He moved quickly, in spite of his seeming clumsiness, his poacher’s hands patting Luc’s clothing and abstracting its contents-a lighter, some rolling papers, car keys, a wallet, a packet of cigarettes. Luc struggled uselessly, swearing. He looked about him, as if expecting to see someone to whom he might call for help, but the street was deserted.
“One wallet.” Louis checked the contents. “One cigarette lighter. Silver. One mobile phone.” He began to open the packet of cigarettes and to shake out the contents into his palm.
Then, on Louis’s hand, I saw something I didn’t recognize. A small irregular block of some blackish brown stuff like old treacle toffee.
“I wonder what this is,” said Louis blandly.
“Fuck you!” said Luc sharply. “This isn’t mine! You planted it on me, you old bastard!”-this to Paul, who looked at him in slow-witted surprise. “You’ll never get it to stand-”
“Maybe not,” said Louis indifferently. “But we can try, can’t we?”
6.
Louis left Dessanges in the root cellar as promised. He could keep him for twenty-four hours, he told us, before he had to charge him. With a curious glance at both of us and a careful lack of expression in his voice, he informed us that we had that time in which to conclude our business. A good lad, Louis Ramondin, in spite of his slowness. Too like his uncle Guilherm for comfort, though, and that I suppose blinded me at first to his essential goodness. I only hoped he’d not have cause to regret it soon enough.
At first Dessanges raved and yelled in the root cellar. Demanded his lawyer, his phone, his sister Laure, his cigarettes. Claimed his nose hurt, that it was broken, that for all he knew there were bone shards working their way into his brain right now. He hammered against the door, pleaded, threatened, swore. We ignored him, and eventually the sounds ceased. At twelve thirty I brought him some coffee and a plate of bread and charcuterie and he was sulky but calm, the look of calculation back in his eyes.
“You’re just delaying the moment, Mamie,” he told me as I cut the bread into slices. “Twenty-four hours is all you’ve got, because as you know, as soon as I make that phone call-”
“Do you actually want this food?” I snapped at him sharply. “‘Cause it won’t hurt you to go hungry for a while, and that way I wouldn’t have to listen to your nasty talk any more. Right?”
He gave me a dirty look, but said nothing else on the subject.
“Right,” I said.
7.
Paul and I pretended to work for the rest of the afternoon. It was a Sunday, and the restaurant was shut, but there was still work to be done in the orchard and in the vegetable garden. I hoed and pruned and weeded until my kidneys felt like hot glass and sweat ringed my armpits. Paul watched me from the house, not knowing I was also watching him.
Those twenty-four hours. They itched and fretted at me like a bad case of nettle rash. I knew I should be doing something, but what I could do in twenty-four hours was beyond my ability to decide. We had foiled one Dessanges-temporarily, at least-but the other was still as free and full of malice as ever. And time was short. Several times I even made it to the phone booth in front of the post office-manufacturing errands just so I could be near it, once even going as far as dialing the number but cutting it off before anyone answered as I realized I had absolutely no idea of what I ought to say. It seemed that wherever I looked I saw the same terrible truth staring out at me, the same terrible set of alternatives. Old Mother, with her mouth open and bristling with fishhooks, her eyes glassy with rage, myself pulling against that dreadful pressure, biting against it like a minnow on a line, as if the pike were some part of myself I was struggling to tear free, some black part of my own heart writhing and thrashing on the line, some terrible, secret catch…
It came down to one of two options. My mind might play with other possibilities-that Laure Dessanges might promise to leave me alone in exchange for her little brother’s release-but the deep-down practical part of my mind knew that they wouldn’t work. We’d only gained one thing by our actions so far-time-and I could feel the prize slipping from me second by second even as I racked my brains to find out how I could use it. If not, by the end of the week Luc’s prediction-your sad little secret is going to be splashed across every magazine, every newspaper-would stand before us in hard print, and I’d lose everything; the farm, the restaurant, my place in Les Laveuses… The only alternative, I knew, was to use the truth as a weapon. But although that might win me back my home and my business, who could say what the effect might be on Pistache, on Noisette, on Paul?
I gritted my teeth in frustration. No one should have to make that choice, I wailed inwardly. No one.
I hoed at a line of shallots so hard and so blindly that I forgot myself and began to gouge at the ripening plants, sending the shiny little onions flying with the weeds. I wiped sweat from my eyes and found I was crying.
No one should have to choose between a life and a lie. And yet she had, Mirabelle Dartigen, the woman in the picture with her fake pearls and shy smile, the woman with the sharp cheekbones and scragged-back hair. She’d given it up-all of it, the farm, the orchard, the little niche she had carved for herself, her grief, the truth-buried it without a backward glance and moved on… Only one fact is missing from her album, so carefully collated and cross-referenced, one thing she couldn’t possibly have written because she couldn’t possibly have known. One fact remains to complete our story. One fact.
If it wasn’t for my daughters and for Paul, I told myself, I’d tell all of it. If only to spite Laure, if only to rob her of her triumph. But there Paul was, so quiet and unassuming, so humble in his silence that he had managed to get past my defenses before I even realized it. Paul, always something of a joke with his stammer and his ratty old blue dungarees, Paul with his poacher’s hands and his easy smile. Who would have thought it would be Paul, after all these years? Who would have thought that after so many years I would find my way back home?
I almost phoned several times. Mirabelle Dartigen was long dead, after all. I had no need to haul her about the weird water of my heart like Old Mother on her line. A second lie would not change her now, I told myself. Nor would revealing the truth at this point allow me to atone. But Mirabelle Dartigen is a stubborn woman even in death. Even now I can feel her-hear her, like the wail of wires on a windy day-that shrill, confused treble which is all that remains of my memory of her. No matter that I never knew how much I really loved her. Her love, that flawed and stony secret, drags me with it into the murk.
And yet. It wouldn’t be right. Paul’s voice inside me, relentless as the river. It wouldn’t be right to live a lie. I wished I didn’t have to choose.
8.
It was almost sunset when he came to find me. I’d been working in the garden for so long that the ache in my bones had become a screeching, jarring imperative. My throat was dry and full of fishhooks. My head swam. Still I turned away from him as he stood silently at my back, not speaking, not needing to speak, just waiting, just biding his time.
“What do you want?” I snapped at last. “Stop staring at me, for heaven’s sake, and get on with something useful!”
Paul said nothing. I could feel the back of my neck burning. At last I turned round, flinging the hoe across the vegetable patch and screaming at him in my mother’s voice.
“You cretin! Can’t you keep away from me? You miserable old fool!” I wanted to hurt him, I think. It would have been easier if I’d been able to hurt him, make him turn from me in rage or pain or disgust, but he faced me out-funny, I’d always thought I was better at that game than anyone-with his inexorable patience, not moving, not speaking, just waiting for me to reach the end of my line so that he could speak his piece. I turned away furiously, afraid of his words, his terrible patience.
“I made our guest some dinner,” he said at last. “P’raps you’d like some too.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want anything except to be left alone,” I told him.
Behind me I heard Paul sigh. “She was just the same,” he said. “Mirabelle Dartigen. Never would take help from anyone, no, not even from herself.” His voice was quiet and reflective. “You’re a lot like her, you know. Too much like her for your own good, or anybody’s.”
I bit back a sharp reply and would not look at him.
“Set herself aback everyone with her stubbornness,” continued Paul. “Never knowing they’d have helped her if she’d said. But she never said, did she? She never told a soul.”
“I don’t suppose she could,” I said numbly. “Some things you can’t. You…just…can’t.”
“Look at me,” said Paul.
His face looked rosy in the last flare of the sunset, rosy and young in spite of the lines and the nicotine mustache. Behind him the sky was a raw red barbed with clouds.
“Comes a time someone has to tell,” he said reasonably. “I’ve not been reading your ma’s scrapbook for all this time for nothing, and whatever you might think, I’m not quite such a fool as all that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
Paul shook his head dismissively. “I know. I’m not smart, like Cassis or you, but seems to me sometimes that it’s the smart ones get lost the soonest.” He smiled and tapped his temple with one extended knuckle. “Too much goin‘ on in here,” he said kindly. “Far too much.”
I looked at him.
“See, it isn’t the truth that hurts,” he continued. “If she’d seen that, none of this might ever have happened. If she’d just asked them for help, ”stead of goin‘ her own way like she always did-“
“No.” My voice was flat and final. “You don’t understand. She never knew the truth. Or if she did, she hid it, even from herself. For our sake. For mine-” I was choking now, a familiar taste rising up from my sour belly, cramping me with its sourness. “It wasn’t up to her to tell the truth. It was up to us-to me.” I swallowed painfully. “It could only have been me,” I said with an effort. “Only I knew the whole story. Only I could have had the guts-”
I stopped to look at him again. His sweet and rueful smile. His stooped shoulders, like those of a mule who has carried long and heavy loads in patience and peace of mind. How I envied him. How I wanted him.
“You do have the guts,” said Paul at last. “You always did.”
We looked at each other. Silence between us.
“All right,” I told him at last. “Let him go.”
“Are you sure? The drugs Louis found in his pocket-”
I gave a laugh, which sounded strangely carefree in my dry mouth. “You and I both know there were no drugs. A harmless fake, that’s all, which you planted on him when you went through his pockets.” I laughed again at his startled look. “Poacher’s fingers, Paul, poacher’s hands. Did you think you were the only one with a suspicious mind?”
Paul nodded. “What will you do then?” he asked. “As soon as he tells Yannick and Laure…”
I shook my head.
“Let him tell them,” I said. I felt light inside, lighter than I had ever felt before, thistledown on the water. I felt laughter rising up inside me, the mad laughter of a person who is about to throw everything she possesses into the wind. I put my hand into my apron pocket and drew out the scrap of paper with the telephone number written on it.
Then, thinking better of it, I fetched my little address book. After a moment’s searching, I found the right page.
“I think I know what to do now,” I said.
9.
Apple and dried-apricot clafoutis. Beat the eggs and flour together with the sugar and melted butter until the consistency is thick and creamy. Add the milk little by little, beating all the time. The final consistency should be a thin batter. Rub a dish generously with butter, and add the sliced fruit to the batter. Add cinnamon and allspice and put into the oven at a medium temperature. When the cake has begun to rise, add brown sugar to the top and dot with butter. Bake until the top is crisp and firm to the touch.
It had been a meager harvest. The drought, followed by the disastrous rains, had seen to that. And yet the annual harvest festival was something we usually looked forward to with anticipation, even Mother, who made her special cakes and left bowls of fruit and vegetables on the window ledge and baked loaves of extravagant and intricate loveliness-a wheat sheaf, a fish, a basket of apples-to sell at the Angers market.
The fair was always held at the end of October, and that day all the Sunday-schoolers would file around the fountain (paganly decorated with flowers, fruit and wreaths of corn, pumpkins and colored squash hollowed and cut into lantern shapes) dressed in their best clothes, holding candles and singing. The service would continue in the church, where the altar was draped in green and gold, and the hymns, resounding across the square where we would listen, fascinated by the lure of things forbidden, dealt with the reaping of the chosen and the burning of the chaff. We always waited until the service was over, and then would join in the festivities with the rest while the curé remained to take confession in church and the harvest bonfires burnt smoky-sweet at the corners of the bare fields.
It was then that the fair would begin. The harvest festival with wrestling and racing and all kinds of competitions-dancing, ducking for apples, pancake eating, goose racing-and hot gingerbread and cider given out to the winners and losers, and baskets of homemade produce sold at the fountain while the harvest queen sat smiling on her yellow throne and showered passersby with flowers.
This year we had hardly seen it coming. Most other years we would have awaited the celebration with an impatience greater than Christmas, for presents were scarce in those days and December is a poor time for celebration. October, fleeting and sappy sweet with its reddish gold light and early white frosts and the leaves turning brilliantly, is a different matter, a magical time, a last gleeful defiance in the face of the approaching cold. Other years we would have had the pile of wood and dead leaves waiting in a sheltered spot weeks in advance, the necklaces of crab apples and bags of nuts waiting, our best clothes ironed and ready and our shoes polished for dancing. There might have been a special celebration at the Lookout Post (wreaths hung on the Treasure Stone and scarlet flower heads dropped into the slow brown Loire), pears and apples sliced and dried in the oven, garlands of yellow corn plaited and worked into braids and dollies for good luck around the house, tricks planned against the unsuspecting and bellies rumbling in hungry anticipation.
But this year there was little of that. The sourness after La Mauvaise Réputation had begun our descent, and with it the letters, the rumors, graffiti on the walls, whispering behind our backs and polite silences to our faces. It was assumed that there could be no smoke without fire. The accusations (NAZI WHOAR on the side of the henhouse, the words reappearing larger and redder every time we painted them over), coupled with Mother’s refusal to acknowledge or deny the gossip, along with reports of her visits to La Rép exaggerated and passed hungrily from mouth to mouth, were enough to whet suspicions even more keenly. Harvesttime was a sour affair for the Dartigen family that year.
The others built their bonfires and sheaved their wheat. Children picked over the rows to make sure none of the grain was lost. We gathered the last of the apples-what wasn’t rotten through with wasps, that is-and stored them away in the cellar on trays, each one separate so that rot couldn’t spread. We stored our vegetables in the root cellar in bins and under loose coverings of dry earth. Mother even baked some of her special bread, though there was little market for her baking in Les Laveuses, and sold it impassively in Angers. I remember how we took a cartload of loaves and cakes to market one day, how the sun shone on the burnished crusts-acorns, hedgehogs, little grimacing masks-like on polished oak. A few of the village children refused to speak to us. On the way to school one day someone threw clods of earth at Reinette and Cassis from a stand of tamarisks by the riverside. As the day approached, girls began to appraise one another, brushing their hair with especia
l care and washing their faces with oatmeal, for on festival day one of them would be chosen as the harvest queen and wear a barley crown and carry a pitcher of wine. I was totally uninterested in this. With my short straight hair and froggy face I was never going to be harvest queen. Besides, without Tomas nothing mattered very much. I wondered if I would ever see him again. I sat by the Loire with my traps and my fishing rod and watched. I couldn’t stop myself from believing that somehow, if I caught the pike, Tomas would return.
10.
Harvest festival morning was cold and bright, with the dying-ember glow peculiar to October. Mother had stayed up the night before-out of a kind of stubbornness rather than a love of tradition-making gingerbread and black buckwheat pancakes and blackberry jam, which she placed in baskets and gave to us to take to the fair. I wasn’t planning on going. Instead, I milked the goat and finished my few Sunday chores, then began to make my way toward the river. I had just placed a particularly ingenious trap there, two crates and an oil drum tied together with chicken wire and baited with fish scraps right at the edge of the riverbank, and I was eager to test it out. I could smell cut-grass on the wind with the first of the autumn bonfires, and the scent was poignant, centuries old, a reminder of happier times. I felt old too, trudging through the cornfields to the Loire. I felt as if I’d already lived a long, long time.
Paul was waiting at the Standing Stones. He looked unsurprised to see me, glancing briefly at me from his fishing before returning to the cork floater on the water.
“Aren’t you going to the f-fair?” he asked.
I shook my head. I realized I hadn’t seen him once since Mother chased him from the house, and I felt a sudden pang of guilt at having so completely forgotten my old friend. Maybe that’s why I sat down next to him. Certainly it was not for the sake of companionship-my need for solitude was stifling me.
Five Quarters of the Orange Page 24
