Page 37 of The Seekers of Deer Creek

“Justine.” I’d starched my voice with formality. “I am—”

“I know who you are, my dear.”

Those words were an immeasurable comfort. I read under them a kindred empathy that made my heartbeat falter. To be known!

“Let me walk you to the cottage,” she went on. “And we will learn more about each other.”

She and Marcel were new to Arles, having recently moved fromLyon. Though she missed her friends, the Camargue seduced her entirely with its beauty. Marcel was in imports, she told me, and he was devoted to his work above all else. They’d been married almost four years without children; this fact did not seem to perturb her, as it might have other women in her position. She’d named their estate—House of Our Dreams—with hope. In her curt laugh, I understood that the naming was at least partially facetious to her. I did not pry, at least not yet.

I’d never met anyone so easy to converse with, aside from Emil, if you can call his haphazard confessions a kind of conversation. I found myself telling her unexpected things about my childhood and my ambitions—not everything, of course. Some demons needed to be kept at bay. She gleaned the substance of my revelations though; that I was alone in the most essential of ways.

Instead of pitying me, she reached for a solution. She invited me to accompany her to the market. Made plans to go down to the river to fish and swim. She brimmed with ideas to reawaken my inspiration.My work—or lack thereof—was treated with respect, but she did not dance around it. That made it easy for me to confide in her.

“I don’t know that I will ever paint again,” I said.

“I’m not an artist,” she said, “but I grew up around farms all my life. I can’t help but think that fallow moments are but a prelude to ones of industry.”

I snuck glances at her as we walked. The sun kissed the tip of her nose. She smelled like tuberose and mint and some ineffable, sweet grassiness that teased my senses. Despite everything I knew I should do, I drew closer to her, in spirit if not body.

I would not say this anywhere but here, but what is a journal if not a glass room, a place for bald meditation?

I wanted her from the start.

As we approached the cottage, she took my hand in hers. “I don’t have many friends in Arles yet and I know you will be busy, but will you visit with me sometimes?”

Did I think of Emil’s cautionary words? Perhaps, fleetingly. But did I mind them? Not for a second.

She leaned over and pressed her lips—dry, cool—to my overheated cheek. It was all I could do not to cry in relief. We made plans to walk for the following day.

Later, alone in my bed in the cottage, studying the willowy stretch of shadows on the ceiling, I could only think of how Fate circles like a butterfly, so innocently yet decisively. Against all odds, it had landed in my hands, bringing with it a woman as vital and enticing as the flourishing wetlands to which I’d traveled.

May 12, 1943

I’m writing in the first moments of dawn, when the world is still wrapped in dreams. From my window, I watch the circling of the peregrines, those sleek and canny predators. They’ve built nests around the archways of the town. I see them tackling lesser birds, beaks wet with the viscera of their prey. The metaphor is too stark, even for my artistic tastes. So many have evacuated this adopted country of mine, chased by the persecution of an evil that breathes its foul breath down the neck of humanity. But I stay, I hide from the clomping of boots and the bellicose thud of rifles on cobblestone. Why this torture, this inexcusable danger? I tell myself I am not done with France. I am not done withher.

During that spring of 1936, my friendship with Justine blossomed under the golden sunlight. As the clement days gave way to the roar of summer, we saw each other more often, rarely going a day without meeting in the parlor of Maison de Notre Rêve or in the cottage.

Justine seemed utterly callous to class divisions; she immediately saw me as an equal, which was no small thing. Together, we adventured across the city and beyond, often biking through the valley as a windswept duo, scattering laughter and songs in our wake. She had a way of muffling the terrible voices, a feat that no one had accomplished sinceNg?c. I no longer wanted to race toward destruction. Why should I, when life had become an embrace, rather than a shove, a violence to be borne?

Under Justine’s insistence, I extended my stay at Maison de Notre Rêve past the original two weeks. Months went by, and we did not talk again about me leaving. The truth was: I would not have been able to bear parting. I held my breath, like a child begging for a lofty boon. Still, supplicant that I was, I could not help wanting more.

I remember the first time we expressed our affection openly.

We’d spent a soggy afternoon exploring the grounds. Tired, we flopped into the barn behind the house. Hay stuck out from Justine’s curls, giving her the appearance of a scarecrow, but no dishevelment could mar her.

In the loft of the barn, we found a litter of mewing kittens, tiny maws working to find succor. They were each so wily and round anddear, bouncing like orange dervishes around their exhausted mama. Justine named them after French monarchs. Louis and Philip and Eleanor and silly, fat Clovis. I called Justine the La Reine Chaton, the Kitten Queen, because she seemed the most incorrigible of them all.

“Well then,” she said, dimpling. “If I’m to be a cat, you will be my wild horse. Independent, fierce. Impossible to tame. My Cheval Sauvage.”

I’d never loved a name so much, nor wanted to live up to one more. Wildness felt possible again. After I left my hometown, I existed as if boxed in by steel walls that followed me wherever I went, a permanent prison of guilt and terror and doubt. Now I’d been released. Justine was the one who unlocked the door and led me into the sunshine.

Which is all to say that in a very short time, we became everything to each other. How could we help it? The world had conspired to weave its gossamer strands of feeling around us, tightening so imperceptibly that we did not know what was happening until it was too late.

I will stop here. From tiredness, yes—my body, that insufficient vessel—but also because I wish to prolong the story. For a few more moments, I’ll allow myself to linger in the memory of a summer of stolen joy. The falcons will have to wait.

May 13, 1943

One day in the first weeks of June, the Chaton and I decided to take a day trip to the aqueduct in Barbegal. I’d never seen it, and she insisted that the structure was a feat of Roman engineering. She was curious about all things architectural—an extension of her enthusiasm for art, I suppose. The aqueduct sounded tiresome to me, but I would go anywhere with her.