The Adventures of Mademoiselle Mac 2-Book Bundle (18 page)

“It's pretty selfish to deprive the world of great art, just to make a joke,” I said, on a roll now. “I wish whoever did this would grow a conscience and give Paris back its beautiful paintings.” The room erupted in applause, completely surprising me.

“A joke?” the little man raged. “A joke? We'll see who laughs at my genius.” He slammed down his drink, shaking with anger and shattering the glass.

“Well, Mademoiselle Mac, thanks for putting this latest insult to art in perspective,” said Louise, relieved to wrap up.

Having received way more attention than I bargained for, needed, or felt I deserved from the staff at the Centre Pompidou, and of course my parents, I was glad to get out of the building. We had tried to check out the view that my mom raved about, but people kept wanting to take their picture with me. Dizzy had caught my act on the TV at CAFTA and was waiting for us at the Stravinsky Fountain — which is fantastic, by the way. We had an interesting family dinner at Alcazar in the sixth, revisiting the day's events and trying to connect them with the “art attacks” that had occurred since Christmas, which felt like it was a month ago. Come to think of it, this morning's training session with Blag felt like it had taken place in another lifetime.

I had a restless sleep with dreams that incorporated men in bowler hats with two left arms marching between the gravestones at Père Lachaise as I watched from the back of Blag's cab. I awoke with a shudder but soon was thinking of croissants and fizzy OJ, replacing my gloomy dream. I was about to tiptoe out of the room when I saw a fancy black envelope addressed in silver script to Mademoiselle Mac, personal and confidential. Almost alone in the breakfast room at the Costes, I opened it.

If you wish to unlock the mystery of the missing art, come to The Little Sparrow's grave at Père Lachaise at closing time. Alone.

“Hey, got a head start on us, did you?” said my dad, coming up to the table with a copy of the
Herald Tribune
under his arm. “There's a big story on the art attacks, as they're being called, and a little piece on the taxi rally I thought you might be interested in.”

“Definitely,” I said, sliding my plate over the letter. “What's on today?”

My mom arrived and kissed me airily on both cheeks. She was getting weirder by the day. “Well, your dad wants to drink coffee where a bunch of dead writers used to hang out. Fun, huh?”

He shrugged as if to say
you know me
. “Why don't we start with something we all like and then explore on our own. Your French is good enough to get by anywhere, right, Mac?” This told me that my dad wanted to commune with the ghosts of Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre on his own. I knew I could go shopping with my mom, but I also knew that she'd be trying to get me into little French girl blue-and-white boat neck sweaters. And that was not going to happen.

“Sounds like a plan,” my mom said, “and the Eiffel Tower isn't far from the Bon Marché, I believe. Mac, maybe you'd like to see the Rodin museum on the way, unless you've had enough art for one visit.”

“I actually want to check out the Christmas displays at the Printemps and the Lafayette again.” I knew this would get the “See — she's still a kid” feelings going. Always good prep for doing something I knew I wasn't supposed to.

The Eiffel Tower visit took forever, waiting in line to go up and then a two-hour, five-course lunch-with-a-view. For me the coolest thing was the view of the Trocadero, the stunning horseshoe-shaped building with its multiple museums and gorgeous gardens. Far too many photos were taken, but freedom has its cost. I was checking the time nervously on my ultra-cool new phone, knowing that Père Lachaise closed at dusk. By the time I got off the Métro and approached the gates, the dusk had given way to darkness. There was an ancient gatekeeper sitting just inside; he was so still that I figured he was either sleeping or auditioning to be one of the full-time guests. He had a thick, woolly scarf wrapped around his neck and a lumpy fedora pulled low. The temperature had dropped and I wasn't prepared for it.

“Excuse me, Monsieur.” I stepped inside the heavy iron gate. He looked up at me very slowly.

“
Oui,
mademoiselle.” His voice was low and husky, but oddly refined sounding.

“I know it's closing time, but would it be possible for me to visit Edith Piaf's grave?” I pulled out a single bent rose that I had taken from the bouquet in our hotel room and tucked in my pocket many hours ago.

“Ah,” he said quietly, “you have something for The Little Sparrow?”

“Yes, if I may. I won't stay long.”

“Hmm, well why not,
pourquoi pas
.” He closed and locked the gate. “Follow me,
s'il vous plait
, you'll be our last visitor of the day.”

“
Merci
, Monsieur.” I was glad of his offer to escort me there. I had a map, but the cemetery was vast, with winding avenues of bare trees, dim streetlights and shadowy markers for the silent inhabitants of Père Lachaise.

“So, you are an admirer of Piaf's music?” My guide moved slowly and deliberately, not looking back.

“Yes, Monsieur. My dad is a musician and he plays ‘La Vie en Rose' when he's feeling romantic.”
What a stupid thing to say
, I thought.

We passed some odd looking monuments: a stone statue of a man lying on top of his tomb, his stone hat at his side, another of a man seemingly trying to climb out of his last resting place, and everywhere so many weeping angels.

“You have been brought up to appreciate artistic expression?” the old man asked, a strange sort of curiosity in his voice. He seemed to be moving even more slowly now as the wind clawed at my thin pink jean jacket. I pulled the tiny collar around my neck to fight the chill.

“I suppose,” I answered, distracted by the deepening gloom as we wound through the dimly lit laneways of Père Lachaise. “Is it much further?”

“Not too far,” he said with a distant tone as a dead branch went skipping by, startling me. “You see there, that's the grave of Modigliani. Do you admire his distorted women's faces?”

“I'm not familiar with his work,” I said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as the temperature seemed to suddenly drop a few more degrees.

“Yes, why would you be ... as an American.” He turned and showed me an eerie smile in the yellowish lamplight. I shivered, and not just because of the cold. “Your accent gives you away, of course.”

“Of course.” I laughed nervously as he stopped and looked around as if to get his bearings. In the darkness it was hard to see the old man's face, with his bushy beard and hat pulled low. “Are we there yet?” I knew I sounded like a kid in the back seat on a family car trip.

I looked around at the gravestones, the inscriptions lost in shadow. He ignored my question and pointed at one of the nearby monuments. “Max Ernst. A German, but loved in France. The father of dada.” I wanted to say “Isn't that the same as being the dada of father?” but thought better of it.

“Is that art?” Even in the dark, I could feel his eyes boring into mine, and I shook my head at what seemed like an odd question.

My voice sounded tiny. “I don't know, why?”

He turned abruptly and continued in silence, and I was regretting this entire outing. What was I thinking? I hated cemeteries. I had no idea who had sent that letter or why it had been sent to me. And I'd already seen as much of Père Lachaise as I needed to with Blag this morning. How I wished I had asked
him
to bring me here.

“There's your little sparrow ... Mademoiselle Mac.”

My blood slowed. I was positive that I hadn't told him my name. I inched up to the grave, not looking back at my guide, and saw that it was covered in flowers, spilling over a stone cross that rested on the top of the tomb. I turned to tell the gatekeeper that I'd be all right and could find my own way out, which was a complete lie, but he was nowhere to be seen. I placed my sad little limp rose on Piaf's grave and noticed something odd. There was what looked like a newly dug grave with a tiny makeshift headstone and dirt piled to one side. My curiosity drew me closer and I had to pull out my phone flashlight to read the handwritten words.

The skill of an artist

The mind of a child

A chill that had nothing to do with December ran the length of my body. I slumped to the ground in terror. I was glad the caretaker was gone, but he was also my only link to humanity. A cat jumped off Piaf's grave, hungry for little sparrows no doubt, completing the Hallowe'en picture.

I knew I couldn't stay there. For one thing, I'd freeze, and for another the inscription scared the wits out of me. I started walking what I thought might be the way back when the first snowflakes fell. It never snows in Paris, I'd been told. Well, almost never. Soon I knew I was lost. I wandered, quickening my pace, till I heard voices and music. Three kids were gathered around a grave, smoking, playing guitars and singing something called “Riders on the Storm” that sounded like a song my dad might have listened to. They nodded when I approached but seemed uninterested and unconcerned. Clearly, I was the only one who thought hanging out in a snowy graveyard after closing time was strange.

I risked an interruption. “Do you guys know the way out?”

The two guys and one girl all pointed in different directions and then laughed. It was a teen remake of The Three Stooges.

“Maybe we should ask Jim,” the girl suggested, indicating the gravestone belonging to, of course, Jim Morrison.

“Never mind, I'll find my own way.” Somehow, just running into them made me feel less at risk. Then I remembered that Blag had called me yesterday and I would have his number in my phone. Naturally, he knew where Jim Morrison's grave was, or the Lizard King, as he referred to the singer, and he directed me to the exit, where he showed up minutes later. He pretended no surprise at seeing me there, but I'd caught his expression of worry as he was looking for me when he pulled up. How touching!

“Partying with the stiffs?” Blag smiled and opened the passenger door. I got in and held my hands in front of the heater.

“As a matter of fact ...” I let it trail off so I wouldn't have to start explaining. “Thanks for coming so fast.”

“No problem, Cal gal. You got me out of checking out some folksinger friend of Tawdry's who had a gig in the Marais. That sensitive stuff makes me hurl. So where to, the Costes? What are you going to tell ma and pa you were up to, zombie chaser? By the way, I don't need to know.”

“Is it possible to go by the Printemps and Galeries Lafayette on the way back?” Blag glanced over at me with a look of disbelief. “Thanks. And
joyeux Noël
, Blag.”

Black and white posters of a man's silhouette popped up overnight all over Paris with the words
WHO IS THIS MAN?
in bold underneath. Sipping his café noisette in the first class compartment of the train for Nice, the small, neat, grey-haired man chuckled to himself as he read the account of the interview in
Le Devoir
with the headline
ART ATTACKER SPEAKS
.
That's the best they could do
, he thought while still thoroughly enjoying the grainy photo taken from a television screen that showed his noble features to excellent advantage. He tugged at his goatee and checked his reflection in the train window.

The previous night's TV special dominated both the airwaves and the city's conversation in the hours that followed. Star TV journalist Louise Lafontaine had been contacted secretly and offered an exclusive interview with the man behind the “art attacks” in exchange for a guarantee of his safety and anonymity. The drama of hearing the culprit's voice altered electronically and seeing his profile in silhouette added to the public's feverish obsession with the mystery. The outrage of the French public led to a chorus of voices demanding that Louise reveal her sources or be arrested herself. She claimed that her only contact was a very old, bearded man with a cane who arranged for the art attacker to arrive at the network by a back alley entrance at a precise time. Even the station employees saw only what the public saw, a silhouette, a shape of a face without features.

“Please tell us, Monsieur Réplique, as you have chosen to be called, what the purpose of these art attacks is.”

Louise had gone all-out preparing for the biggest interview of her young career. Her nails glistened in a blushing rose, matched by her dewy lipstick and a dash of rouge. The tidal wave of auburn hair, her signature, was swept up, defying gravity and framed by dramatic backlighting. This was her moment.

“Very simply, Louise,” he began in a kindly tone. “The art that we have all come to know and love and identify ourselves by has come, over time, to imprison our senses. We no longer see, we expect. We do not experience, we only reassure ourselves of our good taste. Our love of art is now at the level of our affection for a crisp white wine or a buttery croissant eaten on the way to work. As an aside, may I say that I do appreciate the odd sticky croissant
amande
,” he chortled amiably.

“
Oui
, of course,” Louise nodded agreeably, “and my day is quite incomplete without a
petit pain au chocolat
with my
café américain
.” Here they seemed to be sharing a private joke as the nation watched, stupefied. “But Monsieur Réplique, even if we have become sedated by familiarity, does this work not belong to the people of France, and by extension, the world? What do you say to those who travel halfway around the world to lay eyes, just once perhaps, on a beloved Van Gogh, da Vinci, or Magritte?”

He could be heard sighing, as if having to explain something for the hundredth time to a child. “My dear Louise,” he said patronizingly, “and may I direct my comments to those very people you refer to; have you ever stood in front of a Matisse, a Léger, or a Rembrandt, and just listened to the observations and comments of your fellow art lovers? Because I have, for many hours at a time, and frankly, these ardent admirers of creative genius and timeless beauty make me sick.”

His tone turned dark as Louise seemed to sit up straighter, knowing she was getting to the real heart of the interview. The camera did a slow zoom in on the goateed silhouette. Snarkiness took over his voice.

“I love the colour of his hat, Bob. Couldn't he get a hotter chick than that to pose for him, Chip? No idea what kind of flower that is, do you know, Marge? When does the restaurant open?”

He stopped, and silence took over. You could almost hear Louise thinking of how to reply. “Sound familiar, Louise?”

She hesitated. “Well, I suppose, but surely there are some who ...”

“
Ah oui
,” he interjected, tugging at his little beard like a beatnik Santa, “there are the art history majors who analyze the colour of the uniform of the twenty-second soldier from the left in the third row behind Napoleon to see if it suggests his childhood love of fire engines growing up in Corsica.” His voice oozed disdain. “Let me be clear,” he said condescendingly. “I am not a snob like the people who run our major art institutions,” his voice curdled, “like the Louvre. If the works lived and breathed among us, I believe the people would appreciate it as their creators intended.”

Louise came right back at him. “But even considering all this, do you, one man, have a right to alter the work of the masters to make your point?”

The French public held its breath, loving her challenging tone. The defiant flip of the auburn wave helped Louise make her point. But the little man came roaring back.

“I stand for those masters!” he thundered. “For they can no longer be heard. Their work should speak for them, but what it says is lost in the clamour of idiots with cell phones, mall dwellers, and café intellectuals alike with their collections of limited edition teddy bears, their trays of hundreds of shades of nail polish, and their smug little book clubs where no one gets past page thirty-five!”

Louise subtly placed her hands in her lap and looked at the camera. “We'll be right back after these messages.”

A break that included a gauzy ad for skin cream that would take decades off your face was followed by a commercial for a new mini “smarter than smart” car that could fit into a space the size of a fire hydrant, and a promo for a hot new daytime soap opera that revealed the petty jealousies and secret loves of a family-run cheese factory in Toulouse.

After the break, it was a flustered Louise who appeared alone on TV screens all over France. “I ... uh ... we ... excuse me, I mean there's been a last minute change ... a rather, uh ... unexpected programming, uh ... turn of events.” The hiss of urgent voices could be heard in the background. “Monsieur Réplique, as he wished to be known, not his real name of course, disappeared from our studios during the break. I don't think he will return, since he left something behind. Perhaps he felt he had said all he needed, or maybe he feared for his safety, given the extremely controversial nature of his actions.”

Someone off-camera handed Louise a black envelope with ornate silver script that read,
To be revealed only by Mlle Lafontaine to the people of France
. As she opened the envelope, Louise said, “I want you to know that we are seeing this for the first time and the network cannot be held responsible for its contents or the actions of its author.” She seemed to be reading from a teleprompter. “It's called ‘An Artifesto: Five principles by which we may learn to see again.'”

“1. Art must be ‘with the people.' It cannot be the exclusive domain of airless mausoleums masquerading as museums. Witness the location of a beautiful Léger mural in the courtyard, or the Calder mobile poolside at La Colombe d'Or in Saint-Paul de Vence.

“2. Art must be ‘about the people.' Is the beauty of a peasant woman kneading bread or the way a blanket drying on the line plays with the wind not as exquisite as so-called fine art
?

“3. Art must be ‘for the people.' Is the pompous prime minister who poses and pays for art the one for whom the greats should toil in order to afford their canvases and paint? Let the artist receive that fat government cheque each month.

“
4. Art must be ‘by the people.' Why not celebrate the creations of the seamstress, the florist, the weaver whose works beautify life very day?

“5. Art must be ‘of the people.' Do we need another portrait of a pasty, preening, overfed secretary of state? Let us see the milkmaid, the delivery boy, the café waitress at work.”

“These must be met or the so-called masterpieces will disappear forever!

Sincerely,

René Réplique”

Louise looked up from reading the “Artifesto” and simply stared at the camera.

A strange thing happened. It started with one letter to the editor of a small weekly paper in Brittany, in the north of France, and slowly gathered momentum. Some, not all of course, of what the art attacker said made sense to people. They were tired of not being able to afford access to the great works. Or if they did visit, fighting through a throng of shorts and sneakers-wearing loudmouths, arguing over whether Venus de Milo lost her arm in a tragic fencing accident or was born that way. The idea of art displayed in public appealed to a rebellious side of the French populace. One by one, major art institutions began an “
art à la maison
” movement with Monet and Caillebotte rubbing shoulders with pop star posters and calendars from the local
boulangerie.
Starting with the smaller museums, like the Jeu de Palme in Paris, the art of the people was given a viewing on Sundays. Even the tradition-bound Louvre, with Blaise Roquefort gagging and grinding his teeth all the way, agreed to an exhibition of finger painting by a particularly talented group of five-year-olds from a nearby school. The mysterious art attacker was triumphant.