The Missing Matisse Read online

  When we return to Paris in December, all of France has turned crazy. Paris, the City of Light, is in total blackout at night. We tape or glue paper to the windows in a futile trick to give some protection against bomb explosions. There are many people living here who still have fresh and horrific memories of the previous war fought with the Germans on French soil.

  But we have a wonderful surprise in early 1940 when Papa comes home on leave. My hero looks magnificent in his uniform. Papa is a sergeant in an engineering unit specializing in camouflage. Unfortunately, his leave is cut short when he gets word that his unit has been ordered to the front. All of us are devastated; Maman is in tears, and Gérard and I join in.

  I think of the World War I veterans in Paris. We call them les gueules cassées, the broken faces. Is something terrible like this going to happen to Papa—or something worse?

  Papa quickly puts things in order and boosts everybody’s morale.

  “France is going to win this war in a short time. I’ll be back early in the spring,” Papa declares with an air of confidence that clears the black clouds lingering in our minds.

  Nevertheless, when Papa leaves, a nasty vise twists my heart. I have a hard time holding back my tears as he reminds me of the words he said to me on the beach, the day the war began. “Pierre, you are a man. As long as I am gone, you will have to take care of your mother and Gérard.”

  I give Papa my solemn word to do exactly that. I am eleven years old and will be the man he needs me to be.

  What concerns me is the lack of French planes mentioned by le Père Goudreaux. I must solve this problem pronto. I have a brilliant solution. We will bluff the enemy.

  “Why not paint hundreds of planes on carefully selected fields? When viewed from the air, this should scare even the most daring Boches,” I tell Papa. I am certain that when Luftwaffe Marshal Hermann Goering evaluates the odds against such massive numbers of French airplanes, he will surely roll over and surrender. Et voilà! The war is over!

  My father listens with a patient smile. “Excellent strategy, Pierre. I’ll pass it on to the general.”

  When I discover that Adolf Hitler has been in cahoots with Franco, who took my Aurora, I am beside myself. Adolf Hitler had better watch out. My target list is growing.

  5

  A FUNNY WAR

  In war as in love, everything goes.

  OLD FRENCH PROVERB

  EVERYONE IS AFRAID of aerial bombing raids on the big population centers. Some evacuation efforts have been implemented. However, the war takes an unexpected turn, and suddenly everything is quiet from September until April. There is no shooting, no bombing, no offensive in France. People call this la drôle de guerre or the Funny War.

  We get used to this quiet war; Hitler is on the march elsewhere. Gérard stays with Maman at the apartment on l’avenue de Clamart, and I return to live with Tata, visiting Maman on weekends. Maybe this war will not be so bad after all, I think.

  People begin to say things like “Hitler will calm down. It will be over soon, without damage.”

  Everybody except Tata, that is. She firmly states, “It’s not over yet. Wait and see.”

  “They can’t stop this war before I get to Franco and his accomplice, that infamous Adolf Hitler. These two monsters will pay dearly for Aurora. I will see to that,” I reply.

  From 1939 until the bombing begins, the war sirens are tested every Saturday at noon. The long and mournful whine is a sinister noise that immediately brings on fear. Occasionally, they even scream in the night. Alert! The Germans are coming to bomb us, the sirens say.

  Whenever we are awakened by the sound, we grab our coats from the closet or a blanket and race to the underground shelters in the apartment building in our nightclothes. It is dark, cold, damp, dusty, and very scary down there. Piles of black coal are stacked in one corner. Tata tries to comfort me by holding my hand, and I pray for courage.

  “I want to confront the Fritzes in the open air,” I tell her. Defying them one by one is my style, but they never come.

  After a few weeks, nobody bothers to race to the shelter when the siren goes off. Surely the Funny War will end by spring, people say, just in time for the lilies of the valley to bloom, n’est-ce pas?

  I AM NOW ENROLLED in the rue d’Alésia School for boys. The windows are big so I can see the misty Paris sky through the branches of the large plane trees. Instead of studying, I daydream of my own future heroic war exploits once I join the French air force.

  Our teacher, Monsieur Brouchard, is a skinny, tall, ascetic man with a yellow face and a nose so long I’m sure it can split a stone in two. His dead eyes never smile. He has no sense of humor whatsoever. Even his clothes are always gray. We have given him a nickname, Brouillard, meaning “fog.” Monsieur Brouillard never raises his monotone voice one octave above dull. Even his speech sounds like a muted foghorn. He carries himself as if there’s no hope and no excitement left in this world.

  One day we hear the latest official gossip. The Germans are going to bomb Paris with mustard gas. The authorities decide to issue gas masks to every citizen. Monsieur Brouillard must take our whole class to the location where they will fit us with our gas masks.

  “Everybody stand behind me, understand? I am taking care of this. That means you, Monsieur Pierre Matisse.”

  These are his last controlled words. Ahead of us, an official distributes gas masks to another class. Monsieur Brouillard raises his right arm and stands like a statue. He doesn’t move. And neither do any of us.

  His face turns from yellow to violet purple. Suddenly, Monsieur Brouillard shakes a menacing fist at the official and blasts him with his foghorn voice. He starts foaming at the mouth. His angry words come out, loud and clear.

  “Pigs! You there! Yes, you! You are not going to do this to my children. I will not permit it! Do you hear me? Never! You idiots! Never! Never!”

  He is right beside me, looking twenty feet tall. I realize that he is not talking to the official. He is spouting vulgarities at our enemy, yet there is something dignified about him. The other boys and I are stunned into silence.

  Someone calls the school principal, who arrives promptly. He tries his best to calm down Monsieur Brouillard but without much success. Eventually, they call the ambulance.

  “You will nev—my chil—” He is unable to finish a sentence as they guide him away.

  I return home from school with my gas mask in its gray canister. When I open the canister, an offensive stench of mothballs mixed with decaying rubber stings my nostrils.

  I tell Tata what happened with Monsieur Brouillard. She can’t hold back her tears. He is a good man and a dear friend of hers, she says, and he was badly injured by mustard gas in 1916 near Verdun. The poor fellow had a massive nervous breakdown.

  The next Sunday we go to the hospital to visit him. When Tata lets the attendant know whom we are coming to see, the lady tells Tata, “Madame, flowers are out of the question for your friend. He associates the perfumed fragrance with mustard gas and immediately goes into a rage.”

  Tata understands and hands the flowers we brought to the attendant. “Very well. Keep them for yourself and put them on your desk.”

  This is the saddest thing that I have ever heard. To deprive a man of the enjoyment of flowers is criminal. World War I has done this to Monsieur Brouillard!

  When we come into his room, he greets me with a faint smile. “Ha! Pierre Matisse, the dreamer.”

  Seeing Tata, he begins to grow agitated again, ranting about wars involving children. “Ah! Henriette, if you only knew. They want to gas my children. Never! Never!”

  Soon it is time for us to leave. I later learn that when the war begins in earnest, Monsieur Brouillard goes crazy and is placed in an insane asylum.

  After this tragedy, none of us ever refer to him as Brouillard again. He becomes a true hero to us.

  EVERY WEEK DURING SCHOOL, we rehearse the gas mask routine. In spite of my ongoing efforts to aerate the wretc
hed gadget, it reeks of chemicals. With this abominable contraption on my face, I feel caught in an atrocious rattrap, which instantly triggers claustrophobia. During our school practice, one student or another either vomits into his gas mask or faints. A nurse is always at the ready for the casualties.

  We do the routine in groups. When the doors open, one group marches out while the next marches in for the test. Once inside we are supposed to keep the masks on our faces for a few minutes. It’s an eternity! I decide to volunteer to be the first in our group. I march in, put on my mask, then join the group exiting, skipping the test entirely. I’ll take my chances if a real gas war situation arises.

  Eventually, the officials discover that these masks are defective, perhaps sabotaged. They were manufactured in Austria under the Nazi regime. We go through the process of exchanging our masks for another brand that seems no better than the first.

  Eventually the German planes show up in the night. We hear the engines roaring just over Paris. They don’t drop a thing. Anti-aircraft guns fire some shots at them, but nothing much happens. There is no harm done to either side.

  Later, they become more daring, coming in broad daylight. But nobody pays much attention to the enemy’s air force anymore.

  ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON the German airplanes come in greater numbers than usual. This time, they do drop something—tracts. Tata and I are running errands when the little propaganda pamphlets flutter down from the sky. They are well printed and quite attractive with red covers. Written in French, they boast of the might of the German forces. The tracts do no physical harm, except for one unfortunate man who is hit by an unopened package of a hundred or so and is killed on the spot.

  When Tata and I return from some errands, we see our concierge, Madame Bigot, standing in the front of the building, excitedly addressing a small crowd of passersby. We can’t help but hear her anti-tract speech. She is standing there, all of four feet tall and skinny as a rake, shaking a fistful of the little red pamphlets above her head. She reads from the propaganda pamphlet in her high-pitched voice, adding her own colorful commentary.

  “So you have thousands of tanks and planes, Adolf? Well, so do we! And come spring, we are going to kick your arse, regardless of your arsenal.”

  She throws her shoulders back and raises her head like a true French general.

  She continues to rile up the crowd with her posturing and crude comments. She is a master of timing and suspense. Tata approves of the concierge’s patriotism but not her vulgar language. With Tata standing beside me, I have to resist clapping and yelling bravo at the woman’s antics.

  “Pierrot, I think it’s time to go up to the apartment,” Tata says at last. As we climb the stairs to the fourth floor, Tata bursts out laughing. She looks at me, and I start laughing too.

  When she finally can control herself, she says, “Pierrot, please do me a favor. Do not ever imitate her language.”

  “Tata, I am going to write French tracts to drop on the Germans, but mine are going to be better and illustrated with my own art.”

  “You do that, Pierrot,” she says in a soft, tired voice.

  SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED TO PARIS. There are no more visits to the museums now. They are all closed. All of the ponds and park fountains have been emptied of water because they shine at night and can be used to guide enemy aircraft. There is no more sailing my sailboat on the ponds. Tanks line up the whole length of Boulevard Brune.

  “Those tanks are too small. They won’t do,” I overhear a World War I veteran say, a man with one leg who has four military decorations carefully pinned on his coat.

  Piles of discarded scrap metal are left at some street corners to be collected. This is a war effort to melt down metal and make new armaments. In one of those scrap piles I find a discarded rusty revolver—a big one, probably a forty-five caliber. The mainspring is broken, but otherwise the menacing black barrel is quite intimidating. I bring it to class in my leather book pouch.

  At school we have a new teacher to replace Monsieur Brouchard. I don’t like him.

  “Perhaps Monsieur Pierre Matisse would like to repeat, for the benefit of the class, what I just said?”

  Did I hear my name? Distractedly, I turn my eyes from the cloud out the window where I am pursuing a Messerschmitt that has been evading me for the last few minutes.

  “Would you please wake up, Monsieur Matisse, and be kind enough to share with us what is so interesting outside the window?”

  I instinctively reach into my pouch and pull out the massive handgun, placing it firmly on my desk.

  “Maybe you can tell us why you are not at the front fighting with my father?” I rudely demand of the teacher, thinking of Papa lost somewhere on the front line.

  At that, he panics, running for the door as if his behind is on fire.

  “I knew it! He’s a coward! The gun isn’t even loaded,” I declare to the petrified class.

  My classmates burst into laughter, releasing their fear. I quickly pack my books and gun, as the principal arrives to take me out of class.

  I am expelled from the school, which ends up closing two months later. After giving me a stern lecture, Tata takes the education of her impossible nephew firmly in hand. From now on I attend Tata’s private school at home from morning to evening. There is no more fooling around. I learn more in the next two months than in my two years of formal schooling. On Fridays I speak only English because on this day Tata understands only Shakespeare’s native tongue.

  My dear Tata gives me an invaluable gift—the desire to learn and the ability to teach myself anything I put my mind to. This priceless treasure will serve me well throughout my entire life.

  ONCE A WEEK I visit Maman and Gérard in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Maman is alone now in the studio with only Père Straten to help her. Brosse is on the front lines with Papa. My mother struggles to keep the family business going. I notice how her wonderful smile is gone, and worse, she looks tired and worried all the time.

  A few months into 1940 Papa comes home again for a week’s leave. What a hero! Papa’s leave appears to pass like a few hours. Before he returns to the front, we have a talk alone, man to man. Papa says, “War makes you old before your time. Come spring, this war is going to start in earnest. Pierre, you have no choice except to be a man. The games will no longer be games; they are going to be for real.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  From this day on, Pierrot Tatiou is gone. I am Pierre Matisse, a man like my father with serious responsibilities. In war times children grow up fast. Papa leaves, and suddenly I feel like a very old man.

  IN JUNE, WHEN I am staying with Maman and Gérard, Hitler’s planes awaken us from our sleep. This time, they are not dropping tracts but bombs!

  We feel the concussion of a bomb hitting a target. Our apartment rocks like we are in an earthquake. When the sirens finally fade, we go outside and see chaos everywhere. Only one block away, a six-story apartment building has just been hit. Half the structure has crumbled down into the street. The other half still stands precariously, looking like it will topple down at any moment.

  I hear someone screaming and glance up. On the sixth floor of the building, I see a bedroom cut in half and a man, unharmed, is in his bed. “Please, get my pants. They are on the street!”

  Down below, firemen and volunteers dig through massive blocks of stone and brick, risking their lives to save buried victims.

  We cannot walk far. The entire street is blocked by the rubble. I keep a protective eye on Gérard and Maman, but there is so much smoke coming from all around Paris where bombs were dropped. I am praying to God that Tata is safe. On the sidewalk, blankets cover the dead. Some are much too small to be lying there dead. I immediately think of Monsieur Brouchard. He would not like this—his children have been bombed.

  6

  LES BOCHES ARE COMING

  Necessity hath no law.

  OLIVER CROMWELL

  A PERFECTLY WAXED wood floor is to the French what a perfec
tly clipped lawn is to the English. The French wonder why the English are so obsessed with their green lawns. The English wonder why the French keep on polishing their parquet ciré.

  “Be careful with my waxed floor. Take your shoes off, and put on your slippers,” Tata’s maid tells me. She comes once a week to take care of Tata’s apartment and stay with her until I come home from school.

  I don’t like this maid and give her an insolent reply. “We should invite the Boches with their boots to walk on your floor. They will all slip and break their necks, and we will win the war.”

  “Little monster! I am going to report you to your aunt.”

  “Your floor is like a skating rink. Last week I almost broke my back on it.”

  She leaves, muttering angrily about me under her breath.

  But then the inevitable happens. Somebody takes a bad fall, and it’s Tata! She slips and breaks her hip. Tata is immobilized by a plaster cast, confined to her bed, which is moved to the living room. Every time she winces or grows pale from the pain, my stomach is torn apart. I want to save Tata from every kind of pain.

  “If Aurora had been your maid, this wouldn’t have happened,” I confide to Tata at her bedside.

  Soon after Tata’s injury, the wail of the sirens echoes through the middle of the night. Now we take them seriously. Tata cannot move to go to the shelter.

  “Pierre, you must go to the shelter,” she orders me firmly.

  “No. I am not going.” This subject is not open for negotiation. I will not leave Tata behind.

  “Pierre, you are going right now. I want you to go down right away!”