I glanced back at Andre. “Cool?”
He didn’t say it back to me, but he nodded.
I followed Van Laar’s slow procession down a dimly lit hallway, which was impossibly long and smelled of mothballs and old people. It felt as though we were marching toward death. Meanwhile Van Laar told me more about his family background. They were Dutch and moved to Paris in the early 1800s. Over the three centuries of documented wealth, the Van Laar family had various business enterprises ranging from shipping to textiles to dairies, and most recently, aircraft.
“I come from a long line of innovators.” Van Laar opened the door to a room with rich wood paneling and plush red carpeting overlaid with an Oriental rug. In the center of the room were two antique easels. My slumbering prince was displayed on one of them. The other was covered with a black velvet cloth, arranged so that the material didn’t come in contact with the painting’s surface. I wondered what masterpiece Van Laar had chosen to pair with mine. Without even seeing it, I felt unworthy.
“You said your grandfather immigrated to America from Cuba in the 1980s?” Van Laar asked me.
“Yes, he was part of the Mariel boatlift.”
“Was he a criminal?” Van Laar asked.
“He was a political prisoner.” Castro imprisoned anyone who spoke out against him, including members of the clergy, which was my grandfather’s “crime.” My grandfather spent five years in a labor camp, got into a fight with one of the guards who was beating a friend of his to death, and got sent to prison. He was never a criminal. Nor was he ever given a fair trial, an oxymoron in Cuba.
“I hope you won’t find this too intrusive,” Van Laar continued, “but is Martin your given name?”
I narrowed my eyes at him as my suspicion grew to alarm. My given name was Alonso Javier Fonseca, but from the time I was five, I insisted that everyone call me Martin. I refused to answer to any other name, so that’s what my grandfather called me. When I was twelve, he had my birth certificate changed to Martin Alonso Javier Fonseca. There was no way Van Laar could know that about me. Even Melissa didn’t know it.
“Why do you ask?” I said.
Van Laar smiled, or appeared to be trying to. “Have you ever heard of the French painter Martin Bonnaire?”
I did a quick scan of my mental registry of artists, compiled over several years of art history classes. If I had my phone, I could look him up. The name sounded familiar when he said it, but I couldn’t place it. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I didn’t expect that you’d heard of him. Would you mind bringing that chair over, Martin? I’m afraid my standing power is not what it used to be.”
I retrieved an ancient-looking wooden chair, ornately carved, with plush velvet upholstery that looked to be the original covering. “Thank you,” he said. “Would you care to sit?”
“No, thank you, sir.” I was too nervous and wound up. Van Laar knew things about me that he shouldn’t. Everything about this night unnerved me.
“Martin Bonnaire was not well-known,” he continued. “But he was extremely gifted. He painted Parisian whores, simply because that’s who was readily accessible to him. You see, he was orphaned at a young age and went to live with his aunt in Paris who ran a brothel. One finds inspiration where he must.”
I studied Van Laar, captivated by his every word, not knowing what Martin Bonnaire had to do with me, but knowing this story was important nonetheless.
“It was said that Bonnaire was Degas’s principle influence,” he continued. “Only instead of whores, Degas chose dancers, likely because it was more socially permissible at the time. But even in Degas’s work, there is an illicit air in the way he paints his subjects.”
“Is there any documentation of this?” I said, risking insolence. Artists and collectors were notorious gossips, and the urban legends only grew with time.
“There are a few letters between Bonnaire and his cousin, Marie, which describe his work in a general sense. Bonnaire, because of his circumstances, was careful about what he revealed in his letters. And it’s a documented fact that Degas and Bonnaire were contemporaries, living and working in Paris at the same time. The artist community, even in Paris, was well connected. And the similarities between their work are undeniable.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen the work of Bonnaire.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Van Laar said. “You see, because of his choice in material, Bonnaire had a hard time finding patronage, so he quietly toiled away in the basement of his aunt’s whorehouse. Along the way, he fell in love with one of his subjects, a young prostitute, but it was a scandal because she was a black woman from America. The circumstances of what happened between them are only rumors, but when she disappeared, Bonnaire fell into madness. He’d been promised patronage by a wealthy Parisian family, but on the cusp of his introduction into high society, he burned down his studio. All of his works were ruined. All except one.”
My lungs filled with phantom smoke. The smell of turpentine burned my nostrils. All around me were flames. My paintings were burning. It was my nightmare made real, happening just as he described it. I felt dizzy and nauseated. The room spun, and I couldn’t see straight.
“Would you like to see your painting, Martin?” Van Laar pointed his crooked finger at the draped canvas.
Mypainting?
It was as if there was a locked door in the labyrinth of my mind, and Van Laar had the key. I knew something terrible lay in wait. I could hear it breathing, biding its time, but I couldn’t stop myself from opening the door.
I gripped the corner of the black velvet cloth and pulled the veil, gasping as my own work stared back at me. The painting was nearly identical to my slumbering prince, only the subject was a young woman with long curly black hair. The positioning of her arms and face was identical, down to the angle of her chin. I’d painted every curling eyelash, painstakingly slow, lovingly. The lantern—my lantern—hung above her and cast a rainbow of hues on her skin, giving it a stained-glass appearance. In the lower corner of the painting was my signature, Martin, with the treetopT.
“I’ve always been curious, Martin. Why did you paint her like that, in that patchwork way? Was it to hide your feelings or confess them?”
“Is this a hoax?” I prayed for that to be the case, fucked-up as it was.
