enchanting melancholy of Alain-Fournier. Pierre Loti, however, was not to be disregarded. He was redeemed, especiallyby his
Rarnuntcho
. She was sure that sooner or later someone would have done it, perhaps even an American critic: the Americans had an unquestionable flair for the
rêpechages
. To tell the truth, Loti brought back to me the memory of the stuffy smell of the classrooms in the Sacred Heart School in Charleroi, where
Pécheurs d’lslande
was one of the few reading books allowed, but I tried to agree. I had spent eight years erasing the school in Charleroi from my existence and it would not have been to Madame’s liking to bring those memories back to me. I could have aimed at the intellectual, risking Sartre, one of whose stories I had read (it was horrible, however) but I preferred to proceed cautiously and said Françoise Sagan who, after all, had something to do with existentialism. And then I mentioned Hemingway’s
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
(I’d seen the film with Ava Gardner) and Louis Bromfield’s
Rain
. Madame asked me if I knew the tropics. I said no, “
unfortunately
,” but that sooner or later I must; I had always lacked the opportunity. And then we went on to painting.
Here I went on at great length because it was my field, and if I told some falsehoods it wasn’t entirely for “promotional” motives but only to embellish a little. I said that I’d graduated from the state institute of art two years before (which was true) but that Italy was intolerably narrow-minded. What was offered to a young artist in Italy? Substitute teaching in a middle school.
Fortunately in the summer I could cultivate my interests by working in a local art gallery (I ardently hoped, while I said it, that she had never gone there); only that at the end of the tourist season the gallery closed and the town plummeted again into a cultureless void. And so,
me voilà
.
I thought that the moment for more precise questions had arrived. In particular I feared that Madame would question me about my ability to type, an ability which I considered indispensable for every secretary. Mine was nonexistent. Therare times when I had to write a letter, down at the gallery, it took me all afternoon (I typed only with my right index finger) and even after much application the results were not very impressive. Instead, Madame didn’t seem in the least disposed to ask me “technical” questions. She seemed to have her mind very much occupied with painting, and it didn’t seem right to discourage her.
At first we talked about Bonnard’s yellows—I don’t remember why, probably because of the autumn light and the golden spot of chestnuts that we could see on the side of the mountain across the lake. Then I grew crafty and went for the
fauves
, the “big game.” Matisse was out of the question, of course. I took that for granted. But personally I
felt
Dufy more, the Dufy of the seascapes, the geraniums, the palm trees of Cannes. —With Dufy—I said—the happiness of the Mediterranean sings on the canvas.—On the wall next to the desk in the salon of the “Palette of the Lake,” the owner kept a calendar which had a Dufy reproduction for each month. I was a veteran of thirty consecutive afternoons from five to nine (thirty-one for July and August) for every reproduction. In the summer months the “Palette of the Lake” never closed. Let’s say, to be more precise, that Dufy even came out of my ears. But in the gallery the view varied between the Dufy reproductions and the idiotic faces of the women who admired the daubs hung on the walls, and to whom, according to the owner, I had to direct welcoming smiles into the bargain. It’s logical that I preferred Dufy. I knew him from memory.
I asked Madame what she thought of
Bal à Antibes
(it was the reproduction for June) with those splashes of blue and white for the sailors in the foreground in the midst of the turmoil of colors. And the light blue enchantment of
La
Rarnuntcho
. She was sure that sooner or later someone would have done it, perhaps even an American critic: the Americans had an unquestionable flair for the
rêpechages
. To tell the truth, Loti brought back to me the memory of the stuffy smell of the classrooms in the Sacred Heart School in Charleroi, where
Pécheurs d’lslande
was one of the few reading books allowed, but I tried to agree. I had spent eight years erasing the school in Charleroi from my existence and it would not have been to Madame’s liking to bring those memories back to me. I could have aimed at the intellectual, risking Sartre, one of whose stories I had read (it was horrible, however) but I preferred to proceed cautiously and said Françoise Sagan who, after all, had something to do with existentialism. And then I mentioned Hemingway’s
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
(I’d seen the film with Ava Gardner) and Louis Bromfield’s
Rain
. Madame asked me if I knew the tropics. I said no, “
unfortunately
,” but that sooner or later I must; I had always lacked the opportunity. And then we went on to painting.
Here I went on at great length because it was my field, and if I told some falsehoods it wasn’t entirely for “promotional” motives but only to embellish a little. I said that I’d graduated from the state institute of art two years before (which was true) but that Italy was intolerably narrow-minded. What was offered to a young artist in Italy? Substitute teaching in a middle school.
Fortunately in the summer I could cultivate my interests by working in a local art gallery (I ardently hoped, while I said it, that she had never gone there); only that at the end of the tourist season the gallery closed and the town plummeted again into a cultureless void. And so,
me voilà
.
I thought that the moment for more precise questions had arrived. In particular I feared that Madame would question me about my ability to type, an ability which I considered indispensable for every secretary. Mine was nonexistent. Therare times when I had to write a letter, down at the gallery, it took me all afternoon (I typed only with my right index finger) and even after much application the results were not very impressive. Instead, Madame didn’t seem in the least disposed to ask me “technical” questions. She seemed to have her mind very much occupied with painting, and it didn’t seem right to discourage her.
At first we talked about Bonnard’s yellows—I don’t remember why, probably because of the autumn light and the golden spot of chestnuts that we could see on the side of the mountain across the lake. Then I grew crafty and went for the
fauves
, the “big game.” Matisse was out of the question, of course. I took that for granted. But personally I
felt
Dufy more, the Dufy of the seascapes, the geraniums, the palm trees of Cannes. —With Dufy—I said—the happiness of the Mediterranean sings on the canvas.—On the wall next to the desk in the salon of the “Palette of the Lake,” the owner kept a calendar which had a Dufy reproduction for each month. I was a veteran of thirty consecutive afternoons from five to nine (thirty-one for July and August) for every reproduction. In the summer months the “Palette of the Lake” never closed. Let’s say, to be more precise, that Dufy even came out of my ears. But in the gallery the view varied between the Dufy reproductions and the idiotic faces of the women who admired the daubs hung on the walls, and to whom, according to the owner, I had to direct welcoming smiles into the bargain. It’s logical that I preferred Dufy. I knew him from memory.
I asked Madame what she thought of
Bal à Antibes
(it was the reproduction for June) with those splashes of blue and white for the sailors in the foreground in the midst of the turmoil of colors. And the light blue enchantment of
La
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