Mistral's Daughter (78 page)

In
the middle of the night Nadine woke up with a start, as if someone had called
her name, but the house was quiet.
 
Marte, she knew, was sleeping in her room behind the kitchen
downstairs.
 
Yet...
 
something...
 
there was something.
 
She threw on
a robe and went into Mistral's room.
 
The
second she entered the room she knew that he was dying.
 
Death filled the space, a primeval presence,
a thickness of the air, a withering that nothing could reverse.
 
At last.
At last
.

He
was drowning in the liquid in his lungs.
 
She could hear it.
 
She had never
heard that hideous noise before but she recognized it.
 
What else could it be, that choking,
desperate gurgle?
 
If only the stench in
the room wasn't so revolting
—
but she didn't intend to leave, not until
she was sure.

Nadine
went to the window and opened it so that a breeze could enter and push away
some of the loathsome vileness that emanated from the bed.
 
She pulled a chair as close to the window as
possible and turned on a standing lamp just above her head.
 
Intently she inspected her fingernails.
 
The polish on one of them was chipped.
 
Oh, on two.
 
She would have to find a manicurist in Félice before the funeral.

There
was a faint new sound from the bed, a begging sound, a pleading sound.
 
Water? Could he want water when he was drowning?
 
Impossible.
 
He was struggling to speak. Gibberish.
 
Meaningless syllables.
 
She didn't
listen.

Soon
there were no more sounds from the bed.
 
None at all.
 
Still Nadine sat
quietly in the fragile pool of light.
 
She waited until she was absolutely certain that she had won before she
walked quickly back to her own room.

She
needed sleep.
 
The morning light would
wake her.
 
These things were so sudden.

32

It
was still raining.
 
It hadn't stopped all
day, Fauve thought as she peered out of the window of Maggy's apartment, to
which they had both retreated after hearing the news of the death of Julien
Mistral.

"How
long," Darcy asked Fauve gently, "do you think I'm going to be able
to say that you can't talk to all those reporters?
 
Aside from the
New York Times,
and the
Daily News
and the
Post
, there are wire service guys and half a
dozen stringers from out of town, a bunch of photographers, and two TV news
crews right outside the house.
 
They
haven't been allowed in the lobby but they're not going away, rain or no
rain."

"Why
can't they leave me out of it?" Fauve asked miserably.
 
"Unfortunately you're the juiciest part
of the story, sweetheart.
 
When all the
media people went to their morgues to put Mistral's bio together, the most
newsworthy angle, from their point of view, is Mistral's daughter, Fauve Lunel
—
unfortunately it's the part of the story with the most human interest and
you're right here where they can get at you.
 
His death would get enormous attention just by itself, but add your
mother's story...
 
well, you can see why
they want you."

"Do
I really have to talk to them and answer questions?"

"I
don't see why Fauve has to do that, do you, Darcy?" Maggy asked.
 
"Is it necessary?"

"It
would be the simplest way to get it over with," Darcy answered.
 
"Just bite the bullet."

"What
sort of things will they want to know?" Fauve asked, utterly at a loss.

"First
of all, they've all been asking me if you're going to the funeral.
 
After that, I just don't know.
 
When did you last see him, what's your reaction
to the tragic event...
 
you know the sort
of stuff they ask family members."

"I
never expected this," Fauve said slowly.

"I
did," Maggy said bitterly.
 
"I
remember the way it was when your mother died...
 
there's nothing they won't ask and nothing they
won't print.
 
Darcy, can't you write down
a statement and read it to them
—
tell them Fauve is too upset to
talk."

"It's
worth a try," he said, dubiously.

"Just
don't say I'm going to the funeral," Fauve warned, "because I'm
not."

There
was a silence in the sitting room, unbroken until Maggy and Darcy exchanged a
quick look and, in response, he got up to leave.
 
"I'll be in the library, writing the
statement," he explained.

Maggy
moved over to the sofa on which Fauve was sitting and took her hand.
 
"Look, Fauve, assuming that you really
don't go to the funeral, don't you see that it will just arouse ten times the
amount of curiosity there is already?
 
Whatever the personal problems you had with him, your father was a
major figure to the whole world
—
not just to art collectors
—
and besides Nadine Dalmas you're the only other child he ever had.
 
You must go."
 
Maggy's tone was reasonable but
confident.
 
Since that morning they had
avoided discussing Fauve's refusal to go to the funeral and Maggy had had time
in which to consider the situation.

"It
has nothing to do with personal problems, Magali," Fauve murmured.

"Darling,
I don't understand you.
 
There's going to
be a big funeral in Félice in three days... we know that from the news
conference that Nadine gave.
 
You can't
not be there.
 
I'll go with you if you
like.
 
It will attract even more
attention, but that's not important."

"No,
Magali.
 
That's not necessary.
 
Thank you
—
but I'm still not
going."

"Look,
Fauve, every day thousands of people go to funerals and nobody asks them how
they felt in their heart of hearts about the person who died
—
it's
enough that they make an appearance.
 
It
may only be a formality but it's a deeply significant one, a gesture of respect
if nothing else.
 
Particularly in the
case of a father."

"I
can't make that gesture," Fauve said in a voice so low that Maggy could
barely hear her. She moved closer and put her arm around her granddaughter.

"Surely
you can find enough in his work to respect him
—
no matter what went
wrong between you.
 
The work remains,
Fauve.
 
Don't forget that.
 
You really
must
do this...
 
it's a responsibility that you have as his
daughter."

"No.
 
Let's not talk about it anymore," Fauve
said, standing up.
 

"I
simply don't understand," Maggy cried in distress and bewilderment.
 
Fauve was never unreachable by reason.

"I
swore I'd never tell you
—
about what he did, about why I never could
bear to see him again...
 
but I guess I
must now
—
or you'll just never understand."
 
Fauve knelt by the sofa on which Maggy sat
and looked up into her face with a look compounded of a mixture of regret and
misery and reluctance and some other emotion that Maggy couldn't identify,
some emotion that made her draw back in fear.

"The
work you talk about, the work I should respect, Magali, he sacrificed many
people to that work."

"
Sacrificed
?"

"During
the war he chose to paint while the rest of the world was fighting.
 
Others did that... he wasn't alone.
 
He collaborated with the Germans...
 
he wasn't alone in that either.
 
When a group of Resistance fighters
—
Maquis
—
stole the sheets he painted on, he denounced them to a friend, a
German officer.
 
They were all murdered
—
all those boys
—
but he got his sheets back so his work wasn't
interrupted
.
 
But that wasn't the worst, Magali, not even
that.
 
Throughout the war whenever
refugees tried to spend the night at
La Tourrello
he refused to admit
them
—
people on the run for their lives
—
mostly Jews.
 
They were friends from Paris, Magali,
probably many of them were friends of yours.
 
He even turned away Adrien Avigdor.
 
He could have saved some of those people but they might have
disturbed
his work.
 
Jews
—
no one can
say how many
—
went to concentration camps because of his work.
 
And they died there
.
 
Nothing, no human decency was allowed to
come in the way of his work."

"How...
 
who...?" Maggy gasped.

"Kate
told me, but he admitted it."

"He
admitted it?"

"Yes.
 
To me.
 
That was the day I left.
 
I never
wanted you to know, Magali."

"My
God...
 
my God...
 
why were you so afraid to say
anything?...
 
you were only a child...
you should have told me," Maggy said, brokenly.

"I
was too ashamed.
 
Later, there was no
reason to say anything, it was all over.
 
He knew that he'd never see me again."

"Ashamed?"

"Ashamed
that he was my father, a man who could do such things.
 
Ashamed for him, most of all, ashamed to know
what he was worth as a man.
 
That's why I
can't make a gesture of respect, Magali, not to him, not to his work.
 
What work can be more important than human
lives?"

Nadine
Mistral Dalmas did not feel quite the degree of gratification she believed
should be hers.
 
As always, she told
herself, trying to put things into perspective, no human event was without some
flaw.
 
The funeral had been almost all
that she had intended it should be.
 
The
minister of the Beaux-Arts had arrived from Paris with an entourage, and the
windswept old cemetery, at the very top of Félice, had made a most photogenic
background for the long procession of people who had followed the coffin after
the high requiem mass.

All
the adult villagers of Félice had been there of course, as they would be in the
case of any death in the community, but the crowd had been swelled by a crowd
of art lovers from all over Provence who wanted to be able to say that they had
seen Mistral buried.
 
A fine turn-out,
she thought, in spite of the fact that aside from Phillipe and a few rather
unimportant friends of his, no one from Paris had been able to come down.
 
Of course everybody she would have cared to
see was still away on vacation.
 
Quite
naturally it had been impossible for them to fly from wherever they were to
such an inconvenient place.
 
If only the
old man had died in October, in Paris, it would have been quite different,
Nadine thought.
 
Still it
had
been
a perfect ceremony. Even in this provincial village the Catholic church could
be trusted for its sense of style.
 
Quite
unerring.
 
There was nothing she would
have changed about the taste in which everything had been executed.

She
felt a bit bereft now that the press had departed so unceremoniously,
withdrawing their attention as soon as the coffin had been lowered into the
grave.
 
Still, it gave her a chance to
relax for the first time since the death.

It
was this business of the tax man that really irked her, Nadine thought.
 
It was unquestionably the major flaw.
 
How dared that little functionary forbid her
to open the studio? Did he expect her to steal her own property, she had asked
him as he sealed the front and back doors?
 
He had grunted in a way that was too noncommittal to be actually
impertinent
—
just routine in a case like this, he'd said, only until
the gentlemen from Paris arrived, merely a formality.
 
But when she had complained to Étienne
Delage, Mistral's dealer
—
her dealer now, she reminded herself
—
he had told her that there was nothing she could do.
 
The state must establish its share of the
estate before anything could be moved, much less sold.
 
It was infuriating to have to wait one more
minute after she had waited for so long, maddening to have to admit the claims
of the government, but she had no choice.

"And
now," Nadine asked Marte, who had appeared at the door of the salon,
"what is it?"

"
Maître
Banette, a notary from Apt, has just arrived.
 
He asked to see you."

"I've
never heard of the man.
 
Tell him I'm
sleeping, get rid of him."

"I
tried to,
ma petite
, but he insisted.
 
He says that it's important."

"Oh,
all right." Nadine sighed.
 
Everyone
knew there was no way to avoid a notary.
 
She had already dealt with death and taxes, how could a notary not
follow?

The
man who entered, plump and red-faced, dressed in a formal dark blue, had the
pretension to give himself an air of importance, Nadine noticed in a surge of
temper.

"You
pick a bad moment to intrude, Monsieur."

"May
I offer my deepest sympathies, Madame Dalmas?
 
But of course you will appreciate that I had to come as soon as I
could."

"I
don't know why
—
Maître
Banette, is it?
 
Why are you here?"

"Madame,"
he said with reproach, "only my professional obligations could bring me to
disturb you in your grief.
 
But this
matter of Monsieur Mistral's will must, of course, be brought to your attention.
 
It is on file at the Fichier Centrale des
Dernières Volontés in Aix, as is proper, but I brought you my copy.
 
I realized you would wish it."

"His
will?"
 
Nadine sat up with a
jerk.
 
"He made a will!
 
I never knew."
 
In alarm she asked herself if the old man
could have possibly left some money to charity.
 
No, that would not be like him.
 
Most certainly not.