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.