roger Shambley happily fingered the pack of letters. He
had read them so many times since last night that he’d virtually memorized whole passages. For the most part they chronicled
the usual unexceptional adventures of an earnest young man released from schoolbooks and given permission to play for a year
or two before settling into adult responsibilities.

After graduation in the spring of 1911, young Erich Breul Jr. had spent the summer at the family’s vacation “cottage,” near
Oswego on the eastern end of Lake Ontario. (Nowhere near as grand as the “cottages” at Newport, the Breuls roughed it each
summer with a mere eighteen rooms and a live-in staff of only five.)

In August he sailed to England for a month in London, then entrained for Vienna by way of Antwerp, Cologne, and Frankfurt.
Christmas and most of January were passed with his mother’s people in Zurich. Spring found him in Rome. In each great art
center, he dutifully visited the appropriate museums and churches, attended the expected concerts and operas, and afterwards,
with filial rectitude, recorded his impressions of each for his “dear Mama and Papa” back home.

As spring turned to summer in those letters, Shambley could read between the lines and sense young Breul’s growing saturation
with the old masters, lofty music, and approved lectures in fusty rooms. June made him restless for open air and manly exercise.
Accordingly, he had sent his luggage ahead to Lyons and, in company with several similarly minded youths, had hiked along
the Mediterranean coast from Genoa to Marseilles.

At Marseilles, he had somehow acquired a pet monkey, Chou-Chew. The details of that acquisition were glossed over; Shambley
suspected a rowdy night in one of those waterfront taverns frequented by seamen from all over the world.

In any event, Breul had parted from his friends, who were going on to Barcelona, purchased a bicycle, and, with the monkey
in an open wicker basket on the front, had pedaled northward up the Rhone valley. He meandered through small villages where
he bought bread and cheese or a night’s lodging; and as he entered the fertile plains north of Avignon, he enjoyed both the
blazing sun overhead and the cool shaded avenues of plane trees that lined the irrigation canals.

It was mid-August and the young vagabond was dawdling along a back road near the nondescript village of Sorgues-sur-l’Ouvèze
when his innocent reveries were suddenly interrupted by an enormous white dog that bounded over the hedgerows, barking with
such deceptive ferociousness that the startled young American promptly crashed his machine into the nearest tree.

Enter Picasso and Braque, thought Shambley, who had spent most of the night reading everything he could put his hands on concerning
their summer of 1912.

The dog was Picasso’s, a Great Pyrenees, one of those shaggy white creatures as big as a Newfoundland or Great Dane. His whole
life long, Picasso had adored animals, from exotic zoo specimens to the most common domestic cat. How could he resist a monkey?

Braque, himself a cyclist, was more concerned about the damage done to Breul’s new bicycle.

While Picasso quieted his dog and charmed the frightened monkey from the tree with his dark expressive eyes and coaxing voice,
Braque hoisted the crumpled machine over his broad shoulder. Together, they led the youth to the nearest blacksmith’s, left
the bicycle for repairs, and insisted that he go with them for a glass of wine.

As so often happens—even with strictly reared young Lutherans—one glass of wine led to two and before long, the first bottle
was empty and Picasso ordered a second in which to toast “
le grand Vilbure,
” that great American whom he and Braque admired above all others and whose death that spring had so impoverished the world.
The Spaniard spoke French with such a heavy accent that Erich Jr. had to ask him to repeat the name twice. Even then, Picasso
had to spread his arms and make engine noises before Breul understood that they were toasting Wilbur Wright.

Eventually, the blacksmith’s apprentice tracked them down and informed M’sieu Breul that it would be three days before his
bicycle could be repaired. His master had sent to Orange for the necessary part. One must be patient.

“But I’m due in Lyons day after tomorrow!” said M’sieu Breul. “I’m to meet friends there. It’s my birthday.”

“
Tant pis
,” shrugged the blacksmith’s apprentice. “Never mind,” Braque and Picasso told him. “We will celebrate your natal day here.”

Although this would be the last summer that Picasso had to worry about money, the two artists had deliberately chosen Sorgues
for two reasons: it was cheap and no one knew them there. But perhaps they missed Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Derain, Manolo,
Juan Gris, Havilland, and all the other friends with whom they socialized back in Paris. Or perhaps their kindness to the
young American sprang from a combination of great personal and professional happiness just then. Not only did their work intoxicate
them, so did their women.

Braque and his Marcelle still considered themselves newlyweds and Picasso had only that spring taken a new mistress, the lovely
and delicate Eva, “
ma jolie,
” who was to die so young.

In any event, Picasso volunteered to nursemaid Chou-Chew and Braque arranged for Breul to stay with him and his wife at Villa
Bel Air, a rather dreary and commonplace house that was more beautiful in name than in fact.

Shambley wished Erich Jr. had written less about Braque’s domestic arrangements and much more about Braque’s studio, the pictures
he saw there, or the conversations that must have passed between the two artists when Picasso arrived the next morning with
the monkey on his shoulder.

Instead, after a brief reference to Braque’s
trompe-l’oeil
technique and how he used combs and varnishes to duplicate the appearance of marble or grained wood on his canvases, Erich
Jr. wrote that he did not think dear Papa would find the work of his new friends very meaningful. “I fear that you, with your
deep love and knowledge of pure art, would scorn their
papier collé
and the strange analytical shapes of their designs, but their experiments interest me very much and when they explain what
they are doing, their excitement infuses me as well.”

Having seen the results, Shambley could use his imagination to fill in the details Erich Jr. so lightly touched upon. They
made him sit in a chair all afternoon, gave him Braque’s violin to play and, while the monkey clambered at will over sitter
and artists alike, began to devise a birthday portrait, using their new techniques. In the evening Marcelle and Eva produced
a special dinner and Breul gave them most of his pocket money for wine. By midnight, the portrait was declared finished (even
though it had taken on certain simian details as more bottles were emptied) and both artists had signed it on the back before
making a formal presentation to the birthday boy.

In return, Erich Jr. had risen to the occasion with a speech about Spanish-French-American friendship, in token of which he
now gave his bicycle to Braque and his monkey to Picasso. Early the next day, with his portrait tied up in brown paper, a
slightly queasy young American—“I think it must have been the sausages,” he wrote his parents—caught the morning train to
Lyons, where his
wander jahr
returned to its prescribed paths.

Except that it hadn’t quite, thought Shambley, turning to the letters written after Breul settled in Paris for what was to
be his final six months before sailing home. He was discreet about his sorties into bohemia, and his assurances of studious
application to conventional art and culture were probably written in response to pointed questions from home. But the catalogs
and Montparnasse menus, not to mention the two Légers hanging four floors down in that zoo of a janitor’s room, gave ample
evidence that the junior Breul had spent as much time among the avant-garde of Paris as in the venerable Louvre.

Shambley returned the last letter to its envelope and blocked them between his small hands like a deck of cards. At that moment,
Dr. Roger Shambley was a deeply happy man. All his life he’d chased those capricious goddesses, Fame and Fortune.

Native intelligence and dogged hard work had made him a well-regarded expert in nineteenth-century American art. His first
two books had gained him tenure; his third confirmed his reputation for good solid scholarship, which translated into speaking
engagements, magazine articles, even an occasional spot on the
Today Show
when a feature story required an art historian’s authoritative comment. If that art historian came across the tube as acerbic
and witty, all the better.

Yet everyone dreams of immortality. No matter how competently and wittily written, few books survive their time if they only
rehash previously known data; but the discoverer of new material will always be read simply because he was
first
. That’s why every scholar dreams of new finds—that Greek statue only a shovelful of dirt away, that major missing piece of
the puzzle. Discoveries automatically turn on the grant machines and roll out appointments and promotions.

With these letters and a description of how he found an unknown seminal work, Shambley knew he could write a monograph that
would become a permanent appendage to the Picasso-Braque legend. Not only that, he would become a hero to everyone connected
to the Breul House. Once it was made public that this dead-in-the-water museum contained the only documented example in the
entire world of a Picasso-Braque collaboration, they’d have to put in a conveyor belt to keep the crowds moving.