Cooking for Picasso (6 page)

There were shrieks of laughter as the girls popped out of the car and then slid into the front seat beside the driver. Ondine carefully passed her tray to the boys in the back, then the waiters placed their stackable trays on top of hers until the whole thing nearly touched the inside of the car's roof. Ondine asked the driver, “Who should I give the instructions to? Some of these need to be warmed up.”

One of the young men heard her and said, “Better come with us,
chérie,
and explain it all to our hostess.” The driver jerked his head at Ondine and she had no choice but to slip into his front seat where the giggling girls were now crammed.

“Onward, sir! Here, Ondine, have some champagne,” shouted the first fellow as he passed her a glass. The car lurched away so she sipped hastily, just to keep her drink from spilling. It was very good—like cool, golden sunlight in a glass. Ondine, crushed between the car door on one side and a girl's corsage on the other, felt dizzy from the mingled perfume that transformed the auto into a hothouse of orchids and gardenias. And each time the driver made a turn his passengers whooped and exaggerated the swerve, leaning chummily against one another.

“Hooray for my birthday party!” shouted one of the girls.

Her friend announced pertly, “We all know why you've dragged us down here; it's because you're in love with a boy from Nice! You should have come to
my
party in Paris last week. Jean Renoir showed up, just to persuade Coco Chanel to design costumes for his next film. Renoir insisted that, since she did the costumes for one of Cocteau's ballets, there is
no way
she can refuse
him
now. I heard Picasso painted the backdrops for that ballet, you know. I wonder if he'll do that for Renoir's film, too?”

This caused the birthday girl to squeal, “Did
Picasso
come to your party? I'd
so
like to meet him!”

“No, don't you know that nobody can find Picasso these days? He's simply disappeared. I hear he's gone to the Orient to paint geisha girls! Would you pose nude for him?
I
would!” the other girl said.

One of their escorts insisted, “Picasso's not in the Orient. I know for a fact that he's gone to Spain.”

Ondine stifled a giggle. The champagne was making her wonder how they'd react if she blurted out her big secret:
Hah! Picasso is a mere stone's throw away from us this very minute!

For the car was cruising past the steep hill that Ondine had cycled up only this afternoon. But she remained silent as they moved on, circling along the coast and then up another hill to the long, private driveway of a large white villa with an array of autos parked haphazardly near it. The limousine had barely come to a stop when one of the men jumped out and opened the front door that Ondine was leaning on.

When she tumbled out, he caught her by the elbow with impeccable good manners. “Whoops! May I have this dance?” he joked. Picking up a tray he shouted, “Come on, let's all help Ondine carry the food!” His friends took the remaining trays and the group plunged across the lawn leading to the villa, where Chinese lanterns glowed in the deepening darkness.

“Here we are!” he called out to a tall, slender older woman with alabaster skin, who came gliding across the lawn toward them, her long neck making her look like a swan. She must be the hostess, for she had a natural air of authority.

Ondine's escort declared, “
Voilà!
Where do you want this luscious food?”

The swan-woman answered, “
Mes enfants,
bring them to the kitchen.” Ondine heard the tinkling of piano and violins tuning up inside the house. Still carrying her tray, she followed the young people to the terrace, where waiters were offering drinks to guests who wafted about in billowing silk and chiffon.

But now the hostess stepped in front of her, blocking her path and signalling to a waiter to take Ondine's tray away. Ondine hastily tried to explain which appetizers needed heating.

“Thank you very much,” the hostess said in a firm, dismissive tone. “My chef will know what to do. Good night.”

Ondine flushed as if she'd been accused of trying to steal the family silver. She had come so close to the villa that she could see through the long windows into the dining room, where a magnificent table was laid with crystal and china and glowing candlelight. The guests wafted inside, silhouetted against the light, looking just as Ondine had been taught that carefree angels moved about in heaven.

She backed away, returning to the parking area where the limousine remained, but it was empty and the driver had disappeared. Clearly she was not going home in the same style in which she'd arrived. She would have no other choice but to walk back to the café tonight.

The day had started out so promisingly and excitingly, but now, as Ondine trudged through the inky darkness of the streets, although the taste of champagne was still tingling on her tongue, she felt a certain bitterness in her heart. She even felt foolish for having hopes of a happier, better future where she might discover what kind of woman she was destined to become.

“I'll bet that, all over the world, rich and important people are just the same as this lady was tonight. So what makes me think I can go out into the Great World and be welcomed with open arms, when I've got no husband, no money and nothing to recommend me?” Ondine scornfully chided herself. “They'll never let me in, and that means my life will
never
change, no matter what I do or where I go!”

Yet as she reached the harbor, a shooting star flashed across the black sky with such dramatic beauty that Ondine caught her breath, and something new occurred to her.

“Those people at the party tonight just
wish
they could meet Picasso, and I already have!
He
didn't treat me like a gate-crasher. He liked me—he even asked my opinion of his work.”

It dawned on her that perhaps today's omens meant that she did not have to venture far away in pursuit of a better destiny. Maybe, just maybe, Picasso was bringing the Great World to her doorstep, right here in Juan-les-Pins.

P
ABLO
P
ICASSO WISHED HE HADN'T
bothered to read today's mail. It disrupted his newfound peace of mind, which was as delicate as a young green shoot in spring. At first, when he arrived in Juan-les-Pins, the forecast was not auspicious; the weather had gone damp and chilly, making him wonder if he'd made a mistake in retreating here out of season. For awhile he'd simply slept a dozen hours each day—and that itself was a miracle, after so many sleepless nights in Paris.

Then, when he finally ran out of the provisions he'd travelled with, he put on an old coat and hat and slipped into town, roaming the small neighborhoods, enjoying the whole cloak-and-dagger drama of sneaking out of Paris and escaping here
incognito
. He gravitated to the lively, friendly Café Paradis, run by locals who seemed to know how to mind their own business. He'd ordered a good peasant stew of wild boar sausages and lentils, which warmed his blood and nourished his body and soul in a profound way, reminding him of his boyhood days in Spain. The rough red wine and the warm café seemed to wrap itself protectively around his shoulders like a blanket from his doting Italian mother.

“
This
is just what I need,” Picasso told himself. “A month of it and I'll be strong as a Miura bull!”

But he also understood that his newly regained strength could so easily dissipate while tussling with those small decisions and tasks that he found so life-sapping, like the daily questions of, what to eat? What time? And where? Having to settle these Lilliputian things for himself simply exhausted him.

So when the proprietor of the Café Paradis asked if he could be of more service, Picasso impulsively made an arrangement with Monsieur Belange to have his lunches brought up to him at the villa. This would hopefully become an anchor in his daily routine, ensuring that Pablo would not waste his energy with endless domestic indecision—therefore leaving him to his privacy and his work.

Just making
that
decision had helped, because today he'd awakened earlier than usual, feeling alert and hopeful again. And, he noted, today was Thursday—always a fortuitous day for arrivals and departures, for casting out old demons and beginning new ventures.

But there in his mailbox he spied a newly delivered pouch from Paris. Letters were being forwarded—selectively—by his old friend and assistant, Sabartés, who awaited instructions on how to reply to them, so that no one would discover where Picasso had disappeared to.

At first, he threw the package on the desk in the back room. But that wouldn't work. It was sitting there just like a spider, Picasso thought. The only way to kill its fearful power was to confront it.

With a defiant flourish, he opened the parcel, bypassing the envelopes from friends, art dealers and magazine editors and galleries, all the while dreading that he'd find one particular stationery—the one from a lawyer's office, which had become so wretchedly familiar that it made his gut freeze the instant he spotted it.

“The devil!” he exclaimed. He tore it open and scanned it rapidly with growing disgust. What pit bulls his estranged Russian wife had hired! Well, he shouldn't be surprised. To marry an aristocrat was one thing. To marry a ballerina, quite another. But to marry a woman who was both! You couldn't breed a more highly strung bitch if you tried.

Yet he still respected the delicate, volatile, dark-haired Olga. He had thoroughly enjoyed being her husband, dressing up like a dandy in fine clothes with “a true lady” on his arm, whose social connections opened the doors of the best parlors in Europe for him.

“In Spain, a man can keep a wife on one side of town and a mistress on the other for years, and they'd only find out about each other at the man's funeral, when he is beyond caring,” Pablo grumbled.

Not so in Paris. Discretion lasted only so long. Once his young blonde mistress became pregnant, mutual “friends” couldn't resist letting Olga know all about Marie-Thérèse. Now his wife was devoting all her time, energy and fury to winning this legal battle. How could an artist compete with that?

But divorce was out of the question because the marriage agreement he'd signed, subject to French law, required an equal division of property. And property, apparently, included art. Olga's expensive, fancy lawyers were poised to split his collection in half, like the woman in the Bible who would cut a baby in two rather than let someone else have it. They'd even gotten the judge to put a padlock on Picasso's studio in Paris.

“Imagine locking a man out of his own workplace!” he brooded, still incensed.

Olga already had possession of their son, Paulo. That should be enough for any woman. As it was, Picasso could seldom bear to sell a painting when it was done; the whole process of separation from his creations depressed him for days. What did the money-men know of that kind of pain?

No, divorce must be avoided. A legal separation was the only answer. So the bargaining had begun, and the endless torture of waiting, waiting, waiting for a settlement. On and on it went, month after ghastly month, for over a year now; and for the first time in his life, Picasso stopped painting. He was not dead in those months, but he was not really alive—more like a man tied under a swinging blade that was slowly swooshing closer and closer to him until it would finally slice him to death.

In the end, he'd simply had to get out of Paris. Today's letter from his own lawyer was at least hopeful; negotiations were now under way which might finally persuade Olga simply to separate. In return, she'd get the country house outside Paris—and there would be other financial concessions because she'd make sure that he paid a hefty price for his freedom—but the paintings, which were all that mattered, wouldn't so drastically fall under the axe, after all.

Whatever the outcome, here on the Côte d'Azur where the sun shone brightly now, a man could surely regain his vitality. As nature was casting off winter for spring, Pablo was transiting from his conventional, respectable family to the illicit new one presented to him by his angelic muse, Marie-Thérèse. He felt a certain masculine pride in their little daughter Maya, who'd been born just last year.

The ever-submissive Marie-Thérèse never complained, bless her, but now she hadn't any real hope of becoming Madame Picasso, for Olga would still be Picasso's legal wife until God and death parted them. And while Pablo enjoyed playing the doting new papa during his Sunday visits with his little second family, he could already feel the stirrings of boredom that domesticity invariably evoked.

“Women are either goddesses or doormats,” he concluded after each conquest.

F
ORTUNATELY, AFTER A
morning of settling in with his new supplies, he'd found today's fine lunch from the Café Paradis awaiting him; and when he sat down to eat it, once again the food worked its magic to soothe him and make him forget all those letters. Afterwards, wanting to keep his body fit for the task ahead, he'd gone for a walk in the fields behind the house—they belonged to a gentleman farmer who grew roses and carnations—and here, in the remarkable light of the Midi, Picasso's pace became brisk and purposeful. He returned to the villa feeling ready to do what had been impossible only a week ago—to mix his paints and create anew. So it looked as if he'd made the right choice with the Café Paradis, whose cuisine was far more agreeable and soul-nourishing than the boring, restrictive diet suggested by his fussy Parisian doctor to cure his anxious stomach during this time of turmoil.

As soon as the young girl from the café left his studio, Picasso's gaze rested on the seashell she'd been holding. “What a character that Ondine is. One might believe she really is a water nymph,” he mused, recalling a fairy tale that a German dealer once told him about ondines—they were magical sprites who, if they married a mortal man, would lose their immortality but gain a soul.

He glanced out the window just in time to catch a glimpse of Ondine as she was gliding away on her bicycle, with long hair fluttering like the waves of the sea itself and her skirts flowing in a circle around her, like a ship with sails flying. He watched until she reached the crest of the hill, where, for a moment, she seemed to hang there in the sky just before vanishing from sight.

“She's more like a kite on the wind,” Picasso observed, moving his hand in the air in a preliminary sketch of a kite. He stepped closer to his easel. “But, she has a bit too much defiance in those eyes,” he thought with a shade of disapproval.

The truth was, modern girls made him uneasy. They no longer knew how to respect and serve men as women did when he had been a boy surrounded by a doting mother, grandmother, godmother, aunts and sisters who unquestioningly accepted their God-given inferior position to men they treated as kings. All those breasts and bellies and arms and laps! That outpouring of adoration. Nothing could match nor replace it.

And so Pablo grew up believing that women of all ages were meant to sacrifice their lives to men, just as the mythic maidens were sacrificed to the Minotaur. It began with his little sister—and even now, Concepción's name still had the power to pierce his heart like the crown of thorns that wrapped itself around Christ's heart in the holy cards of his youth. For, at only seven years old Concepción had contracted diphtheria, suffering in doomed agony, fading slowly, becoming almost translucent like a ghost, right before his horrified eyes. Day after day she'd lain in bed, pale and hopeless, prompting the thirteen-year-old Picasso to kneel trembling by her side and utter a prayer that he regretted from the moment it left his lips.

“Dear God, save my sister and I will never pick up a brush to paint again!”

What devil had inspired such a terrible sacrifice? For even then, the boy Picasso's talent was indisputable. As a child he'd begun drawing even before he could speak. Everyone knew that he was destined for greatness—why, his father had quit painting and handed over his own box of paints and brushes to Pablo, in a gesture that carried as much burden of guilt as it did a vote of confidence.

Would God really expect the boy genius to give up such a gift if his sister survived, just to make good on his rash bargain? In a panic, Pablo had tried to ignore another voice that whispered demonically in his ear, “Ask God to keep your artistic destiny alive, and take your saintly sister's life as a sacrifice…”

For days Picasso agonized as only a young boy could, imagining that it was
his
will, and not God's, which must make this decision. He would never wish his sister dead—yet he could not help praying to be released from his promise to stop painting if she survived.

Concepción died soon after.

And that was how Pablo came to believe that no one could create without destroying something dear. Birth begat death, and in Spain the ghosts of the dead never completely went away. You learned to live with them instead of resisting them, and you avoided sentimentality, or else the servants of Death would think you were ready for him much earlier than you had to be.

Now, with civil war galloping toward Spain as inexorably as a charging bull, there was no point in going along with the trend throughout Europe of pretending that there would never be another world-wide war. Life and death were like the ebb and flow of the tide. In Barcelona, people understood this. On Sundays a young man's day began in church, but it might finish up with an afternoon visit to a brothel, where love was a mere transaction, and life a mocking challenge to outwit all rivals and enemies.

Create while you can, before the forces of death catch up with you…

Pablo Picasso picked up his brush.