Hunting and Gathering (6 page)

She sniffed, put two restaurant coupons on the table, and walked out.

 
Don't get emotional; the sudden departure has always been the apotheosis, the curtain's descent, on her mother's theatrics.

Usually the star would wait until after dessert, but it was true they'd been in a Chinese restaurant and her mother didn't especially like fried bananas, lychees, or other sorts of sickly-sweet nougats.

 
No. She mustn't get emotional.

It was never easy, but Camille had learned certain survival tricks long ago. So she resorted to her usual tactic and tried to focus on what she knew for sure. There were a few really simple tenets, full of common sense. Hastily assembled little crutches she could reach for when she had to see her mother. Because there wasn't much point in these forced encounters—absurd and destructive as they were—if her mother didn't get something out of them. And Catherine Fauque did get something out of them, for sure: being able to use her daughter as a doormat was very gratifying. And even if she often stomped off with an outraged flourish in the middle of dinner, she always went away satisfied. Satisfied and replete. With all her abject good faith and pathetic vindictiveness intact, and an ample supply of grist to her mill for next time.

 
Camille had taken a while to figure this out and, moreover, she hadn't managed it on her own. She'd had help. Some of the people who knew her, especially in the early days when she was still too young to judge her mother, had given her the keys to understanding her mother's attitude. But that was in the old days, and all those people who'd looked out for her then were no longer around.

And now the kid was having a very hard time of it.

She really was.

8

THE table had been cleared and the restaurant was emptying. But Camille didn't move. She kept smoking and ordering coffees so they wouldn't kick her out.

A toothless old Asian man in the back of the restaurant was jabbering and laughing to himself. The young woman who had waited on their table was standing behind the bar. She was drying glasses, and from time to time she scolded the old man in their language. He would frown, sit quietly for a minute, then start up again with his nonsensical monologue.

“Are you getting ready to close?” asked Camille.

“No,” the girl replied, putting a bowl down in front of the old man, “we stop serving but we stay open. You want another coffee?”

“No, no, thanks. Can I stay a little bit longer?”

“Of course! You can stay. As long as you're here, it gives him something to think about.”

“You mean I'm the one who's making him laugh like that?”

“You or anyone.”

Camille stared at the old man, then smiled at him.

 
Gradually, the anxiety her mother had plunged her into began to fade. She listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen: running water, pots and pans, the radio, and incomprehensible refrains in a shrill key which had the young girl jiggling her feet, keeping time. Camille watched the old man as he lifted long noodles with his chopsticks, dribbling broth down his chin, and she suddenly felt as though she were in the dining room of a real house.

 
There was nothing on the table in front of her other than her coffee cup and tobacco pouch. She moved them over to the next table and began to smooth the tablecloth.

 
Slowly, very slowly, she ran the flat of her hand over the cheap, stained paper that covered the table.

 
She went on doing this for several long minutes.

Her mind grew calmer and her heartbeat accelerated.

She was afraid.

She had to try.
You have to try.
Yes, but it's been such a long time since—

Ssh, she murmured to herself, ssh, I'm here. It will be fine. Look, it's now or never. Go on, don't be afraid.

She raised her hand a few inches from the table and waited for it to stop trembling. Good, you see? She reached for her backpack and rummaged inside: there it was.

She brought out the little wooden box and put it on the table. She opened it, took a small rectangular stone and rubbed it against her cheek; it was soft and warm. Then she unfolded a blue cloth and lifted out a stick of ink; there was a strong scent of sandalwood. Finally she unrolled a little mat of bamboo slats in which two brushes nestled.

The larger one was of goat's hair, and the other, much finer, of pig silk.

She stood up, took a pitcher of water from the counter and two phone books, and bowed slightly to the crazy old man.

 
She put the phone books on her seat so she'd be able to stretch her arms out without touching the table, poured a few drops of water onto the slate stone and began to grind the ink. The voice of her master echoed in her ear:
Turn the stone very slowly, little Camille. Oh, even slower than that! And longer. Maybe two hundred times because, you see, as you do that you're loosening your wrist and preparing your mind for great things . . . Don't think about anything anymore—stop looking at me, you naughty girl! Concentrate on your wrist, it will guide you for the first stroke and it is the first stroke alone which counts; that is what will give life and breath to your drawing.

 
When the ink was ready, she disobeyed her master and began with little exercises on a corner of the paper tablecloth to recover the memories, all too distant. She made five spots to begin with, from deepest black to the most diluted, to remind herself of the ink's colors, but then when she tried different strokes she realized she had forgotten almost all of them. A few remained: the loosened rope, the hair, the rain-drop, the rolled thread and the ox's hairs. Then came the points. Her master had taught her over twenty of them, but she remembered only four: the circle, the rock, the rice and the shiver.

Enough. Now you're ready. She picked up the finer brush between her thumb and index finger, held her arm above the tablecloth and waited a few more seconds.

The old man, still rambling on in his corner, encouraged her by closing his eyes.

 
Camille Fauque emerged from a long sleep, with a sparrow, then two, then three, then an entire flock in flight, birds with a mocking look in their eyes.

 
She hadn't drawn a thing in over a year.

 
 
AS a child she had never been talkative; she spoke even less then than she did now. Her mother had obliged her to take piano lessons and Camille hated it. Once, when the teacher was late, she'd picked up a thick Magic Marker and painstakingly drawn a finger on each key. Her mother had wrung her neck and her father, to make the peace, showed up the following weekend with the address of a painter who gave lessons once a week.

 
Not long after, her father died. Camille stopped speaking altogether. Even during her drawing lessons with Mr. Doughton (she pronounced it Doggton), whom she liked so much, even with him she would not speak.

 
The old Englishman didn't take offense, and he continued to come up with ways to teach her technique, even in silence. He would give her an example and she would copy it, merely moving her head to say yes or no. Between the two of them, and only there, in that place, things were fine. Her mute silence even seemed to suit them. He didn't have to struggle for the words in French, and she concentrated more readily than her fellow pupils.

 
But one day, when all the other pupils had left, he broke their tacit agreement and spoke to her while she was amusing herself with the pastels:

“You know, Camille, who you make me think of?”

She shook her head.

“A Chinese painter called Zhu Da. Do you want me to tell you his story?”

Camille nodded but he had turned around to switch off his kettle.

“I can't hear you, Camille. Don't you want me to tell you the story?”

Now he was staring at her.

“Answer me, young lady.”

She gave him a black look.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes,” she said finally.

He closed his eyes contentedly, poured a cup and came to sit next to her.

 
“When he was a child, Zhu Da was very happy . . .”

He took a swallow of tea.

“He was a prince of the Ming dynasty. His family was very rich and very powerful. His father and grandfather were painters and famous calligraphers, and little Zhu Da had inherited their gift. So just imagine, one day, when he wasn't even eight years old yet, he drew a flower, a simple lotus flower floating on a pond. His drawing was beautiful, so beautiful that his mother decided to hang it in their salon. She claimed that thanks to the drawing you could feel a fresh little breeze in the huge room and you could even smell the flower's perfume when you walked by the drawing. Can you imagine? Even the perfume! And his mother was surely not an easy person to please . . . With both a husband and a father who were artists, she must have seen a few things by then ...”

He took another sip from his cup.

“So, Zhu Da grew up in this carefree world full of pleasure, and he was sure that he too would be a great artist one day. Alas, when he turned eighteen, the Manchus seized power from the Mings. The Manchus were a cruel and brutal people who did not care for painters or writers. They forbade them to work, which was the worst thing anyone could do to them, as you can well imagine. Zhu Da's family knew no peace after that, and his father died of despair. From one day to the next the son, a mischievous kid who had loved to laugh, sing, say silly things and recite long poems, did the most incredible thing . . . Oh! Now who's this, then?” asked Mr. Doughton, turning to his cat, which had just settled on the windowsill. He then deliberately started a lengthy conversation in baby talk with the cat.

 
“What did he do?” Camille murmured, finally.

 
Mr. Doughton hid his smile in his whiskers and went on as if nothing had happened:

“He did the most incredible thing. Something you'd never imagine. He decided to stop speaking forever. Forever, do you hear? Not a single word would leave his lips! He was disgusted by the attitude of the people around him, those who denied their traditions and their beliefs just so they would be viewed favorably by the Manchus; he didn't want to speak to any of them ever again. Devil take them all! Every last one! Slaves! Cowards! So he wrote the word
Mute
on the door of his house, and if there were people who tried to talk to him all the same, he would unfold a fan in front of his face, on which he had also written
Mute
, and he'd wave it every which way to make them go away.”

 
Little Camille was captivated.

 
“The problem is that people can't live without expressing themselves. No one can. It's impossible. So Zhu Da, who, like everyone, like you and me for example, had a lot of things to say, Zhu Da had a brilliant idea. He went off into the mountains, far away from all those people who'd betrayed him, and he began to draw. And from then on, that is how he would express himself, how he'd communicate with the rest of the world: through his drawings. Would you like to see them?”

Mr. Doughton went to fetch a big black and white book from his shelves, and put it down in front of her.

“Look, isn't this beautiful? So simple. Just one stroke, and there you are. A flower, a fish, a grasshopper. Look at this duck, how angry it looks; or these mountains in the mist. And you see how he's drawn the mist? As if it were nothing, just an emptiness. And these chicks, see them? So soft you want to stroke them. Look, his ink is like down, his ink is soft . . .”

Camille was smiling.

 
“Would you like me to teach you to draw like this?”

She nodded.

“You want me to teach you?”

“Yes.”

 
When everything was ready, when he had finished showing her how to hold the brush, and explaining to her how important the first stroke was, she was puzzled. She didn't really understand what she was supposed to do, and she thought she had to complete the entire picture in one stroke, without lifting her hand. It was impossible.

 
She thought about it for a long time, then looked around, and stretched out her arm.

Camille drew a long wavy line, a bump, a point, another point, brought her brush back down in a long wiggly stroke, then came back to the initial wavy line. She decided to cheat when the teacher wasn't looking, and lifted the brush to add a big black spot and six little half-strokes. She'd rather disobey than draw a cat without whiskers.

Malcolm, her model, was still sleeping in the window and Camille, eager to be true to life, finished her drawing with a fine rectangle around the cat.

 
She then got up and went to stroke the cat, and when she turned around, she saw her teacher was looking at her strangely, almost angrily:

“Did you do this?”

So he had seen her picture, seen that she had lifted the brush off the paper several times. She made a face.

“Did you do this, Camille?”

“Yes.”

“Come over here, please.”

Not very proud of herself, she went and sat beside him.

 
There were tears in Mr. Doughton's eyes.

“This is magnificent, what you've done, you know. Magnificent. You can hear the cat purring. Oh, Camille.”

He reached for a big paint-splattered handkerchief and began noisily blowing his nose.

“Listen, lass, I'm just an old fellow and a bad artist to boot, but listen carefully now. I know that life's not easy for you, I imagine it's not always very cheery at home and I heard about your dad, but . . . No, don't cry . . . Here, take my handkerchief. But there's one thing I've got to tell you: people who stop talking go mad. Zhu Da, for example, I didn't tell you this before, but he went mad and he was very unhappy as well. Very very unhappy and very very mad. He only found peace again when he was an old man. You're not going to wait to be an old woman, now, are you? Tell me you're not. You're very gifted, you know. You're the most gifted of all the students I've ever had, but that's not a reason, Camille; that's not a reason. The world today is not like in Zhu Da's time and you have to start speaking again. You've got to, do you understand? If you don't, they'll put you away with people who really are mad, and no one will ever see all your beautiful pictures.”