Page 33

nurse had carried me to the opposite side of the house, to the corner room between Calle del Rimedio and a courtyard populated with statues that would have made me dream of an enchanted world.

In this room I had slept my first sound sleeps, unaware that soon I would have to submit to the judgment of my mother's friends, visiting her boudoir. And since the "fountain pen" had forgotten to stock me with fashionable curls, the various housekeepers would all be raging against my thin hair either by locking it in iron curlers, or by rolling it around a hot iron that opened and closed like the beak of a hungry bird and that first they tried on a piece of paper that had to crumple without burning and phss... made the paper smoke and phss... they did my hair every now and then and sometimes even the skin underneath, when the housekeeper was distracted.

Curls, ironed dress not to be wrinkled, shoes with buttons that came expressly from the Enfant Chic in Paris, which I hated, a long wait in the chair. Then the housekeeper would drag me to the boudoir door and push me into the room.

I hated everything. I hated the looks, the smiles, the murmurs - she looks like her grandmother, her aunt Yole - because that meant curlers, hot iron, waiting motionless.

Over time, the phrase "they're waiting for you in the boudoir" had turned into "they're waiting for you to pose." More or less famous artists asked my parents to have me as a model. They made me sit in an uncomfortable chair where I had to remain still and when my hands, ears, nose began to itch: "Stop! Don't wrinkle your nose" they yelled, "Stop, don't yawn!" and my resignation turned first into suffering, then into despair.