Mistral's Daughter (47 page)

The visit itself had not
taken long, and answers to her questions were simple.
 
The institution of civil marriage in France
he assured her was respected as in few countries of the world.
 
Since 1866 divorce had been possible only
pour
faute.
 
He had leaned back in his
chair expectantly, knowing that he had not yet earned his fee.

"
Pour faute?
"
she had asked, skillfully hiding her anxiety.

"After the presentation
of facts that constitute serious and repeated violations, my dear Madame, of
the duties and obligations of marriage which make continued conjugal life intolerable."
He obviously enjoyed the sonorous rhythm of his words as he rolled them out.

"I don't quite
understand," she had said.
 
"Does that mean that if my husband has given me grounds for
divorce, if he is at fault, I can divorce him?"

"Indeed, yes, Madame.
 
It is only a question of time, and of the
proof."

"But if I don't want to
divorce him, in spite of the fault?"

"Then no divorce is
possible," he answered.

"None?
 
No matter if he should want a divorce?"

"Never, Madame, it is
completely impossible."
 
She had
thanked the notary, paid him, and taken the long, winding road back Félice,
climbing slowly through the bare meadows of winter.
 
She need not worry, she need not act, she
need not respond.
 
She was protected by
the weight of almost a hundred years of French law.
 
Did that despicable imbecile, her husband,
know?
 
Had he learned the truth from
another notary yet?
 
She had no intention
of telling him.
 
Let him find out for
himself, let him learn the facts and slowly grow to understand
—
for he
would not believe them at first, he would rage and shout and declare that
nothing could stop him from getting what he wanted
—
let him realize
that he was utterly impotent, totally powerless for the first time in his
life.
 
She could almost feel sorry for
him if she chose.
 
But that she did
not.
 
He must have forgotten how patient
she was, he must really not remember that she never gave up.

I didn't let you go when I
was young, Kate thought, when I could have had any man I wanted, when I could
have had any life I cared to lead, when I could have shaped my future in any
direction, I chose you, Julien.
 
Is it
likely, when I've spent my life
making
your career, that I'll let you go
now?
 
Oh, no, you contemptible man, why
did you even bother to write and ask? How can you dare to imagine that I'll
ever give you to that sly, thieving girl who came and took you away?
 
Do you truly understand me so little?
 
You belong to me.
 
I own you just as I own these paintings.
 
I paid for them, I still have the receipted
bill, they are my property.
 
And like it
or not, so are you.

Mistral put down his brushes
suddenly and stood very still.
 
Teddy
still looked dreamily at the ceiling moldings of the studio, her half-focused
eyes resting on the garlands of flowers, the bows and cupids that she had grown
so familiar with during the hours of posing.
 
Surely it wasn't time for the break yet?
 
It seemed to her as if she had just lain down on the model stand
—
but perhaps she'd dozed off as she sometimes did after a particularly heavy
lunch.
 
He walked over and stood looking
down at her in abstraction.

"What is it, my
darling?" she asked.
 
"Don't
tell me that I was snoring."

He sat on his heels and put
out his hand and traced a line on her naked body from between her breasts down
over her belly.

"No, not snoring...
 
you never snore, but you're putting on
weight."

"I know.
 
It's all this good living.
 
I'm going to be a Rubens one day.
 
But I can't seem to really care...
 
do you?"

"No...
 
no...
 
of course not."
 
He sounded
just a bit unsure.

Perhaps
he really did want her to be as skinny as she had been when she was modeling.
Perhaps her nice new voluptuousness that she found so pleasant was making her
less paintable in some way.
 
The French
were always so worried about
la ligne
—
Frenchwomen any way.
Mistral took each of her breasts in his big hands and stroked them
thoughtfully.
 
Then he put his hands at
her waistline, thumbs touching, his long fingers spanning her waist.
 
He looked if he were listening to something.

Hey,
what's going on?" Teddy laughed. "Your hands are cold."

"You're
pregnant," he said in a voice of incredulous joy.

"Oh,
no, I'm not!"
 
She sat up, her eyes
wide in alarm.

"Oh,
yes, you are. That's not fat, not the way it's distributed
—
believe me,
I know the difference."
 
He plunged
his face into her stomach and kissed her skin in wild excitement.
 
"My God, my you can't imagine how happy
I am."

"You!
 
You!" Teddy sputtered.
 
"Oh, Julien, you're frightening me
—
how the hell can you know?"

"Isn't
it possible?
 
Think, Teddy."

"No!...
 
yes...
 
I suppose...
 
oh, no!
 
It
is
possible.
 
Oh, 'shit, no it can't be!"

"I'm
right," he said triumphantly.
 
"I knew it."

"
What
am I going to do!
"
 
Teddy
grabbed a shawl and covered herself frantically.

"Do
—
why should you do anything?"

"Julien!
 
You aren't even divorced, for God's
sake..."

"Teddy,
I will
be.
 
I
promised
you that on my life, on my love for you, on my work, on anything you hold
sacred.
 
I will be!
 
Especially now that you're pregnant.
 
When Kate learns about the baby she'll see
that there is no use in clinging to me any longer.
 
I know how she thinks, I know her well enough
to tell you just what's going through her mind.
 
But she doesn't yet understand about us
—
She still
will not
realize that you are the only woman-the only
person
 
—
I have ever loved in my whole
life."

He
stood up and looked down at Teddy huddled in her shawl.
 
"I'm still so amazed by it myself, I
bless every day when I find you in bed with me!
 
And when we form a family, when I recognize the child at the city hall
and tell the world about it, when the news becomes public, Kate's pride won't
permit her to be passive.
 
Or even much
sooner, as soon as she learns the baby's on the way, quietly, sensibly, she'll
take action...
 
for the sake of Nadine,
for the sake of her own name, to stop people from talking.
 
Yes, that's what
will
happen, I'm
convinced of it."

"Do
you know what you remind me of?" Teddy demanded ferociously.
 
"Those stories I used to read in
National Geographic about certain tribes where the men don't even consider a
woman to be wife material until she gets pregnant and proves that she's not barren."
 
Teddy's voice rose violently. "Julien,
you're talking about me, Teddy Lunel, having an illegitimate baby! 'Recognizing
a child'
—
at the city hall no less
—
that's barbaric!
 
I'm a New Yorker, not some peasant girl.
 
I make seventy dollars an hour!
 
I make three thousand dollars a week!
...
 
Oh, Julien, you don't
understand..."
 
She faltered,
stopped and burst into a passion of tears, clutching him like a child, feeling
his arms enfold her and clasp her and mold her firmly, possessively to his
body.

Am
she wept she realized that she wasn't Teddy Lunel who made seventy dollars an
hour anymore
—
that Teddy Lunel who crossed Fifty-seventh Street and all
but stopped traffic
—
she had turned into somebody else, a woman who
loved a man, a woman who was pregnant with that man's baby, a woman who had
become part of that man's history.

Her
mind skittered about as she thought of how easy it would be to have an
abortion.
 
There were a dozen models in
New York she could telephone for a certain well-known address in Sweden.
 
It would be two hours by air from the
Marseilles airport, a weekend in a spotless Stockholm clinic and back by next
Tuesday or Wednesday.
 
But even as she
thought about it she knew that she wouldn't do it.
 
Julien would understand if she did, his
happiness with her didn't need a child to make it complete.

No,
it was something else, an emotion she had felt only once before, a sense of
inevitability that welled up within her.
 
Already she felt changed, truly a woman now, no longer a girl.
 
It was the same feeling she had had on that
first night in the Hotel Europe...
 
as
irrevocable, as irrevocable as her love for Mistral and therefore it must be
as right.

Month
by month Teddy traveled across the winter and spring of 1953, her destination
growing closer and closer.
 
The baby was
due sometime in June, her obstetrician told her, and she lived, from the moment
she had accepted the child, within a circle of enchanted harmony. She knew that
Mistral was working hard on getting his divorce but she refused to worry
herself with the details of the negotiations that she assumed were going on in
an atmosphere of unpleasantness.
 
Nothing
disagreeable could touch her now.
 
To
ensure that Maggy didn't suddenly fly over and make a fuss she simply didn't
write her about the baby in the monthly letters she mailed to New York.
 
Time enough for that information when she
could announce her wedding day.

Now Julien insisted that they
hire servants to live in several of the apartment's empty rooms and Teddy chose
a young married couple, not because they were particularly well qualified for
house-man and cook but because they were so visibly in love.
 
Teddy was obedient, giving in to all
Mistral's protectiveness, even letting him come to the doctor with her every
month although she had never been in more robust health.
 
She was one hell of a healthy animal, she
congratu-lated her image, admiring herself as she never had when she sat before
the mirrors in the dressing rooms of world's best photographers.
 
Her only complaint was that she couldn't keep
from falling asleep over her
eau-de-vie
at night and Julien had to carry
her tenderly to bed, lifting her, easily and tenderly, in spite of her bulk.

In the mornings they went for
long walks and in the afternoons Teddy still posed.
 
Mistral had never been captured by any
subject as totally as he was by her budding body.
 
His work had never been unreachable or
enigmatic, drunk as he was on the mute rhapsody of form and color, but now, as
he painted Teddy growing slowly big with child he began to interpret, to
search, to think in paint, to penetrate the surface more deeply than he ever
had.
 
Maternity had not been a subject
that had interested him before.
 
When
Kate had been pregnant he had been vaguely repelled by the way her womb seemed
to stick out without reference to the rest of her spare frame, as if it were a
growth rather than an organic part of her body.
 
It had drained her face of energy and color and though she had endured
it without complaint the child within her had been a stranger to him.

But Teddy flowered so
rapturously:
 
her breasts, once
fashionably small, burgeoned in unabashed lushness; the blue veins showed
clearly through the translucent whiteness of her skin; her nipples spread and
grew pinker and softer; her arms and legs were less angular, more delicately
rounded.
 
Her body was a miracle of
beauty, and in its swelling volume he felt the power of nature as he had never
felt it in any landscape.
 
No storm, no
sky or star-filled night, no ripe orchards or grape-heavy vineyards had ever
moved him so.
 
It was an inexhaustible
subject, a painter could paint nothing else but the mysterious volume of that
glorious curve of her belly that was never the same from one day to
another.
 
Often he finished a painting in
a single week and soon the studio was filled with the sight of canvases propped
against the wall, more canvases in any one time than he had painted since he
had first painted Maggy.