“Like the musketeers?”
He laughed. “Nothing so fancy. No feather in the big hat! I teach some local boys, a few girls but mostly boys. At one time I was the fencing, how do you say — teacher?”
“Coach?”
“Yes, fencing coach at a boys’ school in the Savoie. It is good skill, very ancient. It teaches quickness in mind and body, to be light on your feet.”
Merle felt the weight of her legs. Ah, to be light of foot. The bed at her hotel was calling. But this third cup of coffee was keeping her going. She only had four days to get this thing done. She thought about what Annie would say: why not have a real vacation? She wanted to be in Paris with Tristan and Stasia. Not mucking around here with weird old women. She sighed.
“We should go see if we can catch the gendarme,” she said, wiping her mouth with the tiny embroidered napkin.
“But what about Sister Evangeline?”
“First, the gendarme.”
The village of Malcouziac, with its thick defensive walls and narrow streets, was like a miniature New York, an island barely connected to the outside world where walking was the preferred mode of transportation. There was nowhere to park a car. Either you had a garage or you parked outside the city walls. She liked that. Everything you needed was a seven-minute walk away.
At one of the arched gates into the city a small bus was loading a line of tourists. Albert explained. “They go to the shrine. Many tourists, and pilgrims, come for miles.”
“Where is it?”
Albert turned back in the direction they’d come. He pointed to a rocky cliff across the narrow valley to the east. “There, on top of the rocks. See the chapel?”
The domed rooftop stuck out from the forest surrounding it. “How do they get up there?”
“The road goes in that direction.” He pointed north. “Then back again, like a snake. But you can walk up the steps. You can see just the top of them.”
A flight of steps was carved directly into the stone face of the cliff. Bushes and the tops of trees obscured their lower reaches at least a hundred feet below.
“They look dangerous. And tiring,” she said.
“Oh, yes. Take the bus,” he laughed.
“What is the shrine called? I’ll look it up in my guidebook.”
“The Shrine of Lucrezia. Not a saint but revered by the faithful. A beautiful little chapel there.” He stopped in front of the building where the mayor officiated. “Here we are. Around the back.”
The office of the gendarme was small and gray, a post-war addition to the traditional stone hotel de ville in front. Utilitarian would be the kind term. She had hopes that meant the gendarme would be a logical, literal man who would see the justice of her claim.
A gray counter ran across the room, with two desks behind it. At one desk sat a woman, plump-faced with dyed blond hair. She stood as they entered but stayed behind her desk.
“Bonjour, Madame Cluzet,” Albert said, pulling off his beret politely. He spoke rapidly. She replied in clipped tones.
“The gendarme is away, having his coffee,” Albert explained.
“Let’s go see him there then,” Merle proposed. Albert held up a hand as the clerk spoke again. “She will call him to return. That is her job.”
They sat on the hard chairs beside the counter. Albert was quiet, and with the woman obviously listening at her desk, Merle sat silently too. The clock ticked. Forty-five minutes later, the gendarme, who from his expression had forgotten about them completely, stepped in the door.
Hatless, he wore the dark blue uniform well with his broad chest. He was younger than she expected, around thirty, tall with thick light brown hair parted carefully on one side, olive skin, and an air of authority that she’d seen on policeman before. Before they were introduced she disliked him. Be nice, she told herself as she shook his hand.
His name was Jean-Pierre Redier, but Albert called him Monsieur le Gendarme. Redier stepped around the counter and leaned on his elbows, waiting for their pitch. Albert translated.
“These papers show I have full claim to the property. Here is the original registry from 1949, and the transfer upon death of his parents. Here is the new transfer registry, the certificate of inheritance tax paid. . ..” She pointed out each document that proved her claim. “The woman living in the house has no right to live there. However, I wish to be fair. I do not want to make anyone homeless. So I would like to speak to you, or whoever is the social welfare authority here, about finding a residence for Madame LaBelle.”
The gendarme listened then shot a look at Madame Cluzet, his lip curled in a half-sneer.
“You will buy a house for Madame LaBelle, he asks,” Albert said.
“No. Non,” she said to Redier. “I want to help find her a place to live. There must be some place for the elderly who have no homes.”
“Not here, he says.”
“How about in a larger city, Bergerac or Toulouse or Bordeaux?”
“You would send her away to Toulouse, he says.” Albert frowned at her. “There is the general perception that Toulouse — and Bordeaux — are, um, full of the vices.”
“Tell him I just want her to have a safe old age somewhere. Besides my house.”
“This is where she comes from, he says.”
What the hell did that have to do with anything? She could see why French lawyers got angry. Everything went in circles. “What about my house?”
“He says, there is another claim on the property, from Madame LaBelle. You can sue her, then the courts will decide who is right.”
“I don’t want to sue her. I want Monsieur le Gendarme to do his duty. Protect my property rights.”
“He says you are not a citizen of the Republic so you have no rights here.”
In dizzying circles, the gendarme wore her down with his glib, nonsensical answers to every parry she made. He could have been a lawyer, she thought, for all his dissembling. He never broke a sweat. Supreme confidence could be very aggravating, especially from someone in uniform. She felt like taking Harry’s old advice and throttling him while he wasn’t expecting it.
She gathered up her papers, stuffed them into the envelope and backpack, and stepped away from the counter before she lost her temper.
“Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Redier. We will meet again.” He gave her a little bow as they turned away. “Isn’t there someone else here, like a welfare officer, who can help Madame LaBelle?” Merle asked outside, walking so fast through the square that Albert had to jump a little to keep up. “Is there a state office here?”
“Just the hotel de ville. Everything goes through the mayor.”
“How convenient.”
“You will come to see Sister Evangeline now?” Albert asked, taking her arm at the corner to halt her. “Pardon, Madame.” He was out of breath and red in the face.
“I’m sorry, Albert. Are you all right?” He was struggling with his breath but nodding. “I’ll get you some water.”
At the grocery she bought him a bottle of water and made him sit in the shade while they both cooled off. “Are you all right?” she asked him again.
“Yes. Thank you for the water.”
“Thank you for the translating. What a jerk that policeman is.”
Albert smiled weakly. “But he is the gendarme. You must respect that.”
“I know. I was just angry with the way he never gave me a straight answer. Or the answer I wanted to hear.”
“I do not think he will help you.”
Stymied by authority, abandoned by her lawyer: she had to get into that house, make nice with the squatter, and figure out a suitable housing arrangement for her. She’d hoped to get the house cleaned out, at least, and workmen hired to repair the roof, to secure it from the elements. Her lists so dutifully made before she came lay unused.
Her only hope was Sister Evangeline.
“It is her custom to leave between noon and one in the afternoon,” Albert said as he stepped up the tall ladder
into the arms of his plum tree. They sat in his garden again, this time with his gate to the alley propped open with a large rock. Opposite was the gate to the Strachie house where, with luck, they would intercept Sister Evangeline.
Merle had gone back to the hotel after the meeting with the gendarme, to take a quick shower and gather some lunch items for the vigil. On the dusty iron table she’d laid out grapes of two colors, red and green, cheese of two kinds: known and unknown, and a sliced baguette. One thing she could get used to, the food of France.
“I will just check from up here,” Albert called from the plum tree.
“Be careful,” Merle said, watching him disappear into the leaves. She steadied the ladder. “What do you see?”
“Plums,” he whispered back. “Wait, someone left the back door. I think the Sister. Wearing a hat, it’s hard to tell. I wouldn’t know Madame LaBelle without her orange hair.”
Her hair must be an amazing color for everyone to keep commenting on it. “Anything now?”
“Can’t tell.”
With a creak the gate to the Strachie garden opened and quickly closed again behind a short woman wearing gray cotton pants, hiking boots, and small-brimmed sun hat. She had a walking stick and a small backpack as if she was ready for a hike. Gray hair, not orange. Merle jumped up. “Madame! Soeur Evangeline!”
The woman paused, looking over her shoulder. “Oui?”
Albert was halfway down the ladder. She asked the sister to wait. But she had taken a few more steps toward the street. “Pére Albert, il est ici!” As she hoped the invocation of Father Albert’s name made her stop.
He appeared with a leaf in his hair, smiling. “Ah, Soeur Evangeline.” He spoke to her quickly, asking for a moment to chat in his garden. He pleaded, it was very important. Five minutes was all she had, she declared.
Despite the gray hair she was a fit woman, energetic with those well-used hiking boots. Her face was round under the hat, with a sunburned nose and large teeth. She wore no makeup and her hair was cut like a young boy’s, all one length mid-ear. Her chambray shirt was clean but frayed, and the same could be said for her hands and nails.
Albert sat opposite Evangeline in the shade and offered her food which she declined. He spoke to her with a slight irritation for that. She replied with the same tone.
“She says Madame LaBelle has no intention of moving out of the house. That it is legally her home from an inheritance.”
“An inheritance? Who gave it to her?”
More words flew. “She says a relative years ago, Marie-Emilie Chevalier, who was her mother. C’est vrai, Madame?” he asked the nun again.
Sister Evangeline shot a look at Merle and mumbled more French.
“Not her true birth mother, she admits. At first the sister thought it was a blood relation. But Madame LaBelle says she was her spiritual mother, her godmother as you say.”
“Does she have proof of any of this?”
“A letter from Madame Chevalier that proves their strong feeling, their close relationship.”
Letters. “Her name was Strachie. Marie-Emilie was married to my husband’s father. Can we see this letter?”
The sister disappeared back into her garden and returned, giving Albert strict instructions before she would hand over the letter.
“She says she has the original in a safe place.” With that the sister turned on her heel, swinging her walking stick.
“Just a second, Albert.” Merle trotted to the street and looked in the direction the nun had gone. She was a block away, walking purposefully, swinging her stick and taking un-elderly strides. At the far corner she turned right and went through the city gate into the countryside. Merle returned to the garden where Albert was reading the letter.
“What does it say?” she asked, looking over his shoulder.
“It appears to be a letter to the convent — I shall read it? ‘There is so much I wish to say to her, so much I wish I could say. Someday I will return and make my feelings known. But for now let her know she will always have a home with me, wherever I am. She will never be without someone looking over her, someone who cares. I have not abandoned her. I never will.’ It’s signed: Marie-Emilie Chevalier.”
“Can I see it?” He handed her the Xeroxed page. There was no mention of Justine LaBelle. It was meaningless, legally. “Where did this come from?”
“I assumed from Justine, but now reading it, I wonder. It doesn’t mention her and is addressed to the prioress. The Mother Superior.”
“Why would Marie-Emilie use her maiden name? She was married before she came to the village,” Merle said. “I have some other letters, ones my husband kept. To Marie-Emilie from someone. They’re in French. Do you think you could take a look at them?”
“If you wish.”
She pulled the small packet from the manila envelope in her backpack. “They’re hard to read, they’re so faded.” He took them, peering closely at the old, brittle envelopes. “Take your time. I think I’ll knock on her garden door.”
They stood in the alley. Merle was determined to speak for herself this time, woman to woman. She rapped on the solid wood with peeling blue paint. “Madame LaBelle?”
No answer. She put her ear to the gate. “Je m’appelle Merle Bennett. Je suis Americaine.” In French she continued: “I want to help you find a new home.”
“Allez! Fiche le camp!”
“S’il vous plait, madame. Can we talk?”
The first rock sailed over the wall and hit Albert’s wall with a thud. They turned, startled, watched it roll down the alley. The second caused them to duck then dropped onto the mossy alley floor.
Albert called out, “Madame! Arretez!”
Merle backed away from the gate. This wasn’t going well, she was thinking, as the third stone hit her square on the forehead. She staggered, stunned.
“Oooh la la, you bleed, Madame!” Albert cried as two more rocks arced over the wall, one barely missing him. He yelled again at Madame LaBelle to stop then insisted they take cover behind his wall. He made Merle come into the house for examination, where, it was true, she was bleeding a little. The goose egg would be a fascinating addition to her forehead.
She held ice in a dishcloth to her forehead. Things were going badly. Maybe she should just wait for the lawyer to get back. She closed her eyes and was back at her desk at Legal Aid, filling out a Section 8 form for an illiterate client. It seemed so safe, so orderly, so normal. She opened her eyes. This was the new normal: strange country, strange people, strange laws. For a moment she wished herself back in the dark, rainy suburbs, changing light bulbs.
Ice water tricked down her nose. On Albert’s dark wood table was an open bottle of wine, a bouquet of pink wildflowers in a cracked crystal vase, a small dish of black olives. The sun shone through his lace curtain at the front of the house, landing on a purple orchid. On the breeze, the smell of lavender.
The odor of France went into her brain. Was she crazy? Did it take a hard knock to the skull to make her wake up? Did she want to be back in the shadows of Connecticut, or in a windowless cubicle in Manhattan? Here she had sunshine, fresh fruit, warmth.
This is France, stupid. Here, now.
When Albert stepped into the room with his first aid kit she stood up. “I’ll go lie down at my hotel.”
“I have medicines, no?” Albert’s face creased with concern. “Perhaps we should tell the gendarme that she is dangerous?”
“He doesn’t care, Albert.”
“They like to know, these gendarmes,” he said. “Leave it to me.”
Chapter 14
Stefan whispers, “Leave it to me.”
How has it come to this — hiding, whispering, touching, like some common peasant who doesn’t know the meaning of time, of commitment, of consequence. Marie-Emilie doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know. He brings her food, for her mind and her body, that is all she knows.
Maybe she is careless now that Weston has gone. Maybe she doesn’t care w
hat her husband feels or thinks, what any of them thinks. The village turned its back on her and it isn’t in her to fight any more. Yes, she is careless. She knows it is wrong, this thing, whatever it is, with Stefan. But there it is and she can’t fight it. He is her friend, her only friend. When she so needs a friend.
“Leave it to me and all will be well.” He kisses her hand, like a gentleman, looking into her eyes. That is as far as she lets him go; she is no whore. She has felt his lips on hers, just once. She closes the door and watches him run with his long legs and floppy blond hair, around the corner. A Dutchman by birth, he moved here as a boy. Who would think, a Dutchman?
On the table are the books. This is how it began, at church, over a discussion of a book. She had not read the one he mentioned although she was quick to tell him she could read, that she had passed all her tests. He didn’t make her feel stupid; he listened. This book is just a story, nothing particular, about a young man in the first war who meets a woman, fights and kills, then comes back to her. She knows the type, she had read them. Fantasies of what war meant, as if every man came back to love again, as if nothing had changed. As if hearts didn’t need to be mended, as if men were not shattered and children starved, as if the land hadn’t gone to rot.
That Stefan had liked the story was what mattered. That he had given her the book mattered.
Weston has been gone for months. She hasn’t heard from him. She is glad. Things have been very bad in town. No one will sell her even an egg at market, not a potato. She rides a farmer’s cart to outlying villages where no one knows her and spends what little money she earns helping at harvest and at planting. The farmers use her then, they have no choice. Men with strong backs are scarce, women too. She was the youngest woman bent over the grapevines last fall, the youngest to plant seeds in rows this spring.
For the first weeks he was gone she worried, keeping the house the way he liked it, making sure she looked decent. He might come home unexpectedly, just waltz in the way he’d done. But when he doesn’t write or return, something changes in her. She feels loose from him, as if a terrible burden has been lifted. As if he had died in the war and she was a widow who was destitute but could go on without worry now. She crossed herself and begged forgiveness for her evil thoughts.
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