The Portrait Read online

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m caressing you,’ I said softly, ‘I’m caressing these breasts … which belong to me,’ I added hopefully and somewhat lecherously.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she replied, turning away.

  ‘And what if I don’t want to leave you alone,’ I persevered, still speaking softly.

  ‘Stop it … I hope at least that you ate the quail?’

  I sat up in the bed and studied Charlotte, my eyes having grown accustomed to the gloom. I looked at her neck and her back. She was a huge cold fish wallowing in my sheets, totally hostile, an icy, frigid mermaid. What had come over me to want to make love with her? If I were honest with myself, I hadn’t desired her in the least for the past month. Yet I had loved her. I had adored her body, her legs, her breasts and that blush that spread up her neck as she came. Could you suddenly stop loving someone because of a misunderstanding?

  But then, had everything we had lived through together just been a misunderstanding? Like an antique that you buy, love and cherish, and which for years makes you think of all the troubled times it has passed through – the Hundred Years War, the French Revolution, the Siege of Moscow – but which you notice one morning is nothing but a vulgar fake made ten years ago.

  Had I made a mistake with my life? What was I doing as a lawyer? If I really thought about it, I spent most of my time defending the progress of modernity, through the patents I protected. But it was the past I loved. I was betraying my convictions. I was an impostor. I should have become an antiques dealer and made money from my fabulous collections, studied at the École du Louvre or the French Library school, become a museum curator, an art critic, an exhibitor at the Biennale des Antiquaires, initiating Californian millionaires into the sensual delights of Fragonard, they who were only familiar with Cadillac chrome.

  And what about my wife; had I made a mistake there too? What was I doing with this partner who rejected me, who laughed at my interests and confined all my wonderful objects, which many an interior designer would have envied, to one little room in the apartment? Perhaps Charlotte would have liked to confine me to my study too? All she would have had to do was turn the key in the lock and she would have been free of me. Perhaps I was no more than a little dead thing to her? A thing that got in her way more than any object from my collections, a thing that talked, breathed and wanted to caress her breasts.

  Feeling dizzy, I went and sat back down in front of my computer. What had I been doing all these years? Perhaps just filling a powder keg ready to explode at any moment. All that had been lacking was the spark that would ignite the conflagration of my life. And now it was here; for three weeks it had been under my nose every day. The source of my torment was the portrait, the one with the indecipherable coat of arms. Since it had been in the apartment, I had felt my existence dissolving as surely as a sugar cube in water.

  I reached for my mouse. The black-and-white screensaver I had downloaded of Sacha Guitry’s salon disappeared immediately, to be replaced by the website devoted to coats of arms. I clicked onto the next page.

  In the centre appeared a sort of triangular shield with a cat, a sword and a carrot in human form. I moved the cursor to the coat of arms and clicked again. With that simple action I activated the only virus capable of destroying my existence, which had been so well protected up until that moment.

  http://www.herald-defranc.org/index_f.tm/trad.html-87k-france-bourgogne-dom/de/m@ndragore

  Mandragore. The lineage of the Seigneurs of Mandragore can be traced back to the twelfth century. Both the family and the estate take their name from the fabled mandrake plant, still occasionally found among the vines of the Mandragore estate today. To find out more, click here: Mandrake, plant.

  Mandrake, plant: n. lat. mandragora. Plant which grows in warm climates whose knobby forked root is said to resemble the human form. The mandrake was once credited with magical properties and was used in witchcraft.

  So the human carrot on the family’s shield symbolised the sorcerer’s plant. It had been a long time since I had heard of the mythical mandrake, and I never imagined it would be my gateway to the coat of arms.

  ‘It’s all coming together …’ I muttered to myself.

  I had a vague feeling that everything was falling into place that night, while Charlotte was tucked beneath the covers. And wasn’t tonight a full moon, when according to legend the magical plant should be dug up? I stood up and lifted the net curtain at the living-room window. The moon may have been full, but it was refusing to show itself.

  A history of the coat of arms of the Rivaille-Mandragore de Villardier family

  Blazon: ‘Impaled. At sinister, sable, a mandrake of gold; at dexter, argent, a cat passant proper, armed and langued gules, holding in its paws a long sword of gold. Motto “None but me”. War-cry “innocent”. Supporters two lions. A coronet.’

  On his return from the fifth crusade, Aymeric de Rivaille, Comte de Villardier, Seigneur of Bourgogne, brought mandrake plants back from the far-off countries he had visited. Having been wounded in Palestine, he was treated using extracts of the plant, known for its anaesthetic properties. Though the plant was already considered maleficent, the holy Church allowed him to grow it on his land in order to continue his treatment. Suckers from mandrake plants are still sometimes found among the vines at Rivaille. Their shrivelled roots no longer reach the impressive size they once did. The Rivaille lands became known as Mandragore, meaning mandrake, and the family adopted this curious name for their own. This is what is represented on the ‘sinister’ side of the shield.

  The symbolism of the cat, which occupies the ‘dexter’ side, is more difficult to interpret. The cat is as rare a heraldic charge as the mandrake; leopards, lions léopardés and lions rampant are far more common. Furthermore, the Rivaille cat is blazoned as ‘armed and langued gules’, terms normally employed for lions, meaning that the black (sable) cat has a red tongue and claws. There are a number of conflicting theories as to its origins. The interpretation given widest currency is as follows: Henri de Rivaille (1540–83) was riding across his lands when he was caught in a storm. Frightened by the din, the horse bolted, and Henri would have been doomed but for a cat sitting on a branch overhanging the path, which took fright at the sight of the steed galloping towards it. Its fur stood on end and it meowed so loudly that the horse stopped in its tracks. Henri saw the hand of God in the behaviour of the cat which, by halting his mount’s uncontrollable charge, had saved his life. The cat was taken home by the count. Among the records of staff and residents of the chateau at the time, the name ‘Innocent’ appears often; it also features as the war-cry above the family shield. It is possible that Innocent was the name of the cat.

  Afterwards, Henri de Rivaille issued an edict: it would henceforth be forbidden to chase, hunt or kill any cat on his lands. Each of these offences was punishable by death. He also had his coat of arms redesigned to feature the cat, the mandrake of his forebear, and the family sword. The only one of these charges to appear in the arms known as ‘old Rivaille’, the first coat of arms of the house of Rivaille, was the sword; the shield was ‘azure, a sword in pale argent’, which is to say, vertical. The attitude of the cat ‘passant’, standing on its hind legs, could be interpreted as follows: the cat saves the sword of the house of Rivaille, its power, glory and descendants, protecting the lands of Mandragore for all time.

  Wine

  Clos Mandragore, premier cru ‘les esprits’.

  Since Aimé-Charles de Rivaille took over from his father upon his death in 1998, he has invested heavily in remodelling the cellars and buying new equipment. The quality of the wines he produces on the finest land of the village of Chassagne-Montrachet has improved consistently over the years. This Chassagne red has an intense ruby colour. Its maturity is apparent on the nose, with aromas of ripe, dark fruits. Blackcurrant and raspberry, with subtle and well-blended woody notes. Full-bodied with an appealing and perfectly balanced mouthfeel (fruits, ta
nnins and alcohol) that is sophisticated, elegant and fruity. A complex and well-rounded Chassagne wine.

  The Chateau

  Regular and symmetrical in appearance, the Chateau of Mandragore is typical of the French classical style: a main building with an elaborately decorated pediment adjoined by two perpendicular wings with tiled roofs and a large, round, slate-roofed tower at either end. Adjacent to the western tower is a stable bearing the arms of the house of Mandragore. The estate is surrounded by wide moats leading into two ornamental ponds and is approached through a courtyard, over a hectare in size, which was planted with a rose garden by Hubert-Félix de Rivaille in 1882. Watch slideshow (12 photos).

  When I opened my eyes again I immediately saw the black-and-white photo of Sacha Guitry’s salon. The screen had gone into sleep mode. How long had I been asleep? My head was full of the images of the slideshow: a huge building with white walls and tiled roof that appeared to be suspended over the water, then a massive round tower bordered by green grass, a rose garden on the scale of a park, the multicoloured flowers bathed in sunshine. The walls inside the building were lined with red fabric and covered in paintings with gilded wooden frames. There were also crystal chandeliers, carpets, armchairs and Louis XV banquettes.

  Twelve minutes past five was the time showing at the top of the screen. I felt a draught on my face – I had opened the window slightly for a breath of fresh air. The calm of the morning was only disturbed by a few snatches of song from birds I could not see. I had not known there were so many in the city and, in the morning light, the silence and the chirping of the invisible birds gave me a strange sensation of harmony. I decided to soak up the peaceful atmosphere by taking a stroll along the boulevard.

  *

  I wandered as far as the gates of Parc Monceau and followed the railings back towards the Courcelles crossroads. On the opposite pavement an old man was walking his basset hound. It was rather early for a walk. Perhaps the old man was an insomniac and his dog had become one too by osmosis. I was reminded of our old dog, Arthur, of his successor and of my collection of erasers. As I walked calmly, I began to have flashbacks of my past. I pictured the lecture theatres at my law school – they were deserted. Deserted and silent, too, was my office in Rue de la Grange-Batelière. I could make out the winking red light on the fax machine. As I walked, images came to me, neither really moving nor exactly fixed; little strips of Super-8, spliced together in a completely random order.

  Curiously I could not see myself in any of the images. Not myself, nor Charlotte, nor my colleagues, nor the crowds in the sale rooms; not even anonymous passers-by who should have been in these photograms. There was no human presence, as if there had been a mass exodus or a nuclear war.

  I went to a bistro on Boulevard de Courcelles and ordered coffee at an outside table. I was the only customer and the waiter setting out tables and chairs on the terrace paid no attention to me. Occasionally a car passed and I noticed that the sound of the tyres was different in the silence of the early morning. Something like a waterfall. Then nothing. Boulevard de Courcelles had also been deserted; there seemed to be barely more than five or six people in the whole arrondissement. The waiter, me, the woman behind the bar, the man in the car who was already on his way to Place des Ternes … And it was best like this. What remained were the essentials; the superfluous parts of life had been eliminated during the night as if by magic.

  ‘End of the world – beginning of the world’, these two propositions jostled in my head and I could not tell which was more appropriate this morning.

  Without knowing it, I was already being erased.

  I opened the door to our apartment quietly and closed it again carefully. I trod on the parquet of the living room, making sure that the boards did not creak. Why was I doing that? What could be more normal than opening one’s own front door then going in and sitting down on one’s sofa? It was the most reassuring of acts. Yet I was not reassured; I was now walking about my own home like a thief. I didn’t want Charlotte to wake up, I didn’t want to have to explain myself. I took the portrait from my study and laid it flat on the floor. In a cupboard I found a large roll of bubble wrap – courtesy of Drouot – and I wrapped the portrait before carefully taping the edges. A few minutes later down in the garage I leant the package against the back of the front seats of my Jaguar. I closed the back door then got into the driving seat. I wanted to know. I would go to the source. Once there I was sure I would get to the bottom of the mystery.

  *

  As I drove out of Paris the radio changed station and started playing the first notes of Melody Nelson. Bass chords popped like soap bubbles, then the voice of Serge Gainsbourg, pure, hypnotic and dirge-like, began to recite the strange poem: ‘The wings of the Rolls Royce brushed past the pylons …’

  I was not driving a Rolls and there weren’t any pylons I could see … yet I did feel I was brushing past my existence one last time. At a hundred and eighty kilometres an hour, the few micrometres that separated the rubber of my tyres from the road were raising me above the warm path that had been my life. I was taking off.

  The smoke from my Benson & Hedges Gold wafts upwards in the candlelight. In the heat, beads of sweat are beginning to form on my brow and it crosses my mind that I ought to put a minibar in the shed to provide ice for my whisky. If there’s a heatwave, visits to my collections will become impossible, to say nothing of the fire risk. I stand up and walk towards a piece I still haven’t found a satisfactory home for in my makeshift cabinet of curiosities, a rosewood liqueur caddy. In the centre of its fine marquetry, just above the keyhole, sits a small copper plate on which the words ‘Lord Byron, Venezia’ can be read.

  My gaze falls on a heavy black cape hanging from a coat hanger and I swallow my last gulp of whisky with a smile.

  ‘One day, you’ll grow up and wear my old coat. Thanks to you, my dear nephew, I feel safe in the knowledge that this coat will outlive me in the world of junk. Happy bargain-hunting! Your old aunt Edgar.’

  The solicitor had read out these words, his eyebrows raised in confusion. My parents were speechless; I was smiling out of the corner of my mouth. I was thirteen. Uncle Edgar, whom we hadn’t heard from in years, had just died, leaving me the sum total of his possessions: his coat.

  When I had grown to six feet tall, I brushed the mothballs from my uncle’s cape and put it over my shoulders one December morning. It was a very windy day and the black cape flapped behind me in the maze of the flea market, the ‘world of junk’ the coat had not roamed through for such a long time. I was nineteen and I had six hundred francs in cash in my wallet. After haggling for some time, I left the aisles of Vernaison market with my pockets filled with two sixteenth-century paxes, those little bronze plates shaped like irons that the faithful used to kiss at communion. An hour later, I sold them on to a dealer in a café for ten times what I had paid for them. I used the money I had made to go back and buy an object which had caught my eye that morning, but had been beyond my means: a rosewood liqueur caddy with ‘Lord Byron, Venezia’ engraved on its copper badge.

  On his trips to Venice, the poet-adventurer had the curious habit of diving into the lagoon at the Lido and swimming breaststroke up the canal to his mistress’s palace. Still dripping with water, he would lie down nonchalantly on sofas covered in Fortuny fabric, open his liqueur caddy and pour himself a cognac. Tipping his head back, he would be lost in contemplation of the Settecento frescos covering the ceiling before at last kissing the beautiful lady, his lips tasting of alcohol and the salt water of the lagoon.

  ‘… they carry the memory of their past owners.’

  That same evening I poured a cognac into one of Byron’s glasses and looked up at the plain white ceiling of my student bedroom. No lagoon, no clouds on the ceiling, no mistress to enliven the dull existence of a law student. But one day the ceiling would be covered in clouds and nymphs, and a fair maiden would offer me her breasts. I was sure of it.

  I raise my hand to t
he cape’s black cloth and it, too, is red hot. I think of bringing a thermometer to the shed in order to measure just how high the afternoon temperature gets. Forty-five degrees, maybe even fifty, would be my guess.

  It’s more than a year since I arrived here at Rivaille on the Mandragore estate. More than a year since I became the Comte de Mandragore.

  II.

  THE ABSENTEE

  After driving for three hours and forty minutes, I parked my Jaguar in the little village square. Here I was in Rivaille. There was almost no sign of life at that time of the morning, just an old Renault 4, a Clio and a little van. I got out of the car and took some deep breaths of fresh air. It’s only when you’re in the countryside that you notice how polluted, stale, and, worst of all, stupefying the air in Paris is. I moved my head side to side, stretched my arms then shut the car door as I caught sight of the nearest café: La Jument Verte, with its ‘Loto’ and ‘Tabac’ signs. I headed there for a double espresso and croissants, after which I’d ask for directions to the chateau.

  I pushed open the door of the bistro. The few early-morning regulars, the ones who enjoyed a little glass of white or a half-pint to help them wake up properly, turned to look at me. As I leant my elbow on the white metal bar, the owner, a round, bald, red-faced man, was straightening up from the beer pump. He stopped midway, and his chubby drinker’s face froze. When I looked at the other customers I saw they were also staring at me intently. They had even put their drinks down.