Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

21 Mona Lisa

› 21 ‹ Mona Lisa — — — — — — — 19 2 1 — — — — — — — John Leecy was concerned, of course, but not surprised that we had quit our jobs as theater stagehands, and then decided to become expatriate native artists, a painter and a writer, in Paris. He respected our ambitions, and he actually assumed that we would have returned much earlier to France. My published stories about our experiences were persuasive, and even more inviting was the exhibition and sale of blue ravens at the Galerie Crémieux. Most natives were not recognized as citizens, not even veterans, so we decided to apply for passports. We avoided the federal agent, of course, and traveled by train to the Federal Office Building and Custom House in Minneapolis. Father Aloysius prepared copies of our birth and baptismal records. We used as our home address the Waverly Hotel. The postal service was not reliable, and we worried that the federal agent might open our package from the Division of Passport Control. Pickel delivered the passports to Patch at the train station in Minneapolis. Aloysius bought several books of fine art paper in preparation for our departure . The cost of an ocean liner ticket was about three weeks of our salary at the Orpheum Theatre. We had expected the cost to be much more expensive. The meals and wine were included in the price of the tickets. The France departed from New York that late December and docked about seven days later in the port of Le Havre, France. The majestic, spacious , and luxurious four-funnel ocean liner had been commissioned nine years earlier, and during the war transported soldiers to France, and then at the end of the war returned the wounded to New York. John Clement Beaulieu, our cousin, served with an army engineer company and was transported to war on the France. The refurbished liner accommodated some two thousand passengers, more than the entire population of the White Earth Reservation. Aloysius painted in the Salon Ravel in the morning and on the enclosed 212 G e r a l d v i Z e N o r and warmer starboard deck in the afternoon, and at night we dined with hundreds of other tourist-class passengers. Stories of actual and imagined adventures were practiced and interrelated, and many tourist recitations were restyled overnight. I sauntered on the decks in the morning, watched the mighty surge of waves creased by the bow, and in the afternoon marked the seethe of the ocean at the stern of the ship. The steady hum of the steam engines moved through my body night and day. The pages of my notebook were heavy from the ocean spray. My visual notes, scenes, descriptions of characters, and outlines of stories were mostly about the crew and passengers. I imagined and merged the unique characteristics of more than thirty tourists, and created conversations between the characters. I met several passengers who intended to visit war memorial cemeteries , and to honor the remains of immediate relatives, but most of the passengers seemed to be on holiday, and boasted about their rich associations and accomplishments in business and various professions, but not the arts. The tourists were consummate by steady boasts and admissions, but most of the stories seemed to be uncertain poses of some fantastic proficiency. I never heard even one tourist mention melancholy, doubt, fear, or a natural totem in their stories. Such exclusions were sensible, no doubt, because no ordinary worries, moods, or totems would survive the great voyage of revision and conceit. We were afloat with many cocky braggers, a tourist liner of wags, grousers, and jesters. I listened to the steady boasters and then decided to counter with my own elaborate stories. My actual recounts of experiences were not ornate enough to hold the attention of the tourist posers and gloaters. So, we participated in the liner dinner game to conceive the uncommon and then overstate the obvious. My start that night was to imagine the presence of the trader Odysseus, and to create a tricky story in his memory. Guillaume Apollinaire became my brother in one elaborate story. The French poet was famous, of course, and died in the First World War. I did not mention influenza as the tragic cause of his death. My brother stole the Mona Lisa was the first overstatement that captured the attention of the audience at dinner. Aloysius, my actual brother, burst into laughter, and contributed an ironic gesture, a finger wag caution not to reveal...