Last week at the Polo I saw a woman I knew. She would not have been allowed before: she is a black woman, from Martinique. But the club now lets many people in, and she was an actress in films for some years. I knew her when she was young; her husband and I were like brothers. It was strange to see her that day at the club because she had not changed in thirty years. She was still beautiful, still sexy. A bright girl, with energy. I remember her always laughing, swinging her legs on the dock at Cap-Ferrat, or sitting on a boat or in a café, but always laughing, showing the gap between her front teeth. She was not laughing so much this time, but when she did it was the same laugh, the same gap. She had the good skin of black women, the face and hands still young. She called herself Mia. We watched her granddaughter do vaultige: the girl stood on the back of the horse at a petit galop around the ring. Eleven years old, a little older than my daughter, with light brown skin and brown curls flying out behind her. There were other children trying to stand on their horses, but none was so accomplished as this granddaughter. She turned upside down and stood on her head.

It was thirty years ago I knew Mia, the grandmother, and we were not so careful about what we said thirty years ago; Mia had three bambini, all with a German father, and we used to say they were not black or white, they were gray. They were green, we said. We called them les petits verts. But you see—the eldest of les petits verts grew up to be a film actress like her mother, and had this daughter who can stand on her head on a horse in the Polo Club in Paris. The little girl came from the horses and kissed me hello, on the left and right, with a shining face and blue eyes. Life is long, when you live a long time—that seems a simple fact, but you don’t know it until you have a lunch like this one.