The Long Way Home(93)

Clara explained what they’d learned about Peter and the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, expecting any moment to hear Chartrand laugh.

But he didn’t. He listened and nodded.

“The rabbit turned from flesh to stone, and back again,” said Chartrand, as though that was a perfectly reasonable thing for a rabbit to do. “Peter’s river turns from sorrow to joy, and back again. He’s learned the miracle of transformation. He can turn his pain into paint. And his painting into ecstasy.”

“It’s what makes a great artist,” said Clara.

“Not many get there,” said Chartrand. “But I think if Peter’s courage holds and he keeps exploring, he’ll be like few others. Van Gogh, Picasso, Vermeer, Gagnon. Clara Morrow. Creating a whole new form, one that doesn’t distinguish between thought and emotion. Between natural and manufactured. Water, and stone, and living tissue. All one. Peter will be among the greats.”

“It took a hare in the Garden of Cosmic Speculation for him to see it,” said Myrna.

“It took Peter growing into a brave man,” said Gamache. “Brave enough not to explain it away.”

“If we find No Man, we find Peter,” said Myrna.

“And maybe the tenth muse,” said Clara. “I’d like to meet her.”

“You already have,” said Chartrand. “You might not know who she is, but she’s someone in your life.”

“Ruth?” Clara mouthed to Myrna, and opened her eyes wide in mock-horror.

“Rosa?” Myrna mouthed back.

Clara chuckled at the thought and looked over the railing, to the woods and the rocks and the river. She wondered if the tenth muse could be a place. Like Charlevoix was for Gagnon. Home.

“I don’t understand why the Greeks would erase the tenth muse,” Myrna said. “You’d think she’d be more important than the other nine Muses, since the Greeks revered art.”

“Maybe that’s why,” said Gamache.

Across the terrasse, the backgammon players stopped rolling the dice and looked at him.

“Power,” he said. “Maybe the tenth muse was too powerful. Maybe she was banished because she was a threat. And what could be more threatening than freedom? Isn’t that what inspiration is? It can’t be locked up, or even channeled. It can’t be contained or controlled. And that’s what the tenth muse was offering.”

He looked from one to the other and rested his eyes on Clara.

“Isn’t that what Professor Norman, or No Man, was also offering? Inspiration? Freedom? No more rigid rules, no lockstep, no conformity. He was offering to help the young artists break away. Find their own way. And when their works were rejected by the establishment, he honored them.” Gamache held Clara’s eyes. “With their own Salon. And for his troubles he was despised, laughed at, marginalized.”

“Expelled,” said Clara.

“He built a small home here, in a clearing,” said Gamache. “But he wasn’t alone for long. Other artists were drawn to him. But only the failed ones, the desperate ones. The ones who’d tried everything else. And had nowhere else to turn.”

“A Salon des Refusés,” said Clara. “He’d created not an artist community, but a home for des refusés. Outcasts, misfits, refugees from the conventional art world.”

“He was their last hope,” said Myrna. Then after a pause she added, “A shame he was crazy.”

“I’ve been called that, lots of times,” said Clara. “God help me, even Ruth thinks I’m nuts. What’s crazy?”

Armand Gamache pressed on his device, and there, glowing on the table, was the photograph of a portrait of a madman.

No Man.

“That is,” he said.

* * *

The menu landed on the table the same instant Jean-Guy Beauvoir landed in a chair.

“La Muse,” he said. “The owner’s name is Luc Vachon and he was a member of No Man’s community. He drew that.” Beauvoir tapped the menu.

“What did he say about No Man and the colony?” Gamache asked, picking up the menu and looking at the picture.

“Nothing. He wasn’t at the brasserie. He takes off painting every year.”

“At this time?” asked Myrna. “He runs a brasserie and he leaves at the height of the tourist season?”

“Can you imagine a business owner doing that?” Clara stared at Myrna until the other woman laughed.

“Touché, little one,” said Myrna, and wondered briefly how her bookstore was doing under the management of Ruth and Rosa.

“When will this Vachon be back?” Clara asked.

“Couple of weeks,” said Beauvoir. “And no way to reach him. The fellow I spoke with said Vachon didn’t like talking about his time in the colony. He did admit that Vachon and No Man must’ve been fairly close, since No Man entrusted him with sending his paintings to a gallery down south.”