“Please enter, madame.” Maxim opened a door behind me and I went into one of the sorriest rooms I’d ever seen. I had grown up in an Irish peasant’s cottage. Our life had been simple in the extreme but we had a good stove, the pots were polished sparkling clean, our battered furniture was also polished and decorated with pillows made from scraps. In short it was a friendly, homey sort of place. This room was barely furnished, with no adornments. The floor was bare, with uneven boards, and in the far corner was an unmade iron bedstead. The only saving grace was a window that looked out across the city, letting light stream in. Under the window was a table with half a loaf of dark bread, next to a palette of paints, a brush still lying across it. A canvas on an easel still glistened with wet paint. There was no sign of the mysterious Jojo. Maxim had spirited her away.
“Madame. Please sit.” He motioned to a wobbly cane chair. “I would offer you some tea, but alas I have no spirit for my little stove. As you can see our life here is … how you say … simple?”
I nodded.
“But if I sell a painting soon, all will be well. Your friend, Mademoiselle Goldfarb, she promises to take some of my paintings back to New York when she departs. She is very kind and very rich, no?”
I was about to say she wasn’t very rich, just comfortably situated, then I realized that to Maxim she would appear to be so. As he spoke I was studying the paintings tacked to the walls. The man downstairs was right—they were gloomy in the extreme. Great gashes of dark colors, mouths open in screams, burning houses, strange flying figures. They were the stuff of nightmare.
“It was a lucky day that we met at the poetry reading, don’t you think? Imagine—Miss Goldfarb searches the whole of Paris for her cousins and doesn’t find them, and then we meet by chance.”
I was still examining the bleakness of the studio. “What about the rest of your family?” I asked. “Are they not still in Paris?”
“All dead.” He sighed. “My parents died when I was a child. I ended up in the orphanage. Not a pleasant place.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s why you paint such sad scenes.”
“I have seen much sadness. Family is important, don’t you think? Family is the most important thing in the world.”
“I suppose it is. I too have no family but my husband and child, so I know how it feels.”
He nodded. “I am so happy to find a cousin. Mademoiselle Goldfarb tells me that my family in New York has done well. I am glad for them.”
“Yes, I believe they have prospered. Sid doesn’t talk about them much. They don’t approve of her lifestyle.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “She too has her problems, then. Life always makes problems, no?”
“So how exactly are you related to her?” I asked.
“My mother, she was also from the family Goldfarb. She told me two brothers left Poland. One went to America, one to Paris.”
“So your grandfathers were brothers?”
“So it seems. So tell me—what do you think of my art?”
“It’s striking,” I said tactfully. “Different.”
“Picasso says it shows genius, and Picasso he is a genius himself. He says the world is not ready for us yet. And that is true. Most people want pretty pictures on their walls. I too can paint pretty pictures if I have to. But I must paint where my soul is.” And he thumped his chest. A most dramatic young man.
“You should paint the occasional pretty picture to pay the rent,” I said. “Every artist has to compromise.”
“I try this. Believe me, I do try this, but it leads only to destruction. So you will buy a painting?”
I gave an embarrassed smile. “I’m afraid I’m not rich like my friends. I’m the wife of a poor policeman.”
“No? A policeman? In America?”
“In New York.”
“Ah, I see.” He nodded. “So you do not come to Paris to buy paintings.”
“No. Actually I came to find you because I’m worried about Miss Goldfarb and Miss Walcott.”
“Worried, why?”
“They’ve vanished. I arrived in Paris, expecting to stay with them and they are not at their apartment. Nobody knows where they have gone. Have you seen them recently? Have they said anything to you about leaving the city?”
Those sorrowful dark eyes turned to me. “No. I know nothing that explains this. Last time I saw them they were happy. The artist lady hopes for one of her paintings to be in the big exhibition. She was working to complete a new canvas. Why should they leave Paris at such a moment? Unless they have been taken ill, do you think?”
“Surely even from a hospital bed they could write to me, or get someone to write to me. And their landlady would know. And is it likely that they are both taken ill at the same time?”
“They could both have eaten bad food and been poisoned. There are bad oysters in the city, so I am told. Many people are sick. Some die.”
My stomach lurched. Food poisoning. Why hadn’t I thought of that? But surely if one has food poisoning it usually strikes at home, several hours after the meal. Wouldn’t the landlady have been consulted about which hospital or doctor they should go to? Still, it was a possibility I hadn’t considered and it gave me a new area to search.
I stood up from the rickety chair. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Noah. I must go. I have left my child with a local woman. I wish you luck with your painting.”