Cooking for Picasso by Camille Aubray Page A

you for propaganda value, as the Daisy in his buttonhole.”
    Ondine caught her breath but managed not to make a sound. Even she knew what it meant when one boy called another one a Daisy, but she kept her expression neutral so that Monsieur Cocteau would not be embarrassed to have a local girl hear this. Quietly she placed her Easter cheesecake pie in the center of the table, wishing she could disappear into thin air. But she had to slice it and serve it.
    Matisse broke the silence. “Now, gentlemen,” he said in a soothing but firm tone as she moved around them, “let’s not speak of monsters like Hitler today. The world has enough ugliness. Let us turn our thoughts, and our appetites, to the
luxe, calme et volupté
of Ondine’s magnificent table.”
    Cocteau nodded. Picasso sat like an emperor. Ondine ducked out to make coffee, her nerves jangling. “Today they like my food. Tomorrow, who knows?” For, despite their warrior-like confidence, these artists were ultrasensitive, highly strung creatures whose mercurial moods were tricky to negotiate. She’d hate to have them turn their guns on her. Especially Picasso. He was as relentless as a bullfighter.
    Cautiously she re-entered the dining room with her coffeepot. The atmosphere had changed yet again; now the men looked supremely sated from the meal, and they’d produced a secret bottle of
absinthe
while joking about mutual friends. As Ondine moved among them, pouring coffee, she saw Picasso glance at her backside and exchange a look with his guests. Matisse waggled his eyebrows.
    They think I’m sleeping with Picasso,
Ondine realized. And furthermore, their host was doing nothing to make them think otherwise.
    “Ondine, which one of us do you suppose is the best at kissing?” Picasso asked slyly.
    “I’ll have to ask your wives,” she answered quickly, and they all laughed uproariously.
    Matisse winked at her through his owlish glasses, while Cocteau, fully recovered from tangling with Picasso, lifted one of his long fingers and waved it as if it were a conductor’s baton as he sang:
“Belle Ondine, Belle Ondine,
    your shoes are all a-shine.
    And your flowery dress so fine.”
    Ondine giggled, for he had slightly altered the lyrics of a popular dance-hall tune, “Caroline”. The men stomped their feet and clapped as Cocteau finished the song.
    But now she was acutely aware that they were sitting at the level of her bosom, their lips just inches away; and she almost felt in peril of being seized by her hips and pulled into a man’s lap so he could bury his face in her breasts. This image came so suddenly and graphically that she flushed with shame at having such strange thoughts. She returned to the kitchen, relieved to be alone.
    By the time she’d cleaned up and packed her hamper onto her bicycle, the guests were gone, the sun was sinking, and the damp evening air was stealing in from the harbor. Picasso had stepped outside to see off his friends. Now he remained in the front yard, working intently on something, occasionally bending to pick up a stray branch that had fallen; but instead of throwing it away he’d attach it to the other items in his hand by twining it with string.
    Ondine didn’t think he noticed her as she wheeled her bike past him; yet at the last minute, he beckoned for her to come to him. She parked her bike and crossed the lawn.
    “So,” he said as he kept working, “you
can
cook. And now you can tell your friends you’ve fed three
artistes
in one day. Which of these ‘geniuses’ did you like better?” he asked with an ironic smile.
    Ondine shrugged, unwilling to choose. Picasso exclaimed, “Certainly not Cocteau! He is talented. But he is the tail of my comet,” he declared. “As for Matisse, well, he’s the only other great artist of our time worth talking about, but he’s too old for you, right?”
    “He was very kind,” Ondine demurred, secretly thrilled to think that such a master painter had expressed the