“That makes no sense to me.”
“Think about what we know about Blackbird now and how he or she works and thinks. What connections have we learned so far? Not what we think we know, but what we know for sure.”
I wasn’t in the mood for this. I was in the mood for quick answers and the big bowl of mussels we ordered. But I could tell by the serious look on Nate’s face he was going to see this intellectual exercise through, so I indulged him. “That Blackbird is familiar with my father’s work and, well, we can even back up and say that he knows who my father is. And, we know that at some point, he had access to my father’s notebooks and made copies of certain pages.”
“Or discovered those pages in someone’s files, right?”
“Oh, right. He seems to have a network of people willing to do his bidding, like maybe Beatrice or the security guard at the Panthéon, so he must have facility with the language, knowledge of the area, and persuasive techniques.” This was kind of fun. The waiter put down a small plate of olives and roasted nuts, along with some cheese puffs, and both Nate and I reached in at the same time. “Or a lot of money.”
“Good answers. So, knowing these things, what do you think might be in there? For example, today we met at the first location of your father’s Joan exhibit. What’s the second location? If he is trying to lead us down that path, where do we go next?”
Now I was starting to get the point of the exercise, but that didn’t make my brain work any faster. “Give me a sec.” Nate looked surprised. “You know, I’m not a Henry Blakely scholar; I’m his daughter.” It was a line I’d used many times before, but saying it to Nate made me hear it with fresh ears. It’s true that most of what I knew about my father’s career was anecdotal or observational, not academic. I’d never studied him properly or written a thesis on his early work. But I’d heard him tell the stories of his work, witnessed the process, cataloged the notebooks, and, in general, been along for the ride. Occasionally, I’d Google his name and read an article about him, if I had time to kill at work. Or, because of his depth of knowledge about my father, Tai and I would wander into a conversation over lunch about my father as easily as if we were discussing the films of Martin Scorsese or modern chair design.
I wanted to protest to Nate that I didn’t have any kind of comprehensive timeline of his work stored in my brain to access at moments like this, but that wasn’t true. I lived in his shadow during his lifetime and taken on his legacy after his death. Now was the time to make all the effort pay off, so I corrected myself, “I’m not a trained Blakely scholar, but I’m the next best thing.”
In my mind’s eye, I conjured up a series of photos that lined the walls of a hallway in the Pasadena house, taken by my mother during that week in Paris long ago. I had stared at them for decades, absorbing the images, but now I had to recall the exact order. Next to the Panthéon was . . . Notre-Dame.
“If that’s a pattern, then the next place to meet would be Notre-Dame,” I announced, remembering the image of a stone statue bathed in white light. “There’s a simple statue of Joan praying. It’s very pious, very straightforward. It’s by a French sculptor. I’m so hungry I can’t remember his name. Des-something. My father used this piece to represent Joan’s steadfast faith, her simple belief in what she was doing. He lit the statues and that whole area of the church in white light, using various sources from candles to lanterns. I think there was also sound in that installation, a choir of some sort, chanting. It was said to be, um, reverent, that’s the word most often used to describe the installation. At least in what I’ve read.”
“So, if Blackbird is leading us on a wild-goose chase inspired by Bright & Dark, Notre-Dame would be the next logical stop.” Now it was my turn for skepticism, because I objected to the phrase “wild-goose chase.” Nate plowed ahead. “Any idea what page from your father’s notebooks corresponds to the Notre-Dame location?”
“No. There are dozens of notebooks. But there doesn’t seem to be a connection to Small World, so why should there be a connection this time?”
“True. Anything else you think might be in inside?”
“Nate, I’m opening this envelope.”
“This makes no sense.”
I handed the paper to Nate. He read the words aloud, in some vaguely Shakespearean cadence. It made the poem even more nonsensical, almost comical.
If the gilded light should fade
When you hear house men have strayed
Here’s memory that tells me so
Here’s golden hair that falls below
I’ll touch the line of her chin
Like steel and glass from within
Come cut those locks at three, sweet maid.
Nate had no future in community theater, that was for sure, but I had to give him an A for effort. He stared at the paper, and then at me, asking, “Does anything jump out? Anything familiar to you? Any Notre-Dame reference?”
“No obvious ones. There are a lot of metal references—golden, gilded, steel. Maybe it has to do with the famous golden Frémiet statue of Joan at the rue de Rivoli. But even that’s a stretch. I’d have to see it again to understand the steel and glass references. It could even be the I. M. Pei pyramid at the Louvre, but I can’t think of any connection there to Joan or my father.”
“Especially because the lines before seem to be about a woman’s head of hair. Did Joan of Arc have golden hair?”
I thought about the hundreds of pieces I’d collected over the years with depictions of Joan, from master painters like Rossetti and John Everett Millais to the pop depictions like Kate Bush as Joan. Joan’s hair color was all over the map, depending upon the artist. “Sometimes. Depending upon the cultural orientation of the artist.”
“Anything else in the envelope?”
I reached in and pulled out a photocopy of another page of my father’s notebooks. This time, there was no recognition. It didn’t look familiar to me at all. It was a rough sketch of the facade of a stone building with arched windows and a grand doorway. Maybe a church, maybe an academic institution. There were some measurements and numeric notations, but no quote, no signature, no date. “This isn’t helpful, either. I don’t recognize it. Do you?”
Nate shook his head. “Looks like a campus of sorts. But it could be any campus. Did your father do any commissions on college campuses? Churches?”
“One finished piece at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. I’ve never been to the campus, so it could be a building there, I guess.”
I had a thought and pulled my trusty Blue Guide out of my backpack. I turned to the index to look up House of anything. House of Steel? House of Gilded Light? I heard Nate snort. “Sure, that should be a lot more helpful than this,” he said as he waved his phone around.
“You never know. History doesn’t change that much in a decade, Nate. And books are another way of organizing data, still a legitimate source of information.” I actually used a lot of books at work when I was researching topics. Being Internet-free kept me focused on the task at hand, and we had an extensive library of books in the back office, annotated in the margins, filled with Post-its from curators and researchers adding their own two cents. The waiter set down a steaming bowl of saffron-scented mussels and a basket of bread. It smelled divine. I closed up my old-school guide. “I’m starved.”
Nate was considering my words and then made a circle motion with his finger, indicating another round of drinks. He even managed, “Encore, merci.” He slipped the drawing back into the envelope for safekeeping. “Let’s eat.”