Paint the Wind, page 30
Valerie wrapped up her restoration of the altarpiece at the end of February, bidding farewell to her imagined artist. She left for Twilight Park the next day with a trunk full of groceries, her typewriter, and Malcolm’s manuscript. She stopped at Greene Meadows Nursing Home in Catskill, New York, to pick up Wanona, who was waiting in the lobby, her bag next to her on the floor.
Wanona gave Valerie a whoop and a big hug when she arrived. “I’m so happy to see you, sweetheart! You are a lifesaver. I was so ready to escape this place, I would have hitchhiked out on Route 23.”
Valerie managed to fit a pair of crutches, a commode, and a collapsible wheelchair into the station wagon she and Malcolm had inherited from his parents. She followed the serpentine road that led up the mountain to Haines Falls and Twilight Park, grateful that it was a sunny day and not snowing or sleeting. She knew weather on the mountain at this time of year was unpredictable. As they reached the curve where the waterfall was visible, she could see that it was still partially frozen. It would be May before the torrent was totally released from its winter sleep and filled the rocky creek that wound through the valley.
Twilight Park was quiet when they passed through the gates. Only a few of the houses constructed along the three roads that clung to the hillside were winterized. Valerie’s great- grandparents had been among the original homeowners in the community that had been established by a diverse group of New Yorkers to escape the heat of summer in the city. In the 1940s, Valerie’s grandparents had winterized the Victorian cottage and added a wing with additional bedrooms and a second bath. Valerie’s childhood summers and Christmas vacations had been spent on the mountain. More than any other place she had lived, Birch Cottage at Twilight Park was home.
When she pulled up to the house, she was surprised but grateful to see that a ramp had been erected from the side yard to the front porch.
“I had Bill Morris, the park caretaker, build that for me while I was in Greene Meadows,” Wanona explained. Valerie wasn’t surprised. Wanona had always been practical and organized. She helped Wanona into the wheelchair and pushed her up the ramp and into the house.
“Bill’s wife, Rosemary, came this morning to turn up the heat and give the place a bit of spit and polish. I was in no condition after I fell to tidy the place up. I didn’t want you to be faced with a mess in addition to being my nursemaid.”
“You know I would have been happy to do it, Aunt Nonie, but I’m also glad we’ll have more time to get settled. Do you want a cup of tea before I unload the car?”
“I’m fine. Just park me over by a lamp and give me that book in my bag.”
After she hauled everything in from the car, Valerie lit the fireplace with the kindling and logs stacked by the hearth, probably another thoughtful instruction from Wanona to Bill and Rosemary.
“I made some chili for us last night. Sound good for dinner?”
By the time Valerie had finished washing up the dishes, it was after eight, and she could see that the strain of travel and resettling had worn Wanona out.
“Are you ready to go to bed?”
With a combination of awkwardness overcome by humor, Valerie managed to help Wanona access the commode, bathe, and get into bed.
“You’re a dear to put up with this, my girl.” Wanona hugged her good night and turned out the light.
Over the next few days, Valerie and Wanona worked out a system for meeting Wanona’s needs, and Valerie was able to carve out time for Malcolm’s manuscript. They settled into a comfortable rhythm in the house that both of them cherished.
One evening, the temperature dropped precipitously as storm clouds gathered over the mountain and it began to snow.
“I think we’re going to need extra quilts tonight, Val. You’ll find them in the cedar chest in the storage room off the second-floor landing.”
The door to the storage room stuck, probably from disuse, but Valerie managed, with some pounding and jiggling, to get it open. A single incandescent bulb hung from the ceiling on a pull chain, and she turned it on to survey the crowded shelves, multiple stacked crates, garden tools, and ice skates that had been stuffed into the room over several decades.
She wove her way through the boxes to what appeared to be a cedar chest, and propped it open after dusting off the cobwebs that clung to it. Folded inside were the quilts Wanona had described, and Valerie lifted them out, remembering the chilly summer nights when her mother had tucked her in with the colorful covers.
“Granny Phyllis made these, sewn from fabric scraps from her calico and gingham dresses,” she remembered her mother telling her.
As Valerie went to close the chest, she noticed what appeared to be a large framed canvas facing the wall behind the chest. She hadn’t remembered it being there in her childhood. After she brought the quilts downstairs and helped Wanona to bed, she couldn’t still her curiosity. She climbed back up the steep staircase and returned to the storage room.
It took some maneuvering to pull the canvas out from its tucked-away position. She dragged it out to the hall and turned it around. It was an unfinished painting of a pregnant nude, painted in the bold colors and dramatic brushstrokes of Expressionism. In the corner was the artist’s signature—M Sircos—and the year 1909.
In all her art history studies, Valerie hadn’t encountered an Expressionist painter named Sircos. She wondered if he were the husband of the pregnant model. She left the painting propped in the hall and went to bed.
Chapter Forty-Five
After the morning rituals were performed and breakfast was finished, Valerie broached the topic of the painting with Wanona.
“Aunt Nonie, I found a painting in the storage room when I got the quilts yesterday. Do you know anything about it?”
A wistful look passed over Wanona’s face, and then she brightened.
“That’s a painting of Maya Sircos when she was pregnant with her daughter.”
“Who was she and who painted it? Why is it here? Did grandma and grandpa buy it?”
“Slow down, hon, and I’ll answer each question. Maya painted it. It’s a self-portrait. She was a well-known artist, first in Vienna and later in Paris, in the first part of the twentieth century. The painting wasn’t your grandparents’. It’s mine.”
“Why haven’t I heard of Maya Sircos? And how did you come to have the painting?”
“You haven’t heard of her and countless other women artists because of two world wars and the Nazi destruction of what they considered decadent art. Maya did a series of self-portraits when she was pregnant. But as far as I know, the painting upstairs is the only one that survived.”
“Why do you have it?”
“Because her daughter, Sophie, gave it to me when I was living in France. When I moved in to care for Grandad, I brought it with me from Springfield.”
“I’m beginning to think that the Aunt Nonie I’ve known all my life has a hidden history. When did you live in France? Will you tell me about Sophie?”
Wanona considered Valerie’s request.
“Let me think about it. I was there during the war. It’s not an easy story to tell.”
Had Wanona served in the military? Valerie’s father had been in the navy in the South Pacific during the war, and except when he went to the VFW hall to play cards with his fellow vets, he had refused to talk about the experience.
“War is something to put behind us. No one wants to relive those days. It wasn’t all Bob Hope putting on USO shows,” he had told her.
Remembering his words now, Valerie understood she should not push Wanona.
Later in the afternoon, as the snow continued to fall, Wanona asked Valerie to bring the painting downstairs.
“I stored it when I first arrived because the house was Grandad’s then, and it wasn’t my place to hang the painting.”
“This is your home now, Aunt Nonie. You can do what you want with the painting.”
“It’s your house, too, Val. Let’s decide together where to put Maya.”
Valerie wrangled the large frame down the stairs, careful of the birch limb that formed the handrail. She propped it against a wall in the living room, and Wanona wheeled over to study it.
“It’s still in good condition, wouldn’t you say, considering Maya painted it nearly seventy years ago?”
“Is that how old Sophie is now?”
“No. Sophie will always be thirty-three.”
Wanona turned in her wheelchair and retreated to her bedroom.
Valerie watched her go, and understood even more fully Wanona’s reluctance to talk about the painting. If Sophie died at thirty-three, it would have been early in the war after the fall of France. Why was Wanona in France then, if the Americans didn’t land on French soil until D-Day in 1944?
Valerie made a pot of tea and sat on the floor in front of the painting. The only part that was incomplete was the background. But Maya, cradling her belly, gazed out at the viewer fully formed. Valerie was completely consumed by the image. Her conservator’s eye saw patches that could use some cleaning. But given its age and the fact that it had survived the Nazi purge of Expressionist art, probably hidden somewhere in the French countryside, it was in remarkable condition, as Wanona had noted.
It was an exceptionally private, vulnerable painting; Sophie must have cherished it as the baby held unseen by her mother. Valerie was particularly drawn to Maya’s face and the expression of both unbridled expectation—any day that child would be born—and apprehension. It was unclear whether Maya had been concerned about the birthing process or the unknowns of motherhood—or both.
Valerie placed her hands on her own belly, mimicking Maya’s pose, and became engulfed in the memory of the baby she had lost a year before, a miscarriage in her first trimester. Her obstetrician had assured her that miscarrying in the first twelve weeks was not unusual, and that she’d most likely be able to conceive again and carry a baby to term. But those words had provided little comfort. The loss had altered something in her relationship with Malcolm. He had seemed to recover and move on to his next book, while Valerie had floundered. Obtaining the commission to restore the altarpiece had helped to keep her from dwelling on her grief, but seeing Maya’s portrait had opened up the wound.
“It has a powerful effect, doesn’t it?” Wanona sat in the doorway to her bedroom. Valerie didn’t know how long her aunt had been watching her.
“Why don’t you make me a cup of tea, and I’ll tell you as much as I can about how that painting became mine.”
They settled themselves across from the painting, Valerie on the couch and Wanona in her wheelchair.
“I was in Europe teaching in an exchange program at the University of Lyon when Hitler invaded Poland and the war began. Gran and Grandad wanted me to come home at once, but I resisted. It was easier in those days to claim letters had been lost. Phone calls were expensive and difficult to schedule, so I blithely ignored my parents’ entreaties. I wasn’t a child. I was twenty-seven, and I understood deep in my being that I needed to do something to make a difference. The world was falling apart, descending into chaos and uncertainty, and I knew I had the perseverance and the ability to face the turmoil and perhaps ease some suffering.”
“What did you do?”
“I found my way to the Brits and offered my services. At first, I was stuck in an office translating French and German messages.”
“I didn’t know you spoke those languages.”
“I imagine there are many things you don’t know about me. Eventually, my facility with languages and my knowledge of Lyon, where I’d been living for over a year, came to the attention of the consulate leadership.
“When Hitler invaded France in May of 1940, Lyon became the heart of the French Resistance. I was recruited then, and didn’t have to think twice about accepting. Sophie had evacuated Paris with Maya, and they, too, made their way to Lyon. They had removed as many of Maya’s paintings as they could from their stretcher bars and rolled the canvases into their suitcases, buried under their clothing. Sophie had already been a liaison for the Resistance in Paris. She was a few years older than I, and a savvy, fearless operator. She was put in charge of a small team that I was assigned to, all women. She had an uncanny ability to disguise herself as anyone from a nun to a prostitute to a farmer’s wife selling cheese in the market square while passing on covert messages.
“In quiet moments, we gathered at the apartment Sophie shared with Maya, and Maya would cook for us and regale us with stories of Gustav Klimt in Vienna and Picasso in Paris.”
“She knew them?”
“She had been an active part of the avant-garde scene in both cities. She’d lived and worked in Le Bateau-Lavoir, the abandoned piano factory where Picasso lived and painted.
“Before that, in Vienna, she’d been a sensation with her pregnant nude series. She painted one every month while she was with child. Maya was a treasure, full of life, despite the circumstances of the war.
“After the Germans occupied Lyon in 1942, we stopped going to her place in order to protect her. Sophie and I and the rest of the women had to move around a lot, never staying in any one place more than a few days. As the activities of the Resistance intensified, we became more than couriers. Sophie, in particular, pushed our superiors to let us do more. We blew up train tracks, received and distributed airlifted supplies—weapons and explosives—and operated clandestine radios that had to be dismantled and rebuilt with every use.
“We thought we were invincible, operating right under the Nazis’ noses. Even as we saw them make brutal examples of Resistance fighters, sometimes even executing them, the danger of our situation reinforced our commitment to the cause.
“One night, before a particularly risky mission, Sophie and I were in hiding in a shepherd’s hut near a bridge we’d been assigned to blow up. We’d already lost several men in the Resistance, and the likelihood of being killed or captured escalated with each day. Maya had left Lyon to hide in the countryside. The paintings she’d salvaged from Paris had been placed for safekeeping with different people. That night, Sophie told me of the whereabouts of Maya’s last pregnant nude, the one she had painted just before Sophie’s birth. Of all the paintings, it was the one most precious to her. Sophie made me promise that, after the war was over, if she did not survive, I would retrieve the painting and hold it in her mother’s memory.”
Valerie was transfixed by Wanona’s story. “Sophie didn’t survive that night?”
“No, she didn’t die then. It was months later. As it became clearer that the Germans were losing, they unleashed a vicious spree of killing, and Sophie was caught up in it when delivering a message to a drop-off point.”
Wanona’s gaze moved away from the painting and out the window at the world covered in the silence of the mountain snow.
Valerie took her hand.
“She was your friend.”
“She was the bravest, smartest person I’ve ever known. Every day, I’ve tried to emulate her conviction and her belief in fighting for the freedom of others. I’ve tried to impart her nobility to my students.”
“I know you’ve transmitted those values to me,” Valerie said.
Wanona squeezed Valerie’s hand. “Thank you, love. This story has exhausted me. Can you help me to bed?”
Valerie pushed Wanona to the bedroom and supported her as she shifted onto the bed.
“I think I’ll skip dinner. All these memories have robbed me of my appetite.”
Valerie spent the rest of the evening in front of the painting. Her mind wandered to Maya, the mother who had lost the child she had carried in her womb to the brutality of war. How had she survived that devastation, and what had happened to her after the war?
Chapter Forty-Six
In the morning, after Valerie assisted Wanona with dressing and built a fire in the fireplace, she took a walk along the ridge. The snow had stopped during the night, and the walkway and ramp to the cottage had already been cleared and the road plowed.
The sun glistened across the mountain, and Valerie took a bracing gulp of air. After months of enduring a gray Boston winter, replete with mounds of dirty snow on every street corner that she had to climb over to make her way to the T, the wonderland before her was absolutely magical.
Wanona had encouraged Valerie to get outside.
“I have the phone and can give a shout out to Bill to find you if I really need you. So go. You need some color in your cheeks after listening to me blather last night.”
“You weren’t blathering. I know how reluctant Dad was to talk about his experience of the war, so I’m honored that you were willing to tell me such a difficult story. Thank you.”
Valerie walked for nearly an hour. When she returned to the house, she shook off the snow from her boots onto the porch and immediately went to Wanona, who was reading by the fireplace. Valerie set about adding logs, while exclaiming to Wanona that it was like Narnia outside.
“C.S. Lewis must have known a landscape like this to be able to create such a mystical place beyond the wardrobe.”
“One of these days, I’ll get back out there. But for now, how about some hot chocolate?”
Over cups of cocoa with marshmallows, Valerie carefully reopened the conversation about the painting.
“What happened to Maya after the war?”
“I don’t know. In the final days of the war, the Germans set about destroying as much as they could. Her association with Sophie, which Sophie tried desperately to hide, could have made her a target. But I didn’t hear anything to indicate she had become a victim. Waves of people returned to Paris, and it’s possible she made it home. She was young enough, only fifty-seven, when Paris was liberated in 1944. With nothing to keep her in Lyon, she might have made the journey. Why do you ask?”
“I’m intrigued by her. The painting resonates with me so powerfully, and I’m astounded that I’ve never come across any of her art or even her name.”
