Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz Read Free Book Online

always sported a fresh red carnation in her
buttonhole, that she jumped in and out of taxis, too busy to walk from one job
to another; it was as Maggy that she danced all night at Le Jockey and La
Jungle to the music of a tango or a shimmy; as Maggy that she moved to the
insinuating melody of the beguine at La Bal Nègre where she felt as foreign to
that world of dancers who had been born in Martinique and Guadeloupe, as did
Cocteau and Scott Fitzgerald, who danced there as well.
    Maggy was invited to the
twenty-round boxing matches at the Cirque d'Hiver, which she attended with
several masculine admirers to protect her from the rough crowd, and she went
often to the steeplechases at Auteuil, cheering when her horse cleared all the
jumps and lavishing all her winnings afterward on champagne for her pals.   She never went to the races without a tip on
a horse and she rarely lost because the tips were excellent, given in return
for a smile and a sudden hug from her strong, slim arms.
    When Maggy arrived at La
Rotonde or La Coupole, there was always a chair for her as she joined first one
table and then another of her copains.   Now Montparnasse felt like her own village too and that fall she
celebrated her eighteenth birthday with a party in her room.   Maggy decorated the bidet by filling it with
bunches of red carnations, piled the one table high with bottles of wine and
invited a hundred people.   Everyone came,
bringing friends, and they sat drinking and singing on the staircase until the
police finally arrived.
    Occasionally she would spend
an evening alone at home, on her quilt, watching the sky from her window and
trying to arrange in her mind all the new things she had seen, all the new
people she had met.   Rabbi Taradash would
have disapproved deeply, Maggy smiled to herself, if he knew how she earned her
living, in fact he wouldn't have believed it possible, but she suspected that
he would still call her, as he used to, "my little mazik ," a
Hebrew word used to describe a beloved child who is also a swift, clever
prankster.
    She wasn't homesick although
she still grieved for her grandmother, particularly on Friday evenings when,
on the eve of the Sabbath, peace and cheer had filled their small house with
the illumination of the two candles on the dining room table and the blessing
of the light and the wine.   None of the
Lunels had been particularly observant or pious Jews yet this weekly ceremony
had been comforting to Maggy and every year she had looked forward eagerly to
kindling an additional candle on her grandmother's fine Chanukah menorah day by
day, until all the candles blazed sweetly in memory of those flames that had
once burned in the Temple in Jerusalem for eight days with only one day's
supply of oil.   Now all that belonged to
a life she had put behind her.   Certainly, she thought, she didn't miss the family seder on the eve of
Passover that had always taken place at Aunt Esther's house.   Maggy's gathered relatives had somehow never
failed to make her remember her shameful status; each year she would once again
feel that her mere existence was a stain on their family's good name...   no, she thought defiantly, no, I couldn't
have endured that existence a minute longer and now I can forget it forever.
    Maggy needed these occasional
quiet hours of reflection as a balance to the many nights of dancing when she
escaped from the immobility of her hours of posing into the wholehearted dash
toward pleasure, ever more pleasure, never enough pleasure, that made
Montparnasse the center of all that was mad and joyous and abandoned in Paris.
    As Paula never failed to
point out to her, there was a dark sideto Montparnasse life, a world in
which drink and drugs were a constant.   But even without her warnings, Maggy would have gamboled immune through
the never-ending party of Montparnasse nights.   She would have been untainted by that sky that burned so red,
illuminated as it was by the dozens of