Cezanne's Quarry (32 page)

Martin stared down at the pungently fragrant reddish broth and pieces of white fish. Would he be consigned to eat alone or, worse, suffer through the meal as Henriette Choffrut stood there watching him, waiting for his approval after every bite?

Clarie came to the rescue. Getting up from her seat, she asked her aunt if she could keep “the judge” company while she sat at the table and wrote out the day’s menus on the slates.

This arrangement, which assured Martin and her niece more time alone together, sent Mme Choffrut happily back to the kitchen. Clarie soon returned with the two black slates and a piece of chalk, and started writing as Martin ate.

“If we don’t get a big crowd tonight, tomorrow we will undoubtedly serve a fish purée for lunch. We’ll use it up one way or another,” she murmured as she wrote out the description and price of the bouillabaisse.

“Do you mind all this, the restaurant business?” Martin asked between bites. He was desperately hungry and the garlicky tomato broth was flowing through every vein in his body, enlivening him.

“It’s terribly hard work. For them, I mean. For me, it’s only being nice to the customers, most of which is easy. Except for certain ones.” She paused to give him a look.

“You mean like Franc.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Why don’t you like him?” This was not surprising, considering Franc’s behavior toward her.

Clarie glanced toward the kitchen before she answered. “I don’t like the way he takes over. He came in here, assuring my aunt and uncle that he’d watch over the place like he watches over the entire neighborhood. All with the hint that if they were not nice to him, he might not be nice to them. They’re so good, they hardly noticed. And so he comes in whenever he wants, and pays only when he feels like it. They’ve risked everything to start this new place. They work so hard. They count every penny. It’s not fair. I don’t like it when someone treats them that way.”

Martin found Clarie’s passionate objection to injustice charming. And he certainly did not disagree with her assessment of his inspector, who was crude, used his position to his advantage, and upheld the law as he saw fit. Yet, despite knowing all these things about Franc, he had no sure way of dealing with him.

Clarie got up again. “Let me go check the desserts, just to be sure. And you had better eat up. Who knows who will show up in a few minutes.”

Martin watched regretfully as she hurried to the kitchen to talk with her aunt and uncle. He had only a little more time to savor his meal and Clarie’s company.

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition of our existence.

—Sholem Asch,
The Nazarene
⁹

W
HEN
M
ARTIN CAME OUT OF THE
Picard house, Franc was waiting for him, leaning against the wall to the left of the door, his cap firmly on his head, his arms crossed. Martin’s heart almost stopped.

“Sir.”

“Sir”—a good sign. Surely Franc was not going to arrest someone in the same moment that he was referring to him as “sir.”

“Franc, you gave me a fright. What are you doing standing there?” Martin pulled at his frock coat, trying to recover his composure.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I decided to wait for you to come out. I know you’re off to the Palais, and I thought you deserved a warning.”

About what?
Martin sucked in a breath.

“You’ll never guess who the Cézannes have got down here to help them out,” Franc said. “They’re pulling out all the guns.”

The warning was about Cézanne, not about him. Martin coughed to cover up his relief, then asked Franc to tell him.

“Zola!”

“Zola, the writer?”

“Who else?”

“Zola is down here?”

“Yes, the master of pornography has decided to make an appearance in his home town to help out his old friend.” Franc shook his head in disgust.

“And do you know what he is planning to do exactly?”

“See
you
! Talk to
you
! Convince you that his friend didn’t do it. At least, that is what Cézanne’s mistress told one of my men when we tried to find the artist yesterday. She guaranteed that
both
of them would be at the Palais today. Ten o’clock sharp.”

Émile Zola in his chambers, cajoling him, convincing him? In Aix? Amazing.

“And I can’t help you, sir. You know I can’t deal with intellectuals. Especially intellectuals who write dirty books. I know you’ve been educated, and maybe you have a different attitude. Have you read any of that filth?”

“Yes.” Martin could not help smiling. It felt good to be back on the old footing, being a witness to his inspector’s pious, and undoubtedly hypocritical, opinions. “I’ve read several. You might even appreciate the last one,
Germinal
,” he added, only to tease Franc a little. “It was serialized in many of the penny presses. It’s about laboring men, northerners like yourself.”

“I don’t need to know more about him. He’s all yours. I’m sure you are smart enough not to let him change your mind about anything.”

Martin was not so sure. Matching wits with the greatest living writer in France was a daunting prospect. But this was not a discussion they should be having outside the windows of the Picard house. Martin took Franc by the elbow and led him to the other side of the narrow street. “The landlords,” he explained in a whisper before asking the inspector if he had managed to find out anything about the boy.

Franc shrugged. “Me and François asked around all the obvious places, for the third time, last night. Finally we got an old toothless whore to say she thought that a runaway calling himself Pierre had come to town a few weeks ago and disappeared around the time of the Vernet murder. He came begging, asking for odd jobs, and ended up running errands for the ‘ladies of the night.’”

“He did not say where he was from? Had no friends his own age? Anyone who might have seen—”

“I’m still working on it. Listen. Let me handle my job. It looks like you’re going to have your hands full too.”

“Right. Zola. Well, I guess I’d better get over there.” Martin tried to sound jaunty. “I’ll need to prepare even more now.”

“Yes. In the meantime, I’ll just concentrate on fulfilling
my
duties.”

Franc’s resentful tone brought Martin back down to earth. They were not on the “same old footing.” Something had changed between them, and most likely it had to do with Merckx. Martin held out his hand. He could not tell if Franc hesitated before he took it. “Thank you for the warning,” Martin said. “We’ll talk later.”

Franc tipped his cap and set off, leaving Martin to wonder what Zola could say that would prove his friend the artist was neither a coward nor a murderer.

Waiting for the bells of the Madeleine Church to toll ten times was like waiting for the clock to strike the hour of his orals in front of the final examining committee. Martin had done everything he knew how to prepare, yet there really was no way for him to be fully ready. When the ringing sounded through his half-opened window, he was tempted to go out in the hall to see if Zola had arrived, but forced himself to stay put. He did not want to start off by appearing too eager. As he went over the questions again in his mind, Martin nervously repositioned his pen, his ink, and his notebook on his desk. Finally, he heard Old Joseph’s timid knocking.

“Come in.”

“The gendarme has brought up M. Cézanne and a M. Zola. M. Zola requests to speak to you first, because he must catch a train.”

“Show him in, please.”

“Shall I stay to take notes?”

“Please.”

Martin watched his clerk leave. “
A M. Zola
?” What world was the old man living in? At least his antiquated greffier would not be nervous. Martin stood up in front of his desk and gave his damp hands a quick wipe on his trousers.

When Zola followed Joseph into the room, the author held out his hand and introduced himself, although there was no mistaking the pince-nez, the close, wiry mustache and beard, and the girth. It was as if he had walked out of a satirical magazine.

“Bernard Martin,” Martin said, as they shook hands. Zola’s grip was firm and dry. Before Martin had time to say more, Zola flipped his bowler onto one of the two chairs in front of the desk and walked around it to look out the window.

“You have a fine view of the square. Is there a market here any more?”

“Most Thursdays.”

“And they sell good things? Anchovies, olives, earthy things?” Zola scrutinized Martin. “Do you like those things?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not from here?”

“No, Lille.”

“Via Paris?”

“Yes.” Zola was sizing him up.

“Everyone comes via Paris. I was born there,” Zola said as he once again stared out the window, “and the people of Aix never forgave me for it. When my father died, after he had built them the best dam in all of France, the leaders of the town refused to help my mother and me. Earthy things, combined with petit bourgeois avarice under the thumb of snobbish passé aristocrats. You like it here?”

It was hard to know what to answer, so Martin remained silent.

“But, of course,” Zola worked his way around Martin toward one of the wooden witness chairs. “I am not here to interrogate you, am I? You need to know about my friend.”

“Yes.” Martin knew that once he got started he would do fine. It was clear that Zola liked to hold forth. He watched as the writer settled in, putting down his heavy walking stick, undoing the only button on his jacket that had been fastened, and, with some effort, crossing his legs. It seemed a paltry thing not to recognize who he was, and what he meant to men like Martin.

“M. Zola, I must tell you how much I admired
Germinal
.”

The writer’s face burst into a smile. “Ah, then you are my kind of republican.” Zola took off his pince-nez and held it in his two chubby hands. “My latest project—well, I have two actually—but the one I’m worried about, is getting
Germinal
on the stage. I may have trouble with the censors. You know there are some government officials—including some in the police—who do not like me. It’s because I tell the truth.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Any support of the workers aroused controversy, Martin knew this only too well. “And your other project?” Martin felt it only polite to ask.

“Another in my Rougon-Macquart series, about an artist. A man who cannot create the masterpiece that he has in his mind, his problems with women, the influence of heredity and the environment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Oh?” Could it be about Cézanne?

Zola paused, as if he were reading Martin’s thoughts, and then continued more slowly. “The main character is a composite of all the artists I know, of course. And I know many. As you may recall, I’ve defended much of the new art in my journalistic pieces.”

Martin did not know anything about Zola’s role in the art world. Was the writer’s talk of a “composite artist” a way of covering the tracks he had inadvertently traced? The phrase “problems with women” had certainly caught Martin’s attention.

“M. Zola, I don’t want to keep you. I understand that you have to catch a train at—”

“Noon.”

“Noon, yes. Then may I ask why you wanted to see me?”

“To offer my services, of course.”

“In what way?” Zola was so nonchalant, so sure of himself. It was obvious that Martin would have to hear the writer out before he got to the questions that he was desperate to ask.

“I thought you and I could share information. If I had the opportunity to peruse your notes, for example, maybe I’d see something in them that you don’t. I’ve done a lot of investigating. Not police work, of course. But for my novels. My whole career is dedicated to describing what makes men do what they do.”

The request to see Martin’s notes was presumptuous. “I’m sorry. No one can see my notes until I pass them on to the prosecutor,” Martin said, hoping that Joseph, who was writing away so quietly in the alcove, would also get the point. “But I see no reason why we cannot talk over some aspects of the case.”

“All right, then.” Even Zola knew that he was not likely to get away with this audacious ploy. So he tried another. “The most important thing is this: Cézanne is innocent.”

Martin was surprised, he had expected Zola to lead up to this assertion with some proof. “How do you know?”

“He is psychologically incapable of hurting anyone. He is a very sensitive man. Very loyal. In fact, in some ways much more sensitive than I. I always expected that he would have surpassed me by now because of this.”

“I’ve heard quite differently. I’ve heard that he has a very bad temper. That he throws things and tears up his canvases.” For the first time since Zola had entered the room, Martin felt he was gaining some control.

“Oh, that.” Zola waved his pince-nez. “That’s frustration with himself, his work. He keeps trying to paint what’s up here,” the author pointed to his head, “and it doesn’t come out quite that way. He sees something that he can’t quite commit to the canvas. All artists go through this. In fact, I do almost every morning when I sit down at my desk to write.”