Cooking for Picasso by Camille Aubray Read Free Book Online Page A

table was laid with crystal and china and glowing candlelight. The guests wafted inside, silhouetted against the light, looking just as Ondine had been taught that carefree angels moved about in heaven.
    She backed away, returning to the parking area where the limousine remained, but it was empty and the driver had disappeared. Clearly she was not going home in the same style in which she’d arrived. She would have no other choice but to walk back to the café tonight.
    The day had started out so promisingly and excitingly, but now, as Ondine trudged through the inky darkness of the streets, although the taste of champagne was still tingling on her tongue, she felt a certain bitterness in her heart. She even felt foolish for having hopes of a happier, better future where she might discover what kind of woman she was destined to become.
    “I’ll bet that, all over the world, rich and important people are just the same as this lady was tonight. So what makes me think I can go out into the Great World and be welcomed with open arms, when I’ve got no husband, no money and nothing to recommend me?” Ondine scornfully chided herself. “They’ll never let me in, and that means my life will
never
change, no matter what I do or where I go!”
    Yet as she reached the harbor, a shooting star flashed across the black sky with such dramatic beauty that Ondine caught her breath, and something new occurred to her.
    “Those people at the party tonight just
wish
they could meet Picasso, and I already have!
He
didn’t treat me like a gate-crasher. He liked me—he even asked my opinion of his work.”
    It dawned on her that perhaps today’s omens meant that she did not have to venture far away in pursuit of a better destiny. Maybe, just maybe, Picasso was bringing the Great World to her doorstep, right here in Juan-les-Pins.

Picasso, Juan-les-Pins, Spring 1936
    P ABLO P ICASSO WISHED HE HADN’T bothered to read today’s mail. It disrupted his newfound peace of mind, which was as delicate as a young green shoot in spring. At first, when he arrived in Juan-les-Pins, the forecast was not auspicious; the weather had gone damp and chilly, making him wonder if he’d made a mistake in retreating here out of season. For awhile he’d simply slept a dozen hours each day—and that itself was a miracle, after so many sleepless nights in Paris.
    Then, when he finally ran out of the provisions he’d travelled with, he put on an old coat and hat and slipped into town, roaming the small neighborhoods, enjoying the whole cloak-and-dagger drama of sneaking out of Paris and escaping here
incognito
. He gravitated to the lively, friendly Café Paradis, run by locals who seemed to know how to mind their own business. He’d ordered a good peasant stew of wild boar sausages and lentils, which warmed his blood and nourished his body and soul in a profound way, reminding him of his boyhood days in Spain. The rough red wine and the warm café seemed to wrap itself protectively around his shoulders like a blanket from his doting Italian mother.
    “
This
is just what I need,” Picasso told himself. “A month of it and I’ll be strong as a Miura bull!”
    But he also understood that his newly regained strength could so easily dissipate while tussling with those small decisions and tasks that he found so life-sapping, like the daily questions of, what to eat? What time? And where? Having to settle these Lilliputian things for himself simply exhausted him.
    So when the proprietor of the Café Paradis asked if he could be of more service, Picasso impulsively made an arrangement with Monsieur Belange to have his lunches brought up to him at the villa. This would hopefully become an anchor in his daily routine, ensuring that Pablo would not waste his energy with endless domestic indecision—therefore leaving him to his privacy and his work.
    Just making
that
decision had helped, because today he’d awakened earlier than usual, feeling alert and hopeful