Cooking for Picasso

by Camille Aubray

  He appeared unusually animated, almost—could it be, a bit nervous? It made him seem vulnerable and therefore more human—like any mortal who was anxious about throwing a party for friends whose opinions mattered. He’s counting on me! Ondine thought worriedly.

  The second man now said playfully to Picasso, “So! This is the angel in your kitchen?” He was taller, thinner and younger than the others—still in his forties, surely—with a fuzzy nimbus of brown hair framing a long, poetic face and soulful eyes that gave him a dashing yet slightly fragile air. He was more luxuriously dressed than the others, in a three-piece suit with a silk pocket-handkerchief and a fresh gardenia in his buttonhole. “Ah, yes, mademoiselle,” he said, “I heard your angel’s wings beating gently as you flitted about the house.”

  “Watch out for Monsieur Cocteau!” Picasso cautioned her. “He’ll put you in one of his avant-garde films. You could end up on the other side of a looking-glass, unable to get out!”

  They were behaving like schoolboys competing for the only girl in the room, Ondine observed, feeling nonplussed. Next to these tall, elegant men, Picasso was like a small, swarthy Arab sultan.

  His guests recovered from the distraction of Ondine, and they returned to scrutinizing the painting on the mantel. “Come, Ondine, have a look!” Picasso exclaimed in that over-animated way.

  He had never directly invited her to inspect his paintings. Surprised, she advanced toward this new canvas. “Minotaure tirant une charette,” said the man called Cocteau. Yes, indeed, here was a naked Minotaur—she recognized the horned, bullish head from the sketches in his studio—pulling a big wheelbarrow; but this fellow was different, for he was almost like a cartoon, with a friendly, innocent face glancing over his shoulder at his haul, which was an overflowing, mad jumble of strange items: a large painting, a ladder tilted askew, a tree that might be a potted plant…and a poor feminine-looking horse all twisted upside down. In the background was the familiar Mediterranean sandy beach and blue tide; but the stars in the greenish sky looked more like starfish floating in an upside-down sea.

  The white-bearded man commented, “You know, this character reminds me of a junk man trundling all his possessions to another town in hope of better luck. Is it moving day for the Minotaur?”

  “Exactemente!” Picasso said. But he stared broodingly at his painting. Ondine noticed that he seemed unusually respectful of this older man—was he some sort of critic or art dealer or journalist? This esteemed visitor had an aura of serenity, like a professor who was confident of his expertise.

  Whereas Cocteau, the youngest one, was extremely eager to impress Picasso. “But clearly this Minotaur has murdered his mate,” he offered, “so he’s hauling the mare away to bury her, yes?”

  Indeed, the horse’s head hung prostrate from the cart, almost touching the ground, her eyes staring, her open mouth revealing teeth grimaced in pain, her legs and hoofs in the air.

  Picasso snorted. “Wake up, Cocteau!” he chided with a scornful expression.

  The older gentleman, looking perplexed, agreed with Cocteau, saying, “Bien sûr, she’s dead! Her entrails are hanging out!” He pointed to thickly painted lines of red and white at the poor horse’s belly.

  Beneath their jocular manner lurked an air of fierce professional competitiveness, Ondine noted; an underlying tension, as if they were soccer players who each didn’t want to be the one to lose the ball.

  “Well? What do you see?” Picasso asked, turning to Ondine as if to a referee. Startled, she realized that he truly expected an answer. His other guests did, too; the older man’s eyes twinkled behind his thick glasses, and the younger fellow’s soft mouth dropped open in amused suspense.

  Like a student who’d been singled out, she gulped and studied the horse, following the bold brushstrokes so closely that she had to tilt her head as far upside-down as she could, to see the animal right-side up. Viewed this way, she realized, the red lines coming from the mare’s belly were not entrails, but the outlines of a tiny creature, also upside down, with a distinct little face—a miniature version of the mare’s, with a similar long head, wide eyes and flared nostrils. Yes, of course—a tiny baby horse.

  “Comme il faut?” the white-bearded man exclaimed, craning his neck to see upside-down, too.

  Ondine blushed as she straightened herself upright again. “Go ahead, say it!” Picasso demanded.

  “I don’t think the mare is dead,” Ondine said earnestly. “She’s just given birth to a foal.”

  “Hooray!” shouted Picasso. “Thank heaven for the pure eyes of youth!” he added with a triumphant smirk at the other men.

  “Surely this angel has a name?” queried Cocteau before he returned his gaze to the painting.

  “She’s my Ondine,” Picasso announced. “Straight from the sea. She’s come to cook you the best lunch in all of Juan-les-Pins,” he boasted cheerfully.

  The older man peered at her more appraisingly through his owlish eyeglasses. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if I were to paint this jeune, I would make her hair purple and red, because she has both beaujolais and bordeaux in those long curly grapevines of hers!” He bowed to Ondine.

  “Henri Matisse, à votre service, mademoiselle,” he said in the most charming way possible.

  Ondine gasped. No wonder Picasso was so deferential! She’d heard diners in the café arguing about Matisse’s genius for years. One customer even came in proudly carrying a Matisse painting he’d bought; a landscape of the bay of Nice in shockingly primitive strokes and colors, yet, Ondine noted at the time, magically devoid of anything ugly like telephone wires, traffic, advertisements—and people.

  She felt herself curtsey in response to the artist’s gallantry. But Picasso was scowling with ill-concealed jealousy now. “Well, are we going to eat, or are we going to stand here talking like ladies in a tearoom?” he said abruptly.

  Henri Matisse calmly, peaceably reached out to a low table where he’d apparently left two bottles of wine with gift ribbons on their necks. He picked up one bottle and presented it to Picasso.

  “À votre santé,” he said amicably.

  Ondine reached into a drawer and handed Picasso a corkscrew. He went into the dining room to open it, and the others followed him.

  Ondine slipped back into the kitchen, even more worried about this business of preparing “the best lunch” in town. Quickly she arranged the appetizers on their dishes and loaded them onto a big tray. Ready. She took a deep breath, hoisted the tray and carried it into the dining room.

  Picasso and his guests stood there with filled wine glasses in hand. Now they took their seats. Ondine served langoustines “Ninon”—shellfish in a leek, butter and orange sauce, with a chiffonade of greens topped by a few edible flowers. “Ah!” the men chorused, dropping their napkins in their laps.

  Back in the kitchen she became deeply absorbed at the stove with final preparations of the main course. When she re-entered the dining room to collect the empty plates, the men had resumed conversing in that low, businesslike way. Picasso did not look up at her, nor give any indication of what they’d felt about the appetizers. She hurried off to put the dishes in the sink.

  “Well, they all ate every bite. They wouldn’t do that if they hated it,” Ondine consoled herself. “But these men are connoisseurs of the world’s greatest art. They must have highly sophisticated palates, too!” Her fingers were shaking as she put the cassoulet and clean dishes on her tray. “Mother of God, give me deliverance!” she said under her breath.

  She staggered back to the dining room with her heavy tray. This time, the men stopped talking and glanced up hungrily, their eyes following her every move as she deposited the main course in the center of the table. They continued to watch while she lifted the lid of the pot. More intense silence. Ondine raised her spoon to break the cassoulet crust with a ceremonial crack! The guests broke into applause. She almost wept with relief, carefully placing each serving before them. Then she stood quietly in the doorwa
y to assess if anything more was needed. Picasso and Cocteau dove in heartily.

  Matisse used his spoon to delicately taste the sauce. “Ah. Superbe!” he sighed. “Ondine, vous êtes une vraie artiste.” She was thrilled. No one had ever called her, or her mother, a “true artist”. From the head of the table Picasso smirked at the food—not her—with pride, nodding.

  Ondine said, “Bon appétit,” before she slipped out to check on dessert. She heard a second bottle of wine open with a loud pop! and soon the men’s voices rose in volume, boisterously laughing and even shouting.

  “Good, they’re happy now,” she sighed in relief as she ground the coffee beans.

  But when she came into the dining room to collect the empty plates, the atmosphere had changed palpably, with a dangerous tension in the air that made her want to hide like a child behind the sofa in the parlor until the guests had gone home. Already she felt she’d been holding her breath all day.

  “You’ve really got Herr Hitler all wrong,” Cocteau was saying plaintively. “He’s a pacifist at heart! And he truly has France’s best interests in mind.”

  Picasso snorted. “He’s got France’s best bridges in mind for his bombs,” he replied belligerently.

  “No, no!” Cocteau insisted unwisely, as if he were confident of words he’d heard repeated a hundred times at other important luncheons. “Hitler loves France. He’s a true patron of the arts.”

  “It remains to be seen,” Matisse cautioned. “The odds are that we are all on his blacklist.”

  Picasso turned to Cocteau with terrifyingly piercing scorn in those coal-black eyes. “You think Hitler will let a ‘degenerate’ like you keep staging your pretty little films and ballets?” he said tauntingly. “He’ll eat you alive for breakfast, and he’ll still be hungry before noon.”

  Cocteau wore the shocked look of a schoolboy who’d had his knuckles rapped. Picasso saw this, but rather than let his friend off the hook, he pressed on in an even crueler tone, with the look of a bird of prey swooping on a mouse. “But if you, Jean, salute whatever flag the Nazis run up the pole, then perhaps the Führer will keep you for propaganda value, as the Daisy in his buttonhole.”

  Ondine caught her breath but managed not to make a sound. Even she knew what it meant when one boy called another one a Daisy, but she kept her expression neutral so that Monsieur Cocteau would not be embarrassed to have a local girl hear this. Quietly she placed her Easter cheesecake pie in the center of the table, wishing she could disappear into thin air. But she had to slice it and serve it.

  Matisse broke the silence. “Now, gentlemen,” he said in a soothing but firm tone as she moved around them, “let’s not speak of monsters like Hitler today. The world has enough ugliness. Let us turn our thoughts, and our appetites, to the luxe, calme et volupté of Ondine’s magnificent table.”

  Cocteau nodded. Picasso sat like an emperor. Ondine ducked out to make coffee, her nerves jangling. “Today they like my food. Tomorrow, who knows?” For, despite their warrior-like confidence, these artists were ultrasensitive, highly strung creatures whose mercurial moods were tricky to negotiate. She’d hate to have them turn their guns on her. Especially Picasso. He was as relentless as a bullfighter.

  Cautiously she re-entered the dining room with her coffeepot. The atmosphere had changed yet again; now the men looked supremely sated from the meal, and they’d produced a secret bottle of absinthe while joking about mutual friends. As Ondine moved among them, pouring coffee, she saw Picasso glance at her backside and exchange a look with his guests. Matisse waggled his eyebrows.

  They think I’m sleeping with Picasso, Ondine realized. And furthermore, their host was doing nothing to make them think otherwise.

  “Ondine, which one of us do you suppose is the best at kissing?” Picasso asked slyly.

  “I’ll have to ask your wives,” she answered quickly, and they all laughed uproariously.

  Matisse winked at her through his owlish glasses, while Cocteau, fully recovered from tangling with Picasso, lifted one of his long fingers and waved it as if it were a conductor’s baton as he sang:

  “Belle Ondine, Belle Ondine,

  your shoes are all a-shine.

  And your flowery dress so fine.”

  Ondine giggled, for he had slightly altered the lyrics of a popular dance-hall tune, “Caroline”. The men stomped their feet and clapped as Cocteau finished the song.

  But now she was acutely aware that they were sitting at the level of her bosom, their lips just inches away; and she almost felt in peril of being seized by her hips and pulled into a man’s lap so he could bury his face in her breasts. This image came so suddenly and graphically that she flushed with shame at having such strange thoughts. She returned to the kitchen, relieved to be alone.

  By the time she’d cleaned up and packed her hamper onto her bicycle, the guests were gone, the sun was sinking, and the damp evening air was stealing in from the harbor. Picasso had stepped outside to see off his friends. Now he remained in the front yard, working intently on something, occasionally bending to pick up a stray branch that had fallen; but instead of throwing it away he’d attach it to the other items in his hand by twining it with string.

  Ondine didn’t think he noticed her as she wheeled her bike past him; yet at the last minute, he beckoned for her to come to him. She parked her bike and crossed the lawn.

  “So,” he said as he kept working, “you can cook. And now you can tell your friends you’ve fed three artistes in one day. Which of these ‘geniuses’ did you like better?” he asked with an ironic smile.

  Ondine shrugged, unwilling to choose. Picasso exclaimed, “Certainly not Cocteau! He is talented. But he is the tail of my comet,” he declared. “As for Matisse, well, he’s the only other great artist of our time worth talking about, but he’s too old for you, right?”

  “He was very kind,” Ondine demurred, secretly thrilled to think that such a master painter had expressed the desire to capture all the shades of color in her hair.

  Picasso immediately guessed her thoughts. “Hah! How would he like it if I went into his house and announced that I was going to paint his cook?” he said belligerently. “Well, perhaps I will!”

  With a sudden flourish, like a magician, he handed her the thing he’d been working on. A diamond-shaped construction of tissue-thin paper, attached to a crossbow of delicate branches and sticks, with a long tail of colorful torn rags. The paper, she saw in delight, had a wonderful abstract face painted right on it, just like his earlier canvases she’d seen this week.

  “It’s a kite!” she exclaimed in utter delight. “You just made a kite! It’s wonderful!”

  Picasso feigned a casual attitude, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette, watching her as she swished the kite around the lawn in a little dance of delight. “You like it?” he said. “Then keep it. You’ll have to take it into the park to give it a good run,” he added, as if it were a pet. He lit his cigarette, drew on it and exhaled, watching the smoke rings rise up and then disappear.

  “Merci beaucoup, Patron!” Ondine exclaimed breathlessly.

  “Au revoir,” he said calmly as he picked up his newspaper from the front step and then disappeared inside.

  —

  ONDINE WANTED TO go right out and fly it, but she did not dare make a detour to the park, where someone might steal her mother’s pots and pans from her bike. She decided she’d take the kite out early in the morning when fewer people would be there. Back at the café, she slipped upstairs quickly and hid it under her bed, for fear that somehow her father might confiscate it.

  As she returned to the kitchen to unload her basket, her mother asked, “So? How did it go?”

  “Just fine,” Ondine replied, feeling suddenly weak with fatigue and relief.

  Madame Belange said pragmatically, “Perhaps so. We’ve had no complaints.”

  Later that night Ondine indulged in a hot bath and finally allowed herself to relax, although it was hard at first for her n
erves to “come down”; she felt like a sports car whose heart was still racing.

  But when she climbed into bed and snuggled under the covers, feeling warm and silky inside, she could almost feel the presence of that kite underneath her, its face turned upward as if it could see her in her bed. Drowsily she recalled those lusty male voices singing her name all around the table.

  “Mmm,” she murmured, “I wonder which one of them really is the best kisser.”

  She imagined the three men insisting she test them, and she pictured herself moving from one to the other around the table, just like when she’d served the coffee. She guessed that Picasso would be a brutal kisser, and Cocteau might nibble on her ears like a deer; but Matisse might oh-so-politely lift her onto the table, push aside her skirt and savor her like a dessert, tickling her thighs with his bristly beard as he kissed her, higher and higher until he reached the rose of her sex, his connoisseur’s tongue encouraging the kind of yielding that makes a woman even hungrier than a man.

  “I can’t choose who’s best,” she’d have to announce finally. “I want you all.”

  “Alors! It takes three mortal men to satisfy this one sea nymph!” they’d proclaim.

  Lying there in the dark, breathing deeply now, Ondine hummed the song that her triumvirate of great artists had sung to her today; and with this lullaby she drifted off to a most satisfying, peaceful sleep. For the first time in many months, she’d gone to bed without thinking about Luc.

  A Mirror for Ondine

  THE INEVITABLE SPRING RAIN BEGAN suddenly one day, with a wind blowing so hard that the waiters had to open up the dining room at the Café Paradis and serve lunch indoors instead of on the terrace.

  When the Three Wise Men arrived, they immediately began to argue over which country was responsible for sending over the winds of such bad weather—Spain, Russia or Arabia.

  But at the back of the house, the weather made no difference; everyone was working hard, as usual. Ondine’s mother told her, “Here, take this lunch to your artist up on the hill.”