Ondine was still struggling to understand her jumbled feelings and his strange antics. But maybe a swim would clear her head. She went inside. It was really just a simple shed, with very weak light that came from a tiny window, high up, and shone a bit through cracks in the slats of the wooden walls. There was a rough bench and some hooks on one wall, with other peoples’ swimsuits in various stages of dampness or dryness. Dubiously, Ondine undressed and put her clothes on a hook.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as she opened the bag Picasso gave her. Why, it was the ragbag from his cart. She was so busy searching for swimsuits that she didn’t hear the door of the cabana open, nor the man who crept in until he put his arms around her bare waist and kissed her quickly to keep her from involuntarily exclaiming. She recognized the scent of his flesh. Picasso whispered quickly, “It’s only me, your secret lover. Of course, in the dark, you can’t really be sure, can you?”
His hands were on both sides of her, tracing the curve of her naked body from breasts to hips, as if sculpting a figure 8, in a way that made her involuntarily shiver. Then he cupped her breasts, one in each hand, and whispered in her ear so close it tickled, “How many lovers has Ondine had? One, two, three? More?” He sat down on the bench and drew her hips to his mouth, kissing her delicately in that hairy place.
“Tell me how many lovers you’ve had,” he demanded, and when she did not answer, his tongue began to probe her as he reached the petals of her sex.
“Ohhh!” she gasped, flushed with pleasure but embarrassed by the intimacy of it.
“How many, besides me?” he persisted.
“Oh—only one other,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” he asked, and then his tongue was probing harder and faster now.
“Yes!” she cried out.
“Shhh!” he said. He stood up and turned her around, pushing her forward so that she had to catch both hands against the wall to steady herself. His hands continued exploring her body. “You must be very quiet no matter how much you want to shout,” he murmured. “Because if you cry out, all the men will come running to rescue you. But when they see you like this, they’ll all want you, too. They’ll each take you, one by one. I won’t be able to stop them. So you must be silent, no matter what.”
Along with the splash of the sea against the shore, Ondine could indeed hear the voices and shouts of people coming and going, running across the beach all around them. More people seemed to be arriving, judging by all the noise. Voices—and feet—clattered right past them. No one called out to Ondine and Picasso, no one knocked on the door while he was kissing her. Yet strangely, each time a voice went rushing past, she felt her pleasure increasing at the very perilous nature of their privacy.
He put his hand flat on her mouth. Then he put a finger into her lips, and she found herself sucking on it, unable to hold back. “Quiet, very quiet,” he repeated, his other hand squeezing her buttocks and then reaching around to stroke her belly. “The little boys who play outside, do you know what they do when they see a beautiful woman go into a cabana? They creep up at the back of it and they peer through any hole in the wall they can find. Do you suppose they can see us now?”
Then suddenly he took her hips in his hands and drew her to him, bent her forward and entered her where she was already pulsing so desperately for him, so wet that he could plunge in deep enough to make them both gasp, and once again, she came before he left her.
For several moments in the dark, they leaned against the wall together, panting hard. Finally, when he spoke, it was with some humor. “I don’t feel much like swimming right now, do you?”
Ondine shook her head. She suddenly felt she could not face that crowd on the beach, for surely they’d all know exactly what had transpired, and she didn’t want to see it reflected on their faces. Especially if the butcher’s wife was still there. The news would be all over town tonight, that she was Picasso’s—or Ruiz’s—whore. How would Ondine explain that to her parents?
“Well,” said Picasso teasingly, “we could go back to the feast of the Virgin.”
“No!” she exclaimed, feeling guilty at the thought of all that piety.
“Yes, I want to go home and paint,” he said decisively.
As they emerged from the cabana, Ondine hesitated in the doorway until she thought nobody was looking. Picasso said a bit impatiently, “Why do you hang back like that? Come, let’s go this way.”
The donkey was still waiting for them, tied under the shade of a tree, chewing on some grass. Ondine and Picasso climbed aboard, and headed back for his villa. His manner was warm and reassuring as he asked her what she’d made for lunch and searched for a good spot to stop and eat it. She smiled and nodded, feeling flushed with physical pleasure. At last they found a quiet place to pull over and eat their lunch—tartines of spiced ham and cheese and roasted red peppers and young arugula. Feeling expansive, Picasso praised her cooking, looking deeply into her eyes, enough to make her blush with pride.
The food revived her, too, and she relaxed. In fact, Ondine realized that until now she’d gone through her entire life feeling all closed up within her body; but now it was as if she’d flung her arms open and wanted to embrace all the pleasures she saw—the open sky, the warm sun, the tumbling sea, the gulls calling out to her. That feeling of invincibility had returned; and yet, she also felt drowsy, as if sleep were an undertow she could barely resist.
When they reached Juan-les-Pins, Picasso yawned and said, “You can get off here. I have to return this cart, and I might sleep before I work today.”
She dismounted from the cart and dragged her bicycle off it. He reached out a steadying hand, then caught one of hers, kissed it gently and said, “Adieu, Ondine.” He placed his hand under her chin for a moment, smiled, and then he was on his way.
The Wheel Turns: Ondine and Picasso
THE NEXT DAY THE BIRDS singing exultantly outside her window seemed to be calling to Ondine to awaken and hurry, hurry to greet the day. But she rose feeling unsettled and a bit guilty about that incident in the cabana, right on the Blessed Virgin’s day! How had things gone so far? She realized that all this time she’d felt quite overwhelmed—first with the challenge of cooking and pleasing her Patron as her parents wanted; and then finding his free-spirited orbit so liberating from everyday life.
But now that the warm weather was bringing more people out and about in the streets, she couldn’t take a chance of being paraded around in public as Picasso’s girl. Did he expect her to be sexually available at his beck and call, whenever he felt like taking a day off? As exciting as it was, she didn’t want to end up just another jealous woman in his harem, fighting tooth and claw over a man who, she was beginning to realize, didn’t really take women seriously. The only thing sacred to him was his art, which was why she’d felt safer—and more exalted—as his model.
“I’ll just have to tell him, I’ll be his cook and his model, but not his concubine,” she resolved.
Yet outside, she could feel that everything was suddenly in full flower, with every leaf, bud, bird, animal and human bursting with the thrill of being alive. She felt her heart beating joyfully in response. She was bringing Picasso a cold asparagus salad and grilled trout; and a pastry that would melt on his tongue, served with cream and delicate Alpine strawberries—tiny, juicy and sweet as candy.
As she cycled past the harbor she detected the distinct odor of wet paint. At first she imagined it was wafting down from Picasso’s house. Then she saw that it was boat paint from the brushes of workmen on the summer yachts. When at last she pushed her bicycle through Picasso’s gate, she felt a strange thrill. Would he paint her today? Would she relent and let him make love to her, after all?
Then she stopped short. The front door of the villa was wide open, and there was a truck parked in the driveway. Ondine had to veer around it to get to the side door. And when she entered the kitchen, a strange woman with a towel around her head was pushing a wet mop across the floor.
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“What’s this? Why are you here in my kitchen? I must cook now,” Ondine said sharply.
The charwoman just kept mopping, speaking only to chide Ondine when she walked across the wet floor. Ondine went into the parlor. Men were coming down the stairs carrying boxes of paintings and the big metal lights. They moved heavily, quickly, as if in a great hurry, taking everything outside. Ondine felt a surge of panic, seeing all those familiar items like old friends now vanishing from her life.
“Where is Picasso?” Ondine cried.
One of the men, a younger one, stopped momentarily and said, “Who?”
Ondine recovered enough to correct herself. “Monsieur Ruiz.” The young man shrugged with a smile of regret that he could not be more helpful to a pretty girl on a warm sunny day in May. Ondine rushed up the staircase, dodging the other men. Picasso’s studio was completely emptied out. Already it had reverted to being an ordinary guest bedroom, with a brand-new bed and table standing where his easel used to be. In the next room, a laundress was stripping the linens off the very mattress where Ondine and Picasso had lain. “Are you the new tenant’s maid?” the laundress asked doubtfully.
“No! I am Monsieur Ruiz’s chef. Didn’t he leave me a letter?” Ondine asked breathlessly.
The woman shook her head. “They never say goodbye,” she said dryly. “It’s like the circus when it leaves town. Just more trash for us to clean up.”
Ondine searched every room herself. All signs of Picasso had evaporated into thin air. Not even a cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray. No jaunty little painted notes for her, no letter of recommendation. She’d half-expected to find it propped up against the fruit bowl. But even that was empty.
How could he just leave like that? she wondered with a hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. A single sob escaped her as a terrible thought occurred: Nothing wonderful will ever happen to me again.
She felt gutted, as if he’d taken the most vital part of her away with him. “He can’t be gone for good,” she whispered. But she recalled what now seemed like warning signs during their outing yesterday: parading around where he might be recognized by the crowds despite that ridiculous disguise; his festive air, as if the circus were in town—in fact, he’d behaved just as people do at the end of their holiday when they want to get all the fun they can out of their last day. And the way he’d taken her, in that dark cabana. Most of all, the way he’d said goodbye. Gently, regretfully. Adieu. Not his usual au revoir or à demain. Already his absence was palpable, leaving her absolutely nothing.
She dashed outside to the open back of the truck parked in the driveway, and without hesitation she climbed in among the curious moving men, insisting on examining every box of paintings. She had seen most of them before—but now there were some drawings of a new model who appeared over and over again—the photographer-lady, Miss Dora Maar, looking like a windswept force of nature with her sharp cat’s eyes and pale skin contrasting dramatically against her fashionably cut dark hair.
Would anyone ever believe that Ondine herself had known Picasso, cooked for him, loved him, posed for him? She only wanted to see one painting. The one that was hers. The one that was no longer here.
“Where is it?” she exclaimed, rushing back into the house, hoping that the moving men hadn’t found her Girl-at-a-Window yet. She frantically searched every closet until the charwoman told her to go home. Only then did Ondine think to ask for Picasso’s address in Paris, but the woman shrugged.
Ondine whirled around and rushed down the stairs to ask the moving men, but even before she reached the front door, they’d already closed up their truck, backed it out of the driveway and sped off down the hill. By the time she hopped onto her bicycle and pedaled after it, the truck had vanished.
When she returned to the café, her mother told her that a man working for Picasso had telephoned just after Ondine left, to inform her father that their services were no longer required and assuring him that they would be paid. Her father had already calculated the bill; and somehow it was this gesture that finally convinced Ondine.
Picasso was definitely gone.
Shock of the New: Céline in the Old Town, 2014
A FEW DAYS AFTER I nearly got myself arrested, I decided to take Aunt Matilda into my confidence about what I’d been searching for in Grandmother Ondine’s café. But I had to swear her to secrecy, because my aunt was turning out to be amazingly garrulous. Even before I could tell her my news, I learned that she’d already told the entire class—including Gil—that I had come all this way to take a cooking course for my poor mother, who was laid up in a nursing home and unable to attend.
“You told Gil that?” I exclaimed. “Why? He’s a pain in the ass. He uses personal information to embarrass people.” It was morning, and Aunt Matilda and I were getting dressed for class.
She said airily, “Oh, you misjudge Gil. I had a nice chat with him and he’s actually a very sweet man. But you have to understand, he’s under a lot of stress right now. What with all the renovations he’s making—he had to borrow a ‘massive’ amount of money, you see—and his silent partner, who’s supposed to help him pay back the loan, is making a lot of demands, and putting a lot of pressure on Gil to make sure they reopen the mas as a hotel on time.”
I stared at her, agog. “How’d you wangle all that information out of him?”
She smiled at me a bit smugly. “He lost his mother at an early age, so he’s susceptible to soothing, older gals like me. He grew up among tough kids, so he had to be tough, too. And his wife, you know, committed suicide. It wasn’t his fault, of course. She was a poet,” she said, as if that explained everything.
“Oh! That’s awful!” I exclaimed, taken aback.
“See? Doesn’t that shed new light on Gil? Sometimes people with so much tragedy in their lives are prickly and pugnacious, just to hide their extreme vulnerability,” Aunt Matilda observed.
I glanced at her and said, “But I know he didn’t tell you all those details about his wife!”
“No,” she admitted, “I read it in a magazine.”
I muttered, “I still don’t see why you told him about Mom.”
Aunt Matilda said gently, “Anyone can see how concerned you are about your mother. It’s all over your face, in everything you do. I see you checking for messages all the time, looking worried.” This was true. I’d been in regular contact with the hairdresser at the care home, who said Mom’s progress was slow since they’d increased her meds, which the woman thought made it harder for Mom to move unassisted.
“Gil understood. See, you can’t keep it all inside,” Aunt Matilda was saying earnestly. “When dealing with other human beings, dearie, there has to be some give and take. Personal information is like currency. You trade something to get something. Gil told me his troubles, I told him yours.”
“I see you didn’t swap your troubles for his,” I pointed out.
She explained, “No, because I had to set him straight about you. He was convinced that you were up to no good at that café in Juan-les-Pins.” She peered at me. “So—were you up to no good?”
“Of course not!” I replied. And that was the point when I realized I needed her help. “Look, if I tell you what I was doing, will you absolutely swear that you will tell no one, no matter what happens?” I asked. Sensing a juicy tidbit, she nodded eagerly. So I told her about how Grandma Ondine cooked for Picasso, which of course immediately intrigued Aunt Matilda. And then I explained that maybe, just maybe, Grandma had hidden a painting for safekeeping somewhere.
I waited for her to tell me I was crazy, but her gambler instinct kicked right in. “Ahhh!” she said. “Now, that would be quite a find.” She pondered this. “Well, in an odd way it all makes sense now. You know, when your mother asked me about Picasso, she said, ‘It’s just something I wanted to know—for Céline.’ Maybe she hoped to find that painting for you—to give you your own legacy.”
I couldn’t help having a catch in my voice as I said, “
I looked all over that café. It’s not there.”
But Aunt Matilda was now like a hound who’d been given the scent of her quarry. “You can’t give up that easily,” she said briskly. “Let me see that notebook of yours. There must be something you overlooked. Do you have any living relatives in France?” I shook my head. That much I knew for sure.
“People,” she said. “Always start with people. Who do you know that knew your Grandma?”
“Besides Picasso?” I said. “Let’s see. Well, the doctor who tended her. But I don’t know his name. Wait, there was a lawyer. It’s in Grandma’s letter.” Aunt Matilda’s optimism was contagious, and I showed it to her. “Monsieur Gerard Clément. He executed her last will and testament.” I used my phone to do a quick search on the Internet. I could find nothing, not even a website for his law firm.
“Not so unusual in France,” Aunt Matilda said, undaunted. “Sometimes they have enough local business so that they don’t need to advertise to the greater world.” The breakfast bell sounded. We left our room for the circular staircase that led to the main level. As we hurried across the lobby she veered away from me and said, “Go on and grab me a brioche and café au lait while I find you an address.”
She was heading for the front desk. I said in alarm, “You swore secrecy, remember?”
“No sweat,” Aunt Matilda replied.
A few moments later she caught up with me just as our morning class was about to start, and she triumphantly handed me a slip of paper with an address and telephone number for Monsieur Gerard Clément. He apparently had an office in the “old town” section of Mougins.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked, nonplussed.
“The old-fashioned way, dear,” she said, wolfing down her coffee and bun. “The phone book.”
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