NOT EVERYONE PABLO talked sculpture with saw it through his eyes—or cared to. Every year after the Liberation, a committee of the friends of Guillaume Apollinaire would periodically revive their old project of a memorial monument to Apollinaire. Politics played its part because the project depended for its approval and financing on the Paris Municipal Council. Among the friends there were factions, too: some very left-wing, politically; others, right of right. So their deliberations were often stormy. After each session at which the Left had triumphed over the Right, a few of them would show up at the Rue des Grands-Augustins with the announcement that Pablo must do a monument in memory of Apollinaire. Pablo’s answer was always the same: he was in favor of the project, but he insisted on having complete liberty. Some of the committee members were agreeable to this; others weren’t very interested in having Picasso at all—even less so, in giving him carte blanche.
Pablo was adamant. “Either I do the job that way or you get someone else. If you want me, I’m going to do something that corresponds to the monument described in Le Poète Assassiné: that is, a space with a void, of a certain height, covered with a stone.” The problem that interested him lay in creating an abstract sculpture which would give form to the void in such a way as to make people think about the existence of it. The people who didn’t want Pablo to make the monument said, jesuitically, that they’d go along with the idea of having him do a portrait of Apollinaire but that the monument he proposed was impossible. They were hoping, of course, that he would back out, of his own accord. At that period the monument was scheduled for the intersection of the Boulevard St.-Germain and the Rue du Bac, which then had a statue dedicated to the memory of two men who, allegedly, had invented the telegraph. To take that down in favor of something entirely abstract and featuring, as its principal ingredient, empty space, would make the committee the laughingstock of Paris, they felt. After one stormy session the committee let it be known that they were thinking of turning the job over to a man like Zadkine, who would produce something more in keeping with their ideas. Pablo said that was all right with him. But Zadkine didn’t like the idea of being called in as second choice. So there it hung, for several more years. The committee kept coming back, every time the wind changed, to sound out Pablo but he remained intractable. Whenever it looked as though agreement was about to be reached, there would be a change in the constitution of the committee or of the Municipal Council and they would have to start all over again. From time to time Apollinaire’s widow, Jacqueline, would come to see if she couldn’t move Pablo to action.
“You really owe it to the memory of Apollinaire to do something,” she told him. “It’s not so important, in the end, whether it’s something extraordinary or not.” So Pablo decided on a compromise: a huge base, supported by four pillars about five feet high with the empty space beneath it that he couldn’t bring himself to eliminate, and then, on top of the stone base, a massive head of Apollinaire, the head itself about three and a half feet high. He made a number of drawings, in some of which there was a laurel wreath on Apollinaire’s head. But it became obvious that the conservative element in the Municipal Council didn’t want Picasso in any form, because this new proposal, which was neither abstract nor revolutionary and shouldn’t have shocked the most backward of municipal councillors, was met with total silence. Finally they decided the monument couldn’t be placed in the spot they had originally assigned to it, but would have to be relegated to the little square behind the church of St.-Germain-des-Prés, at the corner of the Rue de l’Abbaye. By now Pablo was thoroughly disgusted and lost all interest in the project. The affair dragged on months more and when, in the end, the committee managed to get a weak, unenthusiastic OK from the Municipal Council, Pablo himself had so little enthusiasm left that he simply gave them a sculpture that was lying around the studio, a bronze head of Dora Maar that he had done in 1941.
In due time the committee had it set up in the little square under a tree particularly favored by the local sparrows. There it stands today, encrusted with their droppings, less a monument to the memory of Apollinaire than another ill-starred tribute from its maker to Dora Maar.
Aside from the question of the monument, there was a renewed interest in Apollinaire in general at that time because Gallimard was preparing the Pléiade edition of his complete works. Jacqueline Apollinaire and old friends such as André Billy were going to great pains to collect everything unpublished. Marcel Adéma, a fervent Apollinaire collector, was working on a biography. He knew, just as Jacqueline Apollinaire did, that Pablo had a number of unpublished letters and manuscripts, poems and drawings and many other souvenirs of their friendship. Some of these were in the Rue des Grands-Augustins; many more, in the Rue La Boétie. Pablo told me that Olga, in one of her tempery moments, had torn up some of them, along with some of his letters from Max Jacob. But since nothing had ever been thrown away there, one could even have found those pieces if one had had the patience. Everyone was greatly interested in having the new edition as complete as possible and it was suggested that if Sabartés supervised the operation, we might strike a major lode, but Pablo said no. He didn’t even let them use the papers he had ready at hand in the Rue des Grands-Augustins.
“It’s too much of a nuisance,” he said. “Besides, Apollinaire’s memory will be just as well off with the poems everyone knows already as it would be with the few additional ones you’d have if I gave you mine.”
One of the first times Jacqueline Apollinaire came to the atelier, Pablo suggested she show me her apartment, and that very afternoon, after lunch, we went there. It was high up in an old building on the Boulevard St.-Germain, near the corner of the Rue St.-Guillaume. Before we arrived at the top floor, where the apartment was situated, I saw, halfway up the last flight of stairs, the small round window from which Apollinaire’s secretary, the so-called Baron Mollet, looked out at whoever was approaching to see whether he should be admitted.
The apartment had been left in just the state it had been in during Apollinaire’s lifetime. The layout resembled curiously the inside of a human body: an esophagus followed by a stomach followed by an intestine—a real labyrinth. We entered first a good-sized room, and went from that into a long corridor which led us to another room where there were many paintings: the large Marie Laurencin collective portrait of Apollinaire, Picasso, Marie Laurencin, and Fernande Olivier; other paintings by Marie Laurencin; several small Cubist paintings by Picasso, including the one he had given Apollinaire as a wedding present; and many small sketches of Apollinaire that Pablo had made at different periods, including the one of Apollinaire with a pear-shaped head. After that we went into a long second corridor which led to a tiny setback, perhaps five feet square, where Apollinaire did his writing. It was the smallest and most unlikely place in the apartment for anyone to do that kind of work. After that was the kitchen. A winding stairway led up to a single room above the rest of the apartment. It contained a small table and a chair and on the wall you faced as you sat there, were photographs, reproductions of paintings, and handwritten notes pinned up just as they had been at the time Apollinaire died. It had a terrace which looked out over the Faubourg St.-Germain.
I found the place a little sad, like a tiny provincial museum, everything covered with a slight layer of dust. Jacqueline Apollinaire told us she did, too. She had left it just the way it had been when Apollinaire was alive, but she found it difficult to live there for long periods and she spent most of her time away from Paris.
IN PABLO’S ENTOURAGE SOME OF THOSE who filled what might seem like minor posts were the ones who had the greatest influence with him. Chief among the gray eminences was the chauffeur Marcel. When I first saw Marcel, he was about fifty years old, a Norman with the head of a Roman emperor: Norman in the characteristic mixture of peasant cunning and sly wit, but with the kind of head one finds on an old Roman coin—sharp features and a slightly arched nose. He had been Pablo’s chauffeur since 1925 or thereabouts. If Pablo said he wanted
to take a trip, in the end it was Marcel who decided whether or not that trip was necessary, and it was inevitably he who decided what time we should leave. If for one reason or another it suited Marcel better to have us stay home or to leave later, he always found some way of delaying the trip or having it called off entirely. It was generally something that mysteriously went wrong with the motor and occasioned countless trips to the garage, with Marcel supervising the work of the mechanics. But whenever Marcel had the urge to get rolling, the car responded magically. Marcel was in the driver’s seat, in more ways than one.
He had other talents, too. Just as Molière used to read his comedies to his chambermaid first to see if they would go over with his audience, Marcel followed his master’s output from day to day and commented on it in detail. In Pablo’s view, Marcel hadn’t been contaminated by a false veneer of culture and so his reactions could be counted on to be truer than those of most of the others. Marcel carried much more weight in this respect than did Sabartés, for example, even though Sabartés was officially Pablo’s secretary and Boswell. When Marcel arrived in the morning, he first examined the pictures Pablo had done the night before. By the time Pablo got up, Marcel was ready with his opinions of them. Pablo gave out privately that Marcel’s opinions didn’t matter to him but he went on collecting them, all the same.
More important, Marcel had built up the reputation over the years of being the person who was most competent at detecting fakes. When Marcel pronounced a painting authentic, it was accepted as authentic. If he pronounced it a fake, no one dared take issue with him.
“You see?” Pablo would say, after Marcel had laid down a verdict that he agreed with. “My own dealer goes wrong. Everybody goes wrong. But Marcel is always right. At least he understands my painting. There’s the proof: he’s the only one who recognizes it. He can’t explain it, perhaps, with all the glib eloquence of Monsieur Kahnweiler or Monsieur Zervos or Monsieur Rosenberg, but at least he knows it when he sees it.”
Marcel’s authority carried over into the rest of Pablo’s life, as well. He was a little like Don Juan’s valet, Leporello, griping about his hard lot and the blows he had to take from time to time but, all in all, very happy to participate in his master’s adventures. He enjoyed running from one house to another carrying private notes to whoever was, for the moment, in his master’s good graces, and I think it fair to say that Marcel’s feelings of sympathy or antipathy were often reflected in Pablo’s actions.
Whenever Pablo and I went anywhere in the car, he and I sat in the front seat with Marcel. Pablo sat next to Marcel and directed all the conversation to him. Since Pablo never drove, he was completely relaxed and when the conversation warmed up, Marcel did most of the talking and Pablo listened. With others—the poets, the painters, the acolytes—Pablo ran the conversation, but with Marcel, Pablo was content to listen. Marcel gave him a rundown on the news of the day with his own editorial judgments thrown in. He contradicted Pablo and even criticized him. Pablo generally sat back and took it.
When Marcel wasn’t around, Pablo would say, “I have no confidence in that man. He’s been robbing me for years. He never shows up if he has anything else to do. He does as he pleases.” He complained about Marcel as chauffeur from morning till night, but for other things that had no connection with driving a car, Marcel had managed to acquire and maintain unlimited credit. When Pablo complained about the way Marcel handled his job as chauffeur, he didn’t say he was a bad driver because that would have been ridiculous, but he claimed Marcel spent too much money on the car and that he diverted funds from that purpose to his own use. As far as I know, that was not true. But every time Marcel asked for any new equipment—even a new cap—Pablo went into a rage. One day I heard him tell Pablo he needed a new uniform.
“He wants another uniform. He wears out more clothes than I do,” Pablo lamented. “Next he’ll be wanting to drive in a tuxedo.” Then, turning to Marcel, he asked, “How many does that make in the last year?”
“Chauffeurs need new livery once in a while,” Marcel protested. “The way I have to slide in and out behind the wheel so often, my uniform gets all shiny. You don’t want me to look as though I polished it, do you? What will people think?”
“Who cares?” Pablo said. “Look at me. I’m not ashamed to wear old suits.”
“That’s all right for you,” Marcel said. “You’re the boss. It doesn’t work that way with me. I’m only the chauffeur.”
But for anything that had nothing to do with Marcel’s real job, they were on the best of terms. In the antechamber where people waited to see whether they would be received, Marcel shared authority with Sabartés. Sabartés was such a sad-looking monk and was so disagreeable with women and looked so distrustingly at them that they generally appealed to Marcel to get them in. He was the kind of fellow one could always get along with.
Marcel’s presence set the tone for Paulo’s life, too. For a child, there’s nothing much to admire in a father who is a painter; besides, a painter is always in the atelier and the child hardly ever sees him. When Paulo was four or five years old, the kind of pictures his father was painting couldn’t have made much sense to him. But a chauffeur who drives cars is something different. Which is probably the explanation for the inordinate importance motorcycles and automobiles have always had for Paulo. Paulo used to imitate Marcel’s way of speaking, and even his walk. Marcel wasn’t fat but his stomach always stuck out noticeably like that of a self-confident politician, which is, in effect, what he was. Unconsciously Paulo assumed the same stance. When I first went to live with Pablo, relations between father and son were somewhat strained. Paulo didn’t work and was interested in only one thing: racing motorcycles. He was dependent on Pablo for handouts. When things got too difficult, Paulo would seek out Marcel, who was very fond of him, and Marcel would serve as intermediary between him and his father.
Marcel had little formal education but he had shrewd psychological insight. And he had good sense and a good heart. With that peasant shrewdness that enabled him to size up people very quickly, he knew how to protect Pablo from time-wasting or self-seeking intruders. As long as he was there, he was able to ward off a number of persistent bores who, after he had gone, managed to worm their way in and establish themselves among the regulars. And he did it all with a good-natured, witty approach that was quite a contrast to Pablo’s other watch-dog, Sabartés. When people arrived in the morning at the atelier of the Rue des Grands-Augustins and fell into Sabartés, peering out through his thick glasses, completely absorbed in his own melancholy, and from time to time very sadly dropping a word or two that eventually might add up to a whole sentence, that was enough to damp down the most buoyant enthusiasm. The poor fellow didn’t see very well, to begin with, and that gave his most casual glance an almost inquisitorial air. Most people under his scrutiny began to feel very guilty and stumble over their words. As a rule, the mere sight of his mournful, almost tragic expression and manner could get rid of the more timid visitors. However, if Sabartés’s gloom wasn’t enough, and the visitor seemed undesirable, then Marcel finished him off. On the other hand, if the visitor seemed worth receiving but had been put off by Sabartés’s manner, Marcel would spend a few minutes cheering him up and restoring his original enthusiasm.
Marcel was always good-natured. Even when Pablo was in his most savage moods, Marcel kept merry, laughed at his own jokes and got away with it. He was the only one who could. He called Pablo Monsieur, but their relations were much more relaxed and man-to-man than one would expect between a chauffeur and his employer. Every once in a while, though, on one of his black days Pablo would get fed up with Marcel’s insouciance when everyone else was trembling and would blast out at him in a way that Marcel wasn’t used to. Then for a while he would maintain a strictly formal relationship with him, and whenever Marcel drove him anywhere, ride in the back seat without conversation.
When we were living in Vallauris, since there wasn’t room in the house for Marcel,
he lived in the little hotel-restaurant Chez Marcel. The innkeeper, another Marcel, being a Provençal, spent most of his time bowling, and the chauffeur Marcel soon fell in with the routine, with the result that there was a marathon game of bowls going on most of the time. Since it was warm and the mild exertion warmed them even more, they would stop every little while to sip a pastis, the local anise-flavored liqueur, and then, refreshed, go back to their game. That would continue most of the day with just time out for meals. Anytime we needed to go anywhere and called down for Marcel, he generally couldn’t leave right away, either because the game wasn’t quite finished or they had just settled down to cool off with a pastis. Pablo would put up with that, too, most of the time and then, periodically, blow up and stop talking to Marcel. Then Marcel would be crushed, begin to brood, and give up bowls and pastis. Finally he would start to make jokes again and ease Pablo out of that mood and everything would be all right once more.
Except for the days when we went to Nîmes or Arles for the bullfights, Marcel didn’t have much to do when we were in the Midi. He would sit around waiting for us at the other Marcel’s place and that meant more and more pastis. Sometimes Pablo would take it into his head at the end of the afternoon to return to Paris. Marcel would drive us back all through the night, we would spend the day in Paris and return the following night. It was about a fifteen-hour trip each way, with time out to eat, and we had never had an accident—Marcel had always been an excellent driver. But after a few years of being mostly in the Midi and consuming untold quantities of pastis, he began to drive faster and take more chances. One day, returning in Kootz’s Oldsmobile from Nîmes, where there had been lunch and then, after the bullfights, a big dinner with buckets of wine, he was passing another car with the speedometer just under ninety miles an hour when he made a slight miscalculation of the distance between. The door handle of the other car etched a line the full length of the white Oldsmobile. That gave us something to think about.
Life with Picasso Page 37