THE CELLO

THE CELLO

  On a long December day in 1958, my husband, Carroll, my two daughters of eleven and fourteen, and I were exploring the Mediterranean coast. Innocents abroad (I stole that from Mark Twain), this was part of the world we had known only in books. The sun shone, the sea lapped harmlessly across sand and rocks, and we must stop over and over again to savour it all.

Carroll and I were on Sabbatical Leave from our teaching jobs in California. The girls were delighted to leave school for a year, with only some work books to study on rainy days. And I was delighted that I had majored in French.

Our primitive Volkswagen Camper had lumbered from Nice over a scenic headland and down to Cannes. We had stopped about fifty times for photos, wine drinking, olive munching, and other pleasures, and entered Cannes after dark. Our guide book indicated a campground within the city limits. Carroll had pulled over and was trying to figure out where to drive, when we were accosted by a young man. Soon we were in a bar drinking coffee with him (we paid), and he invited us to his apartment for showers. His name was Hjalmar Boyesen and his address was on L’Impasse des Deux Eglises (The Cul de Sac of the Two Churches). After the coffee he guided us to the campground (a dismal lot by a dirty wall) and said it would be best if we put the bath off till tomorrow, and why don’t we come for lunch and bring our share of food? 

We found we were in a gypsy haunt when a rather ragged middle-aged man came begging. He piteously complained that he had neither father nor mother. I tried to look equally piteous and said, “Neither do I.” He grunted and walked away.

A morning in Cannes: markets and fishing boats. A bald gentleman dragged around by a younger woman. Sugar Daddy or Papá? Men playing boules in the park, teams of workmen pounding and painting on what were advertised as APPARTEMENTS GRANDE LUXE. Other workmen scraping the paint off the hulls of small yachts, or painting them again. An old woman and a young one, each with a bag of empty wine bottles and a child. A line of women at the butcher shop, pushing and shoving not a little, each one fussing over the exact piece of meat she wanted, and one accidentally stabbing the butcher’s hand with the price-tag spear.

In a long life, I have been back to France more times than I can remember, but this was the first time. Among its great cultural monuments, which remain, the daily life of the people has changed almost beyond recognition. But in 1958, most of the French were poor. They had lived through a war, and before that a Depression, and they scraped through as best they could.

At lunch time we turned up at the Boyesens’ apartment with some cheese and salami sandwiches and apples. Their apartment was spacious, cold, and colorful, with posters advertising various art exhibitions. Boyesen’s wife, Dorothy, was British, relaxed and charming and quite pregnant, and they had a two year old baby. We furnished somewhat more than half the lunch, and were able to leave some extra, as it was obvious that they were hungry.

Boyesen was a mosaic artist. That afternoon we visited the shop of a decorator friend of his and ordered a canvas bunk to be stitched up so that Adele could have it to sleep in. While there we saw one of Boyesen’s works, a spirited mosaic of a bull, modern and yet suggesting ancient themes.

That evening we went back to the Boyesens’ at the Impasse des deus Eglises. Having been invited to bring our share again, and knowing that food was scarce in that house, we brought a fairly sizeable beef roast, coffee, canned milk, bread, butter, and rice.

Another guest arrived, presumably for the same reason. He had his own offering of meat and rice and was bustling about the kitchen making a large risotto.

Boyesen’s eyes fairly gleamed at sight of the roast. He patted it, stabbed it with garlic, salted it lovingly, and popped it into the oven as though afraid it might fly away.

Hugh, the risotto man, was an Englishman who had lived in Morocco many years teaching English. He was humorous and fun to talk to. He was ardently studying the cello, and wondering where to live next in the world, as he was at the moment unemployed.

While her husband actively presided, Dorothy seemed remote, hardly playing the part of hostess. I tried to draw her into the circle, and she did open up about her frustrations as a young mother, and her former ambition as a cello player when she worked very hard and had high hopes. Now, she confessed, she didn’t want to play at all unless she could excel, so she never plays. Her beautiful cello leaned mutely in a corner. I thought the price she was paying for marriage was rather high.

Boyesen might have been the most talented of the three, jumpy, enthusiastic, self-centered, and at the same time, rather shy and sensitive. He believed in art and poverty, though he appeared to have a champagne taste.

After we emptied the first bottle of wine, Boyesen confessed that he didn’t have a cent to his name; Carroll dashed out to the VW to bring in another bottle.

Boyesen, a great talker, saw himself as an artist battling the world for a place in it that would support him and not demand too much compromise on his part. Although their finances were difficult, he frowned on materialism — though compared to the truly down-and-out, their toilet and bidet were clean and modern. Noble poverty still demanded good plumbing. He even stated that there was an inverse relationship between high standard of living and creativity. He decried modern Mexico (had he been there?) because, he said, it was raising its standard of living.  

By the way, the possibility of a shower was never mentioned again.

He had been in the American Army, driving a jeep when they “liberated” Paris. He had an old aunt who lived in the city, so the first thing he did was drive to her house to see her. (Hemmingway also helped to “liberate” the city, though more flamboyantly, with Greta Garbo on his arm and with much more alcohol.)

We went through a fond farewell at last, and proceeded on our way.

       * * *

Four years later, we returned to France. Adele, our elder daughter, was working at a girls’ camp in the High Sierra, and Claire was in boarding school in Switzerland, so it was just the two of us.  

When we came to Cannes, we went back to the Impasse des Deux Eglises looking for the Boyesens. No one answered the door, and no one seemed to recognise their name.

We traveled on to Monte Carlo and drove all three of the corniches, parallel drives above the sea but at different elevations. 

As we dropped down to Monaco, we noticed a poster for a classical music concert, and after a restaurant dinner we went to the show.

     And beautifully dressed in a long black satin skirt and ruffled white blouse was Dorothy Boyesen, not visibly pregnant, and, eyes half closed as though in a trance, leading the string section, playing, and playing, and playing.