Mistral's Daughter (34 page)

He didn't tell her that he
had no confidence in her neighbor promises, that he could not possibly leave
her alone to face the arrival of the Germans.
 
And it was true enough that he was busily engaged in saving the hundreds
of paintings that had been entrusted to him by many who had decided to
flee.
 
They represented the finest works
of the artists for whom he was a dealer and it was up to him to make sure that
they were securely secreted.
 
Who knew
what the Germans would do when they came?
 
Hitler hated new art.
         
Even
old Picasso was a "degenerate" in Nazi eyes.
 
Someone had to stay.

Now, two years later, he
could only smile grimly at his bravado, yet he would make that same decision
today.
 
He had been able to make his
mother's last years bearable and he was glad she had not lived long after the
decree that made the wearing of the Star of David mandatory for every French
Jew over the age of six.

She had lived long enough,
however, to have had to be helped to stand on her crippled legs to line up to
register as a Jew at the Prefecture of Police; long enough to have seen the
word Juif written in large letters on her identity card, long enough to have
learned that all non-French Jews had been rounded up and sent away.
  

Thank God she had not lived
to know, as he did, that now French Jews, even those who had lived in France
for many centuries, were forbidden to practice any profession, to work in any
business,
prohibited from using the telephone, from buying a stamp, from
going to restaurants, cafés, libraries and films.
 
Even from sitting in public
squares.
 
Nevertheless, we retain one right, Avigdor
told himself in grim humor, we can buy food during one hour each day, from
three
to four o'clock
—
when most shops are closed.

The trains still ran from
time to time and civilians traveled, but not without the
ausweis
, or
German permit.
 
As Avigdor thought over
the possibilities open to him he realized that all over France millions
of
people were traveling to weddings, funerals and christenings,
were
visiting sick relatives or moving to another part of the country for their
health or their business.
 
Life, under
the Germans, for
most Frenchmen, continued under the meanest and most
miserable of terms from the point of view of nourishment and heat and rationing
and restrictions of every kind, but nevertheless they were allowed to try to
survive.

Soutine, he knew, had sought
refuge in Touraine, Max Jacob in St.-Benôit-sur-Loire, Braque was in 1'Isle sur
la Sorgue, his friend, the great art dealer Kahnweiller, lived in Limousin
under the name of Kersaint, Picasso was still working busily in Paris and so
were the collaborators, Vlaminck and Cocteau.

Avigdor's gallery had been
confiscated and turned over, by order of the Germans, to a non-Jewish dealer
who now did a lively trade with the enemy, selling the daubs of tenth-rate
artists.
 
During the last
months
Avigdor had sought information on the best way to escape from Paris, although
that great source of all valuable gossip, Paula
Deslandes, had died
several months ago of a heart attack and La Pomme d'Or was closed for good.

From the earliest days of the
Resistance Paula had been busy helping people who were in danger.
 
"I've been in training for this all my
life," she'd told Avigdor gaily.
 
"I knew there were many reasons never to leave Paris and now I've
found the best one of all
—
 
stay
put and find ways to get others out."

Most Parisians had soon
returned to their city after the first fright; pretty women wore new hats, and
those with money could eat openly in black-market restaurants without feeling
guilty since 10 percent of their check went to the national charity.
 
In the cafés the intellectuals still talked;
people still fell in love and went to church; and women gave birth.
 
Nevertheless, there was no one whose life had
not been profoundly changed.

Each Frenchman and
Frenchwoman reacted differently to the presence of the Germans, and Avigdor,
whose understanding of other humans had once been directed toward selling them
antiques and paintings, now used his sharp instincts to decide who was safe to
go
to for a false identity card and an
ausweis
.
 
Everything
was obtainable, every
degree of false card, including the "real" false card that came from
the police, right down to the most lamentable and obvious forgeries.

As he had cared for his
ailing mother, Adrien Avigdor
 
took
note of the comings and goings of the neighborhood.
 
Like almost every other Frenchman, Avigdor
had been able to keep from starving by recourse to the
Marché Parallèle
,
an institution which might have been called the black market except that almost
everyone
could afford to
make use of it, did so.
 
The rations permitted by the Germans were
simply not enough to maintain life and, in any case,
were rarely
available.

Oh, he had his sources, he
had his friends, he had been reserving them for a long while for this
eventuality.
 
Thank God he had the money
to pay to escape the prison of Paris.

More than two weeks later,
armed with an identity card that did not bear the word
Juif
, the
indispensable ration cards for food and textiles, and a valid
ausweis
,
Adrien Avigdor, wearing the blue garb of a farmworker, and clutching a precious
bicycle, was jammed in a train carriage traveling south.
 
He had been en route for days, most of the
time spent waiting for a train in various squalid, overflowing
stations,
packed with people whose unscheduled trains had not appeared and who waited
patiently, exhausted, sitting on their bundles and packages all night. Once
nine o'clock came, the curfew imprisoned them in the stations until the next
morning.

Several times, Germans
working their way through the trains had inspected his papers, methodically
checking his face against his photograph.
 
Open, amiable, frank, not too clever, his ordinary farmer's face had
never aroused the slightest suspicion, his new cards, adroitly
"aged," which had cost him as much as a country estate, were
impeccable.
 
Avigdor was on his way to
make contact with the large Resistance operation in the mountains near
Aix-en-Provence but he had resolved first to stop and see Mistral.

Who knew if he would ever see
the painter again?
 
He had to satisfy
himself that the man was safe.
 
What if
he had been sent to
Germany
for forced labor as so many had
been?
 
There had been no communication
between them since the fall of France.
 
What if Kate, who had always retained her American citizenship, had been
rounded
up and deported?
 
Avigdor
had kept in touch as much as possible
with what had happened to most of
his artists under the Occupation
—
 
somehow news filtered through
—
but he had been deeply
troubled
by the lack of the slightest scrap of information about Mistral.

It was a long and wearying
bicycle ride from the station in Avignon to Félice, but Adrien Avigdor
relished it.
 
Being in
the open
country after years of confined city life was pure joy.
 
He realized that he would be lucky to reach
La
Tourrello
by curfew as he toiled up the road from the hamlet of Beaumettes.
Everywhere he saw fields left untilled, vines neglected.
 
In every corner of France, the Vichy regime,
who had done the Germans' work for them in the Unoccupied Zone since the
armistice, had taken away many able-bodied
men to work in German factories,
replacing German soldiers.
 
However, the
production of food was always a necessity and Avigdor saw many people still in
the fields, women and children as well as men of his age, old men and boys.

Exhausted, he pushed his bike
up the hill leading to the
mas
, through the forest of live oaks, crossed
the meadow and pounded on the tall gates he knew so well.
 
After a long wait Madame Pollison
opened
the small window of wood and looked out forbiddingly.
 
Avigdor smiled at the familiar face he had
come to know so well during his visits of the past years.
 
"So you think you've seen a ghost, do
you?
 
It's wonderful to lay eyes on you,
Madame Pollison, absolutely wonderful!
 
I
hope you still have a bottle of wine left in the cellar for me?
 
Well, come on, open up
—
where is
Monsieur Mistral?"

"You can't come in,
Monsieur Avigdor," the woman said.

"Is there something
wrong?" he asked, instantly alarmed by her expression.

"No one is to come in,
Monsieur."

"What are you talking
about?
 
I've cycled all the way from
Avignon.
 
Are you afraid of something,
Madame Pollison?"

"Nothing, Monsieur, but
I have
my orders.
 
We can receive
one."

"But I must see Monsieur
Mistral!"

"He is away."

"But, Madame Pollison,
you
know
me!
 
How many times have
I stayed here, for God's sake? I'm a friend
—
more than a friend.
 
Come on, let me in
—
what's the matter
with you?"

"That was before.
 
Monsieur Mistral is not here and I can't
admit you.
^."

"
Where is he
?
 
Was he taken away for labor?
 
Where is Madame"

"I told you, Monsieur is
out.
 
Madame stayed in her own
country.
 
Au
revoir,
Monsieur
Avigdor."
 
The housekeeper drew from
the door and closed the window of wood in his face. Avigdor stood there
incredulously.
 
The
mas
was shut
as tight as any walled village of the Middle Ages.
 
That beastly woman!
 
He’d never liked her but it was incredible
that she had not welcomed him.
 
She knew
perfectly well how close he was to the family.
 
Where could Mistral have gone?
 
What would Mistral do to her when he found out that she had sent him
away?
 
He started pound on the door again
but looked up at the sky first.
 
It was
still light, but darkness and the curfew were coming soon.
 
There was just enough time to get back to Beaumettes
with its one country inn.

Furiously, cursing, Avigdor
quickly headed the bicycle down the hill but before plunging into the oak
forest, he stopped, turned and gave one last unbelieving look backward toward
the
mas
.

There, in the high window of
the
pigeonnier
was a massive,
unmistakable head.
 
Julien Mistral stood watching him
depart.
 
With his keen sight, Avigdor
could even see the fierce, determined, set expression on the painter's
face.
 
He stopped as abruptly as if he’d
been shot and gave a great shout of relief.
 
Their eyes met for a long minute over the distance.
 
Mistral withdrew from the window.
 
Avigdor, his heart pounding, rushed back to
the gate and waited for him to come and open the gate.
 
It was all that moronic housekeeper's fault.
 
She had acted on her own without ever asking
Mistral.

Minutes passed in the twilight
hush, long minutes during which the silence of the
mas
grew more solid,
long minutes before Adrien Avigdor finally understood and remounted his
bicycle. He had not wept when the Germans marched down the Champs Elysées, he
had not wept when he sewed on his yellow star, he had not wept when his mother
had died, but he wept now.

Five months after Avigdor
started to work with the Resistance, the Allies landed in North Africa and the
Germans took over all of France.
 
The
Unoccupied Zone no longer existed, a large German garrison with its inevitable
branch of the Gestapo was established in Avignon, and troops were stationed
five kilometers from Félice, at Nôtre Dame-des-Lumières.

For almost two years Julien
Mistral had worked in the fields. Even he had been forced to accept the fact
that unless he worked officially
at food production, as did everyone in
Provence, he risked forced labor.
 
In any
case if he expected to eat he had to till the soil.
 
The shopkeepers of Félice had almost no food
to sell at any price.
 
The farmer was now
the one who ate, if not his fill, at least better than people in the big towns
who were dying of hunger every day while the crops, the butter, the milk and
the meat of France went to Germans.