At the Edge of Summer

Perthshire

4 September 1911

Dear Luc,

I don’t know if you’ll welcome a letter from me, but you did once and, besides, I have no one else to talk to. I don’t know how to talk to my grandfather. I haven’t had a proper conversation with him since we left Mille Mots. He spent the journey up to Scotland talking to me as though I were nine, which I suppose is the last time he saw me. He kept asking if I still read Father Goose and collected china dolls. Conversation faded after that and he seems unsure of what to ask me next.

I miss all of our easy conversations beneath the chestnut tree. I miss the walks through the woods, the songs you would teach me, the dogs weaving between us. Back here at Fairbridge, I miss all of that more. I’m remembering the muteness of regular life. The days that could go by without me talking to a soul. The emptiness. The way everyone seems to forget me in the silence of the house. It’s almost as if the past few months never happened.

I hope that you write back, if for no other reason than to remind me that there was a summer in Picardy, where I made the best friend I’ve ever had.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Mardi, le 19 septembre 1911

Dear Clare,

I’ve never received a letter from across the Channel, apart from the time I was twelve and Maman sent a letter from Perthshire lecturing me on that term’s marks. That letter was accepted red-faced; know that yours was received with a smile.

I’ve probably told you how, from the age of eight, I was at a Swiss boarding school. I’d come home summers, but, along with most of the boys, would spend my other holidays at the school. Every July I’d arrive in Railleuse, a year older and (I’m sure) a year wiser, yet Maman and Papa acted as though no time had passed. Maman would have last summer’s clothes aired in my wardrobe, last summer’s favorite dishes prepared, last summer’s conversations ready to revive. But, of course, I wasn’t the same boy each July. I’d had a year to grow, to learn, to like and to hate, to have my heart broken and then caught up again by the next passion. Though I may not understand the silence and emptiness you wrote about, I do understand the rest. I understand that mute frustration. I understand the feeling that, for a time, the rest of the world stayed still while you alone kept moving towards the future.

Luc

Perthshire

11 October 1911

Dear Luc,

There is a room at Fairbridge that has always been my favorite. Since I was small, I’d go hide in there whenever I was angry. It’s full of curiosities from around the world—shells, fossils, baskets, bowls, feathers, and bones. On all of the walls hang masks—carved, painted, and generally terrifying. I’d sit in the middle of the room with my knees drawn up and wonder what faces those masks used to hide, what tales of exotic lands they told.

I told you that I used to pretend my grandfather was a pirate. I needed an explanation for him to be gone all of the time. But he wasn’t always a pirate in my mind, you know. I used to imagine he was a sea captain, kept far from us by the whims of Neptune. Sometimes I’d imagine that he was a missionary, bringing holy words and warm blankets to the world’s downtrodden pagans. An opera singer like Caruso, an explorer like Scott, a showman like Houdini—anything where celebrity and dedication kept him, regrettably, from his family back in Perthshire.

As a child, I only saw him occasionally. He’d appear at Fairbridge, without warning, and spend an uncomfortable handful of weeks pacing the gardens and generally avoiding any and all conversation. Mother kept up all pretenses of politeness and studied affection, but when he finally left, she complained bitterly. I realize now that she was envious. She had to stay back at home with me, but Grandfather, he had the world to explore. He was the adventurer she couldn’t be.

It’s funny, though, how sometimes our guesses can be closer to the truth. Grandfather may not be a sea captain, but he’s traveled nearly as far. India, Africa, the South Seas. “Chasing languages,” he says. To each place he went, he sent something back to me. All those hints of the world—each mask hanging on the wall, each shell and woven basket, each dream I had about the lands they showed—were from my grandfather. It was his way of staying close to me, even when he was so far away. So much of the world in one room and, Luc, he promises he’ll take me there.

Clare

Lagos, Portugal

1 November 1911

Dear Luc,

As you can see from the heading, we’re in Portugal now. Portugal! And to think, less than a year ago, I’d never been out of Scotland. Now I’ve been to both France and Portugal. I feel so continental.

Grandfather is happy as a lion, jumping here and there across the city after “smatterings of Berber.” That’s what he’s doing, you know, researching a book that he swears will change linguistic scholarship. I don’t know much about “linguistic scholarship,” but it involves him following lost little bits of a Berber dialect, remnants of the Moorish conquest, through the Portuguese. He’s given me a dreadfully dull tome tracing the paths of the Moors. I don’t understand how he can find this at all interesting. Or, indeed, worth anyone’s time. He tried to excite me about our travels, by saying “Us explorers, we have to stay together!” I don’t know why he thinks of me as an explorer. I’m not, at least not yet.

But I don’t have to pay him much mind. I keep to myself and he lets me. He gives me pocket money and, as long as I don’t stray too far from our lodging, I can explore. I eat fish stew and olives. I ride in donkey carts. I wander in and out of churches laid with painted tiles.

This freedom, it’s nervous. I’ve never had so much space to roam. The first few days, I could only see the shadows between the buildings, the stares, the footsteps behind me. So like Paris. But then I learned to navigate the streets. I caught up a few words in Portuguese. And I began to see the spots of sunshine.

Everything is so different here, at least from Scotland. I’m writing this on a stretch of beach, a beach that doesn’t have rocks or icy water or pale-legged men in striped swimming costumes. The sand is all warm and golden and the water is blue-green. The colors remind me of those landscapes you keep hanging in your room, from that one week your father pretended to be an Impressionist. Has your father ever painted here?

Grandfather says that the sun is putting a little color on my cheeks. I say it’s sunburn. He bought me a straw hat, the kind that Portuguese women plait in the shade of the boats. Of course I won’t wear it. Can you imagine a French woman wearing such a thing?

Clare

Mille Mots

Vendredi, le 22 décembre 1911

Dear Clare,

I am at Mille Mots for Christmas and I wish that you were here. It feels like quite the party. Maman has two new kittens and they are in the punch bowl almost as much as Papa is. Both have new things to wear—Maman a glossy dress the color of mistletoe and Papa a peasant shirt embroidered all around with holly berries. The household is so used to their bohemian wear that no one raised an eyebrow when Papa added to his costume a little round cap like they wear in Bethmale. He bought one for each of the staff, women included. They are completely ridiculous, but, at Christmas, everyone will forgive him.

They even relented to invite Uncle Théophile, the only time of year he will spend the money on a train ticket out to Railleuse. He’s always goggle-eyed at the wine and meat being served, but that doesn’t stop him from eating himself into indigestion. Alain and I hiked out into the woods today for the perfect Yule log and greenery for the réveillon table. Marthe is busy making nougat and candied citron and the sweet orange-water cake she only makes this time of year. She has the fattest goose hanging in the pantry, a behemoth with a black feather in his tail. She stuffs him with chestnuts and sausage, and we are driven mad as he roasts all day for our Christmas Eve feast. Marthe’s midnight supper, it makes up for all those months of eating lentils in the café.

You’d adore the réveillon feast (I know your weakness for Marthe’s nougat) and also the family crèche. With Papa’s help, I built the manger with stones and sticks and bits of straw from the Bois de Fee, and the little figures inside, the santons, Maman sculpted those with clay from the riverbank. She used the faces of those in the household, so Joseph has Papa’s beard and there is an angel, a drummer, and a water-carrier, all bearing an uncanny resemblance to me. She’s put her own face on one of the Wise Men. You’ve seen Papa’s work in the hallways and in Mère l’Oyle, but I think you would be quite impressed to see what Maman used to do.

How are you celebrating Christmas in Lagos?

Luc

Lagos, Portugal

18 January 1912

Dear Luc,

You’ve made me ravenous! We always had goose with chestnut stuffing for Christmas, and black bun for Hogmanay. Here it seems to be salt cod and boiled potatoes. I’ve never eaten so much fish in my life as I have since coming to Portugal. But they have at least a dozen kinds of custard, so I will forgive them the fish.

We are staying in a skinny house painted bright green, one that I worry might lean over in the sea wind. Grandfather borrows the landlord’s bicycle and wobbles around the town with a phonograph strapped to the handlebars. He makes recordings on wax cylinders of the bakers, the fishmongers, the little girls with their baskets of clams. Anyone who will talk to him is duly recorded, both on the cylinder and in one of his ubiquitous black notebooks. His notes are mystifying. Though he says they’re marking down not the words but the way they’re said, I can’t make heads or tails of it. Visible Speech indeed.

I meant to ask, has your papa had another book? I passed a bookseller in the market the other day and there was one propped up that looked so like your papa’s style that I was sure it must be his. No illustrator named and I’m not quite sure what it was about, as it was all in Portuguese, but there was a nymph on the front all covered over with seaweed and rainbows and two bear cubs. Do you recognize it? The trees behind looked almost like the lindens at Mille Mots and there was something of your mother in the nymph’s face.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Jeudi, le 8 février 1912

Dear Clare,

Papa has had no commissions for Portuguese books, no. Perhaps it was someone else from the School of Art? He had students who went on to illustrate.

To be perfectly honest, he hasn’t been painting much at all lately. Not even drawing. I was at Mille Mots last weekend and Maman was out of sorts. Really, it’s not my fault that the roof is leaking (again) and Papa hasn’t taken a new commission in months. He’s been tutoring a pair of sisters who have their eyes fixed on L’École des Beaux-Arts, now that women are admitted. Maman is scandalized that a proper artist like Claude Crépet has stooped to tutoring.

And you, Clare, are you drawing? You’ve talked about the beach with the nets stretched over boats, the market with the fishmongers, and the green house, but nothing of the sketches I am sure you must be making of all this. None for me? I’ve never been to Portugal, but I’ve never before wanted to see it more than I do from your eyes.

Luc

Seville, Spain

14 March 1912

Dear Luc,

They say that the streets of Seville smell like oranges. They do. I almost feel like I’m back in the Fairy Woods with you, eating oranges until we had stomachaches. Remember how all you’d have to do is hold one under my nose to make me smile?

They have a museum here, a museum of fine arts. Grandfather brought me, thinking I’d like it. The paintings, they’re so unlike what your father does. Dark, raw, Spanish. Haunting paintings, centuries old. With all of the sunshine and music out on the street, I didn’t expect the museum to be filled with so much murky sorrow. They made me sad like I hadn’t been in years. When we left, I had to run off for a moment to be alone. I found a narrow street that reminded me of the caves at Brindeau and I pressed my face against the stone of the wall until the waves of sadness passed. When I returned, Grandfather didn’t scold me. But he gave me a box of paints, real paints, and a palette to mix them. “I know you can see more color than they could,” he said. He’s a funny man, isn’t he?

So here’s a painting, just a small one, and not on proper paper either. Of what else? An orange.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

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,

Things are as usual here. Grandfather’s widow friend brought over a tagine again. It’s disgusting, how he’ll smile and simper and eat around the pieces of mutton so that he doesn’t have to admit that he follows a Pythagorean diet. With as often as she comes around, I don’t imagine she’ll stop if she finds out that he doesn’t eat meat.

When she started making camel eyes at him (and she always does), I escaped to the Djemma el Fna. Grandfather thinks it’s too crowded and no place for a girl, but I wear a robe and scarf and, anyway, I have a bicycle now. I’m faster than I used to be. And besides, I can’t resist going. All of the snake charmers and storytellers and dancers in their horned hats. The square is so full of life.

With that heavy paper you sent, I’ve taken to sketching the water sellers. They’re usually young boys in tattered robes, bent under the water skins on their backs and the strings of tin bowls around their necks. If I keep buying bowls of water, they’ll patiently ignore me while I draw. There’s one, a boy with a limp, who reminds me of you. He’s always on the edges of the group, looking like he’s waiting to begin life. But his eyes watch me. Though he’s afraid to say a word to me—a girl, and a Western girl at that—he looks as though, more than anything, he needs someone to listen. It still amazes me that, after so many years, you let me listen to you. As long as I can, I’ll walk with you on your “grand march.”

I love it here, the swirl and commotion of the markets, the color-drenched scarves and robes, the aching warmth of the clay walls. I speak Moroccan French now, and a spattering of Arabic, and I can bargain like a camel trader. Everything is so alive. And yet, all someone has to do is mention the word “Scotland,” and I’m suddenly hungry for it. I can smell gorse in the air, hear the Tummel rippling past, feel the breath from the Highlands. In those moments, I want to be there, too.

Grandfather doesn’t understand. Whenever I mention Perthshire to him, he just laughs and waves a hand and says, “Isn’t it better to be away from there?” I know Grandfather and why he’s been away so long. It was my grandmother’s death and all of the things that remind him of her. For him, memories haunt the halls of Fairbridge, though they are memories softened by distance. It has been too long since he’s known the word “home.” These days, the whole world is his home.

Distance has softened my memories, too. Instead of a cold, echoing, lonely place, I can’t help but think of Fairbridge with a warmth not warranted. I remember my old nursery, with my collection of china dolls tucked high on a shelf. Father used to buy those for me, you know, every time he finished a commission. The curiosity room, packed full of things Grandfather sent from his travels. Even when I felt alone and adrift, there was someone in the world who loved me. Even the way Mother’s room used to always smell like lilacs. I miss her, Luc. I know now that she’s never coming back, but I miss her still the same.

Maybe it’s because, out here, I understand her a little more. I know why she couldn’t wait quietly in one place when the world is so full of possibility. I wouldn’t trade my travels for anything. But, even so, I don’t understand why she left. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive her that. She chose the world over me. She couldn’t have both.

I know you’re like me. Adventure is adventure, but there’s something about home. Maybe it’s because it makes us feel like children. Maybe it’s because it reminds us of summer. When I talk about the river, the grass, the flowers on the air, you understand. Because you’re thinking about Mille Mots.

I do, too. Think of Mille Mots, that is. It’s not my home, but sometimes, during that one summer, I’d pretend it was. Before my grandfather came, I’d pretend that your home was mine. I wanted to have a place to belong. That’s why I was always outside drawing the château, you know. I wanted to be able to capture Mille Mots down to every blade of grass, every ripple in the Aisne, every crumble of white stone, so that if I were ever to leave one day, I could bring the château away with me. I didn’t know that once you fall in love with something, it never really leaves you. Does it? I’ve even found a sweet chestnut tree here that reminds me of ours, though it’s lonely beneath it all by myself. I’ve sent you a leaf, pressed flat. Remember?

Yearning for home, yearning for those warm, safe days of childhood, that doesn’t halt our steps forward. It doesn’t mean we regret or fear. It means that we’re built of so much more than our future. We have the past to stand on. And we’re stronger for it.

Clare

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Mardi, le 29 octobre 1912

Dear Clare,

This time of year is so melancholy. Rainy and gray, as the world slips into winter. I read your letter and it made me wonder, what does “home” mean to me?

Autumn at Mille Mots is just as gray, of course, but warmed by the fireplace in the drawing room and by stands of goldenrod around the edges of the garden. Stacks of books read on the sofa in my room, fresh honey for my bread, all of the apples, grapes, and medlars I can eat. In Paris, I can still find all of the fruit, if I’m willing to go to the market at Les Halles. But everyone rushes past me. Unless you are Uncle Jules (rest in peace) or an English tourist, you are not in Paris to savor it. You’re here to work or to study, like I am. You’re living in a borrowed space, like I am. In a year I’ll be gone.

Perhaps it’s disillusionment, what with this time of year and with my military days looming. I wish I felt settled enough to savor. But I can’t help but think of months ahead and wonder where I’ll be.

Do you know my favorite spot in Paris? The Île de la Cité is a little island in the middle of the Seine, the same island that the great Notre Dame de Paris sits on. At the other end is a tiny triangle of land called the Square du Vert-Galant. I’ll go stand on the edge, point my feet to match the angle of the land, and close my eyes. When the wind from the Seine, smelling of fish and of stone and of history, blows across my face, I have a moment where I feel that I’m at home.

Those days, I remember why I first fell in love with the city. I remember my first puppet show at the little Guignol Theatre on the Champs-Élysées, my first ride on an omnibus down the Avenue de la Grande Armée, the first time I caught the brass ring on the carousel at the Luxembourg Garden, my first taste of Maman’s rum baba, my first boat on the Grand Basin, my first run across the teetering bridge in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Writing this, pinning each of those memories to the page, makes me content. For all its gray, that golden Paris still lurks beneath. Maybe when all this is over, maybe Paris will be the place I call home.

Lately I’ve felt like drawing more often. I’ll go and sit by the Seine, in the Square du Vert-Galant, and sketch until I can’t feel my fingers. I draw the river and the barges, yes, but my pencil also turns to the things I can’t see. I draw Papa’s queens and knights and fairy-tale ogres. I draw the château and the gargoyles above the courtyard chapel. I draw the Aisne, Enété, and the caves around Brindeau. Would you be angry if I told you I also drew you?

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

Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Dimanche, le 4 mai 1913

Dear Clare,

I don’t know what I’ve said wrong.

Bauer, he’s always been tricky on the court. He’s always taken this game far more seriously than I have. It’s friendly competition. Fierce across the net, yet amiable across the café table afterwards. I don’t know if I’d count him a friend, but a friendly acquaintance? Someone I can trust? He’s given no reason for me to think otherwise.

But you, Clare, I’d trust you to the Amazon and back. I’d trust you across the Sahara, through the Himalayas, from here to Algeria. I’ve spent all these years writing to you, confessing to you, sharing with you pieces of myself that I’d never before shared. And now to have you write to me like none of that matters? I don’t know what to think.

And with you leaving, maybe I won’t ever know. Maybe you won’t write back. Of course I’ll still be here, worrying, waiting, wishing that I hadn’t shaken your trust like that. What else can I do?

I don’t know what I’ll do without you waiting at the other end of my letters. Is that too sentimental of me? Before I met you, the world was an uncertain, daunting place. But now, a letter from you brings me back to that summer. I read your words and I can hear the Aisne and the cicadas in each one. Like neither of us ever left Mille Mots. I don’t understand it, but seeing a sand-dusted envelope from you, and I suddenly feel as invincible as we did then.

So, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep writing to you. When you return from the depths of Africa, my letters will be waiting for you. And, as always, Clare, my thoughts.

Luc