by Don Wallace
“We must have windows!”
Gwened looked at her in surprise, eyebrows arched in disapproval. “But your neighbors have no windows. You will have disturbed the look of their house by having windows.”
“I am an artist,” Mindy said in French. “A child of the sunny isles of Hawaii. And I have been suffering in our dark box of an apartment in New York City for too long. Sometimes I feel I’m going mad. Mad! When I am in Belle Île, I must have light. Light!”
We braced ourselves for the backlash, but neither Gwened nor Denis seemed shocked by this cri de coeur. Perhaps, in France, taste must be performed to be taken seriously. In any event, one upstairs window went into the approved column on the preliminary devis. Apparently the way to a sane house was through an insanity defense.
It felt good to win a round, but Gwened was already moving ahead to the next one. “The color of the tiles along the roofline should be black, don’t you think, Denis?”
“The neighbor chose red tiles,” Denis said, craning his neck. “She must think we live on the Côte D’Azur, not the Côte Sauvage.” He laughed.
“Black is traditional. It will be black, then.” Gwened folded her hands on the tabletop as if that settled it, like a poker player standing pat.
Denis eyed the roof a while longer, then gave a slight shrug. “Don’t you think it might look a little odd, if the black tiles were to begin where the red tiles leave off?”
Gwened no doubt thought the traditional choice would please him, a true Bellilois, but she didn’t betray an emotion one way or another. “That is an interesting point,” she allowed. “Perhaps Don and Mindy can offer to replace her tiles with black ones.”
Mindy’s eyes flared, and I nearly choked on my Kir Royale, but Denis was ahead of us, pointing out that the roofline tiles on the barn across the way were also red. At this, Gwened conceded that on certain occasions a uniform look trumped tradition.
With this compromise, a rhythm was established. Gwened or Denis would deal a renovation card, then raise or see the other’s bet, and ours, then call. There were many issues to discuss, many hands to play. But at least we had started to get a hang of the rules of the game.
But as the discussion continued, for some reason I began to feel slow, distracted. I had to remind myself that I should be fully engaged in creating our dream house. This was our one shot, after all; the choices we made here would please us, or haunt us, over the next fifty years. But glancing around at the surrounding houses and the square, visible in glimpses from Gwened’s courtyard, I blinked at the bright afternoon and was filled with an emotional undertow that felt like dread. Yet everything was so quiet, so peaceful. And then I knew.
It’s the sun.
We’d only been here in the Sturm und Drang of winter. We’d loved the whole Côte Sauvage thing: fast-moving storms, lingering fogs, brutal looming combers breaking on the beaches and cliffs. We’d felt positively ecstatic at glimpses of the sun: those brilliant gold jets stabbing down like searchlight beams from the blue-black clouds scudding past.
This was so different. This was a hot, naked sun. For a moment I actually contemplated grabbing Mindy by the arm and shouting, Hey, do you notice? It’s sunny! Let’s go to the beach!
But we still had pages of the devis to review before we could rest. Here was the dreaded flip side of becoming a homeowner in France. Looking over at Mindy, I could tell she felt the same urge to run away as we always had, to just wander out into the moor. Instead, here we were, talking about red versus black tiles, stuck in our chairs for what seemed like an eternity. It was intolerable to be nattering on when an entire island beckoned. We’d plunged into the very trap we’d tried to avoid.
I quietly panicked, letting Mindy carry on.
Gradually the village swam back into focus. As my gloom lifted, I felt a surge of pride in our best enduring value as a couple: a carefully calculated recklessness. Unlike many of our peers, or our siblings, we’d flown the coop, gotten out, made our own way. We didn’t settle. And this was going to be good. Belle Île would combine permanence, which we had feared so much, with our New York City existence, where we were always living by our wits. There was logic there, a balance we’d been seeking all our lives. And maybe this time we’d get it right.
As for that constant low-grade dread… Of course you feel strange! You’ve never owned or renovated a house before! Much less a ruin. Not to mention one in France. You’ve never even bought new furniture. No wonder we felt dizzy and somewhat at a disadvantage. This was our first time sitting down with an architect, or even a carpenter. It was a miracle that Denis was listening to us. Didn’t he know we were idiots?
Besides the newness of the experience and the fat, naked, indolent sun, what was also disorienting, I decided, was the power dynamic. We were in a triangle, but we hadn’t acknowledged the fact. And so we were getting worked.
Time to apply my novelist superpowers and figure out what the hell was going on. Gwened was at the apex. As the self-appointed guardian of the village and our sponsor, she brought a lot of moral authority to bear. Given her own extensive renovations, her local roots, and her unassailable Frenchness, she’d usurped the lead, luring us here, choosing the house and even the architect. She’d come into the meeting fully expecting to control the process, her need sharpened by the ticking of mortality. For whatever reason, she was determined to allow as few changes as possible to our house.
The second point of the triangle was Denis LeReveur. As a young architect starting out, as a local competing with Parisian architects for clients, Denis was in a quandary. He needed our commission, but he needed one that would make a good impression on les autres, the “others” as off-islanders were called. A windowless Breton restoration might not do the trick. However much Gwened might’ve expected him to accede to her demands, Denis had formed his own assessment. But he’d waited for us to arrive, to sit down at the table, before revealing it.
That’s how I read the dynamic. Denis was in our corner and a lot more flexible than Gwened expected. Much closer in age to us, he had a rogue’s twinkle in his eye. He’d just shown both his bemusement at and underlying sympathy for our situation—and why not? We were the clients, not Gwened.
Of course, we couldn’t just hand over the reins to Denis. No doubt he was eager to exploit his commission with these deep-pocketed Americans, children of the Yanks of yore. We’d have to expect a certain amount of give-and-take, with an emphasis on take. But at least Denis had agreed to observe the Golden Mean and to give us a sane house. It could all work out. Right?
When I looked over at Mindy, she was smiling back at me. I could swear that she knew exactly what I was thinking. We’d withstood the first wave; now it was our turn to really think about what we wanted in this place we would call our own, and what our role would be in the village, this community. It was an exciting prospect. We didn’t have to be idiots forever. For the first time in our headstrong lives, we’d found something that could make the idea of responsibility inspiring.
Chapter Seven
Seeing and Believing
“You have done well,” Gwened said after Denis departed and we had eaten lunch. The portions were no less austere than those a couple months before and there was no bread, almost unthinkable in a French home. Perhaps Gwened read my expression, because with furrowed brow, she asked if there was any way that I might somehow possibly still be hungry.
“Oh, no!” My competitive spirit, aroused by the devis dealings, refused to allow me to admit any weakness.
“I’m so glad to hear it,” she replied. “The last time Daniel came home, he had a fit! One forgets how much boys need to eat—especially Americans.”
A bit put out at being compared to a boy, I gave a private cheer for Daniel, last seen throwing a typewriter five years ago. With a mother as controlling as Gwened, a little rebellion could be healthy.
Gwened clapped her ha
nds. “Why don’t we take the bikes and ride to the beach?” she asked, which brought forth sighs of relief. This is what we’d come for, after all. At last the details of house renovation could wait. We hauled three-speeds out of Gwened’s shed and hopped aboard, weaving downhill between deep ruts, skidding around a turn, then standing on the pedals to get up the first hill.
We were passing the old farmhouse behind our house when we saw its owner, Madame Morgane, wearing her familiar light blue apron over her darker blue shirtdress. At our squeal of brakes to say hello, Madame Morgane reared back, retreating into the dark tunnel of overarching elms. Muttering and shaking her head, she vanished through her door.
“She didn’t recognize you. She thinks you are tourists,” said Gwened. “She hates the summer, with all the strangers. We will drop by this evening to remind her of who you are.” With a shrug, we kept going.
But I wished we’d stopped. Madame Morgane was not just our back neighbor; she was the heart and soul of Kerbordardoué. It was her door we’d first come to, late that January night, in search of the key to Gwened’s house. We’d tiptoed up, inhaled, knocked. Quelle consternation! A crashing in the dark, a shout from within, Mindy shouting back. Then a bolt thrown, the door opened a crack, and a wild-haired, wall-eyed, outraged face glaring out.
Pleased to meet you, too, Madame.
The next morning, our first on Belle Île, had found us lying abed, shivering, peering through cracked eyelids and lace curtains at Madame Morgane, who was calling and whistling outside our window. At first I thought this was payback. But slowly a line of cows filed past, trudging toward a twenty-foot haystack. She raised a pitchfork against the rising sun and began hurling clumps of hay over her shoulder to the herd.
At one point she turned and stared directly into our window. The way her blue-black eyes pierced the flimsy lace curtains, as if seeking our faces, was too much this early. We rolled over and went back to sleep, only to wake up later to find Madame standing by the haystack, pitchfork in hand, staring through the window at us again. Though her face was in darkness, a bold slash of morning sunlight crossed her chest like a sash.
“She looks like Death dressed as a Girl Scout,” I muttered.
“This is getting creepy.” Mindy groaned. “Can’t you do something?”
I got up and walked to the window and tried to pull the stiff velvet drapes closed.
“Don’t!” Mindy cried. “Put some clothes on!”
But Madame Morgane didn’t move. She didn’t betray a bit of awareness that a naked American man was standing on the other side of the glass. Puzzled, I snapped the drapes shut.
Later that day, Mindy came back breathless from a chat in the lane with Franck’s wife. “It took a while, but I finally wormed it out of her. Madame has cataracts.”
“So?”
“That’s why she stares at our house—not because she can see us, but because she can’t.”
During the rest of that first winter’s stay on Belle Île, we’d occasionally sense something, turn, and see her standing there, way across a raw, furrowed potato field, a tiny figure barely perceptible against a windbreak of dark, soggy cypresses, fixing her blind eyes upon us.
We got used to it. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to drop by her farmhouse, per Gwened’s instructions, to buy our butter and eggs. Madame Morgane’s expression was so severe, her alarm and shock the night we arrived so violent, that we’d actually become a little afraid of her. It seemed less of a hassle to cycle the five miles to Le Palais to do our grocery shopping. One day, though, just as one of the proprietresses rang up our eggs, who should happen to walk in under the tinkling bell but Madame M.
Funny how sharp her eyes could get when she really needed them. “What, are my eggs not good enough?” she grunted.
After stammering excuses and apologies, we fled the shop, but not before hearing Madame Morgane turn to one of the shopkeepers and proclaim, with a snort, that Mindy spoke French like an immigrant. It was a long, sweaty hour’s ride back, up and down hill and dale, our humiliation compounded by being buzzed by a gray-haired hell-raiser on a moped, baguettes extended at half-mast from both of her saddlebags. Madame M again!
Back at the village as night fell, we unpacked hungrily, only to discover that my rough pedaling had broken the eggs. They’d oozed deep into my knapsack. Without them, dinner would be thin soup.
The sensible thing to do was to buy more eggs from Madame Morgane. But this was also a worst-case scenario, so, of course, Mindy made me go. Would the legendary charm of Young Strudel, especially his mangled pronunciation and gender-bending pronouns, arouse pity instead of scorn?
When I returned, ducking under our low kitchen doorway and handing Mindy just one egg, the inevitable conversation ensued. “One egg? What? Didn’t you say anything?”
I reminded her of Madame’s pointed glance at the dozen eggs we’d bought in Le Palais. Mindy considered. Sighing, she rose and got her jacket off a hook. “Come on, we’re going over.”
“Why? I was just there.”
“Because we insulted her.” Mindy took a wicker market basket off the wall, paused, then picked up the lonely egg and handed it to me. “Gwened warned me. The Bellilois are very prickly. They take offense and they hold grudges. We don’t want Gwened to get a bad report of us from Madame Morgane, the way she did for the Neil Young guy”—who, having arrived with a couple of other American students, had played his guitar and organized sing-alongs that lasted deep into the night.
The villagers had never heard Neil Young before and were traumatized. To hear Gwened tell it, the incessant refrain of “Don’t let it bring you down. It’s only castles burning” had turned cows’ milk sour and stopped hens from laying for weeks.
“But if you knew all this beforehand?” I asked.
“I don’t want to eat dirty farm eggs! That’s how you get salmonella.”
I shook my head at her. It was risk salmonella or starve. Our stomachs finally won out and Mindy knocked next door. A chair scraped, and the door opened. Summoning her most docile expression and dulcet Tours accent, Mindy charmed Madame Morgane with protestations of apology and mortification, going all the way back to our late arrival the first night and failure to pay a call. Madame’s fixed scowl softened—until the subject of eggs came up.
Treading carefully, Mindy thanked her for the one egg and asked if giving it had caused a hardship, perhaps preventing Madame Morgane from baking a cake or making crêpes? Because, if so, we could always return it. At Mindy’s nod, I produced the egg from my shirt pocket and held it aloft.
Non, non, non, said Madame. The hens would lay again tomorrow. Well, exhaled Mindy, then perhaps it was true, as Madame Guedel had seemed to say, that one could find eggs here? Perhaps even enough to feed this large, dim-witted American man who was always hanging around and spoke less French than a duck? I frowned at Mindy, who looked pleadingly at Madame M.
“Beurre aussi.” And butter, added Madame Morgane. “Entrez.”
She stepped aside and we ducked our heads under the wooden lintel, entering a stuffy, crowded room. It was narrow, its once-yellow walls impastoed with a sticky brown sludge of age, smoke, butter, cigarettes, cat hair, fish scales, and who knows what else. A plain tabletop was against one wall, a large dark armoire against the other.
The hearth was small, a blackened hole set with smoke-bleared tiles. The two-burner stove was hooked to a propane tank. A smell of ammonia pricked my nostrils. At the table sat a man: very old, gaunt, narrow of head, mustached, unshaven for days, a dense patch of hair swirling straight up, eyes deeply set, filmed over, fixed straight ahead on nothing.
Madame Morgane beckoned us to the chairs on our side of the table. “Café?” she asked. This I could understand, café being the first word out of my mouth on so many mornings in freezing Paris. Her offer at seven at night touched me. It seemed we were to have a proper visit.
And Mindy had brought her proper manners, honed in conversation with Gwened and her family, but also instilled by her Grammy Nez, an unyielding and, it has to be said, intimidating presence who lived alone in the Connecticut woods, pounding animal skins with giant mallets (for bookbinding purposes) as if in some fairy tale.
While the man and I stared away from each other at right angles, Mindy and Madame Morgane spoke in a measured cadence: unrushed, choreographed by the time it took water to boil and coffee to brew, each remark punctuated by the stirring of spoons and dipping of sugar cubes, nothing topical to be discussed beyond the weather and its effect on the plants and animals.
“Le temps, n’est pas trop beau, oui?”
“Non, mais c’est très beau pour les fleurs, il n’est pas?”
“Oui, pour les fleurs, il n’est pas trop mauvaise.”
For me, this maddening waltz of the double negatives suddenly found a counterpart: the childhood tea parties beloved by my Southern grandmother Gigi. All those hours of boredom after Sunday school now paid off. As I’d previously experienced in Imerovigli, in the sitting room of Yanni the Greek’s parents, the crucial difference between city and village psychology may best be explained by something called “the manners of time.”
The conversation crawled to Madame’s satisfaction. Only after twenty minutes did the old man speak: a muttered interrogative. Madame Morgane replied: “Lui? Américain.”
“Américain?” At last his eyes moved, fastened on me.
“Oui.” I nodded for good measure. He nodded.
“Américain,” he repeated. “Pas Allemand.” Suddenly the armoire began to rattle and shake. There was a sound, high and cackling—like a chicken. What was in there? Was this where Madame got her eggs?
The doors of the armoire flew open, and out popped the head of a little lady, mouth wide open like a baby bird’s, skin white and wrinkled, with tiny red dots on each cheek. She was talking, or trying to, as Madame Morgane got up and deliberately made her way to a shelf where she removed a tiny pair of dentures from a glass of water.