by Jean Giono
“ ‘Fine,’ said Langlois. ‘I escaped by the skin of my teeth. Well, I didn’t tell you the history of France. What do you infer from that?’
“I poured myself a nice big glass of wine, tasted it, smacked my lips, and said, ‘Nothing at all.’
“ ‘Perfect,’ said Langlois. ‘That’s exactly right. There’s nothing to infer.’
“Madame Tim was wading through a hundred ceremonies, her own wedding ceremony, those of her sons and daughters. She didn’t dare use the word ‘love’ but she did say ‘delicacies and organists.’ I made her understand that as for ‘delicacies’ (I looked at Langlois for approval, and he gave it to me), well, that was saying a bit much.
“Well then, organists in any case. Madame Tim would not back down about the organists. But there was no need to worry; it was just the crème de cacao talking. Crème de cacao is a very wedding-march drink.
“I, however, went straight for Langlois.
“ ‘Don’t infer anything from that. So you want everything to be respectable on all three sides?’
“ ‘Exactly.’
“ ‘What are those three sides?’ asked Madame Tim. (Best not to leave the bottle next to Madame Tim, I thought; otherwise soon she won’t understand a word we’re saying.)
“ ‘There is Langlois’s side,’ I said to Madame Tim, tracing it on the tablecloth with the tip of my knife. ‘On Langlois’s side, Langlois doesn’t want us to infer anything, that is, plan anything, don’t you see? No plans about what’s going to happen. Because he wants to be free to make whatever he wants happen. Then there’s the side of the lady we’re supposed to be telling he’s going to marry her, but there’s nothing for her to infer from that.’
“(‘Isn’t that so?’ I asked Langlois, pointing my knife in the air. ‘It is,’ he said.)
“ ‘And then there’s this side’ (I traced a third line with the tip of my knife on the new tablecloth), ‘the side we’re on: you, Madame Tim, the prosecutor, me. On that side, the third side, where his friends are, Langlois also doesn’t want anything to be inferred from that.’
“(And because Madame Tim remained wide-eyed, I added: ‘Let’s not have any illusions about all this.’)
“ ‘Bravo,’ Langlois said stonily. ‘No, really, bravo! Bravo from the bottom of my heart. You are an extraordinary woman.’
“ ‘There is a fourth side,’ I went on.
“ ‘No,’ said Langlois. ‘The fourth side is all the other people. I don’t give a damn about them. As far as my getting married is concerned, I don’t have to appear respectable to the other people. Other than myself and the woman willing to take the risk, only my friends deserve respect, and in this case respect means no illusions for anyone at all.’
“Madame Tim was hallelujahing (I thought). She patted Langlois’s hand with her fingertips, without saying a word.
“ ‘Let’s not get sentimental,’ I said. In a marriage, normally there are two people. We were talking about marriage but for the moment all I could see was one man. Respect, illusions, and inferences—all this was very lovely, but a woman had to be found. And there are times when I don’t back out; I would find her. It remained to be seen if the woman would be up to the task. I know a lot of things, but not everything, and I was very happy that Madame Tim was there to put her two cents in.
“ ‘Do you think we could adjust the stove?’ Madame Tim said.
“It was true: it was very warm. I shut the damper and pushed in the bottom drawer.
“ ‘Here’s what I’ve been turning over in my little noggin,’ I said. ‘If we talk to those silly geese the way we’ve been talking, there will be squawking. They’ll have their theories, they’ll get all excited, they’ll want to arrange things, a marriage is for life. I don’t see how you’ll be able to manage with that flock of fools. And that’s not all; there’s more; there’s something horrible: the parents! Can you see yourself with a father-in-law and a mother-in-law? If that’s what this is about—respectability and Camembert—don’t ask anything of me. Let me drink my wine in peace. You’ll come get my broomstick when you need to; at that time, if you want, I’ll show you how to use it, but until then, this is none of my business.’
“I’d said that, I added, to put a fine point on things for Madame Tim. She was an angel, but in the end, I have to say, she wasn’t from my world; and maybe she had ideas of her own. She might imagine that in this business, I was trying to take all the credit.
“Madame Tim stood up, came around the table, and kissed me. It was sweet of her. I was embarrassed to be dripping with sweat because of the stove and my fire.
“ ‘I have no ideas,’ she said to me. ‘What idea could I possible have?’
“ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Obviously you’re more of a specialist in right thinking and all that; in what I personally believe to be a breeding ground for silly geese and boa constrictors; but you know them better than I do; maybe I’m wrong. Maybe dogs have managed to make a cat, and maybe you happen to know this cat?’
“ ‘No, no,’ said Madame Tim. ‘Dogs make dogs.’
“She returned to her seat and poured herself a glass of wine and drank it down boldly, the way I’d been doing since the beginning of the meal.
“I sized up Langlois, like I was measuring him for a coat.
“ ‘She needs to take you as you are?’
“He nodded.
“ ‘She has to accept Bongalove, mountain, endless snow?’
“(Yes.)
“ ‘Saint-Baudille,’ said Madame Tim. ‘Naturally my house will always be open to her.’
“ ‘That’s very important,’ I said.
“I went back to Langlois.
“ ‘No mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt, or cousin?’
“(No.)
“ ‘Not too old?’
“(No.)
“ ‘Not too ugly?’
“(No.)
“ ‘Not too stupid?’
“(No.)
“ ‘Pleasant to look at?’
“(Yes.)
“ ‘Well, that’s that, then. And in the event we find this rare pearl, she also has to consider her new position to be the jewel in her crown?’
“(Yes.)
“There was a moment of silence.
“ ‘In my profession—’ and then I broke off. ‘First of all, I wanted to ask Madame Tim whether, in her domain, she wouldn’t happen to know any divorcées who want to remarry, or any women who’ve been widowed several times and want to remarry, or—’ But she cut me off and, with godlike calm and with no trace of crème de cacao in her voice, she spoke of entirely run-of-the-mill social situations much more welcoming (if that’s the word) than the ones I mentioned.
“ ‘Well,’ I said simply, ‘that is my profession. With the slight difference that I made my husbands pay.’
“ ‘The other women as well,’ said Madame Tim.
“ ‘And I changed husbands often.’
“ ‘The others too,’ said Madame Tim.
“ ‘And what does the man say?’ I asked Langlois.
“ ‘The man says that life is extremely short,’ said Langlois.
“To keep my composure, I decided to look at this as a bit of hair-splitting in the middle of a rather long discussion. In any case, Madame Tim (who must have understood what I was thinking) right away began loudly holding forth about the profession, speaking precisely, knowledgeably, and with rare inspiration. Very charitable of her. In such a way (I realized later) that she took my breath away.
“For more than an hour we spoke only about underclothes and perfumes. So in the midst of flounces, petticoats, and the scent of iris, opopanax, and freshly cut hay everything was settled.
“Langlois was drinking rum in his wineglass.
“It was almost ten o’clock. We were going to bed. I led Madame Tim to her room. I slipped my hand between the sheets to make sure the bed warmer had done its job.<
br />
“ ‘Would you like me to help you?’ I asked her.
“ ‘To do what?’
“ ‘Unpin your bun and brush out your hair,’ I said.
“ ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I will hardly sleep a wink anyway. It’s a great sacrifice, isn’t it?’ she said, looking at me.
“I nodded, without saying a word.”
•
“Naturally, the following week we received a visit from the prosecutor. I gave him his coffee. He patted his vest. His stomach made a noise like crinkled paper.
“ ‘Madame Tim wrote to me,’ he said.
“ ‘She did well,’ I answered.
“He asked me where I planned on finding that diamond in the rough.
“ ‘I’m well connected,’ I said.
“ ‘So am I,’ he said.
“I told him that, all in all, Langlois was not one to be satisfied with someone’s leftovers.
“The word terrified him.
“ ‘I only had the b-b-best of intentions,’ he stuttered. He’d blushed as red as a billiard ball and he had such a look of despair in his eyes that I realized he’d meant well. Deep down, if he had left anything at all, it wouldn’t have been a leftover; it would have been a sacrifice.
“Once the prosecutor had gone, there was nothing much to say about all that. Madame Tim came back five or six times. The prosecutor four or five times. Langlois went to Saint-Baudille once or twice. Mum’s the word: we talked about the freezes, the beautiful snow, the sleighs. And coffee.”
•
“In the spring, Langlois said to me, ‘Are you ready?’
“ ‘I’ll be ready tomorrow morning,’ I answered. (Then I added:) ‘I can be ready sooner, if you want.’
“ ‘Tomorrow will do,’ he said, ‘but at seven in the morning. We’ll take the public coach.’
“That was the coach that came down from the pass. Not the one that comes through the village and carries the mail; the express that you have to catch on the roadside.
“I was ready at six o’clock. I went downstairs and sat in the dark. I heard him to-ing and fro-ing upstairs. I heard him put down his shaving brush on the marble mantel. He’d been shaving without whistling.
“We climbed the steep path to the old chapel to get to the main road. The sun was well up in a pink sky filled with angel mist.
“We didn’t have to wait long. The coach arrived, and Langlois stopped it with an authoritative wave of his hand. It’s not a regular stop in fact, and sometimes the drivers just gallop right past you as you wave.
“There were three empty seats in the coupé. We took two of them. I hadn’t yet noticed what Langlois was wearing: he’d put on his shepherd’s cloak. But, as he settled into his corner, the cloak fell open and I could see he’d dressed with care. He even had his famous opera hat in a box (it would have been too high for the coach ceiling).
“We had four traveling companions. Among them, Langlois seemed supernatural. And I began to tremble.
“The passenger next to me must have noticed. He asked me if I was cold, and Langlois offered me his cloak. I had to accept. It wouldn’t take much to tip him off.
“So Langlois removed his coat and covered me with it. Yes, he had dressed beautifully, in a way I was particularly fond of. He was not buttoned all the way to the throat; his outfit remained military. This gave it charm and was appropriate to his stature, and that gruff air of his and that habit of nibbling ever so slightly on his mustache; but the outfit had soft touches, like the flare of his collar and the big knot in his tie. All this was very moving on that black tiger. In any case, it was addressed to the feminine heart in a shrewd and precise way. And without any bowing and scraping.
“He had settled into his corner and lowered the earflaps of his otter cap. He shut his eyes.
“On either side of him sat characters of a modern sort. On one side, asleep with his mouth wide open, was a rich horse dealer with a gold pocket-watch chain with charms, and a triple chin. On the other side was some damn artilleryman, a sergeant at arms in any case, most certainly a fellow of the law and money. He wasn’t sleeping. He was staring fixedly at the third copper button on the redingote across from him. He looked like he couldn’t tell a hawk from a handsaw.
“On my side, there were two other men, the one with the copper button and some wiseacre in a smock. Next to the wiseacre, a young village woman had unbuttoned her blouse to breastfeed a chubby infant, so greedy that he sucked in through his nostrils the milk that was spilling out of his mouth. And the milk was spilling out of his mouth because he was grunting. And he was grunting because he was choking on the milk he sucked in through his nose. He was in a rage! He was biting his wet nurse. A breast is sensitive. I like children well enough, but I would have slapped that one good and hard!
“With his earflaps down and his eyes closed, Langlois looked exactly like a man they stick in front of a church door to incite us to confess our sins.
“We had a bite to eat near Agnères. We arrived in Grenoble at six in the evening.
“I hadn’t been in that city for more than fifteen years. I didn’t recognize it. I peered left and right as we trotted down the streets up to the Place de France, which was the end of the line for the coach. I had a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I felt like I was slipping back into bad habits and losing the good scent of freedom. If I’d been on foot and by myself, I wouldn’t have been able to take it, being locked up again between the four walls of those streets. I wasn’t used to such tall houses anymore and I felt like I was suffocating.
“When the carriage stopped on the square, I was the last to get out.
“ ‘Hold on, my knees are creaking,’ I said to Langlois. ‘I’m stiff as a board.’
“Truth be told, I was afraid to set foot on the ground.
“The lights were suffocating too. And the noise.
“ ‘Let me put my arm around you,’ said Langlois, and: ‘Do you want to drink a glass of champoreau?’
“I wouldn’t have gone into that café next to the parcel-delivery office for all the gold in the world.
“ ‘Come on, then,’ I said to him. ‘We’ll have a drink at the hotel; I know one around here.’
“ ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘You’re a lady. I know one. Come with me.’
“Let’s say that I didn’t know it, but I did. There was nothing he could do about it.
“It was a nice little hotel on a short backstreet that ended at the Isère quays. It was quite convenient. It faced nothing. I mean, across from the entrance there were no shops to spy from and no fancy houses; there was simply a big garden wall covered with Virginia creeper. You never forget your trade, no matter what it is.
“To my surprise, we were expected. I was even more surprised to see that the bellboy, as he led us to our rooms, didn’t stop on the second or third floor; we began climbing the stairs to the fourth floor, and this was a completely different hotel for me; our two rooms were there.
“ ‘I thought that you might not know this fourth floor,’ said Langlois. ‘Usually one stops at the second floor, no? I’m telling you, you’re a lady.’
“That’s how he was. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t flinch, he paid no attention to you and then, with a single phrase, he made you realize that he knew everything. And that he had a cure for everything.
“ ‘Hey!’ (He held the bellboy back by the tail of his apron.) ‘Bring us up two very hot champoreaus.’
“ ‘This is your room,’ he said to me next. ‘I believe, if they followed my orders, that it looks out on the trees in the garden.’ (He opened the shutters to be sure.) ‘Mine is next door. Now, what would you prefer? To dine in town or in one of our rooms?’
“ ‘Well, this has nothing to do with anything,’ I said, ‘but do you think that if Madame Tim lived here, she would welcome me the way she does in Saint-Baudille?’
“ ‘This also has nothing to do with anything
,’ he said, ‘but go dress up a bit. We’ll dine in town.’
“And he went to his room.
“What that man called ‘dining in town’ was putting on his opera hat that kicked everyone’s ass and heading out to the grandest restaurant on Place Grenette. In my whole life I’d never set foot in there or even imagined it was possible; you had to be from a different class. There were entire crews in front of the door and, in the gaslight, the gleaming room we entered was nothing but waving fans, feather boas, aigrettes, shirtfronts, and the popping of good bottles. I glimpsed plunging, heart-shaped necklines, throats studded with pearls, and the kind of gold-white shoulders that require at least three generations of breakfast in bed before they can emerge with such perfection out of a ruffled blouse.
“With Langlois, however, you didn’t have to be beautiful, or young, or rich to be someone; you just had to be with him. One thing I do know is how to read waiters: whether they don’t give a damn about their clients or whether they are scared to death. The maître d’ who greeted us and escorted us to the table Langlois had selected was plainly scared to death, so that by comparison everyone in our wake looked totally at ease and even slightly admiring. And there were women I would have envied to no end, even back at the time of my admirable beauty.
“It was lovely: consommé à l’ancienne, lobster à la Roscoff, chicken royal and à la Giscours, grilled shad, meringues à la crème, dessert, champagne.
“And a cigar.
“I would gladly have smoked one. Not one of those stogies that had made me want to vomit in the back rooms. No, I would gladly have smoked a fine cigar, right there, like a good belch among all those women pecking at their food like birds. But I was careful not to say so. He would have encouraged me. And I would have done it.
“ ‘You smoke cigars?’ I asked him.
“ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s much better than a pipe for some things. I’m going to have four or five boxes brought up.’
“A little later (we were about to leave), I said to him, with a glance out of the corner of my eye at the floozies decked out in their ostrich feathers, ‘You could have your pick, you know. . .’
“ ‘They would be too shocked,’ he answered.
