The Restoration Artist (4 page)

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK TO MY ROOM AND
I
SAW MY FACE
in the mirror—haggard, pale, desperate looking—I was shocked. I looked older than my thirty years. Like a man on the run, like someone being hunted.

As I studied the cuts and scrapes on my palms, remembering, my hands began to tremble. Then suddenly my whole body was shivering and my heart started thudding against my ribs. A cold clammy sweat broke out on my skin. A terrible feeling of shame came over me. I staggered over to the bed and collapsed across the cover. How close I’d come. Even though I’d thought I wanted it, I hadn’t.

But what
did
I want? I had no purpose. Except to find that boy. And why? Did I think it was some sort of miracle? My son come back to life? It was absurd to have such thoughts. The fact that I was even here was pure chance. This island, La Mouche, was just a speck on the map off the coast of France.

I’d woken one morning in the apartment on rue du Figuier in Paris after drinking myself into a stupor the night before, the
only way I could fall asleep, with a dry mouth, clammy sweaty sheets tangled around my body, overwhelmed by sudden terror. All that I stopped myself from thinking about during the day I dreamed of in the night. I did not remember my dreams, but I knew I had dreamed because I woke, trembling, my hands searching out the bottle of wine on the bedside table.

When I walked through the apartment I was overcome by a sense of strangeness—all the furniture, all their belongings, everything that had physically defined our lives together, even the contents of the studio when I glanced in quickly seemed unfamiliar, as if they belonged to other people, people I had never known. I was a stranger here.

In less than half an hour I’d showered and dressed and thrown a few things into a bag. I left the apartment without a backward glance towards all those years of happiness, and the months of solitary grief and misery and hopelessness that had followed.

Before driving onto the autoroute and quitting Paris for good—I had no destination except to leave the past behind—I headed up to the heights of Montmartre. All over the city, posters adorned the news kiosks, advertising Brigitte Bardot’s new film,
À Coeur Joie
. I parked on the side of the basilica and walked round to Place du Parvis du Sacré-Coeur. Claudine had liked to come up here, especially on Sunday mornings to have coffee in the Café Jongkind on Place du Tertre. Paris looked like a village from up here, she had once said. Along the skyline a haze was touching the rooftops and chimneys while south of Gare du Nord the buildings faded into ragged edges where they met the sky. Everything was shades of grey and muted whites.

“What do you think of, when you look down on the city?” she had asked me.

“The colours. How I would paint it,” I replied immediately. “And how impossible it is to really paint Paris without making it look like kitsch.” I’d thrown up my hands in a mock gesture of defeat. “And you, what do you think of?”

“I think of all the apartments, all the bedrooms. I think of all the people who made love last night, all the people who are making love at this very moment in their warm beds. All the promises kept.”

I’d kissed her then, in the damp hazy air, overcome by a flood of happiness, slipping my hands under her raincoat to feel the living warmth of her body and knowing myself blessed. If it had been possible I would have made love to her right then.

But as I stood there remembering, with my hands on the stone balustrade, I felt only sorrow. I looked down at the place that had been the only real home I had ever known: the grey and black rooftops, the familiar landmarks of the Eiffel Tower, the dome of the Pantheon, Notre-Dame, and just barely discernible, the slender column in Place de la Bastille not far from my own neighbourhood.

All those lives, all the struggles and hopes and fears. The desperate illusions. The futility of all the promises. Now I could see the darkness that was around everybody all the time, even those who loved.

I left Paris and drove out on the highway.

The motion of the car and the constancy of the unfolding road were soothing, numbing my mind, and as the name of each town flashed by, I left the past further behind. It didn’t matter where I was going as long as I kept moving. The spinning of the
wheels, the roar of the engine, the wind rushing in through the window.

All through the day I drove. I found myself reluctant to leave the car, as if the mass of metal hurtling down the auto-route was my only home now. I travelled through the alien landscape, nothing more than a shadow flitting across the fields and through the towns. I drove onward as evening fell, and I felt myself almost invisible, leaving no trace or impression, a wraith that passed on the periphery of people’s awareness, already a ghost.

At some point I registered that I was steering southwest, taking the known turnings, following the signs down into La Manche. The familiar names flashed by the windshield: Caen, Bayeux, Saint-Lô. I was travelling through the patchwork of the bocage—lush green fields bordered by tight hedgerows, stone houses with slate roofs, pink and blue hydrangeas alongside the walls of farmhouses, sturdy white cattle sometimes raising their heads to watch the car passing.

Only when I saw the sign for Coutances did I realize that I was driving towards Montmartin-sur-Mer. Where we’d been married. Where they were buried. The realization shocked me out of my dazed state. At the very next exit I turned around and headed towards Villedieu-les-Poêles and the Avranches road instead. Perhaps it was cowardly not to go to Montmartin, at least to put flowers in the graveyard. But I could not bear the thought.

On the seat next to me was the little paintbox, the one I’d bought for Piero at André Jocelyn on boulevard Edgar Quinet. I often rested my hand on it as I drove, running my fingers across the name inscribed on the lid. But I never opened the box. I had not painted since that day.

Hours later, I saw lights from a town and a sign that read St. Alban. The road ended at a harbour. Fishing boats were moored under the darkening sky where one patch of blood-red light from the sinking sun smeared across the water. To my left stood rows of orderly houses, a church on the heights, the lamps of evening glowing on the streets and in the windows. I drove up into the town until I saw a hotel.

I ate in the dining room. At the bar nearby sat a young couple, stools drawn together, their heads closely inclined to each other. The blonde woman had her back to me, but the way she moved made me think of Claudine. I ordered a glass of fiery Calvados when my wine was finished, and another after that, continuing to sit and watch the woman, wanting to see her face, but she never turned around. Later, in my room, dizzy from the alcohol, I conjured up sensual memories of Claudine from the darkness and in a desperate attempt to make my body remember her, I tried to masturbate, but my imagination failed me. I searched for the half bottle of whiskey in my bag, and I drank all of it, then lay down on the bed again, waiting for oblivion.

At some dark hour I woke to a cry in the night, a sound so full of anguish that I jerked awake and reached for the bedside lamp immediately. I was surprised to find myself lying on the bedcovers fully dressed, in a room I didn’t recognize. The window between the open curtains framed darkness. I looked at the watch on my wrist, dismayed to see that daylight remained a long way off. In was that dead time of the night, when the past seems a failure and the future an impossibility.

The cry came again. I hurried to the window. The parking lot, lit by a single harsh sodium lamp, was empty except for
my car. The surrounding buildings were in darkness, shutters drawn. Then I saw it. Just below my window an animal moved, a dog I thought at first, but as the long bushy tail swished from side to side and the sleek head with its pointed snout came up I saw a fox.

It pricked its black-tipped ears forward, lifted its snout and looked directly up at me. I stared down at the fox in the hard white light, then I let the curtain fall, located my shoes under the bed and pulled them on before fetching my jacket from the closet.

Damp salt air washed over my face as I stepped outside. The fox was nowhere in sight, but I crossed the parking lot and down a sloping alley, my feet ringing out on the cobblestones and echoing back at me from the high ancient walls of the sleeping town. As I passed through an archway the air changed, a sudden freshness, and there below me lay the dark slow-moving sea. Far out, where the horizon must be, the sky lit up with a white glow. A storm at sea, I thought. In the flashes of distant blue light I could make out, with unusual clarity, the shape of an island, the black silhouette of buildings, wooded cliffs, a church steeple.

It seemed to me a place that I recognized, that I knew, a long-lost landscape echoing in my mind. One of those places I used to create in my paintings. The sky fell to darkness again. The island vanished.

In the morning I retraced my steps along the ramparts. I peered out to sea, searching for the island I’d seen, but the ocean was unbroken by any landforms all the way to the horizon. I made my way to the tourist office. Yes, they told me, there was an island offshore, La Mouche, but it was impossible
to see from the mainland. It had a hotel and I could radio to them from the harbourmaster’s office if I wanted to go there. They could send a boat or I could hire one of the locals to ferry me over.

It wasn’t much later that I was standing on the deck of a fishing boat, watching Saint-Alban recede. And when it finally slipped from sight I turned towards the wide empty sea ahead, and the island somewhere beyond my vision.

W
HEN
I
WOKE IN THE MORNINGS, THERE WAS AN
instant, less than a minute, when I would forget, when memory was kind to me and I was without the burden of grief I carried, even in my dreams. In that brief suspension between the blank state of sleep and full consciousness, I was free, just a normal man wakening on an ordinary day. And I would feel hope, the eternally renewed hope with which human beings rise each morning to engage life. But then I would hear a distant cry from the darkness and smell the smoke, and memory would come. And like a condemned man I would rise to face my prison and the eternity of my sentence.

At first today was no different. Then I remembered the boy. I opened the shutters of my room onto the sky and the green landscape and the blue ocean.

At breakfast, as I was drinking my bowl of café au lait, I noticed a hand-painted map of the island hanging on the wall of the dining room. I placed my finger on the Hôtel des Îles, then moved it to the priest’s house, and then traced the route
back to the woods and the cliffs where I’d fallen. The trees on the map had been painted in daintily with a dark green, and the word
Précipice
marked in red where the woods met the cliff. West of the presbytery, near the centre of the island, was a farm called Manoir de Soulles. Here and there, other dwellings were indicated, mostly along the shore. The island seemed to have no actual roads, just paths of varying lengths, most of them with unusual names, criss-crossing and leading in all directions.

At the farthest end from the hotel, where the land came to a crooked point, was a lighthouse, Phare du Monde, and just past it a cluster of cottages in a curve of harbour indicated the village of LeBec. If I took the lane marked Route des Matelots, which bisected the island, I estimated that I could reach the village in about an hour, depending on the terrain. It would be the logical place to start my search.

But what was I searching for? A ghost?

I drained my coffee and placed the bowl on the table, tucked Piero’s paintbox under my arm, and left the hotel. Of course I wasn’t going to paint, but since I’d explained to Père Caron as well as to Linda and Victor that I’d come to the island to sketch, the paintbox would forestall any further questions.

I headed first straight back to the meadow on the cliff edge, where I examined the ground. It was well trampled with the indentations of goat hooves, but there was no longer any sign of a child’s footprints. Closer to the edge, I saw my own footprints, and a little farther off, those of the rope-soled espadrilles the woman had been wearing. But no others.

Cautiously, I approached the precipice and peered over. The ledge was below me, it hardly seemed so far away now, but
my shoes were nowhere in sight. Blown off by wind, I assumed. As I stood there in the sunlight, the events of yesterday seemed unreal, a dream, and although I knew they were not, I was still unsure of exactly what I had seen. I told myself not to be ridiculous, but a part of me hoped for the impossible. I had to see the boy again.

From the meadow I headed back along the path, following a track that led down into a wide flat heath of coarse grass bordered by dunes. The regular boom and hiss of waves breaking on the shoreline sounded beyond. Making my way up the ridge, through grass thick with purple bindweed flowers, I reached the crest that sloped down to a long beach. The wind was stronger here, whipping fine particles of sand through the air.

Shorebirds took flight at my appearance, flashing silver above the waves that crashed down on the sand in spumes of white foam, bringing a memory of a summer on the beach at Montmartin-sur-Mer. There, hundreds of sandpipers had flocked on the coast that year, darting along the shoreline on their dainty legs, their high piping calls mingling with the voices of Claudine and Piero as they ran after the birds, which took to the air in great curved arabesques.

Piero was five that summer and it was the first time the three of us had the house to ourselves for the whole holiday. Claudine’s mother had passed away the year before. I’d never met her father, who died when she was a teenager. In my mind’s eye I pictured the beach that year, a summer of perfect sun. How brown Claudine had become. And she’d let Piero’s hair grow, so that his black curls and his tanned skin had given him the appearance of a little faun. Like that boy I’d seen.

Now, just as I was about to slide down the slope to the beach, I stopped. I heard a voice calling. But when I looked up and down the sand, in both directions, there was no one. I was alone. It must have been the wind, or the sandpipers. I walked on.

The village appeared as I rounded one of the curves in the shoreline: a handful of cottages facing the harbour, which was tiny, just two stone piers like the arms of a crab sheltering a narrow entrance. A couple of boats were anchored in the harbour with ropes attached to the piers. Heaps of netting and lobster pots lined the quay and the fecund smells of the seaweed and mud were rich in my nostrils as I followed a lane up from the shore between the houses. An unseen dog barked nearby. I recalled the woman I’d met near the cliff yesterday. Did she live here?

The village seemed to be deserted, most of the cottages fastened shut. Disappointed, I continued along the path, which cut inland now. Soon I was beneath the dappled shade of widely spaced oaks. In a hollow where the ground underfoot was thick with brown acorns, I came upon the black pellets of goat droppings. At the same instant, I heard a flat clinking, like the rattle of pebbles in a tin can, and in a gully to my left, among the rocks and grass, I saw the goats. I positioned myself next to the trunk of an oak, keeping very still, my eyes scanning the surrounding area.

Was the boy with them?

The goats hadn’t noticed me. They cropped at the grass and shrubs, clambering among the rocks that edged the gully, the bells at their throats clanking. There was no sign of the big ram that had confronted me on the cliff. Just then, from beyond the
trees, three long low notes resonated over the landscape—the tolling of a church bell. The goats lifted their heads to stare across the gully at me, as if the sound were of my making.

I waited, half expecting some answering sound. The bells pealed again, three deep notes that echoed into one another. As the sounds died away, the goats scampered out of sight. Once again, I was disappointed. I had expected something. But what? After waiting a couple of minutes longer, I walked on, soon coming to the sea again.

Below me, just off shore, stood a small stone church, unusually situated on its own little islet of rock, separated from the main island by about fifty metres of sand. The building wasn’t really substantial enough to be called a church—chapel was more appropriate—but it was sturdily built of the local granite, with a black slate roof. In the tower, silhouetted against the sea and sky, sunlight gleamed on the bronze of the bell that I had heard minutes earlier.

I made my way down to the beach and across the damp, spongy sand to the islet of rock. The chapel doors were substantial slabs of oak with black iron hinges and a knocker in the shape of a braid of rope. One door was partially open.

I hesitated. A tremor shivered through me. Ever since that day in Cyprus, at the chapel of Agios Lazaros, I’d avoided every sort of religious building. I associated them with darkness, with death. Was that other chapel still standing? Had it been repaired, or was it just a bombed-out ruin? As for who was responsible—Turks, or Greeks, or both—that had never been established. Another small war in another small place.

The shepherds who had seen the explosion that day and pulled me unconscious from the rubble had turned me over to
the United Nations Peacekeeping force. After a few days in hospital, where my shock at what had happened was worse than any injuries, the French consulate arranged for my return to Paris. Our return, I should say. Claudine and Piero’s bodies were on the same flight, enclosed in their coffins in the cargo hold.

My desire for justice, for revenge, had burned out in the long months afterwards, until only despair remained. In the end, I was responsible. No one else.

I looked back across to the main island, which was so silent and still that it might as well have been completely uninhabited. But if I did not go forward, where else was there to go?

Fighting off the memories, I grasped the handle and pushed open the door. I was surprised to find not darkness but light, not emptiness but life. About a dozen or so people were gathered in the pews in front of Père Caron, who stood before a simple altar with his hands raised in a blessing.

Hearing the door, most of the congregation turned to observe me. With an embarrassed nod I slipped into the nearest seat as the priest inclined his head in a greeting and resumed the service. Was it Sunday? I had long ago stopped keeping track of the days, but I must have wandered into a Mass.

The interior of the chapel was very plain, just a few rows of wooden benches and an altar covered with a white embroidered cloth. A wooden model of a schooner, about six feet long, hung from the ceiling against the wall where a crucifix would normally be. I guessed that this was a mariner’s chapel, for I’d seen similar wooden boats in country churches along the Normandy coast.

While the priest continued with the service, my eyes searched among the people seated in front of me. The only
children were two youths in their teens and a small girl of about two sucking her thumb. But no boy.

I’d been sitting there for only a few minutes when the door behind me creaked and a thin shaft of daylight fell across the pew where I sat. I looked back over my shoulder. A figure was framed in the doorway. The woman from the cliff. She slipped into a seat across the aisle. The light from a high window fell on her face but her eyes were dark as ink as she looked at me. It was one of those looks that can sometimes pass between two strangers, on a street or bus, of recognition, not in the sense of knowing each other, but of possibility. I remembered her leaning over me on the path, like an apparition. I stared at her, thinking how striking she was. She wore a thin transparent scarf over her hair, tied under her chin, and she had pulled it forward a bit over one cheek. As she turned to face forward, I remembered the bruise.

At the altar, Père Caron made a final benediction and exited through a low doorway into the vestry. Mumbles of
Amen
sounded from the congregation and the shuffle of people rising to their feet signalled that the service was over. A murmur of conversation started up. Somebody opened the doors wide to admit daylight and the flood of brightness dazzled my eyes.

I remained in my seat, subject to the curious glances of the congregation as they filed out. Victor and Linda from the hotel passed and nodded with smiles. I dropped my eyes, avoiding curious glances. What did they know about me? Père Caron had probably guessed what had happened on the cliff, but I doubt he would have gossiped. On the other hand I knew nothing about him, and it was a small island after all. My presence had undoubtedly been noted and remarked upon.

When I looked around moments later, I was alone in the church. I got up from the pew and walked towards the doorway. For the first time I noticed the painting hanging over the entrance. Curious, I drew nearer and studied it. Although the surface was not in good condition and obviously needed a cleaning, I could make out the subject.

The scene showed two figures dressed in classical clothes of an indeterminate period, moving across a landscape. A woman walked first, with a lyre in one hand, the other reaching back to the man behind, her fingers almost touching his outstretched hand. Behind him, an obscure dark patch could be a thicket of thorn bushes, or the entrance to a cave, or just a patch of the painting that had weathered badly.

What caught my attention was a building in the background—this very chapel in which I now stood. I realized that the landscape in the picture was that of the island itself. The work was very accomplished; the style reminded me vaguely of Poussin, but mistier, more atmospheric.

“It’s by Davide Asmodeus.” Père Caron was coming down the nave, dressed again as I had first seen him, in a navy blue jacket, white shirt and his floppy beret. He was holding his tobacco and rolling papers in his hand.

“Asmodeus. Really?” I stepped closer still to study it.

The priest pointed at a blurry signature on the bottom right. “You are familiar with his work?”

“I’ve seen the famous one in the Louvre,
The Rites of Spring
. He died young, I understand. He didn’t leave many paintings behind.” I moved back to get a better view. “How did this one come to be here?”

“Asmodeus was exiled from France by Louis Napoleon in
1858 for so-called ‘seditious activities’ and was on his way to Spain by sea. A storm brought the ship here to La Mouche. He stayed for three months, painting. Some say he fell in love with the island landscape, others that it was a woman he loved here. Whatever the truth, the painting remains.”

“It’s very compelling. Could it actually be an original Asmodeus?”

“A scholar was here before the war to examine the painting and he made no conclusion, although he was inclined to doubt the authenticity of the signature. I like to think it is genuine.”

“And the subject?”

“The expert said it should be titled ‘Love and the Pilgrim.’ Something about the figures being similar to another painting on that subject.”

“It’s a pity about the bloom,” I said, pointing to where the varnish had discoloured. “And that bit on the man’s face where the pigment has flaked off from the gesso. The sea air, I suppose. The church isn’t heated, is it? That would explain the damage. Humidity must have got in with the varnish. And maybe there wasn’t enough binder in that section around the face. The artist probably never imagined this painting hanging in an unheated building so close to the ocean.”

“Of course, you know about these things, you’re a painter yourself.” He pointed to the paintbox under my arm.

“Not really. Not any more.”

“Oh. Aren’t you here to paint?”