Mistral's Daughter (80 page)

"Eric
told me that you were in the Resistance with Monsieur Avigdor?" Fauve
probed, still troubled by his youth.

"Well,
you see I hated school.
 
It was more fun
to run away to the mountains of Aix and play at games of
good-guys-bad-guys.
 
I was thirteen when
the war ended.
 
Alas, there was still
time to make me go back in school, and so as you can tell, I became, relatively
speaking, a respectable citizen."

"How
old were you when you ran away from school?"

"Ten."
He shrugged with a grin. "But as tall as I am now."
 
As he smiled, Fauve caught a glimpse of the
reckless, preteenaged patriot he had been and she felt all lack of confidence
drop away from her.

"Maître
Perrin, can you help me?"

"It
is all I have been thinking about since Adrien called me yesterday night.
 
In fact, Mademoiselle, I have spent the day
working on it, a more interesting day than those I usually spend in my
chambers, I must tell you."

"You've
been at work already?
 
But we haven't
even talked."

"The
question evidently reduces itself to the question of character witnesses, does
it not? Therefore I looked for them.
 
And
I have found one, I am pleased to tell you."

"One?
 
One character witness
?" Fauve
cried protestingly.
 
"What good can
that do against a charge of
 
'notorious
misconduct'?
 
My mother was twenty-four
when she met my father... obviously she had lived, she wasn't a nun
—
and now she's in the hands of my half-sister who's out to ruin her...
 
oh, my mother is so
vulnerable
."

Fauve's
confidence in Jean Perrin vanished as quickly as it had come.
 
How could this man, who now again seemed
naïve and inexperienced, begin to guess what could be discovered and distorted
about Teddy Lunel who had captured the hearts of so many men who were alive
today? "A number of lovers," Melvin had told her, and she'd known
that he was being tactful.

How
many of them would boast?
 
How many of
them would be able to resist talking about their affairs with the most
beautiful girl in the world?

"Mademoiselle,
what does your mother's age have to do with this charge?"

"Everything,
I should imagine," she said in distraction.
 
He just didn't understand.

"You
have not talked to a French lawyer, not even to a notary?"

"My
grandmother spoke to the French counsel in New York and I got on the plane the
next morning."

"Ah,
a diplomat.
 
A pity.
 
Yet how could he have been expected to know,
after all?
 
You see, Mademoiselle, the
law of France is most explicit and firm on this question, it does not permit of
any doubt, it does not allow malicious charges to be brought idly.
 
The charge of misconduct would only apply to
the period during which your parents actually knew each other, during which
your paternity might be questioned.
 
From
what I have learned, they were never apart from the day they met until the day
she died.
 
This fact I intend to see
established beyond a doubt."

He
looked away from Fauve's face.
 
It was
indecent to watch such relief.
 
When Jean
Perrin heard her begin to sob he got up quietly and went back into the house.

"What's
wrong?" asked Beth Avigdor.
 
"Shall I go out to her?"

"No,
I'd leave her alone for a while," Jean Perrin advised.

Eric
ignored him and rushed out to the balcony.
 
Fauve was huddled in a deck chair weeping uncontrollably, shaking in a
way that frightened him.
 
He scooped her
up and held her tightly in his arms, letting her cry until his chest was
running with her tears.
 
He comforted her
with soft noises, rocking her like a baby until, finally, she lifted her wet,
swollen, flushed face and gasped, "Handkerchief."
 
He fished in his pocket and found
nothing.
 

"Wipe
your nose on my sleeve," he said.

"Oh,
I can't," Fauve wailed.
 
"Not
on your sleeve."

"Then
I'll do it for you." He laughed, as he unbuttoned a cuff with one
hand.
 
"Now,
blow
!"

Half
an hour later, Fauve, with her face washed and her hair brushed, sat in the
salon with the three Avigdors as
Maître
Perrin recounted the details of
his day with such well-contained pride that only Adrien Avigdor knew how he
felt.
 
Jean's eyes had shone like that,
Avigdor thought, when he had come back from one of his forays during the
Resistance.
 
He looked as shyly pleased
as on the night on which he'd blown up that freight train that was carrying
arms to the Battle of the Bulge.

"I
started by asking myself what it is that two people, who have, so to speak,
vanished from their customary worlds, would still do that ordinary people
do.
 
That is to say, people who are not
living for love alone," Jean Perrin began.
 
"And to that there is only one answer, is there not?" He
paused but none of them ventured a guess.
 
"They eat."

"They
drink wine," Adrien Avigdor corrected him.

"Both,
mon vieux
, both.
 
And where do
they eat?
 
In restaurants, at least from
time to time, for two people, no matter how much in love, will never be content
with home cooking for an entire year.

And
where in Avignon would the greatest painter in France eat?"
 
Again he paused, and this time Fauve
answered, shouting. "Hiely!"

"How
did you know, Mademoiselle?"

"My
father used to take me there as a special treat," she exclaimed, and then
stopped, astonished.
 
She flushed
deeply.
 
She hadn't said the words
"my father" in so many years that she couldn't believe how naturally
they had jumped out of her mouth.
 

"Of
course, at Hiely, the only two-star restaurant in Avignon.
 
It was not difficult to guess. So I went
there this morning and spoke to Monsieur Hiely.
 
He was learning his
métier
in his father's kitchen in 1953 but he
had often crept to the door and peeked out to admire your mother. He remembered
her well.
 
I asked to see their
Livre
d'Or
because I knew that they would have asked Julien Mistral to sign
it.
 
And there, on one of the pages, I
found his signature.
 
More than a
signature, a charming sketch of Papa Hiely.
 
And, at the bottom, your mother had signed it as well."

"But...
 
but...
 
that doesn't prove anything," Fauve faltered.
 

"Indeed
no.
 
However, the family Hiely sends
Christmas cards to their good clients, and they have a record of their
addresses.
 
With a little searching
through their files, I was able to find out where your parents lived while they
were in Avignon, and there I went, without, as Adrien would be amazed to note,
stopping first for lunch.
 
The house is
still standing and the same concierge who was there then is there now.
 
I imagine that Madame Bette will still be
there in the year 2000.
 
In any case, she
was most helpful..."

"The
concierge?" Fauve interrupted.

"No,
Mademoiselle, do not look so dubious, it is not the concierge who is your
character witness, although she could well serve if we needed more than
one.
 
Madame Bette told me that your
parents had become friendly with a doctor who still lives on the ground floor
of the house. Not more than two hours ago I managed to find this doctor at
home.
 
He told me that he and his wife
knew your parents from the day they moved in
—
indeed they helped move
some of the furniture your father had bought.
 
The two couples used to have drinks together from time to time and go
out to dinner as well, to Hiely, to the Prieuré, to places in the country.

They
loved your mother very much, very much indeed.
 
They never saw your father again, after your mother's death, but they
have always understood why he disappeared from their lives. They spoke of your
parents' total devotion to each other.
 
The doctor, Professor Daniel..."

"Dr.
Daniel!" exclaimed Beth Avigdor.
 
"But I know him!"

"Naturally,
Beth.
 
He is one of the most
distinguished men in all Avignon, a professor at the University of Aix,
Mademoiselle Lunel," Jean Perrin explained, hurrying on.
 
"Professor Daniel felt the most lively
indignation at this odious and disgusting charge that has been made...
 
he became quite outraged
—
indeed, one
would have to say that he took it personally.
 
Of course both he and his wife are ready to testify that your mother
never had anything to do with any man other than your father during all the
time she lived in Avignon.
 
The attack on
the will will be stopped before it starts.
 
There can be no question of any further trouble from the quarter of
Madame Dalmas."
 
Jean Perrin gave
his shy, rapscallion's grin of triumph.

"
Personally
?"
Fauve asked.
 
"Why did the doctor
take it so personally?
 
Was it just
because of being so friendly with my parents?"

"It
was he, Mademoiselle, who delivered you into the world."

33

"Madame
Dalmas, what a pleasure to see you." Madame Violette, the senior
vendeuse
at the salon of Yves Saint Laurent was too highly trained to betray her
astonishment as Nadine strolled in, but there was a perceptible rustle of
startled interest from the group of lesser
vendeuses
who stood waiting
to lead clients to their seats before the collection.
 
As Madame Violette escorted Nadine to the
most advantageously placed chair in the room she asked, "Is there anything
in particular that might interest you, Madame?"

"A
new wardrobe, entirely new," Nadine said with an indifferent air.
 
"I've lived in Albin for so long that it
has become utterly boring, too predictable."

"Ah,
but Madame is superbly turned out.
 
However, I must agree that a change is always amusing.
 
Monsieur Saint Laurent will be sorry to learn
that you carne while he was out of town."

Nadine
picked up the traditional stub of a gold pencil and the little white pad on
which she would write the numbers of the clothes that interested her enough to
try on.
 
It was disorienting to sit, like
any ordinary client waiting to see a new collection.
 
And wildly exciting as well. There would be
none of the overfamiliarity that existed when she had watched Jean François's
designs evolve over a period of months, so that each time she put on a new garment
she felt that she had worn it for years.

Saint
Laurent was the best designer in the world, but it would have been unthinkable
for her to admit it to herself before yesterday.
 
Today she was free, finally free of the
tyranny of that overrated, whimpering infant, Jean François Albin, with his
sulks and his tantrums.
 
Today she was in
a position in which she could not imagine any other woman in the world being
in:
 
she had all the money she could
conceivably spend, and a great deal more, and in her rows of closets there was
not one dress, not one blouse, not even one handbag, that she intended to keep
a day longer than necessary.
 
Even a new
bride of the richest man in the world, she mused, must have something in her
old wardrobe that she didn't want to part with, something she intended to wear
again.
 
But since her interview
—
if that was what you could call it
—
with Jean François yesterday,
Nadine intended to jettison the lot.
 
It
had not been anything that he had said, indeed, very few words had passed
between them.
 
Nadine had simply walked
into his office and told him that from now on he would have to do without her.

"Ah,
I see," he had replied, so expressionless that he must have been too
stunned to begin his habitual complaining.

"You
do understand, Jean François, that now..." She had lifted her shoulders in
a gesture that said to perfection what words could not: now I have no more time
to waste with your tiny, petulant needs, now you are going to have to struggle
along without me, now you will find your silly little life falling apart
because I cannot be bothered with you any longer.

"I
do understand, Nadine.
 
I shall have to
make the best of it.
 
Forgive me, Nadine,
but Princess Grace is in the fitting room and I promised to go to her.
 
Will I see you at her dinner tonight?
 
No?
 
Of
course, you must still be in mourning.
 
Well then, a
bientôt?"
 
He had kissed her on the cheek in the dry way
he kissed everyone, and had rushed off busily, humming, shouting for his
favorite fitter to attend him, instructing a secretary to send coffee down to
the Princess's fitting room, pausing only once, to pet the Afghans that lay at
the entrance to his workroom.
 
"Yes,
my beauties, yes, you are the most beautiful creatures God ever made, yes, my
babies, yes," he had crooned to the dogs, and disappeared down the
corridor.

A
good act, thought Nadine, and one that might have fooled anybody.
 
She knew, of course, that she had dealt him a
severe blow, one which might well send him into one of his nervous depressions.

Nevertheless
there had been something
—
something she hadn't missed
—
that had
made her decide to come to Saint Laurent today.
 
If she hadn't known Albin so well, she would have had to say that it was
a look of...
 
amusement?
 
Was it possible?
 
Certainly not, she thought, as she stared
with only half-hidden contempt at the women surrounding her.
 
This was not the right time of year to order
new clothes; these were women from the provinces or foreigners who were
thrilled to find themselves here.
 
She
didn't like finding herself watching the collection with them, but she chose
not to wear Albin's clothes any longer.
 
What could Jean François possibly have been amused
about
?

The
first manikins passed in a quick-stepping flurry of suits for early day,
designed for fall and winter, clothes which had first been shown earlier in the
summer.
 
By now, Nadine thought, all her
friends who dressed at Saint Laurent had already received their new autumn
suits, and were wearing them.

If
she asked Madame Violette, she was certain that the time required to make her
clothes could be reduced to a minimum.
 
She would have to be treated as if she were a tourist with only two
weeks to spend on fittings, she thought grimly.
 
Never mind, she would see next spring's collection at the press opening,
decorating the front row of chairs with Saint Laurent's other favored customers,
as much a part of the ritual as the clothes themselves and, in certain ways,
more significant.

She
scribbled numbers on her pad while she tried not to reflect on the conversation
she had had this morning with her lawyer.
 
She had gone back to him in one last effort to persuade him to make a
further investigation of the life of that whore, Fauve's mother.
 
When he had learned of the testimony of Dr.
Daniel in Avignon, the lawyer had told Nadine that her case against her
father's will was over, finished.
 
She'd
gone to other lawyers and they had all told her the same thing: one and only
one
"action en reduction"
of a will may be brought.
 
She must accept the will as final: nothing
could now prevent Fauve from receiving 25 percent of the estate in precisely
the way in which the will had been written.
 
She would have to satisfy herself with 75 percent, they had told her, as
if that would prevent her from knowing that she had been irrevocably cheated,
stolen
from!

How
typical it was of her lawyer to insist on having the last word, even in
failure, Nadine thought.
 
He was
criminally unprofessional, she'd told him, to which he had merely retorted
that he had advised her against attacking the will in the first place.
 
As she remembered his smugness Nadine's
pencil broke in half with the pressure she put on it.
 
Madame Violette, who had been standing at the
back of the room, observing her clients, immediately brought her another.

Now
a group of pant suits appeared on the runway, man-tailored with that special
Saint Laurent exaggeration that Albin had never been able to achieve.
 
Very much her style.
 
Precisely what she liked best, thought
Nadine, as she turned over her paper and began a fresh sheet.

The
women on both sides of her were watching her write numbers with such obvious
envy that she could have laughed in their faces.
 
What must it be like to come here and know
that you could only afford to buy a single ensemble?
 
Unimaginable, a life in which you would look
in your closet and find only one custom-made garment?
 
It would be like having one meal a year and
living on bread and water the rest of the time.
 
Why did they even bother?
 
Nadine
wrote more numbers, quickly, greedily, knowledgeably.
 
She could hardly wait to get into the
dressing room and see herself in these clothes.

She
blamed her lawyer for more than the ruinous testimony of that doctor in
Avignon.
 
Why had he not properly warned
her that the text of her father's will would be made public?
 
Why had he not told her that reporters would
swarm to Aix, to read the copy that was filed there?
 
Could that sickening, self-satisfied excuse
for a man not have foreseen that the will would be translated into every foreign
language, would become news in every foreign city?
 
At least, that was what Phillipe had
said.
 
Perhaps Phillipe was wrong, perhaps
it was only in Paris that it had appeared? She didn't intend to investigate.

Phillipe's
opinions were nothing to her now, not even minor annoyances.
 
She had kicked him out the same day that the
will had been printed in
Le Monde
and
Le Figaro.
 
Told him to get out within the hour.
 
It had been amazing, even admirable in its
own way, the speed with which he packed, and with what little protest.

He
must have seen it coming, Nadine concluded, must have braced himself for
it.
 
A man with his experience could not
help but know that once she had her money she would get rid of him.
 
He had probably been planning how to put a
good face on it from the day Mistral died. Phillipe wasn't stupid about things
like that, she had to admit.
 
About
everything else, yes, but not about other people's money.
 
A man who could sponge for an entire lifetime
had to have some shrewdness.

In
any case, she told herself with relief, she need never be burdened with his
bills again, neither his debts nor his opinions.
 
The only opinions she valued were those of
her friends.
 
They would realize that
Mistral had been senile
—
mad, sick, senile.
 
The others, those nobodies who made up the
rest of the world, would have forgotten within the hour even if they had
bothered to read those headlines, that story.
 
So Monsieur Phillipe Dalmas thought that she had poured a bucket of
ordure over her own head, did he?
 
Typical words of a bitter man on his way down and out.
 
How could he explain that no one, not one
single person, had even mentioned the will to her?

What
an absurd idea to have...
 
that no one
had mentioned it because they had not wanted to embarrass her.
 
Yesterday, when she had run into Hélène and
Peggy outside of Hermès, neither one of them had said anything about the
will.
 
But they had not expressed the
conventional condolences.
 
They had acted
as if nothing whatsoever had happened to her, since they had last seen her,
before her father had died.
 
They had
seemed
—
well, a touch offhand perhaps.

Sometimes
it was difficult for even the most well brought up people to speak of death.
Wasn't that why they usually wrote notes of sympathy instead of phoning?
 
Hélène and Peggy. Had there been something...
 
amused...
 
about their glances?
 
If one of
their fathers had written a will so self-evidently insane, she might well have
had the chic, the tact, to make a joke of it, but she would have made the joke
out loud, so that they knew that she understood how ridiculous, how meaningless
it was, how little it reflected reality.
 
Nadine took out a tiny handkerchief and touched her forehead, under her
bangs.
 
It was much too hot in Saint
Laurent.

Ah,
the short dinner dresses.
 
She had always
particularly admired the way he did them, his flamenco bravura.
 
She had always resented having to wear
Albin's dinner dresses with their classically muted sex appeal.
 
He overdid subtlety, Albin, as he overdid
everything else.

As
Nadine inspected the dresses, her trained eyes gloating over each detail, she
wondered idly what the
Cavaillon
series could be.
 
It was a joke, disinheriting her from
ownership of a house in which she wouldn't dream of living, and a group of
portraits of three generations of sluts, as if they could possibly be more
important than the vast body of his work that would come to her.
 
Cavaillon?
 
A market town, a place of no interest whatsoever.

Her
curiosity didn't extend to the point that she was willing to be there when the
tax authorities opened the studio tomorrow.
 
Étienne Delage, her dealer, would represent her.
 
He would make enough in commissions on her,
God knows, to go and stay put for as long as was necessary, keeping a close eye
on the tax men while they made their infernal inventory.