ELEVEN
The Toronto galleries were a bust. None remembered seeing Peter Morrow and all tried to convince Clara she should show at their space. The very same galleries that had rejected and mocked her work just a few years earlier were now trying to seduce her.
Clara didn’t carry a grudge. They were far too heavy and she had too far to go. But she did notice, and she noticed something else. Her own ego, showing some ankle. Eating up the fawning words, the come-hither smiles of these late-to-the-party suitors.
“Has he been here?” Clara asked the owner at the last gallery on their list.
“Not that I remember,” she said, and the receptionist confirmed there’d been no appointment with a Peter Morrow in the past twelve months.
“But he might’ve just dropped in,” Clara persisted, and showed the owner an image of Peter’s striking work.
“Oh, I know him,” she said.
“He was here?” Clara asked.
“No, I mean I know his work. Now, let’s talk about your paintings…”
And that was that. Clara was polite, but fled as quickly as she could, before she was seduced. But she took the owner’s card. You never knew.
Their last stop before getting on the afternoon train was the art college, where Peter and Clara had met almost thirty years ago.
“The OCCA—” the secretary said.
“Obsessive-compulsive…” said Myrna.
“Ontario College of Canadian Arts,” said the secretary.
He gave them a pamphlet and signed Clara Morrow up to the alumni list. He did not recognize her name, which Clara found both a relief and annoying.
“Peter Morrow?” That name he recognized. “He was here a few months back.”
“So he spoke to you?” said Clara. “What did he want?”
She’d actually wanted to ask, “How did he look?” but stopped herself.
“Oh, just to get caught up. He wanted to know if any of the staff was still around from when he was here.”
“Are they?”
“Well, one. Paul Massey.”
“Professor Massey? You’re kidding. He must be—”
“Eighty-three. Still teaching, still painting. Mr. Morrow was eager to see him.”
“Professor Massey taught conceptual drawing,” Clara explained to Myrna.
“Still does,” said the secretary. “‘Translating the visual world onto canvas,’” he quoted by heart from the brochure.
“He was one of our favorite professors,” said Clara. “Is he in now?”
“Might be. It’s summer break, but the professor often comes in to his studio when it’s quiet.”
“Professor Massey was wonderful,” Clara said as she hurried along the corridor. “A mentor for lots of the younger artists, including Peter.”
“And you?”
“Oh, no. I was a lost cause,” said Clara, laughing. “They didn’t really know what to do with me.”
They arrived at the studio and Myrna opened the door. The familiar scent of linseed, oil paints, and turpentine met them. As did the sight of an elderly man on a stool. His white hair was thinning and his face was pink. Despite his age he looked robust. A grain-fed, free-range artist. Not yet put out to pasture.
“Yes?” he said, getting off his chair.
“Professor Massey?”
His expression was quizzical but not alarmed or annoyed. He looked, Myrna thought, the sort of teacher who actually liked students.
“Yes?”
“I’m Clara Morrow. I understand my husband came by to see you—”
“Peter,” said the professor, smiling and coming toward her, his hand extended. “Yes. How are you? I’ve been following your success. Very exciting.”
He seemed to mean it, thought Myrna. He looked genuinely happy for Clara, and happy to see her.
“Did Peter tell you about it?” Clara asked.
“I read about it in the papers. You’re our greatest success. The student has outstripped the master.” Professor Massey studied the woman in front of him. “Probably because we were never really your masters, were we, Clara? Perhaps that was the key. You didn’t follow us. You didn’t follow anyone.” He turned to Myrna and confided, “Not easy to have a pupil who was genuinely creative. Hard to grade, harder still to corral. To our shame, we tried.”
He spoke with such humility, such awareness of his own limitations, that Myrna found herself drawn to him.
“I’m afraid I can’t remember any of your works,” he said.
“I’m not surprised,” said Clara with a smile. “Though they were heavily featured in the college’s Salon des Refusés.”
“You were part of that?” Professor Massey shook his head sadly. “A terrible thing to do to vulnerable young people. Humiliating. I am sorry. We took care that that never happened again, you know. Peter and I talked about it too.”
“Well, I survived,” said Clara.
“And flourished. Come in, sit down.” He walked across the studio without waiting for their answer and pointed toward a group of shabby chairs and a sofa whose middle sagged to the concrete floor. “Can I get you a drink?” He stepped toward an old refrigerator.
“You used to stock it with beer,” said Clara, following him. “We’d have parties in your studio after class on Fridays.”
“Yes. Can’t do that anymore. New administration. New rules. Lemonade?”
He offered them a beer.
Clara laughed and accepted.
“Actually, I’d prefer a lemonade if you have one,” said Myrna, who was parched after a morning trudging from gallery to gallery in sizzling Toronto.
Professor Massey handed her one, then turned back to Clara.
“What can I do for you?”
“Oh, much the same as for Peter,” she said, sitting on the sofa. Her knees immediately sprang up to her shoulders and a whitecap of beer landed on her lap.
She should have been prepared for that, she realized. It was the same sofa they’d sat on as students, all those years ago.
Professor Massey offered Myrna a chair, but she preferred to wander the studio, looking at the works. She wondered if they were all painted by the professor. They seemed good, but then Myrna had bought one of Clara’s Warrior Uteruses, so she was hardly a judge of art.
“Well,” said the professor, taking a chair across from Clara, “Peter and I talked mostly about the other students and faculty. He asked about some of his favorite teachers. Many of them gone now. Dead. A few demented, like poor Professor Norman, though I can’t say he was anyone’s favorite teacher. I like to think it was the paint fumes, but I think we all know he came in demented, and working here might not have helped. I myself have escaped detection by having a mediocre career and always agreeing with the administration.”
He laughed, then fell silent. There was a quality about the silence that made Myrna turn from the blank canvas on the easel to look at them.
“Why are you really here?” Professor Massey finally asked.
It was said softly, gently.
His blue eyes watched Clara and seemed to place a bubble around her. A shield. Where no harm would come to her. And Myrna understood why Professor Massey was a favorite teacher. And why he would be remembered for things far more important than “translating the visual world onto canvas.”
“Peter’s missing,” said Clara.
* * *
Their progress through the woods reminded Jean-Guy of something. Some old image.
Gamache was ahead of him, on what they all suspected was not really a horse. For the past fifteen minutes, Beauvoir had ducked branches as they snapped back into his face, at about the same time Gamache called, “Watch out.”
And when he wasn’t being bitch-slapped by nature, all Beauvoir could see was Bullwinkle’s ass swaying in front of him.
He was not yet having fun. Fortunately for Beauvoir, he hadn’t expected to.
“Can you see it?” he called ahead for the tenth time in as many minutes.
“Just enjoy the scenery and relax,” came the patient response. “We’ll get there eventually.”
“All I see is your horse’s ass,” said Jean-Guy, and when Gamache turned around with mock censure, he added, “sir.”
Beauvoir rocked back and forth on his own horse and couldn’t quite bring himself to admit he was beginning to enjoy himself. Though “enjoy” might be overstating it. He was finding the soft, rhythmic steps of the careful animal reassuring, calming. It reminded him of the rocking of monks as they prayed. Or a mother soothing a distressed child.
The forest was quiet, save for the clopping of the hooves and the birds as they got out of the way. The deeper they went, the more peaceful it became, the greener it became.
The heart chakra. A villager who ran a nearby yoga center once told him that.
“Green’s the color of the heart chakra,” she’d said, as though it was a fact.
He’d dismissed it then. And, for the record, for public consumption, he’d dismiss it now. But privately, in the deep green peace, he began to wonder.
Ahead he could see Gamache, swaying on his creature. A map of Paris sticking out of the saddlebag.
“Are we at the Louvre yet?” Jean-Guy asked.
“Be quiet, you silly man,” said Gamache, no longer bothering to turn around. “You know damn well we passed it a while back. We’re looking for la Tour Eiffel and beyond that, the 15th arrondissement.”
“Oui, oui, zut alors,” said Beauvoir, giving an exaggerated French nasal laugh. Hor, hor.
Ahead of him he heard the Chief grunting in laughter.
“There it is.” The Chief pointed, and in that moment Beauvoir knew exactly what this reminded him of. A drawing of Don Quixote he’d seen in a book.
Gamache was pointing toward a rude cabin in the woods, with a ruder man inside. Or it might have been a giant.
“Should we tilt at it?” Beauvoir asked, and heard the soft rumble of unmistakable laughter from the Chief.
“Come, Sancho,” he said. “The world needs our immediate presence.”
And Jean-Guy Beauvoir followed.
* * *
Professor Massey listened, not interrupting, not reacting. Simply nodding now and then as Clara told him about Peter. About his career, his art, their life together.
And finally there was nothing left to say.
The professor inhaled, a breath that seemed to go on forever. He held it for a moment, his eyes never leaving the woman in front of him. And then he exhaled.
“Peter’s a lucky man,” he said. “Except in one respect. He doesn’t seem to know how lucky he is.”
Myrna sat down then, on the stool by his easel. He was right. It was what she’d long known about Peter Morrow. In a life filled with great good fortune, of health, of creativity, of friends. Living in safety and privilege. With a loving partner. There was just one bit of misfortune in his life, and that was that Peter Morrow seemed to have no idea how very fortunate he was.
Professor Massey reached out and Clara put her large hands in his larger ones.
“I’m hopeful,” he said. “You know why?”
Clara shook her head. Myrna shook her head. Mesmerized by the soft, sure voice.
“He married you. He could have chosen any of the bright, attractive, successful students here.” Professor Massey turned to Myrna. “Peter was clearly a star. A deeply talented student. Art college isn’t just about art, as it turns out. It’s also about attitude. The place is full of scowling kids in black. Including Peter. The only exception was…”
He jerked his head dramatically toward Clara, who was blotting beer off her jeans.
“As I remember it, Peter did his share of dating,” said Massey. “But in the end he was attracted not to the talented girls with attitude, but to the apparently talentless, marginal girl.”
“I feel there’s an insult in there,” said Clara with a laugh. She also turned to Myrna. “You didn’t know him then. He was spectacular. Tall with all this long, curly hair. Like a Greek sculpture come alive.”
“So how’d you win him over?” Myrna asked. “Your feminine wiles?”
Clara laughed and fluffed her imaginary bouffant. “Yes, I was quite the vixen. He didn’t stand a chance.”
“No, really,” said Myrna, getting up from the stool and wandering over. “How did you two get together?”
“I honestly have no idea,” said Clara.
“I do,” said Professor Massey. “Attitude is tiring after a while. And boring. Predictable. You were fresh, different.”
“Happy,” said Myrna.
She’d walked past the sitting area, and into the back of the studio, examining the canvases on the walls.
“Yours?” she asked, and Massey nodded.
They were good. Very good. And one, near the back, was exceptional. Professor Massey followed her with his eyes. No matter the age, thought Myrna, an artist is always slightly insecure.
“So we know what Peter found attractive in you,” said Myrna. “What did you like about him? Beyond the physical. Or was that it?”
“At first, for sure,” said Clara, thinking. “I remember now.” She laughed. “It sounds so small, but it was huge back then. When my work was displayed in the Salon des Refusés, instead of treating me like a leper, Peter actually came and stood beside me.” She ran her hands through her hair, so that it stood almost straight out from her head. “I was an outcast, a joke. The weird kid who did all these crazy installations. And not crazy in a Van Gogh, artistic, cool way. My stuff was considered superficial. Silly. And so was I.”
“It must’ve been upsetting,” said Myrna.
“It was, a little. But you know, I was still happy. I was at the OCCA, doing art. In Toronto. It was exciting.”
“But you were upset about the Salon des Refusés,” said Professor Massey.
Clara nodded. “That was a professor doing it. It was humiliating. I remember staring at my work, front and center in the gallery reserved for failures. Where Professor Norman had put it. Peter came over, and he stood beside me. He didn’t say anything, he just stood there. For all to see.”
She smiled at the memory.
“Things changed after that. I wasn’t exactly accepted, but neither was I mocked. Not so much, anyway.”
Myrna had no idea Peter had done that. He’d always seemed slightly superficial to her. Handsome, physically strong. And he knew the right things to say, to appear thoughtful. But there was a weakness about the man.
“Can I give you some advice?” Professor Massey asked.
Clara nodded.
“Go home. Not to wait for him, but go home and get on with your life and your art. And trust that he’ll meet you there, when he’s found what he’s looking for.”
“But what’s he looking for? Did he tell you?” Clara asked.
Professor Massey shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Why Dumfries?” asked Myrna.
The two artists turned to her.
“I can understand Paris and the other places,” she continued. “But why a small town in Scotland? He’d just returned from there when he came to see you. Did he tell you about his trip?”
Again the professor shook his head.
“We talked about his time here, at the college,” he said.
“Is there anything that connects all those places he visited?” Clara asked.
“Not that I know of,” said the professor, looking perplexed. “As you say, Paris and Florence and Venice make sense for an artist. But then a small town in Scotland? Did he have family there?”
“No,” said Clara. “Then from here he went to Quebec City. Do you know why?”
“I’m sorry,” said the professor, and looked terribly sad. Myrna began to feel they were harassing the elderly man, haranguing him for answers he so clearly didn’t have.
She walked over. “I think we should be going. We have to catch the train back to Montréal.”
At the door, Professor Massey shook Myrna’s hand.
“We should all have a friend like you.”
Then he turned to Clara. “This should be the happiest time of your life. A time of celebration. Makes it all the more painful. It reminds me of Francis Bacon and his triptych.”
Then he brightened. “I’m an idiot. I just heard that one of our professors had to drop out because of illness. He taught painting and composition to first-year students. You’d be perfect for it. I know you should be teaching a much more advanced class”—he held up his hand as though to ward off Clara’s objections—“but believe me, by the time they get to third year they’re insufferable. But the new students? That’s exciting. And they’d adore you. Interested?”
Clara had a sudden image of standing in a large studio, like this. Her own studio at the college. Her own sofa, her own fridge stocked with contraband beer. Guiding eager young men and women. Emerging artists.
She’d make sure that what was done to her wasn’t done to them. She’d encourage them. Defend them. No Salon des Refusés for them. No mocking, no marginalizing. No pretending to encourage creativity, when all the college really wanted was conformity.
They’d come to her studio on Fridays and drink beer and talk nonsense. They’d throw around ideas, philosophies, predictions, bold and half-baked plans. It would be her own salon. A Salon des Acceptés.
And she would be the gleaming center. The world-renowned artist, nurturing them.
She would have arrived.
“Think about it,” Professor Massey said.
“I will,” said Clara. “Thank you.”
* * *
Dr. Vincent Gilbert lived in the heart of the forest. Away from human conflict, but also away from human contact. It was a compromise he was more than happy to make. As was the rest of humanity.
Gamache and Gilbert had met many times over the years and, against all odds, isolation and a life dedicated just to himself had not improved Dr. Gilbert’s people skills.
“What do you want?” Gilbert asked, looking out from under a straw hat he might have stolen from Beauvoir’s horse on an earlier visit.
He was in the vegetable garden and looked, to Gamache, more and more like a biblical prophet, or a madman. Gilbert wore a once white, now gray, nightshirt down to mid-calf, and plastic sandals he could hose off. Which was a good thing, because he was up to his ankles in compost.
“Can’t a neighbor come to visit?” asked Gamache, after securing his mount to a tree.
“What do you want?” Dr. Gilbert repeated, straightening up and walking toward them.
“Drop the act, Vincent,” said Gamache with a laugh. “I know you’re happy to see me.”
“Did you bring me anything?”
Gamache gestured toward Beauvoir, whose eyes widened.
“You know I’m a vegetarian,” said Gilbert. “Anything else?”
Gamache reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a brown paper bag and the map.
“Welcome, stranger,” said Gilbert. He grabbed the paper bag, opened it, and inhaled the aroma of the croissants.
Tossing one precious pastry into the woods, without explanation, he took the rest into his log cabin, followed by Gamache and Beauvoir.
* * *
The train lurched forward but was soon traveling swiftly and smoothly toward Montréal.
“What was that about Francis Bacon?” Myrna asked. The steward had taken their lunch order. “I’m presuming he meant the twentieth-century painter and not the sixteenth-century philosopher.”
Clara nodded but said nothing.
“What did Professor Massey mean?” Myrna pressed. It had clearly meant something.
Clara looked out the window, at the rear end of Toronto. For a moment Myrna wondered if she’d heard the question. But then Clara spoke. To the overflowing garbage bins. To the washing on the line. To the graffiti. Not actual art, but the artist’s name over and over. Declaring himself. Spray-painted in huge, bold, black letters. Over and over.
“Bacon often painted in threes.” Clara’s words created a fine fog on the window. “Triptychs. I think the one Professor Massey had in mind was George Dyer.”
That meant nothing to Myrna, but it clearly meant a great deal to Clara.
“Go on.”
“I think Professor Massey was trying to warn me.” Clara turned away from the window and looked at her friend.
“Tell me,” said Myrna, though it was clear Clara would have rather done just about anything else than put these thoughts into words.
“George Dyer and Bacon were lovers,” said Clara. “They went to Paris for a huge show of Bacon’s paintings. It was the first great triumph of his career. While Bacon was being celebrated—”
Clara stopped, and Myrna felt the blood rush from her own face.
“Tell me,” she repeated softly.
“Dyer killed himself in their hotel room.”
The words were barely audible. But Myrna heard them. And Clara heard them. Put out into the world.
The women stared at each other.
“It’s what you were trying to warn me about,” Clara said, her voice still barely above a whisper. “When you told me about Samarra.”
Myrna couldn’t answer. She couldn’t bear to add to the dread in Clara’s face. In her whole body.
“You think Peter has done the same thing,” said Clara.
But still Clara’s eyes pleaded with Myrna. To tell her she was wrong. To reassure her that Peter was just off painting. He’d lost track of the time. The date.
Myrna said nothing. It might have been kindness. Or cowardice. But Myrna remained silent, and allowed Clara her delusion.
That Peter would come home. Might even be waiting for them, when they got back. With beer. A couple of steaks. An explanation. And profuse apologies.
Myrna looked out the window. The tenements were still whizzing by, apparently endless. But the graffiti artist’s name had disappeared.
A fine hotel room in Paris, she thought. Samarra. Or some corner of Québec. However he got there, Myrna was afraid Peter Morrow had reached the end of the road. And there he’d met Death.
And she knew that Clara feared the same thing.
* * *
Vincent Gilbert’s log cabin hadn’t changed much since the last time Beauvoir had visited. It was still a single room, with a large bed at one end, and a kitchen at the other. The rough pine floor was strewn with fine Oriental carpets, and on either side of the fieldstone fireplace were shelves crammed with books. Two comfortable armchairs with footstools sat facing each other across the hearth.
Before Vincent Gilbert had moved in, this rustic cabin had been the scene of a terrible crime. A murder so unnatural it had shocked the nation. Some places held on to such malevolence, as though the pain and shock and horror had fused to the structure.
But this little home had always felt strangely innocent. And very peaceful.
Dr. Gilbert poured them glasses of spring water and made sandwiches with tomatoes still warm from his garden.
Gamache spread the map of Paris on the table, smoothing it with his large hand.
“So, what do you want, Armand?” Dr. Gilbert asked for the third time.
“When you went to Paris, after you left your wife, where did you go?”
“I’ve told you that before. Weren’t you paying attention?”
“I was, mon ami,” said Gamache soothingly. “But I’d like to see again.”
Gilbert’s eyes filled with suspicion. “Don’t waste my time, Armand. I have better things to do than repeat myself. There’s manure to spread.”
Some considered Vincent Gilbert a saint. Some, like Beauvoir, considered him an asshole. The residents of Three Pines had compromised and called him the “asshole saint.”
“But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still a saint,” Gamache had said. “Most saints were assholes. In fact, if he wasn’t one that would disqualify him completely.”
The Chief had walked away with a smile, knowing he’d completely messed with Beauvoir’s mind.
“Asshole,” Beauvoir had hissed.
“I heard that,” said Gamache, not turning back.
And now Jean-Guy looked at the two men. Gilbert elderly, imperious, thin and weathered, with sharp eyes and a temperament quick to take offense. And Gamache, twenty years younger, larger, calmer.
Jean-Guy Beauvoir had seen great kindness in Gilbert, and ruthlessness in Gamache. Neither man, Beauvoir was pretty sure, was a saint.
“Show me on the map exactly where you stayed in Paris,” said Gamache, paying absolutely no attention to Gilbert’s little tantrum.
“Fine,” the doctor huffed. “It was here.” His fingernail, black-rimmed with earth, fell on the map.
They bent over to examine the spot, like scientists over a litmus test. Then Gamache straightened up.
“Did you ever talk about your time in Paris with Peter Morrow?” he asked.
“Not specifically, no,” said Gilbert. “But he might’ve heard me talking about it. Why?”
“Because he’s missing.”
“I thought Clara sent him away.”
“She did, but they made a date to meet up exactly a year later. That was a few weeks ago. He never showed.”
Vincent Gilbert was obviously surprised.
“He loved Clara. I miss a lot in life,” said Gilbert. “But I have a nose for love.”
“Like a truffle pig,” said Beauvoir, then regretted it when he saw the asshole saint’s reaction.
Then, unexpectedly, Gilbert smiled. “Exactly. I can smell it. Love has an aroma all its own, you know.”
Beauvoir looked at Gilbert, amazed by what he’d just heard.
Maybe, he thought, this man was—
“Smells like compost,” said Gilbert.
—an asshole after all.