The Fake Artist

Chapter One

The Beginning

When Monsieur Le Scameur left Paris, he took none of his canvases with him.

He left behind the paints, the unfinished portraits, the invitations to exhibitions, and the first letters from gallery owners promising him a great future. Even the coat his mother had sewn for him, he is said to have forgotten in his studio.

Under his arm he carried only a baguette.

The people who saw him at the station took it for one of his strange performances. Even then, no one ever quite knew when Le Scameur was speaking seriously and when he was beginning to turn his own life into a legend.

Little is known for certain about Monsieur Le Scameur's childhood. He was born in France, though he named a different place in almost every conversation. Sometimes he spoke of a village between dry vineyards, sometimes of a small town where it rained more often than anywhere else in the country. Once he even claimed his hometown no longer existed.

About his father, he simply refused to speak.

When asked about him, Le Scameur would change the subject, tell a bad joke, or silently straighten his moustache. Only once, it is said, did he say:

"There are people from whom you inherit no memories – only the habit of not speaking of them."

His mother was a seamstress.

She sewed clothes for families who never asked her name, shortened trousers that weren't hers, replaced lost buttons, and mended coats that cost more than everything she owned.

On some evenings, once the last of the work was done, she would set needle and thread aside and take out a small box of old brushes and nearly dried-out paints.

Then she would paint.

No great landscapes, no famous figures. Mostly she painted simple things: a cup on the kitchen table, the light at the window, or an empty chair.

Le Scameur would sit beside her and watch in silence as a whole world took shape out of a few colours.

His mother never explained to him how to paint. She simply let him watch.

Perhaps that was her greatest gift to him.

While the other children played outside, Le Scameur often stayed by her side. He drew on scraps of fabric, on packaging, on the backs of old bills. When there was no paper left, he used the chalk his mother marked her fabric with.

The other children didn't understand his enthusiasm.

They laughed at him for giving feelings to colours and claiming that houses could look sad or lonely.

In time, Le Scameur stopped running after them.

The less understood he felt by people, the more he lost himself in art.

On paper, he had nothing to explain.

There, yellow was allowed to be bold.

Orange was allowed to offer comfort.

And grey was allowed to look as though it had lost something.

His first pictures were full of light. Even empty rooms, old streets, and ordinary objects seemed alive in them. Later, critics would describe these early works as almost magical.

Back then, Le Scameur owned almost nothing, but one thing was certain:

He could paint brilliantly.

As a young man, Le Scameur left his hometown and went to Paris.

Chapter Two

Solène

He arrived in the capital with a few clothes, a handful of brushes, and several rolled-up paintings. He had almost no money, but a confidence greater than anything he had actually achieved by that point.

Le Scameur did everything he could to become known in Paris.

Every morning he carried his paintings through the city, knocked on the doors of small galleries, and tried to convince art dealers and collectors of his talent. He attended exhibitions, spoke to strangers about his work, and left his name everywhere he hoped one day to be discovered.

Rejections didn't stop him. Every closed door only meant to him that he had to knock on the next one. He painted tirelessly, worked deep into the night, and was convinced that one day no one would be able to walk past his paintings without noticing them.

Le Scameur believed in himself.

He did not yet know that the most valuable thing in his life might already be waiting for him.

Nor that he would later give everything to return to it.

In his first months in Paris, Le Scameur lived almost only for his art. He carried his paintings through the city, sought out small galleries, and painted at night until the light in his studio went out.

Back then, Paris seemed to him a golden city.

Every street promised a possibility, every lit window a future. Le Scameur was convinced his fortune was waiting for him somewhere ahead – in some great gallery, in some famous painting, or in the success everyone had by then begun to talk about.

But fate had other plans.

On a rainy afternoon, Le Scameur took shelter in a small crêperie he had walked past countless times before.

It was no special place. The tables stood too close together, the chairs were worn, and thin drops of rain ran down the fogged-up windows. Le Scameur ordered the cheapest coffee on the menu and sat in a corner from which he could watch the guests.

Normally he would draw in such moments.

He studied unfamiliar faces, invented stories about people whose names he didn't know, and turned ordinary gestures into small dramas.

But that afternoon his page stayed blank.

At the window sat a young woman reading a book.

Beside her stood a crêpe with dulce de leche, of which she occasionally took a small bite without lifting her eyes from the page. Around her people talked, laughed, and clattered dishes, yet she seemed to notice none of it.

She seemed to be somewhere quieter.

Le Scameur could not tear his eyes from her.

Then, for one brief moment, she lifted her head.

And he fell in love.

Not slowly.

Not only after hearing her voice or learning her name.

It was enough simply to look at her.

Le Scameur later claimed that the light had fallen so warmly through the window that afternoon only because it wanted to reach her face. Her eyes, he said, carried something he could neither name nor ever paint properly.

When the owner said something to her and she smiled, he understood, he said, for the first time that a single person could make an entire city brighter.

Perhaps that was only one of his exaggerations.

Perhaps Le Scameur was already, even then, beginning to turn his memories into legend.

He wanted to go to her.

But Le Scameur, whose ego was bigger than any of his paintings, had never been afraid to enter a room or approach a stranger. Rejection was, in his view, something that only happened to other people.

But when he stood up and took a step toward her, he felt afraid for the first time in his life.

So the man who could turn any small thing into a great story sat silently at his table. He watched as she turned a page, brushed a strand of hair from her face, and finally closed her book.

Then she left the crêperie.

She hadn't noticed him.

Le Scameur sat there a long while, staring at the empty spot by the window.

In the days that followed, he kept coming back. Later he claimed the light in the crêperie was especially good for drawing.

In truth, he was only waiting for her.

Sometimes he stayed until closing. Other days he ordered coffee after coffee, though he barely had enough money for the first.

Then, on a Friday, she came back.

She sat down again at the table by the window, opened a book, and ordered a crêpe with dulce de leche.

This time, Le Scameur forced himself to stand.

He walked over to her table.

"Excuse me," he said. "I only wanted to ask what you're reading."

She looked up, smiled, and closed the book.

"My name is Solène," she said, holding out her hand. "The rest, you'll have to earn."

Le Scameur laughed.

It was the first of many conversations.

Le Scameur had never been a man of many words. Most conversations he ended with a nod or a smile. But when he was with her, he spoke more than ever before. As if she had awakened a language in him he hadn't known existed.

And that her smile would soon become more important to him than anything else in the world, he did not yet know at the time.

Before long, every Friday belonged only to them.

Some time later, Le Scameur gave her a portrait.

It showed Solène as he had seen her that first afternoon: at the window of the crêperie, a book before her, wrapped in warm light and at the same time so calm and unreachable, as though part of her belonged to another world.

Le Scameur said he had painted the picture just for her.

Solène studied it for a long time.

Then she smiled.

To Le Scameur, that smile was worth more than any exhibition, any good review, any painting he might ever sell.

To Solène, the portrait was a gift.

To Le Scameur, it was the beginning of everything.

They walked together through Paris, visited small bookshops, and spent hours in the crêperie where he had first seen her.

Solène always ordered dulce de leche.

Le Scameur claimed every time that he wanted to try something more unusual, yet always ended up eating part of hers.

He loved making her laugh.

For this he invented stories about the people at the other tables. A silent man by the window was a banished king. An elderly woman with a red scarf was a wanted art thief. A couple who never spoke loved each other, he claimed, so deeply that one more word would have become dangerous.

Solène laughed at his stories.

Not politely, not reservedly.

She laughed so honestly that she sometimes had to hide her face behind her hands.

Le Scameur would later try countless times to paint that smile.

He never managed it.

Solène came from a wealthy family. She attended university and moved in a world where the future could be planned, ordered, and explained.

Le Scameur, by contrast, was just a simple boy from the French provinces.

He had no respected degree, no secure career, and almost no money. All he had were his paintings, his grand promises, and the near-unshakeable belief that one day he would become someone of significance.

Solène knew her family would probably not accept him.

So she led two lives.

In one, she was the cultured daughter of a good family, expected to meet her family's expectations.

In the other, she met Le Scameur every Friday.

She ate crêpes with him, walked with him through small bookshops, and sat in his modest apartment while he painted.

Her family knew nothing of this second life.

Perhaps that was exactly what made their time together so precious.

Everything between them felt borrowed.

The walks.

The conversations.

The Fridays.

As if at any moment someone might open the door and call Solène back into her other life.

When they didn't have enough money for the crêperie, they bought a baguette and shared it.

Sometimes they ate on a park bench, sometimes on the steps of an old building. Often they sat in Le Scameur's small apartment – Solène with a book in her hand, he in front of his canvas.

Back then they had almost nothing.

An unreliable heater.

A draughty window.

Cheap wine.

And a baguette that had to be enough for two.

And yet Le Scameur was happy.

In Solène's presence he painted better than ever before. His yellow grew warmer, his orange more alive, and even his red no longer looked like a warning but like a promise.

He believed Solène was his muse.

Later he understood she had been more than that.

She had not only awakened the magic in his paintings.

She had been the magic.

But the more important Solène became to him, the greater his fear of losing her grew.

Le Scameur knew they came from different worlds. He feared her family might one day show her a life in which there was no room for a penniless artist from the provinces.

So he wanted to succeed faster.

Famous enough that no one would doubt him anymore.

Cultured enough in appearance that no one would ask about the degrees he lacked.

Rich enough that Solène would never have to choose between him and her family.

Perhaps that was why he stopped painting only for himself.

Perhaps he did it all for her.

He made Solène this promise:

"One day, when I have everything, I will still love you exactly as I do now, when I have nothing."

That promise would haunt him for the rest of his life.

For his ambition turned into obsession.

Le Scameur painted longer and longer, took on every exhibition, and searched endlessly for the work that would make his name immortal.

He arrived late to their meetings.

Sometimes he didn't show up at all.

Solène waited alone in the crêperie while her crêpe with dulce de leche slowly went cold.

When she asked him why he hadn't come, Le Scameur spoke of their shared future.

He was doing all of it for her.

After the next exhibition, everything would be calmer.

After the next painting sold.

After the great breakthrough.

But every goal reached was immediately replaced by a new one.

Le Scameur wanted to give her everything one day.

And yet in the present, he gave her less and less of himself.

The end did not come with a great confrontation.

There were no shouted accusations, no shattered glass, no door slammed in the middle of the night.

It began with silence.

Solène stopped reminding him of their meetings. Her messages grew shorter, her silences longer.

And she smiled less and less often.

Le Scameur noticed.

But instead of asking what she needed, he worked even harder. He believed he only had to succeed at last, and then her smile would return.

One day Solène wrote him a final message.

She apologised.

For what, Le Scameur never clearly revealed.

Perhaps for no longer being able to carry his love.

Perhaps for having lost herself between her two lives.

Perhaps simply for leaving.

After that, they never spoke to each other again.

No final meeting.

No further Friday.

No chance to say all the things they had both stayed silent about out of fear.

Solène was simply no longer there.

Chapter Three

The End of the Beginning

At first, Le Scameur waited.

Then he began to search for her.

He visited the cafés where they had sat together. He walked into every bookshop Solène had loved, moving slowly past the shelves.

He kept returning to the crêperie and sitting at the table by the window.

Sometimes he ordered two crêpes with dulce de leche.

The second one stayed untouched.

He searched the parks, the train stations, and the streets they had walked on Fridays. Sometimes he thought he glimpsed her smile in a crowd and followed a stranger through several alleyways.

But it was never Solène.

Le Scameur did not find her.

With every day, Paris lost a little more of its shine.

The cafés became rooms of empty chairs. The bookshops became places where Solène no longer stood among the shelves. Every street reminded him of a happy moment he hadn't recognised as such while he was still living it.

Paris was still the same city.

But without Solène, Le Scameur could no longer see it.

The once golden city turned grey.

And the longer he stayed there, the sicker it made him.

Le Scameur searched for her a while longer still.

But eventually he left Paris.

Not because he had stopped loving her.

But because Paris, without Solène, had lost all meaning.

Every street reminded him of her.

Every café, of a conversation.

Every crêpe, of a Friday.

And every memory hurt more than the last.

So he left.

Not because he could let go.

But because he could not.

Something else disappeared with him.

His magic.

The warm colours he had once been admired for slowly vanished from his paintings. The bright yellow turned grey. The orange lost its glow. Circles remained incomplete. Squares seemed to fall apart. His figures looked as though they had given up midway through being made.

As if every painting were searching for someone.

Perhaps for Solène.

Perhaps for the man Le Scameur had once been.

And it was precisely then that the world began to take an interest in his art.

The less his paintings meant to him, the more, suddenly, they meant to everyone else.

The galleries filled up.

Collectors fought over his work.

His paintings sold for sums he had once only dreamed of.

He bought expensive watches.

Beautiful cars.

Houses.

Originals by other artists.

He became famous.

He got everything he had once believed he was searching for.

But every new painting reminded him that he had long since stopped painting out of love.

He painted out of defiance.

Out of satire.

Sometimes even out of hatred for art itself.

For his obsession had taken from him exactly what had once made his life worth living.

For the first time, Le Scameur understood that success was never the same thing as happiness.

No one knows what became of Solène's portrait.

Perhaps she tore it up.

Perhaps it still hangs somewhere today.

Perhaps she sold it anonymously.

Until his last day, however, Le Scameur claimed it was the most valuable painting ever to bear his name.

Not because of its quality.

But because it was the only one she had ever looked at.

He sometimes imagined that she kept newspaper clippings about him.

Perhaps she secretly visited an exhibition.

Perhaps she once paused briefly in front of a painting.

Perhaps she recognised the small, hidden S that, since her disappearance, had appeared in almost every one of his works.

Perhaps not.

It was only an idea.

But he liked it.

More than any truth.

His greatest wish had long since stopped being to find her again.

He only hoped that somewhere she had found someone who still gave her the most beautiful smile in the world.

Only many years later did the truth about Solène's portrait come to light.

The painting Le Scameur had claimed his whole life to have painted himself had not come from him at all.

He had asked an unknown artist to draw Solène from his description.

When he gave it to her, he passed it off as his own work.

Perhaps he had been afraid his talent wouldn't be enough to impress her.

Perhaps, for a single moment, he had wanted to already be the artist he would only become years later.

Solène never learned the truth.

She never knew that their shared story had begun with a lie.

And she probably never knew that almost every painting created afterward was secretly meant for her.

When the deception came to light, the art world gave him a new name.

Monsieur Le Scameur.

The fake artist.

Le Scameur never spoke about it.

Perhaps he was ashamed.

Perhaps he knew they were right.

Or perhaps his whole life had simply been an attempt to turn that first lie into truth after the fact.

He wanted to become the artist Solène had once believed him to be.

By the time he finally managed it, she had long since disappeared.

From then on, Le Scameur always wore a large moustache.

Some believed it was part of his artistic persona.

Others thought he wanted to seem mysterious.

He himself never explained it.

Perhaps he didn't want to be recognised.

Perhaps he hoped for exactly the opposite.

He carried a baguette with him almost always.

Not out of hunger.

But for the unlikely chance that they might one day meet again by accident.

Then they could share it.

Just like before.

He knew it would probably never happen.

But the thought kept him alive.

When people later asked Le Scameur when he had been happiest in his life, he never spoke of his fame.

Never of his exhibitions.

Never of the millions.

Never of the expensive watches, cars, or paintings.

He always gave the same answer.

"When I had nothing."

Back then he had almost no money.

No security.

No certainty that anyone would ever see his art.

Often a single crêpe was enough.

Or a baguette they shared.

But Solène sat across from him.

And she smiled.

Le Scameur had believed his whole life that he first had to achieve everything in order to be happy.

Only once he had everything did he understand that his greatest happiness already lay far behind him.

When he owned nothing.

Except their time together.

Of everything he later gained, nothing ever came close to Solène's smile.

For it was the one thing he could never paint.

And at the same time the one thing he had wished to have back for the rest of his life.

After Solène left him, Le Scameur rarely spoke of his past.

To this day, no one knows how much of his story was really true.

Did he even speak French?

Did Solène really exist?

Or was she only the invention of a man so obsessed with success that he no longer knew himself where his art ended and his lie began?

Perhaps Le Scameur was a great artist.

Perhaps he was only a great impostor.

He was probably both.