The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

  Now Marianne began to tremble. The shivers rose up from the depths of her body and swept through her veins. She knocked the ring out of the tramp’s hand and attempted to climb onto the parapet again, but the three men jumped forward as one to restrain her. In their eyes Marianne saw pity, and a fear of being accused of something.

  “Get your hands off me!” she shouted. None of them slackened his grip, and reluctantly she allowed them to guide her to the bench. The taller man laid his heavy coat around her shoulders, and the other scratched his hat and then knelt down to dry her feet with the sleeves of his jacket.

  Her savior was making a phone call. The other homeless men sat down on the bench next to Marianne. They held her hands gently as she tried to bite her nails. One of them bent forward and placed her wedding ring in the empty nest formed by her palms.

  She stared at the dull golden band. She had worn it for forty-one years. She had only ever removed it once—temporarily—on her fortieth wedding anniversary. That day she had ironed her gray flowery dress and copied a chignon from a three-month-old magazine she had pulled out of a recycling bin. She had dabbed on a little Chanel perfume, a sample from the same discarded magazine. The perfume had a floral fragrance, and she’d wished she had owned a red scarf. Then she opened a bottle of champagne and waited for her husband to come home.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” was Lothar’s first question.

  She gave him a twirl and handed him a glass. “To us,” she said. “To forty years of marriage.” He had taken a sip and then looked past her to the table where the open bottle stood. “That is an expensive bottle of champagne. Really?”

  “It’s our wedding anniversary.”

  “That’s still no reason to splash out. You can’t just spend my money like that.”

  She hadn’t wept right then. She never wept in front of Lothar, only in the shower where he couldn’t see.

  His money. She would have loved to earn her own money. She’d worked hard, though; by God she’d worked hard. Recently she had volunteered at a hospice. Her first job had been on her mother’s farm in Wendland, then as a midwife alongside her grandmother, and finally as a housekeeper, where she had actually earned a small salary, until Lothar had married her and barred her from running other people’s households as she had to run his.

  She’d been Lothar’s cleaner, his cook, his gardener and his spouse. She’d nursed her own mother, who had lived with them for many years before the old lady had eventually died on Marianne’s forty-second birthday. Until then, Marianne had almost only ever left the house to go shopping—on foot, because Lothar had banned her from taking the car. Her mother had a number of health issues—she often wet the bed—but she could still insult Marianne every day, and Lothar increasingly spent his evenings at the barracks or went out on his own. He wrote his wife postcards from his holidays and sent his love to his mamushka.

  —

  Marianne dropped the ring. At the same moment she heard a siren and shut her eyes until the shrill sound drew closer through the city’s winding streets and stopped right in front of her. The homeless men retreated from the pulsing blue light, and when two paramedics and a small woman carrying a case rushed toward them, the man in the striped top stepped forward, pointed to Marianne, motioned to the Seine and tapped his head again.

  He thinks I’m mad, thought Marianne.

  She tried to force the same smile she had been giving Lothar for decades. “You’re much prettier when you smile,” he had said after their first date. He was the first man ever to call her pretty, in spite of her birthmark and in spite of everything else.

  She wasn’t mad, no. And she wasn’t dead.

  She gazed over at the man who had pulled her out of the Seine without her consent. He was the madman. He was mad enough to assume that one only had to survive to thrive.

  She let the paramedics strap her to the stretcher. As they lifted her up and rolled her toward the open doors of the ambulance, the stranger with the sky-blue eyes clasped Marianne’s hand. His hand felt warm and familiar. Marianne caught a glimpse of herself reflected in his big dark pupils. She saw her pale eyes, which had always struck her as being too big; her nose, which was too small; her heart-shaped face, and her gray-brown hair. When she opened her hand, her wedding ring lay on her palm.

  “I’m sorry for all the trouble,” she said, but he shook his head. “Excusez-moi,” she added.

  “Il n’y a pas de quoi,” he said earnestly, patting his chest with his palm. “Vous avez compris?” he asked.

  Marianne smiled. Whatever he was saying, he must be right.

  “Je m’appelle Eric.” He handed Marianne’s bag to the paramedic.

  I’m Marianne, she wanted to say, but thought better of it. It was enough that he could tell his friends that he’d fished a madwoman out of the water. What good was a name? Names meant nothing.

  She reached for Eric’s hand. “Please. Please keep it,” she said. He stared at the ring as she returned it to him. The doors of the ambulance closed.

  “I hate you, Eric,” murmured Marianne, and it was as if she could still feel his rough but gentle fingers caressing her cheek.

  Marianne lay on the stretcher; the straps cut into her skin during the drive. The paramedic prepared a syringe and pricked a vein in the crook of her arm. Then he took out a second needle and pushed it into the back of her hand before attaching it to an intravenous drip.

  “I’m sorry they had to call you out for me,” whispered Marianne, gazing into the paramedic’s brown eyes. The man glanced quickly away. “Je suis allemande,” mumbled Marianne. I am German. “Allemande.” It sounded like “almond.”

  The paramedic laid a blanket over her and began to dictate a report, his words taken down by a young assistant with a beard. The strong tranquilizer began to take effect.

  “I’m an almond,” mumbled Marianne before falling asleep.

  In her dream she was sitting on the Pont Neuf. She took off a wristwatch that wasn’t even hers, smashed the glass on the stone, tore the hands from the watch face and threw them into the river. Time wouldn’t be able to stop people anymore. Time would stand still as soon as she jumped, and nobody would stop Marianne from twirling toward the sea.

  Yet when she jumped, she fell slowly, as if through liquid resin. Bodies rose through the water, floating upward past her as she fell. She recognized the faces, each and every one of them. They were her dead, the people from the hospice where she had volunteered after her mother died, the place no one else would visit for fear of being contaminated by death. Marianne had held their hands when the time came, and guided by her hand, they had passed into emptiness. Some had offered resistance, whimpering desperately, others were ashamed of dying, but all of them sought Marianne’s gaze and clung to it until their own eyes went dim.

  In her dream they groped for Marianne’s hands. Their voices mourned every unfulfilled wish, every step they hadn’t taken and every unspoken word. What none of the death-bound could forgive themselves for was what they had left undone. On their deathbeds all had confessed this to Marianne: the things they hadn’t done, the things they hadn’t dared to do.

  —

  The light was dazzling, and when she opened her eyes, Lothar was standing at the foot of the bed. His dark blue suit with gold buttons made him look as if he’d just stepped off a yacht. Next to him stood a woman in white. An angel?

  It was awfully loud here too. Machines were beeping, people were talking, and from somewhere came the sound of a television. Marianne put her hands over her ears.

  “Hello,” she said after a while.

  Lothar turned to look at her. She couldn’t see herself in his eyes. He came nearer and bent over her, examining her more closely, as if he were unsure of what he was seeing.

  “What’s the big idea?” he eventually asked.

  “The big idea?”

  He shook his head as though completely bemused. “All this fuss.”

  “I wanted to kill mys
elf.”

  “Why?”

  Which lie should she tell first? “It’s all right,” when nothing was all right? Or “Don’t worry,” when he should?

  “I…I…”

  “I, I,” growled Lothar. “Now there’s a good reason: I.”

  Why didn’t she tell him: I don’t want to carry on, I can’t carry on, I’d rather die than carry on living with you.

  She tried again. “I…I want…” She faltered once more. It was as if her mouth were choked with sandstone. “I wanted to do what I want.”

  Her husband stood up straight. “Do what you want! Aha. And where’s that got you? Just look at yourself.” He glanced at the nurse, who was still standing there observing the scene.

  Marianne felt color rise into her cheeks. Lothar sat down on the edge of the bed and turned his back on her. “After the call came through, I left the restaurant immediately. I had to pay for your meal, of course. The chef couldn’t care less if you’d killed yourself or not.”

  Marianne tried to pull up the bedsheet, but her husband was sitting on it and her efforts were in vain. She felt naked.

  “The Métro only runs until one. And they call this a global city! I had to take a taxi and it cost as much as the return coach journey to Paris. Do you realize?” Lothar exhaled loudly, as if he were about to start screaming. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? Do you want us to grow apart? Do you want me to have to leave the light on every night to keep an eye on you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Marianne squeezed out.

  “Sorry? Who do you think is most sorry? Do you realize how other people look at you when your wife tries to kill herself? It can ruin everything. Everything. You didn’t consider that when you wanted to do what you want. As if you even know what you want.”

  Lothar glanced at his Rolex, then stood up. “The bus leaves at six on the dot. I’ve had enough.”

  “And…how do I get home?” Marianne heard the imploring tone in her voice and felt ashamed. She had nothing, not even her pride.

  “The insurance will cover your trip back. A psychologist will be here tomorrow to travel home with you. My ticket’s only valid if I leave today. You jumped off the bridge on your own, I travel home on my own; that way we both do what we want. Any objections?”

  “Could I have a hug?” Marianne begged. Her husband walked out without looking back. As she turned her head, she met the eyes of the woman in the next bed, who was studying her.

  “His hearing’s not very good,” explained Marianne. “He just didn’t hear. Didn’t hear, you see?” Then she pulled the sheet over her head.

  An hour later, nurse Nicolette tore Marianne’s bedsheet away and slammed a tray down on the bedside table.

  Marianne didn’t touch the food. It looked like roadkill. The butter was rock-hard and the soup was thin, containing only three cubes of carrot and a single slice of spring onion. She gave it to the woman in the next bed. Marianne flinched when the lady tried to stroke her arm in return.

  Now she was pushing her IV drip along on its castors while holding the short hospital johnny shut because it kept flapping apart, showing her bottom. The soles of her bare feet squished every time she lifted them off the floor. She walked along the corridor until she reached another one that ran perpendicular to her block. Tucked away in the corner was the glass-walled nurses’ room.

  A small television set showed an excitable Nicolas Sarkozy venting his displeasure to the nation. A cigarette smouldered in an ashtray and the radio played as Nicolette leafed through a magazine and unwrapped a small madeleine.

  Marianne moved closer. The music…Violins, an accordion, clarinets, bagpipes. She closed her eyes to watch her own private film. She saw men dancing with beautiful women. She saw a dining table, children and apple trees, the sun glinting on the sea at the horizon. She saw blue shutters on old sandstone houses with thatched roofs, and a small chapel. The men had their hats pushed back on their heads. She didn’t know the song, but she would have loved to play it. The notes of the accordion pierced her heart.

  She’d once played the accordion, first a small one, then, when her arms were long enough, a full-size instrument. Her father had given it to her for her fifteenth birthday. Her mother hated it and would say, “Learn to sew instead, it’s not as noisy.” Then one day Lothar had taken the accordion to the rubbish heap.

  A red light pulsed beside a room number on the display board. Nicolette looked up in annoyance, caught sight of Marianne and turned away in a show of complete indifference. Marianne waited until Nicolette had disappeared before entering the nurses’ room. She reached out hungrily for the bag of individually wrapped madeleines on the table, and as she did so she almost knocked a brightly colored square tile, which the nurses used as a place mat, onto the floor. Hearing a door slam, she dashed across the corridor and through a second door marked “Stairs,” almost trapping the IV tube in the door as she pressed it shut.

  She sat down on the bottom step and exhaled with relief. It was only then that she noticed that she was still holding the madeleine and that she was carrying the tile under her arm. She listened out for any sounds, but all was silent. She propped the tile against a window, and removed the cake from its wrapper.

  So this is what it’s like, thought Marianne. So this is what it’s like to be in Paris.

  She bit into the soft, sweet cake and studied the small hand-painted tile. Boats, a harbor, an infinite blaze of bright blue sky that looked freshly washed. The artist had created a magnificent scene in the tiny space. Marianne tried to read the names of the boats. Marlin. Genever. Koakar. And…Mariann.

  The Mariann was a dainty red boat, bobbing half forgotten on the edge of the picture, her sails slack. Mariann. How beautiful it all was. The music on the radio seemed to belong to this place. So cheerful and gentle, so sunny and free.

  By Marianne’s second bite, she was sobbing so hard that she had to cough. The crumbs exploded from her mouth with a mixture of spit and tears. Things not done: that was what the dead had been trying to tell her. Unlived moments. Marianne’s life consisted entirely of unlived moments.

  She stared at the tube in her hand for a moment, then tore it out. It bled. That won’t kill me either, she thought. Besides, I’m still wearing yesterday’s knickers, and how’s that going to look in the morgue?

  She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and blinked. She’d wept more in the past few hours than for decades. It had to stop; it wouldn’t change anything.

  She looked at the glazed tile again. She couldn’t bear the sight of the Mariann’s slack sail. She flipped the tile onto its back. There was an inscription: Port de Kerdruc, Fin.

  Marianne ate the remainder of the madeleine and still felt hungry. Kerdruc. She turned the tile over again and sniffed it. Didn’t it smell…of the sea?

  I’ve never been to such a beautiful place.

  She tried to imagine what it might have been like if she and Lothar had been to such a place. But all she could see in her mind’s eye was Lothar sitting at their living room table. She saw him arranging the neighbors’ old magazines so that their edges ran parallel. She ought to have been grateful to him for the order he’d brought to her life. The house at the end of the cul-de-sac was her home.

  She stroked the tile again. Would Lothar remember to water the orchid? She gave a little laugh. Of course he wouldn’t.

  Kerdruc. If it was a place by the sea, then…

  She gave a start as the door opened behind her. It was Nicolette. She raged at Marianne and waved imperiously for her to come back up the stairs. Marianne couldn’t look the nurse in the eye as she pressed past her into the bright corridor and let herself be guided back to her room without the slightest resistance.

  With a practiced hand Nicolette inserted a fresh drip and slid two pink tablets between Marianne’s lips. Marianne feigned obedience and pretended to wash down the pills with some of the stale water on the bedside table. Her neighbor whimpered in her sleep like a bleat
ing lamb. When Nicolette had turned out the light and closed the door behind her, Marianne spat out the pills and took the tile she’d been clasping to her chest out from under her johnny.

  Kerdruc. She stroked the picture. It was absurd, but she could almost feel the mellow air under her fingertips, and she quivered. She got up and walked slowly over to the window. The wind howled at her. Thunder drew closer, the clouds parted, and for a second a bolt of lightning lit the sky. It began to rain and the drops rattled against the windowpanes like beads from a broken necklace. The moonlight magnified the raindrops so that they looked as if they were dancing on the ground. She kneeled down. The thunder was so deafening that it sounded as if the storm were hovering directly over the hospital.

  My little wifey who’s scared of a storm, Lothar would have said.

  She wasn’t scared of storms. She’d pretended to be for his pleasure, so he could tease her and feel good about himself. Time after time she’d allowed herself to be drawn into playing such stupid games.

  She looked out at the tattered sky and hesitantly cupped her full breasts with both hands. Lothar had been her first and only man. She had slipped from virginity into marriage without so much as a kiss. He had been her home ever since she had left her parents’ house.

  My husband neither touched my soul nor charmed my body. Why did I let that happen? Why?

  She went over to the cupboards and found her clothes. They smelled brackish. She rinsed out her dress, dug out some deodorant and sprayed some on it. Now it smelled of roses and brackish water.

  She stepped up to the washbasin, which was located in the center of the room. Didn’t the architects realize how stupid it looked for a woman to have to wash herself while standing in the middle of the room? But she washed all the same. When she felt cleaner, she balanced on her tiptoes to look in the mirror.