Anio Szado

by Studio Saint-Ex

  I followed him, my head pounding with my feet. Let’s go upstairs, indeed. This was not how I had hoped to someday hear those words. I asked, “Do you really think Madame Fiche was serious when she said you could borrow the studio?”

  “Does it matter? Since she suggested I do so, she cannot blame me—or you—if I do.”

  Upstairs, I pulled out my key but did not slide it into the lock. “Bring me coffee, lots of black coffee, if you want me to let you in.”

  He examined my face. “Ah. Poor Mignonne. I did not realize that last night you perhaps had too much to drink.”

  Antoine returned with a full restaurant pot of coffee and a bottle of wine. “The waiter attempted to limit me to a single cup, and no bottle at all, in the interests of national defense. But he gave in readily when I explained the severity of the situation. Unfortunately, I had to do so with the most grotesque pantomime.” He gave me a sample performance, staggering and cross-eyed, that left me guffawing painfully. “I’m afraid I may have besmirched your dignity a little.” He held the bottle under his arm to lock the door behind him.

  I had settled into a corner of the sofa with my open sketchbook on my lap.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, tiptoeing. “I am stopping you from working.”

  “You’re not. I am working.”

  Antoine peered at the page. “Apparently everything next season, including the models, will be invisible.”

  I swung the book at him, and he laughed as he swatted it away.

  “Come now, Mignonne. Surely it is not that hard.” He took a blank sheet from his folder, filched the pencil from my hand, and in a few confident strokes completed a sketch of a lithe, sensual beauty in a clingy, off-the-shoulder dress and a featherweight cape that hovered above the ground.

  It was stunning. I said, “You’re a swine!”

  “Ha-ha! You take yourself too seriously. Come, let us play for a bit.” He pulled a deck of cards from his pocket.

  “Coffee.”

  “I have it, hot, right here. You have cups?”

  Of course I didn’t have cups.

  “No? It is just as well. What you really need, first, is a small bit of wine. In a moment, your headache will be fixed.”

  He roamed the studio looking for a tool, and finally reamed out the cork with sewing shears.

  “Madame Fiche would string you up.”

  “Madame is all too serious herself. Now”—he sat down beside me—“just a little bit on your lips.” He supported the bottle while I took a tiny sip. “Good. Are you ready for a short break? I will teach you a simple trick—how to make a card disappear.”

  He stood on the rug, cards jumping, eyes laughing.

  I could hardly follow what he was doing, never mind memorize how to recreate the illusion myself, but it wasn’t unpleasant to watch him perform. I drank from the bottle and began to breathe more easily.

  He moved gracefully as he demonstrated the mysteries of the trick, very light on his feet for a man who had broken so many bones.

  I had asked him about one of his scars at the studio the other day.

  “I was flying a Simoun. Very simple compared to what we have today. When we crash landed, the nose curled like the toe of a sultan’s slipper.”

  “How exotic.”

  “Just so. The sun was shining; I had my mechanic friend by my side; life was good.”

  “And your Guatemala City crash?”

  “Broken collarbone—right here.”

  “As I heard it, the plane was smashed to smithereens and you were, too.”

  “One gets used to being reassembled.”

  “Bernard says the repairs haven’t always been good.”

  “The mechanics’?”

  “The surgeons’.”

  Antoine looked at me sharply. “What did he tell you?”

  “He said your bones weren’t always set properly.”

  “And?” The scar that ran from the corner of Antoine’s lip to his jaw seemed to have darkened.

  “That the crash in Guatemala was the start of your fevers. I’m sorry; I didn’t think it was a secret. He spoke freely to me.”

  Antoine lit a cigarette with a long draw. “So you have been seeing Lamotte.” Smoke seeped from his mouth and veiled his face. Then suddenly he was muttering: “Of course you are free—and he is closer to your age. Of course you should. You are right, you are always right. I knew you would like him. And if—”

  I pressed my fingers to his lips. “Are you losing your marbles, Antoine?”

  “Am I?”

  “Hold on. I’ll check.” Brazenly, I dropped my hand to the front of his trousers. “Everything’s there. You have nothing to worry about.”

  That had pleased and amused him. He said, “Nor should you worry, Mignonne. Lamotte speaks openly because he knows that I trust you. But he is not loose with secrets. I have known him for a long time. I would trust Lamotte with my very soul.”

  I refocused: we were alone in Madame’s studio and Antoine was still talking. He was still standing in front of me holding out his cards.

  “And that is all there is to it.” He came laughing back to join me on the sofa and take a swig of wine. “You must try it on Madame Fiche.”

  “Oh God, no. Madame would turn up her nose.”

  “Consuelo too.”

  “Consuelo doesn’t seem like such a serious type.”

  “She is full of fantasy, but she has lost the taste for simple play. Her imagination, though, is enormous. She could convince one that a hat is a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant. She sculpts. At times she paints. She draws. Mostly, she makes up fantasies. She wants to write.”

  “And does she write?”

  “That is a good question. I have come across pages that are written in her voice but not in her hand. She may be dictating, or she may be relying on the talents of a literary friend.”

  “Fiction?”

  “She calls it a memoir, and says I don’t have the right to ask her not to tell the story of her own life.” He sighed. “She has acted when it was the thing to do. In Oppède, where she lived with a colony of artists after the exodus from Paris, they had all sorts of ways to pass the time. Skits. Games of the heart. I’m sure she misses the drama of it all. She makes up for it by engineering her own.”

  I rubbed the edge of my sketchbook. “I guess sometimes you must wish for a life of peace and quiet.”

  “I crave it,” he said huskily. “It is not easy to escape commitments one has made. It is not possible to shed the duties and demands one carries in the heart.” He opened his folder, pulled out a drawing, and contemplated it. “So it is in my new story. I am calling it The Little Prince. I asked Lamotte to illustrate it, but he insists I am capable of creating the pictures on my own.”

  He handed me the drawing. Rising from the bottom right was a miniature planet in a sunset violet hue. On the planet stood a boy—the blond, wild-haired boy Antoine had been doodling for more than a year. Another planet, with a single orbiting ring, was visible far away. Robust stars sat like rivets in the sky.

  The boy wore springtime green—a short-sleeved, buttoned shirt, and long pants that flared toward the hem, where pointed shoes stood sturdily on his planet’s curving ground. Antoine had captured perfectly a child’s softly rounded muscles at rest.

  The red of his bow tie and belt were reflected in the slight flush of his cheeks. Golden hair fanned out from his head like soft flames. His face was simple and pure, sketched with a quick stroke for the bridge of a childish nose, the mouth no more than a brief bar—a mere hyphen—as though he held his emotions in check. His eyes were small ovals, defined with ink that swelled thicker at the bottom so that rather than being blank and empty, they looked longingly down—at a flower, a rose.

  My rose, captured forever in Antoine’s art. My whole body warmed with pleasurable surprise.

  Carefully, reverently, I placed Antoine’s drawing on top of the sketchbook in my lap. “Tell me the story.”
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  “A pilot crashes in the middle of the desert with nothing but sand for thousands of miles around. He’s awakened by the voice of a little boy.”

  “This boy.”

  “Yes. He is a prince.”

  “He’s dressed very simply here, for a prince.”

  “Because he is going to be traveling. He comes to the desert from far away.”

  “From this planet?”

  “Yes. The asteroid known as B-612.”

  “I see. B-612.” We sat shoulder to shoulder on the sofa. I had my feet up under me. Antoine sat with his long-injured leg held almost straight.

  I said, “He looks worried.”

  “It is love that does this to him.”

  “Because he’s away from someone he loves?”

  “In this drawing, because he is with her. But later in the story, in the desert, it will be because they are apart.”

  “Is it a love story, Antoine?”

  “All stories are love stories.”

  I was transfixed by the expression on the face of the little prince. “Before you tell me anything more, I want to know the ending. I’m afraid your story will make me cry.”

  “Because it is a love story? It isn’t love that causes pain, but ownership. And anyway, I don’t know the ending yet. Much still needs to happen before the end. You must be patient, and let me work.” He took his drawing from me. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Much better.”

  “You will work, too?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “You draw. I will sit for a while and write. Later, you can show me your sketches and I will read to you.”

  He lowered himself from the sofa to sit on the rug, and propped his notebook on his bent knee. For a long time, he only looked at the paper. Then he began to write, his script small and imprecise, each letter half finished, the words spreading wide in even lines.

  On the sofa behind him, pencil poised over my sketchbook, I hesitated longer yet. What could I design that would appeal to Consuelo? Beautiful, rude, sensual, hypnotic, fashionable, proud Consuelo: what would make her feel good?

  Antoine began crossing out sentences. His pen stopped. He wrote again. He ripped out the page, crumpled and dropped it, and dove directly into fresh writing as though nothing had disturbed his flow.

  “Antoine?”

  “Mmm?”

  “How would you characterize your wife?”

  He barely paused, and didn’t look up. “In large things, frail and humble; in small things, mean and vain.” He crossed out a paragraph with a furious stroke.

  The intensity and mystery of his actions made it impossible to concentrate on my own work. I couldn’t stop watching him. He worked like a man unaware he was being observed, like a man unable to see anything but the world that was in his mind—springing to life in words, being obliterated with absolute conviction, rising again in a different skin—sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and page by page, what pages still remained.

  When yet another balled sheet of paper had skittered across the floor, I forced my focus back to my sketchbook. Frail, vain … “You didn’t say Consuelo is passionate.”

  “That is a given.”

  “Is it what attracted you to her?”

  “Mignonne,” Antoine said in warning.

  “Sorry. I’ll let you work.”

  “Don’t bother me with questions you might just as well ask of yourself.”

  Long after I had exhausted my shallow store of inspiration, Antoine still wrote, oblivious to his setting, to the hard floor under him, to me. I felt I was watching a man possessed by a zealous ghost, so unearthly was his silent intensity.

  Then, without warning, an invading imp dislodged the zealot from his head. He turned around to grab at my legs, pulling me onto him as I fought and squealed.

  “What have you drawn?” he asked, laughing, when I’d made my escape.

  I blushed. “I’ve designed a coat. For your prince.”

  “Really? Have you sketched a whole wardrobe for the Little Prince? I will ask my publishers to offer him for sale as a paper doll.”

  At first I thought he was serious. Imagine if my work could be produced on the scale of Antoine’s—and with his blessing, too! But he had made a sound, a truncated laugh that was almost a grunt. He was joking … or he wasn’t amused at all.

  I said, “Better ask your prince what he thinks of the idea. He’s the one who told me to make him a coat.”

  Now Antoine did laugh. He joined me on the sofa. “It’s true that princes can be somewhat demanding.”

  “He’s right, though. He’ll be flying very high. Think how cold the air will be up there.”

  Antoine nodded. “You have designed for him a very regal coat.”

  “It’s not too much like a dressing gown?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I could put some ermine on the collar.”

  “He’s just a child. Ermine is for kings.” He pointed to the prince’s shoulders. “You might add a little something here. Boys like a bit of glittery metal.”

  I gave him my pencil, and he added a few quick lines.

  I asked, “How about giving him a scepter?”

  “What for?”

  “To show his royal authority.”

  Antoine thought for a moment. “I will write of authority, but not the prince’s. He has so much to learn.” He gestured for me to show him more sketches. “What else?”

  “Nothing worth showing. I was trying to concentrate on ideas for Consuelo, but I couldn’t get your story out of my mind.”

  “Is that so? Shall I read to you what I have written so far?”

  “I would love it.” I put my sketchbook on the table and leaned against him, studying the drawings that illustrated the text.

  He began reading from his manuscript. “ ‘Once, when I was six years old …’ ”

  Antoine read, his voice swelling like a springtime stream brought forth by the life he had created. And what a boy he had made. Antoine’s unruly charm, my blond hair; so curious and touching; so vexing. So lonely and far from home.

  Antoine’s child. Yearning grew in me like thirst.

  I was so taken with the story that when he broke off, I said, “Don’t stop! It’s not done.”

  “I told you so, Mignonne; that is why I came here. I still have much work to do.”

  “But I want to hear the rest.”

  He chuckled. “Then perhaps you should greet me more warmly next time I show up to write.”

  “You’ll come back? You feel productive here?”

  “It went very well, compared to my last couple of nights. When I try to work in my apartment, even when Consuelo isn’t pestering me, the voice of the city through the windows has a distressing sound. There’s no sense of that here. It is so empty and still.”

  “But not entirely quiet.”

  “The sounds are different, and the feel. This place was built for hard, honest work. One doesn’t sense the piling up of people in their skyscrapers. There’s dignity in this building’s bones. You must feel the energy put out by buildings; I am sure your father did.”

  “I felt it when we went to Bernard Lamotte’s.”

  “Le Bocal. Yes. It is a very good place. It is like a little piece of France.”

  “Is it? I’ve never been to France.”

  The contentment in his expression fell away. “And now you can never see France as it has always been. Soon there may be no France at all. Oh, Mignonne, it breaks my heart to think of what you will never see or feel.”

  I rubbed his shoulders. “You’re so tense. Lie down for a while.”

  He stretched out, and I eased his head to my lap.

  He closed his eyes as though to stop tears from escaping into the crow’s-feet wrinkles that radiated toward his temples. “You are kind to me. And I am so alone. There is no one who shares my memories, not a single man left on earth. The men I have flown with, friends I have lived with … Guillaumet
, Mermoz … the entire Casablanca-Dakar team with Aéropostale, every man on the South American route … they are all gone, every one of them. Disappeared with the mail, crushed, some of them melted with their machines. I am the only one still alive, the last who can still give his life to some greater good.” His tone grew ashamed. “And I lie here in your arms, held to your breasts as soft as doves. I do nothing; I lie weeping. France is imprisoned and I am of no use.”

  “Don’t say that. The tide will turn. You’ll go back to France and see it free.”

  “I want nothing more than to believe you. All I need is one signature. But I am shackled by spineless imbeciles who think I am too old to fly. At least I can believe that you feel there is hope. I knew from when I first met you: you are honest. You are not afraid to tell the truth.”

  The truth was, I had told him what he wanted to believe. As I touched his lined brow and traced the scar at the edge of his mouth, I prayed he would see his beloved France liberated—but also that he would never fly again. I had never known so abused a body, so anguished a spirit, so vital a mind. So many times he had been flung into the ground. He would rather be dropped by the hand of God than be banished from the skies.

  In my lap, Antoine said, “Once, I was lost for four days in the Libyan desert, with my mechanic Prévot. We were desperate for water. One night, I spread out my parachute to try to catch the dew. In the morning, there was nothing; not a single drop. I just stared. I could not even make tears. I remember thinking that even my heart was dried out.”

  Moisture beaded on his lashes. They gathered in points like black stars. I touched them gently. “But look: your heart isn’t dry anymore.”

  “But it is cold, like the heart of this city is cold. Talk to me, Mignonne. Make me love life.”

  In the darkness of the studio, I told him about my childhood, my brother’s struggles, the death of Papa. He listened in silence, smoking on the sofa. I told him about my year in Montreal, what it had been like to live with Mother there, and to drink in the cafés, and to be reminded every day that the populace, unlike that of my home country, was fighting a war. I spoke of school, successes and stumbles, fashion and sewing, my trials with Madame Fiche.