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.
—
FORTUNATELY, 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.
Céline in New York, Christmas Eve 2013
MY MOTHER WAITED UNTIL I was thirty to tell me about Grandmother Ondine and Picasso. It was Christmas Eve, and I’d just flown in from Los Angeles to spend the holiday with her at her house in Westchester—one of those venerable old colonials with large, elegant windows, bordered by carefully pruned shrubbery and situated on a spacious, neat lawn dotted with ancient oak and maple trees.
It was snowing lightly when my taxi dropped me at the driveway. Mom must have been watching from a window, because the front door opened before I even got near it, and she came down the walkway without a coat over her cherry-red wool dress. She always dressed impeccably in finely made suits or dresses, pretty silk scarves and subtle, discreet jewelry; and her skin appeared youthfully radiant.
I instantly admired how good she looked and how she single-handedly maintained a modest, genuine spirit of joie de vivre. Yet the sight of her small figure and bright face coming down the walkway also evoked a protective instinct I’ve often had for her, almost as if she were the child and I her guardian. For, although Mom possessed French good taste, she wasn’t haughty about it; she had a shy, meek demeanor, due to some mysterious trauma from her childhood which she once alluded to but refused to fully explain, saying only, “Grandmother Ondine and I went through some bad times before I got married. But one must take the bitter with the better.” I could never get her to say anything more.
Today though, Mom was especially happy and animated. “Céline, you made it! How lovely you look with your California suntan!” she exclaimed approvingly, kissing me on first one cheek, then the other. I stooped to meet her halfway, because I was so much taller. Her eyes were dark while mine were blue; in fact all I inherited from her was her auburn-colored hair—I wore mine in a waist-length braid, while hers was cut chic and short. I liked the familiar scent of her face powder; the warmth of her soft cheeks. As we hugged, her tiny frame felt a little more delicate now, for she was in her mid-seventies.
I took off my coat and threw it around her shoulders as she said, “Oh, look at the snow! Now we’ll have a white Christmas, isn’t that nice? It’s like powdered sugar on everything. Come in, chérie, let’s get you some chocolat chaud!” Although she cooked like the Frenchwoman she was, Mom felt immensely proud of being what she considered a modern American homemaker typique. I was actually born in France, but my parents immediately whisked me off to New York so I’d have a thoroughly American childhood.
“Hello, Julie! Merry Christmas,” called out a new neighbor from across the road, who’d just come down her own driveway to collect her mail, and perhaps to look me over, because we hadn’t met.
“Merry Christmas!” Mom said, then added with pride, “This is my daughter, Céline. I told you about her—she’s a makeup artist in Hollywood. This year she was nominated for an Oscar award!”
“My team was nominated, Mom,” I muttered, embarrassed.
“Ah, at last I get to meet Céline, ‘the missing link’!” the woman said, bustling across the street.
I supposed I’d been called worse. All my life I was known as the “accident”, a child conceived late when nobody expected it. My mother was thrilled though, because I was her only child after two miscarriages. I had older step-siblings, Danny and Deirdre, twins from my father’s first marriage. Sandy-haired and freckled, they were dead ringers for Dad. Because they were older and very mysterious as only twins can be, I worshipped them wistfully as a kid, but they viewed me as a “Frenchie” like Mom.
“How’s Arthur?” the neighbor asked, and she and Mom nattered on a bit about Dad’s surgery. Since I’d just been on an airplane for six hours, all I wanted to do was go inside and unwind, not stand here in cold weather that my blood wasn’t used to. When my mother tried to give me back my coat, I dug into my carry-on bag for a wool jacket instead, then I waited as patiently as I could until Mom was finally able to make her excuses, and at last we went into the warm house all aglow with holiday lights.
“Mmm, it smells like Christmas in here,” I said as we entered, enjoying the mingled scents of nutmeg, orange, cloves, French mulled wine, and desserts baked with sweet European butter.
Mom’s place was always perfectly neat in a way that I knew my apartment would never be. For the holidays, the rooms were decorated with pine branches and maroon-and-gold ribbon; the parlor had a big tree winking with lights and baubels and wrapped gifts shining beneath it; and, in her large, beautiful kitchen, almost every table and countertop was laden with home-baked desserts.
“You made Les Treize Desserts de Noël!” I exclaimed, thrilled at the charming sight of this ancient, traditional series of Provençal home-baked sweets. Delighted by my enthusiasm, Mom proudly gave me a tour of the Thirteen Desserts of Christmas. Here was the dish of dried fruits and nuts called the “Four Beggars” to represent the four orders of monks; then a sweet, brioche-like cake made with orange flower water and olive oil; various meringue and candied citrus and melon confections; two kinds of nougats with pistachio and almond; also the thin, waffle-like oreillettes, cookies dusted with powdered sugar like the snow sifting outside; and of course, the spectacular bûche de Noël—a Yule Log of rolled chocolate cake with a caramel cream filling, and dark chocolate frosting which had been scraped by a fork’s tines to make it resemble a hunter’s newly chopped log from the forest. There was even a tiny candy Santa Claus carrying a hunter’s axe poised atop this beautiful Yule Log.
“Wow, Mom, you must be exhausted!” I said, impulsively giving her a big hug of congratulations for her beautiful presentation. She purred with pleasure, stroking my cheek and then patting my back.
“Pas du tout,” she said modestly with an airy wave of her hand. And suddenly I realized what was different about Mom today; she possessed the calm, confident demeanor of someone who’d been home alone peacefully cooking all week while Dad was in the hospital recuperating. Even though she loved catering to him, I could see that not having Dad at home had somehow released her, making her both relaxed and buoyant; and it looked as if she’d been secretly enjoying her newfound independence.
“Leave your suitcase in the front hall, we’ll get you settled in later,” she said, eagerly taking my hand and leading me to the kitchen table. She sat me down there and then poured us some hot chocolate, which she’d timed perfectly for my arrival, along with a plate of fresh apricot butter biscuits.
“Mmm, so good,” I said, sipping gratefully. “Now it really tastes like Christmas.”
This conversation was highly unusual; my mother rarely talked about money. She left the family finances entirely up to Dad and his accountants. She shopped, she had credit cards of course, but as far as I knew, she’d never in her life had to balance a checkbook, pay a bill or do her taxes.
Now she took a deep breath. And then she lowered the boom. “Your brother has been helping Dad with all the complicated insurance paperwork, so they’ve put everything in trust to Danny, because he understands what Dad wants and can continue taking care of it all when your father isn’t around to do so anymore. Is that okay with you?” I detected a guilty tinge to her voice as she said all this in a rush, as if to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible.
Still, it took me a moment to grasp the significance of what she was saying. “Danny’s going to get all the money? Even what you inherited from your mom?” I said. She nodded with such a stricken look that I saw it had not been an easy thing for her to agree to, yet she hastily tried to reassure me.
“But Danny won’t keep the money all for himself. He’ll manage it for me and then when I’m gone, he’ll take care of all of you; it will be divided up equally. Daddy says men have more access to information for making better business and investment decisions. ‘Men trust men’, he says.”
My hot chocolate had gone cold right there in my cup. I’d stopped sipping it. “And what do you say, Mom?” I asked quietly. I knew that nobody else in the family was going to ask her this.
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