Villa America by Liza Klaussmann

Author:Liza Klaussmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

The evening of the party was dry and warm, with just a hint of a breeze rustling the plantings on the grounds of Villa America. Sara could name them all now: Arabian maples; persimmon; white and black fig trees; phoenix palms; date palms; cedars of Lebanon; desert holly; mimosa; pepper trees; lemon and orange and olive trees. Their most precious, though, was the linden tree that grew close to the house, high above the tiered terrace gardens. The large old tree with its silvery leaves would eventually shade the gray and white marble terrace that would run along the back of Villa America, and they’d given specific instructions to the architects and builders to take the utmost care with it.

The construction on the house was coming along; the pitched red-tile roof had been removed and the third story erected. Still, the flat sunroof they’d wanted had yet to be built, and all along the perimeter of the house, the earth was turned up and untidy.

The gardens, though, were in perfect condition, if a little dry, and that’s all the space they needed for the party. They’d had furniture brought from the hotel and set everything up on the first three terraces, each separated from the next by a small flight of stone steps.

On the highest tier, closest to the house, was a series of small tables and wicker chairs covered in bright beach cushions, and off to the left, the gramophone and the records.

On the next tier down, they’d set up a banquet. Sara checked the dishes—cold sliced duck with fresh plums, courgettes tartes, wild lettuce, stuffed artichokes, a few lovely fresh cheeses, and, for dessert, millasson sprinkled with castor sugar. There was also a large bar table with champagne, anisette, peach wine, and a rhubarb cocktail that Gerald had spent two days perfecting in the kitchen of the Hôtel du Cap.

The guests had been asked to come at five p.m. for cocktails and the Salons de Jeunesse, a show of paintings produced by Honoria, Baoth, and Patrick under the tutelage of Vladimir. The children would stay for an hour and then be ferried back to the hotel for supper and bed. Sara saw them crowding around Gerald now as he arranged their artworks against a stone wall.

Sara walked over and placed her hand on Gerald’s back. He looked beautiful in his bone-colored linen suit. He’d had it made for him in Paris in the spring, saying he didn’t want to fuss too much with dinner clothes in Antibes. “We’re not going down to mix with sheer society,” he’d said.

Sheer society, holocausts; she smiled to think of the private language that they’d been inventing between themselves over the years.

“What do we have here?” Sara asked now, putting her hand to Honoria’s head. She loved the feel of her daughter’s soft, cropped hair beneath her palm.

“This one’s mine,” Honoria said, pointing to a purple and blue canvas with mounds of green dotted through it.

Sara bent down. She could see that small flowers and bits of leaves had been pressed into the green paint.

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