Cezanne's Quarry Read online

  Cézanne’s

  Quarry

  Cézanne’s

  Quarry

  Barbara Corrado Pope

  PEGASUS BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  To Daniel, Roberta and Jae, in love and friendship

  Acknowledgments

  This first-time novelist owes many debts of gratitude. First thanks to Roberta Till-Retz who proposed writing a novel on Cézanne, Provence and geology. Elizabeth Lyon generously mentored me in matters of writing and publication. My agent, Mollie Glick, was exemplary for her editorial advice and her dedication to getting Cézanne’s Quarry into print. Jessica Case was an encouraging and excellent editor. I also thank the many friends who were willing to read and talk about the manuscript in its early phases: Paula Rothenberg, Jeffry and Ulla Kaplow, Barbara and Tom Dolezal, Geraldine Moreno, Joan Pierson, Sue Choppy, Freddie Tryk, Pam Whyte, Patricia Phillips, Barbara Zaczek, Lisa Wolverton, Barbara Altmann, and especially the bi-cultural, bi-lingual critic extraordinaire, George Wickes. Keith Crudgington and Nora McCole stepped in with crucial technical assistance. And Daniel and Stephanie Corrado Pope gave consistent love, criticism and encouragement.

  Tuesday, August 18

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, August 19

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Thursday, August 20

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Friday, August 21

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Saturday, August 22

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Sunday, August 23

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Monday, August 24

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Tuesday, August 25

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Wednesday, August 26

  Wednesday, August 26

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Thursday, August 27

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Friday, August 28

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Saturday, August 29

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Postscript

  Source of Quotations

  Copyright

  At the beginning of 1885 Cézanne’s lonely contemplation of nature was interrupted by a violent love affair with a woman about whom little is known except that he met her in Aix.

  —John Rewald, Cézanne1

  Cézanne’s

  Quarry

  Tuesday, August 18

  Aix-en-Provence, 1885. A provincial town of 20,000 souls. Its glory days, when good King René reigned over a brilliant, chivalric court, were long since past. After Aix gave the great Mirabeau to the Revolution of 1789, it fell into a deep conservative sleep. As the nineteenth century wore on, Marseilles, only 30 kilometers to the south, more and more surpassed it in people, in industry and in learning. All that remained to Aix in 1885 were a few branches of the university, the law courts (bearing the high-sounding name the Palais de Justice) and, of course, its pretensions.

  1

  INSPECTOR ALBERT FRANC APPROACHED HIM about the dead woman in the quarry because there was no one else around. The Palais de Justice was closed for the summer holidays. Certain that nothing of import could possibly happen during the last two weeks of August, the officers of the court took off to the countryside, leaving the administration of law and order in the hands of Bernard Martin, a judge with little experience and no family or connections in the South of France.

  Martin was alone in his attic room when the pounding began. Startled, he marked the page he had been reading in Zola’s new novel and put it on the shelf above his bed. He pushed Germinal and Darwin’s The Origin of Species hard against the wall, making sure that the black leather-bound Bible his mother had given him would overshadow them. He was not sure who was at the door. He did know that at this time, in this town, it was prudent to keep his radical political sympathies secret. Turning to his table, he shoved the letters from home to one side and swept the stale bread and hardened cheese that remained from his lonely meal to the other.

  “Monsieur Martin. Monsieur le juge!” the voice on the other side of the door called out with mounting impatience.

  With three swift steps Martin reached the door and swung it open. “Sorry, I was reading—”

  “Thank God you’re here.”

  The panting Albert Franc was not a welcome sight. Although not very tall, Aix’s veteran inspector was broad and strong; a man known as much for his toughness as for his disregard of the finer points of criminal procedure. His bulk filled the low arched doorway. Martin stepped aside and gestured toward the wooden chair in front of the table.

  “Thank you.” Franc sat down with a sigh and began to fan himself with his cap. “Any water?”

  Martin poured a cup from the clay pitcher that stood on the stand beside his armoire and handed it to Franc, who gulped it down and began to fan his face again.

  Before Martin could ask, the inspector’s breathless explanation tumbled out. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. But I had to. It’s a dead woman. In the quarry. Murdered, I think. Since the Proc is not here,” Franc said, using the courthouse parlance for the prosecutor, “I need you to go there with me.”

  “A dead woman, here in Aix?” Martin sat down on the bed. “Are you sure?”

  “A boy just came to the jailhouse with his father to report what he had seen. She’s in the old quarry. He thinks she was a gentlewoman.”

  “You’re sure it’s not a prank? Or a mistake?”

  “No, no. You know me, sir, I’m good at that. Questioning.”

  Martin did know, only too well. The inspector’s detainees too often arrived in his chambers bruised and terrified. “Softened up,” as Franc liked to say.

  “I was with him for about an hour,” Franc continued. “I’m convinced he’s telling the truth. He thinks he saw blood. And he even described the dress the woman had on. White with green stripes. Much better than anything his mother had ever worn.”

  A memory flickered across Martin’s mind, but he could not quite catch it.

  “The quarry, is it far?”

  “No, sir, it’s just off the Bibémus road, less than an hour away. That’s why I’m here. I thought the two of us should go and take a look as soon as possible, especially with the heat and cholera and all—”

  Martin’s stomach lurched. Viewing murder victims had been the most gruesome aspect of his legal education. In the Paris morgue, they had lain gray and anonymous on cold slabs of marble. Martin could only imagine what this infernal heat would do to a body.

  “There haven’t been any cases of cholera in Aix, have there?”

  “No, sir, but in Marseilles—”

  “Yes, yes.” Martin tried to sound matter-of-fact as he rose and went to his armoire. Whatever was waiting for him in the quarry, he was not about to show any signs of weakness to someone notorious around the Palais for telling tales. “Which of your men did you bring with you?”

  “Most of them are still celebrating the Virgin’s feast, sir.”

  Martin swung around. “But the Assumption was three days ago.”

  Franc shrugged. “They’re good boys, and it is the middle of August.”

  Good boys! Franc liked to hang out in the jailhouse with the uniformed men doing God knows what. Probably mocking
the priggishness of judges like himself. When Martin pulled out his frock coat and hat, the proper attire for official business, Franc raised his hand to stop him.

  “No, sir, you won’t want to wear that. Too hot. And who knows how long we’ll be climbing around.”

  “Right,” Martin murmured, “right.” Priggish indeed. He grabbed the jacket and cap from his student days and looked around just in time to see Franc scrutinizing his lodgings.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, sir, do you have someone to look after you?”

  “I have a day woman, someone from the country, but with the Picard family gone, she only comes in once a week.” Would his living habits and the fact that he had to rent an attic room become grist for Franc’s gossip mill? The veteran inspector surely knew that beginning magistrates earned a pittance, and he probably had heard that Martin was the rare judge without family wealth. “Let’s go,” Martin added with all the authority he could muster, as he reached over to close the shutters on his window.

  “Of course.” Franc put on his cap, bounded for the door, and held it open. As they hurried down the stairs, he told Martin that he had requisitioned a mule and cart. When they emerged into the blinding light, Franc gestured toward the end of the street. The notary, René Picard, owned one of the newer houses near what had been the northern wall of the city, only a stone’s throw from the Saint-Sauveur Cathedral. The transport that awaited Franc and Martin at the entrance to the cathedral square was a simple affair, gray with age and splintery. Pointing to a handkerchief that he had wound around his left hand, the inspector cautioned Martin to watch out for protruding nails.

  Once they settled onto the seat, Franc flicked his whip, urging the animal toward the great church from which the procession honoring the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven had issued forth into the streets of Aix. Now, three days later, the only sign that remained of the holy festivities was a few blue and white flowers lying shriveled and forlorn upon the cobblestones. The narrow, winding streets that led them out of town were just as somber, the windows of the convents and houses resolutely shuttered against the late afternoon sun and the slow cadence of the beast’s hooves.

  Martin waited until they reached the main road to Vauvenargues to question Franc more closely about the day’s events. How many boys saw the body? Exactly when did they find it? Did they find anything else?

  There was not much to tell. Three farm boys, gone off for a swim. On the way home, they stopped to play hide-and-seek at the quarry, and they got the scare of their lives. Franc laughed, displaying a strong set of tobacco-stained teeth. Evidently, they found the body face down, and none of them had had the nerve to turn it over. They were convinced they wouldn’t know a lady like her anyway. It was the oldest boy’s father, Pierre Tolbec, who reported the incident to the police. Tolbec and his son, Patric, arrived on horseback around two, carrying a parasol and a little sack purse, empty save for a few coins.

  Martin found nothing amusing in this account. His colleagues at the courthouse liked Franc because he took his police duties seriously, and he made their life easier. Most of the magistrates cared little about how the inspector treated the petty thieves, poachers, and prostitutes to whom they dispensed justice. Martin did care, although he tried to keep this to himself. If they really did find a dead body, he was stuck with Franc, and Franc was stuck with him, which, considering his inexperience and the potential importance of the case, was probably worse.

  Martin studied his companion’s profile. Franc’s shiny dyed black hair and thick glossy mustache belied the years hinted at by the gray and white grizzle sprouting on his unshaven face. In the judges’ and lawyers’ cloakroom, Martin had overheard his peers joking about the inspector’s surprising vanity and the excessive amount of pomade it took to keep up the impressive ebony mane. Yet they respected him. It was not only Franc’s size, but his whole demeanor that manifested a rough-and-tumble authority. Martin was as tall as Franc, medium height, but much thinner. According to the rigid hierarchy of the Palais de Justice, Martin was Franc’s superior. Yet, sitting beside the physically powerful and self-assured man, Martin felt like a boy. He tried to quell these feelings by concentrating on his surroundings.

  They made a slow, mostly silent ascent along the stony white road, past farmhouses with red tile roofs, yellowing vineyards, and groves of crooked, silver-leafed olive trees. In the distance, the luminous limestone hills jutted up toward a cloudless blue sky. Everything struck Martin as too bright, almost unnaturally so. It was nothing like the north where he had grown up.

  At first it was a relief to turn onto the Bibémus road, which cut through a sheltering forest of pines and oaks. But the narrow stony road was steep, and as the pace of the mule slowed, Martin’s anxieties mounted. He kept thinking about what lay waiting for them in the quarry. He loosened his collar. He was thirsty and finding it harder and harder to swallow. At last, the cart reached a plateau that was covered with rocks and brambles, and drew to a halt. Only a few misshapen parasol pines grew out of this barren plane, their trunks and feathery green branches bowing in one direction, as if in a permanent state of mournful submission to the mistral, Provence’s fearsome winter wind. The only sounds were those of the insects, all about, screeching, buzzing, and whining.

  “We’re almost there,” said Franc, climbing down. He looked around for a moment, then pointed toward a line of red-orange rocks and boulders. “This way, I think, sir. We’ll need to carry the body back up, but don’t forget to look for anything else a killer might have left.”

  Martin followed the older man’s lead, steadying himself with one hand on the rough sandstone as they zigzagged down a path. The pounding of his heart had little to do with the exertion. But it was only after he slipped that he understood the full measure of his fears. He looked down, half expecting to see blood. Instead, he saw that the stones beneath his feet had been shined smooth by centuries of wayfarers like himself. Fortunately, Franc seemed too involved in the hunt to take note of his clumsiness. The inspector moved with the agility of an animal stalking his prey, sniffing and alert. At last he came up with something. Curled up amid the branches that jutted out from the rocks was an artist’s canvas. Or, rather, a small piece of one. For as Franc unrolled it, they could see that someone had torn apart a crude painting of bent pine trees and great orange boulders. Franc studied the fragment for so long that Martin asked him if he knew who had done it.

  “Not quite sure, sir, but I have my suspicions.” Franc folded it up and put it in his pocket. Then he pointed to a second rocky path, which brought them to their destination, unmistakable in its eerie desolation.

  Here it was not nature that showed the destructiveness of her force, but man. Below them, literally carved out of the plateau, stood gigantic geometric towers and caves, free-floating steps and walls, curved arches and tunnels; the remains of the greedy hunt to provide the material for Aix’s great honey-colored houses. So fantastic was the quarry’s jumbled architecture that Martin imagined that he was looking at the long-abandoned building blocks of some gigantic, ancient gods. The colors, too, were outlandish. The stones glowed orange and red and purple in the setting sun. Everywhere, branches strained and twisted to release themselves from the lifeless stone, reaching for the light in an array of black and yellow-greens.

  Franc slithered down steplike indentations that had been excised by a quarryman’s pick and began his search. It did not take them long to find her. The first thing they saw was her dress. White with green stripes, just like the boy said. With a start, Martin remembered where he had seen it. Across the cathedral square during the Virgin’s procession, under a parasol. Undoubtedly the same parasol Franc would bring to him at the courthouse.

  She lay in shadow and light, half-hidden by the remains of the quarrymen’s work. As Martin approached, he saw an unmistakable sign that it was she. Her hair, unbound, shining under the rays of a merciless setting sun, looked like it had burst into flames. That magnificent golden-red
hair, which he had always seen pinned up, rising gracefully from her long, white neck. Beneath her now, radiating from her shoulder to her waist, was a pool of dark blood, long dried by the heat.

  Martin wanted to reach down to drive the buzzing flies from her body, but he could not move. By contrast, Franc paid little regard to ceremony. Putting his booted foot under her waist, the veteran rolled her over. And then Martin saw her face, that once-beautiful face, now locked forever in a grotesque death mask. My God, thought Martin, this is not right. The day’s sensations, like the shooting rays of the sun, overtook him with furious intensity. Where he had once caught a whiff of perfume, he now smelled human remains. The heat, the odor of death, and the incessant rasping of the cicadas were making him dizzy. Afraid he would be sick, he let himself drop to a seat provided by a boulder.

  “Did you know her, sir?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if you knew her.”

  “Yes . . . no, not really.” Both answers were true. And what little he knew of her, he was not about to tell Franc.

  “You know who she is, then.”

  Martin nodded and buried his head in his hands, willing his nausea to subside. Barely managing to raise his voice above the roar of the cicadas, he mumbled, “It is Solange Vernet.”

  Martin had met Solange Vernet early that spring at a bookstore near the Hôtel de Ville. He had gone to look for a recent edition of The Origin of Species. Because he did not yet know the political sentiments of the bookseller, he searched for it himself among the collection of books on science. He found Solange Vernet reading the store’s only copy of the book at the back of the store. So concentrated had she been, her white hat hanging by a green satin ribbon around her neck, parasol leaning against the wall, brow furrowed with diligence, that she hadn’t even noticed him until he was almost upon her. But she did not jump or back away. She smiled. A beautiful smile, warm and mischievous at the same time.