The Art Collector of Le Marais

By Ahmad Ardalan

In the city of lights, Paris, the art capital of the world, how can one man stand above the rest?

Ever since young Sebastian heard of his grandfather's chance meeting with the great Victor Hugo in 1877, he had been interested in literature, paintings, and poetry. Wandering around various libraries and museums at an early age only stirred that curiosity into an immense passion within him, a deep love and desire for art. After realizing his dream of opening a gallery in the Le Marais district of Paris, Sebastian faces one hurdle after another. Bad luck, Betrayal, revenge, and fierce competition carry him to the verge of total collapse and failure, but through it all, one question remained: How much of his life would Sebastian sacrifice for art, his first true love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ahmad Ardalan
• Release date: Jan 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386442080

Ahmad Ardalan

Ahmad Ardalan was born in Baghdad in 1979. At the age of two, he moved with his parents to Vienna, Austria, where he spent most of his childhood and underwent his primary studies. After his father's diplomatic mission finished at the end of 1989, he returned to Iraq, where he continued his studies and graduated from the University of Dentistry. As a result of the unstable political, military, social, and economic conditions in his home country, Ahmad decided to leave Iraq and move to the UAE. After facing difficulties to pursue his career in dentistry, he opted to pursue employment in the business world. Since then, Ardalan has held several senior roles within the pharmaceutical and FMCG industries, throughout much of the Middle East. His early childhood in a mixed cultural environment, as well as his world travels, increased his passion for learning about cultures of the world and inspired him to pen The Clout of Gen, his first novel. After eleven years of being away, Ahmad returned to Baghdad in January 2013 on a visit that was full of mixed emotions. Inspired by his trip to Iraq, he wrote his second novel, The Gardener of Baghdad. He did not stop there, as "Matt" his latest Short Story Thriller Series will be available beginning 2015. The Gardener of Baghdad, opened readers’ eyes to a different picture of the city they had heard of. With hope and love as his message, Ardalan released Baghdad: The Final Gathering, and followed it by The Boy of the Mosque.

Book preview

This novel is a work of fiction, and of the author’s imagination.

A picture is a poem without words

Horace

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1

• Chapter 2

• Chapter 3

• Chapter 4

• Chapter 5

• Chapter 6

• Chapter 7

• Chapter 8

• Chapter 9

• Chapter 10

• Epilogue

Prologue

One hundred and fifty million pounds for Signor Arthur once again, says the old Italian from Lecce.

Sighs erupt all over the room.

One hundred and fifty million? a quirky, low voice resonates from among the throng in attendance.

Shh!

One hundred and fifty million pounds, going once...going twice...going—

One hundred and seventy! cries the distinctive voice of Mr. Arnold from the third row. The private dealer is tall and fair-skinned, with pencil-line mustache on his face, dressed in a distinguished gray and black pin-striped suit.

The sighs and gasps echo even louder throughout the eighteenth-century auction house in Central London on the beautiful Monday, May 17, 2010. It has been a brutal cat-and-mouse game between the two gentlemen for at least twenty minutes; the early contenders ceased their bids as soon as the painting price rocketed above thirty-five million pounds.

Arthur nods respectfully to Arnold, conceding in silence, then stands and makes his way out of the room.

One hundred and seventy million pounds going once...going twice...gone! Sold to Signor Arnold, ladies and gentlemen, at a record price for the day, I might add! declared the auctioneer, Roberto, an elegant 80-year-old of small stature but with a voice of lion. And with that, the auction is concluded. Thank you for coming.

Fantastic applause roars through the air, but in spite of all that noise, I could not hear a thing. I could only feel the tears forming in my eyes.

Father, you did it! You sold it. One Hundred and seventy million pounds, my Juliette whispers in my ear.

We said seventy-five schools this morning. Now, it’s 250, Juliette, 250! I replied, pulling my daughter into a happy embrace.

Chapter One

My sister Catherin and I sat just outside the dimly lit bedroom, with our ears pressed firmly against the door. I could make out some of what was being said, and I could clearly hear my mother’s faint crying as she sat by my grandfather’s bedside. He had been bedridden for the last ten tiring days, and even at just 10 years old, I understood what a harsh reality death was. I also knew my grandfather was close to it. A few hours earlier, Mother had taken my sister and me in the room to say our farewells. We just kissed him and said a few words, and he didn’t even respond. Truly, it was a sad demise for a man who’d spent his life as such a flamboyant soul.

Dr. Jacques, our grumpy and bold but helpful neighbor, had been stopping by for the last week or so. He was a faithful friend to our grandfather for decades, despite being fourteen years his junior. They loved sharing a smoke on the balcony and had been doing so for as long as I could recall. I would never forget my grandfather smoking his brown, wooden pipe with the golden handle and Dr. Jacques taking puffs from his black pipe with the steel handle, for it was their ritual every evening until my grandfather took ill.

Dr. Jacques was visiting again, dressed in a plain, white shirt and blue trousers. He stuck around for a few hours after our farewell, and when the door finally opened, he followed my mother out and closed the door behind them. My mother, so emotionally overwhelmed, couldn’t bear to utter a word, so she went straight to her room. Dr. Jacques was sweating profusely when he knelt down and, in a low, sad voice told us our grandfather had died.

The next day, my grandfather was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, about fifteen minutes away. Over a hundred came to pay their respects, despite the soaking, heavy rain on that March morning in 1956.

My own father died very young, taken from us by tuberculosis, so my grandfather was a father to me and more. He loved sharing his life stories with us, and he was passionate about art, reading, and traveling. Listening to him inspired me at an early age, but one story in particular changed my life. He must have talked about his alleged meeting with the great Victor Hugo a dozen times. My mother never really believed it, but deep inside, I felt he was telling the truth.

Just past noon on a summer day in 1877, my great-grandmother asked my grandfather, just 6 at the time, to run an errand near their home in Place des Vosges, in the Marais District, between the third and fourth arrondissements of Paris. She was cooking lunch for a family friend visiting from Bordeaux, and she was none too happy to discover that my mother’s uncle, my grandfather’s younger brother, had nibbled on the bread she’d held back for the meal. It would be far too embarrassing, after all, to serve bread with little bite marks in it here and there. My mother’s uncle was penalized with a slap on his hand, and my grandfather was ordered to the nearby bakery to get a fresh loaf. Come back as fast as lightning now! his mother demanded.

After my grandfather luckily purchased the last loaf at the bakery, he headed home. On his way, he noticed a small but striking white cat with a golden collar. Like most boys his age, he couldn’t resist the temptation to follow the animal, and it led him to the gardens of the Hotel de Sully. The foliage and orchards were majestic, a wide array of roses and flowers bursting with all imaginable colors. It was spectacularly landscaped, in a fashion worthy of one of the most important buildings built in Paris in the seventeenth century by famous architect Jean Androuet du Cerceau.

My grandfather wasted a few minutes looking anxiously for the cat, but there was no sign of the wayward pet. He glanced up at the sky and remembered that the hour was growing late and that his impatient mother would have a fit if he ruined her lunch by not returning with the bread in a hurry. With that on his mind, he ran as fast as his young legs would carry him.

As he took a sharp turn in the artistic labyrinth of lovely gardens, he bumped into an old man; in fact, he collided so hard with the stranger that he knocked some paper and a big, green apple out of his hands. The man helped the boy up. My grandfather was about to apologize to the elder one with the strange hat when he recognized that he’d crashed into none other than Victor Hugo, one of the most prominent figures in Paris, a great writer and a man of infinite knowledge, the living legend behind one of his favorite stories, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Of course, Victor Hugo was also known as a man of outspoken opinion and temper. My grandfather recalled that just staring into his eyes made him shiver and tied his tongue, so he could not say a word.

Surprisingly, Victor Hugo boasted an unexpected smile and said, You must be saving us from the Prussian army, running like that, young boy.

I am sorry, really sorry, but my mother will kill me if I don’t get this bread back in time. We have a guest, and lunch must be served soon, my grandfather replied, all fear gone in the wake of the man’s generous smile.

"Tell your mother, patience. As long as there is food, everyone will eat in the end. Tell her Victor Hugo made Napoleon wait for an hour one day, yet here I am, alive and well! Run along, boy. Au revoir," the great man said before he retrieved his apple from the ground and made his way to one of the benches to eat it.

That encounter, true or not, had been proudly retold  for generations. Can you believe that happened to me? The hat, the smile, the green apple... he told the doubters, always punctuating his tale with a big chuckle.

After my grandfather passed away, the encounter he talked about ran through my head a hundred times. As a result, I became obsessed with Hugo’s work, and that whetted my appetite for the writings of other greats. I visited museums and exhibitions all over France, sat down in countless libraries and buried my nose in books, old scrolls, and manuscripts. Poring over that historical literature piqued my interest in other things, and I began to develop a passion for art, paintings, and sculpture. From an early age, I knew exactly where I’d end up one day.

I was lucky enough to be brought up in a household that could afford to support my many ventures, thanks to my grandfather, who’d done well for himself in life. After his literal collision with the great Victor Hugo, he also fell in love with literature, plays, and the opera. After graduating from Sorbonne University with high marks in English language and literature, he opened a small library of his own for a few years. He knew there was a shortage of printing presses, for many books—English ones in particular—were too quickly out of print. Those produced by small publishers were rare and difficult to find; sometimes it took several months to get new additions. So, he started his own company and gave it his family name, Russeau, with intent to target the suppliers of foreign books. His place started as a small company, but it grew and grew as he built a strong reputation among his peers through his hard work and dedication.

Later in life, he married his neighbor’s daughter, my late grandmother, Sophie. One of the most beautiful women in all of Paris, my grandfather and mother used to say about her, and that was proven by the photographs of her. Truly, she was a work of art all her own.

Things were going great for them, until first word of war came to them. In his forties, my grandfather was called to serve in the army reserves. When his unit was mobilized, he found himself involved in the war, based in the Alsace-Lorraine region. My grandmother and my mother were left alone in Paris, and they lived off the money earned by the company before it was forced to close down for several years in my grandfather’s absence. When the war ended, he came back to resume his work, but it took another decade to put the business back in order. Nevertheless, his efforts reaped some success once more, till World War II interrupted their lives and the Nazis took over Paris.

My father, a worker at the printing press, met my mother one day when she came to walk her father home. They spent a few years getting to know one another before they married, back in 1935. For a long while, they tried to have children, only to be disappointed. Then, when World War II erupted, my father enlisted in the French army.

Dad’s regiment suffered huge defeats at the cruel hands of the advancing, merciless Nazis. He luckily survived, only to be imprisoned for three years in Dresden in Germany. During his absence, my grandfather had to manage the press alone. Even worse, the place was closed several times by the Nazis, with accusations of spreading anti-Nazi propaganda, for Paris was flooded with leaflets encouraging the French resistance. When it was proven that none of the accusations were sound, the facility reopened, but the damage had been done. Business was scarce during that poverty epidemic. Life was miserable for everyone then, and my grandparents were not immune to the suffering. In fact, they barely survived those difficult days under the oppressive Nazi occupation.

When the allies finally secured victory, my father returned. Of course, he was not the same man; he died inside while he was jailed and tortured by those devils. Miraculously, my parents were blessed with two kids, me first and my sister two years later. The blessing stopped there though.

Three years after the war, my father met his end when he just fell asleep and never woke up. A week later, my grandmother Sophie joined him, leaving my mother, my sister, and me to rely on the old man. My mother sold the flat I’d grown up in, and we all moved into my grandfather’s place, a cozy three-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a eighteenth-century, three-story building. There were two flats on each floor, and we shared our floor with Dr. Jacques, who lived alone.

At first, it was very hard for all of us to adjust, but under the guidance of my grandfather and through her own strong will, my mother gradually took over for her old man, and we managed to move on. We kids kept busy with school, and in the summers, we played with the other neighborhood children or ran around the printing press, fascinated by all those loud machines.

The facility was just over 2,000 square feet. It occupied the whole ground floor of a small, two-story building within the Latin Quarter, just two streets away from the beautiful Pantheon. Four workers were managed by my mother, under the supervision of my grandfather. In his later days, the old man took it easy. He often only worked half-days and spent the rest of his time entertaining us. He loved to take us to the Jardin du Luxembourg garden, where we played around the fountain and floated our toy wooden boats while he read his books. On the cold, rainy days, we spent our days at home with him; he loved telling us stories of his war days as he cooked lunch for us, and more than once, he told us his tale of the day he met Victor Hugo.

"The man of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?" I asked.

"Always mention Les Misérables first, Sebastian," Grandfather always answered.

After his death, the work and burden of handling it all on her own became a bit tiring for her. The machines did not function as well, for they were old and worn out, in need of costly repairs. Mother had no choice but to sell the press to a bigger company, but she was offered a good price. I studied history, but Catherin was more interested in love; she married a young businessman who had just started a goldmining company in South Africa. A few years later, she gave birth to twin girls, and she rarely came back to Paris.

I loved my days at the university. I was fulfilling my dream of learning more about history and culture, and my adoration of it reflected in my studies, as I excelled in every subject. I knew I was fortunate to be sent to Greece and Iraq for a month with three other students during my last year, as part of a German-French delegation sent to study historical sites. I loved learning about the Greeks, but I was even more interested in the Assyrians. Visiting Athens and Mosul was the climax of that trip. It was enthralling for me to see firsthand what humanity had achieved thousands and thousands years ago, with so few resources.

I easily landed a job in the library at the Louvre after my studies. There, I was surrounded by sculpture, paintings, and manmade wonders, and I enjoyed every minute of my job. I was the first there in the morning and didn’t mind leaving hours after my shift, as long as I got home in time to enjoy one of my mother’s home-cooked meals and a glass or two of the finest red wine. Our living area, that little haven of ours, was lovingly adorned with its own beauty, small landscape paintings, carpets, and sculptures. My mother and work were my life back then, and I was my mother’s world. Every night, she was eager to hear every detail about my day at The Louvre. Through our talks, she became more knowledgeable than most when it came to history. She also visited the museum a few times a month, and she never missed a special exhibition. Often, our chatter kept us up till just before midnight, and only then would she gently excuse herself and go to bed.

Mom always fell asleep within minutes, but I always stayed up to wash the dishes. Afterward, I poured myself another glass of wine and sat in the black rocking chair in the corner of our living room, the same chair my grandfather occupied for years. I loved to turn down the overhead lights and just read by the dim flickering of a six-candle candelabra. I loved that welcoming corner of the living room more than any spot in the house; there was just something endearing about it: the beautiful dark brown corner table with a silky, golden cloth half-covering it; the small, colorful Herend porcelain hummingbird statue; and the lovely bohemian crystal ashtray at my side. There were so many delicate treasures there, things my grandfather had purchased during his world travels.

In that little corner, I immersed myself in books about artists, not only about their work but also diaries and biographies, stories about their personal lives. Our museum library was rich with such books, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. One day, I was living in the world of Van Gogh. The next, I was in Manet’s domain. If I was not in the mood for reading, I just picked up my guitar, a birthday gift from my sister several years prior. Throughout the years, I learned to master the instrument, and I loved to practice the few songs I knew. When I tired of reading or playing, I blew out the candles and headed to my bed for six or so hours of sleep.

On workdays, I woke up early to bathe and enjoy a cup of coffee, fresh brewed by my mother, who was always up around six a.m. She liked to brew the coffee slowly, as she read the daily paper, and she always prepared a sandwich for me to take for my lunch. That was our daily routine during the week, but we did things a bit differently on the weekends.

On Friday nights, I often joined some friends at a small bar in Saint German. My mother invited her two best friends, Mrs. Susanne and Mrs. Claudia, over. The women were both in their early sixties, widows and retired school teachers. The ladies spent their Friday evenings talking, drinking, and smoking dainty little cigarettes that were carefully packed in their handcrafted silver boxes with their initials engraved on them.

After six years of working in the museum library, I was promoted to head one of the treasury storage rooms. While the museum proudly put many items on

Reviews for The Art Collector of Le Marais

[Firas Abdulmajeed · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The writer paints a story that took me through its events as if I was living them!