Cooking for Picasso

by Camille Aubray

Madame Belange shook her head and said crisply, “No, it’s fine as it is. I’d rather err on the side of caution today.”

  Ondine felt a wave of sympathy for her mother, who, unlike Père Jacques, functioned as if on a knife’s-edge, her nerves taut as she constantly battled against time, supplies and cost, with scarcely a franc or a moment to spare. But despite her request for help, Madame Belange kept nudging her daughter out of the way impatiently, as if it were obvious that this small, cramped kitchen didn’t really have room for two grown women.

  Raising a flour-dusted wrist to push aside a stray lock of hair, Madame Belange said, “Vite, vite, get to work!” But then she cried out warningly, “Attention!” as the back door was flung open by a local dairy boy who barreled in with a large crate of eggs, cheese and cream. Ondine ducked out of the way just in time.

  While her mother paid the boy, Ondine unpacked his crate onto an enormous table in the center of the room. She’d been awake since dawn, first to make hot chocolate for the quick breakfast she shared with her parents, then to serve the morning customers their brioche and coffee. After that, she got the stocks simmering gently on the stove before she went outside to pare her vegetables; now it was time to assemble all the salads for the lunch service.

  Yet apparently her mother had much more unusual plans for Ondine today.

  “Just make one perfect salad, fit for our new Patron,” Madame Belange commanded. “And write down every ingredient we’ve used in today’s lunch for our records.” With her hip she pushed a cupboard drawer shut. “This man will be a regular customer, so we don’t want to give him the same lunches again and again. Make notes, tout de suite—and put that convent schooling of yours to some real use!”

  Ondine reached up to a shelf for one of the blank notebooks they used for such occasions—bound in butter-soft maroon leather, they’d been a gift from a stationer who ate his lunch at the café three times a week. She turned to the first page, which had a printed box framed by an illustration of bunched grapes on a twirling vine. Inside the box was a line designated for filling in a Nom. She imagined that this new Patron must be some rich banker or lawyer.

  She paused. “What’s his name?” she asked curiously.

  Her mother waved a ladle indifferently. “Who knows? He’s got money, that’s all that matters!”

  So Ondine simply wrote a large P for Patron. Then she turned to the next page and wrote 2 April 1936 at the top before she recorded today’s meal, checking on which ingredients were used and how they were cooked. Her mother kept such records only for distinguished customers, and special events like catered meals or wedding banquets. Later she would add comments about the Patron’s personal preferences and how the recipe might be better tailored to him.

  Madame Belange looked up from the stove and said resolutely, “All right now. Put away the notebook and let’s pack up this meal!”

  “Pack it?” Ondine echoed in surprise.

  Her mother wore an especially sober expression. “This man has rented one of the villas at the top of the hill. Here’s the address,” she said, digging in her pocket for a scrap of paper and handing it to her. “You will use your bicycle to bring him his lunch every weekday.”

  “What am I, a donkey?” Ondine demanded indignantly. “Since when do we deliver lunch to people’s houses? Who is this man, that he can’t come to the café to eat his lunch like everybody else?”

  Madame Belange said, “He’s someone très célèbre from Paris. He speaks French, but I’m told he’s a Spaniard. The nuns taught you Spanish at the convent, yes?”

  “A little,” Ondine answered warily.

  “Well, it might finally come in handy.” Her mother glanced around decisively. “Get me that nice striped pitcher for the wine.”

  “But that’s your favorite!” Ondine objected. Besides, the tall, hand-painted pink-and-blue pitcher had been promised to her for her wedding trousseau—if she ever made it to the altar. Her unsentimental mother shrugged. Ondine muttered, “I hope this fancy Spaniard appreciates it.”

  She had to move swiftly now; the meal was coming together quickly. They packed the lunch into an insulated metal hamper, wrapping each dish tightly in red-and-white cloths. Then Ondine went into the basement to an oaken barrel of house wine, from which she siphoned off enough white wine to fill a bladder made of pigskin which she brought upstairs. Madame Belange ordered one of the waiters to carry the hamper outside and securely clip it to the metal basket on Ondine’s bicycle.

  “Alors! Listen carefully.” Her mother fixed her with a stern look. “You are to enter the Patron’s house from the side door, which he will leave unlocked for you. Go straight into the kitchen. Heat up the food and lay it out for him. Then leave, right away. Do not wait for him to come downstairs to eat.”

  Madame Belange pinched her daughter on the arm. “Do you hear me, Ondine?”

  “Ouch!” Ondine protested. She’d been listening attentively and felt she didn’t deserve that. But her exhausted mother sometimes just ran out of words, and punctuated the urgency of her commands with a quick slap if anyone in her kitchen asked too many questions. Madame Belange, in her own youth, had never witnessed mothers and daughters having the luxury of time to indulge in searching, philosophical chats. Children were like baby chicks whom one loved the way a mother hen did—you fed them, kept them warm, taught them how to fend for themselves, and pecked them with a nudge in the right direction whenever they wandered astray.

  Madame Belange repeated, “Go in quietly, prepare the food, lay it out, and leave. Do not call out to him or make noise. Later, you’ll go collect the dishes, without making a sound.”

  Ondine had a terrible urge to burst out laughing at these absurd orders to skulk around like a thief. But her mother was so very serious that Ondine recognized the weight of her responsibility.

  “I understand, Maman,” she said, although her curiosity was thoroughly piqued now.

  “Take the daffodils from the dining room with you. Afterwards, on your way home, stop by the market to buy new flowers for the café,” her mother said in a low voice, digging into her apron pocket for a few coins. “Here.” Then, with her elbow, she gave her daughter a shove. “Go!”

  Ondine dutifully went through the swinging doors that led to the formal dining room, which was reserved for the night meal only. Breakfast and lunch were always served outside on the front terrace, rain or shine, since there was a sturdy white-and-grey awning that could be cranked overhead and withstood most bad weather.

  The Café Paradis occupied the first floor of a limestone house that was the color of a honey praline. Ondine’s family lived in the rooms above the café. The second floor had a master bedroom for her parents, and a smaller bedroom for occasional overnight lodgers. Her two older brothers once occupied that guest room, but both were killed in the Great War and now slumbered in the town cemetery, near their infant siblings who’d been lost to scarlet fever before Ondine was born. The third and topmost floor had only one slope-roofed room, originally made for servants, where Ondine had slept all her life.

  She crossed the silent dining room with its gleaming hardwood floor, mahogany chairs and tables and dark-panelled walls. Opposite the bar were a gilt-edged mirror and a framed replica of a Rembrandt masterpiece painted in 1645 called A Girl at a Window.

  “Bonjour,” Ondine said to the girl in the picture for luck, as she’d done ever since she was a child.

  The painting was as mysterious as the Mona Lisa; and indeed many art experts—including some of the café’s patrons—argued over who Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window might have been. An aristocrat, because of her gilded multi-strand necklace and the detailed trim on her blouse? A servant, because of her flushed cheeks and rolled-up sleeves? Or a whore brazenly displaying a bit of bosom as she leaned on her elbows gazing out her window?

  Ondine had always loved this picture, for the model’s luminous round eyes seemed to see everything, as if you, too, had caught her interest when you passed below her i
n the street. But now she seemed to say slyly, I know what you dream of. Think you’ve got what it takes to conquer the Great World?

  Ondine made a quick check of her own image in the nearby mirror. She herself was no woman of mystery, but her skin was pale gold, her eyes a warm chestnut-brown, and from her morning exertions her cheeks and lips were pleasingly flushed. Yet the most noticeable thing about Ondine was her very long, dark hair that flowed in luxurious, silky waves. A boy once told her that these marvellously undulating twirls and curls were like punctuation marks for all the intelligent questions and lively ideas dancing in her head.

  The boy was named Luc, and they had fallen in love—the first real, sweet love for both of them. He’d been orphaned when he was fourteen, which ended his schooling, so he worked hard for the fisherman who hired him; and when Luc came to the back door of the café to deliver a box of neatly laid out, glistening silvery fish, he often had a little gift for Ondine—a seashell, an Alpine strawberry plant, a painted wooden necklace that a sailor had sold him from some far-off, exotic country.

  In return, Ondine sneaked food to him, usually some savory tartelettes made of her best pastry and whatever nourishing bits of meat and vegetables that she could find. Luc was always hungry, yet he showed his gratitude not by wolfing down what she gave him, but by eating slowly, deliberately, reverentially. Ondine loved to place food into his strong, confident hands and then watch him lift it to his eager mouth.

  But her father insisted that a man must have enough money in the bank to support a woman before taking her as his bride; so sweet Luc went off to work on one of the merchant ships that came and went in the harbor at Antibes.

  On the night before he sailed, Luc made a daring climb up the café’s narrow wrought-iron balconies and stole into her attic bedroom for a farewell night of love. Up until then, Ondine and Luc had only traded kisses and caresses when they went for long walks at secluded spots in the woods and meadows of Parc de Vaugrenier; but on this last night, poignantly mindful that anything might happen to Luc, they clung to each other, and Ondine finally discovered what all the fuss about love was about.

  Somehow, after the first surprise of the rude intimacy of it, the whole thing seemed innocent and natural and cozy. They slept sweetly until the birds woke her before dawn, and the sight of Luc lying there beside her was like finding a Christmas present on her pillow.

  “I’ll come back for you,” he promised, kissing her tenderly before he climbed right back out her window. “Once I’ve made a success of myself, imagine how proud your father will be to have me for his son-in-law!” he added boldly, to bolster his courage as well as hers.

  That was two years ago. Luc’s early letters were short on words, and long in coming, bearing only old news because not every port of call had a postal service. Then the letters stopped entirely. Few people in the town of Juan-les-Pins believed that Luc was even alive anymore, much less coming home.

  Ondine could hardly grasp the fact that he was really gone. She became so mournful that her father, who’d expected the nuns to teach his daughter obedience—not art and music and foreign languages—ordered her to forget Luc and concentrate on the more useful arts of cooking, sewing and most of all, serving. “And if we are lucky enough to find you a husband,” her father said sternly, “you will use all your mind and heart to make him happy. Do you understand?”

  Ondine couldn’t imagine any man but Luc as her husband. Yet by now she’d learned the modest art of fake compliance, with bowed head and lowered lashes, like the image of the Madonna.

  “Yes, Papa,” she’d demurred.

  But, just as at the convent, her inmost thoughts were still her own.

  —

  DRAWING AWAY FROM the mirror now, Ondine pulled the daffodils from a vase and wrapped them in a cloth napkin to take with her to the villa.

  “Bonjour, Papa!” she called out as she reached the front of the dining room, where sunlight spilled in narrow, angular stripes from the long windows. Her father sat alone at a corner table, counting up last night’s till for today’s bank deposit. Most of Ondine’s childhood memories of him involved the tallying of money with his old-fashioned adding machine. He was a handsome, pleasant man who enjoyed his neighbors and customers and the hubbub of a busy life, but when he circulated among his guests at the café he kept a clear-eyed view of each table’s potential for keeping the cash register full.

  The café’s clientele were mostly local customers since it was snuggled in a quiet enclave away from main streets and shops. But that didn’t stop the occasional tourists or celebrities from “discovering” the Café Paradis whenever their French friends or a hotel concierge tipped them off; even so, such esteemed visitors tended to remain discreet, instinctively hoarding this gem to themselves.

  Monsieur Belange waited for Ondine to pass directly in front of him before he looked up to say quietly, “Make everything perfect. I mustn’t hear one word of complaint from this man. Understand?”

  Ondine nodded soberly. “Who is he?” she whispered.

  Her father shrugged his shoulders in feigned indifference. “An important artist who wants to work undisturbed, in peace and quiet, before the whole summer crowd gets here.”

  “What’s his name?” she persisted.

  “He goes by the name of Ruiz.” There was something just a touch odd about the way her father said it. Ondine was astute enough to notice, and a look of doubt flickered in her eyes.

  Seeing his daughter’s perceptiveness, Monsieur Belange smiled and said in a low voice, “But he is known in the art world as Picasso. I tell you this because you may overhear that name in his house, yet you must never repeat it to anyone else. He doesn’t want people to know he’s here. He needs his privacy and will pay us well, so we ask no questions,” he warned, proud to be chosen for this honor. “Above all, you must tell no tales of whatever you see in that house. No gossip is ever to come from us.”

  “Oui, Papa,” she said, impressed. The name Picasso rang a dim bell; something scandalous clung to it, for even the nun who taught art had refused to discuss him. Mulling this over, Ondine stepped outside onto the triangular-shaped terrace.

  “Bonjour, Ondine!” chorused three men who’d just arrived to claim their favorite table, where they would read the news and drink aperitifs while waiting for their lunch to be served precisely at twelve-thirty as it always was. They often showed up early so they could watch and comment on everyone else who came to dine.

  She gave them a smile but thought, Without fail, here they are: the Three Wise Men. Luc had invented that nickname for these pillars of the community. The silver-haired doctor Charlot smoked long, pungent cigars; the baker Renard with his trim moustache, still a bachelor at thirty, rose so early in the morning that he was always hungry well before noon; and the black-bearded bank manager Jaubert was as pale as a vampire and liked his meat cooked so rare it was bleu.

  Because they’d all succeeded in making more money than their neighbors, these three men were relied upon by the entire community, not only for the support that their professions provided, but for their prudent and astute counsel. Although immutable in their old-fashioned views, they were kind at heart, and never too busy to advise their neighbors on matters large and small.

  But when Ondine walked past them they stopped talking, and their throaty chuckles and waggling eyebrows revealed their consensus that she was shapely and desirable. She could still feel their eyes on her as she tucked her skirt between her legs, hopped onto the bicycle and began pedaling away.

  The weight of the metal hamper behind her seat made her start so slowly that at first she hardly seemed to be moving at all, just barely staying up. Gritting her teeth determinedly she pushed harder and finally got herself pedaling rhythmically with gathering force as she reached the main road with its shops and hotels.

  “So this important Patron from Paris comes here now, just to get away from his friends!” she mused. Well, it was true that most chic tourists called spring
a “dead” season, wedged between two busy ones. Winter attracted American dowagers who played cards and roulette with haughty Russian émigrés, whiskered German bankers and English princes. Summer brought a younger, jazzy American and English crowd who liked to swim, bake in the sun, get drunk, openly flirt with one another’s wives, and defy their elders’ stodgy rules and traditions.

  “Bonjour, Ondine!” called out the postman, touching the brim of his cap as she cycled by.

  Another day without a letter from Luc, she thought, waving back. Ever since Luc left, she’d kept a small suitcase under her bed so that when he returned she could elope with him if necessary. But as time passed, Ondine began to think that she might just go off on her own, someplace where the local gossips didn’t think of her as a girl who’d been jilted. So her suitcase still contained her favorite treasures and a little purse with not nearly enough money in it. Not yet.

  Skimming along the graceful curve of the harbor with its briny scent of seaweed and the hungry cries of swooping gulls, Ondine saw the fishermen returning, their nets bulging with fish whose wet scales glinted rainbow colors in the sunlight. She hadn’t broken the habit of scanning the figures on the dock, looking for Luc’s distinctive head with his high forehead, his tousled brown hair, and his slim but strong body. Yet she averted her eyes when she passed the seedier bars and hotels where prostitutes and thieves lured the seamen to spend their pay before they could bring it home to girls like Ondine.

  “If I try to go off on my own, and my foot slips just once, I might end up like those shaggy women who hover around the wharf-side bars,” she said under her breath. She hadn’t been afraid with Luc by her side; he’d said, Everyone has a bright star calling them to their destiny, but if you stop listening to your star, the voice grows dimmer over the years until you can no longer hear it.

  He’d pointed to the heavens, where two stars were so close they’d almost merged into one. Those are ours, he’d told her, and she felt it and believed it. But now, alone and still living in her father’s house, Ondine felt more like a tin star left on an old Christmas tree that someone had forgotten to take down.