Samedi, le 13 avril 1912

Dear Clare,

Don’t be cross, but I sent on your little painting of the orange to Papa. It was too dear a painting and he promised to only look quickly and send it right back to me. He does ask about you, you know. Well, he sent it back, and also a letter for you, which I include here. Not a letter; a treatise. All about your technique with paint and your mixing of colors and “mademoiselle, your form.” He seems quite put out with you for forging ahead into a new medium without instruction. “All shades of yellow and reds. So fiery a palette!” On a more cheerful note, he does say that your practice with fruit shows. I told him about the apricots and the thrown pencil. “Like your first lesson, Luc,” he said. “No?” So, you see? Everyone begins with fruit in Monsieur Crépet’s classroom.

I do think your grandfather is right in fixing his sights on Spain next, after leaving Portugal. He’s tracing the path of the Moors in reverse, isn’t he? Following that dialect back to its source? You mock, but I think it all sounds fascinating. This delving into the depths of a language, plumbing its origins, is new to me. I didn’t know there were historians who did more than look at facts and dates and dusty old manuscripts. Words and sounds? I see what draws your grandfather.

As for me, not much draws me these days. We are on to Charlemagne, and I wish him as little as I wished Alexander. I’d much rather be studying about kings and emperors who didn’t do too much, at least nothing beyond a page or two in the history books. Clovis the Lazy? John the Posthumous? Perhaps next term.

Until then I am playing as much tennis as I can. I’m currently ahead of Bauer, 89-62. He avoided me all autumn and then moped through the winter. He clearly does not have a friend in Spain sending him cheering paintings. Did you take his good humor away with you?

So, if you can forgive me for showing Papa your orange, know that it’s tacked inside my desk drawer here at school. Know that it’s brought me a bit of sunshine in the middle of a gray French spring. Know that it’s made me think of you.

Luc

Mercredi, le 1 mai 1912

Dear Clare,

I wanted to tell you, Papa has taken on another illustrating commission. It’s for an edition of la Fontaine’s Fables. Of course Maman is ecstatic; it’ll be a return to the sort of stuff he painted with Mère l’Oye all those years ago. Poor Papa, though, has tried to separate himself from that style for too long. But he’ll do it. He’ll do it for her. I’ve been watching him work on the preliminary studies. Never fear, le Monsieur Crépet still has the golden brush.

Since Papa is quite occupied, Maman took it upon herself to write to you, and has instructed me to include her letter (really, almost a novel) with mine. Papa told her that she must write to you about color and brushstrokes, that someone must, so that you can capture the sands of Iberia or Africa (or wherever else you venture next) without resorting to nothing but Indian yellow.

Enclosed (also from Maman) is a packet of brushes, as they are both quite certain that you can’t find a decent brush outside of Paris. Do you even have badgers there? Papa’s guess is no. He’s added a postscript onto her letter (if you can call a whole page of cross-writing a “postscript”) with instructions as to the proper care of said brushes.

Since a parcel was already coming to you, I added my own bit of inspiration to the bundle. It’s not much of a pebble, but it’s from the caves below Brindeau. I even took a step and a half inside to fetch it for you. Perhaps it will lead you to a fairy or two.

This will be my last carefree, unhurried summer, did you realize? I’m already planning weekends at Mille Mots: lying beneath the chestnut tree reading Dumas and Hugo and Nodier, eating all of the mushroom potages coming from Marthe’s kitchen, wearing out a bagful of tennis balls against the wall of the chapel, pleading with Maman yet again to install a clay court.

Because come next autumn, I’ll be in army camp, for my two-year compulsory military service. Can you think of a greater misuse of youth than that? When I’m done, there will be a couple more years to finish my course at École Normale Supérieure and then hopefully a steady job at a school somewhere. In the meantime, Bauer and I are planning for one last hurrah (he’s also bound for military service, in Germany). In only a few months, the Olympics are in Stockholm. We’re doing what we can to get there. He has a cousin with a yacht (but of course) and a Swedish dictionary. I have nothing but crossed fingers. Will it be enough? Cross yours for me, Clare.

Luc

Seville, Spain

3 June 1912

Dear Luc,

You talk of plans for a steady job. But no plans for taking the tennis world by storm? Of sketching Paris? Of taking sail in search of pirate treasure?

I’ve seen your face glowing as you talked of the Championship of France and of all those tennis players. You speak almost with reverence. Your mentions of your games and the practices you sneak in when you really should be studying or working. I’ve watched your face as you played at Mille Mots, so focused, so devoted, so good. I never feel the same passion when you write to me about your studies, about the history and rhetoric and philosophy. I never see the same excitement underlining your words.

Of course your future is your future. But is it the one you want it to be? Would you be content, sitting in the stands at the Stockholm Olympics, already resolved to never standing on the courts?

Clare

Stockholm, Sweden

Mercredi, le 10 juillet 1912

Dear Clare,

Eight days of tennis. Can you believe it, Clare? I shook hands with Otto Kreuzer and fetched balls for Albert Canet during a practice. He gave me advice and a ball he had used. I even saw the King of Sweden, who sat straight down the row from me. One day when the competitions were interrupted because of a downpour, Bauer and I snuck onto the outdoor courts for a stolen game (because what is a little rain to the pair of us?). Halfway through, a man in a dripping overcoat approached us and I was sure we were caught and would be deported straight away. Bauer, rule-following German that he is, was terrified. But it wasn’t the Swedish police. Our audience of one was none other than Monsieur Thibauld, the writer and coach. He said that if he didn’t see us on the courts at the Berlin Olympics, he would eat his left shoe. Bauer and I shook on it right there.

You’re right, Clare. The way I feel when I’m on the court, it’s nothing like how I feel in the classroom. Out here, the sun in my eyes, arms burning, feet aching, I feel alive. The way Papa feels with his paintbrush, you with your pencil, even Uncle Théophile with his Iliad. Like this is what I was put on earth to do. Like this is my Something Important.

The games are over, the prizes have been given, and the boat sails tomorrow, but my head is still in the clouds. Clare, do I ever have to come down?

Luc

Marrakesh, Morocco

14 August 1912

Dear Luc,

We’ve moved again. That Berber dialect. You were right in your guess of Africa, as now we are in Marrakesh.

Oh, Luc, all of the languages swirling in the marketplace, the stacks of warm clay jars, the smell of spices in the air! Rugs woven in reds and oranges and deep nighttime blues. Women swathed in white, edging through the streets with baskets on their head. Melons as big as fairy tales. Rows of pointed leather shoes, every color on the palette. Streets tented by billowing sheets of cotton, freshly dyed and drying in the hot breeze. I try to paint the way your father explained, to capture all the quickness and light of the souks, but my colors run together. There’s too much here to take in. Grandfather had an easel made for me by a man in the Carpenter’s Souk. It’s flimsy, but it stands straight and folds when I want it to and smells wonderfully of cedar.

I read your letter from Sweden, knowing that you understood. I’m in the clouds and, Luc, I can’t feel the ground beneath me. I feel the way I did that time in the steam of Marthe’s kitchen when we confessed our passions. You doubted yours then, but now, hearing you claim it, hearing you want it, I feel we can conquer the world. I won’t let anything weigh me down. I can’t imagine stagnating away in that house in Scotland the way my mother did for so many years, rather than being here, where everything is warm with life and possibility. I can’t imagine trading all of this for a quiet domestic life. At this moment, I’m standing at the path to my own Something Important. I just have to trust myself to take the first step.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Lundi, le 9 septembre 1912

Dear Clare,

He’s gone and done it. Poor Uncle Jules has gone to the great dueling ground in the sky.

The other night he was as drunk as a marquis and, at intermission, challenged a playgoer who made some uncomplimentary remarks about Véronique’s legs. Uncle Jules’s secret shame was that he’d grown nearsighted and so his shot missed by a kilometer. The other gentleman was just as nearsighted and, unfortunately, hit my uncle square in the chest. He’d planned to delope, as he was Uncle Jules’s next-door neighbor and oldest friend, but didn’t miss the shot as he intended. We are sad, of course, but Jules always said that it was the way he wanted to go. Either that, or on the field in glorious battle. He’ll have to settle for a somewhat blind and botched duel.

Véronique has draped the apartment in meters of black crepe, even down to the birds’ cages. She goes around dabbing at her eyes and murmuring about what a “good run” they had. She’s vowed to not drink Champagne until after the funeral. Uncle Théophile is measuring how long before he can evict her and sell the apartment to cover Jules’s latest round of debts. In the week before his death, he bought seven new pairs of shoes. Jules, that is; Théophile has worn the same pair for a decade. The apartment, though, is in Véronique’s name, and she won’t budge a centimeter. Papa spends his time sniffling around the black-draped salon and leaving all the arrangements to his older brother.

The amazing thing is that I was in Uncle Jules’s will, too. He left me a sizable amount, to be held in trust until I turn twenty-one, only a year off. It will come in handy when I’m in the army, I’m sure. I’ve heard that recruits are willing to be bribed in wine. He also left me Demetrius and Lysander, though two foul-mouthed parrots are less of an asset in the army. Véronique has said she’ll care for them when I leave next fall and has invited me to come visit the parrots, and her, whenever I happen to be in Paris.

Life moves on in its grand march. Though some companions only walk along with us for part of the journey, we’ll always hear the echo of their footsteps.

Luc

Marrakesh, Morocco

1 October 1912

Dear Luc,