by Michel D
He set out again next morning, and when the sun was nearly at its highest drove through a little port full of green, lateen-rigged tartanes with crude patched sails. On the dock a few conscientious artists had set up their easels and were painting, dripping with sweat in the heat. On the road out of the village he stopped at an open-air café at the edge of a beach and got out. He was lent a black swimming costume with shoulder straps that was too big for him. A pretty girl with brown hair, pink cheeks and thick eyebrows brought him half a baguette split in two and stuffed with tomatoes, anchovies, onions and garlic, over which she drizzled olive oil from a large glass. Sitting on the sand, for once he ate distractedly, his eyes fixed instead on the sea’s incandescent blue. Tartanes slipped across his field of vision, halfway to the horizon. From time to time he turned round to look at his Bugatti, which glittered in the sun like the sea. Passers-by placed their hands on its panels, stroked it, squatted down to get a better look at its transmission, its brakes, its rear axle. Someone mentioned that the place was called Saint-Tropez. Antoine decided that when his children had all left home and he was widowed – in his mind the plan had no snags – he would sell La Sauveté and settle here. At the same moment he made the mistake of looking down at his paunchy stomach and white Celtic skin and running his fingers across his bald head, trickling with sweat. He did not like what he saw and felt. The passing years had turned him into this heavy, clumsy man, who only felt unconstrained behind the wheel of his car. The swimming costume he wore was ridiculous, and in a mirror at the café he had glimpsed his face and seen his eyes ringed with white circles from his mica goggles.
Perched on the corner of a table, the girl who had served him swung her shapely leg back and forth, exposing a tanned knee. She was talking to a boy her own age, and their singsong accents mingled. For the pleasure of seeing her up close again, and to separate her from the interloper, he asked for another ‘pan bania’ and a bottle of Var rosé. As she squatted to place the tray on the sand he saw her knee again and, looking up, found himself staring into a face full of warmth and innocence and smelling a scent of nectarine, lightly spiced with garlic. She was lovely, she was simple, she was not for him. As he left, he presented her with a big box of nougat that she accepted with exclamations of pleasure. Her name was Marie-Dévote.
The road through the Esterel wound deep into the red rock and through pine forests whose scent washed over him in great gusts. The car responded joyfully to the effort Antoine demanded from it. Its tyres squealed in the bends and it leapt up the hills and grumbled on the descents with that sweet musical sound that only a Bugatti makes. Behind it trailed aerial pools of castor oil-scented air. Antoine drove through Cannes and Nice without stopping. They were towns for winter visitors, deserted during the summer. Beyond the port at Villefranche, signposts indicated Menton and the high corniche road. He slowed down. Night was falling on Mont Boron. At altitude and this time of evening, the Bugatti’s engine was at its best and would take off at the slightest pressure of his foot, but Antoine was no longer in any haste. In three days, time and space had lost their meaning. After he had seen Geneviève he might go on to China. This admirable machine, so precise and eager, would never develop a fault. At La Turbie he stopped near the Trophy of Augustus to look down at the coast, where the yellow lights trembled and twinkled along the sea like a rosary. A bit further on, at Roquebrune, he noticed at the roadside a little restaurant whose terrace overlooked a slope sown thickly with plum tomato plants. The patron stood at the door in a singlet and linen trousers. An enormous, still-pink scar cut across his face like a stripe, deforming his mouth. He spoke with difficulty. Antoine sampled soupe au pistou, stuffed fleurs de courgettes and fried anchovies. The man served him with a weary casualness. In the kitchen, behind a bead curtain, two women were moving around busily: they could not be seen, but their shrill voices were audible, one young, one old. They did not appear, and once dinner was over they slipped away without passing through the restaurant. Antoine requested a digestif. The patron brought a bottle of Italian grappa and two glasses and sat down opposite him.
‘So you travel like that, eh?’ he said. ‘Leave us poor devils standing.’
Raising a hairy hand, he stroked the awful scar on his face with his fingertips, sighed, and gulped down his glassful.
‘What about you? What did you get?’
‘Oh, practically nothing. A few splinters in my right shoulder. Six months ago another piece came out. I’m not complaining.’
‘Except for hunting …’
‘Except for hunting.’
‘Where did you get to?’
‘Army of the Orient. What about you?’
‘Verdun. Douaumont. Do you like this grappa?’
‘Not bad. A bit young. I’m from Normandy, calvados is my drink.’
‘I wouldn’t say no. They used to give us a glass before we went over the top.’
They drank for a while, silent, then carefully exchanging a few words that let each place the other. Antoine would willingly have finished the bottle, but there were still a few kilometres to go, and the smashed face in front of him depressed him terribly. So many soldiers went to war with the idea of sacrificing their life, or possibly their left arm, but not one imagined that they might as easily come back with their face a pulp, and look like a monster for the rest of their days. He was conscious of his own cowardice, but without cowardice, as without lies, life was impossible. It looked as if there was a night of reminiscing ahead, scenes and stories spilling out in bulk across the tablecloth, stoked by the warmth of the grappa.
‘Were you an officer?’ the man asked, his expression wary.
Antoine felt sorry for him. He had no desire to leave a bad impression, or deepen the certain bitterness of this defeated man.
‘No,’ he said, ‘corporal. Finished as a sergeant.’
‘Like me. Stay a bit longer.’
‘I need to get to Menton.’
‘She’ll wait for you …’
‘It’s my daughter.’
‘Ah! I understand. Well, come by again one day. We don’t stick together enough. My name is Léon Cece.’
Antoine got back into the car and freewheeled down to Menton. The cicadas sang in the pine woods and tomato fields. The town was already deeply asleep. It felt like the sleep of a sick person, so respectful was the silence of the deserted streets. The fragrance of lemon trees in blossom and the dimmed glow of the streetlights were redolent of hospitals. The houses were hidden deep in jungly gardens, walled behind high gates. Not a fishing boat moved in the dock. Antoine drove cautiously along the Promenade and eventually found a passer-by who told him the way to the clinic, a large turn-of-the-century detached house deep inside a silent park. The windows were shuttered and the doors locked. He switched off the engine, turned up the collar of his jacket, rested his head and arms on his steering wheel, and went to sleep.
It was not the dawn that woke him, but the sound of a pair of shutters opening on the balcony above his head. Geneviève appeared in a white nightdress with a ribbon in her hair. She seemed terribly thin to him, and pale, but more beautiful than before, a creature so fragile that the morning breeze or a shaft of sunlight might kill her.
‘It’s you, Papa!’ she said. ‘I thought it was. I was sure I heard the sound of a Bugatti last night. Is it the new one?’
‘Well, it’s the new one for now, the Type 22, four cylinders. Bugatti’s planning to replace it soon with the 28, which is apparently a marvel.’
‘I already like that one!’
Antoine puffed himself up. ‘Do you want to go for a spin?’
‘It’s difficult so early. The door’s still locked. A bit later, if you like.’
‘I’ll go and have a coffee. Look, I’ve brought you some nougat.’
He tossed two boxes up to the balcony, and Geneviève retrieved them.
‘Thank you! It’s so sweet of you to think of spoiling me. I adore nougat. When you come back, could you be really kin
d and bring me cigarettes and matches?’
‘You smoke? That’s not good.’
‘Nothing is good from where I’m standing.’
‘Really? I thought you felt better. You’re worrying me.’
From her pout he recognised his daughter from several years before, his little girl whom he had kissed on the doorstep of La Sauveté on the morning in August 1914 when he had left to join his unit. She had changed quite suddenly: now she was this frail young woman with an oval face and loose blond hair, who made him feel shy and intimidated.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
‘But you won’t get better!’
‘Do we get better?’
He realised that he wasn’t sure enough of the answer to be able to convince her. He could only think of distractions.
‘Do you need perfume?’
‘Well, if you can find something fairly modern …’
‘I’ll try.’
A figure in pyjamas appeared on the next balcony, a dishevelled man who began to gesticulate, showering them with insults.
‘What the hell is going on? Are you mad? There are people asleep here, sick people, and you don’t give a damn!’
‘Calm down, Piquemal,’ Geneviève said in a gentle voice. ‘It’s my father. We haven’t seen each other for five years. Anyway, he’s going. He’ll come back later.’
‘Your father, your father!’ Piquemal shouted, but said no more as he was choked by a fit of coughing.
‘You know you mustn’t get angry. It’s very bad for you.’
Piquemal, doubled up with coughing, retreated into his room.
Geneviève leant down to her father.
‘Don’t be offended. He’s half mad. In any case he hasn’t got much longer.’
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Antoine said.
‘See you very soon, Papa.’
The sloping drive allowed him to roll the Bugatti back to the gate, where he dropped the clutch and had the satisfaction of hearing the engine fire immediately. Menton was waking up in a golden dawn, an oblique light that slid across the oily sea and stroked the trees in the gardens. On the quay fishermen in straw hats were untangling their nets. He eventually found a barber, who shaved him and let him wash. He bought a new shirt and discarded the one he was wearing. Throughout his journey he had not burdened himself with anything: shirts, socks, undershorts, toothbrushes marked his route, tossed in ditches or available rubbish bins. It was harder to find somewhere to buy perfume at this early hour, but he came across a shop that advertised ‘goods from Paris’. Lacking in expertise, he relied on the saleswoman’s advice, then looked for a florist’s and ordered an enormous bouquet of white roses. The thought of burdening his Bugatti with roses threw him for a moment.
‘Would you like me to have them delivered?’ asked the florist, a small brown-haired woman with a downy upper lip.
‘That’s not a bad idea. With this package, if you don’t mind. Be careful, it’s perfume.’
‘Do you have a card?’
He found one in his wallet and wrote carefully and legibly,
My little Geneviève, these flowers will express all my affection much better than I could do it myself. Here also is the perfume you asked for. If you don’t care for it you can exchange it; I’ve left the name of the shop on the packet. Your papa, who kisses you.
Feeling much calmer, he headed west once more and drove as far as the outskirts of Roquebrune, to the restaurant where he had stopped the previous evening. On a chair outside, still dressed in his grubby singlet, the patron was plucking a chicken.
‘Hello!’ Antoine said, without getting out of the car.
‘All right? So, your daughter is well?’
‘Much better, thanks.’
‘Are you eating with us?’
‘It’s a bit early and I’ve a long way to go. Another time. I’ll be back.’
‘Always in a hurry. Like a fart in a fan factory, you are.’
‘That’s life!’ said Antoine, who would never have thought he could slip so easily into this sort of badinage.
‘With a puss like mine, I don’t know that there’s any more life to be had. But you’re right to make the most of it. On your way … see you again, and try not to have to scrape yourself off the road in that thing!’
‘Don’t worry, I’m a careful driver.’
He let in the clutch and the Bugatti leapt westwards down the coast, only stopping when it reached the outskirts of Saint-Tropez and the open-air café. Lounging in a wicker armchair, Marie-Dévote was reading a magazine with a cat on her lap. She turned her head and smiled.
‘Back already? Did you get bored?’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘It’s not really lunchtime yet. Will you be happy with a bowl of bouillabaisse?’
‘I’m sure I will.’
He sat down under the arbour, facing the beach, while she disappeared into the kitchen. A light breeze was blowing, raising ripples that expired on the white sand. He would happily have gone for a swim but the memory of his white, unappealing body disgusted him. Marie-Dévote put a steaming bowl and a carafe of Var wine in front of him.
‘It’s quiet here,’ he said.
‘On Sundays it gets busy.’
‘What day is it today?’
‘Friday. What are you doing that’s so interesting you can’t remember what day it is?’
‘Nothing,’ Antoine admitted.
‘Doesn’t your wife say anything?’
‘No.’
He wanted to ask her to sit on the corner of the table the way she had the day before, and swing her leg and show him her knee, but standing in front of him, hands on hips and feet apart, she seemed much stronger and more solid than he remembered her. Good health, sunshine, the men she had to serve and whose jokes she tolerated, had made her grown-up at twenty. But it was more than that: she had ripened, she was ripe like a luscious Provençal fruit, with that directness of expression and rough candour that women from the Midi have. When she laughed she revealed strong teeth solidly planted in a hungry mouth. Marie-Dévote was as far away as it was possible to be from those girls of good Norman families to whom he had been introduced and from whom, out of boredom and lack of critical sense, he had chosen Marie-Thérèse Mangepain.
‘Are you always on your own here?’ he asked.
‘Cheeky! I can’t half see you coming! No, I’m not on my own. Maman’s here. She never leaves the kitchen.’
‘And your father?’
‘My father’s dead. In the war. Like everybody.’
‘Not me.’
‘I saw you on the beach yesterday. Your shoulder’s all kersnaffled.’
Antoine didn’t know the expression, but there was no need. Marie-Dévote’s speech communicated above all by its musicality, her sentences that began sharply and finished smoothly, with an internal sensuous and lush music that he could have listened to for hours without trying to untangle its sense. But her attention had shifted from Antoine. A fishing boat was being rowed onto the sand. A tall tanned boy leapt out of it, his trousers rolled up to his knees, a bucket in his hand.
‘It’s Théo!’ she said delightedly. ‘He’s bringing the fish.’
She ran towards him in her bare feet. Antoine was eaten up with jealousy, and as he became aware of it he felt glad to experience the feeling. Something was moving inside him. A barrier was crumbling. He belonged to the world of the living, the world of Théo arriving with a bucket of fish, of Marie-Dévote running towards the young man with ill-concealed pleasure. Théo handed her the bucket and walked off, and Marie-Dévote lost her sparkle for a moment, became suddenly dull and lifeless, but the decline was brief. Antoine finished his carafe of rosé and asked for another, merely for the pleasure of seeing her get up, walk the length of the arbour and return with her light, swinging step, as if she were walking on the tips of her toes. Instinct demanded that he leave there and then, to nurse his appetite to return.
That evening he stopped again
outside Charles’s garage at Aix. His work finished, Charles had his head under a tap of cold water.
‘All right, Captain? How’s the beast?’
‘Perfect, Charles. Are you free this evening?’
They had dinner together on a bistro terrace, talking naturally about the war they had shared together in the Balkans, a thankless and miserable episode but one that Charles, with a southerner’s talent for storytelling, had an ability to wrap in unexpected colours. Antoine, who remembered only mud, dysentery, thirst, hunger and wretchedness, listened with childlike attention as Charles crossed the Vardar on 22 September 1918, resupplied the Serbs at Gradsko two days later, raced in his truck to Prilep after the Bulgarians had set it on fire, and charged into Skopje alongside Colonel Gaspereau’s Chasseurs d’Afrique. Punctuated with a regular ‘crash, bang, wallop!’ that shook the table, his irresistible account attracted both waiters and patron to their table, making them briefly oblivious to the other diners. To Antoine Charles’s war was unrecognisable, as he juggled with entire divisions and possessed an incredible gift of ubiquity. But what did it matter? The former driver elevated the squalid, organised the disordered, gave reason to absurdity. When he at last sat down with the Bulgarian government to sign the armistice, the restaurant was in near rapture. The patron shook their hands, his eyes welling with tears.
‘You’re truly brave men,’ he said in a long sigh of garlic. ‘We owe you a great debt!’
