“Why does everything you say sound so cryptic? I’m not used to it anymore. In America, everyone speaks what is on their mind clearly. With you, there are always shadows between the words.”
My mother examined my face. What was she looking for? What was she thinking?
Sebastian and I used to go for walks after dinner when we were younger and dissect the things my mother had said to us, trying to understand their meaning.
“I’ll attempt to be more specific, if you will. Tell me how you feel when you sit down to paint and can’t. What happens when you pick up a brush?”
I took a sip of the champagne and concentrated on the crisp, dry taste and the bubbles bursting on my tongue. What did happen? I wasn’t even sure I knew.
“When I sit down, I just stare at the canvas. I don’t know what I want to paint anymore. Certainly not what I was doing in New York. Not when I painted the series I showed you. Then I was searching for answers, not so much for me but to understand Clara and Monty and the passions that had destroyed their lives. I wanted to explore that kind of fervor. But my search put me on a circular path. Even though I kept moving, it was always in the same direction, and I kept returning to where I’d started. Now that I’m back in France, I want to step out of that circle. Find a new beginning. I don’t know if I can without putting on my blindfold, yet doing so is too great a risk. That last time was such a disaster.”
“You haven’t put on your blindfold since February? That’s almost five months ago.”
I nodded.
“Not since the night of the party?”
“That’s right.”
“And all you painted after that were a half dozen theater posters and the Beast series?”
“Yes. And since I’ve been back, I’ve haven’t done anything but sketch beach scenes, flowers . . .”
“No exploratories for paintings?”
I shook my head.
“I’d hoped your move to Mougins might improve things.”
“It’s almost as if I’ve gone blind for the second time.” My eyes filled with tears, but I held them back and choked on a sob. I wasn’t going to cry here on the terrace of the Carlton. I forced a joke. “And if you think this is hard on me, Sebastian is going mad.”
My mother squeezed my hand and laughed along with me. “I bet he is.”
“He keeps begging me to take just one commission for a shadow painting and try . . .” The tears threatened, but again, I held them back. “But I can’t. Never again.”
“No wonder you are so unhappy.” She reached up and stroked my cheek. “Ma petite belle, it’s what you do. You can stop for a while, but I don’t think you’ll ever really be happy unless you are creating the work you are destined for.”
“Then I won’t ever be—”
“La Lune!” a man called out, and my mother looked up.
I turned and followed her gaze as he approached our table. Extremely short, no taller than I, he had mad, dark, piercing black eyes and jet-black hair parted on the side and falling over his forehead. Despite his lack of height, he was muscular and wore typical fisherman clothes—a striped shirt, espadrilles, and pants rolled up at the ankles. Seeing my mother, his somber face had broken into a smile, and he embraced her warmly, kissing her first on one cheek, then the other.
“You look like you are part of the sky,” he said.
With her cerulean-blue dress and long ropes of blue-white pearls wound around her neck and hanging down her chest like falling bits of clouds, sitting against the powder-blue sky, he was right.
“I’d like to paint you just like this, right now,” he added, as he reached for a sketchbook.
He had his hand on it when my mother laughed that seductive dark laugh of hers that men always responded to. As this man also did. He inched closer, his eyes narrowed a bit, his lips pursed. But instead of looking amorous, there was something clown-like in his actions. “Let me kiss you, then, instead of drawing you.”
“Enough of this, Pablo. Do you know my daughter?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure, no. You’ve been hiding her from me. I wonder why.” The man bowed to me, took my hand, and kissed it with a flourish.
“Because she’s been living in America. Delphine”—she turned to me—“may I present to you the overly bold Pablo Picasso. Beware, part of his charm is that he encourages women to seduce him.”
He was, of course, already famous by 1925. Not with the global, iconoclastic fame that would eventually elevate him above mere mortals. But he was, along with Henri Matisse and Juan Gris, an artist whose work people were collecting in both France and the United States. He, like my mother, had arrived, as they said in New York. They were important. And his star shone even brighter than hers.
Having grown up in the art world and known Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Morisot, and Cassatt from the time I was a child, I was curious about Picasso. But I wasn’t in awe. Nothing those days created a sense of awe in me.
“A pleasure to meet you,” I said, as I peered into his dark yet blazing eyes. Did I see magick there? Or was I just imagining it because of his legend?
I had a bad habit of assuming qualities in someone before giving it full consideration. My mother had explained that as a result of my second sight and impulsiveness, I tended to overread people’s emotions and abilities. This habit, she told me, could prove dangerous if not controlled.
“I’ve seen some of your work in your brother’s gallery,” Picasso said. “I expected you to be good, considering who your mother is, but I didn’t expect you to be as original as you are. Your subject matter surprised me, I must admit.”
He was gazing at me intently, and I didn’t quite understand the nature of the stare. Flirting? Assessing? Searching?
“I’d like to know more about what you’re trying to find in your painting,” he continued. “Such originality must come at quite a price.”
I was flattered that he’d asked me what I was trying to accomplish, and I smiled to myself. Maman was right about him.
“They were dreams . . . nightmares of beasts. I thought if I put them down on the canvas . . . I might be able to control them.”
“They were dreams? They’ve stopped coming?”
“For a time,” I said.
“An intriguing response and one that I understand. You must come visit me at my studio. I want to learn more about your strange dreams. They’re similar to the direction my own work is going. Unusual for a woman, even a daughter of La Lune, to be traveling the same path as Picasso.”
“Don’t flirt with her, you old goat. Delphine is recovering from a miserable love affair.”
Like Matisse, Picasso was full of advice. “Yes, yes, I can see that in your eyes. But you can’t let it stop you from painting. This is the best moment to paint. Take all that misery, and turn it into colors and shapes. Paint it, Delphine. And after you do, come show it to me. I might want to buy it . . . or steal it.”
He was peering into my eyes as he spoke. I felt as if he was looking right inside of me, and there was nothing I could do to keep him away.
Chapter 20