Lisette's List (17 page)

I watched the polka and the gavotte from the sidelines for the rest of the evening, not unhappy that I wasn’t dancing. I was honoring André and remembering how smoothly we used to dance together, and that felt right.

Under other circumstances, I would have enjoyed the farandole, a Provençal dance that started with everyone holding hands and skipping in a circle, giving a little kick and stomp on every fourth skip. The leader called for
le serpent
, and a line broke off and made tight, snakelike turns around the
salle. L’escargot
was announced next, and the line made a spiral in ever-decreasing circles.

Mélanie called out to me when she passed, “You look like Kiki now.” I smiled back. I hadn’t realized that people this far south would know Kiki de Montparnasse—an artist’s model, cabaret singer, actress, and painter. I had idolized her, so Mélanie’s comment pleased me.

No fireworks lit the evening sky as they had done the year before. It would have been too much like the explosives of war. There was no bonfire either. A waste of wood. There was only a tray of candles that Father Marc supplied. Slowly the crowd dispersed. People lingered under the trees of the square saying lengthy good nights as though they wouldn’t see each other for a year, when in actuality, they would gather again the next day for the morning
boules
tournament, the parade of the Apt bugle corps, and the afternoon dance. Since there was no moon and there were no streetlights, not even gaslights in Roussillon, Maurice insisted on walking me home, five houses past his.

He bowed at my doorway, and I went in and lit a gas lamp. Shock ripped through me. The house had been ransacked—chairs upturned, the yellow sunflower tablecloth in a heap on the floor. André’s cabinet had been moved away from the wall, its doors flung open and the contents scattered. Dishes lay broken on the tile floor. I called out to Maurice. He came back, took one look, and ran off downhill in his funny gallop to get the constable. Before he returned, Constable Blanc arrived.

“Just doing my nightly rounds when I heard you call and saw your door ajar. Is everything all right, madame?”

“No!” I opened the door wider for him to survey the
salle
.

He shook his head, which made his thickly pomaded hair gleam in the lamplight.

“Did you see anyone leave?” he asked.

“No.”

“There were many here today from beyond Roussillon.”

“But why my house?”

“Do you have anything hidden here that someone would want?”

I knew he meant the paintings, so why didn’t he say so? He had seen them. André’s first reason for not telling me the location of the paintings flashed through my mind. I could look at Constable Blanc dead in the eye and say, “No. Nothing,” because it was true.

“Do you mind if I look upstairs?”

We both went up and found that the bedding and mattresses had been pulled off the beds in both rooms, the armoire and bed moved away from the wall in my bedroom, clothes dumped on the floor, the chest of drawers at an angle in Pascal’s room. The constable put the mattresses back on the beds and moved the furniture into place. Downstairs, he walked André’s cabinet back against the wall.

“Thank you, Constable.”

“Call me Bernard, please. Be sure to report anything missing.”

“To you or to the mayor?”

“To me, of course. I am the arm of the law.”

“All right.”

“Be on your watch for strangers. Germans, I mean. They aren’t likely to be in uniform. They are scouting out spoils and resources. Listen carefully in the streets. They may be speaking French, but not like we do. Whoever ransacked your house has friends, and they know more than we think they do.” He moved two steps closer to me. I tensed, and he noticed. “Those paintings aren’t worth endangering yourself. Give them up if you need to.”

The comment about the paintings’ worth struck me as harsh, but the similarity of his words to André’s last letter startled me.

“Take care what side of the bread you butter, madame. Think ahead. Take care of yourself. Good night.” He ducked out through the doorway.

I checked the olive jar. My money was still in it. Then it wasn’t money the thief wanted.

In a few minutes Maurice returned, fretful that he hadn’t found the constable.

“Who wants my paintings?”

“I don’t know, but someone definitely does.” He put his arms around me in an avuncular way. “Your dishes may be broken, but you will not be.”

I
STAYED AWAY FROM
the fête the next day, unable to free my mind from the violation of an intruder in my house. The ransacking justified the hiding of the paintings. Passing between the windows where the painting of the little factory of pale yellow stone had hung, I felt a pang. That painting had meant so much to Pascal. Then I turned to the opposite wall, where there had been four paintings,
Red Roofs, Corner of a Village, Winter
, the largest, was near the center of the wall. He often called it
Le Verger, Côtes Saint-Denis
à Pontoise
, which made it seem like this painting had four names. He had said that the roofs were red-ochre, the branches where light hit them a dark golden yellow that was surely made from ochre—he would have said the proper name for them—and the ground, the color of pumpkins. I turned in a circle, trying to bring to mind each of the paintings, wondering which one had been André’s favorite. Regret pricked my conscience. I had never asked him.

Above André’s cabinet, Cézanne’s still life had hung. André had said it was the perfect spot for it. Maybe that had been his favorite painting. He loved apples. I moved a white bowl of three apples, two early pears, and one Spanish orange from the table to André’s cabinet. The dark red of Cézanne’s top apple was a self-assertive red, full of boldness in assuming its imperial position. André would have liked my mimicry of the painting. In placing the fruit on his cabinet, I had performed an act of resistance against the intruder; more important, I had performed an act of love for André.

In Cézanne’s painting, were there three apples? Four? Three oranges? Or were they peaches? My memory of them was already fading, just as the memory of André eating his last apple was fading. Was he standing in the courtyard rolling his shoulders after bending over the last of the popes’ chairs? Had he said anything when he finished, knowing that with the last chair, our time together was growing shorter? I could not remember. I hated it that I could not remember. I understood now Pascal’s desperation to tell someone, me, so that his memories would not be lost forever. I had to hold on, to cherish every word André had said to me, every smile. I had not cherished enough. I had been too self-absorbed. It was excruciating not to know everything he had said to me our last week, our last day.

L
OUISE HAD INVITED ME
to a gathering of friends to take place the evening after the second day of the fête. She called it a
veillée
. I was grateful. I had spent too many hours alone in that house.

Besides André and Maxime, I’d had only a few friends in Paris—Sister Marie Pierre, of course, and Jeannette, the other counter girl at the
pâtisserie
. Jeanne d’Arc I had called her, because she claimed that she heard voices and that she had Gypsy blood. Whenever Maxime came in to buy a pastry, she leaned over the counter to show her breasts and flirted outrageously. He may have flirted back, but he always gave the pastry to me. That threw her into a temper, and with rough words, naughty gestures, and the evil eye, she would shoo him out of the shop. Maxime and I always laughed at those episodes later. What I would give for a day with her now!

Here in Roussillon, I had more friends than I’d had in Paris. Three other families were already at the Chevets’ house when I arrived—Émile and Mélanie Vernet, who had a vineyard, and their darling Mimi; Henri Mitan, the blacksmith, and his wife, who must have developed infinite patience with his stuttering; and the Gulinis, Odette and her Italian husband, René, their daughter, Sandrine, and Sandrine’s husband, Louis Silvestre, whose uneven gait and shortened leg had kept him out of the war. Louise must have run out of real coffee, because she served the
faux café
made of hickory nuts, and everyone followed Mélanie’s lead and took just one cube of sugar instead of the usual two, sugar being rationed now. Maurice offered a small glass of marc to the men, who drank it straight, sipping a few drops now and then to make it last the evening.

“There will be two events tonight,” Louise announced. “I’m in charge of the first, the chestnuts. Maurice is in charge of the second.”

She lay two chestnuts for each person in a pan so old that there were holes in the bottom and roasted them in the fireplace while Émile opened a bottle of his rosé.

“Are we going to have a dessert?” Mimi blurted.

“Shh, no, Mimi. You mustn’t ask,” Mélanie said.

“I’m sorry, Mimi,” Louise said. “We must provide our sweetness by acts of kindness, not by sugary confections.”

“My turn,” Maurice said quickly. “Come with me, Mimi.” His face, speckled with red sting marks from his beekeeping, wore the mischievous grin of a boy at play.

He waddled out the back door, holding Mimi’s hand. When they came back inside, Mimi was leading a small goat on a rope.

“Mimi and I think you should have a little goat, don’t we, Mimi?”

Mimi led it right to me. “You have to take it, madame. See? She likes you.”

“A goat! You’re being silly, Maurice.”

He looked momentarily wounded, but he would not be swayed. “She’s a pretty thing, don’t you think? She gives more than a liter at every milking. Louise and I don’t need another goat. You do.”

“Maurice, I’m a
Parisienne
! I don’t know the first thing about keeping a goat. Or milking one.”

I remembered how at the orphanage, every third day, a goatherd had brought half a dozen goats. I had hopped with glee the moment I heard their bells in our courtyard. Their stuttering goaty noises charmed me. Sister Marie Pierre would hand me a pail, demanding to know what they sounded like, and I had to tell her in words, not by imitation. The goatherd would milk a goat while I held the pail steady beneath it until it was full. Sometimes I was brave enough to pet the smallest goat, the one without horns.

“Milking is easy. I will instruct you.” Maurice’s eyes sparkled. “Just squeeze the teats to the rhythm of ‘La Marseillaise.’ Gently, so you don’t hurt her.

“
Allons enfants
(squeeze a teat)
de la
(squeeze the other teat)
Patrie
(squeeze),
le jour de gloire
(squeeze)
est arrivé
(squeeze).”

Soon we were all singing robustly
“Aux armes, citoyens!”
and squeezing imaginary teats. By the spirited refrain of
“Marchons
(squeeze),
marchons,”
we were all standing, and then we collapsed in laughter.

“But what will I do with all that milk?”

“You can make cheese,” Odette said. “Nice soft chèvre.”

“It will be too much cheese for one person.” I felt a sting of sadness when I said “one person.”

“You can sell me some,” René Gulini quickly said. “I will invent a pastry to put it in. A large round brioche with chèvre inside and apricots on top.”

“Or apples!” I said.

She was a white goat with black ears and a black tail and only nubs for horns. I petted her, and she looked up at me with liquid eyes that said,
Take me
. What leapt into my mind was Pissarro’s painting of the girl and her goat on the ochre path. I supposed it was a silly notion, but I suddenly felt that if I had a goat of my own, it would bring me closer to finding that painting.

“Bien. I accept. Merci.”

I decided then and there that I would add another item to my list:

9. Learn how to live in a painting.

“She has to have a name,” Mimi said.

“A name. Hmm.”

I thought of the goats we children had named at the orphanage. Jeanne d’Arc. Marie Antoinette. Empress Joséphine. Madame du Barry.

“I know!” I exclaimed. “Geneviève! The patron saint of Paris! She became a saint because she led the prayers that stopped Attila’s Huns from conquering the city.”

For an instant, the frivolity was dampened, but I pressed on. “Later, when a different band of warriors did conquer Paris, Geneviève convinced them to release their prisoners. Her statue is in the Jardin du Luxembourg.”

I placed my hand on the goat’s head and declared, “I baptize you Sainte Geneviève.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE SECRET OF GORDES

1941

I
LAY IN BED, AWAKENED BY MY OWN WEEPING AND BY THE
slant of milky light passing between the shutters, conscious, as always, of missing him, of knowing he would not experience this new day. Why get up? Before, it had been to listen to news in the café at the other end of the day. Now a more urgent answer came in the small, bleating voice from the courtyard. Geneviève wanted milking.

I threw on some clothes and washed the pail I’d found in the shed “Oh, you poor girl, thinking I had forgotten you.” I squeezed her teats and sang “La Marseillaise,” which lifted my spirits. We went down the hill outside the courtyard to find grass and thistles. “Look here. Oh, this looks good.
Miam, miam.
”

Having an animal was a responsibility. I couldn’t think only of myself, couldn’t indulge in late, self-pitying mornings in bed. The January chill had set in, so I cut and gathered grass to store for her as she munched.

“Now you’ll be happy until I get back.”

“Baa,”
she said, which I took to mean “
Merci
, madame.”

Some mornings I had to congratulate myself just for functioning. This morning was one of them. I took account: I’d gotten up.
I’d washed and dressed myself. I’d opened the shutters. I’d made my bed. I’d milked Geneviève. I’d gone to the
boulangerie
to see Odette—oh yes, for bread too. Now I heated water for hickory nut coffee, a milky substitute. I went through the steps, just as if André had sat down to sip his
grand café
from his grandmother’s bowl. I licked its edge where his lips had been.