Lisette's List (46 page)

“No, Théo. Not yet. I still don’t know how it will end.”

I avoided Louise and Maurice. I went to the post office less frequently because Sandrine would see my disappointment and would tell Odette. I didn’t want to be the object of pity.

Spring proved to be wet and long.
Cigales
spread themselves on rocks, waiting for the summer’s warmth to signal to the males that it was time to vibrate their stomachs to make their mating call. How ironic. A mating call. Waiting. Also ironic that I longed to hear their jagged cacophony.

Once, when overwhelmed with the weight of Maxime’s last night, I crawled into the bed he had slept in and hugged the pillow to my chest. He was cruel not to answer my letter. He must have known by now that I loved him. I had shown him in every way, besides telling him outright in my letter. How could a relationship so whole and lovely end like this? And if it were to dissolve, who would be at fault? Bernard? Me? What should I have said to either of them that I had failed to say?

T
HE RAINS OF
A
PRIL
persisted for days on end, even into the beginning of May. When it wasn’t raining, it was misting, and when it wasn’t misting, it was damp. I ate only what I had in the house and in the root cellar. My war widow’s check was probably waiting for me at the post office, and I needed the money for food. On Thursday, market day in Roussillon, it was barely drizzling. I put on a coat and head scarf and headed downhill with my market basket.

“
Two
letters, madame!” Théo shouted in a voice bursting with victory. He handed them over the post office counter—my government check in his right hand and an envelope with no return address in his left.

At home I noticed the water-smeared postmark. Roussillon. Not Paris. It had to be from Bernard. The date was obliterated. Had he carried it in the rain? I opened it to
Dearest Lisette
, presumptuous as always. In his own mixed-up mind, though, I supposed he genuinely felt that way.

You must know how deeply I regret entering your house uninvited. It was the unbridled act of a passionate man, an awkward, desperate man of the country untrained in the niceties that you, a Parisienne and a lady, deserve. My foolish hope was that you might feel more comfortable and free in your own house than in mine. I feared that my time to win your affection was running out. I was oblivious to the hour. Please believe this above all—I came not knowing what I would do. In any case, I had intended to be tender, merely offering. Despite what I have shown, I do have that capacity. Discovering that a man was with you, I instantly felt embarrassment and shame for my ill-conceived action. I would have left, but by that time, he was on me
.

I have been troubled ever since by not knowing a way to apologize and to have you feel my genuine sincerity. I have finally thought of a way, and if you come to the cemetery some afternoon, I will see you and come down the ravine and we can make a promenade together. I will watch for you every day at two o’clock, hoping that you can find it in your heart to forgive me
.

Humbly, your devoted

Bernard
                       

I read the letter twice, three times. In spite of his prior vacillation between aggressiveness and retreat, his apology struck me as earnest. Sister Marie Pierre had always advised me to give others the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I was naïve, like André had often said. Maybe I too easily believed Bernard’s protests of good intentions, but his tone of contrition here was different from how he spoke before his declaration of a truce in his dining room. Except for this most egregious intrusion, he had done nothing after the truce to annoy or taunt me.

But to forgive him? If his intrusion had caused the ruin of my relationship with Maxime, I didn’t know how I ever could. Yet a surprising seed of softness told me it would be unkind to deny him his effort at reconciliation. If I didn’t, then living in the same village where I could run into him any day would make me nervous. It was better to confront him by intention rather than by accident. I had to see him, even if it was just to determine my feelings and to find out how far I was from forgiving.

More rain tore through the village the next day, beating the roof, pocking the earth, sliding down windowpanes in sheets. I would be a fool to go out in it. The next day was the same. On the third day, the sky cleared and the sun ventured out, and so did I. The plaster walls had absorbed the rain, and where Louise’s house was pale yellow-ochre in dry weather, it was now a rich golden ochre. All the
buildings and surrounding cliffs had taken on deeper tones, even tangerine, ruby red, and burgundy, enchanting me with love for the village.

I arrived at the cemetery at the appointed time without mishap but with apprehension. He was there, standing on the edge of the red-orange cliff.

“Lisette! Wait just one minute. Don’t leave.”

He backed through the orchard and came out carrying a pair of tall rubber galoshes and an umbrella, then scrambled down the eroded ravine.

Out of breath, he said, “I had almost given up hope. I’ve been out here every day at two o’clock.”

“Even in the rain?”

“Every day.”

A tight knot of resistance loosened a little.

He asked if it was too cool to take a walk. When I agreed to go, he offered the galoshes. Too small for him, they must have been his wife’s. Inside each one was a thick sock. He held me by the shoulders while I pulled them on.

He said nothing about his intrusion or the fight—too mortified, probably. That was good. I didn’t want to have to search my heart to condemn or to forgive just yet.

He suggested going to see the Usine Mathieu, the ochre works where ore was refined into pigments. It seemed an odd thing to do, but since I had never been there, I agreed.

From the cemetery we walked toward the village a little way, then turned off onto a narrow avenue that inclined steeply downhill. The houses became sparse and were surrounded by fruit trees, whose damp petals lay on the ground. One last red-roofed cottage had a vegetable garden, but the lettuce and beet greens and onion stalks had been beaten down by the storms, just like mine had been. As we walked he named the trees—oak, buckthorn, Spanish juniper, pistachio, on the right side below the road. And on the hill above us on the left, maple, snowball tree, and Aleppo pines.

We turned onto a lane leading to a large estate.

“The owners are away and have left me in charge, so we can visit the garden,” he said.

We followed a promenade lined with plane trees toward an octagonal pool, each side of which was a bordered flower bed, the plants flattened and wet. “I was hoping to show it to you before the rains ruined it.” Terraces and a balustrade led to the main house, which was grander than any I had seen in Roussillon. When I exclaimed at its beauty, Bernard chuckled. “I could show you a dozen more, hidden from the roads by hedges and woods. There are big landowners here. When this family returns, I will be invited to a grand soirée, and I am permitted to bring a companion. You.”

He gave me a sideways glance to ascertain the effect of his words.

“As
garde champêtre
, I have the responsibility to protect farms, orchards, vineyards, wineries, olive oil mills, mines, quarries, and factories, so I’m free to show you the Usine Mathieu, where Pascal worked. Monsieur Mathieu was not the first to make pigment from ore. The process was discovered before him, in the late eighteenth century.”

He was obviously trying to impress me with what he knew, with his position, and with Roussillon.

We turned onto a gravel drive that led to the ochre works, two buildings and a series of large open concrete sheds, each containing a huge furnace. Men nodded to Bernard and went right on stoking the furnaces with wood.

“You can see by the powder on the floors and on their clothing what color each furnace is producing. Farther down the hill are the original basins. They haven’t been used for many years, since the operation was moved to another part of the property. I’ll show you.”

As we walked through a forest of oak trees, he explained that the ochre ore, quarried or mined, had to be separated from sand. It was ninety percent sand and ten percent pigments, he said. Pulverized ore of each color was first flushed with water, which ran
through large-diameter pipes. Managing the flow of water was done by boys called washers.

“Pascal worked as a washer when he was a boy,” I said.

“So did I, a generation later. Almost every fourteen-year-old boy in Roussillon did, unless he was the son of a farmer who needed him. There used to be twenty such factories and a thousand ochre workers and miners in the area.”

Every pipe we saw had once emptied into its own narrow concrete canal, and for every canal, lower down the incline, there were several different levels of large rectangular concrete basins, some of them now cracked and overgrown with weeds.

“They are the old decantation beds. Each evening a flux of ochre, sand, and water was sent through the pipes to the canals and basins. The sand is heavy and sank quickly, while the ochre in suspension flowed down the canals into the basins. Throughout the night, when the water was still, the ochre settled at the bottom. In the morning, the water on the surface was released through small locks. In this way, the basins were filled with successive layers of ochre. When the ochre attained a thickness of fifty centimeters, no more water mix was allowed in, and the ochre remained in the basins for six months in order to dry. Then it was cut into bars and sent to the furnaces, where workers refined the colors by heating them at various temperatures for different lengths of time.”

Bernard seemed pleased to explain the process. He looked from one canal and its pipe to another.

“I think this was the one I worked.” He went back uphill a few steps. “No, I think it was that one.” He stepped over a canal and helped me across. “I know how to tell.” He walked up to the pipe and looked back to make sure I was following. All the pipes had wooden plugs about the diameter of a dinner plate. He wiggled this one until it came out.

“Reach inside,” he said.

“No! There could be spiders in there.”

He peered in. “No spiders. Reach in.”

I had a premonition, so I did reach inside and felt the familiar roughness of a painting rolled inward loosely. I tugged at the edge. It came out easily and fell open.

“Pissarro’s goat girl! My favorite! This is no coincidence. You
knew
!”

He raised his shoulders. His expression of acknowledgment was unreadable. Was it sadness? Embarrassment? Shame? I couldn’t tell.

“It was you all along! Hiding all of the paintings. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, barely audibly.

“How did you get them?” I demanded. “How could you possibly have known?”

“You have to believe me. I didn’t steal them.” He took a deep breath. “André told me where they were.”

“What? I don’t believe you. He never—”

“He thought it would be foolish not to tell a second person in Roussillon.”

“But why you? And why did you take them?”

“He
told
me to. He had only a few hours to remove them from their frames and work them off their stretchers and hide them. He never intended for them to remain under the woodpile. He wanted them hidden in safer places, each one in a different place. That way, if someone found one, that person wouldn’t find them all. I only did what he asked me to.”

It took me some minutes to grasp the truth. In a way, it was a relief to find out that André had confided in the
garde champêtre
—in his mind, the proper person. He had trusted Bernard, the arm of the law, to return them.

“Why didn’t you give them to me when the war was over and the Germans had left? That was wrong of you.”

“I know. I know. Please try to understand. I couldn’t bear the thought of you leaving once you had your paintings back.”

I felt my cheeks flush with anger.

“I’m so sorry that I put you through this long, drawn-out ordeal. For a while, I actually didn’t know what I would do with them, but I admit, I wanted the search to take a long time. You see, I was falling in love with you. There. I said it.”

“And so causing me anxiety was your way of expressing love? Bursting into my house at night was your way of expressing love?”

“It was wrong of me. Both things were wrong of me. But then a strange thing occurred. I began to hope that you
would
find them, for your sake, even though that would hasten the time when you would leave Roussillon. I couldn’t tell you outright that I had hidden them or had them—that would make you hate me. But whenever I discovered that you had found one, I was both happy for you and sad for myself. Do you see how conflicted I was? I was in a desperate state the night I came to your house. I thought I might confess everything to you, lay my soul bare, and then leave. I didn’t come to molest you.”