***
She soon owned five paintings. The wood-paneled dining room, rarely used, now became an extended gallery in which she could display her burgeoning art collection. She placed a painting of a young woman holding a parasol rendered in soft, chalky hues over the oak mantelpiece and flanked it with two rhinoceros horns that Ichiro had somehow convinced her to buy.
She still visited Ichiro weekly. Their relationship had developed beyond client and dealer; she considered him a friend.
They were both outsiders. He a foreigner in Paris, she a woman of the demimonde. Ichiro understood, without her needing to explain, the paradox of her existence—that her life was as cloistered as it was independent. That she lived very much like the women in his scrolls, cultivated for the pleasure of others: an artist of the body, a connoisseur of its peaks and valleys, a lover of its acquired tastes. She belonged to a world as elusive as a poem. A plume of incense, as fleeting as the moonlight. And to those who understood it, a world exquisitely pure.
It had been Ichiro who told Marthe stories of the geisha back in his native Japan. Women who were desired not only for their beauty,but also for their charm. She would lose herself in the ink and parchment as his hands unfurled yet another scroll, as she saw women who were well versed in poetry, art, and music as well as the mechanics of love.
His affection for Marthe was genuine, for he had made a living out of recognizing things that were beautiful and rare. But what charmed Ichiro most about Marthe was her curiosity. She did not have a life that afforded her the ability to travel. But when she held a precious porcelain in her hand or traced her finger over the painted images in a scroll, he could see her eyes falling into a journey all her own.
“You remind me of the very ceramics you so love,” he told her one afternoon as they sat in the back of his store looking at his latest shipment. “Fire within the layers of a soft cloud.”
She blushed. She had never studied him too closely, as she was always concentrating on what artworks he had on hand to show her. But now she focused solely on him. He was as finely boned as a sparrow. His features small and sharp, his skin warm and golden.
“Show me more of what you have in those boxes back there,” she said with mischief in her eyes. She knew he had recently expanded his inventory. He was importing not only Oriental porcelains and exotic prints now, but also pieces of ivory and amber. Even rare painted ostrich eggs, and rhinoceros horns.
A smile crossed his lips. “To you, I only show the best.”
He returned with two small velvet pouches. Slowly, he untied the first one and pulled out seven miniature carvings, each rendered as an animal. A small fox carved in amber, a hare chiseled from ivory, and a tortoise carved from paulownia wood.
“These are the latest fashionable pieces to collect from the Far East,” Ichiro informed her. “They are called netsuke... Small enough to carry on your person, and to easily gaze upon from the palm of your hand.”
As he cradled one of the netsuke in his palm, he traced its delicate lines with his finger. Then, he closed his hand and made a fist, warming it. “Every person who has ever held a netsuke adds something to it. Their oils add to the beauty of its patina. Its value increases with every touch.”
“May I see it again?”
“Of course,” Ichiro said, pleased that Marthe was intrigued.
She reached for the small amber fox and examined it closely.
In her hand, the small object transformed. She could see how the amber changed from when she held it to the light, so it became nearly opaque in the shadow of her cupped palms. Ichiro understood better than anyone Marthe’s tastes. She was attracted to things that were as elusive and as secretive as the world she occupied. Things that were not only beautiful, but also that transformed as much in the darkness as they did in the light.
“I love how small they are... ,” she said, smiling.
She felt as though she was holding something that was a secret.
“Hidden beauty,” he said, closing his eyes. “It is always the best kind of all.”
6.
Solange
December 1938
It was difficult to sleep, my mind raced with all of the stories my grandmother had shared. I could envision everything she told me with such precision.
I longed to return to the comfort of her apartment. There the air was always fragrant and the light soft. We drank from hand-painted porcelain, where delicate birds and flowers floated on crisp white cups and saucers, and reached for chocolates that were served on a glimmering silver tray.
My grandmother was the opposite of my mother. My mother was not a woman whose magic was rooted in elegance or beauty, but rather was one of those rare creatures whose intelligence and soul were wedded in her affection for the written word.Mamandid not love silk or perfume as Marthe did. She adored the cadence of words and the music of poetry. She believed in the truth that every good novel holds within its pages. And though her father had accused herof abandoning her faith, I knew otherwise. For the last books my mother held to her chest were not her beloved novels by Dostoevsky or Flaubert, but those that connected her to an ancient past.
Marthe, on the other hand, had no connection to the written word, only the spoken one. On all my visits, I never once saw a book anywhere in her apartment. If she did read novels, Marthe kept them far from public view. What I sensed was that she now had little interest in stories outside her own. What she enjoyed was to sit in the silk throne of her chair, close her eyes, and remember. To recall her life when she was as radiant and as beautiful as she was in the portrait above her mantel.
She had spent a lifetime pushing the reality of the world far from her threshold. She stroked her pearls as though they were a rope leading her back into a different time. The furniture in the parlor, the porcelain on the shelves, and the silver tray on the table were unchanged. But the main character was forty years younger, and the person who sat in the chair across from her was not her restless nineteen-year-old granddaughter who hungered for her stories, but a captivated nobleman named Charles.
***
At the cafés near my home, a coffee and a croissant came cheaply. For two sous, I could spend several hours at a small table and begin to see the material for my book taking form. I filled my first journal. Then, my second and third. As I wrote about my grandmother’s childhood, her pregnancy, and how she reinvented herself with Charles, my perspective on my family soon shifted. I began to understand not only my grandmother more fully, but my father as well.
