Mistral's Daughter (86 page)

"I
never knew that," Fauve said, fascinated. "How did it happen? Tell
me all about it?"

"I
think this conversation has gone on quite long enough," Maggy broke
in.
 
"Fauve, darling, you're doing
the only thing you should do
—
I'm deeply happy for you, I'm happy for
me, and I'm happy for Darcy although I'm not sure he deserves it.
 
A man who breaks promises about a
greenhouse..."

"There's
somebody at the front door.
 
I hear the
kitchen bell ringing," Fauve said hastily.
 
"I have to hang up.
 
I'll
call again in a few days.
 
I love you
both."

Lighthearted
and lightheaded, she ran to the front door and discovered Eric Avigdor standing
there, leaning on the door jamb, a jacket slung over one shoulder.

"Ah
ha.
 
The master builder.
 
Come on in."

"I
got home from Les Baux late last night and I went looking for you this
morning.
 
When you weren't in the hotel I
thought you might be here so I just drove on out and dropped in... that all
right?"

"Of
course, I'm delighted to receive any son of my dear friends the Avigdors."

"You
sound awfully..."

"How
do I sound?" she asked, twirling around, her flaming mantle of hair
flaring out combatively, her beauty focused and dazzling, as she well knew.

"I
can't quite identify the tone," he said cautiously.
 

"I'll
take that as a compliment.
 
How are your
houses?"

"Coming
beautifully.
 
The most important part of
the construction is over, they'll be ready on time.
 
I'll be back to my normal schedule soon.
 
Listen, Fauve, I really came to tell you that
I was sorry I haven't been around much but you've been so busy that it didn't
seem as if you'd have any extra time anyway
—
and now Papa tells me that
you're going back to New York next week."

"Duty
calls," she said, giving him a wicked darting glance out of the sides of
her great, misty-gray eyes.
 
This, she
thought, was the way her mother must have treated the men who couldn't help
falling in love with her.
 
She felt
purely Lunel, for which she couldn't be blamed, could she?

"I
guess it does," he said expressionlessly.

"Would
you like some lunch?" Fauve asked hospitably.

"I
don't want you to bother
—
look, come on, I'll take you to that little
hotel, the Hostellerie in Bonnieux that has such good food."

"I'm
too hungry to wait and I've got a kitchen full of leftovers that we might just
as well finish.
 
All I've had to eat
since breakfast is an apple, and that was a lifetime ago."

She
led the way to the kitchen where the table was already laden with the food
she'd taken out earlier.
 
The cheeses
were properly runny now, the pate and chicken had lost their refrigerated
chill, and while Eric sat drinking a glass of white wine, Fauve set the table
and sliced tomatoes for a salad.

"I've
never seen you looking so domestic," he said broodingly.

"This
is nothing.
 
I'm a demon cook.
 
My specialty is Chicken Paprika with lots of
sour cream."

"Sour
cream?
 
What's that?"

"Creme
fraîche, only better," answered Fauve, who had long considered this
insoluble gastronomic problem and didn't believe she was committing blasphemy.

"Somehow
I've never thought of you as a cook."

"If
you thought of me at all," she murmured, measuring olive oil.

"That's
not fair!" he almost shouted, putting down his wine.

"Oh,
all right. I apologize.
 
Cheap shot.
 
Come on, lunch is ready."

They
both ate hungrily, almost in silence.
 
Fauve bent her head and her eyebrows pulled together in a straight
orange line as she concentrated mightily on not looking at Eric's hands or the
way his wrists emerged from the sleeves of his sweater, or at his throat or his
face, not at his face, particularly not at his face.

"You
know," she said finally, in a thoughtful, reportorial tone of voice,
"I never would have taken you for a person who'd forget a sacred
promise.
 
Darcy promised Magali a
greenhouse and he's taken it back, but that's different, I can understand that.
It was a question of checks and balances. You, on the other hand, seemed very
sincere."

"What
the hell are you talking about?"

"You
promised to take me to Lunel, remember?
 
I always hoped that I'd find a clue there, an illumination that would
tell me something about my identity.
 
How many years ago did you promise me?
 
You still haven't done it and I don't see that you have any intention of
taking me there," she said calmly, remorselessly keeping any note of
reproach out of her voice.

"Goddamn
it, Fauve, that's just too much!
 
You go
away without a word, you disappear for years, you reappear in Rome for only two
days, you disappear again, you show up out of the blue six months later because
of something that has nothing to do with me, you spend all your time surrounded
by lawyers and dealers and new friends and newspapermen and photographers, now
you're about to disappear again, and you have the incredible, breathtaking
nerve to accuse
me
of breaking a promise!"

"You
don't deny that you promised?" she repeated calmly, with a sweetly
innocent smile that ignored his outburst as if she hadn't heard it.

"Of
course I promised.
 
I have the maps in
the car to prove it.
 
God, you're
rotten!
 
Lunel is south of Nîmes and north of
Montpellier
—
it's just a little off route A9.
 
If we got in the car now we could be therein
just over an hour
—
taking the shortcut through St. Rémy and
Tarascon...
 
it's not far from the ocean,
it's on the edge of the Camargue, actually it's just a few miles off the map of
Provence, it's in Languedoc, properly speaking."

"You've
been there without me!" she cried accusingly.

"Of
course not. I'd never do that."

"Then
how come you're so sure where it is?
 
Eric, where's my pear?"

"Pear?...
 
I just ate it...
 
I'm sorry, I should have asked if you wanted
half.
 
What's wrong with you?"

"You
ate...
 
you ate..."
 
Fauve squeaked, hardly able to articulate the
words...
 
my first... subject!"

'Subject'?
 
It was only a pear...
 
I swear to you, Fauve, I never went near
Lunel but I wanted to know exactly where it was.. "

"Why?"
she asked, recovering with difficulty from her fit of laughter.

"Just
in case," he said, "you ever came back and remembered that you wanted
to go there."

"How
long have you had those maps in your car?"

"Ever
since you left...
 
when you were
sixteen.
 
When I got a new car I just
took them out of one glove compartment and put them in another."

"Then
I think I'll decide to forgive you.
 
At
least you meant well, even if you show a lamentable lack of
follow-through.
 
Good intentions count
for something, I suppose..."

"I'd
call it a hell of a lot more than good intentions."

"What
would
you call it?"
 
Fauve
leaned on her hands and looked directly at him across the kitchen table.
 
"Would you call it sentimental?
 
Would you call it nostalgic?
 
Would you call it a romantic gesture in the
direction of a way you used to feel?"

"
You
little bitch
!"

"Oh?"
She managed to raise her eyebrows in polite inquiry while her heart turned
cartwheels of jubilation.

"Don't
try that game with me again!
 
You've
already had your fun in Rome, remember? Letting me think you still loved me,
letting me stay hopelessly in love with you, slipping away at the last minute,
teasing, sadistic, heartless
—
just as you're doing now...
 
there aren't words to tell you what I think
of you."
 
He rose to his feet.

Fauve,
too, stood up and walked rapidly around the table, transfigured, certain, so
certain, as certain as she had been in the empty studio, welcoming life.

Eric
looked at her and his world was reinvented.
 
The one love of his life, her face blushing and prodigal with love that
equaled his own, was holding out her arms to him in a gesture that encompassed
all their shining, unequivocal future.

"Are
you trying to say, in your original way, that you still love me?" Fauve
asked as she put her arms around his neck.
 
"Are you trying to ask me to marry you?
 
Because I warn you, I'm in the mood to take
any kind of risk this afternoon, this is the time to pin me down if you want
me, I'm feeling astonishingly reckless, I'm flying high."

"There's
never been a second when I didn't want you
—
I thought you didn't want
me," he murmured as he looked into the mystery of her eyes and penetrated
to its heart.
 
"But," Eric
added, drawing back, suddenly troubled, "I don't want to take advantage of
your mood...
 
you've led me a hell of a
dance...
 
what if you change your mind
tomorrow?"

"Eric,
it's not a mood.
 
Nothing has ever been
less a mood.
 
I was just teasing, I
couldn't help it, I had to make you mad to get through to you.
 
I've wanted to marry you all these years
—
remember your dream about running off together when I was sixteen?
 
I had that dream too, over and over, but I
was afraid to admit it because I knew what it would have to mean, where it
would have to take us.
 
I've never had an
intermittent heart but I did have a lack of faith
—
oh, not in you but
in the possibility of absolute trust
—
that's over now.
 
There are two things I hope for in life and
neither one of them will be right without the other.
 
I want to be your wife and I want to try to
paint..."

"Paint?
 
How did that happen?
 
When
—
no, never mind
—
tell me
later
—
it's perfect
—
I've always known you had to go back to
it."

"Would
you live here, at
La Tourrello,
Eric?"
 

"This
house has been waiting for us, don't you know that?"

"I'm
a slow study...
 
but yes, I know
now."

He
traced her lips with his finger, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.
 
"Do you still want to go to Lunel?
 
I don't want to keep breaking that
promise," he said gravely.

"Not
now, not today," she answered.

"Don't
you want to see it for yourself?"

"I'm
not in any hurry," Fauve said pensively.
 
"I don't seem to need to anymore.
 
But Eric, I would like to take a drive
—
not far
—
 
just down the road
—
I
have
to
buy another pear."

The
End