Dear Monsieur Clément: My mother told me that on the day my Grandmother Ondine died, a neighbor had looked in on her and called for the doctor. Do you know who this neighbor was, and if so, please provide me with the name, address and telephone number. Any other information you have would be most helpful, as I feel it is extremely imperative that I make contact right away.
As we boarded the van that took us back to the mas, I glanced at Aunt Matilda, but she and Peter were deep in conversation about possible day trips they might take when our class was given its “free time” at the end of the course. I hadn’t yet found the right moment to tell Aunt Matilda that the mas we were staying in had belonged to Grandma. When I’d returned from seeing Monsieur Clément, and Aunt Matilda asked me how it went with him, I told her only that he didn’t seem to know about a lost Picasso painting. Since I’d already searched the mas and found nothing, there didn’t seem to be any reason to burden the talkative Aunt Matilda with another one of Mom’s little secrets.
When we arrived at the mas we were offered complimentary massages in the spa’s open-air white tents that overlooked the lush fields and cerulean sky. As I lay there on my massage table I wondered what other family secrets Mom didn’t know about. I’d just seen two paintings of a model with a mirror who I felt sure was Grandma Ondine. And even Aunt Matilda recognized that striped pitcher in a still life. I felt I was truly on the right path, but now I knew that my mother’s ideas could only take me so far.
While sea breezes fluttered the spa curtains, an expert French masseuse gently kneaded my muscles with massage oils made of local lemon and almond. Beneath the sheet which I was lying on were crushed flower petals of violet, jasmine, rose and lavender, and I wondered fleetingly if this was a new addition inspired by my impromptu flower-shower. I smiled, recalling the look on Gil’s face when he plucked the flowers out of my hair. A bit unsettled now, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, surrendering to new impressions that came drifting in and out of my thoughts on the soft, scented air.
If I’m ever going to find that painting, I’ve got to stop thinking like Mom, I mused. I ought to think more like Grandmother Ondine in order to figure this all out.
Come to that, I might even have to learn—in whatever way possible—to think like Picasso.
Ondine and Julie in Juan-les-Pins, 1952
JULIE TOOK AN INSTANT DISLIKE to France. Even when Ondine reminded her that they were in a country that had recently been torn apart by yet another world war, Julie was in no frame of mind to understand why anyone would want to return here.
First, that awful sea voyage among a class of passengers comprised of wailing babies and their harried mothers, and rough men who drank too much and leered at her. And such unspeakable conditions for eating, sleeping and toilette! Then, the horrible docking here on a cold, pitiless rainy night. Julie had never felt such biting rain, hurtling in from an Atlantic Ocean bearing absolutely no resemblance to her warm summery Atlantic that caressed the beaches of New York.
As if that weren’t enough, they had to go through customs and be quizzed by a horrible man who smelled of fish and cigars, before they could be granted the privilege of boarding a third-class overnight train car, where awful Europeans chattering in every conceivable language crowded in with their bundles and elders and unkempt children—and all of them smelled as if they hadn’t taken a bath in a hundred years.
This was France? This was the paradise that her parents always promised to show her one day? Her father Luc had worked and scrimped and saved and, ultimately, shed his blood for his wife and daughter—only to have them both end up here?
Poor Papa. Julie failed to accept, even now, that he was dead. Part of her believed he was hiding somewhere back in America. It was inconceivable that he’d been reduced to nothing but ashes confined in a small wooden box. And why should he have wanted his ashes scattered to the sea in a tiny provincial town called Juan-les-Pins?
Ondine felt apprehensive, too, as they finally arrived in her hometown. Everything seemed smaller, more compact than she remembered. And from the moment when they reached the Café Paradis, she instantly sensed that something was wrong. For one thing, the chairs were still stacked on top of the tables on the terrace, and it was nearly twelve-thirty in the afternoon. Did the café no longer serve lunch? Also, there was a very mangey cat sitting arrogantly right in the center of the terrace; this cat in no way resembled Ondine’s girlhood pet.
Julie sensed her mother’s hesitation. “This is where Grandma and Grandpa live? It can’t be,” Julie said tearfully. She was tired—bone-tired, soul-dead tired, in a way she’d never been in her life. With all her heart she wished they were back in New Rochelle.
Ondine was silent for a few minutes, then found her voice. “Yes, it is,” she said rather sharply. “Don’t whine. Be sweet and polite to your grandparents.”
The truth was, Ondine had no idea whether her parents were going to greet her with open arms or hurl her right back into the streets. They hadn’t answered any of her letters. But even if they still bore a grudge, they couldn’t turn away poor Julie, their sweet grandchild. Could they?
“You’re wrong, Maman,” Julie whimpered. “See? Look at the sign above the door. It doesn’t say Café Paradis. It says something else.” She squinted, spelling it out. “It says Café Renard,” she said, feeling vastly relieved that this grubby-looking hole-in-the-wall was not their ultimate destination.
“The awning. That’s it! The awning is gone,” Ondine said, startled. She put down her suitcase near the front door. Julie, always obedient, did the same with hers. The mangey cat got up, walked over to the suitcases, sniffed them imperiously, and then, with a slight shudder, returned to the center of the terrace. Ondine pushed the door open and went inside. Julie had no choice but to follow.
The dining room was unoccupied. Its floor had not been polished to its usual lustre; in fact, it looked quite scuffed. “Well, that’s to be expected; after all, there was a war here,” Ondine reminded the dubious Julie, who shrank from the stale smell of bygone meals. The white tablecloths were no longer spotless; they weren’t even ironed properly. The cutlery and glasses were mismatched. The gilded mirror, once beautiful, looked downright smoky. And Rembrandt’s Girl at a Window was gone.
“Allo!” Ondine called out boldly, moving toward the swinging doors in the back that led to the kitchen. Suddenly the doors were flung wide, and a plump man came out with a guarded, suspicious expression.
“Who’s there?” he said loudly.
Ondine, blinking in the dim light, identified the voice before the face. “Good God. It is him. He’s the baker who wanted to marry me,” she told Julie in a horrified whisper. Earlier at the train station Ondine had recognized the stationmaster, and Rafaello the policeman, and other neighbors; but Monsieur Renard was the only person she’d met upon her return to France who’d gained weight since the war. It crossed her mind that people who’d been this well fed must have “played ball” as Luc would say, with the fascist invaders.
Julie was thoroughly disgusted now. “That awful fat man is the one Grandpa wanted you to marry instead of Papa?” she asked in disbelief, for Ondine had told her about it on the journey here.
“Shh! Yes,” Ondine said. With the brightest smile she could muster, she greeted Renard.
“You are Ondine?” he repeated, searching her face for a clue before remembering to nod politely to Julie. But when Ondine asked for her mother, Monsieur Renard looked panicked at her ignorance and quickly explained that her parents—both of them—had not survived the war.
“The Occupation was too much for them. It was terrible. First the Italian soldiers, then the German ones—it all took a toll on your father’s heart. He died before the war was over. Your poor mother carried on a few years after that, but she came down with flu, and like so many, she was already weakened by exhaustion. You can’t imagine how hard we all worked, just to survive! There was no real food to serve our customers. We didn’t even have fres
h fish, because the Nazis wouldn’t let us put our boats out to sea. Everything had to be obtained on the black market. Even so, your mother had to bake tartes and stews made of things we wouldn’t have fed to the pigs before the war.”
Julie noticed that the fat man had not even asked them to sit down, even though Ondine was now visibly teetering and pale, looking utterly exhausted by this devastating news. With an indignant glare at Monsieur Renard, Julie took her mother by the hand and led her to one of those tables with the stained cloth on it. She had to pull out two chairs before she could find one that was steady.
“Come and sit down, Maman,” she said pointedly.
Ondine, like a sleepwalker, followed her. Monsieur Renard, who’d seen the dirty look Julie gave him, pulled out another chair for Julie, then he sat down heavily on the rickety one.
“Désolé!” he murmured consolingly to Ondine. “I hate to be the bearer of this sad news!”
Julie didn’t really think he was sorry. He didn’t offer them anything to eat or drink, not even a glass of water. As if fearing that anyone returning from America looking this sad must be destitute and seeking a handout, Monsieur Renard hastily explained the current situation about the café to Ondine in no uncertain terms. He even went into his back office and returned with a stack of papers to show her that he had all the proper documents proving his sole ownership of her parents’ café.
“We all lost some money during the war,” Renard explained, “but your parents completely ran out of cash. So they had to sign over their half of the café to me. You can check with the judge who oversaw this. He’ll tell you all about it.”
The papers indeed made it clear there wasn’t any money left to Ondine, and no share in the café.
Ondine listened to all this quietly, trying to ignore the rising panic she felt at the realization that she was officially being thrown out of her family’s café—and her childhood home. When Renard finally stopped for breath, Ondine steeled herself, swallowed her pride and offered to become his new chef, hurriedly trying to tell him about the praise for her cooking and the success she’d had in America.
But Renard interrupted her and, not without a certain smugness, said proudly, “No, I don’t need your help! I have a fine young man cooking in my kitchen. Come meet him.”
Ondine rose shakily and followed him, glancing about doubtfully. Julie trailed behind, wondering if she could hold her nose and still not cause offense. For, if the café’s dining room was a bit of a shambles, the rest of this place was worse, as Julie discovered when she hurriedly ducked past the kitchen, went to the lavatory and saw its leaky plumbing and other malodorous fixtures.
Meanwhile Ondine silently observed the dirty kitchen which to her emitted the smell of death—dead fish and meat bits that had undoubtedly fallen behind the stove and not been cleaned; decomposing rats and cockroaches probably entombed in the walls; rotting vegetables that should have been tossed into the compost but which lay in bushels waiting to be served to some unsuspecting diners.
The young chef was a blond, tousle-haired, handsome but slightly arrogant creature, and Ondine could see at a glance that his culinary skills were of the touristy, greasy-spoon variety. Yet Renard beamed happily as he gave Ondine a tour that ended by showing her out the door.
“Goodbye, goodbye!” Renard called out, waving his handkerchief as if he were on a dock and seeing them off to go right back on whatever boat had brought them here.
Witnessing all this, Julie found the whole scene unbearably humiliating. “Why did we have to come to France?” she whimpered as they were turned away.
It became a litany as soon as they boarded a train to the convent. “Nobody’s been nice to us like they were in America when Papa was alive!” she pointed out. Ondine sighed and closed her eyes. The more their journey continued, the more Julie complained, while clinging to her suitcase as if it contained tangible precious memories of happier days in New Rochelle. She couldn’t forgive her mother for making them leave America—and for what? To live with the nuns at the convent Ondine had attended as a girl?
It was nighttime when they arrived; pitch dark without a single light on. “Be grateful for their shelter, if they’ll be kind enough to give it,” Ondine whispered warningly as she knocked at the door. Her head and feet felt too heavy to make another move.
A young nun peeped out, and Ondine, feeling as if she had only one sentence left in her, explained who she was and that she would gladly pay to put Julie in school here, while perhaps Ondine could work to cook for the nuns.
But by now something too heavy to bear was overtaking Ondine; some tidal wave of grief that she’d forcefully pushed out of her mind during the entire voyage but could hold back no longer, as if it had finally breached the seawall of her resolve, engulfing her at last.
Luc. Sweet Luc. It felt wrong, like a betrayal, to have made it back to France without him. This should be his triumphant return. Suddenly, acutely, Ondine could feel his absence from her entire universe, as if a dangerous black undertow was dragging away everything and everyone she’d ever loved. Her parents were dead, too, and she’d never even guessed it. Now there would never be a chance to reconcile, nor to share Julie with them.
“Madame?” said the nun worriedly as she opened the convent door wider and stepped out.
Ondine moved her lips but she could no longer hear the sound of her own voice over the loud thudding in her eardrums; and right then and there, her resolve, her courage, and her legs finally gave way, and she felt as if she’d turned into a bundle of rags as she collapsed on the convent’s stony front step.
Strangers in the Kitchen, Céline, 2014
“CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS our last day of cooking class?” I heard my group echo to one another. Everyone was getting sentimental, now that the end was nigh. But I was on the verge of a small panic, still trying to complete Mom’s mission before the clock ran out on me.
I’d shamelessly rummaged around the women’s bedrooms, even though I was pretty sure that Grandma Ondine hadn’t slept up here. Nothing turned up. Now I’d have to find a spare moment either today or tomorrow to search for her Picasso in the last possible place it could be—the old kitchen of the mas. However, I could only do this at night when the construction workers weren’t hammering and sawing. If I didn’t find the painting there, I would be going home empty-handed.
“I’ll do it tonight,” I vowed to myself.
Meanwhile, Gil’s son, Martin, had been given the entire run of the mas, and he apparently decided that all the nicely kept paths were a perfect runway for his skateboard, which he maneuvered with both surprising skill and yet frightful daring. Gil’s serene French staff was being severely tested as Martin whizzed by and literally ran circles around them.
“C’mere, kid,” Aunt Matilda said finally, catching Martin during one of his rare pauses to make him sit with her while we were waiting for Gil. She was shuffling a deck of cards like a pro.
“Céline told me about you. You like cards? Well, I’m going to teach you how to play ‘Spit’. Pay attention if you want to win.” Martin heard the voice of schoolteacher authority, so he sat down, meek and intrigued. Aunt Matilda said crisply, “Okay, podner, cut them cards.”
Despite his hyperactive nature, Martin was, like most young kids, thrilled when adults paid him any attention. He had a sweetness and intelligence that made us all develop a soft spot for him; we enjoyed feeding him treats from the kitchen after we’d been cooking. Gil had taught his son discerning taste, so Martin let us know immediately if our efforts had resulted in good food or bad. And today, just before we left him to go to our last class, he even gave us a few tips about how to please Gil.
“Dad hates using parsley as a garnish,” Martin told me, then added in his little grown-up way, “but I personally like parsley anywhere, even on the plate.”
By now, miraculously, after days of feeling helpless and clumsy, my classmates found that Gil’s rigorous teaching was finally paying off, and everyone w
as suddenly cooking competently and confidently.
All except me. Oh, I was improving, but I never quite seemed to acquire a knack for gauging just the right moment to stop whisking a sauce, or browning a cutlet, or sautéing a steak.
“You just don’t have a red thumb,” Gil finally admitted today.
“I do so!” I retorted, holding up a burnt finger. “Look at that blister,” I said, aggrieved.
In reply, he held up his palm against mine. “Feel that?” he said, showing me a roughened hand that was a landscape of craters, cuts, blisters, scars, and black-and-blues under his broken nails. “You’re a makeup artist. You deal with color and texture, wet and dry. That’s what cooking is all about,” he said, genuinely trying to be helpful. “You mingle your ingredients to create something new.”
I returned to vigorously pounding garlic cloves with basil and olive oil for a Provençal specialty condiment called pistou, but he stopped me. “Most people misunderstand garlic,” he said, taking the clove and holding it in his fingertips. “Treat it like a delicate flower. Crush gently. When I use garlic for salads, I only rub a whisper on the salad bowl and then I save the actual clove to throw in my stockpot. And I never fast-fry-brown the garlic on high heat. That is like rushed sex.”
I glanced at my elder classmates but they were accustomed to Gil’s sensual metaphors. They just chuckled to themselves, enjoying his provocative exuberance, because it was so evident that he passionately meant it when he exhorted them to handle chicken and fish cutlets “as if it were your lover’s body”. He really, truly loved to cook and was particularly smitten with Provençal cuisine, so I scored a few points today by letting him use one of Grandmother Ondine’s recipes for our class, a daube à l’orange.
“Daube is thought to come from the Spanish word dobar, which means ‘to braise’ and that is exactly what we will do,” Gil told the class. “We’re following Céline’s Grandma’s recipe, which is to braise the beef in red wine with Provençal herbs (not lavender, thank you), tomatoes, onions, black olives, mushrooms, the special ingredient of orange peel—and this, a calf’s foot.”
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