My Soul Looks Back

by Jessica B. Harris

  – Serves four to six –

  3 tablespoons butter

  1 large onion, minced

  4 garlic cloves, minced

  2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

  3 tablespoons Madras-style curry powder

  1/2 teaspoon crushed red chiles, or to taste

  1/2 cup or more cane vinegar

  3 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into strips

  3 large potatoes coarsely chopped

  In a large frying pan, heat the butter and sauté the onion, garlic, and ginger until the onion is soft but not brown. Add the curry powder and the chiles, stirring so that they do not stick or burn. Add the vinegar. There should be enough to make a smooth paste. (If not, you may need as much as 1/4 cup more.)

  Cover the chicken pieces with the paste and place them in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. Allow the chicken pieces to marinate for at least 2 hours. When ready to cook, place the chicken pieces in a large frying pan and add enough water to reconstitute the paste and prevent scorching. Cover and cook over low heat for 30 minutes, checking occasionally. (You may find that you will have to add more water to prevent scorching.)

  After 30 minutes, add the potatoes, cover, and continue to cook for an additional 15 minutes or until the chicken and potatoes are cooked through. Serve with white rice accompanied by the “boys.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  * * *

  TITINE AND TABASCO

  The dappled sunshine and warm weather of the South of France beckoned us as it had Georges and Mary and Jimmy, who had arrived in St. Paul-de-Vence in 1970. Nice became the airport for all arrivals and departures. Located in the hills a little over nine miles from Nice, St. Paul-de-Vence is one of the villages perchés—the villages perched precariously on hilltops that cling to the sides for dear life and look as though a strong mistral could dislodge them and scatter their soft golden stones through the valleys and into the Mediterranean below. From the crenellated ramparts, views over the countryside dotted with orange, cypress, and olive trees and out to the sea are breathtaking.

  The medieval village of St. Paul-de-Vence (usually known by its full name, as there are nine other St. Pauls in France) resonates for the French. Today it is a tourist mecca, a must-see stop on any visit to the Côte d’Azur. Local lore has it that the medieval hamlet was built at the insistence of Saint Paul, and indeed even in the eleventh century, it was known as Castrum Sancti Pauli. The medieval town was fortified in 1538 at the behest of King François I, who wanted to protect it from the incursions into Provence by Charles V of Spain. For centuries, the sleepy town, like its neighbors, was agricultural, growing olives, artichokes, roses, carnations, and oranges, but that began to change in 1911 when a tram was built to connect Cagnes-sur-Mer with Vence via St. Paul. Things developed further in the 1920s when artists Chaim Soutine, Raoul Dufy, and Paul Signac arrived and set up their easels. They were followed by others: Marc Chagall, who lived in neighboring Vence, and Pablo Picasso, who took up residence in Vallauris. They ushered in a golden age for the town that is noted for its beauty and has long been a touchstone in French history. A stroll through the twisting alleyways of the walled old town may reveal a small square with an ancient fountain or a garden brilliant with bougainvillea or a vista through an ancient archway out to the ultramarine waters of the Mediterranean on the horizon. And everywhere there are cats basking in sunny doorways: sleek beasties who seem to own the place and have become inextricably connected to it.

  Today historic churches and museums attract day-trippers and Asian tourists even in the dead of winter. For art lovers, the village is a place of pilgrimage for the Fondation Maeght, the oldest museum of contemporary art in France, which boasts works by Joan Miró, Giacometti, Jean Arp, Marc Chagall, and other early-twentieth-century artists. For others, St. Paul has become an international destination because during World War II, when the area became an unoccupied free zone, the village became a mecca for writers, artists, and actors.

  For lovers of the luxe life, St. Paul is known for its centerpiece hostellerie and restaurant La Colombe d’Or, an inn that has hosted the rich, the famous, and the infamous for more than three-quarters of a century. This village was where Jimmy had taken up residence in 1970, first in a hotel and later in a house he rented from a local woman named Jeanne Faure, a pied noir from Algeria with whom he had a stormy but lengthy friendship. She would eventually become one of his staunchest allies in the town and one of his protectors.

  Sam had arrived before I did, and when I passed through customs at Nice airport to begin my stay, he was there to meet me. As usual, I’d come heavily ladened with my suitcase packed for every eventuality because I was scheduled to spend a week with Sam at Baldwin’s home and I was rigid with apprehension and anticipation. A drive through vertiginous, twisting roads like the ones in the film To Catch a Thief is all I remember, along with some names on road signs that were familiar from a visit I’d made decades prior with my parents: St.-Laurent-du-Var, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Villneuve-Loubet, Biot. Soon we reached the house.

  It’s difficult to describe the house because it was actually several buildings with the typical plastered stone and red tiled roofs of the Provençal countryside, including a gatehouse at the entrance on the road in which Bernard Hassell, Jimmy’s friend and self-appointed guardian, fittingly lived. A tall, lean former dancer, Bernard could be formidable and delighted in being terribly grand. In St. Paul, he was Baldwin’s first line of defense: his friend, bodyguard, amanuensis, and Cerberus.

  A stone walkway led from Bernard’s roost to the main house, which was divided into two distinct living areas. The guest quarters where we were to stay were a combination bedroom–sitting room upstairs. Jimmy’s completely separate apartment was downstairs: I would learn that he referred to it as his “torture chamber.” Bernard, annoyed, I suspect, at the intrusion of a female not from the group into his domain, was initially less than welcoming, but all was smoothed over by Sam, who took me to get settled. I waited and unpacked my luggage.

  Baldwin never lost his African American palate and, I had been informed, loved hot sauce that he could not get in France. (Tabasco would not do.) I’d been instructed that this would be the most welcome gift I could bring Jimmy, and so the most precious items in my suitcase were two huge bottles of Red Devil Hot Sauce. With the inevitability of fate, one shattered, and I spent the rest of the extraordinary week rinsing glass shards and red pepper out of my clothes.

  I’d met Jimmy briefly in New York on a few occasions, and I certainly knew of the great affection that he and Sam had for each other. (Sam called him “Jimmy” and he called Sam, teasingly, “Sammy,” a lèse-majesté Sam would have permitted no one else but one that he loved, for it signaled their special relationship.) This, though, was different; I was at Jimmy’s home and he was relaxed and at rest, albeit a rest that was all about work. It was a view of Baldwin few saw, and I was very aware of the singular honor it bestowed.

  Soon enough, Jimmy arrived: febrile, intense, and terrifyingly impressive. By this time, Baldwin’s visage has become so iconic that its familiarity was startling, but there he was in the flesh. Then he smiled—oh, that smile; it lit up his entire being and revealed not only his huge capacity for joy but also the hurt that lay just beneath the skin. It was a knowing smile, a wise smile, a smile of welcome with immense generosity for the naive, out-of-my-depth young woman that I was. He led us to a table set out among the towering cypress trees where lunch had been set, which Jimmy would later refer to as his welcome table, referring to the old spiritual. The meal was simple: loaves of crusty French bread, a red wine from the region (probably a Bandol), and a tureen filled with a hearty soupe au pistou prepared by Valerie Sordello, Baldwin’s housekeeper and cook. Baldwin ate, chatted, and then vanished.

  I would learn that Baldwin disappeared during the day down to his torture chamber. He composed on yellow pads, but by the time I arri
ved, he was working on his final edits, and so the sound of the typewriter could be heard. When things were going well, it was a steady sound; when it stopped . . . it was noticed. He reappeared for lunch and for cocktails, dinner, and whatever was going on in the evening before descending again. Often in the evening, his appearance signaled a trip up the hill to La Colombe d’Or, the old section of town.

  Originally a café with three rooms called Chez Robinson in the 1920s, it was run by Paul Roux, a farmer turned café owner who eventually became a hotelier, and his wife, the legendary Baptistine, better known as Titine. The place grew and by 1932, it was large enough to merit a more serious name. They baptized it La Colombe d’Or for the doves that roosted nearby and had become the inn’s totems. The inn and restaurant quickly became a hangout for the artists who were making the hills above Nice an artists’ haven. An art lover, Roux traded art for food, and soon works by Picasso, Léger, Matisse, Rouault, and others began to hang on the walls of the restaurant.

  The artists were part of the first wave of creative folks to arrive in St. Paul-de-Vence and were soon followed by a beau monde of writers and actors. Charlie Chaplin, Josephine Baker, Colette, and more signed the guest books. The names Jacques Prévert, Gérard Philipe, and Marcel Pagnol may be less familiar to the non-Francophile, but the names Jean-Paul Belmondo and Marcello Mastroianni and Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. explain the inn’s mystique to the world. Yves Montand and Simone Signoret were married there. By 1973, the hotel had hosted just about everyone known or trying to be known in the Western world; sooner or later they all came to La Colombe d’Or.

  Baldwin lived down the road on the Chemin du Pilon, and it was his habit to head up to the inn for a preprandial drink and to catch up on the news of the town that he had adopted as his own and that had adopted him. The small, narrow bar was his preferred roost, and he’d hunker down on one of the three-legged stools to break his day from the downstairs torture chamber with the first Johnnie Walker of the evening.

  When Baldwin arrived in St. Paul in 1970, Titine became his protector and Gallic godmother. She was by then the doyenne of the town, and a word from her meant instant acceptance; she protected him and guarded him with the ferocity of a mother tigress. Jimmy said of her in his last interview,

  Titine Roux was the old lady that ran La Colombe d’Or, which is a world-famous restaurant and inn. She became my guardian. I never lived in a small town before, which is not easy, and she protected me. I could come in and lunch at her restaurant. And I didn’t realize it at first that she had picked herself to be my protector.

  By 1973, Titine was no longer running the hotel: it had been passed on to her children, but she was still a formidable presence, and her role as Jimmy’s protector was firmly in place. Crow-like in her black dress with opaque black cotton stockings, she looked very much like any other Mediterranean grandmother leaning on her cane. In her world of St. Paul-de-Vence, and increasingly in that of France, the plump doyenne of the hotel enjoyed a fame equal to Jimmy’s and she was equally terrifying until you noticed her bemused gaze at the world expressed through her twinkling eyes. She liked me; I suspected it was my speaking French. She’d decided that Sam and I made a great couple and would tease us, always asking when would we get married, no doubt relishing Sam’s discomfort and my delight. She was at ease with the famous who flocked to her hotel and made sure that those she favored were also at ease.

  One night, we headed up the hill as usual, but when we got to the door of the bar, I stopped stupefied, rendered speechless by the presence on the other side of the archway. Jimmy and Sam went on through, and Jimmy greeted the individual facing us with, “Bonsoir, Yves. Where’s Simone?” Sitting in one of the bar’s corners was Yves Montand, he of the mellifluous voice whose renditions of “La Mer” and “Autumn Leaves” had made more than one generation swoon. He’d been discovered by none other than Edith Piaf, had been her lover, and had a notorious affair with Marilyn Monroe. He was known worldwide. The Simone referred to was Simone Signoret, his wife, who combined beauty with a prodigious intellect and spoke French, German, and English. She was the first French actress to win a Best Actress Oscar and had even inspired Nina Simone’s stage name. I was staggered and starstruck. We joined him at the small table and after babbling bonsoir, I said not another word for the evening, unsure of what idiocy I might utter.

  Montand was the unofficial mayor of St. Paul. His games of boules with such French stars as Serge Reggiani, Henri Salvador, and Lino Ventura on the square in front of the Café de la Place were the stuff of local legend. Montand, Signoret, and Baldwin were friends; they shared the complicity of the extremely famous, each understanding just what “the price of the ticket” was. Montand and his wife would spend hours at La Colombe d’Or chatting with Jimmy about the world, politics, and life. That night, though, Signoret was at home with a cold; her sniffles probably saved me from a major social gaffe, for I’m not sure if I could have handled that much star power. I would not meet her that summer, but nonetheless my week chez Jimmy in St. Paul-de-Vence tested my social abilities to the maximum, but they’d been tested before in Durham, and I passed both times.

  Jimmy liked excursions and adored good company. As much as he required solitude and never missed his daily appointment in the torture chamber, he also liked diversions and reveled in the presence of folks who had good conversation. He possessed, as did many of the circle of friends, an incredible ability to stay out, hang out, drink well and often, and never miss his downstairs date. His work ethic was astounding. Even after an evening of carousing and discussing all manner of things from chalk to cheese, he would head downstairs again, and soon the pecking of the typewriter would be heard. He’d be back at work. Whatever the diversion, sooner or later, it was all about the work, always about the work. It ruled him and his life as it ruled them all.

  By the time of my visit, Jimmy was not only an international legend but a star in his own right in St. Paul: a fixture at La Colombe d’Or and invited to all of the activities of the artists’ colony that the area had become. One evening, we dressed up in summer finery and headed off to a party at César’s, another one of his friends.

  César Baldaccini never used his last name. In St. Paul, you only had to say “César” and everyone knew whom you meant. He’d arrived in the region in the 1960s from his native Marseilles, part of a newer wave of artists, and established himself as one of the more important artists of the period. The man of the compressions, as he was then called, first became known in the 1960s as one of the founders and the stars of the nouveau réalisme movement. He was noted for sculptural works assembled from compressed cars, motorcycles, and the detritus of the modern consumer society. He cast in bronze and created sculptures like those that greeted visitors to La Colombe d’Or, and his public art was seen in town squares throughout the country. He is especially revered in France as the creator of the statuette that is given out at the Film Festival at Cannes; it is simply known as the César in the same way that the Motion Picture Academy’s awards are called the Oscar.

  César was a bon vivant of the old school. Someone once referred to him as seeming to be a character out of a work by Marc Pagnol, whose trilogy, Fanny, Marius, and César, defined Provence for many. Indeed, his Marseilles accent, complete with rolling r’s, his artistic exuberance, and his joie de vivre made him seem like a throwback to another era. With a graying beard and the unkempt look of a pet brown bear, and an oh-so-Gallic way of wearing paint-stained shirts, corduroy trousers, and clogs, he was almost a caricature of a French artist. He loved life and had a playful way that was contagious. This I sensed from the minute we crossed the threshold into his home.

  His home was a Côté Sud fantasy of his own work and the work of other artists like that of his friend and sometimes rival, Arman. Antique and modern furniture jostled for position; the ordinary and the exotic sat side by side, and there was even room for kitsch like the peculiar style of shards of glass and mirror and crockery embedded in
plaster and concrete known in France as pique assiette. This was my first peek at the artistic French Provençal style that spawned its own design revolution. I recall outdoor lights in the garden and a Rabelaisian amount of food. Elegant French country women with perfectly tousled and sun-streaked blonde hair and gentlemen in white linen trousers and feet shoved sockless into expensive loafers gathered with others whose affect was more artistic; women of a certain age with real jewelry and artists with paint-stained fingers all circulated. My French again stood me in good stead; I could keep up with the badinage, make conversation, and even catch some of the political allusions. I had an intense conversation with César’s lady, an exquisitely elegant woman with prematurely white hair; she was casually dressed in the bohemian chic that the French do so well. I don’t remember the topic of our conversation, but I do recall an affinity and that I garnered a return invitation whenever I was back in the region.

  Baldwin was greeted not as a celebrity, but as a St. Paul local: one of the band of artists and writers who had found and made this corner of France their refuge. This was another of his circles of friends—one he’d established away from the land of his birth but one that also accepted him as their own. No stranger in the village here, he fit in with the international intellectual crew of artists as much as he fit in at the lecture podium, the pulpit, at Mikell’s, or among the crowds at El Faro. It was the face of another of the multiple individuals who lived within Baldwin and whom he referred to as “all of those strangers”—another facet of his complex life.