The Portrait Read online

  ‘Monsieur le Comte …’ murmured the owner weakly, as he came towards me. ‘We thought we’d never see you again.’

  Hesitatingly, he held his hand out to me. Not knowing what else to do, I shook it, which had the effect of making him shout out, ‘Martine! Come and see!’

  Martine, a plump blonde woman of about fifty, appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. Her face immediately lit up in a radiant, almost ecstatic smile. ‘Monsieur le Comte,’ she murmured in her turn, letting go of the tea towel she was holding.

  I looked back at the other customers. One of them raised his glass in my direction. His gesture was swiftly repeated by everyone in the bar in a synchronised order not unlike a Mexican wave. This was an unexpected, mad situation, and I didn’t have the strength to put it right. I felt like an onlooker. A helpless onlooker, terrified, but fascinated.

  ‘Drinks! Drinks all round!’ the owner now declared excitedly. ‘This is the best thing that’s happened since Young Marcellin won the football pools! Go and get the ’64,’ he instructed his wife. ‘The ’64 is what this calls for!’ he went on, bounding about like a dog.

  Martine disappeared behind the bar, returning straight away with a bottle of 1964 vintage Clos Mandragore.

  ‘Corkscrew!’ demanded the owner in the manner of a surgeon requesting a scalpel.

  His wife opened a drawer in which there were several corkscrews. Collecting corkscrews had been very fashionable a few years ago; the owner must have made a hobby of it.

  ‘The Presto,’ he said, indicating one of them. His wife held out an elegant corkscrew with arms which he applied expertly, neatly drawing out the cork with a satisfying pop.

  ‘Monsieur le Comte, your motto, let’s hear it!’ cried the owner.

  Swept along on the wind of panic that had sprung up with my arrival in the café, I raised my glass and declared, ‘None but me!’

  ‘None but you, Monsieur le Comte!’ responded the regulars.

  The Chassagne-Montrachet slipped down like velvet ambrosia, noticeably raising my pulse. Aimé-Charles de Rivaille, Comte de Mandragore, that was who I was to these people. I let them speak, making do with a nod from time to time. As I listened to them, a story gradually took shape. Four years ago, Aimé-Charles had gone to Paris to see a wine distributor but had never arrived. No one had seen him since and his car had never been found. Mélaine de Rivaille, his wife, had taken over the running of the estate and the chateau. She had not remarried.

  ‘So where were you?’ the owner asked, leaning towards me.

  I turned towards the dozen people who had gathered around us. The owner’s wife was refilling their glasses. I could not disappoint them, and would they believe me anyway if I told them the truth? That my name was Pierre-François Chaumont and that I had come from Paris after buying a painting at Drouot Auction House? … No, they would not believe me. I had already taken things too far.

  Besides which I was a lawyer, professionally trained in the art of using words. It would not be the first time that I had forced myself to talk nonsense. It was just that I had never before had to do so on my own account. I had never had to work without a safety net. It was like bungee-jumping without elastic. I decided to jump; it was too good an opportunity to miss, even more exciting than an auction. I had never experienced such a frisson. I was about to try something out on these people to see if they would take the bait.

  ‘Dédé,’ interrupted his wife, giving him a discreet nudge with her elbow, ‘perhaps the count doesn’t want to talk about it. These things are personal.’

  ‘I had an accident,’ I told them, in the tone of one whose only desire is to unburden himself.

  ‘I knew it,’ the owner immediately exclaimed.

  An accident. A car accident, there, that was what had happened, a car accident; at least that’s what I had been told because I couldn’t remember anything about it. I had woken up without any papers and with no memory in a convalescent home in the suburbs of Paris. That’s where I had been looked after. The care had been excellent and a few weeks ago my memory had started to return little by little thanks to electric shock treatment. I was not entirely recovered, and although, of course, I recognised the people around me, I couldn’t quite remember their names. Everything would come back but it would take time. It was at my request that my doctor had agreed that I could return alone to Mandragore to confront reality. He had lent me his car – that was his fine Jaguar parked over there.

  ‘Amnesia!’ exclaimed the owner. ‘We saw a programme about that on the telly last week.’

  How could I have fooled them so easily?

  ‘And what did they say at the chateau?’ asked the customer with the half-pint.

  ‘At the chateau …’ I murmured. ‘I haven’t been to the chateau yet …’

  The owner’s wife looked horrified and put her hand over her mouth. ‘Mon Dieu, Madame Mélaine doesn’t know yet!’ she gasped.

  ‘So we’re the first to know!’ cried the large bald man.

  The question of my papers was quickly dealt with.

  ‘And you don’t have your papers with you?’

  ‘He was attacked by thugs – those criminals take everything, even identity papers.’

  ‘You know, they’re worth a lot of money, identity papers.’

  ‘I thought they couldn’t be faked.’

  ‘It’s the serial numbers that are important. I saw a Jean-Pierre Pernaut documentary about it.’

  The mention of the famous journalist brought the argument to a close.

  ‘You look well, at least,’ confirmed the owner. ‘And you haven’t changed … Well, perhaps your hair’s a bit shorter.’

  ‘That will be the hospital barber; they use clippers,’ grumbled one of the customers, before looking in my direction for confirmation.

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s all a bit military,’ I replied, whereas, in fact, I paid one hundred and sixty euros a month to have my hair cut at a chic salon on Avenue Georges V.

  It is easy to convince people who want to believe. You just have to tell them what they want to hear. That’s it, there’s nothing else to it. The words are already formed inside them; all you have to do is say them like a magic spell to produce the desired effect. Nature had decreed that I should look exactly like the man who had disappeared, and no one dared challenge what I told them. On the contrary, they had drunk in my words with even more relish than they had the Montrachet ’64. And now that I was leaving the café, they were all watching me with the look of those who are the proud keepers of a great secret.

  ‘So we’re the first to know!’

  Those words kept going round in my head, distant and intoxicating, like an annoying earworm.

  For several minutes I had been sitting, eyes closed, with my forehead against the steering wheel. Could the solitude and silence of this dirt track help me come to a decision? I had just gone through the strangest experience of my life and I almost wondered whether it had actually happened. Yes – it had. On my journey from Paris, I had run through just about every answer I might receive to my questions about the painting. Every answer except the one I got, without asking a single question.

  Within my web of lies there was nonetheless a grain of truth. And if I had found it easy to spin a yarn, it’s because it was based on fact. The convalescent home was not a product of my imagination but belonged to Dr Martin Baretti, a perfectly affable man but with something about him that suggested his life was more complicated than it first seemed. He had called upon my services a few months earlier to patent a new form of electric shock therapy.

  If my passion for objects created an instant connection with fellow collectors, my day job also sometimes made me the recipient of confidences. Lawyers and bankers are the custodians of people’s lives, and sometimes their clients treat them like confessors. Because of their professions they are seen as trustworthy, and less intimidating than men of the cloth, who in any case stopped hearing confession half a century ago.

  Once, while
contemplating an engraving of a young woman who had been hanged, a collector standing alongside me had admitted to a predilection for bondage, tying up his partner until she was on the verge of passing out. He had even taken an assortment of Polaroids out of his wallet to show me. Dr Baretti, meanwhile, was living a double life: one as a married father of two, and the other with the young male lover he had set up in a charming pied-à-terre in the Marais. When I went to see an electric-shock-therapy demonstration at his clinic, I had noticed how close the doctor appeared to be to the young blond nurse named Jean-Stéphane. Dr Baretti caught me looking at his partner and smiled.

  ‘Yes, Maître Chaumont, I’m perfectly homosexual,’ he confirmed on our return to his office.

  I began to wonder how it was possible to be ‘perfectly’ homosexual when you had a wife and two daughters, but remembered the doctor had already used that adverb a good half-dozen times. Why on earth had the man chosen to tell me? Perhaps because one day it might be useful to me.

  *

  I was ashamed of my behaviour. Ashamed of what I was turning into: an impostor playing on the credulity of good honest people. There was no getting away from it: I was no better than those cult leaders who prey on the weak-minded and lost; I had always despised such people, yet here I was behaving in exactly the same way. Maybe I was even worse than them. I had nothing to sell, no religion, no one-way ticket to another planet. Unless I was already unconsciously plotting my own departure as the crowd looked on, enthralled.

  And yet, despite being horrified by my own lies, I was also starting to see things another way: I hadn’t left Paris by chance; I wasn’t here by chance; I didn’t resemble this man by chance. What had happened since my discovery of the portrait was no fluke. I was following my destiny. Anything I might say to disabuse these people would be to go against my fate. A door was opening before me; I had only to step through it or go back the way I had come.

  I turned to look at the pastel. Through the bubble wrap I could see the face of the man in the powdered wig. The portrait was offering me the chance of a lifetime: the chance to become someone else. It was an opportunity to do something crazy which would never come my way again. My train of thought was interrupted when my mobile phone rang. ‘Charlotte’ came up on the screen. I turned it off to shut it up. Maybe I would never turn it back on again.

  At the start of the dirt track there was a sign, fixed to a centuries-old tree, which read, ‘Welcome to the Mandragore Estate’. Those words stencilled in red on a white background delivered a mild blow to my solar plexus.

  All around me vines spread out over the hills as far as the eye could see before disappearing into the summer haze. I noticed that at the foot of each vine there was a curious cylinder of rusty metal pierced with holes, like a sort of miner’s lamp planted vertically in the soil, very near the roots. It looked like a system for keeping the roots at a stable temperature in winter. I couldn’t help wondering who had filed the patent application. It must have been a profitable invention since there was one for every vine.

  Apart from some crows flying around in the distance there was no one about but me. Yes, me, Pierre-François Chaumont, the lawyer. And as I was repeating my name, I reflected that we always act in the same manner when faced with important decisions in our lives: during the few minutes preceding the decision, we seem bound to do the opposite of what we eventually decide. We try to convince ourselves one last time that there is another option. We want to think there is a simpler, more reassuring path. A better alternative. Yes, a few seconds before we embrace the inevitable, we comfort ourselves with illusions. We can’t help it. ‘I’m only going to the chateau so that I can meet Mélaine de Rivaille and explain everything to her,’ I told myself. ‘I am not Aimé-Charles, I am Pierre-François. Pierre-François Chaumont. I am a Paris lawyer specialising in industrial processes, patents, all sorts of patents, fibre optics, evolutionary microchips, ball bearings, Durit.’

  The house appeared before me as I rounded a hedge. An immense building with high walls of light-coloured stone, reflected in the water of the moat. I knew exactly where I was. I had seen the chateau that morning on the internet. Yet, as the images had been taken from a helicopter, the photos had not conveyed the magnificence of the building.

  The wooden bridge made no sound as I crossed it. I had expected it to creak under my weight but it didn’t. The wind created light ripples on the heavy green water and once again I saw a snapshot from my past. This time it was the wrinkled skin of the warm milk Céline used to make cakes with in my childhood. I went into the first courtyard. There was a group of about twenty people standing by one of the towers talking quietly to each other as they unfolded maps and brochures.

  ‘Here he is!’ cried a blonde woman, pointing at me.

  I smiled at her but immediately spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness. No, I was not their guide.

  ‘Want one?’ a man in yellow shorts asked me. He had taken me for a tourist and was holding out a packet of white marshmallows. ‘Made in the USA’ said the packet in red and blue letters. He must have brought them with him. Where was he from?

  ‘California,’ he replied.

  Then as I chewed the big white marshmallow, he explained that he still loved France, that the politicians could squabble with each other over world problems, but he, James Fridman, didn’t care. He loved France, and burgundy. And as for the war, corruption, the UN and the journalists … ‘Fuck them all!’ he declared with the air of someone skilfully summarising his argument.

  ‘Fuck them all,’ I agreed in my turn, swallowing the sugary, fluffy paste.

  A young man with a blond crew cut hurried over to the group. He was carrying a large guidebook. He introduced himself and asked the group to excuse his lateness, first in French, then in English. James Fridman gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder and offered him his bag of marshmallows, which the young man refused with a shake of the head. It was time for me to interrupt.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Mélaine de Rivaille.’

  ‘The Comtesse doesn’t take part in the guided tours,’ said the young man, looking irritated.

  ‘I’m not part of the guided tour. I have come to see her,’ I replied.

  The young man was put out. He mumbled something about the estate management and a ‘Monsieur Henri’ to whom I would have to introduce myself, but who was busy with the silverware. Through the windows of what must have been the drawing room, I caught the eye of an old man carrying silver dishes on a tray. He froze, and the tray fell from his hands, crashing onto the tiled floor. A moment later the same old man was standing, breathless, before me.

  ‘Monsieur … Oh Monsieur,’ he murmured.

  He did not leave me time to work out how to reply before saying softly, ‘Madame is in the rose garden.’

  I followed his gaze and found I was looking at one of the tourist signs, which pointed to the rose garden with a purple arrow.

  A hectare of roses running either side of narrow pathways paved with white stone. The extraordinary rose garden had a large, weather-beaten information board which told visitors everything they needed to know. I skimmed over it, taking in the occasional name or number: one hundred and forty rose varieties, more than three hundred individual rosebushes. Each one was listed with the name of its group and breeder and the date of its creation. I scrolled down: Triomphe de France, centifolia, Cariou, 1823. Duke of Burgundy, hybrid perpetual, Elliot, 1967. Pierre de Ronsard, modern hybrid, Meilland, 1987. Lady Mélaine, centifolia, Silver, gift from Arthur McEllie, 1997 – Winner, Belles d’Europe ’98; crowned Rose of France ’99; named one of the centifolias of the millennium in 2000.

  Where was Lady Mélaine among all these hundreds of flowers? Where was the rose? Where was the woman? I could see no one amongst the tall stems and bushes; the old retainer must have been mistaken. I scanned all the labels: Gloire des Comtes, Unique Panachée, Soeur de Neige, Jeanne de France, Impératrice Mauve … As I weaved my way a
long the paths, the abundance of names and corollas began to make me feel dizzy.

  Lady Mélaine. A centifolia, according to the detailed description on the little marker placed at its foot. Its many accolades were also listed in italics. The bush should produce around forty flowers with fleshy petals, crumpled as if they had just got out of bed. They were a very pale shade of orange. The biggest petals faded almost to white at their tips, while those in the middle were more intensely coloured throughout. I brought my lips and nose to a flower and a sweet, peppery scent wafted up in the morning heat. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again a moment later, I saw a shape move a few rows away.

  It was definitely a woman, there among the roses. I made out a pale dress in a faded sea-green colour. I walked to the end of the stone pathway. Yes, it was a strappy dress, the kind with buttons down the front.

  Her legs were bare and she wore white ballet pumps. She was leaning over a rosebush holding a wicker basket in which the faded roses she had just dead-headed were visible. Long locks of hair fell in front of her face. They were the shade of blond that’s almost red – Venetian blond, as they used to call it in the eighteenth century, after the way the girls of La Serenissima dyed their hair. But the colour of the hair I was looking at had not come out of a bottle. The rose that carried her name was a similar shade; that was why an American admirer had presented it to the mistress of Mandragore.

  She lifted her head and swiftly tucked her hair behind her ears. Mélaine de Rivaille. She had pale, almost white skin, with just a scattering of freckles on her nose. Even from this distance, I could make out the brightness of her eyes and above all of her lips, which were a deep red colour that surely owed nothing to lipstick. The delicacy of her features continued down the slender line of her neck towards her chest. Beneath the slight rise in the cotton, I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. She leant forwards to look at a flower and her dress gaped open, revealing her small breasts. How old was Mélaine de Rivaille? Thirty-five, maybe thirty-seven?