Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz Read Free Book Online Page B

he did.
    He had always bought in such
quantities that he had persuaded Lucien Lefebvre, the owner of Lefebvre-Foinet,
the art supply store on the rue Bréa, to give him a smalldiscount.   There were cheaper paints to be sure, but
only Lefebvre ground his by hand and mixedthem with poppy-seed oil
instead of the usual linseed oil so that they smelled like honey, and
possessed, Mistral was convinced, a richness of tone that other paints didn't
have.   But even with the discount he had
run up an uncomfortably large bill.   Yet
to limit himself?   Impossible!
    Restraint, economy,
husbanding of resources, living within hit means; all of these virtues Mistral
practiced in his daily life, drinking only a little cheap red wine in cafes,
and paying almost nothing for rent or food.   Women, he thought, as he got ready to leave homeon the evening
of the Surrealist costume ball, to which he'd been invited by a rich young
American woman, Kate Browning, were no expense.   As plentiful in his life as the burrs on a dog, not one of them had yet
cost him a centime.
    Mistral stretched and almost
hit his head on the ceiling of his bedroom.   He decided not to bother shaving or brushing his tangled red curls,
since his only concession to the need for a costume was an old-fashioned,
wide-brimmed, black hat he had picked up in some secondhand clothes store.   He was not disposed to take any moretrouble
for the Surrealists whose definition of beauty — "the chance
encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissection table" — was, to him, an abomination.
    All "isms" were
equally loathsome to him, and in that group he included political parties of
every type, all religious groups and any one who believed in some clearly
formulated system of morals.   Art had
nothing to do with words like morality or immorality; it was above morality,
above definitions of beauty.   Why, he
often wondered, did people bugger themselves up by getting involved in ideas ,
instead of paint?
    Still, he was willing to take
the time to go to the ball.   Kate
Browning might buy another painting soon, he thought, and God knows he could
use the money.   She was not unattractive
in her severely groomed, almost ascetically pretty, blond, and obviously
American way.   In the last months he'd
sold her two small canvases, which made her even more attractive to him than
perhaps she deserved — he liked a less austere type.
    In any case, he would not,
could not skimp on his materials.   Mistral hurried out, rolling the Lefebvre-Foinet bill into a ball and
flipping it into the garden next door.   There was no artist so serious or so busy that he didn't go to costume
balls, not even Julien Mistral.
    Were there more costume balls
in 1926 than there had been in 1925?   Or
would there be more in 1927?   No one
could be sure during those fine festive years for no one could keep track.
Every week there was another ball sponsored by a different group.   In this second week of April 1926, the
Russian artists had already given their Bal Banal and the
homosexual international had held their Bal des Lopes at Magic
City. When the Surrealists organized a Bal Sans Raison d'Être to
celebrate nothing at all and everything at once, everyone agreed it was not to
be missed.
    Just a year before, the
Surrealists had created a great scandal at a banquet given at the Closerie des
Lilas that ended in an attempted lynching only broken up by the police.   Freethinkers of the most doctrinaire kind,
they made a violent stand against the government, the military, the church, and
for full measure, against business as well, glorying in their nickname
"The Terror of the Boulevard Montparnasse."   When two of their number, Miró and Max Ernst,
created the decor for Diaghilev's Ballet Russe , dozens of
Surrealists broke up the performance by blowing trumpets, making speeches and
attacking the spectators.
    With their exciting
reputation who, with any pretense to position in the world of art