Laughing Torso

THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

motif on a hill. It was very windy, so we attached
our easels to a string and a large stone, so that they
could not move. I was painting furiously, and
suddenly, behind an olive tree, appeared a Japanese.
He said, " Bon jour, Nina" and I looked at him for
a moment and recognized him as the friend of
Foujita—Kavashima. This was quite fantastic as
one does not expect to see people one has not seen
for ten years on a Pyrenee.
One day we decided to have a picnic in the
woods. We bought sardines, bread, cheese and
some wine. We found a place with very green
grass. I thought at once of mosquitoes—we
spread out some paper on the grass. After lunch
the paper was strewn all over the place. I said,
thinking of Hampstead Heath, " We must clean
the paper up." Madame Foujita said, " Pourquoi! "
And I said, "It spoils the landscape," and so I
dug a hole in the ground and buried all the paper
and sardine bones. After lunch Foujita saw a
large tree. It had a big trunk and no branches at
all. He said, " I will climb this tree." I wondered
how he was going to do it. He took the trunk of the
tree with one hand on each side and climbed up
like a monkey. We all looked at him with astonish-
ment and admiration. He could use his toes in the
same way that he could use his fingers. To enter
Spain one had to have a visa. None of us had one,
but we wanted very much to get to Port Bou, which
is the first Port in Spain. Madame Foujita, although
tiresome at times, was a woman of determined
character, and if she made up her mind to do some-
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