The Rain Watcher

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  Nothing has changed. He is greeted by the scent of lavender and roses, with a touch of beeswax. He could be stepping back in time, in a flash. The entrance is warm, thanks to Nadine, who also left a couple of lights on for him. In the kitchen, the table is set for one. He checks the fridge: fresh soup, ratatouille, rice and chicken, a slice of tarte aux pommes. There is a note for him on the kitchen table from Nadine, in her small, neat handwriting: She hopes his father will soon be back home. Linden suddenly remembers (how could he have forgotten?) that cell phone reception is hopeless here. The only way to get a decent connection is to walk up the hill, beyond the swimming pool, higher and higher, holding your phone up like the Statue of Liberty—nothing he feels like doing right now. He finds it chilly in the big living room, so he moves to his father’s office while his dinner is gently heating up. No more lavender and rose scent here, but more the acrid flavor of tobacco. This is Paul’s room, where he can’t be disturbed, where he comes every morning, sitting behind that old-fashioned writing desk, to answer his letters, to make his calls, to write his conferences papers. Paul sits facing the valley, which can’t be seen now because the curtains are drawn and the shutters closed. On the walls hang framed leaves pressed under glass from all kinds of different trees: ginkgo, yew, beech, cedar, sycamore. The only visible photograph is the one Linden took in December 1999 of the storm at Versailles. Paul’s Bowie vinyl records are preciously stacked here, next to the old record player. Paul has always refused to succumb to digital recordings, asserting that analog formats have a richer, truer sound. Linden glances through the records, chooses Blackstar, Bowie’s last album, the one he knows less well. He clicks the old stereo on, sliding the record out of its case, a gesture he hasn’t done in a while but one that he has watched his father accomplish so often. Static crackles on his skin as he manipulates the record, making sure he doesn’t get his fingers on the surface. He gently lowers it onto the turntable, positioning the tone arm to the outer edge. Then he sits at his father’s desk, his hands spread on the old scratched surface. The music rises, opulent and intense, wrought from audacious, sometimes disconcerting harmonies, interleaved with abrupt outbursts of weird sound effects, the fizz of a synthesizer, and an almost religious chant. After a full four minutes, as Linden tries to fight off his perplexity, a sheer high note picks its way through the confusion and Bowie’s voice rings out, true and clear, sending a shiver down Linden’s spine, something about an angel falling. As he listens, entranced, his hands stroking the worn wood, memories resurface randomly, and he doesn’t push them away. Paul teaching his son to drive; once, he got furious because Linden drove straight into a fence, making a dent in the car. Months later, when Linden obtained his license, motoring his father all the way to Lyon, Paul was proud. Linden remembers that pride, how Paul would nod to all the unknown people they passed, chanting, “It’s my son driving. Hey, look, it’s my son at the wheel!” Paul, kneeling in front of the mantelpiece, showing him how to start a good log fire. His deft hands, crumpling newspaper up into small balls, stacking tinder into a sort of grid, then balancing two split logs on the very top. Paul letting Linden light the fire with a long match, saying, “You need to let the fire breathe. Don’t overfeed it. Give it time to grow.” Paul teaching him to swim, his father’s thumbs firm under his armpits. Paul never wanted to use those little floater wings other kids had. He said his children had to learn without them, like he did. The first thing he taught them was how to hold their breath underwater, and then how to float on their backs, without being afraid. Linden would put his head on Paul’s shoulder: Look up there at the sky. See what you can see. Birds, clouds, or a plane maybe, or a butterfly? Put your head way back; hold out your arms. There! You’re floating, all by yourself! When Linden was nearly ten years old, his father took him on an excursion up the Lance mountain, which rose behind Vénozan in a long curved arc. His father said it would take six or seven hours, that it wasn’t always easy, but that he could do it. Tilia wanted to go, too, but Paul had insisted this was between father and son. How well Linden remembers that phrase: “between father and son.” They left early in the morning, on a crisp April day, carrying food and water in their backpacks. They climbed up through lavender fields, cherry orchards with blossoms sending sweet perfume their way, then cut though thick woods. The first pass was easy to get to. It became a little tougher from there. Linden felt breathless, but he forced himself to keep up with his father, putting his feet where his father had tread. Paul climbed steadily and swiftly, knowing exactly where he was going. Sometimes he’d point out the stump of an old oak, or the ruins of an abandoned farm. After a while, once they left the forest and reached the plateau lining the highest part of the mountain, moving through the second pass, they stopped for lunch. They were alone, just the two of them, sitting on a flat boulder. Paul split the bread, ham, and cheese with his knife, handing slices to his son. His father didn’t speak, but Linden felt intensely happy. The sun scorched the tip of his nose. He listened to the wind, blowing stronger as they edged closer to the pinnacle. They set off again, rising up through steep pastures peppered with rocks and bushes. The grass was short and yellowed, parched in places. Linden felt tired all of a sudden; his legs ached, and he nearly sprained his ankle on an unsteady stone. Just as he was about to fall back, to murmur he couldn’t do it, that his father had been wrong, he was too small, he would never make it up to the top, Paul’s hand shot out to grab his, just like when he was younger, and he held on to it, feeling his father yank him upward, as if a new energy was streaming from his father’s arm to his. At the top of the mountain, the view was magnificent, like a reward, and it made Linden laugh out loud with awe. An ancient stone cross was implanted there, and he reached out to touch it. His father said they could see all the way to the Italian border, over the Alps, and Linden believed him. He felt as if he were standing on top of the world: Endless layers of hazy blue and green spreading out in front of him like a vast carpet dotted with crests and peaks, and if he stretched out a finger, he imagined he could caress them. The splendor of the image remained imprinted in his mind. His father finally spoke. He said it all seemed calm, so peaceful, didn’t it? Linden nodded. His father then said something he never forgot. When nature got angry, Paul said, there was nothing man could do about it. Nothing at all.

  In the grain of the wood, Linden’s fingers follow grooves and incisions, feeling his father’s presence beat there like a pulse. How old is this desk? It has probably been in this room since his great-grandfather Maurice’s day, although it was less shabby then, its corners less rounded. On the left, fountain pens and blotting paper, a jar full of pencils and ballpoints, a magnifying glass with a curved handle, an ashtray, a lighter, and the snow globe that Linden remembers so well and which he now picks up to shake. Flurries spin around miniature white birch trees studded with tiny red-and-brown robins. Linden pulls on the brass handle of the top drawer, which opens with a squeak. He finds writing paper, its pages curling with damp, stamps, an old black wallet, which smells of tobacco, in which he discovers a forgotten fifty-franc banknote and a school picture of a plump-faced Tilia, age nine or ten, which makes him grin. At the back of the drawer is a cemetery of old copper coins, rusty scissors, and a jumble of obsolete keys. On the right of the desk, next to the telephone, there are stacks of paper, unopened mail, with stamps from all over the world. It’s extraordinary how all these tree lovers get in touch with Paul. Linden knows his father answers every letter he gets. Paul doesn’t own a computer, or a typewriter; he does it all by hand. Linden reads a long paragraph on a single sheet of notepaper. Several sentences and words have been crossed out and rewritten. He guesses it is the unfinished draft of a speech his father was working on before he left for Paris last Friday. His father’s large, sprawling handwriting has never been difficult to decipher. Trees. Always trees. And now the box in the tree, in the oldest lime. What is the significance of that box? Why did his father want him to come here and fetch it? Linden goes into th
e kitchen to get a tray, on which he places his food. This room has few happy memories for him. This is where they had breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. Lauren never used the formal dining room, which she considered not cozy enough. Linden sees himself in that chair, there, by the window, thirteen or fourteen years old, told off by his mother because he wasn’t sitting up straight; burdened with the daily teasing and taunting at school, which he didn’t have the courage to bring up. How lonely he was; how sad he felt. Is this why he seldom comes here? Because it brings back that pain, that rejection? Doesn’t Vénozan deserve a second chance? Must it always bear the scars of his adolescence?

  Installed in his father’s office, Linden eats his meal hungrily. The ring of the phone startles him. It’s his mother, making sure he got there safely. She says she called Vandeleur, that he’ll turn up first thing tomorrow morning. Paul had a peaceful day, but he still seems very tired. She’s worried. She says she thinks Professor Magerant looks worried, too, but she can’t get anything out of him. Tilia had a go at him, and Linden can imagine what that means. The professor had remained surprisingly calm. He told them only that they were changing the medical treatment. Nothing more. It was frustrating. Linden comforts her the best he can, but he can feel the disquiet grow within him, as well. When he finishes talking to his mother, he uses the landline to dial Sacha’s cell phone. The call goes straight to voice mail, which is rare, as Sacha’s mobile is usually always on. He tries Sacha’s direct line, and gets his assistant, Rebecca. No, she hasn’t seen Sacha yet this morning, but she’ll let him know Linden called. She checks the agenda. No, there are no outside meetings scheduled for Sacha today. Linden hangs up, marginally bothered. In the nearly five years they’ve been together, he has never been unfaithful to Sacha. He has never even wanted to. He hopes and believes Sacha feels the same way. He trusts Sacha; he always has. At present, with a new tenuousness rocking the base of his world, he wonders. He is aware of the magnetic effect Sacha has on other men. He’s seen it. It is instantaneous, potent. Sacha seems blind to it, but surely he must be conscious of it. He calls the cell phone again, asking Sacha to ring him at Vénozan, leaving the number for him. There’s so much he wants to share with him. He’ll start by recounting how he described Sacha to his father, so that after a while, it felt like Sacha was there, in the room with them. How is he going to put words to what he felt when he understood his father loved him? It was the warmest, most beautiful and precious sensation, and just thinking about it brings tears to his eyes, brings him back to the boy he was, following Paul around in the garden, listening to him talk about plants and nature. Another memory surfaces: Paul pointing out the big black carpenter bees to his small son, explaining the males never sting, they can’t, and he can even catch them in his hand, which he promptly does, while Linden looks on, quaking. Look how beautiful they are, with their shiny black bodies and metallic dark purple wings; Linden mustn’t be afraid, even if they make such a loud noise and look menacing. The females will sting only if they feel they are under attack. Linden just needs to let them alone. One summer day, his father gently deposited a male carpenter bee into his palm. It felt tickly and quite terrifying, because the insect seemed huge in his tiny hand, but he felt his father’s pride, and it made him glow inside.

  Linden puts his dinner things away, clears up, and makes his way upstairs. He has never felt frightened in this house, but it does seem particularly silent tonight. For once, the mistral is not blowing at all. He enters his old room. He left here twenty-one years ago, and his mother had it redecorated, but as soon as he finds himself within these walls, he suspects he might harvest the angst of the sad, harassed teenager again, shedding the know-how of the sophisticated, worldly photographer. He decides he won’t be enduring any of that despondency tonight. It is a small inner tussle leaving the painful memories behind, but he does it quite effortlessly. He has a quick shower and slips into bed. He thinks of his father again. There is so much catching up to do, so many conversations to have. How will this be possible? Paul won’t be able to board a plane for quite a while, he imagines, because of his stroke. Well then, in that case, Linden will have to return to Vénozan, this time with Sacha. They must both make time for this. He sees it clearly: the white wrought-iron table, candles flickering in the soft evening breeze, the sun setting on the right of the house, sending its final golden rays over the valley, all the way up to the gigantic cypress trees standing in a row, the ones Paul calls “the Mohicans.” He sees Lauren and Sacha laughing, with Paul looking on, his father’s eyes always roving back to his army of trees clustering around the house: the old oak with its splintered trunk, the two towering planes, the maple and the elm, familiar landmarks of Linden’s childhood. What will happen to this house when Paul and Lauren are gone? Who will look after the land, the arboretum? It is the first time this cheerless thought comes to him. Not Tilia, surely; she seems attached to her life in London, her daughter, her art, her hopeless husband. He thinks now about all the decisions that will have to be made once his parents are no longer here. The idea of the estate being sold or razed makes him wince. No matter how unhappy he was here as a teenager, this house, this land, is part of who he is. The child that Linden and Sacha will adopt one day will carry both their names. That child, the one they so often talk about, the one who is woven into their future, will come to know this land; of that, he is certain.

  Linden had left the door open so that he could hear the phone ring from his parents’ room if Sacha called back, but what wakes him is the cavernous clang of the doorbell penetrating his sleep. He is astonished to see it is nearly nine o’clock and that sunlight is peeping through the curtains. The doorbell jangles again, mightily. Linden dresses in a hurry, pads down in his bare feet, wrestles with the lock. Vandeleur is standing there, a wide grin on his freckled face, and it is Linden’s childhood beaming at him. The bright red hair has tapered to a sandy gray, the shoulders seem less broad, but Vandeleur’s green eyes still twinkle above his bulbous nose. He calls Linden “little chief,” like he always has, slapping him on the back with a powerful square hand. What’s all this business with the boss? The boss, in the hospital? Can’t be possible. Got to get him out of there fast. Is the boss on the mend? He must be, because Vénozan will never be Vénozan without the boss. His hoarse, rough voice is perhaps a little less brash. Linden takes him into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, then runs upstairs to get his shoes. He explains what he is here for. Vandeleur stares at him, incredulous. What? The boss wants to dig a hole in the old lime? That lime? The oldest one? Linden nods. They must get to work now. God knows how long it will take. There is a box in the tree that his father needs. Vandeleur nearly drops his coffee. Does Linden mean a treasure, or something like that? Linden can’t help smiling. The seventy-year-old gardener has the expression of a five-year-old being taken to the circus. When Linden steps outside, he is dazzled by the golden sunlight. It is so strong, he has to close his eyes, and yet how delicious it feels on his skin. The past week in Paris has been similar to living in a cave. He mentions this to the old man as he follows him to the shed, where they pick up tools. Vandeleur says he has never seen anything like the Paris flood, which he’s been watching on TV. He wants to know what it was like, those watery streets, the desolation. Hell, answers Linden. As they walk up to the arboretum, carrying the ladder between them, as well as a sledgehammer, Linden realizes there is nothing watery around them, only grass, trees, and blue sky. The pure wintry air courses through his lungs, invigorating and refreshingly fragrant. How far away sodden, stinking Paris seems! When they get to the top of the hill, he turns to look at the valley behind him: the house nestling in the hollow where the winding path ends, the sky immense, unencumbered by bulky clouds. The wind lies low today; only the tips of the trees at the top of the vale sway with a gentle whisper. Yes, Linden has missed this land, this place that saw him grow up. He has missed it much more than he thought.

  All the trees of the arboretum sport their winter garb: n
aked black branches, not a leaf in sight. Spring is still far off. They know exactly when to blossom—Linden recalls Paul telling him this as a boy—launching the formation of their lush pale green bower with absolute precision. Vandeleur’s voice is a little ragged from the climb. The boss used to love playing here as a kid. He’d come here every day. He had a tree house in one of these. Does Linden know that? Linden nods. Vandeleur continues. The boss still comes up here all the time, sometimes alone, sometimes with him. Not much talking going on. Just looking out on the land and checking how the trees are doing. The tallest lime is easy to pick out, looming high over the others, its huge gnarled branches stretching out like gargantuan arms, its thick, twisting roots reaching deep into the gravelly hill. How can Linden not think of his father when he is standing here, right under his favorite tree? He can almost hear Paul’s voice, explaining to him how rain was greedily sucked up by the tree, branches and leaves opening up like cupped hands to catch each raindrop, sending them streaming down the trunk in rivulets, feeding the thirsty roots. Vandeleur sets the ladder against the lime. He scratches his head. Is Linden sure they’re supposed to slash into this one? Linden says he’s sure. Vandeleur doesn’t seem convinced. It sounds crazy to him. This is the boss’s favorite tree. Linden says he knows, that he was named after it, Linden means “lime” in English. Vandeleur guffaws. He never guessed that at all! He thought it was just a fancy American name! But he knows Tilia is the Latin term for it. So, the boss has a thing for lindens, doesn’t he? He and the boss fight about this old tree’s age all the time. Vandeleur thinks it’s over four hundred years old, and the boss says three hundred. Cut into it? It just doesn’t make sense. This tree is like royalty. This tree is the master of the forest. Vandeleur puts his hand on the old bark with reverence. Is this really what the boss ordered? Linden reads aloud from Dominique’s note. “Tallest lime. Blocked-up hole where dead branch used to be, halfway up, left as you face the valley. Get Vandeleur to help.” The old man starts at the sound of his name, then nods. He’ll do what the boss wants. Linden says he’ll go up to find the hole while Vandeleur steadies the ladder. He climbs up gradually, surprised at the girth and height of the tree. He had never imagined it was so enormous. He can now glimpse the small lopsided hole clogged up with cement, on the left, where a dead branch used to be. The ladder doesn’t quite reach high enough; he wonders how he is going to manage. As he twists around, figuring it out, the ladder wobbles.