Dear Francoise,
The more I draw, the more I admire myself,
Because,
Yesterday (and the day before yesterday), the weather was fine.
I had granted myself a quarter of an hour of bathing. A quarter of an hour only, because, as you may know, I am finishing an album.
So I was on a small pontoon. Let me describe the atmosphere: the sky was blue. Calm blue. The sea, also blue,
I was white. A boat was passing.
On board, two female silhouettes.
One wearing a pink hat. I had the sun in my eye, which gives me this expression so graceful that I had in my last film (“The Smile“).
“Hey… hello, said the pink hat to me, how long have you been here?”
– Two days, I replied with my wit, which surprised more than one.
– Come home. We’re going skiing, continued the pink hat (…)
When I arrived from Bordeaux, determined to quickly climb the ladder of success that lead to Fame and Relationship, I trained myself to recognize any of the characters glimpsed, if only for a second, wherever whatever he did. It served me. But the philosophical work that matures, embraces me and believes in me, diminishes, by its intellectual demands, some of my aptitudes. Now…
So it was only when she pouted that I recognized Brigitte Bardot. I say hello to him.
Three or four families around were bulging their eyes.
I went to Brigitte’s house. And there, I admire myself, and will admire myself for a long time, I said after forty minutes, that I had to go back to work.
WHAT I HAVE DONE.
So they can say what they want about me. That I was mixed up in 1957 in this famous business of piastres, and that, although already married, I promised marriage to Solange Parfelou, that under the grief, her father’s business collapsed, that I soaked – I do not deny it – in this curious story of the PTT of Avignon (between us, I served as a scapegoat), that, it is true, I cheated during the final of this Billiard tournament du XVIIe arrondissement, that yes, I lied to you when I told you that another newspaper gave me 500 Francs more per drawing.
We can say all that.
But I know few people capable of saying to Brigitte Bardot: “Your two-piece is charming. Your hat too, but don’t count on me to come by boat, I have work to do.
– Come from time to time
– You know I’m not on vacation here, I’m working”.
I left.
I know more than one – I’ll give you names on occasion – who would have thought: “I’ll work later” or “Those bastards in the newspapers, if they paid me better, I wouldn’t have to spin like crazy” (I will tell you the names of at least twenty-five collaborators in whom you trust, who make you smile, who are friendly, who would have thought that in my place). But I left.
“The man is silent and leaves,” said Alain.
Although Alain was not, as far as I know, in a similar situation…
So I came home and wrote a letter to Christiane Collange [NDLR : rédactrice en chef à L’Express] explaining to him (I don’t know what I could have invented) that I could send him my drawing since it was in front of me, finished, erased, packaged, but that the subject was better suited for the following week and that, as I I was afraid it would get lost, I will send it in a week.
I quickly changed into a bathing suit. You know, I had the red one. And it didn’t take me more than twenty-five minutes of looking in the mirror to realize that blue-green goes much better with my eyes.
I rushed like a stone to my house in Brigitte, which is only three minutes from the one I rent….
Published in L’Express n° 783 of June 20, 1966