When the ink was ready, she disobeyed her master and began with little exercises on a corner of the paper tablecloth to recover the memories, all too distant. She made five spots to begin with, from deepest black to the most diluted, to remind herself of the ink’s colors, but then when she tried different strokes she realized she had forgotten almost all of them. A few remained: the loosened rope, the hair, the rain-drop, the rolled thread and the ox’s hairs. Then came the points. Her master had taught her over twenty of them, but she remembered only four: the circle, the rock, the rice and the shiver.
Enough. Now you’re ready. She picked up the finer brush between her thumb and index finger, held her arm above the tablecloth and waited a few more seconds.
The old man, still rambling on in his corner, encouraged her by closing his eyes.
Camille Fauque emerged from a long sleep, with a sparrow, then two, then three, then an entire flock in flight, birds with a mocking look in their eyes.
She hadn’t drawn a thing in over a year.
AS a child she had never been talkative; she spoke even less then than she did now. Her mother had obliged her to take piano lessons and Camille hated it. Once, when the teacher was late, she’d picked up a thick Magic Marker and painstakingly drawn a finger on each key. Her mother had wrung her neck and her father, to make the peace, showed up the following weekend with the address of a painter who gave lessons once a week.
Not long after, her father died. Camille stopped speaking altogether. Even during her drawing lessons with Mr. Doughton (she pronounced it Doggton), whom she liked so much, even with him she would not speak.
The old Englishman didn’t take offense, and he continued to come up with ways to teach her technique, even in silence. He would give her an example and she would copy it, merely moving her head to say yes or no. Between the two of them, and only there, in that place, things were fine. Her mute silence even seemed to suit them. He didn’t have to struggle for the words in French, and she concentrated more readily than her fellow pupils.
But one day, when all the other pupils had left, he broke their tacit agreement and spoke to her while she was amusing herself with the pastels:
“You know, Camille, who you make me think of?”
She shook her head.
“A Chinese painter called Zhu Da. Do you want me to tell you his story?”
Camille nodded but he had turned around to switch off his kettle.
“I can’t hear you, Camille. Don’t you want me to tell you the story?”
Now he was staring at her.
“Answer me, young lady.”
She gave him a black look.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yes,” she said finally.
He closed his eyes contentedly, poured a cup and came to sit next to her.
“When he was a child, Zhu Da was very happy . . .”
He took a swallow of tea.
“He was a prince of the Ming dynasty. His family was very rich and very powerful. His father and grandfather were painters and famous calligraphers, and little Zhu Da had inherited their gift. So just imagine, one day, when he wasn’t even eight years old yet, he drew a flower, a simple lotus flower floating on a pond. His drawing was beautiful, so beautiful that his mother decided to hang it in their salon. She claimed that thanks to the drawing you could feel a fresh little breeze in the huge room and you could even smell the flower’s perfume when you walked by the drawing. Can you imagine? Even the perfume! And his mother was surely not an easy person to please . . . With both a husband and a father who were artists, she must have seen a few things by then ...”
He took another sip from his cup.
“So, Zhu Da grew up in this carefree world full of pleasure, and he was sure that he too would be a great artist one day. Alas, when he turned eighteen, the Manchus seized power from the Mings. The Manchus were a cruel and brutal people who did not care for painters or writers. They forbade them to work, which was the worst thing anyone could do to them, as you can well imagine. Zhu Da’s family knew no peace after that, and his father died of despair. From one day to the next the son, a mischievous kid who had loved to laugh, sing, say silly things and recite long poems, did the most incredible thing . . . Oh! Now who’s this, then?” asked Mr. Doughton, turning to his cat, which had just settled on the windowsill. He then deliberately started a lengthy conversation in baby talk with the cat.
“What did he do?” Camille murmured, finally.
Mr. Doughton hid his smile in his whiskers and went on as if nothing had happened:
“He did the most incredible thing. Something you’d never imagine. He decided to stop speaking forever. Forever, do you hear? Not a single word would leave his lips! He was disgusted by the attitude of the people around him, those who denied their traditions and their beliefs just so they would be viewed favorably by the Manchus; he didn’t want to speak to any of them ever again. Devil take them all! Every last one! Slaves! Cowards! So he wrote the word Mute on the door of his house, and if there were people who tried to talk to him all the same, he would unfold a fan in front of his face, on which he had also written Mute, and he’d wave it every which way to make them go away.”
Little Camille was captivated.
“The problem is that people can’t live without expressing themselves. No one can. It’s impossible. So Zhu Da, who, like everyone, like you and me for example, had a lot of things to say, Zhu Da had a brilliant idea. He went off into the mountains, far away from all those people who’d betrayed him, and he began to draw. And from then on, that is how he would express himself, how he’d communicate with the rest of the world: through his drawings. Would you like to see them?”
Mr. Doughton went to fetch a big black and white book from his shelves, and put it down in front of her.
“Look, isn’t this beautiful? So simple. Just one stroke, and there you are. A flower, a fish, a grasshopper. Look at this duck, how angry it looks; or these mountains in the mist. And you see how he’s drawn the mist? As if it were nothing, just an emptiness. And these chicks, see them? So soft you want to stroke them. Look, his ink is like down, his ink is soft . . .”
Camille was smiling.
“Would you like me to teach you to draw like this?”
She nodded.
“You want me to teach you?”
“Yes.”
When everything was ready, when he had finished showing her how to hold the brush, and explaining to her how important the first stroke was, she was puzzled. She didn’t really understand what she was supposed to do, and she thought she had to complete the entire picture in one stroke, without lifting her hand. It was impossible.
She thought about it for a long time, then looked around, and stretched out her arm.
Camille drew a long wavy line, a bump, a point, another point, brought her brush back down in a long wiggly stroke, then came back to the initial wavy line. She decided to cheat when the teacher wasn’t looking, and lifted the brush to add a big black spot and six little half-strokes. She’d rather disobey than draw a cat without whiskers.
Malcolm, her model, was still sleeping in the window and Camille, eager to be true to life, finished her drawing with a fine rectangle around the cat.
She then got up and went to stroke the cat, and when she turned around, she saw her teacher was looking at her strangely, almost angrily:
“Did you do this?”
So he had seen her picture, seen that she had lifted the brush off the paper several times. She made a face.
“Did you do this, Camille?”
“Yes.”
“Come over here, please.”
Not very proud of herself, she went and sat beside him.
There were tears in Mr. Doughton’s eyes.
“This is magnificent, what you’ve done, you know. Magnificent. You can hear the cat purring. Oh, Camille.”
He reached for a big paint-splattered handkerchief and began noisily blowing his nose.
“L
isten, lass, I’m just an old fellow and a bad artist to boot, but listen carefully now. I know that life’s not easy for you, I imagine it’s not always very cheery at home and I heard about your dad, but . . . No, don’t cry . . . Here, take my handkerchief. But there’s one thing I’ve got to tell you: people who stop talking go mad. Zhu Da, for example, I didn’t tell you this before, but he went mad and he was very unhappy as well. Very very unhappy and very very mad. He only found peace again when he was an old man. You’re not going to wait to be an old woman, now, are you? Tell me you’re not. You’re very gifted, you know. You’re the most gifted of all the students I’ve ever had, but that’s not a reason, Camille; that’s not a reason. The world today is not like in Zhu Da’s time and you have to start speaking again. You’ve got to, do you understand? If you don’t, they’ll put you away with people who really are mad, and no one will ever see all your beautiful pictures.”
They were interrupted by her mother’s arrival. Camille got up and said to her, in a hoarse, unsteady voice, “Wait a minute, I haven’t finished putting my things away.”
One day, not long ago, she received a poorly wrapped parcel with this letter:
Hello.
My name is Eileen Wilson. That probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but I was Cecil Doughton’s friend, he used to be your drawing teacher. I’m very sad to inform you that Cecil passed away two months ago. I know you will appreciate me telling you (forgive my poor French) that we buried him in his native Dartmoor that he loved so dear, in a cemetery with a lovely view. I put his brushes and his paintings in the earth with him.
Before dying he asked me to give you this. I think he would be happy knowing that you are using it and thinking of him.
Eileen W.
Camille could not hold back her tears when she unwrapped the box of Chinese painting tools—the same box she was using at this very moment . . .
INTRIGUED, the waitress came to clear away the empty coffee cup and she glanced over at the tablecloth. Camille had just drawn a cluster of bamboo stalks. The leaves and stems were the most difficult thing to get. One leaf, lass, a simple leaf blowing in the wind, took the masters years of work, even an entire lifetime . . . Play with contrasts. You’ve got only one color to work with and yet you can suggest everything . . . Concentrate harder. If you want me to carve you your seal someday, you’ve got to make your leaves much lighter than that . . .
The paper was really poor quality, and it curled and absorbed the ink too quickly.
“May I?” asked the waitress.
She held out a packet of clean tablecloths. Camille moved back and put her work on the floor. The old man was grumbling; the girl scolded him.
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s complaining because he can’t see what you’re doing.” She added, “He’s my great-uncle. He’s paralyzed.”
“Tell him the next one will be for him.”
The girl went back to the bar and spoke to the old man. He calmed down and looked fiercely at Camille.
For a while Camille stared back at him; then, using the entire surface of the tablecloth, she drew a little laughing man who looked just like him, running through a rice paddy. Camille had never been to Asia but for a background she improvised a mountain in the mist, some pine trees and rocks, and even Zhu Da’s little hut on a promontory. She portrayed her old man in a Nike cap and a jacket, but she’d left him with bare legs and wearing only a traditional loincloth. She added a few splashes of water at his feet, and a group of children chasing after him.
Camille leaned back to inspect her work.
There were a few details she was dissatisfied with but, in the end, the old fellow looked happy, truly happy. So she opened the little pot of red cinnabar and set her seal onto the picture in the middle of the right-hand side. She stood up, cleared the old man’s table, put a plate under the tablecloth to prop the picture up, then went back for it and arranged it in front of him.
No reaction.
Oops, she thought, maybe I’ve offended him.
When his great-niece came back from the kitchen, he let out a long, sorrowful moan.
“I’m sorry,” said Camille, “I thought that—”
The girl made a gesture to interrupt her, went to fetch a pair of thick glasses from behind the counter and slid them onto the old man’s nose below his cap. He nodded ceremoniously and began to laugh. A child’s laughter, clear and jolly. There were tears there too, and he laughed again, rocking back and forth with his arms crossed over his chest.
“He wants to drink some sake with you.”
“Great.”
The girl brought out a bottle and he yelled something. She sighed and went back to the kitchen.
When she returned, she had a different bottle and the entire family in tow: an older woman, two middle-aged men, and a teenager. They were all laughter, shouting, bowing and bursts of enthusiasm. The men tapped the old man on the shoulder and the boy gave him a high five.
Then each of them returned to what they were doing, and the girl put two little glasses down in front of Camille and the old man. He nodded to her, then emptied his glass before filling it again.
“I’m warning you, he’s going to tell you his life story,” said the girl.
“No problem. Whoa, this is strong.”
The girl walked away, laughing.
They were alone now. The old man was chattering away, and Camille listened earnestly, nodding whenever he pointed to the bottle.
It was no easy thing to stand up and get her things together. She bowed good-bye over and over to the old fellow, then stood giggling and helpless by the door, tugging on the door handle, till the girl had to come help her to push it open.
“You’re at home here anytime, okay?” she said. “Come and eat here whenever you want. If you don’t come, he’ll be angry. And sad too.”
Camille was completely drunk when she showed up at work.
Samia said excitedly, “Hey, did you meet a guy or something?”
“Yes,” confessed Camille, sheepishly.
“No kidding?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he like? Is he cute?”
“Really cute.”
“Really? That’s great! How old is he?”
“Ninety-two.”
“Hey, you’re bullshitting me. How old is he really?”
“Okay, girls, whenever you’re ready!”
There was Miss Josy, pointing at her watch.
Camille walked away, giggling, tripping over the hose of the vacuum cleaner.
9
MORE than three weeks had gone by. Franck was working every Sunday as a catering assistant in another restaurant on the Champs-Elysées, and every Monday he traveled to his grandmother’s bedside.
She was in a convalescent home a few miles north of the town, and from first light on she’d be waiting for him to come.
As for Franck, he had to set his alarm, head like a zombie down to the corner café, drink two or three coffees in a row, climb onto his motorcycle, then head off to catch up on his sleep in a hideous leatherette armchair by his grandmother’s bed.
When they brought her dinner in on a tray, Paulette would put her finger to her lips and, with a jerk of her head, indicate the big baby curled up there, keeping her company. She watched over him jealously, and made sure that the jacket covered his chest properly.
She was happy. He was there. Really there. All hers.
Paulette didn’t dare call the nurse to ask her to raise the bed; she took her fork gingerly between her fingers and ate in silence. She hid things in her night table—bits of bread, a portion of cheese and some fruit—for Franck when he woke up. Then she quietly pushed the tray away and folded her hands across her stomach with a smile.
Lulled by her youngster’s breathing and the sudden rush of memories, Paulette closed her eyes and dozed. She’d lost him so many times already, so many times. She sometimes felt she’d spent her life hunting for him: in the garden, in
the trees, at the neighbors’, where he’d be hidden in the stables or slumped in front of the television; then at the café, of course; and now she hunted for him using little scraps of paper where he scribbled phone numbers that were never correct.
She’d done her best, though, she really had. Fed him and kissed him. Cuddled and reassured and scolded him. Punished and consoled him. But none of it had done a bit of good. No sooner did that kid know how to walk than he was scampering off somewhere, and once he had three hairs on his chin that was it. He was gone.
Sometimes when she was daydreaming she’d wince, and her lips would tremble. Too much sorrow, too much waste, and so many regrets. At times it had been so, so hard. But she mustn’t think about all that. Anyway, Franck started to wake up, hair tousled and his cheek marked by the seam on the armchair.
“What time is it, Grandma?”
“Nearly five.”
“Fuck, already?”
“Franck, why are you always saying that f-word?”
“How about, ‘goodness-gracious-me, already’?”
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m okay, I’m more thirsty. Let me go stretch my legs.”
So there we are, thought Paulette, that’s it. “Are you leaving?”