The Day of the Bees Read online

  I parked my car and walked in the direction the elegantly dressed crowd was coming from, for they could only be returning from the auction at Louise’s. I passed the village café, which was doing a business never thought possible in calmer times. It was thronged with international media and art moguls, all there because of Reigne’s newly discovered famous daughter. When Louise arrived there fifty years earlier it had been a lost place, with no jet airport at the nearby Côte d’Azur, no freeway slicing through the countryside, no bullet train shooting between Europe’s capitals in mere hours. Reigne was remote then, not only in setting but in its perceptions of the outside world. To Reigne there was no world beyond the surrounding vineyards and orchards, beyond the high forest ripe with truffles and wildflowers. Reigne’s concerns extended no further than its main market center across the valley, Ville Rouge. The fabled lights of Paris were as distant as the sun. Reigne would not have known a Francisco Zermano painting from a bowl of peaches, and given the choice would prefer the peaches. The village knew the best vintage years of its vineyards but did not know Louise’s real name. Reigne was unaware of the fame that surrounded Louise when she lived with Zermano. In Reigne, Louise had been a simple daughter of the countryside, and the village was a tolerant parent.

  Now Reigne was a proud parent, made famous overnight in the media’s glare. Its postmaster, doctor, greengrocer, mayor, farmers, and vintners—all gave interviews on Louise’s life, every one an instant authority. Yes, some said, they knew her well, were best of friends, what a gregarious and fun-loving woman she was. No, chorused others, she never left her house except for essentials, never talked to women, only to men, and then in the barest of conversation. She was closed off, aloof, frightened, skittish, paranoid. Nonsense, shouted the baker, she was my lover, tender as a rabbit in a hutch. All lies, declared the butcher, she was no man’s lover, and she was never tame, I can testify to that!

  I passed the village church with its romantic wedding-cake architecture and turned up the street leading to Louise’s house. I was struck with vertigo, for the street quickly became no more than a stony path along the top of a crumbling medieval rampart, giving way on one side in a thousand-foot drop to the valley below. Birds circled in the sky over the valley. Behind them the peak of Mont Ventoux soared from a distant chain of mountains, its barren windswept peak a mute reminder of a world beyond reach. My vertigo was not brought on by the heady reality of gazing at such splendor from such a lofty perch, but by the fact that I was coming so close to Louise, to where she actually lived. If only I knew what lay ahead I might have turned back. I felt Louise was calling me. She knew someone like me would appear, the curious one who would probe, who would find what she herself in life could not bear to reveal.

  Facing the stone wall of her house with its sunny flowers creeping from long vines, with its pale blue wooden door, I couldn’t turn back. What I didn’t know I didn’t know. I pushed open the door and stepped in. The first thing I felt on my skin was the cool freshness of the interior after the heat of the outdoors. I did not have the sensation that someone had grown old and tired here. Instead there was the silent tick of life being lived, of continuity. The walls held a vibrant ochre tint in their smoothed plaster surfaces. The rooms were not large, but their proportions made one aware of the greater world through the open shutters of the tall windows, where everything in the distance could be observed: Château-Colline, Ville Rouge, Mont Ventoux. Exploring room to room gave one a sensation of being in midair, tumbling across a landscape of time.

  “May I be of assistance?”

  The solicitous voice came from everywhere and nowhere. I looked around and saw no one.

  “I’m afraid the auction is concluded, not an item of art left. Case closed.”

  I found the voice. It was coming in through the open window of Louise’s bedroom. I was standing next to the high-backed cherry-wood bed where Louise had slept until she was discovered one morning, asleep forever. The voice came from outside on the stone terrace, from a man sitting in a wicker chair deftly working a calculator. I went out to the terrace. The man, dressed in a fashionably tailored suit, rose and offered his hand in greeting.

  “I’m Ralph Norrison of New York. Our gallery represents Zermano worldwide. Since all of the works of Mademoiselle Collard were created by Zermano, he has the rights to them. As no one came forward to challenge those rights we have disposed of the art at the children’s request—with a generous tax consideration for the various governments involved, I might add.”

  I hadn’t asked him to add anything. He appeared defensive as I introduced myself and shook his hand. I quickly assured him I wasn’t a tax collector, nor had I come to attend the auction. Since I was a scholar my interest was purely of an academic nature; I only wanted to have a look at Louise’s home. He seemed relieved I wasn’t a tax agent dispensed to savage his windfall profit. He sank back in the wicker chair, addressing me in an expansive manner, as if to underscore that what he had to say was of such significance it was destined to become a footnote to the grand life of Francisco Zermano.

  “Your name sounds familiar. I think I read an article of yours in some obscure journal. What was it? If I recall correctly it was a theory about Zermano’s middle period, how it could be interpreted through his paintings of Louise. Not a very unique idea, most of you academic boys have chewed all the meat off that old bone. Which is not to say that Louise is totally without significance. I don’t know why he disposed of her in such a violent fashion, a real opera-stopper. Then to top it off she shows up dead in this nowhere village. Nobody here knew who she was, although they all like to lie about it. That is part of the opera, because we’ll never really know what happened. We never got the second and third acts. No one left to tell the story. The curtain closed.”

  The last thing I had traveled here for was to hear a mangled critique of my theories. I quickly nudged the conversation onto neutral ground. I inquired as to Louise’s personal items. Clothing? Jewelry? Was there anything left behind that could offer insight into her life?

  “Some gold Art Deco jewelry was the only thing of value. We are having it appraised in Paris. Obviously it was given to her by Zermano. She kept it in an old paint box under her bed. I suppose she brought the box with her when she came to Reigne, since it once contained Zermano’s oils. It was something personal to remember him by. Sad what disappointed lovers will cling to—an old scarf, an empty checkbook, a keychain, the strangest things. I suppose love dies but hope does not.”

  I wondered about the art work. How did Louise manage to come by it?

  “There’s not much of a mystery there. Before the war Zermano was already one of the dominant painters in Europe. He was not above living up to his own expectations of himself. The life he led on the Riviera with Louise was nothing short of storybook: the soirées, the movie stars and royalty coming for a look at the incandescent couple in the pink villa on the promontory overlooking the sea. Zermano had a Stutz Bearcat, a rarity even then, a luxury automobile the size of a hotel room. There’s a story he got it by trading a painting to a collector for it. Another story is that he won it in Monte Carlo at the Casino. Who knows? It’s probably rusting away now in a rich Arab’s sandy backyard. You can stuff a good deal of art into a Stutz Bearcat, you could get a small museum into it. The legend is that Zermano loaded Louise into the Bearcat with the paintings and drawings, drove to Ville Rouge, and dumped her off with the goods. For some reason he wanted her, and the art he made with her, out of his life.”

  I reminded him what an odd notion that was. The critical consensus held that after the war Louise inspired some of Zermano’s greatest masterpieces. The paintings and drawings done of her from memory were uncannily similar to those he created when they lived together. Which underscores my thesis that Louise was not only his model in life, she was his very model of life.

  “That’s self-evident, it can be seen in the works sold here today. But Zermano is a mimic as well as a true alchemist. If you loo
k at his last Spanish period you observe just what a great mimic he can be. He painted at least twenty versions of Velázquez’s Las Meninas, trying to improve upon it I suppose. And certainly he is not above mimicking himself. I’m afraid all great artists stand guilty of that if they live long enough. Some are guilty of it even if they don’t live long at all.”

  This merchant’s handling of Zermano’s artistic reputation was preposterous, but not out of character for his breed. He was a member of the irredeemable class that believes, when it divines genius in a work of art, that only through it alone can that genius be disseminated to a dull and unsuspecting public. This spectacle on the wicker chair—waving his cigarette authoritatively, poking it into the day’s eye, not noticing the loving care with which Louise had set the potted flowers around the terrace—was the kind Zermano tormented all his life by abruptly abandoning his painting style once it had been pounced on and pronounced “genius” by those in the know. Had this man dared speak about Louise before Zermano as he now spoke to me, Zermano would have taken his head between two strong hands and squeezed it down to the size of a copper penny. This creature was part of a species that speaks bravely against the great, when the great are safely six feet under or incapable of defending themselves. So he kept on talking.

  “I think Louise’s impact on Zermano’s aesthetic has been exaggerated, mostly by pedants who themselves have fallen in love with her. She was a seductress, that much is clear. If she could seduce Zermano away from his work, she could seduce Jesus down from the cross. I think that’s why he dumped her. After a time he couldn’t paint with her around. She was jealous of his art and competed with it. It’s a challenge with a woman like that. When she finds a true artist it becomes imperative to seduce him from his art, to make him prove she is the higher aspiration. Since Louise possessed with her body an art more ancient than all others, she eventually led Zermano to a personal standstill in the fury of their passion. It’s a wonder he ever painted again. Most people think he slowed down because of the war. No, it was Louise who took the brush from his hand and brought him to his knees.”

  I had never heard anything so absurd. I held my tongue. There was something I wanted from this loquacious bully. I was wondering, had Louise left any writings behind?

  “What kind of writings?”

  I was thinking along the lines of diaries. Letters perhaps?

  “Nothing. Not a thing. I don’t think she was very clever in that way, you know?”

  No, I didn’t know. But certainly there must be something left behind. How odd for someone to live more than fifty years in one house and not leave the merest scribble.

  “Not so odd, people do it all the time. Not everybody can be Proust. Wait. There is one thing.”

  One?

  “A diary actually.”

  Really?

  “But you can’t call it a diary.”

  I don’t understand.

  “It’s a little black book, but all the pages are blank.”

  So there’s nothing?

  “Except the one thing.”

  What thing?

  “When I found the diary I turned every page to see if she had hidden a Zermano drawing there as a precaution against thieves who might one day show up and strip everything off the walls.”

  Did she?

  “No such luck.”

  What was the one thing then?

  “A newspaper clipping.”

  Of what?

  “Nothing of particular interest. About someone dying during the war, a suicide or something in Ville Rouge.”

  You don’t recall who it was? “No, but I have the clipping.” Where?

  “Right where I found it. It’s still in the diary. Shall we have a look?”

  Yes!

  I followed my host to the living room. A stone fireplace arched across the back wall, giving the feeling one was wrapped in a cave. I envisioned Louise sitting there in the well-worn leather chair, next to a crackling fire, flames dancing on ochre walls around her, not alone with her memories, not alone at all.

  “It’s a pity she didn’t keep a diary.” My host took down a small black book from the fireplace mantel, thumbing idly through its blank pages. “I’m sure if she had it would have been quite a salacious slice. Louise’s power wasn’t simply that men desired her. Men wanted to make her pregnant. That’s the difference between sex and destiny. She was a different breed of cat altogether.”

  Irreverent fool.

  “Quite unusual she didn’t have any children, considering the appetite she provoked in men. Don’t you think?”

  No, I don’t think.

  “Ah, here it is, the little nothing.” He fished up a faded scrap of newspaper and held it before me.

  May I read it?

  “Not much to read.” He started right in reading it himself, translating aloud. “ ‘The badly decomposed body of Monsieur Richard Royer was discovered in the early hours of this morning at the bottom of an ochre pit beneath the south-facing cliffs of Ville Rouge. Royer is survived by his wife of seventeen years. He spent his entire career with the Postal Authority. Police are investigating whether or not the death was accidental.’ ”

  “That’s all?”

  “What did you expect? I told you it was nothing, just the death of some guy in World War Two. Read it for yourself if you think I’ve left anything out.”

  I took the clipping. He hadn’t left anything out. I flipped through the pages of the diary. He was right, they were blank.

  “So you see, she left nothing.”

  So I saw, and how sad it was. I had come hoping to find something of her; the smallest revelation would have made my journey worthwhile. Now there were no paintings on the walls, no mementos. Everything seemed monastic, stripped bare, leaving a void as vast as that between the village of Reigne and Mont Ventoux in the distance. She was gone from here, and with her had gone her spirit. Perhaps that’s as it should be; perhaps what is most intimate should never be revealed.

  “I’m going to lock up now. I’m taking the express train back to Paris tonight.”

  Yes, certainly. I must be on my way as well. Thank you for your time.

  “That’s all right. I may not seem it, but I am touched you really care about her. When you said you were a scholar I took you for one of those academic headhunters out to make his reputation. With everyone else it’s only been him, that’s all they want—Zermano. No one was ever much interested in her for her own sake. It’s only natural I suppose, the life of the artist is creation, the creation of woman is life.”

  What an amazing thing to suppose.

  “Sorry you didn’t get here earlier. Louise’s collection was breathtaking. It will never be seen in one place again.”

  His words came to me as I started to leave the room, passing by a highly polished antique bread-table. On its top was a basket constructed of twisted branches forming a deep bowl beneath a curved handle, as if designed by an overly ambitious bird. Sunlight from the window fell across the basket, striking the bright balls of yarn mounded within. It was a beautiful still life, the kind Zermano would have painted—if he had painted still lifes.

  “It was Louise’s basket. She was always knitting. Knitted those heavy fisherman’s sweaters one sees around Marseille in wintertime. The yarn is very special to this area, from the sheep on the high slopes of Mont Ventoux. It must have been difficult for her to knit because her hands were deformed.”

  You mean her hands were arthritic from old age?

  “No. They were like two stumps, as if she had been injured in some strange way. It had to have been after she parted from Zermano, because we don’t see the deformity in any of the paintings he made of her at the time.”

  What do you mean by a strange injury?

  “Very odd. When the autopsy was done the coroner said it looked as if she had been crucified.”

  You can’t be serious.

  “Crucified by the hands, not the feet. It isn’t as if we have a case of a female
Christ here.”

  This was startling information, almost too much to take in. I picked up one of the bright balls in the basket, an orange one, a burst of sun between my fingers. Here was something tangible of hers, something tender. Maybe I was touching the most personal of her things. She must have spent hours, thousands of hours, sitting in the leather chair before the fireplace, knitting, the days and nights passing by. Did her hands hurt? What was she thinking? Was she thinking her life could have turned out differently? Maybe she wasn’t thinking anything at all. Maybe she was trying to forget.

  “You can have that basket if you like.”

  I hadn’t thought about taking it.

  “The basket’s not on the inventoried list of valuables.”

  I would like it. I would like it very much.

  “In that case take all of them.”

  All of them?

  “In the cellar. There are three more old-fashioned baskets just like this one.”

  I’ve come this far, no need to go home empty-handed. I’ll take them.

  “Let’s make it quick then. I have to catch that train.”

  I followed him down dimly lit steps into a cellar that had been cut into stone long ago. A musty scent filled the air, not unlike the unmistakable odor one encounters in the wine cellars of ancient châteaux. My host shone a flashlight on a wall of wooden shelves weighted by dusty jars sealed with wax. The jars contained the preserved fruits of Provence: plum marmalades, cherry jams, blackberry spreads.

  “Louise was an industrious one, despite her injuries. Look at these.” He reached up and pulled down jars from a high shelf, every jar filled with a different kind of honey; honey of lavender, honey of wild forests, jar after jar, each labeled with a handwritten piece of paper pasted around glass.