The Beautiful American (39 page)

Sometimes I would be asked to go to the director’s office to translate a letter or business order sent to or from New York, and history would be repeated. I could see that eventually I would leave the factory for the office, for better pay and the things that money
brought—new cushions for the sofa, rugs to replace the ones that had been taken, perhaps a car to replace the one I had given up.

But there was no pleasure in those expectations. Not without Dahlia.

And then one day in August I received a letter from Pablo Picasso. “Come see me,” he said. “Day after tomorrow. I have news for you. Good news.”

Omar had brought me the letter from the post office, and waited as I tore it open and read it.

“Ah,” he said. He could see it in my face. “Don’t be afraid to hope, Nora.”

“He says there is good news.”

“Then you must believe him.”

“I can’t. Because if it is not news of Dahlia, good news of Dahlia, I think I will not survive it.” And then I felt selfish because he had lost his brother and his wife and yet he comforted me.

Omar should have been a photographer or an artist. He read people better than Man Ray had, even better than Pablo did. “It is all right, Nora. Your hope will not harm me. I take pleasure in any good news my friend receives.”

•   •   •

T
he next day I rose early. I borrowed Omar’s ancient Citroën and motored down through the hills, refusing to allow myself to feel hope and optimism. It was a fool’s errand, I told myself repeatedly. He had some useless message from Lee, an invitation to a party or some nonsense. Do not feel hope, I commanded myself, much in the same way during the war I had commanded myself not to feel hungry, or afraid. Feel nothing or at least as little as possible. That was the safest path.

It was a fine summer day, hazy with heat and sun that made the scent of wild thyme and lavender rise up like a kind of hope and prayer.

By late morning, following Pablo’s directions, I had reached Vallauris, a small seaside town of whitewashed houses and rocky hillsides dotted with silvery gray olive trees. People were sitting at the crowded tables set up on the beach, and children with sand pails and little shovels ran back and forth, shouting with delight.

I stopped at one of the red-and-white-striped-awning cafés for a coffee and sat remembering the times I had taken Dahlia to swim in the bay of Cannes, usually at la Napoule, a smaller and less expensive place than Cannes. The little town and beach there were presided over by an ancient castle guaranteed to fascinate any young girl. During the war the castle’s owner, a rich American named Marie Clews, had stayed and worked as a maid for the Germans who had taken over her castle, so that she could remain there, close to her husband’s grave.

Don’t think of graves, I warned myself.

I finished my coffee, got back into Omar’s car, and found the street leading to Pablo’s villa, la Galloise.

It was a ramshackle little house, not very pretty or even well maintained, but lovingly situated in a sunny space on the hillside, with ocean views and silvery olive trees off to the side.

A pretty dark-haired young woman with a baby in her arms and a raw-kneed boy clinging to her legs opened the door to my knock.

“You must be Nora,” she said. “He told me you would be coming.” She did not sound pleased to see me, but any woman with two children under the age of three has the right to seem annoyed and preoccupied by a stranger on her doorstep.

“I’m Françoise. Come in.”

Lee had told me about her, briefly: Pablo’s new lover, the reason he had grown silent when I asked after Marie-Thérèse and Olga. Françoise Gilot had been studying law in Paris when she met Pablo in a restaurant. During the war she had quit her studies to become a painter and Pablo’s mistress. She was less than half his age.

“I said, come in.” Françoise was lovely and plainly impatient. She looked over my shoulder before taking me by the hand and pulling me into the house. “Last year Olga came and plagued us. She still won’t give him a divorce, you know. Catholic. She stood in front of the house calling me names. God knows what the villagers think. Can you believe it? I keep checking to make certain she isn’t back. Coffee?”

She thrust her head back out the door and looked left and right before slamming it shut.

“No, thank you.” The house was cool and smelled of last night’s dinner of scampi. Françoise was a different kind of housekeeper from Pablo’s wife, Olga, and the little villa showed obvious signs of busy occupation—toys on the floor, a milk bowl for a kitten in the corner, a perch with an owl on it, blinking at me and twisting his head almost in a circle in that strange owl fashion. Gauzy curtains fluttered in the breeze, showing cobwebs attached to the underside.

Françoise stepped over a pile of wet beach towels and led me into the kitchen.

“So you are Nora Tours,” she said, sitting down, balancing the baby on her knees so she could tousle the little boy’s hair. He had a long forelock, just as Pablo had once had. “I know one of your perfumes. What was it called? Oh, yes. Panther. Almost all amber, with just hints of rose and thyme.”

I had made that one before the war, for a niece of Madame LaRosa, as a birthday present.

“How did you come across it?” I asked, sitting down opposite her. “Only a few bottles were ever made, a single small batch.”

“My father was a perfumer. He got it from somewhere. Friend of a friend. Are you still making perfumes?” Françoise took a biscuit from an opened wrapper and broke it in pieces for the boy, who looked up at her with Pablo’s dark, expressive eyes.

“Haven’t composed any in a while.”

“I ran away from home, you know. My father wouldn’t let me give up law to become an artist. I never see him anymore. For this.” She laughed.

“I ran away, too. From Poughkeepsie. And then from Paris.”

“I know. Pablo told me. Are you sure you don’t want a cup of coffee? Maybe something stronger?”

“No. Please, why did he send for me?”

Françoise grew serious. She kissed the top of her baby’s head, inhaling that rich smell of infancy, and a wave of brown hair fell over her face. “I’m supposed to prepare you,” she said, brushing the hair back. “Oh, God. Look at your face. Here.” She took a bottle of whiskey from the tray on the table and poured me a glass.

“It’s good news, Nora. Lee found your daughter. Actually, her friend Davy Scherman found her. He’s researching a book on Paris and Lee told him to ask everywhere, to scour the streets, ask favors of all their contacts, for her friend’s missing daughter.”

“I looked in Paris,” I said. “Everywhere. Asked at all the centers, all the offices tracking people, all the hostels and rooming houses.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t look in this place—a Dominican convent outside of Paris. The nuns had taken her in. Someone had found her begging outside of Notre-Dame.”

I drank the whiskey but refused a second shot when Françoise
offered the bottle. The baby on her lap began to pull on her long hair. Françoise patiently untangled his fists.

I had so many questions. Why had Dahlia gone to Paris? Why had she left? What had she planned to do? Why hadn’t she come home to me? But the questions could wait.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Down at the studio, with Pablo. She arrived the day before.”

It seemed a century before I could react, before I could breathe, or see, or smell the little vase of wild lavender and roses on the table. A century of nothing passed, and then a moment of everything arrived.

“Dahlia is here?”

“I told you. In the studio. She knows you’re coming. She seems to be in good shape. A little thin, a little dirty when she first arrived, but she cleaned up nicely. Pretty girl.” Did I imagine it, or was there a hint of jealousy in Françoise’s voice? “There’s a letter here for you from Lee.” Françoise took an envelope from a pile of unopened mail and handed it to me.

My hand was surprisingly steady as I took the envelope and opened it as carefully as I pulled petals from rosebuds in the factory workroom. I recognized Lee’s bold handwriting.

Dear Nora,

Contacts can be useful. Davy and I used all of them, in the army and the diplomatic service, and of course, finally it was a fishmonger who supplied fish for the American ambassador who told Davy where the child was. She had been sent out to buy fish for dinner and he noticed her, a girl from the south. No one in that place had seen her before.
The other children the nuns had sheltered during the war had all gone home or found new ones and he wondered who the stranger was. I have found your daughter, Nora. She wouldn’t tell Davy why she wouldn’t go back home to you and he decided not to force her, to use an intermediary for the reunion. Remember being sixteen and being dragged back home? At least, I do.

I remember more than you think. I knew all along you had been that childhood friend, the one who pulled me off the porch to play. A couple of times in Paris I almost said something. But I didn’t want to talk about it. Some memories, the more you talk about them, the stronger they become. Remember that when you speak with your daughter.

So, this is a very belated thank-you. If I had gone back into the house that day, instead of being pulled off the porch by you, I might never have been able to come out again. The favor is returned. Have to go. Anthony is screaming for attention.

Keep in touch this time.

Lee

I stood. “Where is the studio?”

“Follow the path down the hill. It will lead you right there. The studio is an old perfume factory.”

I could feel Françoise’s eyes on me as I found the path and began the gentle climb back down the hill. Then I heard the door shut
and Françoise went back to her life, her children, as I walked to my child. Nothing mattered but that. Dahlia would be at the end of this journey.

Each footstep on that rocky patch made the world new. Put your foot down, and light separates from darkness. Another step and the water separates from the land. Birds fly overhead on the fourth step. Dahlia is here. Dahlia is here. Dahlia is here became the rhythm of my steps and nothing mattered except that. The sun was high and hot on my shoulders and it seemed I had never felt such a wonderful warmth before. The light itself was a kind of home and everything else was just an address.

EPILOGUE

SILLAGE

After the
départ
, after the surprise of the top note, the reassurance of the middle note, the longing of the bottom notes, there is
sillage
, the wake that is left when a woman wearing perfume leaves the room.
Sillage
is the closest thing to a molecular memory, the closest thing to permanence in the impermanent life of fragrance, for it is
sillage
that imprints on the mind to create the final, lasting impression. It is the closing of the perfume’s story.

—Notebooks of N. Tours

August 4, 1977

I
am just going out the door for a picnic at Upton Lake with Dahlia and her three children when the postman arrives, carrying a letter from Roland Penrose. I haven’t heard from him in years and I know without opening it what the letter will say. I take the mail and go back inside to the coolness of the kitchen in Dahlia’s summerhouse.

Lee has died.

She was seventy, a bit young to die, I think, since, I, too, am now seventy. But considering all the risks she took, all she went through, perhaps it was a good span for her. She could so easily have died a violent death any number of times, but instead she died at home after a long slow illness, with her husband at her side.

Lee, that beautiful, radiant, damaged child. The drop-dead gorgeous model. The brave and talented photographer. The woman who found my lost child. Gone. After that weekend at Farley Farm when she showed me those photographs of the war and war’s aftermath, Lee mostly photographed her family and friends, turning away from the crueler, uglier things that destroy, that kill or at least leave lasting scars.

I refold the letter and close my eyes, seeing that little girl in her white dress on her porch.

“Are you okay, Momma?” Dahlia comes in and sees the look on my face. She is in early middle age, but when I see her, I still see the girl sitting at the potting wheel in Pablo’s studio in Vallauris, her face smeared with clay, her eyes wide with delight mixed with fear, the girl who stood hesitantly and came to me, older, sadder because that is what time does to us.

•   •   •

M
y daughter, who had once been lost to me, but was found by Lee.
After they took you away, André came to the house.
The hesitation lasted only a second. She ran to my opened arms.
He broke the window next to the side door and forced himself in. He told me I would never see you again. That you had been shot as a traitor. That it was my fault because I had told. So I ran away. I was afraid of him. I thought you were dead.

We slept in Pablo’s studio that night. Françoise gave us pillows
and blankets and supper. Dahlia curled in my arms, a child again. The next day, we went home to Grasse.

•   •   •

“L
ee Miller has died,” I say, putting the letter in my pocket.

“Oh.” Dahlia takes the car keys from the hook by the door and jangles them, an expression of indifference on her lovely face. She met Lee once, in 1955 in New York, where Lee had exhibited in the Family of Man show in the Museum of Modern Art. Dahlia was still a college student then, just beginning her final year. Lee had taken Dahlia’s hand and winked at me. The three of us did not talk about 1949, about the six months of Dahlia’s disappearance or what had happened to her before that.

But I knew that Dahlia still had the occasional nightmare, as did Lee. The past does not die. It just acquires more shadows, blurs a bit like a fading photograph.