The Daughter's Tale

by Armando Lucas Correa

  Marie-Louise’s screams tore the deep silence. She was staring at the razor, which had once been her husband’s. A long time ago she had put it away on the towel shelf together with a small bag of lavender. In her mind she could see Viviane going into the bathroom and opening the cupboard. There, nestling among the perfumed towels, was her only salvation. Marie-Louise couldn’t help feeling certain that she was the one who had brought death within poor Viviane’s grasp.

  When she reached for a towel, the razor must have fallen to the floor. Opening it, Viviane had seen it was still sharp enough to help her on her journey. Naked, weightless, and free from all contact with the hostile world, liberated from a guilt she had never properly understood, she promised herself that her child would never be called a child of shame. She opened the window and let the stars’ distant glow illuminate her: stars that kindly hid all traces of the blows and wounds. She settled as best she could in the cold porcelain bathtub, at peace. The time for explanations had passed. She would no longer have to protect herself from anyone.

  She picked up the open razor. The metal edge was like a caress on her throat. No shouting, no tears, no death throes. With her right hand, she stroked her belly.

  That night, as she listened to Marie-Louise’s horrified sobs, Elise realized the cook would never go back to work at the abbey. She saw herself living with her and Danielle, and this brought her a fleeting moment of comfort.

  The girls accepted that they now were the cook’s family. Everything was different. Now they had a real home.

  46

  In times of peace, the nights seemed endless. Elise was constantly wary of the setting sun. She waited for the night to speed by, desperate to see the last star fade. Since Viviane’s death, she was terrified of closing her eyes for fear that she would see images of the future. She didn’t feel ready to see what would come next. Sleep was no longer a refuge. Elise spent the whole day stumbling along, struggling against the weight of her eyelids.

  For her part, Danielle began to show Marie-Louise she was ready to become an independent young woman who would be no burden to her. She gave orders to the daydreaming Elise. “Clear up the kitchen.” “The towels should be folded in four.” “Make sure you close the windows onto the street.” “Don’t waste water from the faucet . . .” She gave all these instructions out loud, to reassure Marie-Louise. Danielle had begun to take control of her life. And as the elder sister, she was also responsible for Elise.

  They spent that winter clearing the store of dust, and polishing the counter and shopwindows. They told any villagers who wanted to know that Atelier Plumes, which still had its faded sign outside, would reopen its doors and offer its services once more with the arrival of spring. Marie-Louise rescued the remaining rolls of cloth from the basement and took it upon herself to initiate the girls into the mysteries of brocades, velvet, silk, and lace. Some materials were ideal for decoration, others to keep out the light, still others to upholster couches, and yet more to help embellish drab, neglected corners.

  “Fabrics are our great allies,” she would tell them. “We have to choose their fates carefully; to be loyal to them, without going too far or asking them for something they can’t give.”

  Still daydreaming, Elise learned the difference between cretonne, chenille, damask, linen, and jacquard. She talked like an expert about plain weave bleached taffeta, or which fabrics were more permeable, hard-wearing, or able to resist the ravages of time with dignity. Danielle would fetch the rolls and lay them out on the counter while Elise made sure that their clients, mainly women who could not allow themselves the luxury of reupholstering their sofas, were nonetheless enchanted by the girl who spoke of raw cottons as if they were abandoned orphans, or of moiré as an exotic princess held prisoner in a tower. Marie-Louise listened to her admiringly, and whenever the conversation languished, she would take a sample of the most expensive material and spread it out on an armchair so that a ray of sunshine brought out the magic of its texture, the work of an eminent craftsman.

  By now, the Germans and the war were a distant nebula. The radio had been consigned to an empty shelf in the kitchen, because the news brought only sadness. Marie-Louise decided that from this moment on, there would nothing but music in her house and shop. She rescued a battered old gramophone from the basement, cleaned the needle carefully, oiled the arm, and set it up in the back room.

  Their days now began and ended with tangos sung by Tino Rossi, once the favorite singer of Marie-Louise’s husband.

  “At night, when we closed the café, Albert used to dance with me, his hair slicked back like Tino Rossi,” she said with a smile. “But my Albert was better looking.”

  The music brought to the surface the name that until then she had avoided mentioning. To the beat of “Je voudrais un joli bâteau,” Marie-Louise would stretch her arms out to Danielle, whom she was teaching the complicated steps of a dance Elise knew she would never be able to grasp.

  “If I have to learn to dance tango to get married, I think I’ll stay single all my life,” Elise would say. With each passing day, she sounded more and more like an old woman in a young girl’s body.

  Marie-Louise was still hoping her husband would return one day when they were least expecting it. Every time Elise heard his name, she would open her eyes wide as she tried to erase the image assailing her: Monsieur Albert would never come back; he was lost at the bottom of a well; his soul had been drowned, his body burned.

  Overwhelmed by this proof that her powers had returned, Elise cursed the misfortune of being able to foresee the future time and again. She had no idea where this gift came from. With the arrival of summer, she started to look for silver linings. Atelier Plumes was prospering; they had more and more clients. Now it was not only indecisive old ladies from their own village, but people from other surrounding places that had heard they offered an exquisite selection of fabrics from a bygone era of a quality not even to be found in the best Paris boutiques.

  Now that misfortune had been swept away and the windows could be left wide open without the covering of dust that had veiled them for so long, Marie-Louise felt it was time that Elise began to enjoy herself once more. It upset her to see the young girl still not sleeping well, wandering about with her head in the clouds, trying to interpret meaningless dreams.

  “We can’t spend our whole lives daydreaming. And if we can’t avoid it, we have to remember that dreams are just that: dreams, and nothing more,” Marie-Louise insisted one night as she was brushing Elise’s hair. “It’s the present that matters, the plate of food we have to put on the table in order to survive. If tomorrow takes us somewhere else, so be it, my girl. Neither you nor I are able to change what’s coming. So it’s better for you not to expect anything: let everything arrive in its own time.”

  “When are we going to go to Paris?” replied Elise, as if she had not heard a single word.

  “Goodness me, there you go again with Paris! There’s nothing for us there. First of all, we have to make a success of Atelier Plumes. Besides, Albert knows this is where I’ll be waiting for him. That was our agreement before he was taken away.”

  Elise didn’t dare tell her that her husband wasn’t coming back, that he had ended up in a dark hole he could never climb out of, that from the day the French police had arrested him he was condemned to death. Marie-Louise had already wept over him. There was no point doing so again. Her husband was dead: Elise had seen it.

  She looked for the old Columbia Records album, and Marie-Louise let herself be carried away by the intoxicating voice of her Corsican idol: “Le plus beau de tous les tangos du monde, C’est celui que j’ai dansé dans vos bras.” She took hold of Elise’s hands and they began to dance the tango as if it was a Viennese waltz.

  47

  A year after the liberation, Marie-Louise decided that to successfully revive the Atelier, she needed to take on someone who could help them lay out the rolls of cloth on the counter, fill the seat cushions, and fit the springs
in the heavy armchairs with their carved legs.

  Danielle and Elise both hoped this meant there would be another young boy around: that would make the tango lessons much more fun. They were enthusiastic about teaching him to upholster, to show him this world that now fascinated them. But one afternoon, while they were busy sweeping up scraps of material, threads, and tacks, Marie-Louise, who had been to Limoges to buy fabrics, appeared in the doorway carrying two enormous bags, several rolls of cloth, accompanied by a stooped, elderly man who seemed unable to carry even himself.

  “Help Señor Soto,” said Marie-Louise, dumping her purchases on the counter.

  “Does he speak French?” Elise asked in a whisper.

  “Señor Soto speaks French as well as we do. Leave your cheeky questions for later. You’ll have more than enough time to find out whatever you like, because as well as helping in the Atelier, he’s going to be living here for the time being, in the back room.”

  Señor Soto was a scrawny man with leathery skin and not an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. Elise thought there wasn’t a single muscle left on his bones, from which hung clothes that may once have been the right size for him. His pants were done up with a length of rope to stop them from falling down, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow. He also wore a black vest, possibly to give some kind of shape to his decrepit figure. His body was as light as the breeze.

  He was completely bald, although over time the girls realized that in fact he shaved his head. A sparse white beard covered his sunken cheeks, and in the depths of his pronounced eye sockets shone a pair of gray eyes. He was constantly blinking, as if he was trying to bring everything around him into focus. Poor Señor Soto can’t see very well. How is he going to be able to help us? thought Danielle. When they first saw him, he was so dirty it was impossible to tell the color of his skin, although Elise was amazed that he did not give off the usual smell of death that the itinerant workers of the postwar period seemed to carry around with them. Señor Soto had no smell: What could he stink of, when it seemed as if he hadn’t eaten or perspired in years?

  That evening they had to wait a long time before they could have supper together, as he spent hours in the bathroom. The water ran endlessly, but Marie-Louise didn’t seem to mind.

  “He’s a friend of my husband. He lost all his family in the war. He needs us as much as we need him. He’ll be staying here temporarily, until he finds out if there are any survivors from his father’s side of the family. If Señor Soto can come back, so can my husband.”

  “Is he sick?” Elise asked, but Marie-Louise ignored her. In fact, she didn’t know the answer, and so instead told them what little she had gleaned about him.

  Señor Soto, a Spaniard who had fled to France, ended up in an internment camp together with his wife and young daughter, all of them considered étrangers indésirables. It was there that he had met Marie-Louise’s husband. According to him, Albert was immediately transferred to a camp at Drancy, and from there to another one in Poland. Despite the fact that both he and Señor Soto shared the same libertarian ideas, to the French and Germans, her husband was above all a despicable Jew.

  Elise listened closely to Marie-Louise’s account, but instead of concentrating on the past, her eyes were turned toward the future. She could foresee that Señor Soto would not live with them for long. One day he would abandon them. Closing her eyes, she could see him leave the way he had come, empty-handed.

  “His wife and daughter died of typhus soon after they arrived in the camp,” Marie-Louise went on. “When they were liberated, Señor Soto returned to the only village he could recall, but his house no longer existed, and the neighbors didn’t recognize him, and slammed their doors in his face.”

  It was difficult to accept that in a war someone could die of typhus. That was mere bad luck. In a war you die in a bombardment, are hit by a stray bullet, or are shot through the head as Father Marcel had been. But typhus . . . that’s a death for peacetime, Elise told herself.

  When Señor Soto finally appeared from the bathroom and came to the table, he was a different man. His forehead had recovered a pink glow that gave his lined face a friendly appearance. He was wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt and a loose, well-pressed pair of pants that had once been Albert’s. He seemed to be floating inside his clothes.

  As he came to sit next to her, Elise discovered a huge scar on his left arm. When he saw her looking, Señor Soto withdrew his arm and kept it under the table throughout the supper.

  Danielle would have liked to ask him what life had been like in that prison, how he had managed to survive, how he crossed countries and cities to reach this hidden village where now he would be devoting himself to upholstering furniture for capricious clients, but a stern glance from Marie-Louise prevented her from doing so. They had to leave Señor Soto in peace; he had already been through enough.

  His hair will grow back, Elise wished for him as she studied all his movements while he drank his thick potato soup.

  After a good bath, a hearty soup, and several hours’ sleep, Señor Soto was able not only to carry the rolls of cloth but to move chairs, armchairs, couches, and even sofas with ease.

  Over the next few weeks, from hearing Tino Rossi so often, Señor Soto learned the words of the songs, and they discovered that this man who had seemed so wretched when he arrived had a powerful baritone voice. One day he started singing songs that they didn’t recognize in a language none of them knew. “Bésame, bésame mucho, cómo si fuera esta noche la última vez . . .” By the third verse, both their idol and Señor Soto went back to singing in French. The girls and Marie-Louise applauded.

  One evening Elise was on her own with him. She went over, removed a few feathers stuck to his vest, and told him straight out that he was a lucky man.

  Soto took a deep breath before replying. She was only a little girl, and so he didn’t feel he had the right to disappoint or bewilder her with philosophical comments that would get them nowhere. In the end, he wasn’t sure if Elise was referring to him having survived the death camp or for having met such a kindhearted person as Marie-Louise. He smiled a painful smile.

  “It’s you who are a lucky girl. You have your family.”

  “You’re right. Yes, I think I’m a very lucky girl,” said Elise, her eyes lighting up at the idea that someone who had only just met her should see her as part of Marie-Louise’s family.

  48

  Señor Soto soon became an expert upholsterer. It was Christmas, and now without Nazis controlling the world, Elise thought they should celebrate with open windows, lots of music, and a rich dessert. For both her and Danielle, the war was becoming a distant memory.

  One evening, Marie-Louise returned from Limoges in a very good mood. Not only had she bought herself a new Tino Rossi record but she had had her hair cut, found a splendid pheasant, and brought home the cake Elise had been dreaming of: a bûche de Noël.

  Before they sat down to eat, they brought the gramophone close to the table. Marie-Louise went to fetch the new record and, each with a glass of red wine, they enjoyed the moment as they had never done before. “Petit Papa Noël, Quand tu descendras du ciel, Avec des jouets par milliers, N’oublie pas mon petit soulier . . .”

  From that moment on, Petit Papa Noël became Elise’s favorite song, and she forced Marie-Louise to play it until she was sick of it. Although Elise felt fortunate, she had an ominous feeling that she tried at all costs to avoid. It wasn’t so much at night that she was obsessed by it, because then she collapsed exhausted, but during the day when she grew drowsy, her eyelids drooped, and she began to see things. On New Year’s Eve, Elise saw herself all alone on a ship in the middle of the ocean; at that moment, she knew that her days of happiness were about to end.

  In the spring of 1947, Señor Soto left them. He had located a brother in a small town on the other side of the Pyrenees. He wasn’t too keen on the idea, but his brother needed him to help keep the farm going. Losing an employee for the Ate
lier wasn’t such a problem, because they all knew that another one would appear soon enough: the streets were full of young people looking for work. What saddened them was that no one, however hardworking they might be, would have a baritone voice like Señor Soto’s. To Marie-Louise it was like losing Tino Rossi himself.

  The same evening that Señor Soto left as empty-handed as he had arrived, but weighing a few pounds more, and with a flourishing head of hair, they got a message from the abbey. Father Auguste was expecting them urgently. He had received a letter from New York, from the girls’ uncle.

  The news startled Danielle. Trembling, she went to fetch the suitcase, and the three of them set out for the abbey. None of them spoke. Holding tight to Danielle’s hand, Elise cautiously followed Marie-Louise. She didn’t want to predict the future. She couldn’t.

  When they reached the ancient building, Father Auguste, leaning on his cane, led them into the sacristy and then went to sit behind the weighty mahogany desk strewn with papers. He picked up a letter, unfolded it, and paused to look at them.

  “Claire’s brother, Roger Duval, has been in touch with us,” he said hesitantly.

  Marie-Louise’s face lit up. She was expecting to see the same joy in the girls’ eyes, but they didn’t seem to react.

  “When is he coming for us? Do we have to go live in New York? Can’t we stay here?” Breathless, Danielle poured out every possible question. Elise stood motionless, trying to keep her eyes wide open.

  Looking toward Marie-Louise for support, Father Auguste handed her the letter. As she started to read it, her smile froze.