The Wheel Turns: Ondine and Picasso

THE NEXT DAY THE BIRDS singing exultantly outside her window seemed to be calling to Ondine to awaken and hurry, hurry to greet the day. But she rose feeling unsettled and a bit guilty about that incident in the cabana, right on the Blessed Virgin’s day! How had things gone so far? She realized that all this time she’d felt quite overwhelmed—first with the challenge of cooking and pleasing her Patron as her parents wanted; and then finding his free-spirited orbit so liberating from everyday life.

But now that the warm weather was bringing more people out and about in the streets, she couldn’t take a chance of being paraded around in public as Picasso’s girl. Did he expect her to be sexually available at his beck and call, whenever he felt like taking a day off? As exciting as it was, she didn’t want to end up just another jealous woman in his harem, fighting tooth and claw over a man who, she was beginning to realize, didn’t really take women seriously. The only thing sacred to him was his art, which was why she’d felt safer—and more exalted—as his model.

“I’ll just have to tell him, I’ll be his cook and his model, but not his concubine,” she resolved.

Yet outside, she could feel that everything was suddenly in full flower, with every leaf, bud, bird, animal and human bursting with the thrill of being alive. She felt her heart beating joyfully in response. She was bringing Picasso a cold asparagus salad and grilled trout; and a pastry that would melt on his tongue, served with cream and delicate Alpine strawberries—tiny, juicy and sweet as candy.

As she cycled past the harbor she detected the distinct odor of wet paint. At first she imagined it was wafting down from Picasso’s house. Then she saw that it was boat paint from the brushes of workmen on the summer yachts. When at last she pushed her bicycle through Picasso’s gate, she felt a strange thrill. Would he paint her today? Would she relent and let him make love to her, after all?

Then she stopped short. The front door of the villa was wide open, and there was a truck parked in the driveway. Ondine had to veer around it to get to the side door. And when she entered the kitchen, a strange woman with a towel around her head was pushing a wet mop across the floor.

“What’s this? Why are you here in my kitchen? I must cook now,” Ondine said sharply.

The charwoman just kept mopping, speaking only to chide Ondine when she walked across the wet floor. Ondine went into the parlor. Men were coming down the stairs carrying boxes of paintings and the big metal lights. They moved heavily, quickly, as if in a great hurry, taking everything outside. Ondine felt a surge of panic, seeing all those familiar items like old friends now vanishing from her life.

“Where is Picasso?” Ondine cried.

One of the men, a younger one, stopped momentarily and said, “Who?”

Ondine recovered enough to correct herself. “Monsieur Ruiz.” The young man shrugged with a smile of regret that he could not be more helpful to a pretty girl on a warm sunny day in May. Ondine rushed up the staircase, dodging the other men. Picasso’s studio was completely emptied out. Already it had reverted to being an ordinary guest bedroom, with a brand-new bed and table standing where his easel used to be. In the next room, a laundress was stripping the linens off the very mattress where Ondine and Picasso had lain. “Are you the new tenant’s maid?” the laundress asked doubtfully.

“No! I am Monsieur Ruiz’s chef. Didn’t he leave me a letter?” Ondine asked breathlessly.

The woman shook her head. “They never say goodbye,” she said dryly. “It’s like the circus when it leaves town. Just more trash for us to clean up.”

Ondine searched every room herself. All signs of Picasso had evaporated into thin air. Not even a cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray. No jaunty little painted notes for her, no letter of recommendation. She’d half-expected to find it propped up against the fruit bowl. But even that was empty.

How could he just leave like that? she wondered with a hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. A single sob escaped her as a terrible thought occurred: Nothing wonderful will ever happen to me again.

She felt gutted, as if he’d taken the most vital part of her away with him. “He can’t be gone for good,” she whispered. But she recalled what now seemed like warning signs during their outing yesterday: parading around where he might be recognized by the crowds despite that ridiculous disguise; his festive air, as if the circus were in town—in fact, he’d behaved just as people do at the end of their holiday when they want to get all the fun they can out of their last day. And the way he’d taken her, in that dark cabana. Most of all, the way he’d said goodbye. Gently, regretfully. Adieu. Not his usual au revoir or à demain. Already his absence was palpable, leaving her absolutely nothing.

She dashed outside to the open back of the truck parked in the driveway, and without hesitation she climbed in among the curious moving men, insisting on examining every box of paintings. She had seen most of them before—but now there were some drawings of a new model who appeared over and over again—the photographer-lady, Miss Dora Maar, looking like a windswept force of nature with her sharp cat’s eyes and pale skin contrasting dramatically against her fashionably cut dark hair.

Would anyone ever believe that Ondine herself had known Picasso, cooked for him, loved him, posed for him? She only wanted to see one painting. The one that was hers. The one that was no longer here.

“Where is it?” she exclaimed, rushing back into the house, hoping that the moving men hadn’t found her Girl-at-a-Window yet. She frantically searched every closet until the charwoman told her to go home. Only then did Ondine think to ask for Picasso’s address in Paris, but the woman shrugged.

Ondine whirled around and rushed down the stairs to ask the moving men, but even before she reached the front door, they’d already closed up their truck, backed it out of the driveway and sped off down the hill. By the time she hopped onto her bicycle and pedaled after it, the truck had vanished.

When she returned to the café, her mother told her that a man working for Picasso had telephoned just after Ondine left, to inform her father that their services were no longer required and assuring him that they would be paid. Her father had already calculated the bill; and somehow it was this gesture that finally convinced Ondine.

Picasso was definitely gone.