Page 4 of One of Them
Sophie circled the figures, absorbed in examining them from different angles.
Then she noticed that Delia hadn’t moved.
“Chérie, I told you to go over there and play,” she said, a touch impatient.
She waved her arm toward the opposite side of the room.
“Vas-y.” Go on. Delia walked across the room and opened the satchel of things Sophie had packed for her.
There was a book, but not the story of Babar that Delia loved and was now able to read on her own.
Instead, she found an alphabet book that told her P was for Pomme and C was for Chat .
Babyish and boring. She set it aside to examine what else was in the satchel.
There was a cloth sack of marbles, but marbles needed another person to play.
And instead of her beloved Coco, a sleek, plush leopard, Sophie had packed a bisque doll that had been her own as a child, and which she seemed to think Delia ought to love.
But Delia found the doll’s unsmiling face, with its row of shiny, feral teeth and staring glass eyes, disturbing.
Still, this was all she had, so she brought the doll with her to the wall where the stone slabs were clustered.
She began to make her way between the slabs, pretending that they were a forest of petrified trees, trees that she could bring to life again if she uttered the right words.
She explained all this to the doll as she ran her fingers over the varying surfaces, some smooth, others rough and pebbly.
The syncopated sounds of her mother’s efforts—hammering, chiseling, banging—became a form of music; the air grew cloudy with stone dust.
There was a tall piece of stone, almost a column, whose top she could see but the rest of which was hidden behind another piece.
It seemed to sparkle, and Delia wanted to see it better, to touch it, even lick it.
She set down the doll and tried wriggling first her hand and then her arm behind the stone in front of it, as if pulling it in for a hug.
But the stone in front tipped, and then the one behind it did too, pinning Delia against another large slab and hitting the doll that was lying beside her, cracking the bisque head wide open.
Delia let out a small, high-pitched yelp.
The two stones were heavy, their weight a shocking affront to her small, trapped body.
She tried to wriggle free, but she couldn’t.
Her shoulders hurt. Her back too. And her knees, oh her knees felt like someone was pressing down on them with a spatula, the way their cook pressed down the egg-soaked bread when she was making pain perdu.
Sophie dropped whatever tool it was that she was using and rushed over. With some exertion, she shoved one of the stones aside so Delia could scramble out. “Are you all right?”
Delia nodded dumbly.
“You need to be more careful, chérie. You could have been hurt.” Then her mother looked down at the broken doll.
“Delia, look what you’ve done! And she was such a pretty thing.
” Sophie frowned. “Next time, pay more attention to what you’re doing.
” Sighing loudly, she picked up the pieces and went back to work.
Delia remained where she was. She had been hurt—her shoulder and chest still throbbed, and later blurred purple bruises appeared on her skin.
But her mother didn’t bathe her that night or dress her the next day, so she didn’t see them.
And when her nanny asked Delia what had happened, Delia didn’t want to say.
In the spring of 1939, Simon bought a house of roughly hewn stone that seemed to grow right out of the hills above Vence; he called it Le Piol.
This purchase was the result of months of conversation about what was happening in Paris.
The city was changing; it felt different, even threatening.
Even though the rise of Adolf Hitler and the harrowing events of Kristallnacht took place in Germany, Germany was a country with which France shared a border.
It seemed better, safer , to leave the city for a while.
But none of this felt very close to Delia.
It all seemed like grown-up talk, and not anything that concerned her.
She was more interested in getting to know this new environment, enchanted by the house, the landscape, and most of all, the colors—glowing, confection-like—that exploded all around her.
There was peach, goldenrod, salmon, robin’s-egg blue, lilac, and celery, all contained by the vivid greens of the surrounding trees and capped by the blue dome of the sky.
The lively and sometimes raucous meals continued, only now they were eaten outside at the big table of pierre chaude that came from Lacoste, which also provided the material for some of Sophie’s sculptures; she rented a studio somewhere in town.
Delia never went with her, never even asked, but Sophie seemed happier here—less irritable, less distracted.
She laughed more, and her manner was easier, less tense.
Delia began to relax. She wished that they could stay here forever.
At dinner, large blue-and-white faience platters—Sophie had started collecting them—were filled with roasted eggplant and tomatoes, anchovies, and olives—and that was before the main dish was served.
Loaves of bread sat in wicker baskets, and bottles of wine circulated freely.
Sometimes discussion of politics and current events crept into the conversations about art and culture that were the mainstay of the evenings, but all that seemed less pressing here, less dire.
Guests included Messieurs Picasso and Matisse, though never at the same time—her father said that they were rivals.
“Friendly rivals,” he’d said. “But rivals all the same.” Delia especially liked M.
Matisse, who entertained her with sketches of flowers and pretty ladies in hats, and who said Simon must bring her to his studio so he could draw her.
Sophie loved that idea and brought down one of her large straw hats for Delia to model.
“See how chic she looks,” she said to M.
Matisse, who regarded Delia appraisingly.
Some days later, Sophie scheduled a time for Delia to visit M.
Matisse’s studio in Nice, and she drove Delia there.
Sophie took the sharp turns in the narrow roads at such speed that Delia was terrified.
Papa never drove like that, and he was always chiding Sophie for doing it.
But finally they arrived safely. After parking the car, Sophie took Delia into the grand building, a former hotel where Queen Victoria of England had once stayed, and where M.
Matisse had bought himself a large flat the year before.
They were offered citronade and little sugar cookies, but Sophie declined both and left almost at once, saying she’d be back in an hour or so. Delia was alone with the artist.
During the dinner at Le Piol, M. Matisse had been engaging and chatty, but now he was preoccupied with his work and spoke tersely: Turn your head , Put your hands in your lap , and the like.
One hour stretched to two; M. Matisse got up, paced a bit, and then sat down again.
Delia’s leg fell asleep, and her back hurt.
Also, she had to use the bathroom but was afraid to say so.
Why had her mother left her here for so long?
Would she ever come back? It was nearly three hours later when Sophie breezed in, face flushed and skin glowing.
M. Matisse seemed happy to see her and declared Delia to have been an exemplary model.
He gave Sophie—not Delia—one of the pen-and-ink drawings he had done.
Sophie was so thrilled that she talked of nothing else on the way back to their house—not a word of explanation or apology about her prolonged absence, not a question about what it had been like to pose for a famous artist. At least she didn’t drive so fast.
Sometimes Delia’s parents drove to the beach at Antibes or Juan-les-Pins; other days, they went to Nice for the big marché aux puces near the port, where Sophie was always on the hunt for things that excited or enchanted her—a woodcut of two lambs in a manger, an oval mirror with an ornate gold frame, a whole box containing nineteenth-century petticoats, slips, chemises and bloomers, all made of white cotton that had grown soft and fine from years of wear and washing.
The box sat at her feet in the restaurant where they went for a lunch of fish soup and langoustines, Delia squealing with delight as Sophie pulled out one frothy white garment after another and shook it over the table.
Delia loved being in Vence, maybe even more than she loved Paris.
The summer had been one of fresh mornings, hot afternoons, and mild evenings, of riotous flowers in purple, magenta, and blue, and of the rippling warmth of the azure sea.
She was older now, and when her father wanted her to perform for the guests— Read everyone that essay you wrote on Molière, it was brilliant!
—she could smile and shake her head before escaping to the tranquility of her room or the garden behind the house.
Maybe next year she would invite her best friend Gabrielle along, so she would have a companion her own age. An ally even.
But that summer in Vence turned out to be not only the first; it was also the last. By the time they returned to Paris in September, Germany had just invaded Poland.
They felt the tremors, like aftershocks, all around them.
The Poles had capitulated so easily, emboldening Hitler; where would he turn next?
The adults were anxious, jittery; the after-dinner conversations chez Goldhush were no longer about art and culture but about the possibility of invasion or, God forbid, full-scale war.