Authors: John Hanson Mitchell
Walking back from town that afternoon I began to wonder why I even cared. Le Baron had always been nice to me, seemingly accessible and appreciative, or at least bemused by my uneventful sojourn in this place. The truth is, I suppose, he represented for me the old Europe, with all its style, class, elegance, and refinements, as well as its corruption, vice, violence, and world-weary cynicismâall of which I had originally come to Europe to experience. Whoever le Baron was, whatever he had done or had not done, he was a true native of the European continent. He was part of an ancient lineage out of the caves of Périgord, nursed for generations through century after century of plagues, famines, wars, inquisitions, and a thousand years of murderous regimes that had ended only fifteen years earlier, in what amounted to the greatest singular atrocity ever carried out by one group of human beings upon another. Le Baron was a survivor. He endured.
The following week, while I was having a drink at the same table in the plaza, I saw Maggs coming out from the little temple-like market stalls across the square. She was carrying a net bag with some fruit and was wearing one of her short, brightly colored skirts and blue espadrilles. I watched her circle the square. She was in no hurry, merely strolling along, pausing briefly to look in shop windows and then moving on. She stood out among the dark-haired masses: blond, very trim, and wearing her loud colors. I noticed men in the cafés on the other side of the square turning to watch as she passed.
When she arrived at my side of the plaza I called out to her, and she joined me at the table.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I'm hiding from Vincenzo,” I said. “There is a mess of fish back there to clean, potatoes to peel, onions to chop.”
She order a demi of beer and we watched the action on the square. The boules players were forming a new game.
“They come here every afternoon,” I told her. “The same old men.”
“This must be their way of ordering their world,” she said. “People now do not have that so much anymore, the old ways.”
She sipped her beer and looked at them again.
From the first time I saw her, she had reminded me of someone I thought I knew, but watching her here, out of context, I realized that she looked like the American actress Eva Marie Saintâhigh cheekbones, winsome blue eyes, blond hair.
With the lines formed, the small man called Henri took up his boule and made the first cast. It was a modestly good throw, and there arose among the assembled a dull chorus of approval. Another made his pitch, a wide shot that generated no comment. And then another. And then a fourth.
Maggs looked back at me.
“They do this every day, don't they?”
“Heavy rain keeps them in,” I said. “But not wind.”
Just then the one-armed man took up his post. The mumbling of the chorus softened. He scraped away a few stones with his left foot. Stood eyeing the cochonnet, bowed, tipped his arm, and threw. The boule swept over the pitch, angled down, and nestled against the little pig. A kiss. A palpable kiss.
“That's Robespierre,” I told Maggs. “He's the best of the lot here.”
“Robespierre is his name?”
“Yes, the barber told me that. He was a leader of an underground network around here. Lost his arm in an ambush on an armored car. Robespierre was his code name. They all had code names. That little man with the squinty eyes was known as Mouse, but they don't call him that anymore.”
“What do you do?” she asked. “Come down here all the time and watch? How do you know all this?”
I told her that on certain days I would come here in the late afternoon, take a drink, and watch the action on the square, but on other days I would go out to the Ile de la Pietra to the tower, and at other times I would hitch a ride and take a hike in the maquis, alone. I realized as soon as I said it that she might suspect that I had spotted her with André. But it was too late.
“What a life,” she said.
“Yes, but I also have to clean fish every day and get pricked by rascasse spines.” I showed her my swollen thumb.
“You know, it's odd,” she said. “I saw you sitting here, and I felt a flash of something, maybe it was just recognition but maybe something else. You look more natural here. I see you more as you are, perhaps. You do know that we're on to your trick, don't you? You play at being that dimwitted busboy who shuffles out from the kitchen in his stained apron and sweeps the floors or cleans fish and pretends not to know what's going on. But I see you listening. I see you pretending not to understand French or even English when you want. Speaking in Italian with Vincenzo. You are more than they all think you are, aren't you?”
“Well, cleaning fish was never my ambition, exactlyâI don't think.”
“What is?” she asked bluntly.
This stopped me. Except for my vague, as-yet-inactivated idea of becoming a writer, like many people of my time, I had given up on words like ambition, career, and duty.
I said as much to her.
“But that's quite enough, really, that's perfect. You should just write and don't worry about duty and conviction. You don't need to be certain. You don't need to believe. That's one of the things I learned in Warsaw, isn't it, not to believe in anything. The Nazis believed. The Jews believed. And look what happened. Don't bother to believe in any one thing. Just go ahead and write.”
She reached over and patted my wrist. Then she rested her hand on mine for a second, and then she squeezed and patted my hand again, looking me in the eye.
“You are an engaging young man,” she said, still resting her hand on mine.
She had that same steady look that le Baron hadâa direct, unblinking stare that seemed to have the ability to penetrate and expose any element of untruth in what you said. It was a look that made me nervous, and, coming from her, with her warm hand still on mine, I wonderedâbrieflyâif I was perhaps being propositioned. I didn't know what to say.
“Never mind,” she said. “I've got to go. Peter will be coming back from his spearfishing, and he'll be wondering where I am again.”
She stood. Then, smiling sadly, she said something in Polish.
I didn't dare ask her to translate.
chapter fourteen
The Dinner Party
The dinner invitation came through after all, as I feared it would. Jean-Pierre mentioned, almost casually, that le Baron had invited me and Marie to come out for an informal evening at his villa.
“You can take the night off. Take the car.”
Marie was sitting in the nook with Giancarlo, swinging her right leg nervously and pretending to pay attention. She glanced over at me. I think she knew what we were talking about.
“Marie knows?”
“Yes, I told her.”
For all my interest in le Baron, I was not entirely happy about this upcoming event and went around the rest of the day killing time and not enjoying myself very much. I didn't look forward to a whole evening with this formal old gentleman and his penetrating blue eyes. It seemed like work to me, even though I was genuinely curious to learn more about his life. By that time in the season, anything that even remotely resembled something out of the ordinary line of work displeased me. I liked my unadventurous routine of sweeping floors, clearing tables, and cleaning fish and dishes. I liked my afternoon hours in the town or my rambles in the maquis or the hot sojourns on the rocks of the Ile de la Pietra. I didn't want anything to interrupt the routine.
I talked to Marie later that afternoon about our upcoming date, and she said she felt the same way.
“I don't like it,” she said. “I think he has designs. I don't know what. We must be on guard.”
“Max told me he just likes younger people,” I said.
“Yes, of course, but why?”
For all her youth and chatter and professed Catholicism, Marie was not naive.
After I cleaned the fish for the evening meal, I went for a swim in the cove, then dressed in a clean shirt, and went to the bar, where I sat fortifying myself with a glass of wine, waiting for Marie.
As usual, just before the dinner hour she made her grand entrance at the door. She was dressed in a light silk blouse and a dark skirt and big hooped earrings. I noticed that she had made a point of wearing her small silver crucifix necklace and that she had buttoned her blouse higher up on her chest than she usually did. The ruse didn't work, though. Even if she had gone in disguise as a nun, any experienced older lecher such as le Baronâif that's what he wasâcould spot the coiled sexuality beneath the habit by her walk alone.
“Ready?” I asked her.
She signed herself in jest.
Jean-Pierre's car was an old black Citroën with red leather seats. It was too big a car for me, too grand, I felt, but I got in and managed, after some fiddling, to get it started. I backed out onto the causeway from the parking area, shifted gears, and drove slowly down the road, bouncing on the ruts and stones as we moved. I was dreading navigation of this excellent chariot through the maze of back streets of Ile Rousse, not to mention the narrow, winding, donkey-blocked road that ran toward the village of Santa-Reparata and le Baron's villa. But I forged on.
About a half-mile beyond the village, just where the maquis began, we turned off on a side track and jounced down a rocky road. Below us was the straight, cypress-lined drive that led to the villa. We drove in and parked in the courtyard on the left side of the house. A scruffy, one-eyed man dressed in worker's blues was in the yard, raking. He must have been mute, since he merely indicated the door with a sign and then led us to it, knocked on it for us, and backed away. A dark-eyed maid with a 1940s hairdo and a white apron opened the door, eyed us, and then guided us through the hallway to another set of French doors opening onto a garden behind the house.
“He's out there someplace,” she said. “You'll find him.”
There was a raked-earth path leading to a fountain, and in one of the side gardens off the main allée, among the tea roses, we saw le Baron. He was dressed in pressed khaki trousers, a white collared shirt and a paisley cravat, and a houndstooth jacketâdressed down on this occasion, for our sakes perhaps. He advanced enthusiastically, his hand outstretched, his smooth, tanned face shining. He kissed Marie on each cheek, and then gathered up her hands and kissed them, laughing.
“Two young roses,” he said, speaking in French. I don't know whether he meant Marie's hands or the two of us.
“Please,” he said, spreading his right hand back to the garden.
A woman appeared during our greeting and stood in the middle of one of the paths. She seemed horrified at our presence at first, wordless, as if we were invaders, her big china-blue eyes wide and her hand at her throat.
“May I present,” said le Baron, “my wife, Isabelle.”
Her apparent surprise dissipated, and she approached and took my hand warmly and then kissed Marie on both cheeks, as if they knew each other.
She had ash-blond hair and smooth, papery skin, delicate hands and well-manicured nails, and she was dressed in a simple white blouse, a small gold necklace, and pearl earrings. I would have said she was about forty-five, but she was one of those women whose age cannot be determined.
After small talk, we moved to a terrace by the French doors, and the maid brought out a silver tray with a bottle of Heidsieckâa 1959, I noticed, a vintage year that everyone was talking about at that time. She came back out with a plate of fresh crudités and olives, which she set down on the filigreed iron garden table.
Le Baron poured the champagne. We toasted America; we toasted a safer world; we said we were all worried about Nikita; and we all laughed heartily at this double entendre because we all knew this was the name of the lazy dog belonging to Jean-Pierre and Micheline, but that there was, over in Russia, another Nikita who bore watching, as le Baron said, and on and on, and le Baron was at his most
charmant
, winking and smiling to Marie and back to his wife, and leaping up to help with the service, and bowing and scraping and acting young at heart in the company of such young blood, such fresh young roses, as he said.
As the champagne sank lower in the bottle, we all began to relax, another bottle, another '59, appeared and soon Marie, who was not a heavy drinker, was chatting on about her stupid parents and their stupid political views. Le Baron and Isabelle laughed warmly at her monologue, and then, Isabelleâas she insisted I call herâcornered me privately and asked me all about my studies and why had I chosen France, and did I like the current president, John Kennedy, and then the maid appeared again and dinner was announced.
We went indoors through the airy main foyer, and through a formal dining room to a conservatory on the south side of the house, where the table was laid with crystal and silver and Limoges dinner plates. The glass doors to the conservatory were flung open, and as dusk fell I could hear the ringing chirp of crickets and night birds in the garden tangle beyond the more formal garden rooms. It was a sound I was not used to in my sea-eagle aerie above the cove, and it spoke of moist luxuriance, of fecund life, with a hint of savagery.
Dinner began with a light fish broth that tasted of fennel and orange, served with a local white malvoisie wine. Following this, there was a serving of several small cakes of pâté. Isabelle identified each one as the plate was passed: a pâté of rouget, another of rabbit, and another of
merle
, the local blackbird. Then came the main course, a succulent dish of partridges cooked with white grapes and wine. Le Baron had a little discussion with the maid in patois, and she came back with a bottle of wine, which le Baron himself opened and tasted first.
I didn't know wines that well, but I knew enough to notice that it was a Montrachet, also 1959.
We carried on with our political discussion in a lighthearted manner. They seemed to be interested in what we, the younger generation, thought of all that was going on: Algeria liberated, the right wing on the rampage in Paris, John Kennedy and Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev in Russia, Indochina, and the American advisors now loosed in Vietnam in the wake of the French failures. They had picked the wrong people to ask; along with Herr Komandante, we were the least political players around the Rose Café. But this did not stop Marie from contributing her opinions. In the main, she was tired of the Arabs.