Luc
Marrakesh, Morocco
27 November 1912
Dear Luc,
I’ve drawn Mille Mots more times than I can count. I’ve drawn the caves and the chestnut tree and the light falling on the courtyard. I’ve drawn the row of copper pots in Marthe’s kitchen, the vases along the mantel of your maman’s salon, the mauve sofa in the studio upstairs. And I’ve drawn you. Would I be angry at anything you’ve sketched? Would I be angry that you are thinking of me?
I wish I had seen Paris while I was in France—really seen—that golden Paris you love so much. I wish I’d had a chance to capture it on my sketch pad, the way you are now. The museums. The puppet shows and omnibuses. The rum babas, the carousel, the trees in the park. Will you send me something of it? Because the only Paris I remember, from those few hours there, is not as bright.
Grandfather has spent longer here in Marrakesh than any of the other places. It has become less about scholarship and more about the brown-eyed widow. His passion always used to belong to linguistics, but now I don’t know. Can love ignite the same way?
I’ve become so accustomed to wandering that I’m beginning to feel restless. I think he is, too, though he ignores it. He’s run out of things to transcribe and has talked to everyone in the market three times over. If he is to ever find the source of his dialect, if he is ever to finish his book, he must move on. As we grow, we all must.
Clare
Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris
Jeudi, le 18 décembre 1912
Dear Clare,
You really should consider coming here when you’re done wandering. I’ll show you the Paris I love, the Paris that you never had a chance to see. And you could be accepted into one of the fine art schools, I’m sure. Remember those dreams you told me through a mouthful of mimolette? I worry that you’ve forgotten those in your wanderings. Where’s your portfolio? Your letter of application? Where are those plans you once had?
Clare, you should, you must go. Find someplace where you can surround yourself with art. Someplace where you can breathe it in, smell the paint and freshly sharpened pencils, feel the wet of a brush on your fingertips. It’s all well and good to be sitting in the marketplace with your sketchbook, drawing the world, but you need to be with other artists. You need to be appreciated. You will be.
Luc
Constantine, Algeria
25 January 1913
Dear Luc,
I can’t think about that. About abandoning Grandfather? Now that we’ve left Marrakesh, now that he’s left his widow friend, all he has is me. If I leave, who will pour his tea the way he likes it, with a lump of sugar unmixed at the bottom? Who will make sure he has a fresh supply of the Alizarine ink he prefers? Who will be here to crank the phonograph while he scribbles away in his notebooks, then help him later decipher that hen scratch he calls an alphabet? I can’t go off on my own. He’s the only family I have left.
Dreams can change. People can grow up. These days I sell my drawings off the back of my bicycle when Grandfather’s funds for the month have dried up yet again. I keep us in beans and couscous. Do you understand? I know you must, with all of your old talk about “steady work.” I know you can see why, sometimes, we have to choose the earth beneath our feet rather than the clouds above.
Algeria feels quieter than Morocco. Or perhaps that’s me. Tomorrow’s my birthday. At seventeen, maybe the world doesn’t dance as much. Even Grandfather is melancholy, at having to leave his widow behind. He sits in our rooms, drinking strong tea. I can’t stand to be in there. With the walls all hung over with dark rugs and cushions piled along the floor, it’s stifling. I go out into the baking air, and I walk.
There are more women on the streets here, women wrapped in pale robes and veils, women in colored skirts and head scarves, draped in long shawls. I even see the occasional European woman, sweating in a tailored suit. Before, I would’ve noticed the patterns on their scarves, the colors of their stitched leather shoes. But now, all I can see is the way they drag their feet in the dust, the way their shoulders bend under their baskets, the way they tug on their veils, just for a second, to catch a mouthful of fresh air. With age, you no longer see the trappings on the surface. You start to see the people beneath.
Luc, do we have to grow older? Does the world have to change for us? Can we return to that one summer, when everything was beautiful? Can’t we hold onto our childish dreams for a little longer?
Clare
Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris
Samedi, le 22 février 1913
Dear Clare,
You mean to be an artist, so you shouldn’t fear growing older. Experience brings depth, no? At least that’s what Papa always says. Ask him, and there’s more thoughtfulness in his later paintings, more nuance, more symbolism, more expression. “No art done with youthful naivety was ever worth discussing,” he says. “You must first live it.” We must all suffer to gain experience, to create things capable of emotion.
It’s nothing creative compared to art, but sport can be the same. Between classes and studying, I have so little time, but what I have, I give to tennis. Stretched, exhausted days swinging a racket, leaning up against evenings of loneliness, quiet cups of café. My goal is no longer a gold medal tacked to the wall. It’s no longer to have my name in the record books alongside the greats. It’s to do the best I can. It’s to be a better me.
Bauer is in it for the competition, I know it, but he helps me to push myself. We’ll play wherever we can. Clay, grass, parquet. Solid ice, if someone propped a net over it. We’re stronger, faster, trickier. Bauer has developed this drop shot that gets me every time. He’ll lob balls deeper and deeper into my court until they become almost a yawn. He’ll wait until I move exactly where he wants me, until I stop thinking so hard about every stroke, then he’ll drop a shot just over the net, well out of my reach. I should have learned to expect those shots by now. But I don’t. It’s so easy to trust Bauer. He lulls me with the easy shots, then blindsides me with the unexpected drop shots. He knows how to set me up to lose. He’s up right now on games won, 257 to 228. Once I remember to be wary, I’ll turn that around.
Luc
Laghouat, Algeria
31 March 1913
Luc,
We’ve only just arrived in Laghouat, but we may be moving yet again. The dialect Grandfather has been chasing, sniffing out scraps here and there, he thinks he’s found it. But we have to trek to the Senegal River. He was ready to set off with nothing but the phonograph strapped to his back, but I’ve told him we can’t leave right away. We need to be sure we have a stock of ink, paper, rice, dried beans, tea, chlorine, quinine tablets. We need to set up for our mail to be collected. We’ll be out of contact for however long it takes to track down a dialect. This is more than packing up to move to yet another city. This is an expedition. But we can manage.
But you, Luc, can you? You let Stefan Bauer trick you again and again. And you still think he is to be trusted? I could have told you two years ago that he wasn’t. If I didn’t think you’d have figured it out by now, if I didn’t want to let the past be the past, I would have.
I won’t let anyone trick me, not anymore. Not the fruit sellers, not the paper merchants, not the beggars in front of the Parish House. And not Stefan Bauer. I’ve spent these past years wandering Iberia and Africa, learning to navigate foreign streets, learning to manage our odd little household, learning to think for myself. Learning not to be as starry-eyed and unquestioning as I once was. I direct my own life and I can do it alone. I’ve grown too much to let someone else, for even a moment, feel they can outsmart me.
But it’s part of growing older, this deciding for ourselves. This deciding who we can trust and who we cannot. The day you led me to that stool in the kitchen and asked if I could trust you, I knew I could. You didn’t push, you didn’t intrude, you didn’t offer yourself uninvited. But what you gave, in those spoonfuls and bites of friendship, was perfect. They told me that, in my grief and loneliness, here was someone I needed. Here, surprisingly, was something I wanted.
But when you continue to put your trust in people like Stefan Bauer, it makes me wonder if I was wrong. I thought you knew more of the world than that. I thought you were clever enough to see when someone wasn’t really a friend.
Clare
