Lisette's List (7 page)

He found another sheet of paper, sat down at the small desk, and wrote down the colors.

“Why are the names of colors so important?” I asked.

“Because God conceived of those colors, and we mined the ochres that
made
them! Because there is holiness in color. It’s the queen of art.” His voice exploded with exasperation. “Because I don’t want to forget when … when I go on.”

Oh my, what I had caused him to think.

We were quiet awhile, until I asked, “How many frames did you have to trade for
Red Roofs
?”

His head sank slowly until he was looking at his lap. “The number didn’t matter.”

The effort it had taken to make me understand had exhausted him, and he rose and grasped the railing to pull himself upstairs to bed.

But I
was
understanding, at least a little. I remembered how much importance color held for Sister Marie Pierre. Once she sent
me across place de la Concorde on some errand, and when I returned she asked me what was the color of the hollows of the hieroglyphics carved into the Egyptian obelisk.

“I don’t know. Gray!”

“Don’t just tell me gray. Gray is a noncolor. Strictly speaking, the Impressionists never used it.” She motioned with her arm that I should go back out.

Fuming, I grabbed my coat and walked the distance again. When I got back, I reported, “Green-gray on the south side, yellow-gray on the west side, violet-gray on the north side, and blue-gray on the east side.” Then she was pleased, but I remember having taken secret delight in including the word
gray
in each color.

A
NDRÉ CAME IN THE
door with his lips turned down at the corners and his eyes downcast as well.

“What? No frame shop in Avignon?”

“He doesn’t know of any. Maybe I can get some furniture repair work.” He took a weary breath. “I’ve been to the post office.” He held out an envelope, but he seemed painfully reluctant to let go of it.

“Who could it be from? Maxime!”

He had already opened it. I yanked it out of the envelope, skipped the salutation, and read:

I hope you are well and enjoying the warm south. Without you here, I have been in a definite slump until early this week when I sold a painting in Galerie Laforgue. It was a dancing harlequin with a sad face by André Derain. Monsieur Laforgue had been away for a few days, and when I told him the news, he was elated. So elated that he took on a woman as an apprentice gallery attendant, I regret to say. That threw me back into a slump again. To celebrate the sale, he took me to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to see Josephine Baker dance wearing only a skirt made of bananas, but after having seen it before, I thought it had grown stale. I’m sure it was due to my mood. I had hoped he would hold off hiring anyone until you came back. She may not last long. She’s haughty, overbearing, and opinionated, though she does have a good eye. I’m dreadfully sorry, Lisette
.

I have hope for Pascal’s swift recovery and for your quick return
.

Your friend, Maxime

André put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, too.”

CHAPTER SIX

ANDRÉ’S GIFT

1937

F
OR DAYS
, I
COULD HEAR
A
NDRÉ SAWING, POUNDING, AND
sanding in our courtyard, working until dark. He had told me not to come out there. He had even closed the shutters so I couldn’t look out the south windows. Even so, the aromatic scent of freshly cut pine told me what he was doing, and it wasn’t making a frame. Still feeling ashamed for creating trouble, yet full of pride in his grandson’s resourcefulness, Pascal knew too.

“André loves you,” Pascal said.

“I know.” Never for a moment did André let me feel unloved or taken for granted.

“We want so much for you to be happy here.”

“I know that too.” I arranged a plate of apricots and peaches on the table in front of him, but I felt compelled to offer him something more.

“When I was seventeen and still living with the Daughters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, a nun found a position for me in a fine
pâtisserie
. On that first day I was supremely happy learning the names of the pastries and smelling almond, vanilla, and cinnamon, but she told me two things that morning that I will never forget. ‘No
matter where life takes you,’ she said, ‘the place where you stand at any moment is holy ground. Love hard and love wide and love long, and you will find the goodness in it.’ ”

“She’s a wise woman. Camille would have agreed.”

A
FTER MORE THAN A WEEK
, André invited us out to the courtyard. There it stood near the edge of the cliff, just what I had suspected but hadn’t dared to say in order not to spoil his joy in surprising me. An outhouse, complete with a peaked roof. The door, facing over the cliff, had a window and shutters, like a little cottage. André stood back proudly and gestured for me to open the door. Inside was a wide smooth bench attached to the side walls at about knee height, and a smoothly finished square wooden toilet seat, contoured with rounded corners and dovetailed joints, varnished. And square.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make an oval.”

“André! It’s beautiful. It’s like a frame!”

“Well done, André,” Pascal said.

André had hung a sprig of dried lavender under the roof beam for the unveiling. How thoughtful, this husband of mine.

“Go in, go in,” André urged. “Just pretend.”

I stepped in. Sticky tears of sap seeped out from the freshly milled pine, my tears of gratitude made solid. Then I looked down. The pit he had dug wasn’t very deep.

André closed the door and said, “Turn around. Sit down.”

He opened the shutters. Laid out before me was a valley of the Vaucluse, our
département
in Provence, cut by canals, dirt roads, and rows of cypress trees, France’s fertile Garden of Eden. There were vineyards and orchards on hillsides, and vegetable plots and rows of lavender in the valley. Beyond, the mountains of the Luberon. A grand panorama.

“It’s like a painting in a frame.”

I stepped out. “But what do you do with …?”

“Dig it out. Or I’ll dig a trench, and we’ll use a bucket to wash it down the cliff once in a while.”

“That is what we
Roussillonnais
do,” Pascal admitted.

And do the
Roussillonnais
go outdoors to their outhouses during the monstrous thing called the mistral, or in the rain? Or at night? It wasn’t perfect. It would never be perfect here, but André had done what he could, and I loved him for it.

“One more thing.” Grinning, André reached around the corner and presented me with a square board with a raised edge, the corners bisquited the way he joined them for his frames, a little larger than the seat and as smoothly sanded and varnished. He turned it over and set it on the seat like the lid of a box. “
Voilà!
A cover.”

“Carved!”

“A fleur-de-lis, for my Lise.”

“Oh, André! How good of you. It’s exquisite.” He had carved away the wood around the fleur-de-lis so that the bloom was rounded and raised above it.

I laughed. “I never thought I would ever say I loved a toilet, but this one, André, I do love.”

“No one else in Roussillon has an outhouse as
haut bourgeois
as this,” Pascal said. “You could start a business here.”

“Ah, how the mighty have fallen,” I said. “From making frames for the painters of Paris to framing village derrières.” I gave André a sympathetic look.

“Let’s go to the
épicerie
before it closes. I want to buy a new roll of toilet paper.”

We all set off. How straight I stood at the counter announcing proudly, “One plump roll of toilet paper,
s’il vous plaît.
” It felt marvelous to make the proprietor wonder why we were all grinning. A moment later, I blurted, “For our fine new outhouse.”

“Ah!
Oui! Certainement!
” He pointed to one roll after another on the shelf, then held them up and turned them for my inspection as though they were works of art. We left the store laughing.

As we approached the café on the way home, I said, “Let’s celebrate with a pastis. Maybe we’ll find Maurice there.” I pulled André along toward the door. Pascal looked alarmed.

I parted the hanging beads and peeked in. There were no small round marble tables with black wrought iron bases like those in the cafés in Paris, only rustic wooden squares. There was no mirror behind the bar. And though the café was full, there was not a single woman. But there was music playing from a radio, Suzy Solidor’s deep voice singing a tango—the sound of Paris.

“Lisette, we had better not,” Pascal said.

Several men stood quietly at the bar. Others sat at the tables having lively conversations, drinking the rosé produced here or the milky pastis in tall slim glasses. Group by group, I realized, they were scowling at us. André tugged at my elbow, and I stepped away from the door. He turned me toward home.

“Men only,” said Pascal. “Women don’t go to the café.”

“Ever?”

“On rare nights with their husbands when Monsieur Voisin shows a movie, or in the afternoon to refill a wine bottle for supper.”

“Is there some law?”

“Tradition.”

“Well, it’s provincial. Primitive!” I cried in the most disgusted tone I could utter. All my earlier elation vanished.

André looked stricken. “I’m sorry, Lisette. That’s the way it is here.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

PASCAL’S LIST

1937, 1885

I
WOKE UP VIOLENTLY SCRATCHING A SPIDER BITE ON MY ANKLE
.

“Don’t scratch. It will only make it worse,” André murmured.

Five minutes later I was sitting up and digging at it again. I shook out the sheets and quilt to try to find the culprit and pulverize it in retribution, but no luck. That black beastie was sly and would live to bite again.

It was a Monday, so André was going in Maurice’s bus to scour Avignon again for any carved furniture repair work he could do at home. Except for a few rainy Mondays, he had been going every week throughout the summer, convinced that he would find something.

Pascal had kept to his bed the day before, but he came downstairs when we heard Maurice call,
“Adieu, mes chers amis!”

I opened the door wide. “Adieu, Maurice.” I giggled self-consciously at what seemed so strange coming out of my mouth.

Pascal said, “Come in. André has something to show you.”

“Do you like our village, madame?”

“It’s very quaint.”

“Oui. C’est la Provence profonde.”

I was amused. He had adapted the expression
la France profonde
, which referred to rural central France as the soul of the nation, to his own province, naming Roussillon as its soul and center.

They all went out to the courtyard, and I followed, not wanting to miss the lift of Maurice’s exuberant eyebrows.

“Merveilleux!”
he cried.

Pascal gave him a little push. “Look inside.”

“
Oh là là!
Such a thing in Roussillon. A window too! A room with a view! And the symbol of France.”

“With my Lise’s symbol,” André said.

“Provence will have the last laugh over Paris. A stream of people will come to see. But madame my wife.
Non, non, non.
” He shook his head, his hands, his jowls. “We must not tell Louise.”

In this gossipy village, she would find out sooner or later.

He held up a chubby index finger. “Me, I must christen it,
non
? It is a long ride to Avignon. Ha-ha. As we say in Provence, madame, I had better change the water of the olives.” Nimbly, he stepped inside and pulled the door closed. “
Quel trône!
Fit for a king.”

Pascal chuckled. “A throne. He called it a throne, André. The pope in Avignon would have been jealous.”

Outside once again, Maurice let out a long, breathy “Ah.”

Laughing, Maurice and André started downhill to the bus stop, smugly whistling.

I
EMBARKED ON A
thorough housecleaning to get rid of any nests or hiding places for wicked little creatures. I swept up mouse droppings and grit from the last mistral. I carted buckets of water from the faucet in place de la Mairie and set to work scrubbing the red tile floor. On my hands and knees, I discovered a black widow spider’s thick web and her white egg sack within it on the underside of the kneading table. Furious, I chased the ugly little devil around the
edge of the floor until I had smashed her flat, thinking of the she-devil with a good eye who had taken my position at Galerie Laforgue.

I stood up in victory and found Pascal writing what appeared to be a list with annotations. With his brows knitted together in concentration, he worked on it for an hour, using both sides of a second sheet, while I worked my way around the floor of the
salle
. Finally he sat back and let his arms flop to his sides, exhausted. He exhausted? What about me?

“There. Today I shall tell you about Paul Cézanne.”

“Maybe later.” I squeezed cloudy gray water out of a rag.

“But it has to be now, while it’s in my mind.” The paper trembled in his hand. “Please, Lisette, sit down and listen.”

“I can listen while I do this.”

“You have to be still so I can think out my memories. All I am is my memories. You’ll learn that about yourself someday.”

I surrendered, only too happy to sit for a spell. I just wished the settee were more comfortable.

“I met Paul Cézanne in Julien Tanguy’s art supply shop. Julien was convinced that Cézanne would introduce something new in art. His shop was the only place in Paris exhibiting him. He told me that Cézanne needed cheering up because he doubted himself. At that, I recall Madame Tanguy saying something snide, like ‘With good reason.’ ”