She arrived half an hour later and she had with her the little brown-paper parcel. I poured her a gla.s.s of champagne and put a slice of foie-gras on toast for her. She accepted the champagne, ignored the foie-gras, and remained silent.
"Come on," I said, "what"s bothering you?"
She emptied her gla.s.s in one long swallow and held it out for more. I refilled the gla.s.s. She drank half of it, then put it down. "For G.o.d"s sake, Yasmin!" I cried. "What happened?"
She looked at me very straight and said simply, "He smote me."
"You mean he _hit_ you? Good G.o.d, I am sorry! You mean he actually struck you?"
"Don"t be an a.s.s, Oswald."
"What _do_ you mean then?"
"I mean I was smitten by him. He"s the first man who"s ever bowled me completely over."
"Oh, I _see_ what you mean! Good heavens!"
"He is a wonder, that man," she said. "He is a genius."
"Of course he"s a genius. That"s why we chose him."
"Yes, but he"s a beautiful genius. He is so beautiful, Oswald, and so gentle and wonderful. I"ve never met anyone like him."
"He smote you all right."
"He certainly did."
"So what"s your problem?" I said. "Are you feeling guilty about it?"
"Oh no," she said. "I don"t feel in the least guilty. I"m just overwhelmed."
"You"re going to be a h.e.l.l of a lot more overwhelmed before we"ve finished," I said. "He"s not the only genius you"re going to call on."
"I know that."
"You"re not running out, are you?"
"Certainly not. Give me some more drink."
I filled her gla.s.s for the third time in as many minutes. She sat sipping it. Then she said, "Listen, Oswald . .
"I"m listening."
"We"ve been pretty jokey about this whole thing up to now, haven"t we? It"s all been a bit of a lark, right?"
"Rubbish! I take it very seriously."
"What about Alfonso?"
"You were the one who joked about him," I said.
"I know that," she said. "But he deserved it. He"s a joker."
"I can"t quite see what you"re getting at," I said. "Renoir was different," she said. "That"s what I"m getting at. He"s a giant. His work is going to live through the ages."
"So will his sperm."
"Stop it and hear me out," she said. "What I"m saying is this. Some people are jokers. Some are not. Alfonso is a joker. All the kings are jokers. We have a few other jokers on our list, too."
"Who?"
"Henry Ford"s a joker," she said. "I think that fellow Freud in Vienna is a joker. And the wireless boy, Marconi. He"s a joker."
"What"s the point of all this?"
"The point is," Yasmin said, "I don"t in the least mind being jokey about jokers. I don"t mind treating them a little rough either if I have to. But I"ll be d.a.m.ned if I"m going to start sticking hatpins into men like Renoir and Conrad and Stravinsky. Not after what I saw today."
"What did you see today?"
"I told you, I saw a really great and wonderful old man."
"And he smote you."
"You"re d.a.m.n right he did."
"Let me ask you this, did _he_ have a good time?"
"Amazing," she said. "He had an amazing time."
"Tell me what happened."
"No," she said. "I don"t mind telling you about the jokers. But the non-jokers are private."
"Was he in a wheel-chair?"
"Yes. And now he has to strap the paint-brush to his wrist because he can"t hold it in his fingers."
"Because of arthritis?"
"Yes."
"And you gave him the Blister Beetle?"
"Of course."
"It wasn"t too much for him?"
"No," she said. "When you"re that age you have to have it."
"And he gave you a picture," I said, pointing to the brown-paper parcel.
She unwrapped it now and held it up for me to see. It was a small unframed canvas of a young rosy-cheeked girl with long golden hair and blue eyes, a wondrous little picture, a magic thing, a marvel to look at. A warm glow came out of it and filled the entire room. "I didn"t ask him for it," Yasmin said. "He made me take it. Isn"t it beautiful?"
"Yes," I said. "It is beautiful."
16.
THE EFFECT that Renoir had upon Yasmin during that dramatic visit to Essoyes did not, thank heavens, take all the fun out of our future operations. I myself have always found it difficult to treat anything too seriously and I believe the world would be a better place if everyone followed my example. I am completely without ambition. My motto--"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task"--should be well known to you by now. All I want out of life is to enjoy myself. But before one can achieve this happy end one must obviously get hold of a lot of money. Money is essential to a sybarite. It is the key of the kingdom. To which the carping reader will almost certainly reply, "You say you are without ambition, but do you not realize that the desire for wealth is in itself one of the most obnoxious ambitions of them all?" This is not necessarily true. It is the _manner_ in which one acquires wealth that determines whether or not it is obnoxious. I myself am scrupulous about the methods I employ. I refuse to have anything to do with moneymaking unless the process obeys two golden rules. First, it must amuse me tremendously. Second, it must give a great deal of pleasure to those from whom I extract the loot. This is a simple philosophy and I recommend it wholeheartedly to all business tyc.o.o.ns, casino operators, chancellors of the Exchequer, and budget directors everywhere.
Two things stood out vividly during this period. First, the unusual sense of fulfillment Yasmin was getting from each artist she visited. She would emerge from house or studio with eyes shining like stars and a bright red rose on each cheek. All of which caused me to ruminate many times upon the s.e.xual dexterity of men of outstanding creative genius. Did this prodigious creativity of theirs spill over into other fields? And if so, did they know deep secrets and magic methods of exciting a lady that were beyond the reach of ordinary mortals like me? The red roses upon Yasmin"s cheeks and the shine in her eyes made me suspect, a trifle reluctantly let me say, that this was so.
The second surprising facet of the whole operation was its extraordinary simplicity. Yasmin never seemed to have the slightest trouble in getting her man to deliver the goods. Mind you, the more one thinks about this, the more obvious it becomes that she never was going to have any trouble in the first place. Men are by nature polygamous creatures. Add to that the well-substantiated fact that supreme creative artists tend to be more viripotent than their fellows (just as they also tend to be heavier drinkers) and you can begin to see why no one was going to give Yasmin much of an argument. So what do you have? You have a bunch of supremely gifted and therefore hyperactive artists, loaded with the very finest Sudanese Blister Beetle, who find themselves staring goggle-eyed at a young female of indescribable beauty. They were jiggered. They were scrambled and dished up on b.u.t.tered toast from the moment they swallowed the fatal chocolate. I am positive that the Pope in Rome himself, in the same situation, would have had his ca.s.sock off in nine minutes flat just like the rest of them.
But I must go back for a moment to where we left off.
After Renoir, we returned to our headquarters at the Ritz in Paris. From there we went after old Monet. We drove out to his splendid house at Giverny and I dropped Yasmin off at the gates in the approved fashion. She was inside for over three hours, but I didn"t mind that. Knowing there would be lots of other long waits like this coming along, I had installed a small library in the back of the car--a complete Shakespeare, some Jane Austen, some d.i.c.kens, some Balzac, and the latest Kipling.
Yasmin emerged at last and I saw she had a large canvas under one arm. She was walking slowly, just sauntering along the sidewalk in a dreamy sort of way, but when she came closer, the first thing I noticed was that old glint of ecstasy in her eyes and the brilliant roses on her cheeks. She looked like a nice tame tigress who had just swallowed the Emperor of India and had liked the taste.
"Everything all right?"
"Fine," she murmured.
"Let"s see the picture."
It was a shimmering study of water-lilies on the lake in Monet"s Giverny garden, a real beauty.
"He said I was a miracle worker."
"He"s right."
"He said I was the most beautiful woman he"d ever seen in his life. He asked me to stay."
Monet"s s.e.m.e.n, as it turned out, had a better count than Renoir"s in spite of his being a year older, and I was fortunate in being able to make twenty-five straws. Admittedly, each straw had the minimum count of only twenty million sperm, but they would do. They would do very well. They would be worth hundreds of thousands, I reckoned, those Monet straws, in the years to come.
17.
THEN WE HAD a stroke of luck. In Paris at this time there was a dynamic and extraordinary producer of ballets called Diaghilev. Diaghilev had a talent for spotting great artists, and in 1919 he was regrouping his company after the war and preparing a new repertory of ballets. He had gathered around him for this purpose a group of remarkably gifted men. For example, at that very moment: Igor Stravinsky had come up from Switzerland to write the music for Diaghilev"s _Pulcinella_.
Pablo Pica.s.so was designing the sets.
Pica.s.so was also doing the sets for _Three-Cornered Hat_.
Henri Matisse had been hired to design the costumes and the decor for _Le Chant de Rossignol_.
And another painter we had not heard of called Andre Derain was busy preparing the sets for _La Boutique Fantasque_.
Stravinsky, Pica.s.so, and Matisse were all on our list. On the theory that Monsieur Diaghilev"s judgement was probably sounder than ours, we decided to put Derain"s name on as well. All of these men were in Paris.
We took Stravinsky first. Yasmin walked right in on him while he was working at the piano on _Pulcinella_. He was more surprised than angry. "h.e.l.lo," he said. "Who are you?"
"I have come all the way from England to offer you a chocolate," she said.
This absurd remark, which Yasmin was to use on many other occasions, disarmed completely this kind and friendly man. The rest was simple, and although I longed for salacious details, Yasmin remained mute.
"You might at least tell me what he was like as a person."
"Sparkling bright," she said. "Oh, he was so sparkling bright and so quick and clever. He has a huge head and a nose like a boiled egg."
"Is he a genius?"
"Yes," she said, "he"s a genius. He"s got the spark, the same as Monet and Renoir."
"What is this spark?" I said. "Where is it? Is it in the eyes?"
"No," she said. "It isn"t anywhere special. It"s just _there_. You know it"s there. It"s like an invisible halo."
I made fifty straws from Stravinsky.
Next it was Pica.s.so"s turn. He had a studio at that time in the rue de la Boetie and I dropped Yasmin off in front of a rickety-looking door with brown paint peeling off it. There was no bell or knocker so Yasmin simply pushed it open and went in. Outside in the car I settled down with _La Cousine Bette_, which I still think is the best thing the old French master ever wrote.
I don"t believe I had read more than four pages when the car door was flung open and Yasmin tumbled in and flopped onto the seat beside me. Her hair was all over the place and she was blowing like a sperm whale.
"Christ, Yasmin! What happened?"
"My G.o.d!" she gasped. "Oh, my G.o.d!"
"Did he throw you out?" I cried. "Did he hurt you?"
She was too out of breath to answer me at once. A trickle of sweat was running down the side of her forehead. She looked as though she"d been chased around the block four times by a maniac with a carving knife. I waited for her to simmer down.
"Don"t worry," I said. "We"re bound to have one or two washouts."