The young boy was sitting on the bench outside the atelier. In his hands was a battered fiddle. But the sound coming from the instrument belied its shabby appearance. It was pure, sweet and extraordinary.

‘Where did you learn to play like that?’ he asked the boy in astonishment when the piece had ended.

As usual, he received only a piercing gaze in return.

‘Who gave you the fiddle? Landowski?’

His question elicited a nod.

Recalling Landowski’s words, Laurent surveyed the boy carefully. ‘I see,’ he said quietly, ‘that like any artist, you speak through your craft. Truly, you have a gift. Treasure it, won’t you?’

The boy nodded, and gave him a sudden smile of gratitude. Laurent placed a hand on his shoulder, and, with a small wave of goodbye, he wandered off to further contemplate his own misery in the bars of Montparnasse.

Maia

July 2007

Last Quarter

16; 54; 44

46

I stared at Yara as she finally lapsed into silence, then looked up at the portrait of Izabela that hung on the wall above the fireplace, thinking of the dreadful decision my great-grandmother had been forced to make. I simply had no idea what I would have done in the circumstances. Even though we’d lived at different times, in different cultures, the underlying dilemmas had not changed at all, especially for women . . .

‘So did Gustavo ever mention what he had discovered to Bel?’ I asked Yara.

‘No, never. But even though he may not have outwardly spoken the words, my mother always said she could see the pain in his eyes. Especially when he looked at his daughter.’

‘Senhora Carvalho? Her first name is Beatriz, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I myself remember Senhor Gustavo once entering the drawing room when the two of us were ten or eleven. He stared at his daughter for a long time, almost as though she was a stranger. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I think now that perhaps he was trying to decide whether she could possibly be his blood. Senhora Beatriz was born with green eyes, you see, which my mother once said were reminiscent of Senhor Laurent’s.’

‘So your mother suspected that he was Beatriz’s natural father?’

‘When she told me the story before she died, she said she had never been in any doubt,’ Yara explained. ‘According to her, Senhora Beatriz was the image of Senhor Brouilly and she also had artistic talents. She was only just in her teens when she painted that portrait of Izabela.’ Yara pointed to the painting. ‘I remember her saying that she wanted to do it in memory of her poor dead mother.’

‘Izabela died while Beatriz was still a child?’

‘Yes,’ Yara nodded. ‘We were both eighteen months old and it was just when the Cristo was being blessed and inaugurated on Corcovado Mountain in 1931. There was an outbreak of yellow fever in Rio and Senhora Beatriz and I were confined to the house. But of course, Senhora Izabela insisted on going to watch the Cristo ceremony. Given her history, it obviously meant a lot to her. Three days later, she went down with the fever and never recovered. She was only twenty-one.’