Mistral's Daughter (55 page)

"No, tonight it was the
peacocks
—
the peahen is in heat and they engaged in an unseemly
tussle.
 
Shall we waltz?"

"I would like nothing
better
—
but alas, the orchestra is not in agreement."

"Then shall we sit this
one out?"

"Perhaps it would be
wise, Roland."

"My name is Eric,"
he said, "but you can call me Roland if for any reason you'd prefer
it."

"My name is
Fauve."
 
Usually the young men of
the neighborhood, who heard her name for the first time, made some silly
remark.
 
She waited but he said nothing,
inspecting her openly with a look of frankest fascination.
 
She thought that she couldn't remember if she
had ever seen a man
—
for he was a man, not a boy
—
who looked so
comfortably at home in his skin.
 
Eric
was well over six feet tall and there was some one outstanding quality to him
that Fauve was intensely conscious of, yet she couldn't manage to put a name to
it as she looked at him.
 
It wasn't just
good looks although he was exceptionally handsome, with strong, blunt,
well-formed features, deeply tanned skin and thick brown hair that sprang up in
an unruly way from a cowlick over his right eye and fell down over his forehead
on both sides.
 
His lower lip was full
and indented in the center, the focus of his face, giving him a humorous and
generous expression. But just what was it, Fauve wondered, that struck her as
an unusual and important aspect of this stranger?

"You're staring at
me," he said, and grinned.

"You're staring at
me
,"
she said indignantly.
 
"Would you
rather dance?"

"Perhaps we
should."

The orchestra had just begun
to play "La Vie en Rose" when Eric took her in his arms. Fauve, who
had stood braced in the normal dancing posture of the region, found herself
being held close to his chest and masterfully led into what was, to her
instantly responding feet, most decidedly a waltz.
 
Perhaps the orchestra wasn't playing the
requisite one, two, three, one, two, three of a Viennese waltz but,
nevertheless, they were waltzing magically, and so gracefully that the
orchestra leader, watching them, signaled his men to play "The Blue
Danube" next.
 
When that waltz was
over they stopped suddenly, both of them amazed to find themselves in the
center of a circle of other dancers who were watching them with as much
curiosity as if Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire had materialized on the dance
floor.

"That was
wonderful!" they each said at the same moment, their words colliding in
midsentence.

"Come on, let's get
something cold to drink.
 
I've discovered
three important things about you and I intend to impress you with my intelligence,"
Eric said, leading her out of the circle. There was a café next door to the
Salle
des Fêtes
where the chaperones gathered to play cards. Fauve and Eric found
a table and ordered Cokes.
 

"First," he said,
"you are a foreigner, second you're an artist and third, you smell better
than any girl in the world."

"But I don't use
perfume," Fauve protested.

"That's just what I
said."

"Oh."
 
She thought about it for an instant and
discovered that she was blushing, that disastrous blush that had been passed
down in a direct line from one Lunel woman to another. "How do you know
I'm a foreigner?" Fauve said hastily, slipping easily into the accent of
the Midi.

"Too late to try that
trick, and anyway I can do it too.
 
You
waltz like a foreigner
—
divinely, to be blunt
—
the only girl in
Provence who could have taken Archduke Rudolf away from Marie Vetsera.
 
You didn't learn that here."

"Oh!" Fauve had
seen a revival of
Mayerling
on television and her blush deepened.
 
"How do you know I'm an artist?"
she demanded nervously.

"Because
only an artist would deliberately wear those colors
—
the dress with
your hair could be just to be noticed but then to add orange tights and those
shoes..."

"I'm
interested in art," Fauve said evasively.
 
She never told people that she painted herself. Only her family and
Melvin Allenberg and a few close friends knew that she painted and, of them, no
one had any true idea of how deeply she felt about her work.

"'Interested
in art'?" he said.
 
"Is that
all
—
just interest?"

"I
go to a lot of galleries and museums
—
New York is the capital of the
world, after all."

"So
the New Yorkers would like to think," Eric said defensively.
 
No Frenchman would admit that after the war
the center of the art world had indeed shifted to the United States.

"Oh,
come on, you know it is.
 
Every Saturday
afternoon you can see more new art just walking in and out of the galleries of
Madison Avenue than you possibly could in Paris
—
not to speak of the
museums.
 
My friend Melvin and I go out
looking two or three times a month," Fauve answered.

"Your
friend Melvin?
 
Is he some sort of
expert?" Eric bristled.

"Melvin
is absolutely brilliant!
 
It's amazing
how much he knows...
 
and he's such a
darling."

"This
paragon
—
no doubt he's handsome too?"

"Well,
perhaps not in the obvious way, but it's extraordinary how many girls fall in
love with him.
 
They get hooked by his
brains and his talent first and then they realize how very attractive
 
he is and how sweet.
 
Sometimes I think that there's nobody in the
world I can talk to the way I can talk to Melvin
—
it's as if I can tell
him everything and count on his understanding me."

"That
sounds to me as if you're in love with him yourself," Eric said grimly.

"'In
love'?
 
Oh, Eric, what a marvelous
idea!" Fauve chortled.

"What
the hell's so marvelous about it?
 
I
think it's in terrible taste for you to sit here with me droning on and on
about brilliant, handsome, sweet Melvin with whom you share so many artistic
afternoons."

"And
evenings too, Eric
—
there are all the gallery openings, you know, and
my grandmother lets me go to the really important ones with him," Fauve
said, with a wicked grin.

"Oh,
that's too much!" Eric drained his Coke and slammed the glass down on the
table. "I'm going back inside."

"Eric!"

"What?"
he snapped, glaring at her.

"Melvin
is an old man
—
ancient
—
he must be at least forty-three or four
—
he's like my uncle or something
—
he used to go out with my
mother, for heaven's sake."

"How
old are you, anyway?" he asked, sitting back in his chair, barely hiding
his relief.

"Sixteen,"
Fauve answered.
 
Sixteen suddenly sounded
absurdly young.
 
Her nostalgia for her
fifteenth year had vanished, not to reappear for decades.

"I'm
twenty."

They
smiled at each other for no reason and for every reason.
 
Fauve realized what it was in Eric's face
that had struck her from the moment she'd seen him.
 
She trusted him.
 
She had trusted him overwhelmingly and
instantly.
 
It seemed like a strange
thing to have picked out as the dominant quality in that face.
 
How could she trust a complete stranger at
first sight?
 
And such a handsome one?

Pomme
and Épinette said men like that were spoiled and full of themselves, and to be
avoided at all costs.
 
Well, Pomme and
Épinette didn't understand as much as they thought they did.

"Besides
knowing all about art, thanks to doddering, kindly, antique Melvin, I suppose
you know everything about architecture too?" Eric asked.

"Nothing,
except the things you pick up just walking around.
 
I'm genuinely uninformed."

"Well,
thank God for that," Eric said delightedly.
 
"I'm an architect, or rather I soon
will be... I'm at the Beaux-Arts."

"Why
are you so pleased that I'm ignorant?"

"I
want to have something to teach you," he answered.

"Okay.
 
Start."

"I
don't mean now, I mean tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week, all summer
long... don't you have any romance in you?"

"I'm
not sure...
 
I mean, how do you
tell?" Fauve asked seriously, drawing her eyebrows together in
concentration.

"So
you're a romantic illiterate too?
 
That's
even better.
 
Come on, Fauve, let's go
and waltz some more and then will you let me drive you home?
 
Or did you come with somebody?
 
It's impossible to figure out at these
dances."
 
He sounded suddenly
unsure.

"I came with some
friends but they won't mind if you take me home."

"Where do you
live?"

"Near Félice."

"That's not exactly
around the corner."
 
He sounded
jubilant.

"It's about sixty
kilometers," she said apologetically.

"That's what I like
about it.
 
Now Fauve, you've got to stop
blushing when I compliment you.
 
I'm
going to train you, just like dog.
 
A
compliment every ten minutes for a couple of hours and you'll forget how to
blush... no, perhaps that's not a good idea after all.
 
I think I like your blush...
 
it adds such an interesting shade of pink to
all the others."

Dances in Provence never
start before nine and rarely end before two o'clock, but Fauve insisted on
leaving soon after midnight since the drive was so long and her father always
waited up for her safe return.

Near Remoulins, where they
picked up the National Route 100 that led almost due east to Félice, Eric tried
to persuade her to make a quick detour to see the Pont du Gard by moonlight.
"It's one of the supreme wonders of antiquity, almost intact after two
thousand years
—
you'll never understand the Romans until you see that
aqueduct, it's...
 
no, you're sure?
 
You can really live another day without an
aqueduct?
 
Well...
 
we'll have to come back."

At Villeneuve-les-Avignon, he
had another suggestion.
 
"Let's just
go up to my parents' place and say hello
—
they're never asleep this
early and the view from their terrace of the Fort St. André is the best you'll
ever see
—
it may well be the best example of a fortification with twin
towers...
 
not that either?
 
Don't you
like
a good fortress?
 
All right, all right...
 
I'll go straight across the river, looking
neither to the left nor to the right although you're making a mistake not just
taking a peep at the Popes' Palace tonight
—
it's never as good by
daylight."

"Home, Eric," Fauve
insisted, and once past Avignon they sped across the flat, rich plain, Eric
proposing and rejecting a dozen projects for the next day.
 
He felt a heavy responsibility for choosing
Fauve's first experience with architecture.
 
Since the nearby countryside possessed the ruins of a Phoenician city
founded six centuries before Jesus Christ and a hundred other wonders from
every era since, what should he pick as a starting point?
 
How much of a ruin should a ruin be?
 
What was her tolerance level for stones?

Fauve found herself scarcely
listening to him as they got closer to Félice.
 
Her father had never seen her with any special boy before tonight, she
reflected with apprehension.
 
What would
he think of her leaving for the evening with a group of old friends and coming
back home with an unknown young man she'd picked up at the dance?
 
Surely it must happen to other girls all the
time?
 
He should be delighted that she
hadn't been a wallflower, she thought as she indicated the road to
La
Tourrello
to Eric.
 
He should be
pleased that she'd met somebody who was studying something as interesting as
architecture, shouldn't he?