Chasing Cezanne Read Online Free Page A

aisle.”
    Andre checked his boarding card against the seat number, and saw that he was sitting in his allotted seat. He showed the stub to the young woman.
    â€œYou don’t understand,” she said. “I’m window sensitive.”
    Andre had never encountered this particular affliction and certainly didn’t want to hear about it for the next seven hours. For the sake of a peaceful flight, he offered his aisle seat to the young woman, whose mood brightened visibly. He moved across to the window seat, watching as she arranged documents and a laptop computer in front of her to create the necessary business environment. Not for the first time, the thought crossed his mind that modern travel was a vastly overrated pastime: crowded, tedious, often uncomfortable, and almost always irritating.
    â€œDon’t you love travel?” said the young woman, her good humor now fully restored by her having had her own way. “I mean, getting to go to the south of France. It’s so …”
    â€œFrench?”
    She looked sideways at Andre, unsure of how to respond. He nodded at her and opened his book. She returned to the contents of her laptop.
    The airline passenger seeking a few hours of undisturbed silence is most vulnerable during the serving of meals, when feigning sleep is out of the question and hiding behind a book while eating is physically impossible. As the trolley laden with gourmet-in-the-sky dinners approached, Andre was aware of occasional glances from his neighbor, who had abandoned her communion with the laptop and seemed poised for another attempt at conversation. And so, when the inevitable piece of frequentflier chicken landed in front of him, he slipped on his headset, bent over his tray, and tried to distract himself from the cooking by reflecting on his future.
    He had to stop traveling so much. His social life, his love life, and his digestion were all suffering. He camped, nothing more, in his studio in Manhattan; cartons of books and clothes were still unopened, eight months after he’d moved in. His New York friends, tired of speaking to a machine, had virtually given up calling him. His French friends from university days in Paris all seemed to be having children and settling down. Their wives accepted Andre, but with reservations and some suspicion. He was known to chase girls. He stayed up too late. He liked a drink. In other words, he was matrimonially threatening and was regarded as a bad influence on young husbands not yet completely come to terms with the pleasures and constraints of domesticity.
    He might have been lonely, but he didn’t have the time even for that. His life was work. Fortunately, he loved it; most of it, at any rate. Camilla, it was true, was becoming more eccentric and dictatorial with every issue of
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. She had also developed a tiresome habit of insisting that Andre take close-ups of paintings, which, he had noticed, seldom appeared with the published article. But the money was good, and he was building a reputation for himself as one of the top interior photographers in the business. A couple of publishers had already approached him about doing a book. Next year, he promised himself, he’d do it: work at his own speed, pick his own subjects, be his own boss.
    He gave up his halfhearted attempts to conquer the chicken, switched off his light, and leaned back. Tomorrow there would be real food. He closed his eyes and slept.
    The familiar smell of France welcomed him as he passed through Immigration and into the main concourse of Nice airport, a smell whose components he had often tried to analyze. Part strong black coffee, part tobacco, a soupçon of diesel fuel, a waft of eau de cologne, the golden scent of pastry made with butter—it was as distinctive as the national flag and, for Andre, the first pleasure of being back in the country where he had spent so much of his youth. Other airports smelled bland and international. Nice