The Missing Matisse

by Pierre H. Matisse

  “My mother must have hated such dishonesty and deception,” I say to Mathilde.

  “I am quite sure she did, Pierre. I have nothing against your mother. She is a decent person who found herself in a bad situation. Jean, too. They clearly loved each other, but I believe that Jean’s circumstances were controlled by the Matisse family. Mostly Jean’s mother, I would guess. But please know you were loved from the moment you came into the world.”

  “Did Tata know?”

  “She did. But she never wanted to interfere in her niece’s affairs.”

  “Before she died, I sensed that Tata had something she wanted to tell me,” I say, almost to myself. “Perhaps that was it.”

  “She probably would have in time.” Mathilde nods.

  “Pierre, you are a wonderful grandson, and I am happy to call you my own. However, it is precisely because I have come to love you that I cannot remain silent. I don’t want to be part of a deception that robs you of the truth. Now that you know, it never needs to be spoken of again. You can be ours, with no secrets. The choice is yours.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “You are welcome here for as long as you want to stay, for the rest of your life if you’d like.”

  I am still speechless.

  “Camille is our only child, and he has no children. We have had no news of him since the Americans landed in Algeria.”

  Mathilde stares out the window. “Pierre, this war complicates everything,” she says. “Soon, Normandy might find herself in the middle of a battlefield. Who knows what will happen next or who will survive to see the end? I thought that you had a right to know who your real father is. Maybe I am not the one who should have told you this. All I know is that now you know the truth, and it’s yours to keep.”

  She looks squarely at me, her eyes shining with kindness and concern.

  Finally, I find my voice. She has given me the truth, a gift I can never repay. I stand up and take her small weather-worn hand in mine, and returning her honest gaze, I reply, “Thank you. You were right to tell me the truth.”

  At that moment, Grandfather bursts through the door and says excitedly, “This morning, the Allies landed on our beaches and are only forty-four miles away. The Boches have declared martial law in Normandy. We are now on the battlefield.”

  It is June 6, 1944.

  For now, surviving the war takes priority over everything else, even this new revelation about my identity. Still, numerous questions swirl inside my head. I know Mathilde wouldn’t lie or have an ax to grind. I need to pull myself together. At the proper time, I will tackle this delicate subject about my father head-on with my mother.

  Now more than ever, I vow to go to America, leaving all these bad memories behind me forever.

  23

  SPITFIRES, SHRAPNEL, AND ALL THAT JAZZ

  To live is the rarest thing in all the world. Most people exist, that is all.

  OSCAR WILDE

  TWO DAYS AFTER D-DAY, there is no immediate change for us because the fighting is still on our doorstep. The Germans are moving east, but there are more of them every day, and it’s a risk to go out.

  “We might have to evacuate,” Grandfather Leroy reports.

  “Evacuate? Are you crazy?” Mathilde is going to have none of that. “Walking for days and being targets for exploding bombs and machine-gun fire. Never! Don’t you remember what it was like in 1940 when the Germans first overran us? You hear me, old fool? Never!”

  “But what’s going to happen to us when we find ourselves in the middle of a war zone, Mathilde?” he replies, the worry lines on his forehead deepening.

  “We’ll survive as best we can in our own home.” This lady knows exactly what she wants.

  “Or die in our own home.” Grandfather could be right.

  “Right, or die in our own home, Louis. What do you think, Pierre?”

  “I know that the exodus from Paris to Bordeaux in 1940 was horrible for Maman, Gérard, and me. I prefer to stick it out here. At least it’s more comfortable.”

  “Pierre is right, Louis.”

  “That settles it then. We stay,” Grandfather Leroy decides.

  Mathilde flashes a beaming smile at me.

  WE ARE ON the back lines of the Normandy battle, still under German occupation. For the most part, the German army hides during the day and moves their troops and equipment at night.

  Twenty-four hours a day, there is a humming drone overhead from British and American planes, which have supremacy in the air. The Luftwaffe had been driven out of the clouds a month or two before. We are used to the sound. In fact, we really only notice when things are quiet, which is rare.

  We try our best to ignore the war and live as normally as possible. For me, that means gathering grass for the rabbits, my regular chores, and continuing to polish my English. When I can, I take long walks in the woods and fields, in hopes of seeing what the Boches are up to.

  I am sketching a landscape by the roadside one afternoon when I notice an odd-looking Normand with a trumpet under his arm. He stops and looks over my shoulder for a few minutes.

  “Never put people in your drawings. They are nothing but trouble. Put more trees in this one. I like trees.”

  Then, with a salute, he introduces himself as “Désiré Lambert Against the Prussians.”

  Taking his well-polished trumpet, he blows me a lively military tune.

  I shake his hand. “I’m Pierre Against the Boches, and I prefer jazz.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Pierre.”

  “Peter the Great,” he proclaims with a theatrical flourish.

  “No, my name is Pierre,” I try to correct the funny fellow.

  “Look here, you! For me, you are Peter the Great,” he commands.

  No use arguing. For Désiré, that’s who I am.

  To the sound of an imaginary orchestra, he dances for a moment or two. He looks to be in his late fifties, a stocky fellow of average weight and height. He is dirty as can be and stinks to high heaven. A childish, mischievous smile lights up his face, which seems to have weathered a million storms. Désiré displays such total childlike abandon and kindness that he immediately puts me at ease. He could be a little crazy, or he could be a genius—it’s hard to know.

  “Now you can tell me if I’m wrong, Peter the Great, but I believe this is one of your favorite songs. Listen!”

  A moment later he is playing “Stormy Weather.” Since the Boches confiscated all the radios in Normandy, I have not heard music for ages. The melodious notes go right to my heart and bring tears to my eyes.

  “How did you know it was my favorite song?”

  “I am the village idiot, Peter the Great. We know these things.”

  “Get down!” I push Désiré to the ground and roll next to him.

  Shee . . . shee . . . boom! Boom! The bombs seem to be falling directly above our heads.

  A quarter of a mile away, a huge cloud of smoke mushrooms and obstructs the sun. Two small German cars speed past us.

  “They got them. Hip, hip, hooray!” Désiré is jumping and pointing his horn at the passing vehicles, making machine-gun sounds.

  “Tac-tac-tac. I’ll kill you!” he screams.

  One of the German soldiers catches Désiré’s theatrics and shakes a menacing fist in our direction.

  “What do you do for a living, Désiré?”

  “I’m a carpenter. But in the last war I was a general. I had pigeons that sent love poems to my wife in Paris.”

  Odd, he doesn’t look the general type.

  “So you were living in Paris?” I inquire politely.

  “Yes, until I returned from the war to my beautiful wife.”

  “How did you end up in Normandy?” I ask, curious.

  “My wife left me for an admiral. After that, Paris was never the same. Normandy is not the same either. Nothing is the same. Something is wrong, Peter the Great. Something is very, very wrong, but I don’t know exactl
y what it is.”

  He turns his horn in his hands, wipes a tear from his cheek, and says, “Now I’m the village idiot, but I’m not as stupid as they think.”

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot, Désiré.”

  “Thank you. That’s awfully nice of you to say, Peter the Great.”

  I like him, and I know Papa would like him too. Later I learn that he had been terribly shell-shocked in World War I and has been battling the demons ever since.

  BECAUSE THE BOCHES use the power lines for their telephone communication, we have no electricity. The Nazis have taken total control. This means no telephone, no radio, no newspaper, no mail, no public transportation, nothing. We are cut off from the rest of the world. Worse, we have been ordered to keep all doors unlocked so that the German army can enter our homes at any time, day or night.

  But how to get back at them? I explain a simple sabotage trick to my new friend, and he is a willing coconspirator. We place pins in the telephone lines to short them out. This can take days to detect, locate, and repair. Désiré enjoys asking the German soldiers what they are doing as they painfully check miles of wires. If only they knew, I think. But I’m thankful they don’t.

  One day I am by the roadside cutting tidbits of grass for the rabbits. I don’t hear the amphibious car with two Boche soldiers inside until it stops next to me.

  “Caen?” The driver gestures, asking for directions.

  “What?” I answer, shrugging my shoulders.

  “Caen!” the passenger repeats more loudly as he points his machine gun at my belly.

  “Ah! Caen, why didn’t you say so?” When machine gun is being spoken, I understand perfectly.

  I use sign language and draw a little map in the dust, and they leave, heading in the wrong direction.

  Later, when I am walking back home with my full burlap bag, I sense something is amiss. A quick look behind me confirms my premonition.

  “Swine Françouse!” a Boche yells. The amphibious car is racing toward me, intent on running me over. The soldier with the machine gun is taking aim, but I am running in the ditch, and when the car goes off-road it bounces crazily. I hear the tac-tac-tac of the first gunfire, and out of the corner of my eye, I see specks of dirt popping up from the ground. Everything is rolling in slow motion, but I think fast. If I can make it to the woods, only a few yards away, I’m safe. They are catching up to me, but the field is bumpy. I know that Mister Schmeisser can’t hit me easily under these conditions.

  Between the forest edge and the field, there is a barbed-wire fence that I have to jump over. I’m running so hard that my heart wants to blow out of my chest. I jump, fall on the other side, and roll away. My legs are too weak to stand, so I begin to crawl. Suddenly I hear a bigger machine gun and the high-pitched sound of an airplane. Tac-tac-tac. A British Spitfire is above us.

  The amphibious car is retreating, hugging the fence. It hits a heavy corner fence pole and then begins zigzagging to avoid the plane’s bullets. A second Spitfire makes a pass, shooting at the vehicle. The car slows down and a Boche jumps out, disappearing over the fence into the woods. I can’t see the driver, but suddenly the car is on fire and then flips over. I wait a few minutes to catch my breath and then take a detour back to where I dropped my bag of grass.

  A neighboring farmer, who has witnessed everything, comes up to me. “That was a close one, Pierre.”

  My legs and hands are shaking, but I keep my composure. “Yes, it was.”

  It does feel good to be alive. I think of Papa and wonder if he would have been proud of the way I handled this crisis.

  A WEEK LATER, I’m heading out of Rugles in luxury, pedaling a beat-up bicycle with only rims for tires. Apart from the Boches, the streets are deserted. A civilian gazogène truck sporting a white flag puffs uphill and passes me. I grab the side of the platform on the back to hitch a ride, although it’s a bit uncomfortable and dangerous being so close to the smoky gazogène stove.

  Even though I could have walked faster than the truck is going, I’m enjoying this. Suddenly, a lot of things happen very fast. The asphalt is breaking apart, then pieces of the truck begin flying off, and my bike folds underneath me. Merde! The next thing I know, I am flat on my belly kissing the road. A diving Spitfire is heading right for us.

  That’s when I see a ditch with a cement culvert. Fantastique! To this day, I still don’t know how I managed to squeeze into that tight space.

  The sound of the airplane fades away, and I can hear a woman screaming and a man swearing in German. A moment later, two planes make a second pass, but this time they don’t fire. The woman is still screaming, but I don’t hear the man’s voice anymore.

  Why does my left foot hurt? My hand is pressed against my left leg, and I can feel that it is sticky with blood.

  “I lost my shoe,” I say out loud.

  I am jammed in this culvert, and I don’t want it to be my coffin. It takes all my effort to twist and turn my way out, but I finally free myself.

  Flames are coming from the engine of the truck, and the woman, one of three passengers, is still in hysterics. The driver is lying by the side of the road with his right arm in shreds. The German soldier is trying to calm the woman down. My bike is useless, and I can’t find my shoe. I look at my leg and realize I have been hit by shrapnel, and there is a nasty wound on the sole of my foot.

  As I search for my shoe, I notice ammunition boxes and food supplies in the back of the burning truck. The Boches are using civilian trucks to move their supplies, protected by white flags. When I see a German command car approaching, I decide it’s wise to get out of here. This is not the time for introductions or tea. Using a large branch as a temporary walking stick, I limp to the doctor in Rugles.

  “YOU’RE LUCKY,” the doctor says, extracting small pieces of metal from my foot and knee and cleaning the wounds. “Nothing more than some superficial scratches and a little metal to remember your escapades today.”

  He hands me a roll of heavy cloth. “Wrap up your foot with this.”

  “Thanks, Doctor.”

  I know the less time I spend here, the safer it is for him.

  He smiles. “In the last war, we used to call these Russian shoes. Now, go directly to your grandparents and stay out of trouble.”

  Before I go home, I need to make a stop. I recall there’s a grave close to a destroyed Boche half-track. The reason I noticed the grave at all was because of the boot tips sticking out of the dirt. I need shoes, and the boots are made of heavy-duty leather.

  I find the grave, thankful that the boots are still there, and improvise a shovel with a scrap of metal. The rotting body in the shallow hole smells horrible, and I turn away to vomit. I feel faint, but I only need to shovel a little more around the boots to pull them off.

  “Sorry to disturb you, soldier. I don’t mean any disrespect,” I say. “I just need something on my feet.” I hope he understands. Besides, like Papa used to say, a man has to do what he has to do, period.

  It’s almost dark when I finally finish. The boots are almost new, with hardly any mileage on them. Clutching my reward, I make my way home, hiding a few times from German vehicles passing on the road. I don’t tell my grandparents any of the details of my adventure because it could potentially put them in danger. Papa has taught me well.

  I clean the boots well, but until my foot heals I have to wear wooden clogs. Clogs are not the best for long-distance running, so I will need to stay put for a while and not plan any adventures that might need a quick getaway

  Finally the day arrives for me to try on the boots. They fit perfectly. I don’t know it yet, but I will wear those boots for the next four years.

  24

  KAPUT

  Freedom lies in being bold.

  ROBERT FROST

  IT IS A CLEAR DAY, and Désiré is teaching me the fine art of finding escargots near Bois-Arnault’s cemetery. As we search, my mouth is watering. I can already taste this French gourmet specialty. A quarter of
a mile away to the west in a small field, a plane cuts its engine and, with landing gear retracted, force lands on its belly. We don’t hear anything until the propeller hits an apple tree, which gets our attention.

  I can tell from the markings that the plane is American, and as we are about to rush to the pilot’s assistance, I see two German cars on the road.

  “Désiré, look! Boches.”

  “Merde!” he says, spitting disgustedly.

  “We have to get out of here. It’s too late to help the pilot anyway.”

  “No, Peter the Great, we are going to help the pilot!” he answers firmly.

  “Désiré, we are going to get shot.”

  The cars have stopped, and German soldiers are running toward the wounded bird. We hide behind a tall hedgerow to watch what happens. The pilot is slowly getting out of the cockpit, and I can see some blood on his arm. In no time at all, the Boches surprise him and brutally yank him out of the plane.

  “The war is finished for him. He is now a prisoner,” I explain to Désiré.

  “No! They are going to shoot him,” Désiré declares.

  “They can’t. It’s against the Geneva Convention, Désiré,” I argue.

  “The Prussians do not care about convention. Any convention,” Désiré says, making one of his peculiar facial expressions. “We’ll have to stay close and hope for an opportunity to help him escape.”

  The Boches drag the pilot to one of the cars and then drive right by us to the nearest farm. Désiré and I follow at a safe distance and lie low near the farm all night, waiting for an opportunity to possibly rescue the pilot. It doesn’t come.

  Early the next morning, the Boches come out of the farmhouse with the pilot. They drive a few miles away and make him dig his own grave. We arrive just in time to see one of the soldiers empty a Schmeisser magazine into his body. Killed in cold blood.

  “God will get them, Peter the Great,” Désiré says with tears in his eyes and fists clenched. “They won’t get away with it forever. He sees all their deeds.”

  “I’ll volunteer to help Him if I get the chance,” I solemnly vow as we silently slip away.