Maybe I had changed. After all, I’d never felt desire like this for Benjamin. And before him, there had only been Leon, and I’d been too young and really only playing at being grown up to know what I’d felt.
I knelt down on the floor and began to search for less suggestive canvases, looking through a new cache of paintings stored in wooden slats—to protect them, I assumed, so they wouldn’t lean against each other while drying. There were several I could use, studies of -Cherubino in more formal poses. I was about to stand up when I noticed there was a cupboard behind the storage unit.
I swung out the slats and opened the door to a cubbyhole.
Inside was a tumble of fabrics: silks and velvets, chiffons and lace twisted into one another. And beneath them was a pile of drawings on thick yellowed paper.
I withdrew a handful of the sketches and examined them. All were of the same man and same woman from the paintings. But these were even more intimate. How uninhibited they had been to draw each other as they were undressing, as they were becoming aroused, as they touched themselves. If the drawings weren’t so beautiful, they would have been lewd and indecent—and possibly would have landed the artists in jail on morals charges. And since they were hidden away like this, the artists must have known that.
“What did you find?” Monsieur Duplessi crouched beside me. The sunlight coming through the windows cast a shadow from his thick, dark eyelashes onto his cheeks. “May I see?”
It was far easier to show him than explain. “Please, do.”
He fanned through them. “Well . . . these are certainly evocative.” His voice sounded thick and heavy, like a long drip of honey.
Starting at the beginning, he examined them one by one, and I looked over his shoulder. Seeing them for the second time, I noticed what else was on the pages, other than the nudes.
In the corners were odd-looking symbols.
“Do you know what those are?” I asked Monsieur Duplessi as I pointed.
“Yes, do you?”
“I believe so. My father was interested in all the esoteric sciences and collected ancient books on subjects from alchemy to astrology. These look like ancient magick and Hermetic symbols. I think this one is satanic.” I looked at him. “What are they doing here?”
Chapter 9
As we left the studio, I carried one canvas and Monsieur Duplessi the two others that I thought would serve my purposes. After making the trek down the dangerous staircase, made even more so by our encumbrances, we returned to the main part of the house.
I excused myself to wash up.
A few minutes later, emerging relatively dust and dirt free, I found Monsieur Duplessi in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine.
“I thought some fortification was necessary if I’m going to figure out how to get you into Les Beaux-Arts.”
“So you will help?”
“After the help you’ve given me, I have no choice, do I?”
“What help have I given you?”
“Let’s go sit down and I’ll explain in situ, so to speak.”
We took the bottle and glasses into the fantasy drawing room at the front of the house and sat on opposite couches, facing each other.
“Everything here is amazing . . .” He gestured around the room. “The antiques and artwork are as opulent and wonderful, as one would expect. But the treasures in the bell tower are a remarkable find. The artist’s studio might make designing the museum more challenging, but potentially adds so much interest that I’m bound to get more recognition for the project.”
“I’m glad for you.” I sipped the Bordeaux out of a crystal glass that had belonged to my grandmother’s mother.
“You seem disconsolate.”
“I’m sure you’re a wonderful architect and that you’ll do an amazing job and the critical acclaim will propel your career. It’s just not what the house wants. She doesn’t want to be on public display.”
“She?”
I stood, began to pace. I had barely articulated to myself what I sensed about this ancient building—how was I going to explain it to Monsieur Duplessi?
“In theory, as an architect, can you accept that a house might be a living thing?” I asked.
“Of course, it’s made of organic materials: wood, stone, plaster, and cement. It moves imperceptibly in strong wind, swells in extreme dampness, shrinks back in the heat.”
I nodded. “And might that be more complex? Could a house be inhabited by the soul of the one it once belonged to?”
“Now you’re treading into territory where I have to shake my head. Ancient souls and ghosts? No. I told you before, I have friends who dabble in the occult. I’ve done work for them. I’m afraid none have been able to convince me of forces and powers from beyond the grave.”
“I never would have thought I could be convinced . . . In fact, I’m not yet convinced, but I do feel as if this house is a living thing. And that she would be upset . . .” I stopped to search for the word. “That it would be sacrilegious to let strangers traipse through here, gawking at what was bought and paid for with . . . with women’s bodies.” I had shocked myself, but it was true.
Everything in this house had been bought with the money given to my ancestors by their lovers and consorts in exchange for sexual ministrations.
“To put this house on display would be like going about undressed in public. We’d be baring the breasts of each woman who made the best of what she had and engaged in the profession into which she had been born.”
“That’s an extraordinary way of describing what I thought of as making a display of all the beautiful things here that no one has ever seen but the handful of men who’ve visited your grandmother’s soirees over the years,” he said. “Come look at this the way a stranger would.”
Standing up, wineglass in hand, Monsieur Duplessi walked out of the room into the hallway and then the grand salon. I followed.
“Stand here.” He pointed to the center of the room. “Now turn around slowly. Really look at where you are.”
As if looking through a stranger’s eyes, I examined the grandly decorated, great, and gilded room. I had never spent much time here as a child and hadn’t ventured in here during my previous visit.
An almost full-size marble sculpture of Diana wearing her crescent-moon headpiece stood on a pedestal between the windows. Someone had draped a double string of gray pearls around her neck, and they hung there still.
I walked over to them and fingered them. Were they real? If they were, they were quite valuable. Suddenly, I was seized with an idea. I spun around, examining the room. There were so many precious objects here—surely no one would notice if I borrowed one or two and pawned them. Just for a short time. Just until I could arrange to get some of my own money from America.
Could I do this? Did I dare remove something that didn’t belong to me from my grandmother’s house? Such a brash idea was so uncharacteristic of me, but so was my sudden determination to attend art school and my daydreams about taking a stranger as a lover.
Monsieur Duplessi was gesturing to a painting that hung over the couch and talking, but I’d missed what he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I was just saying this Georges de la Tour might be my favorite painting in the whole house,” he said.
“It’s always been one of my favorites, too.”
I turned back to the room with purpose. Like in Ali Baba’s cave of mystery and delight, every corner was filled with wonders, curious oddities, fanciful amusements and riches, all gleaming and shining. Did I really dare borrow one of these treasures?
We all belong to you, they seemed to be whispering. Take whatever you need.