by Michel D
It was lunchtime when he parked in front of the hotel, whose handsome sign could be seen from a long way off: Chez Antoine. To the beach café of 1920 had been added a pretty building finished in ochre plaster, whose bedrooms overlooked the beach. Marie-Dévote and Théo lived on the ground floor and rented the first, to painters mostly. Maman still ran the kitchen, invisibly but noisily, fanning the flames with her curses. Antoine had not seen her more than four or five times in three years, one such occasion being the marriage of Marie-Dévote, at which she had appeared swathed in black and wearing a wide-brimmed hat from which floated a veil held in place by a pair of jade pins. Of the face he caught a glimpse of that day, he could only remember a red nose and striking black eyes like Marie-Dévote’s.
Yes, Marie-Dévote was married. I have not had time to say so until now, or perhaps it was so obvious I did not take the trouble to make it clear. In any case, no marriage was more natural than hers, for she had been sleeping with Théo since she was fifteen and he was handsome and lazy, which makes it much easier to keep a man at home, have him all to yourself, not share him with his work, and keep him fresh for bed at night. There is an interesting philosophy at work here, which I have no leisure to develop because time presses, but which deserves some reflection by the reader. It will have its defenders and its critics. Some will judge it impracticable, others will point out that it can only thrive in sunny places, where a man can live on very little: an olive, a chunk of bread, figs off the tree, and bunches of grapes hanging from the arbour. The admirable thing is that this philosophy was an instinctive reflex for the happy young couple, who did not go round in circles analysing the situation. They simply lived the way their feelings took them, and, young but already wise, congratulated themselves on such a perfect success.
Théo helped by possessing great understanding. He had no better friend than Antoine, and on the days Antoine was there he went fishing at dawn and returned, noisily, in the small hours. The little hotel adjoining the beach café, and a fine new boat that was soon to be equipped with an outboard motor, justified this sacrifice. And when their benefactor had gone Marie-Dévote came back to him more tender than ever, and as though her appetite had merely been whetted.
*
Théo appeared first at the sound of the Bugatti’s engine revving for the last time before Antoine switched off. Antoine pulled off his helmet and goggles. The sight of his face reddened by the air, with a white line across his forehead and pale circles around his eyes, made Théo buckle with laughter.
‘Saints! You should see your face, old friend. You look like a watermelon. Come on, get out if you can. If not I’ll fetch the corkscrew.’
Antoine, ordinarily rather thin-skinned, put up with Théo’s jokes. He felt he owed it to the man whose wife he was sleeping with so openly. At least that was how he saw it, although from his point of view Théo was convinced that it was he, the husband, who was cuckolding the lover. As a result they were both full of sympathy for one another, and incapable of hurting each other.
Marie-Dévote was on the beach, at the water’s edge, her skirt hitched up to her thighs, showing off her beautiful long brown legs as she washed the catch she had just gutted.
‘Really, Antoine, it looks like you smelt there was going to be bouillabaisse today.’
‘My sense of smell is acute.’
He kissed her on both cheeks. She smelt of fish, and as he closed his eyes for an instant she changed in his imagination into a sea creature, a siren come to warm herself in the sun. He would happily have laid her down on the beach and wriggled beneath her skirt there and then, but Théo was standing a few steps away, his hands on his hips and his brown face lit by a wide smile.
‘I’m hungry!’ Antoine said to conceal his agitation.
And he was hungry for Marie-Dévote. She was one of those women that one wants to bite and eat, whose skin tastes of herbs and conjures up the pleasures of food as much as those between the sheets. He kissed her again on the neck and she squealed, ‘Hey! I’m not a radish, just because I’ve got a sprinkling of salt on me. Leave a bit of me for Théo. He needs feeding too.’
*
Unluckily, the sea’s blue suddenly darkened, violent gusts whipped across its surface, and a warm drizzle stained the sand. Eating under the arbour was out of the question. Marie-Dévote laid the tables in the dining room, one for Antoine, Théo and herself, another for the two painters living on the first floor, who came down soon afterwards.
Antoine regarded them with suspicion. He distrusted artists, though he had never seen any at close quarters and all his knowledge of them was from books. These two looked reasonable, however. Properly dressed in corduroy and suntanned, they conversed normally without raising their voices, ate with knives and forks, and drank in moderation. One was well-built and had a thick neck, the other was slim and distinguished-looking. Marie-Dévote served them but so gracefully, unobtrusively and rapidly that she never seemed to leave her place at the table between her two men, both in a cheerful mood after drinking several glasses of pastis. Antoine watched her from the corner of his eye as she crossed the room, flitting from one table to the other. Then he saw one of the painters studying her, and his heart sank.
‘Come on, Papa, don’t be jealous!’ Théo, leaning over, muttered to him. ‘They’re not going to steal her from under your nose.’
Of all Théo’s jokes ‘Papa’ was the only one that irritated Antoine, especially in front of Marie-Dévote.
‘If you call me “Papa” again, I’ll break a bottle over your head.’
‘Keep calm, Antoine, I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re “Papa” because I think of you as part of the family.’
Turning to the two painters, who had stopped talking at the commotion, he added, ‘Antoine is a friend. Our great, great friend. He’s not from round here. He comes from the north where it’s cold and it rains a lot.’
‘I should like to point out,’ Antoine said, ‘that it is likewise raining here.’
The deluge was streaming noisily down the windows and obscuring the view of the beach. The sea was only thirty metres away, but it was impossible even to make it out.
‘We need the weather,’ Théo said. ‘Without it the plants, they all die, and it’s a desert. Even the cold. It kills the germs, otherwise you walk round knee-deep in them and pretty soon you die.’
His self-assurance had grown since his marriage, and Antoine suspected that he might even be reading the odd newspaper and picking up some basic facts there that he then passed off as his own knowledge. But Antoine’s problem was rather more pressing than the irritation he felt towards Théo. Inactive since his accident on the Tôtes road, reduced to the furtive kindnesses requested and received from Adèle Louverture in his room, where there was always the danger of being disturbed, and with his blood now warmed by pastis, rosé wine and Bénédictine, Antoine battled against the arousing effect of Marie-Dévote’s skipping around the room. From the corner of his eye he followed her bottom and legs as she moved rapidly between the kitchen and tables; he miserably failed to resist the temptation offered by the neckline of her blouse, and would have given anything to be the little gold crucifix that swung between her breasts on a black velvet ribbon and caressed each of them with every movement. Théo was not so accommodating as all that, and would certainly not have given up his siesta with his wife without a number of expansionary projects that had been evolving over recent months, all of them requiring Antoine’s patronage. Having left his friend in lengthy nail-biting anticipation, Théo suddenly announced that he was summoned to Saint-Raphaël and stepped outside to catch the bus that stopped in front of the hotel. The two painters, giving up hope of a break in the clouds, started a game of jacquet, and Antoine, successfully trapping Marie-Dévote in the hallway behind the door, at last placed her hand where she could measure the length of his admiration.
‘And who’ll do the dishes?’ she asked, in entirely token resistance.
‘Bugger the dishe
s.’
It is true that there are moments when the dishes are no longer of the slightest importance. Marie-Dévote did not need a great deal of persuading. And so they spent the afternoon together in bed, and I shall stop there, because this story already has many longueurs, and note merely that it was highly successful.
They slept for a time, and were woken by the sound of hooting as the bus returned from Saint-Raphaël. Marie-Dévote sprang out of bed and dressed in the twinkling of an eye to go and meet her Théo. Antoine’s mouth felt furry and his eyes swollen. He too got out of bed, walked down the beach, jumped into the sea, splashed around like a seal and came out breathless but rejuvenated. It had stopped raining, and one of the painters had set up his easel on the beach and was finishing a picture of Théo’s boat, beached on the sand. A soft orange-washed light spread from the horizon into a sky that was free of clouds. Antoine walked behind the painter and felt a shiver of delight. He knew nothing of modern art, but this painting, laden with primitive colours and an ample, sensuous reality conveyed in reds and blues, charmed him instantly.
‘Do you sell your work?’ he said awkwardly, not knowing how to go about such questions with an artist, without offending him.
‘From time to time,’ the painter said, cleaning a brush.
‘I mean: that picture.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Antoine du Courseau. But the picture will be for Marie-Dévote and Théo. They haven’t got anything for the walls of their dining room.’
‘Ah!’
The painter tidied his palette away and, folding up his easel, offered the canvas to Antoine.
‘Take it now. If you don’t I’ll change my mind. I’ll glaze it for you when it’s dry.’
‘But … I need to give you something for it.’
‘Of course … write to my dealer. I’ll give you his card. He’ll tell you how much. That’s his business.’
Antoine stayed standing alone on the beach, the canvas in his hand, like a stray object he had discovered on the sand. Dusk was falling. A cool onshore breeze began to blow and he shivered.
‘Saints! What’s up, Antoine? Are you dreaming?’ Théo shouted. ‘Come and have a pastis.’
He walked back to the terrace. The bottle was waiting next to the carafe of cold water. Théo poured pastis, then water. Antoine placed the painting on the table and drank standing up.
‘Do you like it?’
‘I suppose so. Hey … it really looks like it.’
‘To decorate your dining room.’
‘Nice. The boat looks as if it’s about ready to go.’
‘Are you fishing tonight?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
It was part of the game. Antoine played with ill grace, and Théo brought it to an end by giving in, but only after enjoying Antoine’s discomfort. He left to go fishing with his lamp, and Antoine remained in the dining room with Marie-Dévote and the two painters, who acknowledged his shy nod with a smile. Marie-Dévote had rings around her eyes and the slightly too languorous and feline look of a woman who has spent the afternoon satisfying herself fully. Antoine still wanted her, but more calmly and deliberately this time, and as he sipped her soupe au pistou, served steaming in big blue china dishes, he felt to an extreme extent – to the point of oppression – the fear of loving and of experiencing an impossible passion for a woman who could never be his. It was a bewildering feeling, a feeling that, for all its desire, revealed the bitterness of a wasted life. He wished he had never met Marie-Dévote, and he cursed the appointment with fate that had driven him, on an August afternoon three years earlier, to this beach café where a young girl sat sunning her brown knees on the terrace. At the same time he was forced to admit that, in the absence of Marie-Dévote, these last three years would have been pitiful, without any grace, joy or happiness. Without any happiness at all. He looked up.
‘What’s the matter?’ Marie-Dévote said. ‘Your eyes are watering.’
‘The soup’s hot. I burnt myself.’
‘Oh good. I’m glad it’s nothing worse!’
She left to help her mother with the dishes and he turned to the painters, who were also finishing dinner, and raised his glass.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ the one who had sold him the picture said.
‘I’d be delighted.’
They questioned him diplomatically, and he answered without bending the truth. One of the two men knew Grangeville.
‘I was up that way last year. I rented a little place near the cemetery. Very soft light. Grey gravestones, white cliffs, the sea. One of those places you wouldn’t mind dying in. I came back with a dozen seascapes, but that’s not what the dealers want. The only thing they can sell is the sun. Isn’t that true, André?’
‘Yes. And we’ll give them as much as they can handle, blue skies, blue seas, red sails, green boats. I know it like the back of my hand by now, I could go and paint it all in a cellar in Paris with a bare bulb over my head. This is the future, the Midi; people are going to make fortunes here …’
They discussed their respective dealers with a scorn and aggressiveness that startled Antoine. He had been expecting revelations about art, some explanation of heaven knows what, and all he got instead was talk about money, names, exhibition dates and moaning about critics who only cared about official art, that great producer of war memorials. Antoine had never questioned whether these memorials were beautiful or ugly. In the course of his excursions he had seen them going up in every village, allegories in exaggerated drapery shielding a wounded soldier with a tender hand, proud bronze infantrymen watching over tearful women and children. They seemed unhealthy to him, full of dishonest symbolism, but the thought of judging their beauty or ugliness would never have occurred to him without the two artists’ sarcastic commentary. He felt ashamed of his ignorance, and left them to go to his room. Here, a little later, Marie-Dévote followed him.
‘Would you like it again?’
‘Of course, it’s all I’ve got. I don’t give a damn about all the rest.’
And it was true: about all the rest he didn’t give a damn, and there was no pain, no sorrow, but when he pressed Marie-Dévote against him or, daydreaming, stroked her pretty breasts and their brown tips, something else existed: his pleasure. He stayed at Saint-Tropez for three days, his limit, which he never exceeded, so that he could be sure of leaving with a trace of animal regret on his lips that provided him with the certainty that he existed. The route des Maures, then the high corniche road to Nice, took him down to Roquebrune, where he stopped. Léon Cece, recognising the note of the Bugatti’s engine, appeared at his door in linen trousers and torn white singlet. Far from fading, his facial scars had deepened, splitting the soft tissue of his cheek, twisting his mouth, and attacking one eye, its bloodshot white beginning to bulge out of its orbit. His restaurant was doing badly. In the egotism of peacetime, diners were not willing to put up with the sight of his smashed face, a reminder of a time everyone was doing their best to forget and an awful reproach to those who had got through it without too much hardship; a mute and unacceptable pang of conscience from which most fled like cowards.
‘All right, Antoine?’ Léon called. ‘It’s been an age since we saw you.’
‘Three months. I had an accident. My knee in plaster. This is my first long trip.’
‘Well, that’s good anyway. You’re not like the others.’
They dined together on the balcony, wreathed by clouds of moths that whirled around the hurricane lamp and singed their wings. Léon was a man of truth. Unlike Charles Ventadour, the war he kept going back to was a squalid conflict, but it was his conflict, his alone, revolving around that attack when his head had been blown apart. He needed to talk about it, to go over it ceaselessly as though it were still possible, six years later, to take that one sideways step that would have saved him when the German 77 burst. And so great was his desire for that step that he seemed, at odd moments, almost able to erase the tragedy and recove
r his face as it had been, and his morale and cheerfulness, only to fall back again, harder than before, into the depths of a despair so bitter it had the taste of death about it. More than anything, he could not forgive the involuntary aversion of those who saw him for the first time. A curse had fallen upon him, and his uncomplicated and still sound spirit could not overcome the vast injustice that separated him from the rest of the living.
‘You don’t know what goes on,’ he said to Antoine. ‘My daughter and her mother do their best not to look at me. I don’t make love any more. It would be unsightly, and everything around me is so beautiful. Roquebrune is the prettiest place on Earth. The people who come to the Côte are happy, they’re beautiful, I turn away so that I don’t make them sad. Sometimes I say to myself: Léon, you’re not a man, you’re not a man any more, you’re like a dog, you’re a pest, you’ve got to hide away.’
‘You’re a very unhappy man,’ Antoine said.
‘Maybe that’s it. You’re the only friend I have. We talk to each other. We drink grappa and the hours go by. Then you leave, and I wait for months for you to come by again. It’s not your fault. I know you have a family and friends and, judging by your car, plenty of loose change. Maybe you’re unhappy too. But you get around. I’m stuck here. That’s my life. It’s all I’ve got.’