At the Edge of Summer (14 page)

Mardi, le 29 octobre 1912

Dear Clare,

This time of year is so melancholy. Rainy and gray, as the world slips into winter. I read your letter and it made me wonder, what does “home” mean to me?

Autumn at Mille Mots is just as gray, of course, but warmed by the fireplace in the drawing room and by stands of goldenrod around the edges of the garden. Stacks of books read on the sofa in my room, fresh honey for my bread, all of the apples, grapes, and medlars I can eat. In Paris, I can still find all of the fruit, if I'm willing to go to the market at Les Halles. But everyone rushes past me. Unless you are Uncle Jules (rest in peace) or an English tourist, you are not in Paris to savor it. You're here to work or to study, like I am. You're living in a borrowed space, like I am. In a year I'll be gone.

Perhaps it's disillusionment, what with this time of year and with my military days looming. I wish I felt settled enough to savor. But I can't help but think of months ahead and wonder where I'll be.

Do you know my favorite spot in Paris? The Île de la Cité is a little island in the middle of the Seine, the same island that the great Notre Dame de Paris sits on. At the other end is a tiny triangle of land called the Square du Vert-Galant. I'll go stand on the edge, point my feet to match the angle of the land, and close my eyes. When the wind from the Seine, smelling of fish and of stone and of history, blows across my face, I have a moment where I feel that I'm at home.

Those days, I remember why I first fell in love with the city. I remember my first puppet show at the little Guignol Theatre on the Champs-Élysées, my first ride on an omnibus down the Avenue de la Grande Armée, the first time I caught the brass ring on the carousel at the Luxembourg Garden, my first taste of Maman's rum baba, my first boat on the Grand Basin, my first run across the teetering bridge in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Writing this, pinning each of those memories to the page, makes me content. For all its gray, that golden Paris still lurks beneath. Maybe when all this is over, maybe Paris will be the place I call home.

Lately I've felt like drawing more often. I'll go and sit by the Seine, in the Square du Vert-Galant, and sketch until I can't feel my fingers. I draw the river and the barges, yes, but my pencil also turns to the things I can't see. I draw Papa's queens and knights and fairy-tale ogres. I draw the château and the gargoyles above the courtyard chapel. I draw the Aisne, Enété, and the caves around Brindeau. Would you be angry if I told you I also drew you?

Luc

Marrakesh, Morocco

27 November 1912

Dear Luc,

I've drawn Mille Mots more times than I can count. I've drawn the caves and the chestnut tree and the light falling on the courtyard. I've drawn the row of copper pots in Marthe's kitchen, the vases along the mantel of your
maman
's salon, the mauve sofa in the studio upstairs. And I've drawn you. Would I be angry at anything you've sketched? Would I be angry that you are thinking of me?

I wish I had seen Paris while I was in France—really seen—that golden Paris you love so much. I wish I'd had a chance to capture it on my sketch pad, the way you are now. The museums. The puppet shows and omnibuses. The rum babas, the carousel, the trees in the park. Will you send me something of it? Because the only Paris I remember, from those few hours there, is not as bright.

Grandfather has spent longer here in Marrakesh than any of the other places. It has become less about scholarship and more about the brown-eyed widow. His passion always used to belong to linguistics, but now I don't know. Can love ignite the same way?

I've become so accustomed to wandering that I'm beginning to feel restless. I think he is, too, though he ignores it. He's run out of things to transcribe and has talked to everyone in the market three times over. If he is to ever find the source of his dialect, if he is ever to finish his book, he must move on. As we grow, we all must.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Jeudi, le 18 décembre 1912

Dear Clare,

You really should consider coming here when you're done wandering. I'll show you the Paris I love, the Paris that you never had a chance to see. And you could be accepted into one of the fine art schools, I'm sure. Remember those dreams you told me through a mouthful of mimolette? I worry that you've forgotten those in your wanderings. Where's your portfolio? Your letter of application? Where are those plans you once had?

Clare, you should, you must go. Find someplace where you can surround yourself with art. Someplace where you can breathe it in, smell the paint and freshly sharpened pencils, feel the wet of a brush on your fingertips. It's all well and good to be sitting in the marketplace with your sketchbook, drawing the world, but you need to be with other artists. You need to be appreciated. You will be.

Luc

Constantine, Algeria

25 January 1913

Dear Luc,

I can't think about that. About abandoning Grandfather? Now that we've left Marrakesh, now that he's left his widow friend, all he has is me. If I leave, who will pour his tea the way he likes it, with a lump of sugar unmixed at the bottom? Who will make sure he has a fresh supply of the Alizarine ink he prefers? Who will be here to crank the phonograph while he scribbles away in his notebooks, then help him later decipher that hen scratch he calls an alphabet? I can't go off on my own. He's the only family I have left.

Dreams can change. People can grow up. These days I sell my drawings off the back of my bicycle when Grandfather's funds for the month have dried up yet again. I keep us in beans and couscous. Do you understand? I know you must, with all of your old talk about “steady work.” I know you can see why, sometimes, we have to choose the earth beneath our feet rather than the clouds above.

Algeria feels quieter than Morocco. Or perhaps that's me. Tomorrow's my birthday. At seventeen, maybe the world doesn't dance as much. Even Grandfather is melancholy, at having to leave his widow behind. He sits in our rooms, drinking strong tea. I can't stand to be in there. With the walls all hung over with dark rugs and cushions piled along the floor, it's stifling. I go out into the baking air, and I walk.

There are more women on the streets here, women wrapped in pale robes and veils, women in colored skirts and head scarves, draped in long shawls. I even see the occasional European woman, sweating in a tailored suit. Before, I would've noticed the patterns on their scarves, the colors of their stitched leather shoes. But now, all I can see is the way they drag their feet in the dust, the way their shoulders bend under their baskets, the way they tug on their veils, just for a second, to catch a mouthful of fresh air. With age, you no longer see the trappings on the surface. You start to see the people beneath.

Luc, do we have to grow older? Does the world have to change for us? Can we return to that one summer, when everything was beautiful? Can't we hold onto our childish dreams for a little longer?

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Samedi, le 22 février 1913

Dear Clare,

You mean to be an artist, so you shouldn't fear growing older. Experience brings depth, no? At least that's what Papa always says. Ask him, and there's more thoughtfulness in his later paintings, more nuance, more symbolism, more
expression.
“No art done with youthful naivety was ever worth discussing,” he says. “You must first
live
it.” We must all suffer to gain experience, to create things capable of emotion.

It's nothing creative compared to art, but sport can be the same. Between classes and studying, I have so little time, but what I have, I give to tennis. Stretched, exhausted days swinging a racket, leaning up against evenings of loneliness, quiet cups of
café
. My goal is no longer a gold medal tacked to the wall. It's no longer to have my name in the record books alongside the greats. It's to do the best I can. It's to be a better me.

Bauer is in it for the competition, I know it, but he helps me to push myself. We'll play wherever we can. Clay, grass, parquet. Solid ice, if someone propped a net over it. We're stronger, faster, trickier. Bauer has developed this drop shot that gets me every time. He'll lob balls deeper and deeper into my court until they become almost a yawn. He'll wait until I move exactly where he wants me, until I stop thinking so hard about every stroke, then he'll drop a shot just over the net, well out of my reach. I should have learned to expect those shots by now. But I don't. It's so easy to trust Bauer. He lulls me with the easy shots, then blindsides me with the unexpected drop shots. He knows how to set me up to lose. He's up right now on games won, 257 to 228. Once I remember to be wary, I'll turn that around.

Luc

Laghouat, Algeria

31 March 1913

Luc,

We've only just arrived in Laghouat, but we may be moving yet again. The dialect Grandfather has been chasing, sniffing out scraps here and there, he thinks he's found it. But we have to trek to the Senegal River. He was ready to set off with nothing but the phonograph strapped to his back, but I've told him we can't leave right away. We need to be sure we have a stock of ink, paper, rice, dried beans, tea, chlorine, quinine tablets. We need to set up for our mail to be collected. We'll be out of contact for however long it takes to track down a dialect. This is more than packing up to move to yet another city. This is an expedition. But we can manage.

But you, Luc, can you? You let Stefan Bauer trick you again and again. And you still think he is to be trusted? I could have told you two years ago that he wasn't. If I didn't think you'd have figured it out by now, if I didn't want to let the past be the past, I would have.

I won't let anyone trick me, not anymore. Not the fruit sellers, not the paper merchants, not the beggars in front of the Parish House. And not Stefan Bauer. I've spent these past years wandering Iberia and Africa, learning to navigate foreign streets, learning to manage our odd little household, learning to think for myself. Learning not to be as starry-eyed and unquestioning as I once was. I direct my own life and I can do it alone. I've grown too much to let someone else, for even a moment, feel they can outsmart me.

But it's part of growing older, this deciding for ourselves. This deciding who we can trust and who we cannot. The day you led me to that stool in the kitchen and asked if I could trust you, I knew I could. You didn't push, you didn't intrude, you didn't offer yourself uninvited. But what you gave, in those spoonfuls and bites of friendship, was perfect. They told me that, in my grief and loneliness, here was someone I needed. Here, surprisingly, was something I wanted.

But when you continue to put your trust in people like Stefan Bauer, it makes me wonder if I was wrong. I thought you knew more of the world than that. I thought you were clever enough to see when someone wasn't really a friend.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Dimanche, le 4 mai 1913

Dear Clare,

I don't know what I've said wrong.

Bauer, he's always been tricky on the court. He's always taken this game far more seriously than I have. It's friendly competition. Fierce across the net, yet amiable across the café table afterwards. I don't know if I'd count him a friend, but a friendly acquaintance? Someone I can trust? He's given no reason for me to think otherwise.

But you, Clare, I'd trust you to the Amazon and back. I'd trust you across the Sahara, through the Himalayas, from here to Algeria. I've spent all these years writing to you, confessing to you, sharing with you pieces of myself that I'd never before shared. And now to have you write to me like none of that matters? I don't know what to think.

And with you leaving, maybe I won't ever know. Maybe you won't write back. Of course I'll still be here, worrying, waiting, wishing that I hadn't shaken your trust like that. What else can I do?

I don't know what I'll do without you waiting at the other end of my letters. Is that too sentimental of me? Before I met you, the world was an uncertain, daunting place. But now, a letter from you brings me back to that summer. I read your words and I can hear the Aisne and the cicadas in each one. Like neither of us ever left Mille Mots. I don't understand it, but seeing a sand-dusted envelope from you, and I suddenly feel as invincible as we did then.

So, if you don't mind, I'll keep writing to you. When you return from the depths of Africa, my letters will be waiting for you. And, as always, Clare, my thoughts.

Luc