Brutal Telling

“It’s quite startling. She’s full of Grace, but something’s just happened, hasn’t it?”

Still Clara remained silent, staring at the reproduction of her own work.

Therese Brunel went back to looking at it too. Then she inhaled sharply and looked at Clara. “The Fall. My God, you’ve painted the Fall. That moment. She’s not even aware of it, is she? Not really, but she sees something, a hint of the horror to come. The Fall from Grace.” Therese grew very quiet, looking at this lovely, blissful woman. And that tiny, nearly invisible awareness.

Clara nodded. “Yes.”

Therese looked at her more closely. “But there’s something else. I know what it is. It’s you, isn’t it? She’s you.”

Clara nodded.

After a moment Therese whispered so that Clara wasn’t even sure the words had been spoken aloud. Maybe it was the wind. “What are you afraid of?”

Clara waited a long time to speak, not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she’d never said it out loud. “I’m afraid of not recognizing Paradise.”

There was a pause. “So am I,” said Superintendent Brunel.

She wrote a number and handed it to Clara. “I’m going to make a call when I get back to my office. Here’s my number. Call me this afternoon.”

Clara had, and to her amazement the elegant woman, the police officer, had arranged for the Chief Curator at the Musee d’art contemporain in Montreal to see the portfolio.

That had been weeks ago. A lot had happened since. Chief Inspector Gamache had arrested Olivier for murder. Everyone knew that had been a mistake. But as the evidence grew so did their doubts. As all of this was happening Clara had taken her work into the MAC. And now they’d asked for a meeting.

“They won’t say no,” said Peter, speeding along the autoroute. “I’ve never known a gallery to invite an artist to a meeting to turn him down. It’s good news, Clara. Great news. Way better than anything Fortin could have done for you.”

And Clara dared to think that was true.

As he drove Peter thought about the painting on his own easel. The one he now knew was finished. As was his career. On the white canvas Peter had painted a large black circle, almost, but not quite, closed. And where it might have closed he’d put dots.

Three dots. For infinity. For society.

Jean Guy Beauvoir was in the basement of his home looking down at the ragged strips of paper. Upstairs he could hear Enid preparing lunch.

He’d gone to the basement every chance he got in the last few weeks. He’d flip the game on the television then sit with his back to the TV. At his desk. Mesmerized by the scraps of paper. He’d hoped the mad old poet had written the whole thing on a single sheet of paper and simply torn it into strips so he could fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle. But, no, the pieces of paper wouldn’t fit together. He had to find the meaning in the words.

Beauvoir had lied to the Chief. He didn’t do it often, and he had no idea why he’d done it this time. He’d told the Chief he’d thrown them all out, all the stupid words Ruth had tacked onto his door, shoved into his pocket. Given others to give to him.

He’d wanted to throw them out, but even more than that he’d wanted to know what they meant. It was almost hopeless. Perhaps the Chief could decipher it, but poetry had always been a big fat pile of crap to Beauvoir. Even when presented with it whole. How could he ever assemble a poem?

But he’d tried. For weeks.

He slipped one scrap between two and moved another to the top.

I just sit where I’m put, composed

of stone and wishful thinking:

that the deity who kills for pleasure

will also heal,

He took a swig of beer.

“Jean Guy,” his wife sang to him. “Luh-hunch.”

“Coming.”

that in the midst of your nightmare,

the final one, a kind lion

will come with bandages in her mouth

and the soft body of a woman,

Enid called again and he didn’t answer but instead stared at the poem. Then his eyes moved to the furry little feet dangling over the shelf above his desk. At eye level, where he could see it. The stuffed lion he’d quietly taken from the B and B. First to his room, for company. He’d sat it in the chair where he could see it from his bed. And he imagined her there. Maddening, passionate, full of life. Filling the empty, quiet corners of his life. With life.

And when the case was over he’d slipped the lion into his bag and brought it down here. Where Enid never came.

The kind lion. With its soft skin and smile. “Wimoweh, a-wimoweh,” he sang under his breath as he read the final stanza.

and lick you clean of fever,

and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck

and caress you into darkness and paradise.

An hour later Armand Gamache walked out of the woods and down the slope into Three Pines. On the porch of the bistro he took a deep breath, composed himself, and entered.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. When they did he saw Gabri behind the bar, where Olivier had always