Mistral's Daughter (63 page)

Fauve would be
locked into his life forever.
 
What dusty
history book could bind her more closely to him than the possession of the very
best of the work of his lifetime?
 
What
architectural bagatelle, what book, what list of names of people long dead,
could make her feel a greater sense of identity than to know that, while he was
alive, her father had given her as much as he could of the treasure for which
he had lived?
 
The work that was
him
.

He stood up and
brushed the debris of the forest floor off his trousers.
 
As he walked back to
La Tourrello
,
Julien Mistral's silhouette in the starlight looked as eager and young as it
had on the day he had first approached the gates of the vast farmhouse that was
to determine the course of his future.

"Kate,
please make arrangements for two of the guest rooms to be prepared,"
Mistral said to his wife the next morning as she sat alone by the pool.

"Have you
invited visitors?" she asked, surprised.
 
He left their social life entirely to her.

"Two men are
coming, who'll have to take their meals with us since there's nowhere around
here for them to eat.
 
They'll probably
stay for a week or ten days."

"Julien,
what are you talking about
—
that's absurd."

"I've
decided to make a will.
 
The paintings
must be appraised.
 
This morning I
telephoned to Étienne Delage for advice.
 
As a dealer he knows all the tricks.
 
He told me that I shouldn't make a will until I've established the value
of each of my works.
 
Otherwise the
government will do it for me after I'm dead and, naturally, they'll put the
highest value on them so that my estate will have to pay the biggest possible
tax.
 
But if it's done while I'm alive, I
have the right to appoint one of the appraisers, and the government sends another
—
those are the two gentlemen who are coming
—
and between them
they reach a fair compromise.
 
Étienne
has found me a man who will put the lowest realistic value on the paintings
that he can
—
it's his specialty."

"How very thoughtful of Étienne.
 
May I ask why you've decided to make a
will?"

"I'm leaving Fauve one-third of my estate, the
part that may go to a stranger."
 
He
looked at Kate for signs of distress but her dark glasses covered her eyes and
her expression didn't change. "Last night I remembered that it was
possible and I kept hearing your words
—
'every child needs a feeling of
identity'
—
and I knew that it was what I must do.
 
Of course you and Nadine will get the other
two-thirds
—
I'm going to leave Fauve her share entirely in the form of
paintings, since it would be useless to leave her one-third of a farm, or of
investments in a country in which she doesn't live.
 
That means that I must establish the total
value of
La Tourrello
and of our bank accounts and other investments as
well as that of the paintings in order to make sure that she gets her fair
third."

"I see," Kate said tonelessly.

"All that will take time to establish
—
probably the details won't all be down in black and white until long after
Fauve goes home, but Étienne says that paintings
—
like furniture or
silver or jewels can be left individually.
 
In other words, a painting that's worth a particular amount will be left
to Fauve, one worth the same amount to Nadine, and one to you, and so on."

"And so you're going to leave them all by name
and description?"

"Yes.
 
Oh,
I haven't forgotten that you own all of the
Rouquinne
series, never
fear.
 
That was an intelligent investment
you made, Kate."

"So it was."

"I intend to buy them back from you."

"Do you?"

"Yes
—
they should go to Fauve
—
after all, they're family portraits, so to speak."
 
He grinned in a way she hadn't seen in years.

"Indeed
—
they are indeed.
 
Have you any idea what they're worth?"

"Whatever it is, I'll pay."

"Good."

"Well." Mistral stood up, relieved.
 
"It's settled then.
 
You'll tell the servants whatever's
necessary?
 
The appraisers arrive in two
days."

"Of course," said Kate.
 
"Have you informed Fauve yet?"

"No, not yet.
 
I'll speak to her tonight, when she gets back to dress
—
there's
some sort of a party she's going to this evening."
 
He disappeared into his studio, thinking that
Fauve might as well run around all day today, for tomorrow she wouldn't be able
to tear herself away from the discoveries of the storage room.

Kate sat perfectly still, wondering if she was going
to be able to endure the slicing, writhing rage that cut into her flesh like
engine-driven iron drills grinding into a piece of wood.
 
So it wasn't enough to beggar Nadine, to force
her to work for a living until he died, was it?
 
Now he was stripping her, despoiling her, robbing her, lowering his own
daughter to the level of his bastard.

Did he think that she was such a fool as to believe
his explanation of the "fairness" of the process of choosing the
paintings he would leave Fauve?
 
Didn't
he realize that she knew as well as he that between two paintings that are
appraised for the same amount there will be an enormous difference in
importance
that the artist alone can assign?
 
Didn't
he even suspect that she knew perfectly well that he would give Fauve only the
paintings that he was sure were his greatest?
 
The masterpieces of his masterpieces?
 
If Fauve received all of her one-third share in paintings, leaving out
his land, his money, his investments, it might well be possible to give her at
least
half
of the contents of the storage room
—
the image of
that room made her suck in her breath and bend over, grasping her stomach in
both hands.

How dare he do this to her
?
 
She, Kate Browning,
had taken up an unknown artist and made him into Julien Mistral and goddamn him
to hell everlasting, he
belonged
to her.
 
He had no rights on the face of the earth unless she granted them.
 
How could he prattle like an old fool about
"sharing" his work, when everything, every last bit of canvas he had
ever smeared paint on, was rightfully hers?

He was her creature
.
 
What would he be if she hadn't
become his wife?
 
Nothing!
 
He would be nothing, an embittered old man,
living in some shabby Paris studio, wondering why the world had not come to his
door.
 
He would have missed his moment
and some other painter would have had the glory.
 
And yet he dared, he actually
dared
to
speak of giving his work to Fauve?

What was his work but what she had enabled him to
create?
 
If he gave his work he would be
giving away the one thing in the world
—
the only thing
—
that
belonged absolutely to her. That he could not do.
 
That he must not do.
 
Paralyzed by an onslaught of fury greater
than she had ever known in her life, greater than the emotion she had felt when
Julien left her for Teddy Lunel, Kate sat sightlessly in the sun while
bubbling, bursting coils of violence grew in her belly until finally she had to
jerk herself out of her immobility and dash into the pool pavilion in order to
throw up the loathsomeness into the bathroom toilet.

When she was finished she felt steady, calm and very
sure of what she had to do.

"Will you come into my room and shut the door for
a minute, Fauve?" Kate asked as soon as she heard her come upstairs that
afternoon.

"Sure
—
but I'm a mess and Eric's coming
back to pick me up by six
—
do you want me for long?"

"No, not long. Fauve, I don't think you realize
how much you're upsetting your father with the sort of discussion we were all
treated to last night."

"Oh, I know I went on talking too long,
Kate.
 
I thought about it today and I
realized that I'd sort of taken over the conversation.
 
It won't happen again.
 
I'm truly sorry."

"It's not how long you talked, Fauve, it's the
subject matter.
 
You never got off the
topic of Jewish suffering."

"What?"

"I hoped I'd never have to tell you this but I
see that you're really deeply involved in your maternal heritage
—
it's
completely understandable and I find it quite touching and fascinating
—
but you see, your father...
 
when you
speak of Jews like that it opens old wounds."

"I suppose you mean that it reminds him of my
grandmother?
 
I know about that, Kate,
and I can't believe that whatever I said would necessarily make him think of
her.
 
Maggy's not the only Jew in the
world."

"I don't mean that at all.
 
It had never even occurred to me.
 
No, Fauve, it's something that's much more
difficult for me to explain."

"What are you driving at, Kate?" Fauve
asked, puzzled by the intent, concerned expression on Kate's normally
controlled face.
 

"Fauve, you're only sixteen.
 
You've always lived in a safe world, yet only
ten years before you were born World War Two was going on, and catastrophes
that you can't even begin to imagine were everyday events."

"Oh, my God," Fauve said slowly, "last
night, when you said what you did about concentration camps, you were thinking
of what happened to the Jews in the war, weren't you? You were trying to warn
me off
—
 
oh, Lord, Kate, I'm so
sorry!
 
I didn't realize that it would
upset him...
 
I never thought..."

"Fauve, I haven't made myself clear.
 
I'm talking about the Occupation of France
and what happened to life here during that time.
 
When I got back to Félice after the war Marte
Pollison, who was here at
La Tourrello
the whole time, told me things
that I thought I'd never have to speak of to anybody."
 
Avidly, Kate watched Fauve's bewildered face,
which had already been drained of the carefree, excited radiance with which she
had walked into the bedroom.
 
"Fauve,
for weeks you've been fascinated by the Jews who lived in Provence and I've
been a wet blanket about it.
 
There was a
reason for that
—
I thought you might finally lose your interest.
 
But you haven't and now, before I tell you
why you must stop bringing up this subject up, I want to be sure that you truly
understand your father.
 
He lives only to
paint.
 
You realize what his work means
to him, don’t you?
 
You know that his art
is everything, his reason for being?"

"He's also a person, a man," Fauve said
slowly.

"But not like the others.
 
No genius never is.
 
I've had to learn it over the years, it's
certainly not something I expect you to grasp fully, but there's a certain
dimension that genius lacks, a dimension of ordinary humanity that is denied genius
precisely because it is genius."

"I guess I don't 'fully' understand, Kate."

"No, I was afraid you wouldn't.
 
An example can show you what I mean better
than words alone. I n those last years of the war there were Germans
everywhere, no place was so remote that they didn't know what was going on, not
even here in Félice.
 
They took almost
all of the able-bodied men away for forced labor in Germany..."
 
Kate paused and shook her head sadly.

"And...?"

"Your father would have been sent away too except
for the protection of a high-ranking German officer with whom he became very
friendly, very close."

"I don't believe that."

"No, Fauve, of course you don't.
 
That's exactly what I meant about the
difficulty of making you understand, even such a little thing as that."

A little thing?" Fauve's face had turned white,
Kate noted with a thrill of satisfaction.
 
And what had she told her yet?
 
Nothing important, nothing at all.
 
How wise she had been to stay in Marte Pollison's good graces over these
many years.
 
The woman was a tyrant but
eventually she couldn't resist gossip.