Chapter 44 Present Day
PRESENT DAY
OSCAR
For all her help, Oscar had invited Elle to dinner at his hotel in Paris.
But his anxiety grew as the waiter poured expensive-looking sparkling water and he looked at the prices on the menu of the Brasserie du Louvre.
When the waiter had moved on, Oscar placed the old and dusty shoebox on the table, but catching the disapproving look from the ma?tre d'h?tel, he moved it to his lap, out of sight under the white tablecloth.
Oscar glanced at Elle over the hefty, leather-bound menu. She glowed with serenity from their enchanting afternoon in Giverny as she read through the offerings, making the cuisine sound delicious.
They had taken the late afternoon train, having spent as much time as possible with Louie the Fourth, the gardener, truly a happy man with everything he wanted, his beloved books and flowers.
What a charming man, they decided, and shared that they hoped to find that kind of contentment in their own lives.
They were especially grateful that he had been so willing to tell them about Monet’s life and love.
Louis first shared Camille’s story that began when she was a model for some of the artist’s most famous paintings.
Camille got pregnant in 1867, and she and Monet were finally married three years later in 1870.
Because of this relationship, Monet’s father stopped subsidizing him, and Claude and Camille lived the life of paupers, bouncing from one dismal living condition to the next.
Their second son, Michel, was born eight years after they had married.
Louis revealed that because of Monet’s growing success and generosity, he’d invited the impoverished Hoschedés and their six children to move in with his family.
He explained how Camille and Alice co-existed.
“It is the French way,” he kept saying. Tragically, Camille became quite ill, and Alice helped care for her.
She died from uterine cancer, in 1879, a year after their second son was born, and the Hoschedés had moved in.
He then described how it got even more complicated when Monet’s first son, Jean, married Blanch Hoschedé, his stepsister and Monet’s stepdaughter, who had lived with them since Alice moved in.
“It is the French way,” he repeated. And how Monet became further brokenhearted when Jean, the first son, suffered an illness and died in 1914 when Claude was seventy-four.
After Monet’s death from lung cancer in 1926, Michel, the second son, inherited Giverny, but he did not live there and Blanch, his brother’s widow, took care of the property.
Because of World War II, the property and gardens fell into disrepair until Michel donated it to the foundation that oversees it to this day.
“Would you care for wine?” Their waiter had returned, startling Oscar from his recollection of the afternoon with Louis.
“Of course, it is the French way,” Oscar said, putting on his French accent and smiling at Elle.
She looked fabulous in a floral dress with a plunging neckline, showing her lacy lingerie.
Earlier in the day, Oscar caught himself looking at a line of freckles on her neck that came to an arrow that pointed down to her cleavage.
He’d tried to suppress a grin, when she discovered him staring. Before he could think of some kind of apology, he’d received a mischievous nod and a knowing smile.
“Hmm…what to order, what to order,” Elle drummed her fingertips against her chin.
“I think we shall start with a bottle of your Dom Pérignon champagne, and the pan-seared warm Foie Gras with Balsamic reduction. Hmm,” she paused, “followed by the Belle-Meuière sole with fine butter, and for dessert, the Grand Marnier Suzette Crepes.”
She looked up at the waiter and then at Oscar, whose sweat beaded on his forehead as he added up the near five-hundred-dollar tab.
“What?” she touched her ample bosom. “Should I get the Confit Duck Leg Parmentier instead?”
Fortunately, after spending all day with her, Oscar realized she was teasing and said again in his French accent, “My dear, I think you should get both.”
They laughed when the waiter, probably imagining his tip, swallowed hard. He looked quite upset when Elle said. “On second thought, I am not very hungry and would love a bowl of your French onion soup.”
Oscar breathed a sigh of relief and ordered the same with an assortment of bread.
The waiter left dejected, and Oscar said, “Are you sure you really don’t want anything more?”
“Aw, you are sweet, Oscar, to ask, but I don’t want you going back to America and becoming a gigolo to pay off your credit card bill.” She laughed. “Besides, we can have dessert later.” She bounced her eyebrows.
Oscar had also learned to ignore her flirtation and pulled the box from his lap.
He placed it back on the table. Included with the hairpin and the message in the bottle were five letters from Monet to Shibata Yuria.
In his writing, Claude called her by a mixture of her formal and pet names: including Ma Belle and Juliet, but mostly Julia.
“Which letter would you like to read again?” Oscar asked.
“Let me start with the woman’s and see if I can get through it without weeping like a fool.”
The fact was, she’d wept through all of them when they’d read them with the gardener. They all did.
Oscar removed the wrapping from the bottle, but tucked the box away again on his lap when he saw the waiter with their tray of two soup bowls and a basket of bread.
Oscar held the bottle upright as the waiter set the bowls in front of them and the bread in the middle. “Here you go, your Belle-Meuière sole,” he snorted, but before leaving, he noticed the bottle that Oscar held.
“Monsieur, where did you get this bottle?” he said with a heavy French accent.
“I have not seen those for years.” He asked if he could hold it, and Oscar offered it to him.
He held it to the light and saw the rolled paper inside.
“Oh, it is a message in a bottle, oui? This hotel used these bottles in the late 1800s and early 1900s for mineral water.” He cupped his mouth with his hand as if to reveal a secret.
“They replaced the terrible American water with French, however,” he laughed.
“They used the bottles until they became too valuable. Now they are collectors’ items,” he said, and carefully handed the bottle back to Oscar.
As the waiter walked away, Oscar uncorked the bottle and poured out the rolled letter, watching Elle with her hand over her mouth in shock. “Is it possible the Japanese delegation stayed in this hotel?”
Oscar nodded, carefully unrolled the letter, and handed it to her to translate. She read:
Monsieur Monet,
You will laugh as I have ‘borrowed’ this bottle from our hotel.
Please forgive me for my poor writing abilities.
Your language is so foreign to me, as are the feelings you have aroused in me.
I wish you read Japanese as I might come closer to expressing the feelings in my heart. My heart sings with joy.
If I lived in another life, I would stay with you in your warm embrace. I am afraid I don’t have the words to explain what your touch does to my mind and my body, each exploding with colors, like paint on your canvas, in ways I have never experienced.
You have expanded my heart like the ocean I crossed to meet you, stirring it with waves and awakening it to pleasures unknown to me. I have never felt the highs of this joy or the lows of sorrow for having to leave you.
Elle used her napkin to wipe tears and blow her nose.
I hope you can forgive me for leaving and thank you for your understanding.
I do not know what my future now holds, but I am samurai and bound by honor and duty and loyalty.
I have never known of this love that you speak of or what the Japanese poets write…
until I met you. This love is the most powerful of forces.
I will never forget you, Oscar, and hope you never forget me. Maybe in a different life or time, our love will be fulfilled. Please remember me when you paint your beautiful water lilies. This symbol of rebirth in my country. I will hold you in my heart for all eternity.
Your Juliet forever
Elle whimpered. “I can’t stand it. She loved him so much. Why did she leave?”
Oscar let out a resigned breath. “I think from what I know of Japan during that time, she had no choice.” He reached into the shoebox and retrieved the top two letters, one written right after Shibata Yuria left and one Monet wrote as an old man.
He handed them to Elle. “Would you read these two again?” he said and took back the rolled letter, carefully inserting it into the bottle.
Elle took the parchment from its yellowed envelope addressed to Shibata Yuria, Japan, gently smoothed out the paper, and translated the French:
Ma Belle
My eyes filled with tears and my heart ached with great sadness as I watched your ship sail from the harbor. And so, I paint this sorrowful sunrise, one with great pain and torture of you leaving, but not without hope.
I have never completely understood the power of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet until now, my dear Juliet, now that a piece of my heart has gone missing, now that this raw loneliness aches without end. Juliet, Juliet, wherefore art thou that my heart may be complete once again?
What is this love that I would give my very life for…
everything I am, everything I have? Am I a silly schoolboy where a spell has been cast?
No, I am a man fully alive, fully awake.
This is love in its purest earthly state, perhaps even written by the divine.
Oh, that I would know such goodness, even for a moment.
How lucky I am that I got to touch its goodness, kiss its very lips, and feel its warm embrace.
Both Elle and Oscar wiped their eyes as she continued: