Morning, sunshine. Happy to hear the dress has already been out and about. You’ll have to fill me in when you get home. Re: French friends. We did have a few friends from our year in Paris that we stayed in touch with. Ian and Nicola Forster, an English couple who worked at the embassy as cultural attachés. They live in London, but have a home in Provence now, of course. They do collect, so maybe it’s them. I haven’t heard from them in a few years, but they sent a lovely note and made a donation after your father’s death. They were very upset.
Then there are a few of my fashion friends like Ines de la Fressange and Carole Bouquet, but I don’t think they’d be anonymous or have a JoA thing. Patrick DeM & Mia have a place in Brittany but I just saw him for dinner in Montecito—shooting guess who—and he would have mentioned something about this, I’m sure.
Good mystery. Let me check my Rolodex and see if anyone else pops out at me. Yes, I still have one!
xoxoSCB
Chapter 11
The drizzle was turning to rain and the light to dark as I raced to reach the Panthéon before the doors closed to tourists. The air was cool; dodging and weaving through the Latin Quarter got my blood going. Dodging students and tourists and locals took me back to my junior year. I loved the chaos of this neighborhood with cafés on every corner and markets tucked here and there. Narrow sidewalks packed with people and the occasional quiet block where you could catch your breath. The Panthéon in Paris was a massive structure with the facade of a Greek temple complete with imposing Corinthian columns. I was invigorated as I climbed the steps to the ticket window.
It was built as a church dedicated to Saint Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, by Louis XV but then rebranded by the people after the French Revolution as a temple to intellectuals. The main floor was vast and cold, as if stripping the building of its religious affiliation had also stripped it of its humanity, in an odd sense. Now it served as a crypt to some of the most revered minds in French history, from Voltaire to Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Alexandre Dumas. It’s also the final resting place of Marie Curie, one of five great women entombed in the Panthéon. I guess the French must consider Madame Curie to supersede her gender, as the inscription over the entrance reads “Aux Grands Hommes La Patrie Reconnaissante.” To Its Great Men: A Grateful Homeland.
I’d only visited the Panthéon once as a student, in Jamie Goodspeed’s architectural history class. There was so much else to see in Paris, and tombs of dead guys weren’t very high on my list, even though my father had made his mark here. Jamie made no mention of Joan Bright & Dark, which was a relief because at the time I was in denial of my father’s work. In previous classes, I tended to throw up my hands when a professor asked me about it. “It’s what he does,” I would say, as if his work were on par with plumbing or floor refinishing. Maybe because that’s the way my father acted most of the time, like his art was a J-O-B.
I hadn’t recalled how imposing the Panthéon really was. How would I ever find Blackbird? I bought my ticket to go in. The ticket seller reminded me that I only had a half hour to see the entire Panthéon and its many wonders, then gave me a stink eye, as if to say, “What else to expect from an American?”
I answered in French, “Je suis ici pour voir le mur de Joan seulement.” I’m only here to see the Joan Wall.
“Ah, très bien.” And a half smile to boot.
As I entered the interior of the dome, my eyes darted around frantically. What exactly was I looking for? I had no idea.
I heard a voice. “Hey.”
It was Nate, standing against a slender column waiting for me to arrive. He was reading the visitor’s brochure. I felt complete relief. And a tingle down my spine. He looked like he’d run through a wind tunnel before arriving. He was a long way from the slicked-back, button-down guy on the plane.
“This is a big place. What do you call this . . . style?” he said as he waved his hand around and walked toward me. He brushed my cheek with a kiss, then gave me a squeeze, like he was trying to let me know everything was going to be fine. He must have seen the worry in my eyes. “You smell clean.”
“Thank you,” I said, staying close to him. “It’s neoclassical. It was the first of its kind in Paris. The building ushered in a design simplicity in the architecture of the city, a refreshing turn after the baroque style. But honestly, it’s a little boring, isn’t it?”
Nate shook his head and laughed. “Where did that come from, Susie Tour Guide?”
“College art history class meets museum guide. I’m nervous.”
“Well, did you know the first experiment with Foucault’s pendulum was held here in 1851?” He held up his handy-dandy brochure as proof. “At least I think that’s what this says. They only have guides in French, so I’m using my high school Spanish to translate.”
“I really don’t even know what that means.”
“Foucault’s pendulum? It’s a simple device to demonstrate the rotation of the earth. First demonstration here in 1851.”
“See, we all have our obscure areas of expertise.”
“I wouldn’t call physics obscure.”
I didn’t want to let him go, but I did. “Thank you for being here. I thought you couldn’t miss your dinner?”
“I realized in the cab back to the hotel that the dinner tonight was work. Talking to the same sort of guys I talk to every day about the same stuff we always talk about. I’ll have that same dinner twenty times this year. And twenty times next year. My sister made me promise to get out and see the city. I think this qualifies. Plus, art theft and international intrigue? I don’t get a chance to do a lot of that. I thought I’d tag along.”
“To make sure I don’t get into any strange cars?” I was starting to relax.
“Exactly. You have very questionable judgment when it comes to men.” He reached out and touched my cheek, then glanced at his watch. “It’s 5:54. We should find that Joan Wall, right?” Nate took in the cavernous interior, still dotted with a few tourists. “That could take a while.”
The Joan Wall runs along the north transept of the Panthéon. There are four major panels, each more than fifteen feet high, that depict Joan’s life, from peasant girl to martyr. Above the panels are four additional friezes with more scenes from Joan’s life as warrior and leader. Eight or ten massive columns create a visual and physical maze that a viewer must navigate in order to take in the entire wall. The Lenepveu oils peek out from between the columns, the colors deep and glowing from the low, warm lighting. I hadn’t seen the Joan Wall in person in over a decade, but I’d been through the sketchbooks so often in the basement of the museum, that I was struck by its familiarity.
According to my father’s own account in a piece from Interview in 1981, for the first installation for Joan Bright & Dark, he lit the columns in front of the panels with lights that changed from green to smoky gray to orange that he’d placed around the interior during the day with the help of a few art-loving guards. The paintings themselves were lit by a golden wash, and pastoral images were projected across the ceiling. An art critic writing for the International Herald Tribune said that the work made the columns, walls, and ceiling crawl to life and created the effect of Joan rising from the dead, as if she were a crypt buddy of Marie Curie’s. For some reason, the image made me laugh despite my nerves as we approached the Joan Wall. All I could think of now was how those giant columns made it impossible to see if Blackbird was hiding in the shadows. And the half dozen tourists milling about in front of the wall were an innocent distraction. Nobody looked the slightest bit suspicious in their fleece jackets and blue jeans.
“This is a lot to take in,” Nate observed. “Bigger than I expected.” He lowered his voice, as it was clear that everything echoed. “What do you think we’re looking for exactly?”
The same question I had asked myself. “In my mind, it’s a guy in bird suit with a wheelbarrow full of notebooks, but I think that’s unlikely.” Suddenly we both cracked up.