Mistral's Daughter (8 page)

"’Mountain
Greenery’.
 
It's nice and bouncy and you
can't just sit here."

Reluctantly he got to his
feet, inches taller than anyone in the room, and followed the trim American
onto the infernal dance floor on which the bodies were so pressed together that
his lack of dancing skills wasn't important.
 
For a few minutes they moved inexpertly almost at the edge of the crowd
as the music changed to a pulsing ragtime beat.
 
Suddenly Mistral and Kate were squeezed from both sides by scores of
dancers crowding to get a better look at Maggy, whose four bearers were
approaching.

Maggy, on her perch, was
wrapped in a mounting delirium induced by the warm bath of cheering admiration
whirling around her.
 
There was an immense
liberation in being naked yet covered by paint as if she were visible and
invisible at the same moment. She felt as if she were hovering over the
ballroom floating free.
 
From every side
hands reached out to try to touch her but she was aware of no menace as the
artists raised the silver oval higher and higher to keep her out of reach.

Suddenly, from the crowd, a
voice shouted, "Down with the Realists!"

"Down with the
Surrealists!" screamed a dozen other voices.
 
The crowd, which only a second before had
been good-natured in spite of the suffocating pressure of the dance floor,
joined battle vigorously
—
this is what they had been waiting for all
evening.
 
Kate Browning, aware of danger,
adroitly slipped out of Mistral's arms, and threaded her way to the edge of the
crowd, leaving Mistral to follow her.

Jostling, shoving, elbowing
each other, howling slogans, the dancers closed in on Maggy's four artists,
almost knocking Alain and André off their feet.
 
Pierre and Henri, the Camembert and Roquefort, still struggled
manfully.
 
However, without the careful
balance the four artists had achieved, the big wooden platform tilted
alarmingly and, with a start, Maggy realized that she was in danger of falling
and being trampled underfoot.
 
She looked
around, suddenly alert, keeping her wits about her.
 
Everywhere there was a mass of bodies, men
punching each other, women ducking and screeching.
 
The place had erupted into a riot.

Crouching, Maggy gathered
herself together, coiled herself up into a tight ball and launched herself off
the platter with a strong leap sideways, aimed right at the only point in the
room that seemed stable
—
Mistral's black hat.

He caught her with an
"Ouf!" of surprise but he stood rocklike, too strong to lose his feet
in the mob.
 
Maggy lay in his arms like a
child on a swing, no fear, no alarm in her eyes, still under the spell of the
moment in spite of her instinctive spring to safety.

She curled her arms around
Mistral's neck and let her head fall on his shoulder. Automatically he tightened
his arms and held her to him as she compressed herself into a compact oval,
bending her knees sharply so that her legs and feet protected the backs of her
thighs and her bare, silver-splotched bottom.

Finally, Mistral moved.
 
There was a door to the street not more than
a hundred feet away and he pushed strongly toward it through the swarm,
clutching Maggy as if she were someone he had rescued from the sea.

As he reached the street,
Maggy spoke. "Where are we going?"

"Not far."

"I hope it's an
unpretentious place."

"Oh, it is."

Mistral crossed the street,
turned a corner and walked into a large building with an ornate, sham-Moroccan
façade.
 
Inside there was a counter
behind which a woman stood waiting for customers.

"Good evening,
Monsieur.
 
For one or two?"
 
She showed no surprise at the sight of a man
carrying a multicolored, naked woman.

"One, please.
 
Do we have to wait?"

"No, you're in luck
tonight.
 
I have something ready
—
just follow ine, Monsieur, 'Dame."

The woman led the way down a
hallway lined with doors at regular intervals.
 
She opened one of the doors, ushered him in and shut the door behind
them.

In the middle of the bare
room stood a huge tub filled to the brim with hot water.
 
On a chair by the tub lay a towel, a cake of
soap and a washcloth.
 
Still holding
Maggy, with a rapid movement Mistral bent down and tested the temperature with
one finger.
 
Satisfied, without letting
her feet touch the floor, he plunged her into the water, getting his arms wet
above the elbows.

"Assassin!" Maggy sputtered.

"It's not that I don't
admire your costume but it was coming off all over my shirt," he said,
vigorously lathering the washcloth.
 
"Give me that."

"Certainly not. It's
man's work."
 
He took off his damp
jacket, rolled up his wet sleeves and knelt on the floor by the tub.
 
Maggy tried to stand up in the water but she
couldn't get the right leverage in the deep tub.
 
She floundered, heaving herself halfway out
only to slip back again. Mistral ignored her struggles and briskly applied the
washcloth to whatever part of her body presented itself.
 
Within seconds the water turned a murky gray.

Maggy started to laugh
helplessly.
 
She let herself lie back in
the water and watch uncomplainingly while he scrubbed her shoulders and her
legs.
 
Only when he approached her
breasts did she pounce, with an overhand blow from her two hands, her fingers
firmly interlaced, right to the back of his neck.
 
His hat fell into the water and he let go of
the washcloth just long enough for her to grab it.
 
She slung a hatful of soapy water directly
into his eyes and, while he swore vilely, half blinded, into the towel, drying
them as best he could, she finished scrubbing off the last of the watercolor
from her body, laughing harder than ever at the sight of him kneeling on the
floor, dripping onto his shirt, his eyes red and smarting.

At last Maggy dropped the
washcloth on the wooden floor and sat in the opaque water that rose to her
shoulders, her arms folded on the rim of the tub, her chin on her hands.
 
Her damp hair clung
to her shoulders,
her eyes wet with tears of mirth, but her lips were curved in an old tomboy
grin, and she'd clapped Mistral's sopping hat on the back of her head.

"Nice work," she
congratulated him.
 
"But what have
you planned for the rest of the evening?"

Mistral sat back on his
heels.
 
What indeed?

"I'm getting cold and
I'm getting hungry," Maggy menaced.
 
"And when I'm cold and hungry I get mean.
 
D'y' want to risk it?"
 
There was challenge in her voice, in her
eyes, in the cock of her head
—
even her red eyebrows were
challenging.
 
She might be naked and
submerged but the very way she'd appropriated his hat defied him.

"Don't go away,"
Mistral said, jumped to his feet and walked out of the room, taking his jacket
and the damp towel, closing the door behind him.

"Oh, that son of a
bitch!" Maggy cried out loud.
 
She
looked disgustedly at the rim of the tub where a gray ring was forming.
 
She tried to let in some more water but the
faucet was locked. She shrugged and stood up in the tub, sloshing water over
herself with the palms of her hands. She was reassured to see that she hadn't
turned gray.
 
She stepped carefully onto
the floor and shook herself mightily, shuddering like a great dog, wringing
water out of her hair.
 
Fortunately the
night was warm and the room was even warmer, filled, as it was, with the steam
of the bath.

Suddenly, the door opened and
Mistral walked back into the room.
 
Maggy
straightened up, shielding her lower belly with the big hat, one arm over her
breasts.

"You forgot to
knock."

"Sorry."
 
He passed her two fresh towels.
 
"Dry yourself off
—
go on
—
I won't look.
 
And here's my jacket
—
put it on when you're finished.
 
I have a
taxi waiting."

"I hope we're going
somewhere nice for dinner."

"Eventually."

"You do know how to
treat a girl."
 
Maggy struggled into
his jacket.
 
The sleeve's dangled below
her knees, hiding her hands.
 
Clumsily,
she wrapped her arms around herself to hold the jacket together.
 
She was entirely covered up except for her
bare legs and feet.
 
"Well, I'm all
set, and rather grand too, but you don't look like much.
 
Your shirt's all wet," she grumbled.

"I think we both
look...
 
clean," Mistral said,
leading the way to the front door of the public baths.
 
"As long as you're clean, the rest isn't
important."

Padding in her bare feet,
Maggy followed him to the street door of the public bathhouse. They darted
across the pavement into the taxi that waited outside.

"Sixty-five boulevard
Arago," Mistral told the startled driver.

Still barefoot, but wearing
the red kimono, which she had put on with a smile of surprise at finding it
just where it had been a year before, surprised that it could still hang from
the same hook like a remote memory, Maggy entered the studio, dimly lit at
night when the work lights were off, and looked for a place to sit down.

The studio was as crowded as
the bedroom was bare.
 
Mistral had the
habit of visiting the
brocantes
of the neighborhood, the dealers
in objects that could not be called antiques, yet were certainly not new, and
picking up odd bits and pieces that caught his questing eye; a huge casserole
of Quimper pottery with a hole in it; a ship's figurehead, half eaten by worms;
the last remaining piece of a once splendid set of painted tin soldiers; a
Victorian chair of purple satin trimmed with moth-eaten braid.

However, although his
discoveries filled a room they fell short of furnishing it. Maggy picked her
way toward the Victorian chair, which at least seemed to have a recognizable
function, and sat in it with a sigh of pleasure.
 
She was brimming with a mixture of curiosity
and adventure.
 
She had never expected to
find herself here again and the evening seemed filled with tentative wonder.

"Soup?" she called
into the tiny kitchen in which she heard Mistral moving about.

"What do you think this
is, a restaurant?
 
If I want soup I go
out for it.
 
You'll get bread and cheese
and sausage and wine and be glad for them."

"You're not much of a
host."

"I don't entertain
often," Mistral said, looking with irritation at the sausage he was slicing.
 
It had an air of antiquity to it.
 
On a tray, he hastily arranged a few mismated
dishes, a bottle of wine and two glasses, one of them chipped, and carried it
out to the studio.
 
He stopped in
mid-stride at the sight of Maggy in the purple chair, her orange hair spread
out on the red Japanese silk.
 
It was as
if a fire had been lit in the corner of his studio.

"You can't sit
there." "Why not?"

"That chair is about to
fall apart."
 
"What do you
suggest then-the floor?"

"I have a little table
outside in the garden
—
I thought we'd eat out there."

"But do you also have
little chairs out there in the garden?" she asked with a flick of laughter
in her voice.

"Yes, believe it or
not."

"Ah, well in that case,
who could resist such magnificence?"
 
Maggy followed Mistral outside where overgrown lilacs, their white
blooms just in full bloom, hung glimmering faintly over a table of white
painted wood.
 
Two bentwood chairs stood
in the unmown grass, with heart-shaped backs and striped cotton cushions on
their wooden seats.
 
Mistral lit a tall
candle in a short, twisted copper candlestick while Maggy bent over the plate
and inspected the sausage.

"Go on, take a
slice," he urged her.

"It lacks...
 
how shall I put it...
 
a certain youth."

"Better not eat
it," he said, hastily putting the plate on the grass.
 
"I think the cheese is probably
safe.
 
Are you really hungry?
 
I can go and get something
—
there's a
charcuterie
that stays open late..."