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possibilities in depicting the way that water abstracted the willows and the sky and wove all their colors into its reflections. The walls of his home were hung almost exclusively with Japanese prints (many by Hiroshige), almost all of which depicted water, fish, or fishermen.
    â€œWhy didn’t he paint the fish?” I asked Yannid later that day as we stared at several large carp in the lily pond.
    â€œOnly you would think of that,” Yannid said. “Maybe he had enough to keep him busy on the surface. He knew he had to decide what to paint, and then master what he chose.”
    On the way back to her aunt’s home, Yannid and I stopped at a fish market in Etrepagny and bought some fresh cod and squid.
    When we arrived at the house Yannid opened a bottle of muscadet that had been chilling in the fridge. There was a cool musty flavor to the tall kitchen, which made Yannid’s skin feel cool on my hand. I kissed her hand and held it between mine.
    I sautéed the squid in olive oil with lots of garlic and we baked the cod in the oven with fresh vegetables. Yannid brought the wine out on the porch, where we had set a small round table with forks and plates and our meal. I lit a candle.
    â€œWhat are you going to do when you leave France?” Yannid asked. I could see that she was getting sad and I heard a touch of vibrato in her voice. “I’m trying to be rational about this.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I’m lonely, you know. You’re leaving this summer, and I want you to be happy and free. But I don’t want you to go.”
    I kissed her cold cheek, now wet with tears. A cool breeze blew from the direction of the garden. “Let’s clean up and go to bed,” she said.
    A N E XHIBITION OF F ISH
    O ne among Pierre’s circle of fishing friends was an elderly gentleman named André Schoeller. André always wore a tie, even when he fished, and never passed up an opportunity to show his talents as a raconteur. He shared memories of being a boy in Parisduring the Nazi occupation, hinted at his relationship as a young man with the singer Edith Piaf and his friendship with Picasso, spoke of the record pike he had taken in his pond in Normandy, and also of the health of the Seine.
    An art dealer for the better part of his life, André was in the midst of organizing an exhibition of paintings and sculptures of fish and fishing scenes done by painters, living and dead, who fished. To Schoeller, the crowning jewel of artists who had rendered trout on canvas was the French realist Gustave Courbet. He wanted badly to borrow Courbet’s painting La Truite from the Musée d’Orsay to be the cornerstone of the exhibition, but even with his connections this was difficult. In the event that he could not borrow the painting, he had arranged for the next best thing, to hold the exhibition nearby the museum, on 13, quai de Conti, at the Galerie Larock-Granoff.
    Pierre Larock, André’s personal friend who owned the gallery, was famous for having inherited the largest private collection of Monet paintings from his aunt Katya, Monet’s niece. Like Schoeller, Larock was a fisherman, and no doubt the idea for the exhibition took form over a lunch at their private pike-fishing pond in Normandy. Both François and Marie-Annick, whom I had previously met, were to be included in the exhibition as living artists, and I was asked to participate as well; dead artists included were Rebeyrolle, Messagier, and Miró, among others. The exhibition was arranged and a date for the opening was set.
    In the meantime I had a trip planned to eastern France to visit and fish for trout with a friend of Pierre’s, Philippe Boisson. I had been told that the trout—locally known as the truite zébrée— and the streams there were exquisite, especially the river Loue near the Swiss border where Philippe lived.
    P HILIPPE B OISSON AND L IFE IN C HENECEY -B