Lisette's List (35 page)

Maurice lifted his eyebrows. “Troubadours
originated
here,
ma petite
! From Provençal soil, when the whole southern region of France was called Occitania, all the way to two seas.” A grin slid over his face. “Chivalry! Courtly love, my lady! Knights undergoing dark dangers for their chaste lovers!
Oh là là! Quelle aventure!
Get Maxime back here, and we’ll go a-roving on a night when there is no moon to reveal us.”

“Maurice! Be serious!” Louise commanded. “These are Lisette’s paintings at stake. This is not a
game
!”

“She’s right, Maurice. It’s not,” I said, but there was no diverting Maurice’s well-intenioned desire to lighten the situation.

“Oh, my lady,” he whined, stroking Louise’s cheek. “Would you deny me the pleasure of a dangerous pursuit for a noble cause?” Louise pursed her lips in exasperation. “You want me to be chivalrous, don’t you?” he asked. He nodded for her and said,
“Òc, òc.”

“What’s
òc òc
?”

“It means ‘yes’ in the old Occitan language, which developed here into Provençal,” Maurice said, “and it has secret powers for finding hidden paintings.”

“Ouf,” Louise said. “You’re impossible.”

“Òc, òc,”
I agreed. “Impossible.”

Despite Maurice’s insistence on turning the windmill search into a caper, and despite being no closer to finding the other paintings,
I clutched the Pissarro to my chest and left the Chevets’ house with hope. A few days later I wrote to Maxime.

4 DECEMBER, SAINTE BARBARA’S DAY, 1946

Dear Maxime
,

Your drawing of the windmill has brought good luck. I found a painting there! All by myself. It’s the small Pissarro called
La Petite Fabrique.
It has given me hope. There are two other windmills here that we can search. Please come when it’s warmer and the threat of mistrals isn’t so great. Windmills are in windy spots. We need to search them without permission, at night
.

I am earning my way to come to Paris, but it’s going to take a long time. You can guess how if you like. I am inspired by your gift of marzipan
.

Geneviève and Kooritzah Deux miss you terribly and pine for the day when you will return. Not understanding that you are doing the work you should in Paris, Geneviève has become irritable and Kooritzah morose
.

Joyeux Noël
,

Lisette
           

After I sealed the letter, I took out my List of Hungers and Vows. Number two,
Go to Paris, find Cézanne’s
Card Players, I realized, was a hunger. Number fourteen would be a vow:

Earn my way to Paris.

I
N MY QUEST TO
make perfect marzipan I took pleasure in thinking of its source. Except for the Spanish oranges, the fruit Cézanne painted had been grown in Provence and bought at a market in
Aix. His paint used the ochres of Provence, and now my marzipan would be colored by the plants of Provence. The almonds were from my tree, growing on Provençal soil. Kooritzah Deux, my Provençal chicken, would provide the eggs. It was all of a piece. With a touch of amazement, I realized how important Provence had become for me. I was, in a truer sense than blood, Pascal’s daughter.

I started over, making very small batches so as not to waste the ingredients if they didn’t adhere or if the marzipan had no almond taste. I prepared juices, distilled carrot residue, and smeared the dyes onto my practice fruits. The colors came out too dark. I learned about diluting and using tiny amounts. It was an alchemy of nature, and I was fascinated, spending days poring over my precious fruits. The first time I gave a pale yellow peach a touch of ruby pomegranate juice and blended it with strokes of my wet fingertip to look smooth and natural, then used the juice full strength for the groove and the stem’s depression, I felt like an artist. More difficult to do were the threadlike red striations on yellow apples. I used a pine needle as an applicator. For pomegranates, I laid down a wash of orange from carrot scrapings and overlaid it here and there with diluted pomegranate juice. Inside the crowns, I used a drop of beet juice. I kept records of my experiments and made arrangements on saucers.

When I had a successful batch, I took an apple and a peach to René and Odette in the
boulangerie
.

“Too lovely to eat,” Odette said, and put the peach on a saucer on the counter.

“Then how are you going to know what it tastes like?” René asked. He bit into his apple and rolled the morsel around in his mouth, sucking in his cheeks, nodding his head in approval.

“It could stand a couple more drops of almond extract,” he advised.

F
OR THE HOLIDAY MARKET
, the day before Christmas, I had plenty of marzipan fruits to sell, so Maurice let me share the vendor’s table where he sold his honey. I placed the candies in rows on a white napkin in a shallow drawer I had removed from the desk and wrote
Twenty centimes each
on a piece of paper, which I folded, then stood up like a tent.

Although it was cold, the square was festive. People wrapped in mufflers were happy to engage in the old traditions.
Chanteurs
strolled by carrying candles and singing the sprightly carol “Il Est Né, le Divin Enfant.”

When someone came to the table to purchase honey, Maurice said, “Wouldn’t you like to buy some of Lisette’s pretty marzipan?” And when someone came to the table to pick out a couple of marzipans, I said, “Wouldn’t you like to try some of Maurice’s delicious lavender honey?” Because marzipan was one of the thirteen desserts served traditionally at Christmas here, my little fruits sold well.

After so many days of solitude, it was exhilarating to have friendly conversations with the people of the village and countryside. Madame Bonnelly descended upon me out of the stream of people, took my head in her large, crablike hands, kissed me noisily, and bought two of each fruit. Not to be outdone, three women behind her did the same.

Sandrine walked by holding Théo’s hand. He was a precocious child who was constantly moving. Spotting my rows of marzipans, he pulled Sandrine toward our table.

“
Maman, Maman
, may I have a candy? May I? May I,
Maman
?”

He was learning to speak with Provençal robustness.

“Just one, so pick carefully,” she said.

A scowl of concentration came over his face as he pointed to one after another, politely refraining from touching any of my ten types of fruits. Finally he settled on a red apple and said a perfect sentence. “
S’il vous plaît, madame, je voudrais une pomme.
”

I was so delighted that I was tempted to give him two apples, but I didn’t want to undermine Sandrine’s rule.

Henri Mitan said, “Ah-ah-all the g-grapes,
s’il vous plaît.
”

I was nervous when Bernard came by our table, and prepared myself for some snide remark.

“I don’t know which is prettier,” he said. I thought he was comparing one fruit to another, as Théo had done, until he picked up a cherry and added, “The cherry or the cherry maker.”

“If you touch it, you will have to buy it,” I warned.

“The cherry maker, you mean? I already have.” He ran his finger down the whole row of seven remaining cherries, touching each one, then letting a five-franc note flutter onto the table. He bit into the one cherry he had taken. “Sweet and succulent,” he said, flashing a leering look, and sauntered away.

“He can turn any innocent thing into something lascivious,” I muttered to Maurice.

“Bernard, he may seem threatening, but he wouldn’t harm a flea,” Maurice said. “He takes his role as constable seriously. Still, watch your step with him.”

Agitated, I left the table, so that he wouldn’t find me there if he came back, and meandered in the other direction, where there were displays of
santons—santouns
in Occitan, the sign said—the beguiling small clay or wooden figures of saints and nativity characters outfitted as
Provençaux
. Also depicted were white-kerchiefed women carrying market baskets,
boules
players, fishmongers, shepherds, artists, farmers, even René in a tall white baker’s hat, Father Marc in his ecclesiastical mantle, and Mayor Bonhomme wearing the red Provençal sash. One
santon
even looked like me, I thought. I was relieved not to find the clay figure of the constable. That would have soured the day.

At one of the
santon
booths, I found the real Aimé Bonhomme wearing his red sash and approaching me with a man I didn’t know. Aimé introduced him as Benoît Saulnier, the miller who owned the
olive-pressing windmill called Moulin de Ferre. “He just told me something that would interest you.”

The two men stepped away from the crowd, and Monsieur Saulnier greeted me with a certain gravity.

“I haven’t worked the mill for years. All the olive pressing has moved to the big automated mills in Apt. There’s no use staying in Roussillon any longer. We have just moved to Apt. I was lucky to get a post there in a large modern mill. I was cleaning out my mill, packing up all the things that had accumulated over the years, tools and barrels and crates, when I spotted a curious picture, a child’s painting of heads.”

I stifled a gasp.

“I didn’t recall ever seeing it before when I was operating the mill and thought it was my daughter’s. She used to play there on rainy days, but she said it wasn’t. It being of no value, I just let it stay there, and we finished packing and left. In Apt I told my wife about it and she wanted to see it, so she sent me back for it.” Monsieur Saulnier swallowed, and his Adam’s apple moved up and down in his throat. “The painting was gone, madame. Aimé thought you should know. I suppose I should have told him sooner. I’m sorry.”

“How long ago was it that you saw it?”

“Two months, I suppose.”

“Can you describe it to me?”

“It wasn’t pretty. They were women’s heads, as far as I could tell. They had pointed chins and narrow faces, and their noses were bent to the side.”

“Was the painting damaged?”

“No, madame. It was just the way they were painted. Like a child would do. Their eyes didn’t match either.”

I looked at Aimé. “It was André’s painting. I’m sure of it. Was the windmill locked?”

“No, madame. There being nothing of value in it, I took the lock with me to Apt.”

I didn’t think I should say who might have painted it. I just thanked him, accepted his apology, and turned back.

There was someone moving the paintings around, or someone else searching for them who had happened on this one before I could. Or perhaps someone had just come upon it by chance and recognized its value. I was furious with myself for not acting more quickly.

A great urgency swelled up in me as I walked home. We had to get into that windmill. Maybe the miller had overlooked the painting or had inadvertently placed something over it. Maybe there were others hidden there.

At home, I put twenty-one francs fifty in the olive jar, wrote
Vow Fourteen, Earn my way to Paris
on the back of my paper sign, and slipped it inside the jar. But what did twenty-one francs fifty count for, when I had lost a Picasso or a Modigliani worth who knew how much?

I went to the Chevets’ for a Christmas Eve
veillée
. Everyone greeted me with congratulations for my success at the market. I tried to respond cheerfully, but Louise knew something was wrong. Whispering for me to tell her later, she served the traditional Christmas Eve supper of vegetable broth, baked cod with cauliflower, chard stalks, and celery.

The guests laid out the thirteen desserts for tasting, the number thirteen referring to Jesus and his disciples. Mélanie had brought the four beggars, which represented the four mendicant monastic orders—raisins from their vineyard for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustines, dried figs for the Franciscans, and almonds for the Carmelites. Then Sandrine laid out dates and dried plums, examples of the foods of the region where the nativity had taken place. Odette brought quince cheese and pear and winter melon slices. René had made cumin-and-fennel-seed biscuits, the flat olive loaf called
pain fougasse
, and
oreillettes
, thin light waffles. The thirteenth dessert was my marzipan.

Mimi sang “Les Anges dans Nos Campagnes,” with everyone
joining in on the chorus of
“Gloria, in excelsis Deo.”
I yearned to feel the love of the angels of our countryside, as the song said. Before I left, I gave Odette the remaining marzipans for her to sell in the
boulangerie
, hoping that it might start a continuous business.

At Midnight Mass, the older boys of the village, dressed as shepherds, formed a living nativity scene. Théo knelt alongside a cow brought close to the manger to shed its warmth on the Christ Child. Monsieur Rivet, the town notary, Mayor Aimé Bonhomme, and Maurice, with his head wrapped in a dish-towel turban that kept coming undone, took the roles of the three wise men. The most recently born babe in the commune, the child of a former prisoner of war, lay in the straw. How deeply joyous his parents must have been to see him swaddled there in the manger. A line from a
chant de Noël
, “Born that man no more may die,” came to mind. I considered that a babe born to freedom was more important than a painting. If it were my child, I would certainly think so. A woman wearing a lace-edged white shawl crossed over her breasts like folded wings stepped alongside the altar and, with the voice of an angel, sang “Gloria in Excelsis” in Occitan. If I hadn’t been preoccupied with worry about someone else finding the paintings, her voice would have lifted me off the earth.

After the service, I lit ten candles—for André, Pascal, Maxime, Sister Marie Pierre, Bella, Marc, Pissarro, Cézanne, Modigliani, and Picasso. The flames cast a soft golden glow. But what did lighting a candle mean? I suppose it signified that I was asking God to take care of someone. But if God was all-knowing, I reasoned, He already knew my yearning and didn’t require a candle to remind him. Still, I felt a need to say an individual prayer for each of them, an affirmation in my own words. I thought God would appreciate that more than my lighted candles, since He was already the source of light and goodness. Thinking that made me feel that all was well with them. That I could not see them or speak with them was not sufficient evidence that they were not living still.