Cooking for Picasso

by Camille Aubray

  “Didn’t she live in the rooms above the café?” I demanded, startled.

  “For many years, yes. But not the year she died! Goodness, no. By then she walked with a cane and had difficulty climbing stairs. She had someone drive her to the café every day, to check on the kitchen, but she rented out those rooms above the café to paying guests. No, Madame Ondine was living at a mas in Mougins at the time of her death. Her bedroom was on the ground floor there.”

  “A mas?” I exclaimed. Suddenly I felt as if I were standing under an avalanche. Then I realized that it was simply more pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

  “Yes, a farm that supplied most everything she needed to run her café.”

  “What is the address of this mas?” I asked, certain I already knew. And sure enough, he pointed to a page with an address that matched Gil’s hotel and restaurant.

  “Grandma lived at this mas?” I asked. He nodded vigorously. I stammered, “Then—everything you’ve told me about the day she died took place in Mougins—not in Juan-les-Pins?”

  “Absolument,” he said. “Didn’t your mother remember that Madame Ondine died in Mougins?” There was just the slightest indication in his voice that if Mom could be wrong about something so basic, then she was surely mistaken about any missing Picasso artwork.

  I realized that Mom hadn’t actually spelled out where Grandma was living when she visited her. “It’s my mistake,” I said, still reeling. “Who did you sell the mas to when Grandmother Ondine died?”

  “A dairyman who owned the farm next door; he’d had his eye on Madame Ondine’s property for some time, with a view to merging it into one estate. He really only wanted the mas for its farmland. So he didn’t live at Madame Ondine’s house; he used her buildings for storage. He had no children, and his wife predeceased him. When he died the combined property was sold, I believe, to an English chef.”

  I sat motionless, waiting to see if he had any more bombshells to drop. But he glanced worriedly at his watch. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you again later,” he reminded me. “I hope this satisfies.”

  “Fine, fine,” I said, now eager to get my hands on the file on the table. “Bonnes vacances.”

  Monsieur Clément gave me a polite nod, then disappeared back into his office.

  I pored over the file for an hour. It was all in French, of course, and in legalese, which made it hard to decipher. But I managed to plough through the list of all the furnishings, which was easier. It was pretty exhaustive, right down to each pot and pan in the kitchen and every flowerpot or vase.

  But my mind was reeling with this stunning new perspective. If what Monsieur Clément said was true—and I believed him, because he was so straightforward, unlike Mom and her secretive, roundabout way of giving out information—then the whole story she’d told me about Grandmother Ondine giving her the notebook had occurred not at the Café Paradis, but at Gil’s mas in Mougins, and I had simply misunderstood. There hardly seemed to be any point in investigating the café in Juan-les-Pins any further—especially since the current owner had banned me from ever darkening his doorway again.

  “That’s why Mom was so keen to take this cooking class,” I said under my breath. “For years Grandma’s mas had been under private ownership, so there was no chance that she could look for the Picasso painting. But along comes Gil with his cooking class, and suddenly the whole place becomes available for Mom to search it, one more time!”

  I rested my chin in my hands, contemplating three possibilities: One: Grandma Ondine sold the artwork long ago and deposited the money in the bank. Two: Somebody—the dairyman who bought Grandma’s mas, or even a thieving neighbor—found the Picasso and sold it, so it was long gone. Three: Grandma hid the Picasso and nobody found it, which meant it must still be somewhere at Gil’s mas, right where I’d been sleeping and cooking, all this time. This led to a truly dire thought.

  “Does this mean that, technically, the painting—if it’s still hidden there—now belongs to Gil?” I gasped. Resolutely I pushed that idea out of my mind. I knew perfectly well that, if I somehow managed to find the Picasso at the mas, it would rightfully belong to my mother. I would just have to remove the artwork quietly, without anyone else—Gil especially—knowing that I’d found it.

  Ondine in September, 1936

  PICASSO HAD SIMPLY VANISHED FROM the face of the earth as far as Ondine was concerned, for Paris was as far away as the moon to her. And now that Ondine no longer had an artist to cook for, her mother was keeping her on a short leash, not only cooking but waiting on tables during the busy summer season. Her father expected her to turn over her tips to him at each day’s end. It was as if her parents sensed that she must be constantly watched in order to get her to the altar on her wedding day.

  But as the summer months faded, no one, least of all Ondine, grasped what was actually happening to her until, just a few weeks before the wedding, she went to the dressmaker who was altering Madame Belange’s bridal gown to fit Ondine. But now, in what was supposed to be just the final fitting, suddenly the gown could not be buttoned at Ondine’s waist.

  “I’ll have to let out the seams,” the dressmaker observed. There was a silence, punctured only by the sound of the scissors picking out the threads. “I’d say it’s about four months,” she said finally.

  Ondine, standing on the tufted footstool, saw her own startled expression reflected in three mirrors around her. “It can’t be true,” she whispered. “I’m just eating too much, that’s all.” But with a sinking heart she knew the real reason why she’d been feeling so strange and a little sick at times.

  The dressmaker gave her a sharp, no-nonsense look. “I’ve seen more brides like you than I can count,” she said with certainty. “You are going to have a child.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” Ondine said in panic, thinking of her parents.

  “Of course not. We can drape some lace here, like an overskirt around your hips,” the woman said, pinning the lace to show her, then sitting back on her heels and gazing at Ondine with a sympathy so rare that she nearly burst into tears. “Does Monsieur Renard know?” the dressmaker asked, looking doubtful, for no one could imagine the fastidious baker taking such advantage of his future bride.

  “No!” Ondine cried out in anguish. The dressmaker’s little black dog, who’d been asleep with his back against the stool, sprang up in alarm at her desperate outburst, then whimpered in sympathy.

  “Is it Monsieur Renard’s baby?” the dressmaker asked. Ondine’s blush was her answer. “Does the father know?” the woman said in a low voice.

  Ondine bit her lip, then shook her head. For weeks she’d bicycled to Picasso’s villa in the hope that he would return. Yet he never did. The villa was rented to other summer people, and Ondine felt foolish, mournfully skulking about with strangers gazing back at her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Picasso had somehow taken her heart, mind and soul with him, leaving behind only a ghost of a girl.

  Then one day she saw a newspaper photo of Picasso in St. Tropez—with that photographer Dora Maar by his side, looking triumphant. It seemed hopeless for the blonde mistress and her baby now; and so for Ondine as well. Picasso just boldly appeared anywhere he pleased without warning, then mysteriously vanished all over again. One thing was certain—he had definitely moved on. For weeks Ondine had felt like a sleepwalker, compliant to her parents as if she didn’t care what happened to her.

  The dressmaker rose to her feet and warned, “Forget about the baby’s father. Let Monsieur Renard think it’s his. It’ll be better for both of you. I heard Renard say he wants to have two sons!”

  It took Ondine a moment to comprehend that there was only one ridiculous way to convince the baker that he was a papa. Now I have to seduce Monsieur Renard? she thought disgustedly, wondering if she could even succeed because he was so proud and proper.

  “If he feels he’s compromised your virtue, he’ll honor the promise he made to you and your family,”
the dressmaker said. “But stay away from other women; don’t undress in front of them, don’t let them see you getting sick in the morning. And don’t let your friends tell you to ‘get rid of it’ by jumping off walls or drinking poison. Murder is messy, and it’s often the mother who dies instead.”

  Ondine barely knew what “getting rid of it” meant. But she nodded dumbly, left the dressmaker’s house and went for a long walk at the Parc de Vaugrenier in the special places where she and Luc used to stroll. There she threw herself down on a carpet of wildflowers and howled at the sky, rolling around and tearing out grass like a dog. When she turned onto her belly she thought she sensed a bump now—that little creature growing inside, greedily feeding off her.

  “Who asked for you?” Ondine wailed savagely, wondering in a frenzied moment if she could just crush it and suffocate it, right here and now. But then, when her hot tears were spent, she lay on her back and sighed, and saw that the moon had already risen in the blue sky and was staring back at her.

  It’s the Virgin Mary watching, the nuns used to say. Ondine had the feeling that of all people, the Virgin would understand and forgive her. Wasn’t this child inside Ondine like a heavy little moon revolving around her as if Ondine were the sun itself? She had to smile. The wind stirred the wild herbs and she breathed deeply, rhythmically, until one word filled her mind with peace.

  “Mine,” she whispered in wonder to herself, to the baby, to the moon. Nobody had ever belonged to her before. There was something so sweet about it that she wanted to run and tell someone.

  But as she headed for home she couldn’t imagine a single soul who’d be glad. “They won’t let me keep the baby,” she sighed. “They’ll force me to give it up to an orphanage or a foster home. I’d never be able to sleep nights, knowing my child is out there without its mama.”

  When Ondine reached the Café Paradis she crept upstairs and sat on her bed, unable to go back to work today. “If it’s the baby or Renard, I choose my baby,” she decided resolutely. “But I’ll have to do this quickly, before they find out what I’m up to.” Now she knew why she’d kept her suitcase packed with her few pitiful treasures: a photo of Luc, her notebook from cooking for Picasso, a small coin purse and her favorite clothes. Like someone in a trance, she added a few more things to wear for when the weather changed.

  After counting the coins in her purse Ondine concluded that she had enough money for a train fare to the convent. She would tell the nuns that she’d cooked for Picasso, and ask them to find her a suitable position cooking for someone else—but in a town far away from here, where she could pretend to be a widow, so she could have her baby there.

  Carrying her coat and suitcase, Ondine slipped out of the café as stealthily as she came, hearing the clatter going on in the kitchen without her. Halfway down the street she saw a tramp coming in her direction. He looked like the kind of scoundrel who’d impudently go to the back of the café seeking a handout. Ondine automatically shrank from him, averting her eyes. Then the tramp lifted his weather-beaten face and saw her.

  “Ondine!” he called out, hurrying toward her now. She eyed him warily until he said, “Don’t you recognize your Luc?” Then she gasped and stopped short, afraid she must be imagining a ghost.

  “Luc?” she exclaimed in shock. His clothes were worn and rumpled, his thick dark hair longer and wilder, his face covered with a beard. He was so very thin and brown and wiry and tough-looking.

  “Ondine!” he shouted joyfully, dropping his own bundle on the road. At first his gaze was deep and searching and uncertain—until he saw something in her face that set his expression alight with joy, and then he couldn’t hold back any longer. He scooped her up in his arms and swung her off her feet, then set her down to again gaze into her eyes. Ondine, gasping in amazement, could hardly take it all in.

  He was taller than she remembered. He smelled like tobacco and fish and earth and musk—but underneath all that, he still smelled like Luc. The same intelligent dark eyes, that high forehead and the finely sculpted nose and jaw, the sensuous lips. He took her face into his two rough hands as if she were the most precious thing on earth, and then the kisses he covered her cheeks with were sweet and loving.

  But when his lips found hers, he kissed her in a new way—seeking, giving, finding—and Ondine, shaking now, felt herself answering him with not just her kisses but her whole body. “Ondine!” he exclaimed again, as if it were she, and not he, who’d gone away for such a long time.

  Off in the distance, a church bell clanged the hour. “We can’t go to the café!” she warned him.

  “Come on then, let’s get out of here,” he said promptly, and she recognized the healthy confidence in his beautiful voice, although it was lower and more resonant now, as if it were coming from the hold of a steady ship that had conquered the sea itself. The muscles in his neck and arms resembled ropes that had weathered many storms. He glanced at her suitcase, took it to carry for her and asked, “Where are you going? Or are you meeting someone?” For the first time he looked alarmed.

  “The train station,” she said instantly, still trembling with joy. “No, I’m not meeting anybody. I just don’t want to stay here anymore.” He didn’t ask why. But as they walked, they kept staring at each other searchingly. “What happened to you?” Ondine asked. “Where have you been all this time?”

  Luc explained that he’d caught typhoid in North Africa. “They had to put me ashore. They left me for dead in Tangiers—thinking they’d never have to pay me my last wages. No other ship would take me home or anywhere else.” He’d lain ill in bed in a cheap rooming house, unable to move, barely able to think.

  “I was down to skin and bones, more dead than alive.” He told her that if not for the madam of the house, who’d fed and nursed him, he’d indeed have died. But when he recovered, she made him work to pay her back; so he’d been a kitchen porter in a restaurant called the Purple Parrot, which catered to the whorehouse girls and their seafaring clients.

  Then Luc told her what he’d learned about what was happening now. “There will be another world war. Everybody pretends it isn’t true, but there’s no doubt the Nazis are coming; they’re already sizing up our navy in Toulon. The cagey politicians and businessmen in Paris are ready to sacrifice France to the fascists, yet all they’ll say to ordinary citizens is, ‘Don’t worry, the forts of the Maginot line will protect us.’ But the line will not hold—ask any soldier who’s drunk enough to tell the truth.”

  “Nobody here talks about war,” Ondine said worriedly.

  “Not to women,” Luc said. “Not to children, or fools who wish to remain children.”

  Ondine suddenly saw her plan to go to the nuns as the lonely prospect it was. “I want to go and be a chef somewhere. Maybe Paris,” she said, emboldened by his presence to dream a little bigger now.

  He warned, “That’s a bad idea. Paris won’t be a good place to be when Hitler comes. If you don’t believe me, read your history book. I did a lot of reading, first at sea, then when I was recovering. In our past wars the Parisians were surrounded by the enemy and reduced to eating rats—they even ate the animals in the zoo!”

  Ondine tried to picture Picasso reduced to eating a giraffe. Well, he would surely do it. You have to kill something every day, just to live, he’d told her.

  “The place to go is America,” Luc said, his thin, dirty face alight. “That’s where a man can make a fresh start.” Ondine thought he might be mad. Her poor sweet man had returned looking half-starved, like a scarecrow; if her mother saw him approaching the café she’d chase him off with a broom.

  Luc read her thoughts. “I may not look my best,” he said defiantly. “Bien sûr, I could have stopped somewhere for a bath and a shave. But while I lay near death, I vowed to myself that if I ever got home again, I would let nothing—I tell you, nothing—stop me from seeing you as soon as my feet touched the earth of Juan-les-Pins.” He stopped, put down the suitcase, reached into his pocket and pulled out a c
loth sack with a drawstring, which he put in the palm of her hand. It was very, very heavy.

  “It’s all in gold,” he said. “I made sure of that. Nobody knows which currency is going to count for anything in the days that come. I took dangerous work from anybody who’d pay high. Some of it was legal. Some of it wasn’t. All I thought was, I’d like to see your father’s face when he counts it!”

  He stopped to kiss her again, and he held her while she actually swayed, still reeling with delight.

  She could see that he had triumphed, after all. And he’d faithfully returned to Ondine, just as he’d promised, to share it with her. Gently he asked, “But, Ondine—why didn’t you answer any of my letters?”

  Now, as they kept walking, it was her turn to tell what had happened while he was gone. She explained how his letters had been kept hidden away, and why hers had never reached him. She told him about her father and Monsieur Renard’s plans for her. Luc absorbed this information without comment, as if he were weighing the situation carefully.

  “I’m so sorry, Luc. I can’t believe my parents could be so cruel to you,” Ondine said, ashamed.

  But Luc just shook his head. “Parents are ordinary mortals, you know. And people do what they think they have to do to get what they want. I’m surprised to hear how much they really intended to keep us apart. But fate did not agree with them; for here I am, and here you are.”

  They had reached the station, where a few travellers awaited the last train. The stationmaster was just locking up his office to go home. Ondine and Luc sat close together on a bench on the far end of the platform so no one would notice them. He spoke very calmly, making it all seem so sensible and attainable. Ondine was listening in admiration, for he’d somehow taken the measure of the Great World, and his ambitions seemed rooted more deeply in the earth, no longer lost at sea.

  “Well, Ondine, it’s too bad about your parents but it’s our choice now, not theirs. All we have is each other! All right, that’s more than enough for me. Like anyone else, we have a right to do what we feel we must to take care of ourselves, just the two of us.” Luc’s face was so happy and trusting that Ondine burst into tears. “What’s the matter?” he asked worriedly. “Don’t you want to come with me?”