They gathered again at seven for communal dinners at which the food might be meager but the company never was. Afterward, they read newspapers and listened to the radio, often until the BBC signed off with a rousing rendition of “God Save the King,” for heaven’s sake. They played made-up games, the favorite a simple listing of the ten people you most liked to fantasize being dead. They sang together, with Varian at the piano and Gussie singing enthusiastically. And if the night was clear enough, they returned to that Boston jazz station and rolled up the rugs and danced.
THE VERY DAY the Bretons moved into “the chateau,” as they’d taken to calling the shabby old place, the Surrealists in the area got wind of it and began dropping by at all hours to pay homage to the founder of their movement, forever interrupting André’s work. His solution was to send Gussie to spread the word that he would receive visitors only at a salon he would host, the first of which would be on La Toussaint, the French All Saints’ Day, a holiday meant to honor the poor old saints who didn’t merit their own special day. Anyone who cared to visit was to come between noon and seven to pray to the good saints of the arts, whoever they might be, through food and wine and games.
That morning—a Saint Martin’s summer day, November but still warm enough for shirtsleeves—they set tables and chairs out on the belvedere, with white tablecloths, dishes, and silverware for the scant repast Madame Nouget was able to muster, and quantities of wine. Also long pads of paper, colored pencils and crayons and drawing pens, scissors and paste, and old magazines for the games André meant for everyone to play.
Danny climbed up a ladder Nanée held for him and out onto a branch of a tree. Nanée climbed to a lower rung and handed a painting up to him. Some of André’s friends planning to attend this first salon had contributed works of art the two were now to hang from the trees. Danny took hold of the twine attached to the canvas, leaving the painting itself in Nanée’s hands while he tied the twine around a branch.
“All right,” he said.
“Are you sure it’s secure?”
He gave her a look.
“It’s a Miró, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “I’m not going to be the one to tell André I dropped it ten feet onto rough stone and I’m very sorry but it’s now worthless, never mind how much money it might have fetched to help refugees.”
She carefully let the painting go. It hung at a slight angle, but the ladder was too precarious for her to straighten it, and anyway, she rather liked the tilt.
From this height, she spotted Varian sitting with Dagobert, seeking his advice about whether he ought to get his own dog. Dagobert was as often with the children or one of the others as with Nanée now, as if he’d grown from a toddler always wanting his mother into a teenager who preferred his friends. And his best friend was, oddly, Varian.
Jacqueline Breton appeared below, her bangle bracelets jangling as if to announce the arrival of the mobile she handed up to Nanée—small, dangling black-and-white photos taken by Man Ray, who’d managed to flee Paris for Los Angeles. No color at all, not like the Calders Nanée loved, mobiles first envisioned in Mondrian’s Paris studio thanks to light playing over colored cardboard tacked to the wall much like, Nanée imagined, the sunlight now reflecting from the colored glass adorning Jacqueline’s blond hair.
“A bit of art actually meant to be hung,” Jacqueline said, seeming so much more mature than Nanée even though they were the same age. Because she was married to André, who was fifteen years their senior? Because she was the mother of a five-year-old?
“I think we need to hang you, Jacqueline,” Nanée said, meaning to compliment her hair, but sounding like a complete idiot. “I mean, you look like a work of art yourself.”
“Of course if someone bid on me, we would have to sell me,” Jacqueline answered brightly. “But then you never know. I might just make a fine whore!”
Even as Jacqueline turned back toward the house, Nanée said to Danny, “I have an idea how to get Edouard out of Camp des Milles.”
Danny grinned. “‘Edouard’？ That’s awfully chummy, isn’t it?”
Danny had returned late the night before from a trip to Camp des Milles, where he’d managed to bribe one of the guards to allow him to see the list of prisoners. Several of the men on Varian’s list were indeed being held there, including Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer, as was Edouard Moss. “Who is Edouard Moss?” Varian had asked. Moss was well-known in Europe, but not well enough known in the United States to have made Varian’s list.