Ondine, a Girl at a Window
IT WAS RAINING SOFTLY OUTSIDE Ondine’s window when she awoke at dawn to find a shadowy female figure standing over her like an angel.
“Wake up, Ondine!” her mother whispered. “They’ve taken your father to the hospital. I’m going there now, so you will have to run the breakfast service today. Monsieur Renard has already delivered bread and brioche, so just make the coffee. Then for lunch, have the waiters serve cold terrines and salads. As for your artist’s lunch at the villa, you can make him a quiche.”
“What’s the matter with Papa?” Ondine asked groggily, sitting up.
“His heart again. He was working on the receipts and bills, but then he came into the kitchen looking peculiar, and he said, ‘Something is wrong—I can’t see the numbers…’ He collapsed right there on the kitchen floor. Monsieur Renard will drive me to the hospital. Listen, before you go up to the villa, you must pay the delivery boy when he comes with the eggs. Did you hear me, Ondine?”
“Yes, yes,” Ondine said, awake and worried now. “Pay the boy. Where is the money for him?”
“The fourth canister on the top shelf of the pantry,” her mother said hurriedly. “Get up. Now!”
She swept out of the room, and Ondine heard her footsteps rapidly going down the staircase.
The rest of the morning was a blur of breakfast service and lunch preparation. Word had already spread throughout the village that her parents were at the hospital, so the diners were prepared to be grateful for whatever they got to eat today. By the time Ondine had all the platters ready on the big kitchen table for the waiters to grab, the weather was not cooperating; it had grown so windy that they were once again going to have to close the terrace and serve lunch indoors instead.
Ondine was packing up her supplies for Picasso when the delivery boy came with eggs and butter and cream from the farm. She went into the pantry and counted the fourth ceramic canister, which was labelled herbes but was instead filled with coins her mother squirreled away as petty cash. The fact that she’d revealed to Ondine where the money was hidden proved the seriousness of the situation. Ondine’s fingers shook as she opened it, and she dropped the canister’s cork top on the floor. Hurriedly she went to pay the boy, then she returned to the pantry to put the canister exactly as her mother kept it.
When Ondine stooped to retrieve the cork top from where it had rolled under the shelves, she noticed a loose brick in the wall. She touched it, intending to push it back into place, but it fell out in her hand. There were several other loose bricks around it, and when she took them all out, she saw a deep, wide space, in which she discovered a bundle of white envelopes tied together with string. Ondine wondered just how much money her mother had been squirreling away for a rainy day. She could not resist drawing the bundle out to feel how weighty it was.
But she was startled to see that the top envelope, which had been stamped and postmarked, was not addressed to her mother—the handwriting said Ondine. And, it had already been opened.
“This letter was mailed to me!” Ondine exclaimed, stunned. “What’s it doing here?” She untied the string carefully so that later she could put everything back as she’d found it.
There were five letters, every single one for Ondine, each postmarked from a different exotic port of call. Tunis. Algiers. Morocco. On closer examination the handwriting was startlingly familiar.
“Luc!” Ondine cried. She sank to the floor, allowing the letters to drop into her lap. She stared at them uncomprehendingly for several minutes before she picked up the one that had lain on top:
My sweet Ondine,
I have seen the most wonderful and terrible things that no postcard can do justice to, so I send you my thoughts instead. The world is a bigger place with a smaller heart than we ever imagined. A sailor’s life is not enriching me quickly enough to please your father. But don’t worry, I will work hard, and somehow I will find a way to make our fortune…
Ondine had to keep blinking away her tears in order to continue reading. She reached blindly for another letter in hope of better news. It, too, had already been opened:
Chère Ondine,
I think of you every morning as the sun comes up. Each day I wonder—Is she ill? Is she still alive? Is she just angry with me for going away? Perhaps you feel guilty because you no longer want to wait for me? Or have you simply stopped loving me? Whatever you tell me will be all right. Only, please tell me. Love, Luc
Her mind was whirling and her breath was coming out in short, hard gasps. “What’s he talking about?” she wondered, bewildered. “Why should he accuse me of not writing to him?” She seized the other letters, and all were entreaties for her to tell him that she was alive and well, and to explain her silence. All but the last one, which said:
Darling Ondine,
I am very sick with fever. They have called for a doctor. I will ask a friend to mail this letter. In case I never make it home, know that I love you forever. And please keep one small corner of your heart free for my poor soul to come to rest. Adieu, Luc
“Luc!” she wailed in despair. She felt as if a fog had crept into the room, so thick that all sounds were muffled and she could barely make out her own voice when she whispered, “But I did write to him in care of his ship! Why didn’t he get my letters—?”
A terrible thought crossed her mind, and she peered again into the slot in the wall, dreading what she’d find. Sure enough, farther in there was another similar packet—of her own letters to Luc. In utter disbelief, she seized them.
“But I gave all these to the postman myself. I know I did!” Ondine cried, frantically sorting the unopened envelopes. Just seeing them again made her vividly recall how she’d felt writing these letters, her hopes progressively fading with each new attempt to contact Luc. And how, each time she wrote another one and handed it to the postman, he’d glanced at it, seen that it was addressed to Luc, and shaken his head as if he thought her very silly indeed.
The answer came to her swiftly. “I gave them to the postman, but he must have been told not to mail them—to bring them to Papa instead. My letters never got past our café.”
And all this time her parents had insisted that Luc abandoned her, while his letters—and her own—lay languishing just a few feet away from the kitchen table where Ondine worked every day. Her mother had hidden them here like a guilty secret; perhaps she thought she’d explain it to Ondine one day. Her father must have intended her to marry Monsieur Renard all along; the baker might not go into partnership with her family unless he got a young wife to work for him as part of the bargain. That must be why her father had turned Luc away. In an awful way, it was all starting to add up.
The tears that had been streaming down her cheeks had finally stopped; and now her wet face made her feel chilled.
“But how could they do this to me?” Ondine gasped, shocked. “And how could they be so cruel to poor Luc? He was so honest and trusting, obeying their command with his entire life!”
At first she sought to find a more humane explanation. Maybe her parents truly believed that they were protecting her from a ne’er-do-well, who, no matter how much money he earned, could never measure up to a man with such standing in the community as Renard. Perhaps if Ondine’s brothers had survived the Great War and returned to take care of the business, things might have been easier for her; as it was, Ondine was her parents’ only hope to obtain more financing and security. One thing was certain; they absolutely didn’t want Luc around.
But now Ondine felt as if her heart were being gripped by a cold hand. She checked the envelopes again; yes, Luc’s letters had stopped three months ago. There had been nothing since then. Either he’d recovered and found another girl to marry…or something much worse had happened.
“Murderers,” she cried. “All of us. We all killed Luc, because we made him go away from everything he loved here. And for what? If we hadn’t interfered, he’d be alive, as he deserves to be! Luc and I would have been married by now, maybe even have a baby, and a happy life together. But now it will never happen!” She clapped a hand to her mouth, having finally said aloud the very words she’d tried so hard, all this time, to not even think about.
Reality was burning away the fog of shock, and she saw her whole life under this sharp new lens. Instinctively she felt that no one must know she’d found these letters. Her parents might come down hard on her, even restrict her from leaving the house just to ensure that she got to the altar. She put the letters back exactly as they’d been. Trembling, she struggled to her feet and returned to the kitchen.
While Ondine was packing up Picasso’s lunch, Dr. Charlot arrived to dine with his fellow Wise Men, and he had a reassuring message for Ondine. “Your father gave us all quite a scare! But I believe he’s out of danger now. Your mother will stay with him at the hospital awhile longer, but she wanted me to tell you she’ll be back here in time to run the dinner service. Don’t worry, my dear, he’s going to be all right.” He smiled and patted her shoulder before he returned to his table. Ondine nodded mutely.
But she was seized with a wild urge to break something, to stab someone, to throw herself off a cliff, to do damage to something, anyone—just to exorcise this suffocating pain from her chest. She’d once seen a madwoman who tore her own hair and clothes. Now Ondine thought she understood why.
She carried her hamper outside, climbed aboard her bicycle and pedaled furiously, flashing past the harbor, scarcely noticing that the wind was making the sea kick up angrily with choppy waves, and the sky was filled with heavy, lowering dark clouds like ominous battleships—grey, ponderous, threatening.
When she reached the driveway of Picasso’s villa, the entire sky had gone as black as night, but it was no match for her own savage mood. She saw that there was only one lighted window in the house, upstairs in his workroom. She found the kitchen door unlocked as usual. She put the hamper on the table, went to the foot of the stairs and listened. All she could hear was the low rumble of distant thunder coming in from the sea, slowly moving closer, sounding like a growling beast prowling across the sky.
Ondine did not want to set the table. She did not want to cook. She didn’t want to serve anyone. She only wanted to scream at the top of her lungs and wake up the dead, shout to anyone who would listen, tell them about the grave injustice that had been done to her and Luc.
Silently she drifted up the staircase and glided like a ghost along the hallway to Picasso’s workroom. She had an idea that only he could help her now.
He was not there, but tall, metallic lamps stood like giants, still turned on, burning brightly. They appeared to be the professional lighting that photographers used. The lamps had been on so long that they gave off a threatening smell of overheated metal.
“He must have worked all night,” Ondine realized. “He’ll burn the whole place down.” She began turning off each one, careful not to touch the hot aluminum shades.
Down the street, the thunder crept steadily closer, rumbling in derision, as if the devil himself were laughing at her. Ondine turned off the last lamp; but a moment later, a sudden, blinding flash of lightning made every window in the room seem filled with fire, illuminating two paintings that were propped up in the corner where she was standing.
“That’s my pose! God, look what he did to me!” Ondine exclaimed, gazing at the first canvas, recognizing her blue checked dress and long curly dark hair. But it was like peering into a fun-house mirror. Both eyes were stuck on one side of her face, which was attached to a long goosey neck, which in turn seemed attached at the throat to two breasts shaped like oranges that were popping out of her unbuttoned dress. Meanwhile her hands looked like claws, and her feet were like flippers. And why were her toenails and fingernails black? She didn’t even wear polish!
Yet here was Femme à la montre—she knew it because of the mirror, the comb and wristwatch, and the crown of yellow forsythia in her hair. Aghast, she turned to look at the second painting.
“Me again. But it’s no better!” she said in dismay. Same pose with her blue dress and a mirror—but the yellow flowers and the wristwatch were gone, and now there was a second figure sitting on the floor who looked like a faceless wire mannequin with the same curly hair as Ondine’s.
Everything was a joke to him! He’d called her a goddess, a Greek statue. Yet how people would laugh at her if they knew she’d sat here posing for this, without any pay, without any thanks, hoping that Picasso would guide her to a better life.
“So he sees me as an ugly, foolish creature. Well, my life is a joke,” she said bitterly. “I’m to be sacrificed like a lamb to Monsieur Renard. They might as well roast me in one of his ovens! No, I won’t go to church and marry the baker! I won’t be his slave. They killed Luc—but they won’t own me.”
She felt like throwing herself out the window then and there, into the storm that was raging relentlessly, and she didn’t care if the wind picked her up and blew her straight out to sea. This sudden urge for self-annihilation felt so real that it frightened her. Feeling momentarily lightheaded, she swayed slightly, and looked around for a chair or something to catch hold of.
“Zzzz-zhzz!” A snoring noise came from down the hallway, puncturing the silence. The dark, brooding morning must have discouraged Picasso from getting out of bed. Only a city man could indulge in the luxury of sleeping so late. Ondine marched over to the room where his snores were coming from, and peered in the open doorway.
Picasso slept peacefully in his bed, oblivious to the storm. She crept closer to the foot of the bed, then stopped and stood there, staring. He’d kicked off the covers in his sleep, like an infant, and was lying on his back naked, blissfully snoring away, his body completely exposed, right down to his wiry pubic hair, from which sprung his penis, perkily alert, like an arrow.
“Here lies the Minotaur,” Ondine murmured, horrified and fascinated. “He devours all the women who enter his labyrinth. Do they die of pleasure, or agony?”
She’d never looked at a man’s zizi before—not even Luc’s when he stole into her bed; she’d only felt his friendly arousal nudging against her under the covers in the dark. Yet even with Luc’s tender love, sex had involved an invasion that made her bleed.
“I may as well throw myself on the Minotaur instead of out the window, and I don’t care what he does with me after this!” Ondine imagined herself impaled upon him—bloody, spent, yet somehow, triumphant. She felt a surge of something else besides rage swelling inside her, arising from all her pent-up, frustrated desires for love and independence and the power of a better destiny.
“I want to be the one who is rich and happy. I want to be the one who takes all the pleasure!”
Defiantly she slipped off her underdrawers beneath her dress, just as she had when she posed for him. But now she wanted to rid herself of this blue dress, too, that she’d worn so many times for Picasso—and in church for Monsieur Renard.
“You don’t see me as I really am,” she whispered to the slumbering figure as she unbuttoned her dress. “Nobody does!” With an outraged gesture she yanked it up over her head and hurled it to the floor.
“There. Look at me! Am I not beautiful?”
The thunder crashed directly above now, like a cannon reverberating through the house to its very foundation. It woke Picasso, and with a shocked gasp he sat up suddenly.
“Who’s there?” he said in a low voice, squinting and automatically pulling up the sheets. “Ondine? Is that you? What’s the matter?”
“Everything,” she said, coming to the side of the bed.
“What do you want?” he asked in surprise, still trying to see her.
Ondine didn’t answer but trembled as she stepped out of the shadows. He saw that she was naked, and he studied her face, assessing the situation. Then suddenly he opened his arms to her. When she rushed in, he enveloped her in an embrace that surprised her with its welcoming warmth.
“Chère Ondine,” he murmured soothingly. “Why have you come to me now?”
“Because I want—” Ondine began, then found that she could not speak. She tried again. “I want to know…I want to feel. I want—I want—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, softly stroking her hair away from her cheek. He pulled her closer to his chest, and his arms around her made her feel as if, like Zeus, he could cloak her in something that the storm could not touch. At the same time, his persistent stroking ignited a spark that unleashed the hunger seething inside her—for, having tirelessly served the appetites of so many people who came and went from the café, Ondine suddenly realized she’d been starving for love all along. Now, instead of working hard to please this man and her parents, it felt like finally somebody wanted to please her.
And although she could not say exactly how it began, she found that he was kissing her and she was kissing him, and her heart was beating faster, faster, faster, as she’d once felt when she was a child climbing up a great tree, higher and higher, her limbs growing taut with strength, her blood like a fire urging her on, and her mind dizzy with the risk—how high could she go without falling?
He was kissing her breasts as she clung to his strong neck; and to Ondine’s surprise her body told her that for quite some time she’d been living in an aching state of arousal, stimulated by each visit into his world, each picture he painted—her flesh already so exquisitely pliable that she felt triumphantly indestructible as he thrust himself inside her soft wetness. Nothing could stop her now, not even when he began to withdraw while he was still hard; she only seized him hungrily and held him long enough to take what she needed for her pleasure before he, too, surrendered. And for once, her own greedy strength triumphed over everyone and everything—over anger, over sorrow, over death itself.
LATER, SHE HEARD the rain, like the distant rushing of an Alpine stream pouring down from the heavens in a benediction, washing away the thunder and lightning, whispering and soothing through the trees, making them toss their heads like ladies shaking their hair dry after a day of bathing in the bright blue sea.
Ondine felt fearless now; all the rage was spent from her limbs, and her muscles and bones were relaxed and strong again. She sat up and took a folded blanket from the foot of the bed to open up and wrap around her. She liked its looseness; she did not want to be restricted by clothes yet.
She would have gotten out of bed and gone to the window to drink in the fresh air, but now Picasso stirred and gave her a smile like sunlight. Ondine experienced this perfect moment as an acute grace, so peaceful that she knew, no matter what happened afterwards, nothing could ever take it away from her. I am alive. I am a creature to be prized. He has given me this recognition and I will take it.
Picasso leaned close to her now and picked up a long spiral of her hair that had fallen over her forehead, gently putting it back into place with the rest of her curls.
“Belle Ondine,” he murmured in admiration. She sighed.
“Beautiful,” she repeated. For a moment she remained silent, letting the word reverberate in the air. Then, without reproach she said, “I saw the paintings you made of me.”
“Ah,” he commented. “Well, you don’t even have to say it. I know what most women think. ‘Is that how you see me? I don’t look like that at all!’ Am I right?” His alert dark eyes were watchful for an answer.
She mulled it over, then offered the only explanation she could honestly come up with.
“I guess it’s very difficult,” she said thoughtfully.
“What is?” he asked, looking wary now.
“To paint people’s souls right into the flesh on their faces,” she offered. “Like Rembrandt.”
At first, he howled with laughter. Ondine smiled uncertainly, then shrugged.
“Humph!” he exclaimed, taken aback. “What do you know about Rembrandt?”
“I’ve seen a picture of his,” Ondine explained. “Just a girl looking out a window.”
“Oh, that one!” Picasso nodded.
“You’ve seen it, too?” she asked eagerly. “I see it every day in the café. And yet she is a mystery to me. Isn’t it incredible—to make a person look real and yet so much more than ordinary?”
“You think I couldn’t do it?” Picasso said abruptly, sitting upright and reaching for his clothes. “Come with me to my studio, right now.”
Calmly, still partially wrapped in her blanket, she followed. The soles of her bare feet seemed to feel every grain of the wooden floor, like a healthy animal stalking through the forest.
“Go to that window where the sun is,” he ordered, for indeed, the sky was clearing now. She hesitated until he said challengingly, “You want to be my immortal Girl-at-a-Window, don’t you? Then pose like her, but leave your shoulders bare.”
She could not resist saying, “Look, there’s a rainbow out there! What perfect colors.”
“Hmm,” he observed gruffly, “you know, you’re not like most females, especially when you make love. You’re too…aggressive, like a man. A woman can be strong—but not in bed!” A faint tone of paternal disapproval crept into his voice. “You’re not a virgin, are you?”
Ondine looked away defiantly and warned, “Don’t spoil it.” She didn’t want a father or a priest lecturing her now.
“Then turn your head more this way and be still,” Picasso growled, picking up his brush.
For a long while, all was quiet. Then she asked curiously, “What’s Paris like?”
“Dirty and wonderful,” Picasso replied, still looking preoccupied.
“If I came to Paris would you—” Ondine began, but he looked up so sharply that she said hurriedly, “—introduce me to people who run the restaurants? I want to be a great chef there.”
“Everyone always wants the glory, but nobody wants to do the work,” Picasso muttered. “It takes years to learn a trade, any trade. Assuming one has the talent to begin with.”
“Hard work doesn’t scare me. I’ve worked hard for years!” Ondine exclaimed. “Whatever I don’t know, I’ll learn fast. You can see that. You know I have the gift for cooking,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Picasso conceded, “You do. But in Paris all the head chefs are men. They won’t give a top job to a woman. Besides, a big restaurant kitchen is no place for a girl. They’re full of bad men working there. They’d rape you in the basement the day you arrived. What’s the matter with you? You belong here. Why do you want to run away from lovely Juan-les-Pins?”
“My parents are planning to marry me off to a man I can’t possibly love!” Ondine cried passionately. “I must get away and cook on my own.”
He stopped painting momentarily. “Listen to me,” he said sternly, “Paris is no place for a sweet country girl like you. They’ll eat you alive. You can’t just find a job. You have to know somebody.”
“I know you,” Ondine pointed out. But she could see that he looked fairly alarmed at the idea, and clearly he had no desire whatsoever to have her turn up in Paris looking for favors. Remembering what the nuns sometimes did to place their students in positions of governesses and ladies’ maids, she said softly, “Won’t you at least write me a letter of recommendation, saying that I am an artiste in the kitchen, just as you told Miss Dora Maar? I could use that anywhere.”
Picasso wore the trapped expression of a small boy ensnared by his own boasts. He returned to his canvas, muttering, “Of course, of course. I’ll do it tomorrow. But don’t blame me if you hate where you end up! Those kitchen jobs pay shit. You’ll die an old, hardworking peasant unless you learn to take yourself seriously.”
“What do you mean?” Ondine asked, intrigued.
“If you want something in life,” Picasso said, looking hard at her now with those fearless black eyes, “you don’t ask nicely and politely for it. You don’t write letters. You have to kill for it.”
“Kill?” Ondine echoed. “Kill who?”
“Anyone who gets in your way,” Picasso answered. He saw her doubtful expression. “You think I’m wrong? Listen, every time you cook something for me, you have to kill it first. It doesn’t matter if it’s a carrot or a pig,” he said bluntly. “You have to kill something, every day, just to live.”
Ondine pondered this. She could think of people she’d like to kill. The postman, for one.
“So you might as well stay home in Juan-les-Pins,” Picasso said, putting down his brush now, “and let a man do the killing for you, while you have his babies.”
But Ondine smiled defiantly to herself. One thing she’d already learned today, to her surprise, was the strength of her own ravenous appetite, the discovery of her own powerful teeth and claws.
“Can I see my portrait now?” she asked, observing that he had stopped painting.
“It’s not finished,” Picasso said, “but yes, you may look.”
Ondine padded across the floor and peered at it. “Oh!” she cried. “It is beautiful!”
Like the other canvases it was stretched upon wood, but this one was smaller. It was indeed A-Girl-at-a-Window—and it was a Picasso, but what sort of Picasso? More tender, natural, eternally human. She’d never seen him paint this way before. This girl in the picture had Ondine’s face, of that there could be no doubt. Her flesh glowed with the radiance of youth, health and vitality. Her eyes were alight with curiosity, her mouth just hinting at her innermost thoughts, her hair in all its colors seeming as if every expressive strand was an echo of her spirit.
“It’s so different from anything I’ve seen you do,” she said quietly.
“Oh, well, the critics will say I’ve gone back to my Rose Period,” Picasso said ruefully.
“What does that mean?” Ondine asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” Picasso answered. “It’s what they’re born to do—chatter like squirrels. Then the dealers will convince some cautious businessman, who’ll buy it to decorate his new house so he can tell his friends, Here’s my Picasso! Don’t worry, it’s not one of the ugly ones!”
Ondine stood before the portrait, her hands clasped. “Oh, how can you bear to sell this painting to people who only want it because you’re famous?” she asked softly. “If I made this I would never let anyone take it away, unless I knew that they loved it and understood what makes it beautiful.”
Picasso looked truly touched. “Fine! It’s yours,” he said impulsively, with a sweep of his hand.
Ondine was thrilled. “Really?” she asked, awed. “I would love to have it! It would bring me luck, I am sure.”
“Ah,” he said sagely. “But—what kind of luck?”
“When will it be finished?” she asked eagerly.
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” Picasso said vaguely. “And now, chère Ondine, I’m hungry. So, feed me!”