I was discovering that Cornichons was full of artists.
“It’s kind of a colony,” Nina said.
“Like an ant colony,” Graham said.
We were sitting at their kitchen table having breakfast before I went across the street to start my first day at work with the Festival.
“The Festival is a kind of outgrowth of the artists being here. Cranston Muller is a friend of Berenice Boon. I think they went to school together. And she’s pretty big in the United States. She only paints pigs. I like that actually,” Nina said.
“My favorite is the Austrian,” Graham said.
“The Austrian?” I said. “How’d he get here among all the Americans? And how do the French feel about that? Having been occupied and all.”
Graham said, “A. They bear no ill will toward the Germans for having occupied their country. Or they don’t seem to. This was occupied territory so the Germans were actually here. They lived in the Abbey. No one seems to have objected. The only person who was in the French Underground was the plumber, Monsieur Poniard. And nobody likes him. And B. Mr. Burkhardt is Austrian, not German. Austria was occupied, too.”
Nina was quiet over her Fruit et Fibre cereal. “He says. He says he’s Austrian. But he told me the other day he was amazed at how much open space there was around here.”
I said, “Maybe it will be the Germans who will sweep through here on their way to Bordeaux.”
“Please, Hugo,” Nina said. “You haven’t been here a full day, and you already are proposing spy theories of your own. Now we’ll all be wondering if poor Franz Burkhardt is even really German, let alone Austrian. He could be a Russian.”
“He might very well be a spy,” Graham said. “His painting is terrible.”
“You don’t like the fact that he uses old cars as canvases and then paints them to look like other cars?” Nina said.
“He sounds great,” I said.
“Actually, that old Peugeot that he painted the word ‘Police’ on the side with red paint that was all drippy and looked like a five-year-old had done it I thought was pretty amusing,” Nina said.
“Do people buy them?” I said.
Graham got up and went over to the sink that looked as though it might date back to 1600 with the rest of the house. Nina and Graham were not kitchen and bathroom fanatics, which you might expect from Americans. Nina had explained to me they only had their tiny refrigerator because their American guests expected ice cubes. Otherwise, they shopped every day and didn’t really need it. From the sink Graham said, “He claims his cars are in all the major museums. We’ll have to check it out one of these days.”
“It’s not every piece of art you can drive to the museum that buys it,” I said.
“The biggest art star we have here is Dick Submariner. He really sells.”
“The local smart set calls him ‘Deeck Subleem.’ The sublime Dick. I don’t want to go there myself,” Nina said.
“And his paintings?” I said.
“They’re duplicates of French postage stamps. Exact duplicates. To size.”
“So you could frame a postage stamp and put it on your wall and say it was sublime.” I said I had to go. I got up from the table and put my cup and dish in the Stonehenge-period sink. It was very dark and cool in their kitchen. I liked it very much.
“Or you could mail a letter with a fifty thousand-dollar painting,” Graham said. “That would show a sublime indifference to the relative value of things.”
“I must away,” I said. “I’ll report back after my day with an entirely different order of artist. I’m sure no one is going to display a sublime indifference to the relative value of anything,” I said.
“Say hello to Toca Sacar for us,” Nina said. “He’s your director. I think we’re the only people that get his sense of humor. Maybe you will, too.”
“It’s almost undetectable,” Graham called after me.
Baby Theo was sitting in a small cardboard box in the lavender living room pretending he was driving a car when I left. Perhaps the talk of painted cars had inspired him.