Piers' Desire

by Marianne Ackerman

  As they climbed a winding road in full view of the jagged Dentelles mountain range, past one picturesque town after another, Magali admired the scenery.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked. He refused to answer, finally stopping in a parking lot at the foot of a medieval jewel perched on a hill, the village of Le Barroux.

  Pointing at a high row of cypress trees across the road, he said, “That’s Prince Charles’ family estate, you know. Or one of the Royals. You can see it from the castle, if kings and queens are interesting to your generation. Your grandmother gave a very generous donation to the restoration of the castle I’m about to show you, in hopes of getting to meet Prince Charles, or the little princes.”

  “Really? Did she meet them?”

  “Oh yes. Didn’t she tell you? At a party held in the castle. Charles said — and I quote — ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Maw-dom.’ It was one of her most memorable experiences.”

  “Grandpa! You’re fibbing!”

  “She bought gloves especially for the occasion. Never wore them again, that I recall.”

  In Magali’s recollection of the day, the sun shone brightly. Lunch with her grandfather at the Geraniums was an experience she would remember always. The terrace was closed for the season so they ate in a cosy room overlooking sloped vineyards and the Dentelles. But first they took a stroll through the narrow streets of Le Barroux, climbing past dozens of gated yards and shuttered windows, each house different from the next and lovingly restored, fitted out with pottery and flowerboxes, most of them closed up for the winter.

  Their destination was a mammoth fortification perched on the highest point of the mountain, dating from the Middle Ages. “The castle was occupied by the Germans in the war,” he explained. “Before retreating, they blew it up. The renovations are quite impressive. I thought it might be interesting, for a budding historian.”

  The main doors were open on stacks of new stone and scaffolding, evidence of construction in the courtyard, though the building seemed empty. They entered a cavernous room on the ground floor. Originally a chapel, rough stone walls had been cleaned up for an exhibition of black-and-white photographs, including some showing the castle in ruins. Mounds of guns, tarps, ammunition boxes and spare uniforms worn by the Nazis offered evidence of what went on behind the walls when the fortress became a military headquarters.

  Watching him study the photographs, she knew his thoughts were back there, in the world of Nelly’s diary, and that she was in the presence of a hero. As they left the exhibition, her heart beat so quickly she could hardly keep up with his pace. The birds-eye view of the Royal mas paled next to the revelation of a secret world. She could hear his memories roar, and struggled for a question or comment that would take her inside his head. As he started down the grassy slope on the other side of the castle, it seemed the moment would slip away.

  She stopped, and called out, “Grandpa, wait for me, please.”

  He turned around. She was standing on a pile of rubble. He offered his hand, intending to help her back onto solid ground. Instead, she blurted out a question:

  “Were you really Roland?”

  He stood staring at her, speechless. She reached for his hand, and stepping over a pile of gravel, took him by the arm.

  “So, who told you?” he said, finally. “I guess it must have been Nelly.”

  “No, I mean, not really. She didn’t exactly tell me.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Never mind questions, Grandpa. Please, answers. Were you a Resistance fighter? Did you jump out of an airplane and land in a field one night?”

  He stopped walking, eyes fixed on a point on the sky.

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you ever talk about it?” He laughed. “Well, no one ever asks.”

  “Oh! How could we know to ask? You’re so secretive. All these years …”

  “That was a long time ago,” he continued, leading the way down toward the restaurant. “I guess I’ve just never had the occasion to recall certain events. At the time, it was important to be discreet. Maybe secrecy becomes a habit. There wasn’t much to tell, really. A lot of rushing around, precious little heroism.”

  “No, don’t think you can get off so easily! I want to know everything that happened from the moment you joined the movement.”

  “I had a friend who had connections. An older guy, his father was in the army.”

  By the time they reached the restaurant, he’d warmed to the subject, though he spoke in terse sentences, as if every word were costly. She tried to resist letting details from the diary slip into her questions, thinking that if only he told her the same story, she just might get away with the act of theft, and no one ever need know.

  When he came to the harrowing escape from La Roque du Buis, where his band of Resistance fighters in hiding were hunted down by the Germans, his hands were shaking. He told how he ran for hours, stopping only to scoop up the odd handful of snow from the evergreen branches, in lieu of water. About the sweet warmth of the farmhouse where he’d stopped for a rest. How good the sight of a bed by a fire had looked, though he’d insisted on staying in the barn. Discovery would have meant certain death for the people who hid him. How he made it all the way to Carpentras without being noticed, only to come face to face with the SS officer in charge of the search mission. Then a train straight to Nuremberg, and a German work camp.

  “After that, it was all a matter of waiting.” The story over, he tucked into his plate of confit de canard as if it were the first good meal he’d had in ages.

  What about Murielle? The note you left for her under the rock? Did you write her from prison? The obvious questions could not be asked. “What about Aunt Nelly?” she ventured, cautiously. “Was she in the Resistance too?”

  He looked up from the plate, catching her eye for the first time. “I’m sure she must have stories to tell,” he said.

  For a moment she wondered if he might be asking her for information. But how far could she go without becoming hopelessly tangled in things she had no right to know?

  “Everyone has such a different version of history,” she said, calmly.

  He smiled, nodded. “The historian speaks. Yes, I guess everyone does.”

  History. The word was a mistake. She knew he would use it to slip back into generalities, lecture her on grand themes, and the only story that mattered would be gone with very little chance of ever coming back. Leaning forward on her elbows, she summoned her courage and said, in a low voice, “Grandpa, why didn’t you come back to Murielle, like you promised?”

  He was holding his knife and fork, ready to cut a piece of meat, and stopped, as if suddenly he’d forgotten what the business of eating was all about.

  “I did,” he said.

  A wry smile floated across his eyes. He knew Nelly’s side of the story was out on the table, brought there by an emissary who had thus far been an ally. But he wasn’t about to give up more information easily. She wasn’t prepared to be silenced either.

  “You did? But what happened?”

  “She’d gone with someone else.”

  “You mean, she’d fallen in love with someone else?”

  “Something like that,” he said, dismissively. “That’s what her mother told me.”

  “Her mother! But you didn’t ask Nelly? You didn’t see her?”

  “She’d moved to Carpentras.”

  “Grandpa! It’s a thirty-minute drive away.”

  “Not in those days,” he protested. “Carpentras was …”

  As she laced the new details into Nelly’s story, it seemed more horrible by the minute. So her mother sabotaged the reunion? Did Nelly know? Did she fail to mention the real reason she lost Roland?

  “What happened to this other person Nelly went off with?”

  “I have no idea,” he snapped. She
could tell by his tone that the time for questions was over.

  A few terse details dropped into a Sunday lunch, and a story she’d so recently thought of as deeply romantic, even tragic, suddenly seemed crazy, silly, awful, so unfair! Why didn’t they call, or take the bus, or even send a telegram? So it wasn’t because of deep dark secrets that nobody in the family talked about important things. The secrets were a result of how they acted. Or more precisely, how they did not act. Grandpa, she wanted to shout, how could you? By the faraway look on his sad, grey face, she knew he was back there, wandering around Ste. Cécile les Vignes, feeling bad about bad news. She could have slapped him. But of course it was far too late now, even though Nelly was still alive and could answer all of his questions. If she wanted to answer. Probably not. It was too late for anything but truth. And who cared about that? What good would it do?

  SEVENTEEN

  AS A CHILD MAGALI FEARED THE moment of falling asleep, as though falling out of watchfulness, she would fall forever. The minute she closed her eyes the room whirled. Her father bought fluorescent stars and pasted them to the ceiling, telling her not to think about sleep, just keep looking at the night sky. From then on she woke up believing she hadn’t slept at all. It was ages before she started to remember her dreams.

  Waking up under a dim November sky, she had a rush of the old anxiety in reverse, a feeling that some fine, important dream had been interrupted by the waking world, that she should have remained asleep until the end. Reaching for her watch on the floor beside the mattress, she saw it was not quite five o’clock. The house was dark and silent as she tiptoed toward the WC at the end of the hall. When she came back, the door was half open. She tried to remember whether she’d closed it or not, anxiety crystallizing around the idea that someone was there, or had been and had just left. Nothing seemed out of place and there was no place to hide, only a thin armoire hardly big enough for a person. She checked anyway. The sensation persisted even as she crawled into bed and pulled the duvet over her head. Finally, she had to get up and turn on a light, which is when she noticed a postcard propped up against the desk lamp, addressed to her in familiar handwriting. On one side was an intricate pattern of mosaics in neon colours, on the other, an invitation to a concert with the time, date and place in Arabic and French. Scanning the list of performers, she found Mouloud’s name.

  The streets were all but empty, no one up yet but a sullen sweeper, as she hurried along the narrow sidewalks that led to the other side of town. At the door to his building, she kept jabbing the button beside his name again and again until finally he appeared at the bottom of the stairs, groggy.

  “Why do you do this?” she demanded.

  “What?”

  She waved the invitation in his face. “This.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Invade my life! You’re a sneak. Why? What have I done to deserve this? Tell me, now long is it going to last? Where will it end?”

  He stared at her, mystified.

  “Why won’t you answer me?”

  He shrugged, leaned against the door case, as if he hardly had the strength to stand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, flatly. “Everything that’s going to happen is already known. It has already happened.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” A look of deep sadness melted her anger into desperation. “Mouloud,” she pleaded. “Please tell me what I can say or do to make you understand and leave me alone.”

  As if he had suddenly woken up, words tumbled out: “I thought you might be interested. That’s all. It isn’t only me, it’s a big concert. The others are good musicians, professionals. I thought you— never mind!” He snatched the card out of her hand, and headed back upstairs. She followed.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me? Phone, or whatever? Why break into my home to tell me something simple? It wasn’t necessary.”

  He turned around, barring her way. “What are you talking about?”

  “You came into my room while I was sleeping. Why? It’s creepy.” She shouted. “You’re trying to prove something, aren’t you? This is self-destructive, you know. It hurts you more than me. Tell me why I should tolerate someone invading my life? Why, why would I?”

  “I sent you an invitation, that’s all,” he murmured. He handed the card back to her. Turning it over, she saw her name and address, and for the first time, a postal imprint. When she’d seen the letter on her desk, she’d been sure he had put there, in defiance of Nelly’s rule.

  “You sent this through the mail? … The stamp must have fallen off. Oh dear.”

  He headed up the stairs, this time doing nothing to stop her as she followed down a dimly lit hallway smelling of stale grease and old shoes.

  “Wait, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you …”

  He stopped outside a door with the number six scrawled loosely in black marker.

  “May I come in?”

  He shook his head.

  “Please.”

  “You won’t like what you see,” he said. There it was again, the strange, disturbing mixture of fragility and menace. She always suspected the worst of Mouloud. Every encounter left her stomach in knots, and yet he had a way of drawing her back, especially when he didn’t try, like now. He was sending her away, but she couldn’t go. “What is it?” she said.

  “Nothing important. But …”

  “Let me have a look.”

  “As long as you don’t blame me, or tell anybody.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Of course. I promise,” she sighed.

  “Say it.”

  “I promise I won’t blame you or tell anyone. I keep my promises, you know?”

  As soon as the words were out, she knew she’d made a mistake. But it was too late.

  “Don’t think it means anything,” he added.

  “Okay.”

  He opened the door on a small room, a dirty yellow, barely enough space for a single bed, a sink and table covered by a rich embroidered cloth, a shrine for his precious laptop, the treasure chest of everything and everyone he knew in the wide world outside Ste. Cécile les Vignes. Beside the bed was a straw mat, two pairs of shoes leaning neatly against the wall. A red curtain hung over the tiny window. When she stepped over the threshold, he closed the door and turned on the light. The wall behind his bed was completely covered with a bold mural in black and red, a giant portrait of her face, cheeks, wild eyes and hair filling most of the wall. Lodged between the carefully etched details were tiny bits of limbs, bones and organs splashed in red, superimposed with her features at odd angles. Her mouth was open, as if in a shout. A small foot dangled from the lips.

  She groaned, and sat down on the bed, turning her back on the mural. Even so, she could feel the image glowering. It gave her the creeps.

  “I warned you. Don’t take it the wrong way,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Sit beside me,” she whispered. When he sat down, she reached out and took his hand. She bit the inside of her lips hard, but tears came flooding out anyway.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going away. I’ve got work in Marseille. You’ll see. Everything’ll be fine. You won’t have to think about me again. I promise.”

  She put her arms around him, drawing him down on the bed. He seemed to collapse into her embrace. He was so thin, she was afraid he might break. Next to the wafer lightness of his frame, she felt robust, bursting with blood. She rubbed his arms and back as if to warm a corpse. He made no effort to hold her, though she could sense his breathing relax. Folding his head into the crux of her neck, she ran her fingers through his soft hair, smoothed it with her hand.

  “Mouloud, Mouloud,” she murmured. “Believe me, there is nothing about you I will ever, ever forget. Everything that happened to us will stay inside me forever, b
ecause … of what happened. You’ll see, in years to come, you’ll still be with me, everything, in me, somehow I know that. So I want you to know. There is love in me for you. I can’t say more. I can’t stay with you or anything like that. Don’t ask me to stay, but take my love, Mouloud, Mouloud. Are you listening? Please listen to me, take my love and feel good about it. Take what I can give you and be strong, please.”

  When he didn’t answer, she moved his head away from her shoulder and looked into his eyes. His expression was blank. She couldn’t tell whether he’d understood, whether what she’d said had soothed his rage, or whether he was only feigning calm. They lay silent for a few moments, Mouloud staring at the wall. She could tell his thoughts were faraway. As she pulled out of the embrace and covered him with a blanket, he kept on staring at nothingness. She kissed his cheek and ran her hands over his hair, then covered him with a blanket and left the tiny airless room behind.

  Walking back to rue des Griffons, she wondered whether she’d even meant what she said about giving him her love. In the presence of torment spread over the walls, a room dripping in the memory of a bad time they’d gone through together, she’d been overcome by a wave of tenderness. Her whole body ached with sympathy. Maybe it was only pity, she thought, looking back. But at the time, warm feelings had poured out of her needing words and the only word big enough was love. Now facing daylight, she was dizzy, empty, as though she’d left the word and her love behind.

  When Magali had gone, Mouloud splashed his face with cold water and sat down at his computer. He took a book of poetry from the shelf fixed to the wall, selections from the Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarca. Opening at random, he read for a few moments, then closed the book and typed one word. She—

  The first lines came easily, until a church bell distracted him. He waited for the bells to finish chiming the hour. It was the hour of prayer. Looking down at the straw prayer mat, he remembered she’d walked on it with shoes that had trod the streets of Avignon, dog shit and piss and spit, who knows what else. It was time. He knew he should take the prayerful position, but was sure he could smell shit from her shoes on the mat. A sob rose in his throat. He crawled onto the bed and cried until he slept.