The Patriarch, page 8
“Bonjour, Bruno,” came a voice at his elbow, and he turned to kiss Clothilde on both cheeks and to shake the hand of her companion, Horst, a German archaeologist attached to the prehistory museum in Les Eyzies who had become a friend. Bruno was surprised to see Clothilde, an expert on the cave artists who had helped design Le Thot’s original exhibits, was still curious enough to visit it yet again.
“Have you seen this new twist?” she asked, pointing at the tiny blue glows that helped illuminate the life-size models of Cro-Magnon people. Some were shown using flints to scrape out the bowls of stone lamps or to cut the pelts of reindeer, and others were attaching tufts of fur from reindeer tails onto sticks to make paintbrushes. Bruno had to crane and peer to see what they were doing, since the museum tried to re-create the dim lamplight the cave painters would have used.
“They’re using ultraviolet light to pick out the flint; it makes it easier to understand the various tasks they’re performing,” she said. “But that’s not what we’re here to see.”
Clothilde led the way down the corridor and into a large room where Raquelle was waiting for them, an iPad in her hands being used to control the images on a giant screen that covered one entire wall. She lifted one hand to wave a greeting and then pointed at the screen where Bruno saw himself, Clothilde and Horst, standing by Raquelle. He raised one arm and saw his image on-screen do the same.
“Don’t expect too much,” said Raquelle. “We’re still working out a few bugs, but here goes. Pick a prehistoric animal, your choice—cave bear, mammoth, giant stag.”
“Cave bear,” Clothilde replied.
Raquelle pressed some buttons, and suddenly Bruno saw a giant bear appear on-screen before them, apparently sleeping, the sound of its snores coming from some speakers he could not see. Inside the room, there was no bear, only the astonishingly real image on the screen. He bent to try and touch the fur where the bear ought to be but felt nothing. And yet as soon as he stretched out his hand, the bear on-screen appeared to stir and then to wake. It rose to stand and stretched its arms out and opened its jaws wide as if yawning, its great height dominating the puny human figures on the screen. Then it went to the image of a cave wall and began to scrape with its giant claws. To Bruno’s delight, the sounds of nails on rock came over the speakers, and the image of claw marks appeared on the rock wall to match the movement of the claws. He knew that what he saw on-screen was an illusion, but it seemed extraordinarily real.
The bear sidled off, to be replaced by a miniature woolly mammoth, apparently a baby taking hesitant steps and making feeble sounds that were quickly drowned out by the trumpeting sound of a full-grown adult as a giant beast with great tusks came on-screen to steer the baby away. Then came a cave lion, creeping with feline grace as if tracking the humans who were its prey before leaping onto a cliff.
“That’s amazing,” said Bruno, whose knowledge of computers did not go much beyond e-mails and Google searches.
“It took a lot of computer time to create the beasts and then to make them move in lifelike ways,” said Raquelle. “We’re using actors to train our guides to get the children involved in this virtual reality in a positive way. The last thing we want to do is frighten them.”
“This is just the beginning,” Clothilde added, turning to Raquelle. “But perhaps I’m speaking out of turn. Do you want to talk about the new project yet?”
“It’s too early,” Raquelle said. “So far we’ve got an auroch built, and it’s working after a fashion, although the movements are still jerky.”
She touched some more buttons on her iPad, and the screen went dark as the lights in the room came up, and she led the way out of the museum and across to the building that housed her studio and workshop. She introduced them to the two young men and the young woman who sat at giant computers. On one screen, Bruno saw a giant stag with enormous antlers, its body crisscrossed with a grid of green lines. On another was an auroch bull standing over a cow that was being suckled by a calf.
Raquelle opened a door and led them into the workshop, where they were confronted by a giant bull, not on-screen, but standing in the middle of the floor, dominating the space with its huge, curved horns. Raquelle slipped into a seat before another computer, and as she tapped the keyboard and began to manipulate a control stick, the beast raised and then lowered its head and turned it from side to side.
“This is my own project, not yet official, but we’re working with a robotics company in Boston and with the robotics group at the national research agency in Grenoble,” she explained as the great bull began to back jerkily away toward the open double doors at the rear of the workshop. “At first we had trouble getting him to walk on uneven ground, but I think we’ve fixed that now. What we don’t know is how the real bulls will react to him. If they try to fight him, we could be left with some very expensive junk.”
“Are you going to try and make similar robots of the bears and cave lions?” Bruno asked.
“Eventually, if we can get the funding. My dream would be to re-create the whole landscape and fauna of prehistoric man, the bulls, the giant stags, the mammoths, the cave bears, maybe one day even some Cro-Magnon people, and try to reenact hunting scenes.” She brought the robotic auroch back to stillness. “But all that’s a long way off, and I’m getting hungry. We’re having lunch at my place, and the other guests will be arriving on the doorstep any minute. It’s just family. They were going to join us to see the computer-generated animals, but something came up.”
11
Raquelle lived in the heart of Montignac, the small town nearest to the Lascaux Cave, in a terrace house of stone that nestled against the old city wall just before the bridge. She led Bruno through the sitting room and kitchen to a small paved garden tucked against the medieval wall, at least ten meters high. Somehow her garden still managed to capture the sun. A long and narrow pool, apparently designed for swimming laps, took up part of the space, and a dining table and six chairs stood on a terrace by a small cave or tunnel that had been cut into the wall.
Raquelle came out with a tray containing plates, cutlery and glasses, a chilled bottle of white wine from Château Thénac and a corkscrew. He opened the wine and set the table and looked into the cave. It was only a couple of meters deep with a small pool of clear water at the bottom. Raquelle had rigged a small fountain and a lighting system that would doubtless look striking in the evenings. The walls and shelter made the place a sun-trap, and Bruno took off his uniform jacket and sat back, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of the autumn sun on his face.
“I’m glad you’ve made yourself comfortable. I love this spot, the color of the stone reminds me a little of the part of Jerusalem where I grew up,” Raquelle said, coming out with another tray, full of food. “It’s a very simple lunch, salade Niçoise, bread, cheese and fruit.”
Bruno heard footsteps inside the house, and then Clothilde and Horst emerged with Yevgeny, the Patriarch’s Russian son, whom they had met on the doorstep. That made five, thought Bruno, wondering who might be the sixth at lunch. Raquelle asked him to pour out the wine and said, “My sister-in-law Madeleine will be joining us, but a little later.”
“She drove Victor home after the cremation,” said Yevgeny. He was taller than Bruno, broader than Horst, and with a clumsy way of moving that occupied so much space he seemed to dominate the terrace. “Victor was very upset, his oldest friend, dying like that.”
“Cremation?” asked Bruno, jerking up his head from where he was greeting Clothilde. “You mean Gilbert?”
That was fast work, Bruno thought. His advice about contacting the air force to arrange the military funeral that was Gilbert’s due had obviously been ignored.
Clothilde sat down abruptly in one of the chairs and gasped. “Gilbert, dead? But there was nothing in the newspaper.”
Bruno began to count in his head. The Patriarch’s party had been on Friday, Gilbert died that evening, and today was Monday. That made three days, traditionally the minimum waiting time for burial or cremation. And that meant there would be no possibility of an autopsy, even if he had any reason to question Dr. Gelletreau’s verdict of natural death, or any motive that might suggest somebody had tampered with Gilbert’s drinks.
“Yes, Gilbert, he wanted to be cremated,” Yevgeny replied. “He used to joke about it, saying he’d spent his life as a pilot but never been shot down in flames nor exploded in a crash landing, so it was only fair that the fire should get him in the end. He had a strange sense of humor, very dark, very Russian. Maybe that was why we all liked him so much.”
“You knew him in Moscow?” Bruno asked.
“Of course, he was one of my best customers,” Yevgeny replied. “He’d bring distinguished visitors from Paris to my studio where they could see a real Russian artist at work. Since in those days the state wouldn’t give me an exit visa, I was obviously some kind of dissident, so that was an extra thrill for them. I was even quite fashionable for a short while. That was how I developed my taste for French women.”
“How did it happen?” asked Clothilde. Looking stunned, she had tucked herself into Horst’s embrace, as if in need of his comfort and protection.
“He killed himself with vodka,” said Yevgeny, raising his hands in a gesture that was half resignation, half blessing.
“He died in his sleep, the evening of the Patriarch’s party,” Bruno said vaguely, not wanting to upset Clothilde further. “Did you know Gilbert well?”
“We were very close at one time, not long after he came here,” she replied, with a hesitant and reminiscent smile. “It was not long after he came back from Moscow. He’d just retired, or rather he’d been pushed out. He was very bitter about it. I wish I’d known; I’d have liked to attend the funeral.”
In the brief silence that then fell, Raquelle quickly changed the subject, talking of her recent trip to Chicago to help launch the new traveling exhibition of the Lascaux Cave, which she and Clothilde had helped design. It was a topic that drew Clothilde back into the conversation and lasted until the sound of stiletto heels on Raquelle’s tile floor signaled the arrival of the final guest.
Victor’s wife, Madeleine, strode into the walled garden with an apology for her lateness and air-kisses for all except Bruno, to whom she stretched out her hand and held his for just a heartbeat too long. She was wearing tight jeans and a loose white cotton sweater that revealed one smooth, tanned shoulder and announced, “I just had to get out of those depressing funeral clothes. Didn’t I hear you talking about your work on Lascaux, Clothilde? I’m so sorry to interrupt, do go on.”
“I’d finished,” said Clothilde, stiffly. There was evidently little love lost between the two women. But then Clothilde, as a scholar with an impressive reputation in France and abroad, was accustomed to dominating any gathering by force of her personality as well as her academic renown. Madeleine could do the same effortlessly, by her looks alone. And if Madeleine was touched by that cool arrogance that marks so many beautiful women, she was clever enough to conceal it. Raquelle, Bruno noted, was watching both women with a cocked eyebrow and slightly mocking smile, enjoying the subtle rivalry between them. Horst and Yevgeny had their eyes on Madeleine, as would any man in his senses, Bruno thought, as he shifted his eyes back to her and caught her examining him, perhaps wondering why his gaze had been elsewhere.
“Where does the exhibition go after Chicago?” he asked Clothilde.
“Montreal, then Tokyo, after that I’m not sure. Perhaps China.”
“I hope not,” said Horst. “Lascaux is crowded enough without millions of Chinese coming to see it. They’ve already made the Louvre impossible and driven up the price of Bordeaux wines to the point where I can barely afford them.”
“Drink our good Bergerac instead, it’s a lot cheaper and often better than the wine made by those hidebound snobs in the Médoc,” said Madeleine, picking up the bottle on the table and pretending to be shocked. “Shame on you, Raquelle, serving a Bergerac that hasn’t come from the family vineyard. And you a shareholder!”
“Rest assured, Madeleine, the next bottle is one of ours,” said Raquelle, guiding them to take their places around the table, slicing a fat pain and telling them to help themselves to the salad. She sat at the head of the table, and Yevgeny took the foot. Bruno sat beside Clothilde, facing Horst and Madeleine.
“Do you know you’re quoted in the paper today?” Madeleine asked Bruno. She pulled a folded copy of Sud Ouest from her bag and passed it to him. The paper opened to a page about Imogène and her deer, with a photo of Adèle standing by her battered car and another of an emaciated fawn. Bruno was quoted as saying that unless Imogène built the fence the court had required, the next step would be for the prefect of the département to seek a court order for the deer to be culled. But he hoped an agreement might be reached to establish a proper refuge.
“It sounds like you’re on the side of this crazy woman,” Madeleine said. “You ought to stick up for your fellow hunters.”
“I don’t think there’s much hope of raising the funds for a refuge, but any form of amicable agreement is usually better than going to court,” he replied. “And I don’t think she’s crazy, just obsessed with saving her deer. I went to see her, and she obviously loves animals and has taken some very impressive photos of them. I was thinking we might try to mount an exhibition of them for her and see if we can raise some money that way.”
“A lot of us are getting very fed up with the way these animal rights people and the Greens and vegetarians are getting more and more powerful,” Madeleine said firmly. “This is the Périgord, hunting is in our blood; we’re carnivores, just like our ancestors. Any ecology needs predators to stay in balance, and that’s the problem with this stupid woman. You may say she loves animals, but those deer of hers are starving to death. The population has to be controlled. I often think we hunters are the real protectors of the environment because we know that.”
Bruno nodded politely. It was an argument he’d heard before, usually at election times when the Pêche-Chasse Party fielded a candidate, but the attempt to build a political alliance of hunters and anglers had faltered. They had once gotten 15 percent of the vote in the département of the Dordogne, but now they had just a few scattered councillors in rural communes.
“I think the most likely outcome will be a cull,” he said amiably. “But it’s my job to try to find an acceptable compromise.”
“Good for you,” said Raquelle. “I know Imogène a bit, both of us being members of the Green Party, and I used some of her photos when we were putting the computer models together. I like her and respect her commitment. But she can be infuriating, not the kind of person who’d ever want to compromise.”
Raquelle poured out the rest of the wine and asked Bruno to open the next bottle. It carried the label Domaine du Patriarche, the vineyard run by Victor and Madeleine. Bruno knew it as a decent everyday wine with few pretensions. It was not a wine he bought himself, despite his reverence for the man for whom it was named. A drawing of the Patriarch, wearing an old-fashioned flying helmet, dominated the label. The reds were a competent blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot; the whites an equally orthodox blend of sauvignon blanc and sémillon grapes. The vineyard prospered mainly through sales to local supermarket chains, where margins were very tight, but did better by selling direct to campsites and tourist restaurants in the summer.
“You’re being diplomatic, Bruno,” said Madeleine, smiling at him but with a challenging look in her eye. “Tell me what you think of our wine.”
“Very agreeable,” he said politely. “I’m only sorry that having to drive back means I can only drink half a glass.”
She studied him coolly for a moment and then looked around at the others at the table before addressing him and smiling again. “We all know this wine is nothing special, but perhaps all of you ought to come out to the vineyard and taste the surprise we’re preparing.”
“A special cuvée?” Clothilde inquired. “I love it when our local vineyards strive for something better.”
“Very special,” Madeleine replied. “We’ve assigned a separate part of the vineyard, brought in a new winemaker from St. Émilion, bought new oak barrels to age it and to the white wine we’re adding about eight percent muscadelle grapes that we planted five years ago.”
She leaned across the table and tapped the back of Bruno’s hand with elegant fingers that looked as though they had never worked in a garden, far less wielded grape scissors in a vineyard. “We’ve been planning this for years. And it will be a completely organic wine, fully certified. We’re going for a different market entirely, a real quality wine with a much-higher price point. And the new red wine we’re making also has something special to it.”
“It sounds like a wine worthy of the Patriarch,” Bruno said politely.
“The Patriarch’s Reserve, that’s what we’re calling it. He’s going to lead the marketing drive himself.”
“I wish you every success,” he said. “It must involve a lot of investment.”
“Tolko dyengi, as we say in Russia,” Yevgeny broke in, laughing. “It’s only money. Seriously, the new wine is very good, we’ve all tasted it. There’s something about time in the barrel, and the muscadelle in the Bergerac Sec really adds something.”
“When do you launch it?”
“At the end of the month, aiming at the Christmas market,” said Madeleine.
