Hold Back the Night (23 page)

'For two years or so they survived. During those years Elisabeth taught your father how to read and write. He stole food sometimes, or money to pay the rent. He had promised Elisabeth he would not steal again, but he could not bear to see her go hungry. When she found out, she threatened to leave him, and so he stopped. Then one morning in a rainstorm he took shelter in the palace of the Louvre, the exterior of which he had been painting from the Place de la Concorde. In his desperation to learn of the art he thought he could not do, he took his last few sous and paid his admission. And what he saw changed his life again.'

During her growing years Domini had often visited the Louvre with her father. He had always entered the part devoted to the impressionists and always followed the same course. Domini guessed it must have been the course he had followed that very first time. The Renoirs, the Cezannes, the Van Goghs, the Gauguins ... she could imagine very well what he had viewed.

'For him, it was the second lightning clap, as riveting as the speaking of his own tongue had been. He had thought he could not paint because he had never seen great art, or indeed any pictures that could be dignified by the name of art at all. But in the Louvre he saw bent buildings and oblong apples and orange skies. He saw paintings of people, something he had never tried. The flesh tones especially moved him. A lesser man might have been humbled to see such works, but what he saw filled him with strength, for what he recognized in seeing these great paintings was the seed of his own greatness. After that, he knew he had much to learn, but he never doubted his own ability to learn it. He started to paint like a madman, no longer street scenes but canvases of Elisabeth. Your father said she was unhappy because pictures of people put no food in the larder. He didn't care; he was possessed by his need to paint. For the next few years he did little else. He no longer thought of food or rent and left such problems to Elisabeth. She was also shy of posing in the nude, but she did so without complaint. He says she grew thin as the stack of canvases grew large. None were sold. When he ran out of canvas, he painted her picture on the walls, and when the walls were filled he painted over his own paintings. When he ran out of paint, she produced some for him, and he did not ask how. He thought Elisabeth must have started stealing, too, against her own teachings; at the time he did not even care. Later he learned that she had taken to selling herself to keep them both alive. She loved him, too, you see.'

Berenice bowed her head and paused in her story for a few moments, as if in silent homage. When she spoke again she switched to French, marking the end of one passage of Le Basque's life.

'She died in a fire, and with her all the canvases he had done and all the paintings on the walls. He even lost the small stones he had kept for so many years. Do you wonder that he found it hard to talk to anyone of these things?'

Domini shook her head, too moved to express her feelings in words. And she had once asked her father what he had learned in Paris. Could she have guessed that he had learned such terrible pain?

Berenice talked on, perhaps relieving some of her own deep feelings in the telling. With the cruel irony often accorded by fate, Elisabeth's death had marked the beginning of Le Basque's success. After moving in with a kindly fellow artist who offered temporary shelter after the fire, he happened to learn of the manner in which Elisabeth had put food on the table during the previous few years. In rage and pain he had started a self-portrait as tortured and full of despair as the famous image Van Gogh had once painted of himself. Domini had seen it; it was hanging in the Louvre along with the painting of the unicorn. She had never liked the work, which troubled her deeply because it was not the Papa she knew.

The studio where Le Basque painted the self-portrait was next door to a small art gallery, and the dealer who ran that gallery had chanced by while it was being painted. He became interested. Soon there were more canvases, more important galleries, more sales, more successes. There were no more self-portraits, but the work remained unfailingly filled with despair. At last, unable to bear a Paris or even a France where no Elisabeth existed, Le Basque had left for America. There he learned a new language and continued to paint of his purgatory like a man possessed. Still young but already rocketing in reputation, lionized by critics and collectors alike, he met and after an overnight courtship married a woman who bore a strong resemblance, physically at least, to Elisabeth.

As it turned out, she was unlike Elisabeth in every other way. Greedy, grasping, and cold except in bed, she had married Le Basque for his already remarkable success. She was grudging with her body when she felt there was anything to be gained by withholding it. Out of bitterness and disillusion, Le Basque suffered through the marriage for some years, taking what little solace he could from the children she produced.

'He remained faithful to her, not because he loved her but because he had loved Elisabeth ... and yes, she had the same dark eyes, the same dark hair, the same long throat. He never painted her, because he could not bear to paint with cynicism and dislike what he had once painted with love. Nor, after a time, did he care to share her bed very often. They had been married nearly twenty years when he learned of her infidelities, not done from necessity as Elisabeth's had been done, but out of wealth and boredom and too great a taste for pleasure. There was little left for him in the marriage. Already he hardly recognized his sons, who at his wife's insistence had been sent to private schools and fine country clubs and taught to turn up their noses at their father's uncouth ways. He walked out on her, taking no more than his paints, and leaving all else to her.'

After that t ,re had been a succession of models and mistresses, all painted with the brushstrokes of a bitter man. Anastasia Greey had been the last of these. As Domini already knew, her mother's death had deeply affected Le Basque; now she discovered why.

'While she was in labour with you, Didi, Anastasia told your father she had allowed herself to become pregnant only because she loved him. She said she had always known she could not hold all of him forever, and so she wanted a part of him to hold for a little time. He was cynical and didn't believe her; he thought her condition was due to miscalculation. But after she died in delivering you, your father learned that she had been strongly warned against the pregnancy, even before it started, and told that it might kill her to carry a child to full term. And yet, as they took her to the delivery room, she told him nothing of her fears, only of her love.'

So her mother had loved her father, truly loved him. The knowledge gave Domini comfort and a vision of her mother that denied the shallowness depicted in Anastasia's portrait.

'He had almost come to believe that no woman but Elisabeth was capable of love and a generous heart. And yet, this mistress whom he had taken so cynically had wanted to carry his child. I think, perhaps, if he had been able to bring your mother back to life, he would have learned to love her after all. Instead he learned to love you. When you were born, it was as though he was reborn too. You gave him back the faith he had lost when Elisabeth died.'

Domini knew the rest of the story because it was her own. Berenice's painful revelations had explained so much. Domini no longer needed to question the reason for the great stone in the courtyard, nor why her father had not sent her away to be educated as many men in his place would have done, nor why he had taught her to love with all her heart, without holding back. She understood his anger at the careless use of the name that had cost him such pain in the earning. She was grateful that Berenice had told the story, because now she could look back at her father's denial of her with a true and heartfelt understanding.

'Through you, Didi, I think he lived his own childhood, the childhood he could not remember. I wonder if you know how much you gave him?'

Domini thought of the father who had gone wading, done somersaults, lain on his stomach watching an ant with awe, danced the
jota
until sweat streamed over his broadly grinning face. She thought of the grown man who had deliberately squirted a
bota
at his chin at the cost of his dignity, who had chortled with delight to win at cards, who had watched
pelote
with the excitement of a boy. She thought of a hundred other memories and knew Berenice was right. Her childhood had been her father's childhood too. In a way, they had been children together, and Domini felt humble and grateful to realize that if her memories of childhood were beautiful, so must her father's have been.

'He loved you very much, Didi,' Berenice finished gently, with tears at last springing to her eyes. 'I was never jealous of the love he held for you or for Elisabeth, after I understood that without the two of you he would have had no capacity for love at all. He suffered when you vanished without a trace. He tried so hard to find you, but the most that could be learned was that someone in the name of Domini Greey had flown to the United States. So many private detectives he hired! Do you know, he even used influence ... and it was not easy on short notice ... to arrange for the famous portrait of you to be sent overseas on tour. He hoped that you might go to see it. In every city it was sent to, there were detectives watching the doors.'

Domini stared, remembering what she had read not so very long ago. Realization came to her with a great instinctive sureness.

'And the unicorn,' she said, her lips numb. 'He sold the unicorn, too, for the same reason.'

'Yes,' Berenice confirmed. 'He thought you might hear of the auction and get in touch to object. But you know, it nearly broke his heart to part with it.'

Released at last, Domini put her face in her hands and wept until there were no more tears to shed.

Le Basque's will was read on a Saturday, the day after a funeral that had called so great a number of important people to the Pyrenees that the small church and the rustic graveyard of his choice was incapable of holding them all. Most left immediately after the funeral, but those who had been advised to do so stayed for the reading of the will, Ailing the local inns to overflowing. Photographers had been strictly excluded from the funeral services, but on the following day they vied for position outside the gates to take pictures of those who entered or exited the farmhouse. Although reporters were now aware of Domini's presence, to her gratitude they were not being admitted to the house and therefore succeeded in taking no pictures of her.

It was bruited about that Le Basque's estate might be worth well in excess of three hundred million dollars, a figure to which Berenice scornfully retorted, 'Pah!', pointing out that he had supported too many foundations of various kinds during his life for the figure to even approach accuracy. The wild estimate, she insisted, was based on what Picasso had left, not Le Basque. Nevertheless, the sums involved were considerable, and so was the attention of the press. When great or wealthy men died, the disposition of their estates was always news, and Le Basque had been both great and wealthy. Although he had not died intestate, as Picasso had done, the interest of the newshounds was considerable.

Among other stories, the disowning of Domini had become public knowledge, although the reasons remained murky; it was also reported that she had been allowed back into her father's house only when he lay on his deathbed.

For the reading of the will, rows of straight chairs had been arranged in the airy, carpetless room that had been Le Basque's studio, the largest and also the emptiest room in the stone farmhouse. At Berenice's instruction, windows were flung open to admit the warm July air. Sunlight streamed through the skylights that had been installed long ago. Large important canvases lined the walls, along with huge and elaborate floral arrangements, too many of which had been received for the small country church to hold.

As the interested persons called together by Le Basque's lawyers started to assemble, Berenice had a few hushed and private words to say to Domini. 'Please,' she said gravely, 'don't be surprised by anything he may have done. Someday you will understand.'

The will was dated several months after Domini's departure from the Pyrenees. Its reading took an interminable time. There were bequests to charities and foundations, bequests to servants past and present, bequests to good friends, bequests of particular paintings to particular art museums. The clauses were read in French and occasionally, at the request of a lawyer representing Domini's three half-brothers, translated into English. At first Domini listened with half an ear. Insulated by her personal grief of the past few days, she cared very little about the details of disposition, although she was human enough that it had at some point crossed her mind that her own . Je and Tasey's might conceivably be easier from now on. And she might be in a better position to help Sander too. That was not an unwelcome thought.

And yet she didn't want to think of her father's death in terms of the money he might leave her. She hated the intent expression upon her half-brothers' faces and didn't wish to tar herself with the same brush. And so she deliberately allowed her mind to wander, thinking of other things.

When the droning recitation reached the point of the bigger bequests, Domini had to drag herself back from painful memories of the last time she had been in this room with her father still alive.

The lawyer cleared his throat and took a drink of water to punctuate what he was about to read, and the succeeding clauses were read in both languages as a matter of course.

''To each of my three sons by my legal marriage,'' the will stated, naming each son by name and city of residence. ' "the price of one black mourning suit." '

As the words were translated into English, shock waves reverberated through the air. Within moments Domini could feel several pairs of hostile eyes sidling in her direction and Berenice's. There was still a very great deal of wealth to be disposed of, and her three half-brothers now knew three people who were not going to get it. She sat stiff as a board, scarcely daring to breathe. Did this mean that Papa was going to leave a good deal of his estate to her? It was possible, she realized, because Berenice was a wealthy woman in her own right.

'To my beloved companion Berenice a Soule,'' the lawyer went on, ' ''I leave the household furnishings of the farmhouse in the Pyrenees, which farmhouse was purchased by her at fair market value prior to the writing of this will.' " It was the first time Domini had heard that news; it surprised her that her father should have sold the house he loved so dearly. '"To her I also leave whatever residue remains of my estate, after the bequest of my most valued possessions which are hereinunder named."'

There .vas a dramatic pause while those in the audience began to make mental calculations about the number of canvases hung in the farmhouse or stored in its cellars, the sketchbooks, the paintings still unsold at dealers both in France and abroad. It was known that the bulk of Le Basque's estate was in works of art, the prices of which were already skyrocketing due to his death. Now nearly all eyes were on Domini ... the most important bequests were usually left to the last. The wording of Le Basque's will seemed to confirm her as his main heir. She sat motionless, her hand stilled on the lap of her navy pleated skirt, her hair pulled back into the golden twist that had made a few former acquaintances fail to recognize her at first when they had been gathering for the funeral the previous day. She felt frozen by the eyes upon her, at the moment too numb to think.

' "To Domini, known as Didi, my own daughter born out of wedlock to Anastasia Greey, I leave my name should she choose to use it, and also my great stone. I wish the stone to remain in the peaceful place where it now rests, until such time as Berenice a Soule, owner of its resting place, requests its removal. In this I trust my daughter will respect my wishes." '

That was the end. Nearly everyone knew of the stone and knew it was valueless. Domini knew it was not, and she had to fight to prevent her eyes from filling in front of so many spectators.

But she need not have feared. The spectators in the room had all turned their eyes, hostile or otherwise, away from Domini to fasten on the person the will had made wealthy. Berenice sat as calmly as though she had been aware of what was going to happen all along.

Berenice was not even a blood relative, and the battle lines started to form almost before the beneficiaries had filed from the room. Domini saw her half-brothers, heads together with their lawyer, looking coldly furious. She wasn't yet sure how she felt about her father's will, but she knew she didn't feel anger. Thank God he had left it to Berenice and not to them!

It was a beautiful sunny day. Drinks and refreshments were being served in the courtyard because many people present ... in particular those representing various museums and charitable institutions ... had come from Paris or even farther afield and required some sustenance before starting the return trip. Within half an hour of the reading of the will, Domini's half-brothers cornered her privately and offered her a breathtaking sum if she would help them in contesting the will. 'She must have exerted undue influence on a dying old man,' argued one. 'You lived with them for many years, you can testify. You must have seen what she was trying to do.'

'He threw you out of his home only months before he wrote the will,' prompted another. 'There must have been signs of his mental deterioration even then.'

'He left you nothing,' claimed the third. 'And then calling the stone his most valued possession! When he wrote that will, he must have been half mad.'

Domini gave them a withering look and walked away, not even dignifying the proposal with an answer.

'Your father had to write his will like that, partly because he didn't know what had happened to you,' Berenice told Domini some time later, when the others had finally departed. They were walking slowly in the large walled courtyard, alone with the sun and the stones and the trellised vines. 'Your father had other reasons, too, although I won't go into them right now. But understand, Didi, that if he had left you any substantial sum in his will and you hadn't been located . . . well, in that case it would have been too easy for his true wishes to be disobeyed. Who knows what the courts would have done? I know what his true wishes were, and I intend to obey them. He wanted you to be looked after, for one thing. Come to France with your daughter and live here.'

'Not right now, Berenice,' Domini said slowly, thinking of Sander and the uncertainties of her future. 'I have my own life in New York, a life I'm not ready to leave.'

'The stone is yours, and the stone is the heart of this house. Who owns the stone really owns the house, no matter what it says on the deed, which is only paper after all.'

'The house is yours,' Domini reminded her. 'You bought it from Papa.'

'Ah, but that was because he wanted . . .' Berenice paused and started again, choosing her words carefully. 'He wanted you to have it some day. To you, I can admit that he sold it to me, thinking to keep its succession safe in case you were never found. He didn't want your brothers to get hold of it. Are you afraid that two grown women can't be mistress of the same home? You needn't fear. I imagine I'll be returning to Paris to live within the next few months. I'm not an old woman and many of my friends are there. I must think of building myself a new life; even your father would have wanted me to do that. He will keep his place in my heart, of course, but he would want me to stop living no more than he stopped living when Elisabeth died. This home is yours because, in truth, that's what your father really wished. Reconsider, Didi. You belong here.'

'Perhaps I do,' Domini agreed, her eyes rising to the distant mountains beyond the stone wall. Her slow pacing came to a halt while she thought about what Berenice had suggested. The thought of raising Tasey in such surroundings had a very strong appeal. 'Perhaps someday I'll return to this part of the world to stay, although I would have to find a place that was truly my own. A cottage, perhaps. But not yet. Not yet.'

Berenice sighed. 'If you must return to New York, you must. But I feel you need help, financial help, Do you think I have no eyes? That little navy dress you're wearing, Didi, is a very good one, but it's one we bought in Paris together nearly five years ago. Very few of your other clothes are new either; I've noticed that. And having a young child to support

Domini turned to look at the great crude stone she owned. The offer was tempting, but the stone said no. She faced Berenice again, feeling oddly light-hearted and happy for the first time since her father's death.

'If I need help, really need it, I promise I'll call on you. But do you know something? I think Papa's already given me all the help I need. He left me the two most important things he owned.'

Berenice smiled as though she understood. 'I think he's left you his pride too,' she cautioned. 'Sometimes pride can be a burden.'

Domini was silent for a moment. 'I'm not that proud,' she denied finally. 'There is one thing I'd like from you, Berenice, I'd like you to contact Papa's dealer in New York ... Lazarus, isn't it?'

'You've met him, haven't you?'

'No, never. And I feel I can't approach him myself, because I want to protect my New York identity. There's a man ... a sculptor whose work I'd like him to look at. That's all, just look at it. I don't want pressure applied for Lazarus to handle something he doesn't want. Sander wouldn't like it.'

'About that, you need have no fear,' Berenice said dryly. 'Lazarus can be very rude, even to important artists and collectors. If I tried to apply too much pressure, he would hang up on me.' She paused and then asked delicately, 'This sculptor, this Sander... he is a good friend?'

'He's my lover,' Domini acknowledged with the simple directness her father had taught her. 'Come and sit down, Berenice, and I'll tell you all about him.'

And so, sitting on a stone bench beneath the great stone she now owned, Domini at last told the story of Sander, of Tasey's conception, of what had happened since then in their relationship. Some parts were glossed over, but others were not. Domini briefly explained her reasons for not wanting Sander to know her true identity and dwelled at greater length on the power of his work, a subject on which she spoke with convincing sincerity. Berenice agreed to use what influence she could with Le Basque's important Manhattan dealer, a man known for his integrity and taste, as well as for his occasional rudeness.

'I'll phone him at once,' she promised as the two turned their footsteps into the now peaceful house. And then Berenice laughed, as she had not for many, many days. 'No, no,' she said. 'I'll wait until Monday. By then the news of the will should have reached New York. I imagine he will have to listen to me then!'

'He'll have to pretend to happen into Miranda's gallery,' Domini warned. 'When he sees the small bronzes, he can ask if there's anything larger. She'll be glad to show him, especially if he says who he is. You'll be doing me a great favour, Berenice.'

'Such a little favour for you to call it great.' Berenice sighed. 'Your father would expect you to accept much more. Is there nothing else I can do?'

'Nothing at the moment,' Domini assured her. One side benefit of having no sudden inexplicable source of wealth, she mused with a touch of wryness, would be not having to explain it. It was a comfort, though, to know that Berenice could be called upon in moments of emergency, and Domini knew she would never really have to worry about money again.