Mistral's Daughter (33 page)

On the first of September
1939, Germany invaded Poland, and, two days later, England and France, bound by
treaty to defend the Poles, reluctantly declared war on Germany.

There was still time for
Julien Mistral to get out of France if he really wanted to, and thousands of
Frenchmen did, but now he had begun painting in earnest the series that would
be called
Les Oliviers
.
 
The light
had turned that limpid, deep golden color that meant that the summer was over,
the wind, that rough, icy exhilarating mistral that he loved, had blown all
the glare away from the groves of olive trees and he was plunged in ruthless,
blind concentration. Mistral could no more pick up and move away from Félice
than if he had been a woman in the last stages of childbirth.
 
All winter long in his studio, Mistral
painted the olives of the summer, those strange mythic trees, hermaphrodites,
with their ancient, masculine trunks, twisted, brutal, almost ugly, above which
sprang feminine branches and leaves, silver and slender as they joined in a
constant dialogue with the sun.

When Mistral visited Félice
he found the mood in the café calm.
 
After the defeat of Poland there had been no further aggression on
either side and everyone agreed that there must certainly be a way short of
actually fighting to get out of this
drôle de guerre
that the Germans
themselves called the Sitzkrieg.
 
But
while Mistral thinking of nothing but his olive trees, the Germans, refreshed
and rested, overran Europe.
 
On the
seventeenth of June 1940, Pétain,
 
the
old marshal of the French Army, now premier of France, asked for an armistice
or a truce, or a surrender, or a cease-fire, depend on each man's political
convictions.
 
The trap was closed.

Why now
, Mistral raged
violently, cursing his evil luck.
Why now,
when I have so much to do!
 
Why now,
when I haven't a second to spare,
why now
, when I'm painting as never before,
why now
, this
stinking, foul
interruption?
 
What
if I can't get any more supplies from Paris? There still isn't a decent paint
store in Avignon.
 
And what the hell am I
supposed to do about new canvases?

He rampaged about his studio,
stacking up empty canvases and grimly taking count of how few remained.
 
There had been no shipments from Paris for
months.
 
He, like all painters, hoarded
paint, but who could tell when he'd start to need more?
 
And if that wasn't bad enough, if that wasn't
enough damnable, ill-begotten trouble for him to worry about, there was the
matter of the
mas
.
 
Ever since
Kate had gone on her trip to New York the farm had deteriorated steadily.

Jean Pollison, the young
farmer Kate had engaged before marriage to work the land, had always hired many
additional men to help him during the time of heavy work, in the spring and in
the fall, but since last spring there had been no men to hire; either they had
been drafted and were now in German prison camps, or they were needed on their
own farms to replace other men who had left for the army.
 
Pollison had done his best by himself,
assisted by farm machinery Kate had bought which the other farmers of
 
region so envied, but now he had come to
Mistral
—
 
actually
broke
into
his work,
Mistral thought incredulously
—
and told him that feared a
shortage of petrol to run the cultivators.
 
The new government in Vichy was beginning to ration everything.

"Merde,
Pollison!
 
Is that my affair?" he roared.

"I'm sorry, Monsieur
Mistral, but I thought I must tell you since Madame is not here."

"Pollison, do whatever
you can, but
never
bother me in studio again, you understand?"

"But Monsieur
Mistral..."

"Pollison," he
shouted, "enough!
 
Figure it out
yourself, that’s what you're here for."

As Jean Pollison hastily
retreated from the studio he thought to himself that no matter how Monsieur
Mistral played at being a part of the life of the village, no matter that he
was the boules champion of the region, no matter how many rounds of drinks he bought
for everyone at the café, he was still a stranger from Paris, and nothing would
ever change that.

Five days after the
cease-fire of June 17, Marte Pollison knocked timidly at the door of Mistral’s
studio late one afternoon.
 
Normally she
just left his lunch tray outside the studio, but today her errand was so
important that it overcame her terror of angering him.

"What is it?" he
barked.

"Monsieur Mistral, I
must speak to you."

"Come in, damn it!
 
What the hell is it?"

"People have arrived in
a car filled with baggage asking to spend the night.
 
It's Monsieur and Madam Behrman with their
three children.
 
I told them to wait
outside until I spoke to you. They're driving to the border, trying to get to
Spain.
 
He said it’s no longer safe for
Jews to stay in France."

Mistral punched one big fist
into the palm of his other hand in rage.
 
Charles Behrman, and his wife, Toupette, were old friends.
 
He had known Behrman, a sculptor, since the
days of Montparnasse.
 
They had rented
the studio next to his on the boulevard Arago and when Kate had invited them
down for a weekend several years before, Mistral found the children annoyingly
boisterous.
 
Mistral thought
quickly.
 
It was intolerable, Behrman’s
thinking that he could just drop in with his whole irritating family, expecting
food and lodging.
 
And who knew how long
they might stay once they were comfortable?
 
If he chose to chase off to Spain because he was a Jew, that was his own
problem.
 
The war, after all, was over,
the cease-fire established all over France.

"Did you tell him I was
here?" he asked Marte Pollison.

"Not exactly, just that
I would have to ask you before I let them in."

"Go back and tell them
you can’t find me, that I’ve gone out and you don't know when I'll be back.
Tell them that you have no authority to allow them to spend the night without
my permission.
 
Get rid of them one
way or another
.
 
You didn't let them
inside the gate?"

"No, it was
closed."

"Good. Make sure that
they drive off, keep a good eye on them until they've gone beyond the oak
forest."

"Yes, Monsieur
Mistral."

The day after the Behrmans
had been turned away from
La Tourrello
, Mistral went up to the café in
Félice and bought a round of
pastis
for his friends.
 
He listened with unusual care to the words of
the men at the bar.
 
Genuine ill feeling
and bitterness had begun to divide them for the first time since he had met
them.
 
Men who
had enjoyed
good-natured, long-running, political arguments for years now had formed into
two angry camps, those who thought Pétain's cease-fire had saved France and
those who thought he was a
traitor.

There was only one subject on
which everyone seemed to agree, the infuriating invasion of the countryside by
the blasted northerners, people who had escaped from the Occupied Zone into the
South before the line of demarcation had closed, and those others, amazing in
their numbers, who were still managing to filter through the line
illegally.
 
The strangers were
everywhere, ill prepared, often
in panic, desperate for unobtainable
food and petrol, swamping the local authorities with their presence, a pest and
a plague on villages and farms.
 
Resentment was high against these hordes who couldn't stay peacefully
where they belonged.

Mistral returned home
thoughtfully.
 
He knew too many people in
Paris.
 
He knew many too many Jews.
 
Because of Kate and constant hospitality, her
years of exhibiting their contentment at the
mas
, too many friends had
learned the road to
La Tourrello
.
 
They knew how many extra bedrooms it had, how rich its fields were, how
self-sufficient the property had become.
 
There were bound to be many more unexpected visitors like the Behrmans
and there was no way to know when they would arrive, or in what condition of
need.

He called Marte and Jean
Pollison together in the kitchen.
 

"Pollison," he said
to the man, "I want you to build a high fence where the road to the
mas
branches off from the road to Félice.
 
I
don't want anyone coming here and disturbing me at my work
—
the whole
country is crawling with people who will try to take advantage, and I must not
be bothered by them."

"Yes, Monsieur
Mistral."
   

"And, Madame Pollison, I
don't want any more interruptions of my work.
 
If anyone should ignore the gate and come through the woods, don't come
to let me know.
 
Tell them that I haven't
been here for a while and that you can't receive them.
 
Don't open the gate
for anyone,
under any circumstances, use only
the little postman's
window.
 
For no one.
 
Do you understand?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

In the two years that
followed, a number of old friends and acquaintances who had known Mistral for
years were to make their dangerous, laborious, terrified way to
La Tourrello
,
sometimes aided by Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who risked their lives to help
them.
 
All of them hoped for just a
single night's shelter from those who hunted them so efficiently and
mercilessly.
 
Many of these despairing
and hounded refugees disregarded the stout fence and managed to make their way
to the
mas
, but the great wooden doors were always kept tightly locked
and Marte Pollison responded grimly and negatively to the frantic ringing of
the doorbell that sounded in the kitchen.

Most of those who came were
Jews and only a few of them survived the war.

In June of 1942, as he
followed his mother's small funeral procession, Adrien Avigdor realized that
now he was free to leave Paris... if free was a word that could be used at all
at such a time.
 
He made sure that the
yellow Star of David bordered in black, as big as the
palm of his hand,
with the word
Juif
inscribed on it in black letters, was clearly visible
on his jacket.
 
Women were being picked
up all over Paris for carrying their handbags in a way that obscured the
star;
 
a man had been arrested only
yesterday for wearing a star that wasn't sewn on tightly; last week an old lady
who lived near him had been caught and taken away when she ventured outside to
pick up her mail in her bathrobe, forgetting that it bore no star at all.
 
Three stars for each Jew, the order of the
twenty-ninth of May 1942 had decreed, and he had been made to give up tickets
from his textile ration card for each of them.

He had not foreseen this, no
one had foreseen this, when Avigdor had made his decision to stay in
Paris.
 
His mother was too crippled by
arthritis to move, and together, during those hot weeks in June, two years
earlier, they had watched the exodus from behind the closed shutters of
Avigdor's apartment on the boulevard St.-Germain.

By night and by day they had
watched the mute, terrified herd struggling southward.
 
Most of Paris, entire villages to the north
and the east, hundreds of miles of countryside, were abandoned to the oncoming
enemy.
 
The population had taken to the
roads in whatever vehicles they possessed, only to leave them when they ran
out
of petrol and to continue on foot, carrying miserable children,
umbrellas and Sunday hats, pushing baby carriages filled with pathetic, useless
household treasures; farmers lugged chickens in cages a prodded cows bellowing
with thirst.
         

"Go Adrien, go!"
Madame Avigdor had begged him.
 
"I'm
an old woman.
 
You mustn't stay to be
with me...
 
Madame Blanchet across the
hall has offered to fetch me whatever I want. Leave now, Adrien, while you
can!"

"Maman, don't be
foolish.
 
Just look at those people
—
bedraggled, hypnotized, a rabble
—
I assure you that I have no intention
joining them.
 
How can I abandon my
artists, how can I leave my gallery?"