Read Online Lisette's List by Susan Vreeland - Free Book Online

second sheet, while I worked my way around the floor of the salle . Finally he sat back and let his arms flop to his sides, exhausted. He exhausted? What about me?
    “There. Today I shall tell you about Paul Cézanne.”
    “Maybe later.” I squeezed cloudy gray water out of a rag.
    “But it has to be now, while it’s in my mind.” The paper trembled in his hand. “Please, Lisette, sit down and listen.”
    “I can listen while I do this.”
    “You have to be still so I can think out my memories. All I am is my memories. You’ll learn that about yourself someday.”
    I surrendered, only too happy to sit for a spell. I just wished the settee were more comfortable.
    “I met Paul Cézanne in Julien Tanguy’s art supply shop. Julien was convinced that Cézanne would introduce something new in art. His shop was the only place in Paris exhibiting him. He told me that Cézanne needed cheering up because he doubted himself. At that, I recall Madame Tanguy saying something snide, like ‘With good reason.’ ”
    Pascal turned to look at the Cézanne still life. He was squinting, so I stood to take it off the wall and propped it on a chair closer to him. The painting left a rectangular outline of dirt on the wall where it had hung. In fact, the whole wall alongside the stairs that once had been whitewashed was now yellowish, stained by tobacco and woodsmoke. Pascal might have praised the color as pale yellow-ochre, but to me it was dingy and depressing. It was a disgrace to hang a beautiful painting on a grimy wall. I would have to clean the whole expanse. Since I was still standing, I dipped my rag in a fresh bucket of soapy water and raised it to the wall.
    Meanwhile, Pascal kept talking. “Cézanne came into the shopwearing a cape, and underneath it he was carrying this very painting. Take a minute to look at those pretty apples in that white compote dish, and the oranges spilling out of that tilted plate, and that one lone pear on the table.”
    When he said “one lone pear,” I stopped scrubbing, and in my mind’s eye I saw the single pear in the Madonna and Child painting in the chapel of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. It was just below the babe’s chubby toes, which looked like a row of corn. The golden skin of the pear made a lovely contrast with the Virgin’s deep blue cloak, and I thought how remarkable it was that a person’s memory could call forth such details from days gone by.
    Pascal looked up from his paper. “That blue patterned cloth is an indienne , made here in Provence with cotton grown here and indigo dyes. Everyone here has olive pots dipped in green glaze like that, made in Aubagne, east of Marseille. But it was the compotier , that shallow bowl on a pedestal, that brought tears to my eyes in Tanguy’s shop. Are you listening, Lisette?”
    “Yes,” I said, my mind still in the chapel. “So why did it make you weep?”
    “My mother had a compote just like that, which she had bought on a rare trip to Marseille. She was proud of it because it was more refined than the rustic terra-cotta vessels from Aubagne called terres vernissées , with only their upper portions glazed. In season, she filled it with fruit. When I was a boy, I knocked it off the table and it broke into pieces. She never got another one.”
    “I’m so sorry,” I said, my rag dripping water down my still upraised arm. “Tell me about meeting Cézanne.”
    “Ah, Cézanne. A saint of a painter.” He consulted his list to shift his memory back to what he had started telling me.
    “When Julien introduced us, Cézanne didn’t raise his head to look at me. He only said in a heavy Provençal accent, ‘I won’t offer my hand. I haven’t washed in a week,’ but when I answered, ‘Eh, bieng’ in an equally strong Provençal accent and extended my hand, he lifted his chin and gave me his.
    “Then, looking at the painting, Julien cried, ‘Magnifique.’
    “ ‘No, it is definitely not magnifique ,’ madame interjected. ‘A