Léon and Louise

by Alex Capus

  ‘Salut, Léon!’ she called as she trotted along beside the train and opened the door of a third-class carriage. Oh, he thought, so she knows my first name. Had he introduced himself last night at the Café du Commerce? No, he hadn’t. He ought to have, of course. It would have been only polite, but he hadn’t, so she must have learned his name some other way – possibly even have made a point of finding it out? Oh-oh. And she hadn’t forgotten his name overnight; on the contrary, she had memorized it. And now she had uttered his name with her mouth, lips and little white teeth – with the breath of her body. Oh-oh-oh.

  ‘Salut, Louise!’ he called when he’d recovered his composure and she was about to jump aboard the still moving train. He stood enshrouded in the locomotive’s hissing spurts of steam and waited the regulation minute after which, pursuant to the timetable, he had to signal the driver to continue on his way. The train moved off and Léon, craning his neck, ran to the door behind which Louise had disappeared. But because the platform was too low and the windows were too high, he couldn’t see the passengers sitting on the far side of the compartment. Then the train pulled out and Louise was gone.

  Léon stared after the red rear light until it was out of sight beyond the brick works, and he kept a lingering eye on the locomotive’s plume of smoke. Then he repaired with his red flag to the office, where Madame Josianne had left him some coffee and two tartines.

  When he went out into the forecourt at lunchtime his eye lighted on Louise’s bicycle in the shelter. Looking around to make sure he was unobserved, he went over and examined it. An ordinary old gentleman’s bike that had once been black, it had rusty gear sprockets, a worn-out chain and solid tyres with no tread left on them. The gear change was broken and the chain guard bent. Gingerly, he rested his hands on the cracked, bleached leather grips on the handlebars, squeezed them hard and then held both palms to his nose to catch a whiff of Louise’s scent, but all he could smell was leather and his own hands.

  Crouching down, he examined the chain guard and discovered that it really was the cause of the squeak. He tried to straighten the bent section with both thumbs, but failed because of the sprocket behind it. He fetched two screwdrivers and a hammer from the workshop, removed the metal guard, and hammered it flat against the goods shed’s timber wall. Then he oiled the rusty chain, screwed the guard on again, and made one experimental circuit of the station yard.

  When Léon embarked on his usual after-supper bike ride into town, he was wearing his slacks, his white shirt, and the grey cardigan his mother had knitted him during her sleepless nights before his departure. Having ridden across the station yard in the afterglow of the sunny day, he set off up the avenue – and saw someone standing beside the fifth plane tree along on the right-hand side of the road.

  She was leaning against the tree in her blue school skirt and her red and white polka-dot blouse. Her left hand was imprisoned in the crook of her arm, her right hand held a lighted cigarette. She had raised her right eyebrow far enough to furrow her smooth forehead; the other loomed low over her left eye. Could this piercing stare really be meant for him?

  ‘Evening, Louise. Waiting for me, were you?’

  ‘I never wait for anyone, let alone your kind.’ She took a long pull at her cigarette. ‘Any of my precious time you steal will be deducted from the end of your life.’

  ‘I can spare a minute or two,’ said Léon.

  ‘My bike doesn’t squeak any more,’ she said.

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘I don’t remember asking you to repair it.’

  ‘Something had to be done,’ he said. ‘The local farmers were complaining.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It was upsetting their cows.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, turning their milk sour in the udder.’

  ‘And that’s why the local farmers asked the assistant telegraphist at Saint-Luc station for help?’

  ‘I couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘The local farmers will be grateful.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Do I have to be grateful too?’

  ‘No, why should you be?’

  ‘I owe you, though, is that it?’

  ‘Not for a little thing like that.’

  ‘What do you want in exchange – to show me the stars at night?’

  ‘I’m no astronomer.’

  ‘To show me your stamp collection?’

  ‘I don’t own a stamp collection.’

  ‘What do you want, then?’

  ‘All I did was bend the thing straight.’

  ‘And for that you want to squeeze my bottom?’

  ‘No, but I could always bend it out of shape again.’

  ‘That would suit me fine.’

  ‘You miss the squeak?’

  ‘People will. They won’t be able to hear me coming any more. They’ll get a shock when I turn up without warning.’

  ‘I’ll screw a bell to your handlebars, then they’ll be able to hear you. All right if I walk with you for a bit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which way are you going?’

  ‘I know where you’re going: the Commerce.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The way you do every evening.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Every inch the stick-in-the-mud railwayman, aren’t you?’

  ‘Where did you go in the train today?’

  ‘None of your business. You’re going to the Commerce, anyway. I have to go that way too. Leave your bike here. I’ll walk with you for a bit.’

  Louise was waiting for Léon at the fifth plane tree the following evening, likewise the next evening and the one after that. They took over an hour to cover the few hundred metres into town because they walked so slowly and paused so often, crossing the road for no reason or even retracing their steps. They never stopped talking. They talked about everything and nothing: about the mayor’s cigars and the postman, who was reputed to be his bastard half-brother, about the station and Léon’s knowledge of modern telecommunications, about old Barthélemy and his infatuation with Madame Josianne, about the vicious watchdog outside the locksmith’s, which frightened passing schoolchildren, and about the delicious chocolate éclairs in the Catholic bakery. They talked about the widow Junot, whose visits to her sister in Compiègne always coincided exactly with the days on which the curé went on his pastoral missions to Compiègne. They talked about the quarry behind the station in which fossilized neolithic sharks’ teeth could be found, about the black Madonna in the church and the little wood beside the route nationale in which the cherries should soon be ripe, and about Colette’s novels, all of which Louise had read but Léon hadn’t.

  From the third evening onwards Louise described her work as an angel of death while Léon looked up at the treetops, listening in silence. Later he told her about Cherbourg, the Channel, the islands and his brightly painted sailing boat while Louise likewise listened in silence, gazing at his face intently.

  But once, when he tried to ask about her background, she cut him short. ‘No questions,’ she said. ‘I won’t ask you any and you won’t either.’

  ‘All right,’ said Léon.

  While they were talking together like this, he would bury his hands in his trouser pockets and play football with some little pebbles. Louise, gesticulating as she smoked one cigarette after another, would walk backwards in front of him to see if he understood and approved of what she was saying. Léon not only understood but approved of everything she said, simply because it was Louise that was saying it. He found her laughter entrancing because it was her laughter, and he loved her encouraging, searching gaze because it was her green eyes that seemed to be asking, again and again, ‘Tell me, is it you? Is it really you?’ And he found her errant strand of hair captivating because it was her strand of hair, and he couldn’t help laughing when she mimicked the mayor lighting his cigar because the mimicry w
as hers.

  It hadn’t escaped them, even during their first walk together, that the citizens of the little town were watching their every step from behind their curtains. That was why they kept well in sight in the street and spoke especially loudly and distinctly, so that anyone who wished could hear what they were talking about. Once outside the Café du Commerce, they always stopped and said goodbye without a kiss or a handshake.

  ‘Au revoir, Louise.’

  ‘Au revoir, Léon.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Then she disappeared around the corner and he went into the café and ordered a glass of Bordeaux.

  5

  At Whitsun 1918 Léon had a whole two days off for the first time. Contrary to his usual routine, he woke early in the morning and watched as his window exchanged the darkness of night for the pale light of dawn and the glow of sunrise. Having washed in the fountain behind the goods shed, he got back into bed. He listened to the twittering of the blackbirds and the creaking of the beams and waited until it was eight o’clock at last – time for him to go to the office and have his café au lait under the effusively affectionate aegis of Madame Josianne.

  After breakfast he rode his bicycle into town. A storm had swept across the countryside during the night, tousling the maize fields, ripping the last of last year’s withered leaves from the plane trees, and filling the canals and ditches with rainwater. Léon made a circuit of the Sunday-silent town, with its gleaming roofs, wet streets and gurgling drains. A gentle summer breeze wafted the scent of flowering jasmine from the gardens into the streets, and the sun proceeded to dry everything before the inhabitants emerged from their houses, blinking, and went to Mass.

  Léon got off his bike in the Place de la République, propped it against an advertising pillar and sat down on a bench that had almost dried off. He didn’t have long to wait. A few pigeons cautiously approached him, heads bobbing, before reluctantly strutting off when they found he had no breadcrumbs to scatter. An old man in a claret-coloured dressing gown and brown-and-yellow checked slippers shuffled past with a baguette under his arm and disappeared down the alleyway between the town hall and the savings bank. A cloud drifted over the sun and exposed it again. Then, behind Léon’s back, the morning silence was broken by a bicycle bell – rri-rring, rri-rring! – and a moment later Louise was standing in front of him.

  ‘I’ve now got a bell on my bike,’ she said. ‘Do I owe you something for it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you for one, but thanks all the same. When did you do it?’

  ‘Last night, after the café.’

  ‘You happened to have a bell and a screwdriver with you?’

  ‘And a box spanner that fitted.’

  Louise leant her bicycle against the advertising pillar, sat down on the bench beside him and lit a cigarette.

  ‘You’ve got some funny odds and ends on your luggage rack again. What are they?’

  ‘Four blankets and a saucepan,’ said Léon. ‘And a bag of bread and cheese.’

  ‘Found them all on the beach?’

  ‘I’m going on a trip to the seaside. There today, back tomorrow.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘I want to see the sea again. Eighty kilometres. I’ll be there in five hours.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’ll go for a walk along the cliffs, collect some more bits and pieces on the beach, and look for a dry spot to sleep.’

  ‘And you need four blankets for that?’

  ‘Two would be enough.’

  ‘You mean me to come too?’

  ‘It’d be nice.’

  ‘If I did, you’d try to get into my knickers.’

  ‘Wrong,’ he said.

  ‘What do you take me for, an idiot? Any man tries to get into a girl’s knickers if he’s alone with her among the sand dunes.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Léon conceded. ‘I won’t, though.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. What someone wants and what they do are two different things.’

  Léon got up and went over to his bicycle. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘there aren’t any sand dunes at Le Tréport.’

  ‘No?’ Louise laughed.

  ‘Just cliffs. And a shingle beach. I won’t, honestly. Not as long as you don’t.’

  ‘Word of honour?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘How long do your promises normally last?’

  ‘A lifetime. I’m being serious.’

  Louise frowned and pursed her lips, then breathed out through her nose. ‘Hang on, I’ll go and get some more cigarettes.’

  They rode out of town and headed west towards the sea along the wide, dead straight, deserted highroad that led through the charming pastureland of Haute Normandie, which has so generously supplied its inhabitants with the necessities of life since time immemorial. The sun was high, the horizon distant, and they sped past pale-green fields of wartime wheat, as sparse and patchy as an adolescent’s beard because they’d been sown by inexperienced women and children. Later, in the hilly terrain far away from the villages, birch saplings were already growing on steep fields that hadn’t been ploughed for years.

  Louise rode fast, but Léon, being rested and in good shape, easily kept up with her. They looked straight ahead at the road, legs pumping rhythmically up and down, not talking much because their thoughts were focused entirely on the ride and making good progress and getting to their destination. They were happy. Louise pretended not to notice when Léon occasionally glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Once they held hands while going full tilt and coasted for a bit like that, side by side. Then Louise rang her bell from sheer happiness.

  They reached their destination at half-past two that afternoon, quite suddenly and earlier than expected. The sea hadn’t announced its presence; the air was no saltier, the sky no wider, the vegetation no sparser, the soil no sandier. The Normandy countryside, with its rich arable land and lush meadows, simply broke off and continued a hundred metres down at the foot of chalk cliffs washed by the grey surf of the English Channel. They rode past the Canadian military hospital that had established itself in a sea of white tents on the cliffs, then along the river and into Le Tréport.

  The place had once been a fishing village. Ever since the railway had linked it with the capital, however, the inhabitants’ main source of income had been the Parisian holidaymakers who had built themselves fine villas with sea views at the foot of the cliffs. Léon and Louise left their bicycles on the Quai François and walked round the harbour. They watched the fishermen mending their nets, repairing sails, coiling ropes and sweeping their decks with gnarled hands and half-smoked cigarettes in the corners of their mouths. They also eyed the holidaymakers with their pink bootees and gleaming spats, their white sailor suits and translucent linen skirts, their panama hats, skilfully peroxided plaits and ostentatiously Parisian accents. Léon suddenly felt Louise take his arm – something she’d never done before.

  ‘Look at those stuck-up mam’selles with their parasols,’ she said. If you ever catch me with a parasol like that, you must shoot me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve no one else to ask.’

  ‘All right.’

  After that they walked on in silence, side by side like a long familiar couple with nothing left to prove. While sitting on their bikes and pedalling they had been free and unconstrained because their destination still lay in the future and the present wasn’t what mattered. Now there was no obstacle and no escape left; now it was the present that counted. But even now, as they walked round the harbour, they were neither guarded nor uneasy, just incapable of putting their feelings into words.

  Where Léon was concerned, the warmth of Louise’s hand on his arm was enough to render him perfectly happy. It was the first time in his life he had been privileged to walk so close to a girl
. That he could, if he bent his head sideways only a little, breathe in the scent of her sun-warmed hair was almost more than he could bear.

  They walked along the mole to the lighthouse that marked the harbour entrance, sat on the wall and watched the steamers and sailing boats going in and out. When the sun was nearing the sea they made their way back to the little town, walked up the Rue de Paris and visited the Eglise Saint-Jacques, the town’s landmark.

  Just on the right of the entrance was a Madonna they stood in front of for a long time. It was a crudely modelled plaster figure with a flat face, Dutch doll red cheeks and black, boot button eyes. The Virgin’s robe of gold-embroidered blue velvet was entirely covered with slips of paper rolled up or folded several times. These were attached to the garment with pins, but other slips of paper were wedged between her fingers, pinned to her kerchief, or lying on her halo and her feet. Slips of every size and hue could even be seen between her lips and in her ears.

  ‘What are those pieces of paper?’ Louise asked.

  ‘They’re from seamen’s wives asking the Mother of God to keep their husbands safe,’ said Léon. ‘I’ve seen them back home. They draw their men’s fishing boat on a slip of paper and hope it’ll come safe home under the Holy Virgin’s protection. Others fold up a lock of their consumptive child’s hair in a piece of paper and ask the Virgin to cure it. These days, you’ll also see soldiers’ photos.’

  ‘Shall we look at some?’

  ‘It’s bad luck to do that. The ships would sink, the children die, the soldiers be blown to bits by a shell. And your fingers would rot off if you even touched one.’

  ‘We’d better not, then. Shall we go?’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Léon took a notebook and a pencil from his breast pocket.

  ‘You’re going to write one?’ Louise laughed. ‘Like a seaman’s wife?’

  Léon tore the page out of the notebook, rolled it into a cylinder, and stuck it in the Madonna’s right armpit. ‘Let’s go, it’ll soon be low tide. I’ll get us some mussels from the rocks for supper.’