The Restoration Artist Read Free Page B

story.”
    Piero moved nearer to the fresco and stood with his face close to that of Lazarus, peering at it intently. He stood with such silent concentration, almost as if he were listening, that I reached out gently and put a hand on his shoulder.
    He took a few steps backward, looking at the figures, then turned and hurried out again into the daylight, leaving me alone with the painting. Tiny motes of dust hung in the shafts of light emanating from the window openings, and from outside came the murmur of doves cooing. The sounds, which should have been soothing, gave me a feeling of disquiet.
    Moments later two piercing blasts from a whistle outsidebroke the silence. I raised my head and listened. The whistle called again, summoning me. I left the painting and made my way to the door.
    Halfway up the slope, Piero stood looking up to where Claudine waited just near the summit of the ridge. She was turned away, observing something out of sight. For a moment I felt I was still looking at a painting—two figures isolated in an elemental stillness, a mother and child in a landscape, looking or listening to something only they could perceive, that I would never see.
    Piero blew the whistle again. Two notes, one rising, the second descending.
    The whistle had been a gift from me. A couple of weeks earlier, on a visit to Jardin des Plantes, which was crowded with tourists and groups of school children, I had become separated from him. I’d been gazing at one of the statues along the walkway, and when I turned, the boy was gone. I rushed around in a panic, shouting his name, my heart gone cold with terror. It was probably only seconds later that a smiling Piero emerged from behind the plinth on which the statue stood. It was a game to him, but I had fallen to my knees and grabbed the boy into my embrace with such ferocity that Piero had patted me on the back, saying, “I’m here, Papa. I’m here.”
    A few days later I had stopped to look into the window of one of the antiques stores along rue Saint-Paul. On a lower shelf I noticed a silver whistle of the kind that referees use in sporting events, but smaller and engraved with an intricate floral design. As coincidence would have it, the name of the manufacturer was also engraved on the surface—
Piero
.
    “If you get lost again and can’t find me,” I told Piero when I presented it to him, “just blow on the whistle and I will come to you.”
    He ran his finger over the engraving with a look of pleased amazement. But when he tested it and filled the apartment with piercing blasts, I covered my ears and retreated to the studio to escape the noise. A little later I become aware that the whistle was sounding two repeated notes, softly, the first a bit higher and briefer in pitch than the second, like a bird call. I realized that the sounds mimicked the syllables of my name—
Lee-oooh, Leee-oooh
. When I opened the studio door, Piero was standing at the other end of the hall with the whistle to his lips.
    “It works, Papa. You came,” Piero had said to me.
    Now, the whistle sounded a third time. The scene came to life. Claudine beckoned to me, waving her sun hat. Piero raised both arms in a salute. I walked up to join them.
    Claudine had spread a blanket on the dry grass and unpacked the lunch we’d purchased in Famagusta before setting out: goat cheese wrapped in sage leaves; a sort of pancake filled with herb-seasoned meat; a baklava of honey and nuts; and a flask of Commandaria, a local sweet wine. I fetched a bottle of water from the back seat and sat down in the shade of the car.
    “This is a wonderful spot, Leo,” Claudine said, leaning against me and placing a cup of wine in my hand. “I’m glad we came.”
    I kissed her and ran my fingers through her hair. “And I’m glad you’re here to see this with me. You should go and have a look at the fresco afterwards. It’s really fantastic.”
    When lunch was over, I helped Claudine tidy up, then collected my