Mistral's Daughter (64 page)

"That officer was an art lover.
 
He supplied your father with precious paints
so that he could continue to work in spite of all the shortages and he took him
off the list of those who were destined to be sent to factories in
Germany.
 
Some of his best work was done
in those years, and yet if people knew about it they'd be quick to call him a
collaborator."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"To make you grasp fully what your father's
genius demands of him.
 
When he told the
German about the bunch of young good-for-nothings who stole his precious
sheets
—
for years he had nothing else to use as canvas
—
how
could he know that they were members of the
Maquis
?
 
It was a terrible misunderstanding and he's
never forgiven himself for it
—
twenty of them, all caught and executed
on the spot.
 
Why, he'd never even have
known what had happened to them if the German hadn't returned the sheets."

"I don't believe a single word you're
saying," Fauve said furiously.
 
"It's a contemptible lie, and what the hell does it have to do with
last night?
 
I was talking about the way
Jews lived in Provence before the Revolution, not about the war!"

Kate sighed and put her hands over her face for a
brief moment.
 
Now!
 
She thought,
now
! "Oh,
Fauve," she said wearily, her voice gentle, in supplication, as if willing
the girl to make a leap of intelligence.
 
"It was only an example of the sort of thing, the sort of horrible,
tragic thing that can happen in time of war.
 
It was to give you an insight into the situation with those Jews who
came to him for help during the Occupation."

"
Jews
—
what Jews?"

"Jews from Paris, trying to get out of Occupied
France.
 
They came and kept coming
—
people who had just presumed on the fact that they were old friends of his from
the days he had lived in Paris, or from the fact that they'd been invited here
before the war.
 
Why, sometimes they were
only friends of friends.
 
Marte told me
about it...
 
oh, Fauve...
 
this is just too hard to explain to anyone of
your generation...
 
what do you know
about the war?"
 
Kate slumped in her
chair, her expression closed and guarded.

"What is too hard to explain?" Fauve said
faintly, her heart beating so hard that she felt as if she must run away, as if
the house were on fire and she was in mortal danger.
 
Kate took a breath of resolution and spoke
quietly, looking at the carpet.

"Your father ordered Marte and Jean to build a
barrier to hide the entrance to
La Tourrello
down at the main road so
that no refugees, Jews, any others, Jewish or not, would come up here to
disturb him, to interrupt his work.
 
Of
course he had to close the big gates too because some of them actually
infiltrated right through the woods
—
naturally they knew the house was
here, if they'd been here before.
 
But
your father knew that if he weakened and let some Jew spend even one single
night under his roof he could be in serious danger.
 
Any Frenchman who helped a Jew was putting
his own life in jeopardy."

"But what about all the French who did help Jews,
who fought in the Resistance, who bombed German trains, who fought back?"
Fauve asked tightly.

"Little people, Fauve, little people with less to
lose than your father.
 
He had to choose
between painting and risking his life and I believe absolutely that he made the
right choice and I pray you'll think so too
—
he decided that his only
loyalty had to be to his work, not to sheltering people for whom he'd never had
any responsibility.
 
You must be grown
up enough to understand that."

"Grown up," Fauve repeated, "grown
up?"

"But Fauve, they simply had to be
made
to
go away!
 
Nobody invited them but they
just kept coming.
 
They would have
destroyed his peace of mind.
 
Why do you
think it took him eight years to go to see you?
 
He was afraid for his peace of mind, for his powers of
concentration.
 
Those Jews would have
prevented him from painting, even if they'd never been caught, even if no one
had known.
 
La Tourrello
is
remote, I admit, but in the village everything gets talked about sooner or
later and someone might have denounced him to the authorities.
 
And that, Fauve, is why your keeping on about
the Jews is upsetting him...
 
it makes
him remember all the people who got past the fence at the road and kept on
ringing and ringing the bell in the kitchen."

"How do you know any of this!
 
You weren't here!
 
Is it Marte again because I wouldn't believe
one single goddamned lie she told you!"

"You still truly don't understand.
 
Ah, Fauve, why would I bother to lie to
you?
 
Your father’s
work
was at
stake, don't you know what that means?
 
Nothing could be more important."

"
Liar!
"

"Ask Adrien Avigdor since you don't believe
me."

"What?"

"You heard me.
 
He was your father's best friend before the war.
 
But your father had to turn him away too, had
to refuse him entrance.
 
Avigdor told me
so himself in 1946 in Paris and all the time that you've been seeing Eric I've
been terrified that the old man might have said something to you.
 
He was horribly bitter about it when I saw
him last.
 
It seems that he actually kept
track of the people who came here...
 
artists mostly of course.
 
His
personal animosity was frightening.
 
He
acted as if it were all your father's fault that there was a war going on in
Europe and many of those unfortunate people were caught and deported
—
they probably would have died no matter what your father had done."

" Deported...
 
died...
 
caught."

"Fauve, I simply had to tell you.
 
We must
not
have any more of your
history lessons during meals.
 
Will you
give me your word..."
 
Kate's words
trailed off as she watched Fauve run out of the bedroom.
 
No, she thought, no, she didn't think she'd
left out anything important.

As Fauve pushed open the door into the studio Mistral
was working on Fauve's picture, alive in every pore with energy and
insight.
 
His ability to participate in
Fauve's quest for a sense of herself had provided the element that had been
missing from his work these past few weeks and in one day he'd conquered the
picture.

"Thank God you're back!
 
I have so much to tell you."
 
He threw down his brush and started forward
to kiss her.
 
She stopped, just inside
the doorway, and held up one hand, warding him off.

"Father, did you refuse to give shelter to Jewish
refugees during the war
—
did you listen to the bell ringing and not
come to the gate to let them in?"

Mistral fought back.
 
The shock of Fauve's challenge left him with only a single thought.
"
Avigdor
," he roared.
 
"What the hell has he been telling you?"

"So it's true!" Fauve cried.
 
All her desperate hope had died as soon as
he'd said Avigdor's name.

"Do you ever think about them, the Jews who died
because of you?"

She turned, but not quickly enough to avoid seeing the
truth that was branded so clearly on his face.
 
He reached toward her but she was gone.
 
And he did not dare to go after her.
 
He stood, trembling, in the center of the empty studio, irresolutely,
and then he began, with the haste of a man in danger of his life, to lock every
door and window of his studio from the inside so that he would be safe from the
hatred he'd seen in his daughter's eyes.

Eric Avigdor, arriving there three-quarters of an hour
later, found Fauve waiting outside the walls of
La Tourrello
.
 
Her suitcases were on the gravel driveway
beside her and she carried her raincoat.

"Are we going somewhere, darling?" he said
gaily.
 
He was ready for all of Fauve's
caprices.

"Please, Eric, take me to the train station in
Avignon."

"I certainly won't.
 
If you've had a fight with that so-called
sister of yours I'll go right on inside and break one of her fingernails."

"Eric, don't, don't joke..." Fauve bowed her
head and, with a pang of fear he turned to part the curtain of hair that almost
hid her face.
 
At his touch she gasped
with a single rending sob and he saw that she must have been weeping long
before he came, for her face was raw with tears that had run into her mouth and
down her chin.

"My God, what's happened to you?" he cried,
but she shook her head blindly and climbed into the car and huddled in the
seat.
 
He threw the suitcases in the back
and tried to hold her in his arms and comfort her but she shook him off.

"Get me away from here," she said in a way
that made him start the car without another word.
 
They drove off in the direction of
Avignon.
 
They had been speeding along the
main road for five minutes before he tried again.

"Fauve, tell me what's wrong.
 
Please, darling, let me help.
 
I know I can."

"No, Eric."
 
Her voice seemed to have no home in her body.

"Fauve, don't you trust me? Nothing can be that
bad."

"I can't talk about it."
 
She had stopped weeping but there was a
blotched, hopeless, creased look to her young face that terrified him when he
glanced at her.
 
He stopped the car and pulled
off the road.

"Fauve, I won't drive you any farther until you
tell me what this is about.
 
I've never
seen anyone in the state you're in."

She opened the door of the car and jumped out.
 
Then she reached for one of her suitcases. He
clenched his hand around her arm and dragged her back into the car.

"What do you think you're doing?
 
Are you crazy?
 
Fauve!"

"If you keep asking me questions I'll hitch a
ride to Avignon. Someone will come along and give me a ride."

"All right, all right.
 
You win.
 
But why won't you talk to me?
 
Don't you know how much I love you?"

At that promise of tenderness, at that sweet
watchfulness, she lost control of herself and abandoned herself to a tempest of
wild grief, spasms of gulping, childish sobs mixed with a keening sound of such
violent loss that Eric could scarcely prevent himself from stopping the car
again.
 
He felt as if the countryside
around him had disintegrated.
 
By the
time they approached the outskirts of Avignon she had calmed down into a
blurred, scattered emptiness.

"Please, let me off at the station.
 
I'll wait there for the evening train."

"I'll stay with you."

"I wish you wouldn't."

"You can't stop me."

They sat on a bench outside the station, Fauve staring
straight ahead of her as mute and barred-off from any contact as if she were in
a concrete box.
 
Eric tried to hold her
hand but she drew quickly away from his touch and folded her arms tightly
around her body, tucking her hands under her arms.
 
Only her hair, burning with its
inextinguishable flame, reassured him that this was Fauve, his teasing, blithe
girl with her festival heart and mirthful impulses.
 
Even when she'd been serious or sorrowful,
she'd always been ready to explore difficult feelings without holding back, but
now she was locked in a kind of a glacial trance that all his immense love
could not penetrate.
 
If only he were
really grown up, if only he knew what to do, he thought in anguish, hating
himself for being only twenty.
 
He was
not able to understand that she could no more tell him what she had learned
than if she had been responsible herself for what Mistral had done.
 
She felt extinguished by a weight of shame so
great that it was no different from guilt itself.
 
She felt contaminated by being her father's
daughter, his monstrous love made her feel as if she must be tainted with his
evil, and Kate's revealing words, one filthy secret after another, filled her
head like grinding rocks that would rub against each other for a vile eternity.