Chapter 6
6
The following week I have a video conference with my academic advisor for my individual studies class, where he goes over the proposal for my term project, stroking his beard and nodding and muttering as I talk in my living room. Since the proposal is on his screen just below his camera, it gives the impression he’s staring right into my psyche.
Finally, he nods. “You seem to have a feel for the subject. Woman Wandering in the Irises , with its storied history, is bound to be intellectually engaging, but you bring a personal insight to the topic.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
“It should make for a compelling read.”
“I hope so. I really want to bring the subject to life.” If he only knew.
“Hmm,” says my advisor, stroking his beard again. “It almost seems as though you’ve seen the painting in person. I didn’t think it arrives at the Musée d’Orsay for another month.”
“It’s not on public display until then, no, sir.”
“Ah. You have seen it, then? Through your internship?”
There is nothing odd about his interest—art is meant to be seen in person, and the lost Renoir is a sensation. But my previews have been a secret, and I want to keep it that way, like a clandestine affair.
I say truthfully, “No one is allowed to see the painting until the debut. But I do have access to reproductions that you can hardly tell apart from the real thing.”
“That should suffice for this stage of your project. We’ll meet again next week to talk about your research.”
We wrap up our call, and as soon as I disconnect, I grab my bag, making sure I have everything I need for my afternoon at the museum. Adaline is long gone already—our schedules, between work and school, mean that we run into each other more often at the Musée than at the flat.
I’m almost at the Metro when my phone rings—there are only a few people who would call rather than text, and my sister is one of them, especially for anything to do with work, so I never let it go to voicemail during opening hours.
“Oh, excellent,” she says when I answer. “I caught you. You haven’t left for work yet, have you?”
“I’m on my way now,” I reply, hanging back from the entrance to the train so the noise doesn’t drown out her voice.
“Would you mind terribly making a detour to meet Claire at the Louvre and have a look at the painting on loan there? It’s the Renoir piano girls, the one with the sun damage. It’s back from restoration and has already been shipped to the Louvre, but I would feel better if you could give it one final look now that it’s been installed.”
I’m already detouring to a different Metro stop. “Happy to. But is there a problem?”
“No problem,” she answers. But I picture her frowning. “This restorer is the best. I simply want your sharp eyes on it in its new setting. If there’s anything we’ve missed, I’d rather you find it than their people.”
“In other words, you’re fussing.”
She scoffs. “I’m double-checking. Wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would. It’s the Louvre.”
“Thank you, Julien. Claire is aware the painting has had minor restoration, but not the specifics. If it’s been repaired properly, the fix will be undetectable.”
“Of course.” Sun damage, and its repair, are somewhat routine, but I know what she’s saying. Don’t draw Claire’s attention to something otherwise unnoticeable.
On my way to the Metro stop, I see the usual assortment of street artists who’ve set up shop along the river to draw caricatures of tourists. I spot Max, one of the regulars, and swing past to say hello. He’s one of the best here, and at the moment he’s sketching a gangly English boy, who’d clearly rather be anywhere else, as the parents look on, oblivious to his fidgeting. Does it even need saying that this was their idea?
The boy’s too-long limbs remind me of a baby horse, and I say this to Max in French as I watch over his shoulder.
“You better hope they don’t know ‘ poulain ,’ or I’ve lost ten euros,” he says, but he’s laughing.
I laugh too, and go on my way with a parting promise: “I’ll cover you if they turn out to be bilingual equestrians.”
* * *
Wild horses couldn’t drag me into the Louvre after dark.
At the Musée d’Orsay, we only have art painted after 1848—relatively modern in artistic terms. But our sister museum is full of medieval and Renaissance works, from periods that mainly drew from the Bible or other Classical sources. I don’t want to run into Salome walking around with John the Baptist’s head on a tray, or Prometheus with his liver half-eaten by crows.
The piece I’m studying is a seventeenth-century Georges de La Tour depicting Joseph in his workshop with a young Jesus. It’s pleasantly domestic, but they can stay in their frame, thank you very much.
“It’s an ironic inclusion as an interior scene, don’t you think?”
The slightly smug question tells me Claire picked it for the exhibit—Interiors through the Ages — herself . The assistant curator has the carefully manicured look of a news anchor—sharp skirt, heels, proper blouse, and straight brown hair that falls just so—and she’s giving me a preview of the exhibit before we get to the task at hand. When Claire offered to let me take a peek, I couldn’t resist.
“It definitely makes me think,” I say, though it’s more like I’m hoping this painting doesn’t come alive, since I’d rather avoid a religious experience in the museum.
In the La Tour, Jesus holds a lit candle for his earthly father, and I peer at it closely, as if the painting could reveal its nighttime secrets to me.
“Well, what does it make you think about?” Claire asks, as if quizzing me.
Before I can form a reply, a sharp, hot pain sears my hand. I gasp and look at my palm, expecting . . . I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it’s not this.
There, dancing in my cupped hand, is a single flame. A candle flame, like in the painting, as if the fire has jumped from the canvas to . . . me.
My chest seizes tight. Nothing like this has ever happened during daylight hours.
I’ve just wrapped my head around art coming to life at night and now it can ambush me anytime?
I’d wondered whether something from a painted world could harm me.
Well, now I know—it can hurt like a son of a bitch.
I close my fist around the flame, snuffing it out. Then I slowly uncurl my fingers again, and find my palm is the reddish pink of a bad sunburn.
Claire’s gaze drops to my turned-up palm. “Oh, dear. Did you burn yourself?”
Surprise rocks me back a step. “You can see that?”
Her perfectly arched eyebrows knit in a frown. “Your burned hand. What happened? What do you mean?”
Those are both excellent questions. I raise my gaze to the painting, and a fist of shock hits me in the gut. On the canvas, the candle in Joseph’s workshop is almost burned out. The flame is now only a guttering spark in the well of wax.
Is that because I put out the flame? Should I have returned it to the canvas like I do with Cézanne’s peaches and Olympia ’s cat?
Did I cause permanent damage to a work of art?
I point to the painting. “The candle flame in the La Tour. It’s gone.”
Claire glances from the canvas back to me. “Is that a joke? The painting looks the same as ever.”
So, Claire can’t see the blackened spot, even though she saw the effect of the flame on my hand.
But what the hell does that mean?
I recover the best I can, considering my upside-down world has made another spin. “My apologies, Claire,” I say more formally. “I must have confused this with another painting for a moment. How embarrassing.”
Humbling myself a little was the right call—she thaws from blast freezer to merely subarctic. “Well, things happen.”
“They do. I’ll just have a look at the Young Girls at the Piano and then be out of your way.”
She leads me to the Renoir of two girls sitting at a piano, featured on another wall of the gallery. “I think it looks amazing here.”
I smile politely and agree it does. The repairs are seamless and undetectable. Except . . . when I peer closer, I see one of the piano keys is already fading again.
Adaline is not going to be happy. I glance warily at Claire, ready to assure her the piece had been in pristine condition when we packed it up for transport. But she smiles dreamily as she gazes at the scene. “I love this one. Perfectly on theme. Do tell your sister I’m so grateful for the loan.”
Merde.
Claire can’t see this new sun damage, just like she couldn’t see the extinguished flame on the La Tour. Which leads me to think the damage to both paintings must be related somehow. Or am I the only one seeing this new damage?
When I take my leave of Claire, I double back through the museum, keeping an eye out for any other anomalies as I walk the galleries. Impressionists, Romantics, Neoclassicists . . . No signs of trouble until I get to the Dutch masters.
Rembrandt’s Bathsheba in his Old Testament scene has always been a round-bellied woman, but now she looks bloated, her stomach bulging. Close up, bits of flesh are poking out of the frame.
It’s grotesque, and like nothing I’ve seen in my museum.
I picture Cézanne’s peach, how I’m able to put it back in its canvas. I glance around. There’s no one in the gallery, and perhaps if I can push the protruding bit of Bathsheba back into the canvas, everything will be fine. But there are alarms and security cameras, and this isn’t the Musée d’Orsay, where the guards all know me.
Before I can take the risk, a new group of tourists pours into the gallery. I slink into their midst to see the art through their eyes.
Not one person remarks on Bathsheba, or the canvas that for some reason can no longer contain her.
And once more, I don’t know if art is losing its mind or if I am.
* * *
“The Young Girls at the Piano looks fine,” I tell Adaline when I reach the Musée, managing not to flinch with guilt. “You’d never know there’d ever been a problem.”
My decision not to tell my sister about the fading piano key comes down to the fact that I don’t know what to tell her. Sun damage no one else can see? Even if she believes me, what can she do? What can I do about it?
Still, I walk the galleries, inspecting every painting for the least sign of trouble. There’s nothing—everything here is in perfect shape.
For now.
* * *
I have an early class the next morning, and immediately afterward, I take the train from the university to the Louvre. I hardly slept last night. I worried about our paintings in the Musée d’Orsay, but it was the Louvre that kept me wide awake with a kind of inevitable dread.
My instincts didn’t lie. Whatever happened yesterday is spreading. More keys on the piano are disappearing, a peacock feather droops in Ingres’s Grande Odalisque , and the mirror inside a Titian has a hairline fracture.
Bathsheba hasn’t fared well either. She’s painful to look at. There’s a black-and-blue bruise on the rolls of her stomach.
She looks ill, and that thought leads me to a crazy notion—are these anomalies some kind of contagion, spreading from frame to frame? And did bringing that sun-damaged Renoir here introduce some kind of epidemic to the Louvre?
But while the Rembrandt, the Titian, and the La Tour are bruised and cracked and burnt, the Renoir seems to be simply fading again.
Either way, the art here isn’t so much coming to life as it is dying.
A pit deepens in my stomach, and I can’t exit the Louvre fast enough, hating the sense that I’m leaving the art here to spoil. But a bigger panic seizes me.
I call Remy as soon as I’m outside. “Is the painting okay?” I ask before he even has a chance to speak. “Is she okay?”
“Of course.” He sounds startled at either the question or my tone. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I need to see it. I need to see her.”
“Now?”
It’s not a reasonable request, but I’m not feeling reasonable. “Yes. If I can. I know it’s the middle of the day, but it’s important. You said she has to be protected.”
There’s no hesitation this time.
“Come, then. I’ll let you in.”