Mistral's Daughter (57 page)

"The Bible?" Fauve
laughed.
 
"What has the Bible to do
with dozens and dozens of books of debates and commentaries on the Torah, the
Five Books of Moses?"

"Dozens and dozens of
what?" Eric said, bewildered.

"Oh, stop kidding
me.
 
Monsieur Avigdor, there are bound to
be at least two opinions in the Talmud, or maybe even a dozen, so you wouldn't
ever really get an answer, but at least they'd give you a good argument.
 
At least that's what Rabbi Taradash would
have said, according to my grandmother."

Avigdor's jaw dropped in
astonishment.

"Drink some wine,
darling," Beth Avigdor said hastily to her husband.
 
In her opinion it was a perfectly reasonable
suggestion; old-fashioned, unexpected and quaint coming from such a young girl,
but certainly not a reason for such gaping amazement.
 
Mistral's daughter or not, wasn't Lunel a
Jewish name, and a fine old one at that?
 
What had come over the man?

By the time she went to bed
that night, Fauve had drawn a self-protective shell of rationalization around
the revelations of Adrien Avigdor.
 
She
no longer felt betrayed by her grandmother.
 
Now that she could think over what he'd said without the element of surprise,
it made perfect sense that Magali had not told her the whole story, had kept
some part secret.
 
When she was younger
she simply wouldn't have been able to understand it.
 
God knows, the family history of the Lunel
women and all those star-crossed lovers of theirs was complicated enough.
 
It was really rather romantic
—
love
across two generations
—
she thought sleepily, but somehow she thought
that she wouldn't ask her father anything about Monsieur Avigdor's
memories...
 
she'd wait to question
Magali about it when she got home.
 
No
one had hidden things from her...
 
no one
had betrayed her...
 
she could trust
them...
 
everything was as it had always
been...
 
there was just one layer of
mystery...
 
unimportant...
 
so far in the past...
 
so long ago...

"Fauve,
hurry up and finish your breakfast," Mistral said.
 
"It's time for your painting
lesson."

"I
promised to spend the day with Eric," Fauve said.
 
"He's taking me to the Roman Arena in
Arles."

"I
assume you're teasing.
 
I've put aside
that time for you every morning."

"No,
I'm serious."

"But,
Fauve, you have your whole life to spend in looking at Roman arenas
—
what are your priorities?
 
With your
talent you can't waste time sightseeing!
 
It's simply not possible!
 
How
many days are there in the summer?
 
Don't
you know how much you still have to learn?"

"I
know, Father. But I promised."

"Julien,"
said Kate, "aren't you being unreasonable?
 
Why should Fauve want to spend the morning shut up in a studio with you
when she can be out with such an irresistible young man?
 
know that at her age I certainly would have
preferred to flirt than paint...
 
don't
be insensitive."

"Kate,
this has nothing to do with you.
 
Fauve,
come along.
 
When that boy shows up,
Kate, tell him to wait until Fauve's through for the day.
 
If he's interested, he'll still be here at
noon."
 

"No,
Father."

"No?
What does that mean?"

"I'm
not going to paint with you this summer
—
not at all.
 
I can't anymore."

"What
are you talking about?"
 
Now Mistral
was too astonished to be angry.
 
"Can't?
 
Can't what?
 
You're not trying to say that you are unable
to paint?
 
How many times have I told you
that you have a serious natural talent?
 
What's this all about?"

"I've
thought about it all winter."
 
Fauve
faltered at first but her voice steadied quickly.
 
"Last summer, you remember, when I
wanted to do some experimental work, you said that I'd been contaminated by
all the vulgarity and chichi of the shows I'd seen in New York and we went back
to painting figures and landscapes and still lifes
—
well, I wanted to
tell you then that I couldn't keep on trying to paint like Mistral, that I
wasn't Mistral and never would be Mistral and there was no reason for you to
keep hoping that I could ever be anything like you
—
but I didn't
dare.
 
I promised myself that I'd have
the courage to do it this summer...
 
well, that's it, that's why I'm not coming to the studio with you."

"Fauve,"
Mistral said, struggling to keep calm, "you live in the center of a
whirlpool of all the filth of the entire world of art, if you can dignify that
money machine, that total anarchy that reigns in New York by calling it art at
all.
 
I can understand why you aren't
completely able to avoid some infection.
 
It's a kind of Broadway-Hollywood interior decorator's insanity, a bunch
of talentless exhibitionists
—
but surely you don't take people
seriously who make 'art' from fluorescent light tubes and modular shelving and
Styrofoam and comic strips and things they find in garbage cans
—
Jesus
Christ, Fauve, if you want to be amused by art go study Marcel Duchamp
—
at least he did it with style and he did everything first!"

"You simply don't understand what I'm trying to say.
 
I don't want to do Pop or Op or Minimal
—
or any of the others
—
I don't want to do what anybody else is doing
—
and I
can't
do what you do
—
 
I don't want to paint at all!"

"You can't possibly not want to paint, Fauve.
 
You
are
a painter, you have no
choice." Mistral's voice was gentle, patient, as if he were speaking to an
unexpectedly stubborn thoroughbred horse.
 
"I've never asked you to imitate me, not that I'm aware of.
 
I've simply tried to keep you from being
swept away into a cesspool of so-called new ideas
—
they'll only distort
and corrupt your natural gifts.
 
You know
what I've always said:
 
that you can't
fly until you've developed wings strong enough to lift you off the ground and
into the heavens.
 
You
must
have
all the essential equipment
—
afterward you can do
anything
—
why, even Picasso, worn out and obsessed by erotica as he is, can still draw
like a thousand angels when he chooses to.
 
He had to have the classic training
in order to leave it behind him
.
 
I'm telling you only that you don't yet
—
don't quite yet
—
have all that necessary background, all those
skills.
 
Fauve, let's go on up to the
studio.
 
You do anything you like this
morning
—
no lessons
—
we'll just paint together quietly, no
criticism, suggestions, just paint."

"
No, Father."

Mistral's
lips tightened.
 
He looked at Fauve and
he saw something in her face that made him reflect for a second, and decide to
meet her on her ground. "All right, then, if it's a Roman arena you feel
you must visit this morning, go and have a good time.
 
We'll talk more about this later, eh?
 
It's not something we have to settle
 
right now, after all."

The
kitchen bell sounded.
 
"That's
Eric," Fauve said, jumping from the table.
 
"I'll be back for dinner...
 
or if I'm not, I'll call."
 
She kissed Mistral on his cheek.
 
"See you later."
 
She
picked her shoulder bag off a chair and walked quickly out of the room.

"Well,
Julien," Kate said, in her flat, uninflected way, "I must say I'm
stunned.
 
I had no idea that she resented
your lessons so much
—
hasn't she any idea of the privilege it is to be
taught by you?"

"Oh,
don't talk rubbish, Kate.
 
She's my
daughter, and privilege has nothing to do with it.
 
It's that New York world she lives in, all
sense of values disappeared there long ago.
 
It's the people she's permitted, God knows why, to associate with, that
photographer Falk, who's allowed to drag her to those disgusting new galleries,
it's a contagion, it's a sickness..."

"Hasn't
it occurred to you, Julien, that she may simply not be interested anymore?
 
Why do you expect Fauve to be different from
most other sixteen-year-old girls?
 
They
live and breathe horses or ice skating or ballet and then one day they discover
a boy
—
like Avigdor's son
—
and they lose interest overnight in
that one thing to which they've devoted years of their lives
—
it's a
well-known phenomenon."
   

Kate
stood up, shopping list in hand.
 
Then,
as if having a second thought, she continued. "After all, how many great
women painters are there?
 
How many times
have you said that their ener
gies go into childbearing?
 
And
how many children of famous parents manage to achieve anything important in the
same field as their parents did, eh?
 
Has
there
ever
been a great
—
even a well-known
—
woman
painter who was the daughter of an artist of your stature?"
 
She put her hand on Mistral's shoulder.
 
"Don't take it so hard...
 
it was bound to happen sooner or
later...
 
young Avigdor just provided the
spark that made the mixture explode...
 
and I must say I can certainly see why now that I've met him.
 
What an extraordinarily good-looking young
man! And how hospitable his parents were to Fauve yesterday...
 
they seem to have been in quite a hurry to
take her to the bosom of their family."

"What
an absurd thing to say about one lunch," Mistral said, his face red with
rage.

Kate
made a philosophic face.
 
"That's
what happens with children," she said, watching Mistral carefully.
 
"You spend your life worrying about them
and doing everything you can for them and then, just when they get to their
most interesting age, they dash off with the first person who comes along and
leave you waving goodbye.
 
Do I complain
that Nadine practically never comes here?
 
Since she married Phillipe they spend all their vacations in Sardinia or
Marrakesh or wherever their friends are
—
it's all quite normal.
 
You accepted it with Nadine
—
the same
thing is happening with Fauve, my dear, that's all."
 
She gave a shrug of resignation.

"It
seems hard to believe that you used to be an intelligent woman,
Kate."
 
Mistral was so enraged that
his voice lost all of its color.
 
"Fauve and Nadine have nothing in common.
 
Fauve is gifted, enormously gifted...
 
she was born to paint.
 
She's simply going through a moment of
rebellion.
 
Tomorrow or the next day
she'll be back at work."
 
He stood
up and left the room without another word.

Kate
sat down at the breakfast table alone, listening to the sounds of the
countryside.
 
A brief smile crossed her
finely molded lips as she thought of the stricken look on Julien's face, at the
fury she had watched him conceal from Fauve.
 
Ah, Julien, she said to herself.
 
Don't you know that this is only the beginning?
 
You've just started to lose her.
 
You...
 
you who used to be an intelligent man?

"Why
Cavaillon?" asked Eric as he drove the car.
 
"I know that's where they grow the best
melons in France, but I thought that we were set for Arles?
 
Cavaillon is basically without architectural
interest."

"Because
a Roman arena will wait one more day but in Cavaillon there's something I want
to see.
 
Anyway, didn't you say I could
do anything I wanted to yesterday?
 
And
didn't I go to that old aqueduct and listen to all your explanations?"