“Are you chilled? I can make you some coffee. It’s about time for me to take a break.”
It was almost as if this was his house and I was the visitor. I said I would like some, and as we walked to the kitchen, I offered a suggestion: “Maybe my grandmother locked it. She comes in the morning to let you in, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t usually go upstairs.”
I wondered if my grandmother had found out—or somehow sensed—that I’d been in the attic and had come earlier than Monsieur Duplessi specifically to relock the door. She had that uncanny skill—her capacité, my father had called it—to know things that had happened or would be happening without being told. Like in the restaurant when she’d told me to get up just before the rock had been thrown through the window.
When I’d asked my father more about her capacité, he’d laughed and said legend had it she had some witch’s blood in her and that must be how she could foretell the future.
But what if she knew I’d found the studio? What would she do? My grandmother seemed so determined not to tell me about La Lune—surely the studio was La Lune’s world.
“Did you tell her I’ve been here?” I asked.
“No, I honored your request, but still don’t understand why you’d want to keep it a secret.”
“Was she already here this morning when you arrived?” I asked.
“No, I was first, and was quite uncomfortable waiting in the rain, if you must know, so as soon as she did arrive, we went to the locksmith and had a key made for me. She said she finds it tedious to have to come just to let me in, and that I shouldn’t plan on seeing her until I’ve finished taking inventory and am having the plans drawn up.”
“Perhaps the key to the front door will work on the bell tower studio.”
He poured the hot water over the coffee grounds, and a marvelous aroma filled the kitchen.
“I doubt it. The front door is a double-acting pin tumbler lock, which was only invented about a hundred years ago. The lock on the tower door dates back at least a hundred years before that and is much simpler.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m an architect and trained to notice details.”
When we were done with our coffee, I suggested we try the door with the key anyway. As we walked through the empty mansion, he told me that he’d hoped I’d be back today even before he discovered the locked door.
“Why is that?”
He seemed surprised by my question, as if it were normal for him to hope I’d return. After a moment, he said, “I enjoyed your company. And I was worried about you. You seemed so upset yesterday when you left.”
“I was frightened.”
“Because of the dates on the paintings?”
“Yes, the dates were disturbing, but . . .” I couldn’t finish. How could I explain that what had scared me away were the feelings he’d stirred in me?
“Was it something I said?” He’d stopped just as we were about to ascend the main staircase and turned to me. “I hope I didn’t offend you in some manner.”
In the hours since I’d been here, I hadn’t quite been able to remember the shade of his eyes. They were more black than green, the color of evergreen trees in a thick forest. How would you mix up the right colors and hues on canvas to capture their gleam? I’d been wrong about the slant of his cheekbones, too. They were more exaggerated than I’d recalled. The hollows beneath them, deeper. The desire to paint him overwhelmed me. I understood neither its scope nor its persistence.
I shook my head. “No, it was nothing you said.”
Continuing up the grand staircase, we passed the gallery of family portraits.
“This is an odd collection of paintings, isn’t it?” Monsieur Duplessi asked.
“It’s funny how you can see something all the time and never -really focus on it,” I said. “I’ve never spent much time looking at them. They were all courtesans. Did you know that? Is that why you think it’s an odd collection?”
We’d stopped and were examining them.
“No, not at all. It’s that, looking at the dates on the plaques, it’s clear they span centuries, but all of them seem to be painted by the same hand. I wonder if someone re-created older portraits. And how do you think they became damaged in the same way?” he asked.
“Damaged?”
He pointed to first one and then the next.
“I’d gotten so used to them, I forgot how they must look to someone seeing them anew.”
The damage was indeed curious. Each of the ladies’ lips were unfinished and pale, with bits of bare canvas showing through.
“When I was a little girl,” I told him, “I always thought it was because they’d been kissed too many times.”
He laughed, and his eyes became less black and more green. “How charming. You must have been quite a precocious little girl who got into all kinds of trouble.”
I had a sudden image of Leon and myself in the servants’ quarters and felt my cheeks flush. I ducked my head down and continued up the stairs, past Monsieur Duplessi, hoping he would not notice my embarrassment.
Even before we reached the tower’s heavy wooden door, I recognized the same aroma I’d sniffed at the école earlier that day. It was an artist’s scent: oil paints, turpentine, and linseed oil mixed with the same scent of violets I’d smelled downstairs the other day. How could the smell of the paints and old flowers still be vital after so many years?
We reached the top of the steps and stood facing the large carved door.
“Why don’t you just try the key anyway?” I asked.
He did but the lock didn’t release.
“Let me try,” I said. The metal door handle was icy, and as I held it with my left hand, I inserted the key with my right and jiggled it.
I felt the pins move.
“It’s opening,” I said.
What I didn’t say was that, as I held it, the doorknob was warming. Perhaps it was simply a sensitive metal responding to my body temperature. But it was a very odd sensation.
“I don’t understand. I just did that,” Monsieur Duplessi said.
“Maybe . . .” I didn’t know what to say. He had; I’d watched him. But the door had not opened for him. Only for me.
“Well anyway, now we know the same key works on both doors,” I said, and handed it back to him as I stepped inside the room. “The locksmith must have been asked to create a lock for the front door that used the same basic configuration as this one, but more complicated. Is that possible?”
Monsieur Duplessi followed me in. “I suppose so. Possible but not logical.”
“And you prefer logic?”
“I’m an architect.”
“You’re also an artist,” I said. “I think that sometimes art defies logic.”
“You may be right, but in architecture logic is important or the buildings we build wouldn’t remain upright.”
I opened the louvers and let in the light and the fresh air.
“There is something different about it here today,” I said.
“So you believe your grandmother did come up here since we visited?”
“I’m not sure. Does it feel different to you?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
I didn’t know how to explain it, but the room seemed to have come alive since we had been here. As if it wasn’t holding its breath anymore.
“I wanted to inventory the canvases. What was your reason for wanting to come back here?” Monsieur Duplessi asked.
“I’ve decided to take art lessons while I am in Paris, but to be admitted, I need to show samples.” I took a jar off a shelf and opened it. Inside was the most gorgeous blue color, like the whole evening sky turned into powder. “I hoped I could use these supplies to paint some samples.”
Cabinets were filled with dozens of bottles of pigments and oils. Canvases stacked against one another covered the lower half of the wall. Containers held paintbrushes in every size.