Chapter 45 Present Day
PRESENT DAY
OSCAR AND JULIA
Julia had called Doctor Sato after hanging up with her mother. She told her the news about Grandmama, and then she wept buckets of tears. Doctor Sato waited for Julia to breathe before agreeing with Julia’s mother that she should finish the trip.
“Why does pain and sorrow have to coexist with joy?” Julia had asked the doctor through her tears.
After listening patiently, Doctor Sato said, “Oh, Julia. This is one of life’s greatest existential questions, isn’t it?
Let’s add this to the growing list of trailheads to explore.
Not that you should just swallow this pain and sorrow or ignore it,” she paused, “but just know that without these lows, we will never understand the joys. This is one of the great contradictions and mysteries of our lives. It is hard for all of us to wrap our minds around.”
“Hmm,” was all Julia could muster.
“Since you are there in France, let me give you one of my favorite quotes from an early French philosopher, Simone Weil: ‘There are only two things that pierce the human heart; one is beauty, the other is affliction.’ I have found this to be true in my life.”
Perhaps the doctor was right. Now, forty-five minutes out of Paris, Julia realized the motion of the train had lessened her grief, and the catharsis had contrasted the colors of life, deepening the green of the French countryside and brightening the blue of the sky.
Open fields quickly gave way to the thick emerald forest of Fontainebleau, the one she read about last night when she couldn’t sleep. These trees that were some of Claude Monet’s favorite subjects to paint.
As the train lurched to a stop at the quaint Fontainebleau-Avon station, Julia hurried from her seat to one of the few awaiting cabs. She stopped at the open window and smiled at the taxi driver wearing a tan beret. “Do you speak English?” she asked.
“A little,” he smiled back, then asked, “Parlez-vous francais?”
“Oui,” she said in her best French accent, “Croissant.”
It made him laugh, and he signaled for her to get in the back.
“Where to, mademoiselle?” he asked as she settled in and closed the door.
“Chateau de Fontainebleau,” she said.
“Oh, you do speak French,” he teased, turning into the street.
“How long is the trip?”
“Oh, hours and hours, I’m afraid.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror and laughed.
Then he held up five fingers. “It is very close. For us taxi drivers, they should have put the train station farther away.” He looked at her in the mirror again.
“You go to visit your long-lost Uncle Napoleon in his tiny little home?”
It made her laugh. How prescient! How close he’d come to hitting the target of her mission of visiting a relative, but she decided the language barrier prevented explanation.
Julia gazed through the window at the detailed French architecture. “How many people live here in Fontainebleau?”
“Oh, we are only a small village…maybe fifteen thousand people at the most. Of course, since the twelfth century, our most famous residents have been the royal family…and me.” He laughed. “Do you know what door you want to enter?”
Julia scrunched her lips together and shrugged. “There is more than one, I gather.”
“Oh, mademoiselle, you will see. The grounds are over one hundred thirty hectors.”
When he saw she didn’t know that measurement, he added. “Almost half the size of your Central Park in New York, I believe. The chateau has one thousand five hundred rooms alone.”
“I imagine it has lots of paintings?”
“Oh, many, many, many paintings, they multiply like rabbits…or the royal family.” He snorted, “Too many paintings, like the stars in the sky.”
In all that had transpired in the last few days, Julia had not even thought about the reality of finding this one particular painting. She blew out a loud sigh. How in the world am I going to find it?
“You sound disappointed.”
“Oh sorry, I’m doing some research and looking for one specific painting.”
The driver gave her a wide-eyed look.
“Here, I take you to the main entrance. There are many tour guides ready to offer their services,” he looked at her with concern, “and a few pickpockets. Sometimes they are one and the same.”
Julia hugged her purse that hung over her shoulder and felt for the pocket watch in her front pants pocket, relieved to feel it still in place.
She bent to peer at the ornate tops of the downtown buildings.
She wished she had more time to explore the town.
“What a charming city,” she told the driver, turning her head to watch a carousel full of children spin.
“Oui, and over on this other side and beyond the wall is the Diana Garden.”
Julia turned, but all she could see were trees.
“The private garden for the King and Queen,” he explained. “The fountain of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, a gift from the Pope to King Henry the Fourth, stands in the middle. It is a beautiful place to go and contemplate life.”
The taxi driver followed the avenue for a few more blocks and turned left. As he did, the expansive entrance to the Chateau de Fontainebleau opened into view, and Julia’s heart leaped.
“Oh my,” Julia gasped. A stately, wrought-iron fence topped in gold spear tips surrounded expansive grounds.
Two golden eagle statues guarded the entrance to the massive French renaissance-style palace—a mansion of grandeur symmetrically designed with an elaborate facade, multiple towers, and steeply pitched roofs.
“Oui, just a small summertime hunting cottage.”
“Look at all those chimneys!”
“You will see this is merely the front of the chateau. There is a fireplace in every room. When they were not populating the world, the royals had to stay warm somehow,” the driver smirked.
Julia thanked the driver, paid him, opened her door, and got out. Standing in front of the royal gate, she had to wonder what her great-great-great-great-grandmother had thought when she’d stepped from a horse-drawn carriage to this awe-inspiring palace.
The taxi driver waved from his window as he drove off, “Au revoir, mademoiselle. I hope you find what you are looking for.”
* * *
Julia had chosen to wear tennis shoes that morning, and it turned out to be a wise decision.
After walking along gardens, the length of football fields, from the taxi to the massive horseshoe-shaped front staircase, a guard at the front door pointed to the public entrance of the chateau—way down one of the side wings of the structure.
Julia sighed, trudged to the entrance, and paid the fourteen-euro fee for the self-guided tour, deciding that, although the chateau looked amazing, she was there with a singular purpose and a lengthy tour would only encourage anxiety.
She wished she’d had time for a long tour, because all the tour guides looked friendly enough and honest. That taxi driver was pulling my leg, she chuckled.
If this was the commoner entrance, she wondered what Shibata Yuria had experienced going through the grand front door. After being in Japan last week, she understood why Yuria would have thought the place gaudy and ostentatious.
A blinding exhibition of flamboyance, the ornate walls and ceilings and even the floors were excessive expressions of inlaid woodwork and trim, and every inch of the walls were festooned with paintings, mirrors, tapestries, gold trim, scrolls, and carvings.
With every surface elaborately garnished, it was difficult to focus on anything.
Not one inch was wasted on emptiness. No Japanese simplicity and minimalism here.
Julia strained her eyes to see the end of the long corridor, even though well-lit with brilliant chandeliers of gold.
“It is something, no?” asked a young man with a name badge, who appeared to be waiting on his tour group.
“Yes, something,” she said, continuing to absorb the grandiose elegance.
“Would you like a tour?”
“No…I mean, that’s okay. Thank you,” Julia said with some frustration.
“But maybe you can point me in the right direction. I’m here looking for a painting of a Japanese woman…
uh…” she stumbled over her words, trying not to sound like a kook.
“Monet painted it…Claude Monet. I’m doing research,” she added to sound more official.
His smile gave her a glimmer of hope, but when he turned to a group of other tour guides and asked in French, all he got were shoulder shrugs and head shakes.
“I’m sorry, Madame. No one seems to know of this painting.”
Julia sighed and looked at the floor.
“But don’t worry, we have thousands and thousands of paintings, as you can see. Let me call the chateau’s historian and ask.” The young man walked behind the entrance desk, picked up the phone, and dialed. He spoke, nodded many times, and said, “Oui, oui.”
Hanging up the receiver, he picked up a trifold from the counter and walked to Julia.
“Well, I am afraid our historian is out for now, but will be back in two hours. His secretary said to come by the office then.” He looked at his watch, “maybe around noon?” He used a pen to circle a room on the map.
“This is where you will find his office.”
“Thank you. Can you point the way to the pavilion in the pond?”
“Oh, yes. It’s a beautiful day for a stroll by the Pavillon de l’étang. If you follow this corridor to the end, you will see the sign to the right.”
“And what about the English Garden?”
“Aw, you will walk through the garden by the pond. If you follow the trails far enough, you will find the springhead of Fontainebleau, the Fontaine Belle-Eau, the spring of beautiful water.”
* * *