“What?”
“That the painting of the man was done by a woman? I assumed the same painter painted both.” He gestured to the murals. “That one man painted everything here.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Monsieur Duplessi inspected the portrait of the female.
“There are initials here, the first two that are on the mural. ‘CC.’ ” He walked around to the portrait of the male nude. “You may be onto something. There are initials here, too—the last two in the mural—‘LI.’ ”
I walked over and inspected what he was looking at. Stared at it. The initials had a circle painted around them, and it seemed there was some kind of serpent or dragon’s head on the circle. “Not ‘LI.’ That’s an L. It’s ‘LL.’ ”
“Could be,” he said, peering at it.
I felt his wool jacket sleeve brush against my hand as he came close, and a rush of feeling began to flutter and gather inside me.
So intense and foreign was the experience, for a moment I thought for sure I was going to be unwell. And then I almost laughed as I comprehended that my reaction was anything but illness coming on.
“You are right,” he said. “CC and LL. Two painters sharing this studio . . . when? How long ago? This is a marvelous find. It could even be an important find.” His excitement was palpable and infectious.
“There’s a lesser-known Renaissance painter named Cherubino Cellini. I saw his work in the Louvre one day when I visited with my grandmother. It was a very dramatic painting of Judith beheading Holofernes, and I remember commenting on it. The model he’d used for Judith had oddly reminded me of my grandmother. She didn’t think it was much of a compliment.”
I turned to inspect the wall art. “Now that I think about it, this style matches the painting in the museum. And both use mythological themes. It was quite fashionable at the time, especially in Italy.”
“You’re well versed in art history,” Monsieur Duplessi said.
“My father collects”—I corrected myself—“collected art and gave me the unofficial job of curating for him. Some of the happiest times I’ve had were visiting galleries with him and buying art. Supposedly an ancestor of mine was—” I broke off. Of course. How could I not have put it all together?
“Listen, I know who LL is . . . I’m certain of it. One of my ancestors was a woman named Lunette Lumière. La Lune. This was her house.”
“Was she a painter?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know . . . She was a well-known courtesan, and there was a legend that she was the lover of a famous painter.”
“Surely these both could have been painted by the same man, and he put her initials on his self-portrait and his initials on hers. But that doesn’t really make sense. One painting is CC alone. The other is LL alone. Only the mural has both initials. Maybe they both painted the mural, and this is a portrait of La Lune painted by Cellini, and this is a portrait of Cellini painted by La Lune?”
“Let’s look at the rest of them.” I began to unstack the paintings that were against the far wall. One after another after another, I turned them face out. Each was of either him or her. All nudes or only slightly draped. Those of the woman were all signed “CC.” Those of the man, all signed “LL.”
The heat in the room seemed to grow more intense and oppressive as more and more of the erotic studies were exposed. We organized them with all the paintings of him leaning against one wall . . . staring at all those of her leaning against the other wall.
I looked from the portraits to Monsieur Duplessi. As he intently studied the artwork, I imagined him turning, walking to me, undressing me, and lying down with me on the daybed.
I glanced over at it now—not meaning to, but involuntarily staring at its silk coverlet and overstuffed pillows. Strangely there was no visible dust there either. Had it blown off when we opened the windows?
Then a sense of unreality came over me.
I was seeing myself there with Monsieur Duplessi, our bodies as naked as those of the man and the woman in the paintings on the easels. Our bodies intertwined. My hair fanned out on the pillow. His fingers gripping my shoulder.
Suddenly, I was embarrassed to look at the architect for fear he would see what was on my face, in my eyes. I did not understand what was happening. I had been married for almost four years and had never imagined an erotic scene, not even in my dreams.
But Monsieur Duplessi was not looking at me. Not paying any attention to me at all, in fact. He was bent over the paintings, intently examining one after the other. And then suddenly, he did turn. Quickly. And caught me looking at him. Our eyes locked for a moment.
No, this was unfair. My mind was mocking me. My body wasn’t capable of enjoying the idea of lovemaking.
I flew out of the room, down the steps. Going dangerously fast on the narrow, slippery risers. Behind me Monsieur Duplessi’s footfalls followed.
“Sandrine! Stop! What is it?” His voice echoed, and it sounded as if he was calling out in this moment and in moments past.
I didn’t notice that I had gone from being Mademoiselle Verlaine to Sandrine. I just ran and ran, trying to escape my shame. But he was faster and caught up to me just as I tripped down two steps and was heading toward a nasty spill.
He grabbed me and pulled me back, kept me from falling.
I was out of breath, panting.
We were both covered in dust, rivulets of perspiration dripping down our faces. What a fright I must have looked!
“What are you doing? Are you mad? You can’t take these stairs so fast! You could kill yourself! What were you running away from?”
I shook my head. Even if I had wanted to explain, I was too out of breath to talk.
“I wanted to show you the most extraordinary thing,” he panted.
“What?” I asked, forgetting myself for the moment.
“The paintings all are dated.”
“Yes, I noticed the dates . . . They were mostly 1606 and 1607.”
“But there were some that were later, Sandrine. Some were dated the mid-1700s. Some even in the early and mid-1800s.”
“There were?”
“Yes. But what was even stranger is there’s one dated this year, and there are two dated in the future.”
Chapter 7
“I’d like to know something about our family history,” I said to my grandmother the following night at dinner. It was her birthday, and we were dining at Le Grand Véfour, a fine restaurant tucked away in a corner of the Palais Royal. From our table we could look out at the elaborate gardens in the courtyard, the cour d’honneur, which was surrounded on all four sides by the palace once occupied by Cardinal Richelieu and his court. As we alighted from her carriage, Grand-mère had told me that the restaurant was more than a hundred years old and that Napoleon had often dined there with Josephine.
“Our family history?” Grand-mère asked as she watched the sommelier fill the crystal flutes with champagne. “We come from a long line of courtesans dating back to the 1500s. Cultured, lovely women born into a life that offered little escape.”
“Tell me more about them. Who was the first?”
“Why are you asking about this?”
“There’s so much history in Paris. All around us, everywhere we go. It’s made me curious. Tell me about La Lune.”
She looked at me strangely with an expression that I couldn’t quite read. But clearly she wasn’t pleased.
“Why bring her up specifically?”
“She’s part of my heritage.”
“There are more interesting things to discuss. Such as which operas we will be going to see this winter and how we are going to introduce you to society. Are we going to say you are married or unmarried? And if married, why are you using the name Verlaine?”
“I have no interest in being introduced to society.”