Piers' Desire

by Marianne Ackerman

  Mouloud opened his eyes and stared at his father. A wrinkled old man, worn down by hard labour, eyes ablaze. The darkness had lifted, the fierce light was gone. He saw the room in shades of grey, his future, stretched out like a line in the desert sand. When Ahmed had gone, he sank back into sleep, hoping to be rescued by dreams.

  By the time he’d extricated himself from the drama of hound incarceration, Léonce had heard a good part of Alonzo’s life story, including the saga of his wicked nieces and how the pair of sibling curs had come into his custody. He was tempted to ask about Piers Le Gris, who was the fellow, really? He tried to imagine the circumstances under which he and this strange peasant had come to know each other. He wanted to ask, but the fellow’s monologue was seamless. He’d have had to grab him by the shoulders and fire a question, and was sure such a blatant show of curiosity would soon get back to Le Gris.

  Instead, he helped the trio into the ancient 2CV and shoved a handful of cash at the little man. Alonzo refused at first until Léonce insisted Monsieur Mourabed would be insulted if the dogs didn’t get a few good meals for their trouble. Suicide is a mortal sin for an Arab, he explained. “You didn’t just save his life, you saved his soul. And the family’s honour.” Alonzo nodded and the two dogs whimpered, as though they’d understood completely.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON by the time Léonce returned to rue des Griffons. Nelly assured him Mouloud was out of danger. Following her into the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, he asked how Magali was taking it all.

  “Not well,” she sighed. “She cried most of the morning. I had the doctor come around and give her a sedative. She’s sleeping. She seems to think it’s all her fault. Apparently the boy had made some kind of vow, and he was carrying it out against himself. I don’t understand at all. A crazy Arab boy, he’s been lurking around here for months. I told her—” “Nelly, Mouloud was born in France. He’s in love with her.”

  “Well, I suppose that explains everything,” she answered coldly.

  “Yes, in a sense it does,” he said.

  She’d been busy with the coffee pot and only half watching him. But the sadness in his voice caught her attention. When she turned around he was standing at the end of the table, his face was drawn, dark blue eyes gazing at her from a mass of lines. He looked frail, as if life had given him a good hard beating, and he was grateful just to be alive. Gratitude was not a state Nelly associated with Léonce Martel. She was tempted to feel sorry for him, but just then the coffee bubbled up. She poured two cups and took them into the sitting room. He followed.

  They had just sat down when Piers arrived back from the hospital. He said Mouloud was resting comfortably and would be kept in overnight. Ahmed would spend the night in town with his sister and brother-in-law. Nelly offered coffee, but in the melee of handshakes and exchange of important facts they somehow ended up drinking from a large bottle of Scotch he brought down from his room. At least the men drank; she took a small glass of homemade nut wine.

  As she watched and listened, a passive observer to an ancient ritual, she thought how naturally men rule the world. Once something happens to galvanize their attention — a crisis will do — emotion doesn’t stand in the way. After a single stilted dinner at the Grand Café, the conversation hummed along like a good car on a freshly paved motorway. They hardly gave her a second glance. The moment Piers Le Gris sat down, Léonce noticed the atmosphere change, the familiar haze of intimacy, calling her Madame Reboul, an unconvincing politesse laid on for the benefit of an interloper. He decided they were lovers. He kept up a rousing conversation with Le Gris but watched her every move, looking for confirmation.

  Had Piers been alone with Nelly, he would have found the encounter awkward. The presence of Léonce handed him a lifeline. He was grateful for an opportunity to be sociable and generous with his Scotch, a chance to watch her out of the corner of his eye without having to face her gaze. They carried on as if nothing had changed. If he drank a little too much, or too quickly, it was pure carelessness and not a contest. A diligent drinker, Léonce had a precise understanding of his own tolerance and monitored his intake. As the evening wore on and evolved into dinner, hastily prepared by Nelly, he made an effort to draw her into the conversation. He was determined to demonstrate indifference.

  Later, thinking through the evening, Piers would marvel at how adroitly the old man had played the scene. He ignored Nelly for long stretches, then out of the blue he’d turn to her and say something, recall a distant detail about some person or trivial event in their past, and his attention covered her like a cloak. She was helpless in such moments, totally drawn in by his gaze. An outsider felt invisible. By the end of the evening Piers wondered whether he might have dreamed the previous night. Had she really come into his candle-lit room? Was that her waiflike body he’d held in his arms? The fragile embrace into which he’d poured months if not years of desire? He was thinking these thoughts, reliving a dreamlike night that had delivered him into a state of grace, a new world in which miracles do happen and the future is assured without anxious mortal intervention, when he was seized by an involuntary urge to yawn. Nelly stopped talking in midsentence. “Monsieur Le Gris! Oh dear, listen to us going on and on about people and things you’ve never heard of. Please excuse us!”

  There was no avoiding the cue. He apologized for yawning and excused himself for the night. She followed him to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Please speak to Magali,” she whispered. “She needs to talk about today. I’m sure she would want to see you.” Her motherly advice surprised him. So that’s the way it is now, he thought. I’m being handed over to the girl, told to keep her company while an important house guest finishes what he came for. Her tone was almost patronizing, the edge of jealousy he’d felt for months was gone. Trudging up the stairs, he suddenly felt exhausted. There was no light in Magali’s room, so he went on by and collapsed noiselessly on the bed.

  “I’m quite incapable of driving,” Léonce announced, as Nelly came back into the room. She noticed he’d tossed a large log on the fire.

  “Your boarder is generous with his Scotch,” he added.

  Nelly said, “I’ll make coffee.”

  “Oh no, I can’t take coffee after dinner. I’d be up all night. Maybe I should look for a hotel.”

  “You’re perfectly welcome to stay here,” she said curtly.

  The nearly empty bottle of single malt was sitting on the coffee table. Léonce reached over and poured a splash into his glass and offered it to Nelly. She declined.

  “You’re looking well,” he said, leaning back in the chair. The new log had caught on and the room took on a friendly glow.

  “As are you,” she replied. “The last time I saw you, you looked drawn.”

  “Did I? At the restaurant?”

  “No, I was thinking of before. After Brigitte’s illness, you were worn out.”

  “Oh yes, the funeral. I was tired.” He swirled the drink around in the bottom of the glass and took a sip. “So, you take in boarders? Why?”

  “For the company. I don’t like living alone in such a large house.”

  “Nor do I. But you— that surprises me. I’ve always thought of you as someone who’s quite happy to be on her own.”

  She looked over at him, slumped in her reading chair, feet crossed and resting comfortably on the needlepoint footstool. He had no idea of who she was, how she’d managed all those years. It occurred to her that she could agree, claim she’d preferred being alone to marriage, that it had broken her heart to leave Ste. Anne’s for the privilege of changing her name, and although Alphonse had been a devoted husband, an excellent provider and a saint on his deathbed, she didn’t miss him much at all. But that wasn’t quite the truth.

  Instead, she sighed and looked at her shoes, handmade Italian pumps worn with sheer stockings, a trim grey suit and pearls. An outfit cho
sen with him in mind.

  She was sitting in a straight-backed chair, legs crossed at the knees, hands resting in her lap, holding a tiny glass of homemade wine. An elegant bird, Léonce was thinking. It had always surprised him how thoroughly urban Nelly had become. The word bourgeois came to mind, her opinions as well as her wardrobe. Buxom Brigitte fit in easily with village life and motherhood, but Nelly had left it all behind. A touch eccentric, a true original. Without the galvanizing presence of her boarder, he found it difficult to think of something to say.

  Interpreting his silence, she said, “You must be tired. Let me show you to your room.”

  They tiptoed up the stairs in darkness and turned into a narrow hall. He was surprised, the house seemed much bigger from the outside. The entrance, formal front rooms and vast marble staircase suggested grandeur, but the living space was relatively insignificant. Nelly pointed out the WC as they passed, and led him on to a room at the end of the hall, no bigger than an oversized closet. As if reading his thoughts, she whispered, “I’m afraid this room is quite small.”

  The bed reminded him of an army cot, and looked about as comfortable. When he sat down, the springs sank. The dressing table was crowded with perfume and cosmetic bottles, a cotton nightdress draped over a chair. Yet even without these signs, the room’s aroma would have told him it was hers: flowers laced with something faintly medicinal, camphor or pine, he wasn’t sure which, but the effect was potent, confusing. She had taken him to her bedroom. Now she was standing over him, rambling on about finding a pair of pyjamas. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Is that your husband?” He nodded at a photograph hanging over the bed, though he wasn’t looking at it, he was looking straight at her. He’d noticed the photo as soon as he entered the room, the shadowy back of a man’s head and a full-on shot of the great statesman himself.

  “Yes, that’s Alphonse getting his medal from the General,” she said, a touch stiffly.

  “I recognized de Gaulle,” he said. Then, thinking the remark might have sounded sarcastic, he said, “What was the medal meant to commemorate?”

  Nelly detected accusation in his tone. She sat down on the dressing table chair. “He was wounded at Ardennes.”

  “Alphonse Reboul fought at the Battle of the Bulge?!” The decisive victory in the Liberation of France? How had a minor military pawn made it that far? Had he escaped the Occupation and fought on the front? Incredulous, Léonce turned to look again at the late hero, searching for signs that it could be true.

  “Oh no,” she said. “It was May of 1940 …”

  “Ah!” The fall of France. So the talk had been true: Reboul had missed the action, packed it in early with a minor medal. He kicked off his shoes.

  “I have a better picture of him here,” she said, opening a drawer in the dressing table. She handed him a yellowed photograph. This time Alphonse was alone, staring straight at the camera, with a medal pinned to his chest. A broad reliable face without a spark of intelligence, Léonce decided. No sign of de Gaulle either.

  “I have others,” she sputtered. Rummaging through an old chocolate box, she described the events that had led to his medal, but Léonce wasn’t listening, he was removing his socks, pants and shirt and slipping under the covers. When she turned around he was lying in her bed, covered with a blanket she had kept since the war.

  Confident that comparison with the shadowy hero of a lost battle would stand him in good stead, he said, “Turn out the light, my darling, Lie down beside me and fall asleep in my arms.”

  The command struck her as bold and arrogant. He hasn’t changed at all, she thought. The rumours had flown around Ste. Cécile of his many affairs, and none too discreet. Observing Brigitte’s marriage from a distance, she’d had ample evidence that destiny had dealt her the better fate, a consolation that held up on a day-to-day basis, even if memories of Roland still had their power. He really is another man, she thought, casting a glance at the sleeping figure reflected in her dressing-table mirror. He’s changed completely. Nothing at all like Roland.

  His eyes were half closed, he was watching, waiting. He’d been around enough women to know there comes a moment in seduction when a man can lose everything with one wrong word. There’s no way of knowing what that word might be. No point taking the risk.

  Bubbling contempt kept Nelly rigid. Every fibre of her body wanted to know if he smelled and tasted like Roland, but the distance between yearning and fear, between the dressing table and the bed, was great. It angered her how he’d slipped into bed behind her back, expecting she’d peel off her clothes in front of him. Even if she could forget the past, the thought of standing naked, of revealing what time had done to flesh, would have stopped her. Where was the hectoring Sheikh Nefzaoui when she needed him? His thundering commands, pure Eros, an irresistible aphrodisiac for the mind had been banished by the presence of real time, too much history, too many solitary nights, too many reasons to stay fixed, staring into the mirror.

  What finally made her turn around was a thought evoked by what he’d said, or so she’d heard him say.

  Lie in my arms.

  The words made her think of Piers, the impulsive almost brutal skirmish that had left them both embarrassed. Not the act itself, a blurry, unexpected invasion. But the way he’d held her when it was over, the feel of his hand on the back of her head, the other firmly around her spine, pressing her against his body. At the time, all she could think of was how to escape. But now the memory of his embrace burned. She wanted that feeling back, the sensation of being held by a man, in a man’s arms. Days, weeks, years later, it wouldn’t matter that she had been thinking of Piers Le Gris as she turned off the lamp, slipped out of her clothes and climbed into bed, into his embrace. Léonce would never know, and in any case, he wouldn’t have cared. In due time, Nelly herself would hardly remember thinking of Piers Le Gris in the dark. The reunion of a dead hero and a weary survivor would leave no room.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MORNING OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE, Nelly and Magali left for Ste. Cécile in the blue Mercedes. Caesar travelled up front in his cat basket, The General ensconced in the back seat, his head resting on Magali’s lap as she stroked his neck and drank in the small talk of lovers. They were making an effort to pretend nothing had changed, but of course everything had. Even without the advantage of knowing who they’d been during the war, Magali was sure she would have noticed the difference. Their words had turned from grey to blue and gold, colours that proved love was possible, which was all she needed to know.

  Mouloud, too. His name was no longer green with rage, it was the red and orange of sunsets over the sea. As promised, his father had sent him straight back to Tangiers and she’d already received a postcard. She answered straightaway, assuring him she’d gone back to his room on rue de la Palapharnerie and rescued the poems just in time, before the landlady tossed them into the garbage with the rest of his belongings. I’m keeping them till you come to your senses, she wrote, and meant it.

  Walking back to rue des Griffons with the bundle of papers in her arms, she’d seen Piers Le Gris standing on a street corner, staring off as if his thoughts were an ocean away. He already looked like someone she’d known a long time ago. Maybe a trick of light, but the air around him seemed to glow. She would have gone over and spoken, but the bundle was heavy and Nelly needed help. A great burst of cooking had settled the question of what they would eat for the réveillon.

  Evening. Solitude has returned to rue des Griffons. In the absence of familiar voices, the house has given up on grandeur, let shabbiness reign. The only sound, a printer churning out the final chapters of The Lethal Guitar. Piers is stretched out in the horsehair recliner, eyes closed, mind’s eye lingering on the story’s last scene: the usual carnage followed by the flourish of a door slammed shut, his personal contribution to the trademark.

  In a far corner of the avocado room, a door slides open. Sounds of laboured br
eathing, the creak of ancient joints willed into movement, the slow scrape of clunky soles dragged across terracotta tiles, muffled by the chug-chug-chug of pages piling up. An odour of stale coffee masks a cloud of incense hovering around a tiny wizened creature now making his way across the room. Hardly human — a description he would not dispute.

  Mindful of the half-sleeping man, he plants himself behind the recliner, out of sight so as not to risk surprise, and waits. A cord holds his hopsack robe at the waist. He unties the knot, ties it again, considering his next move. A minute passes, two, five. He’s stalling. This has happened to him before. In the penultimate moment of a mission, he falls into a kind of stupor and the message, even the sense of himself as a messenger, seems to dissolve. He has already missed the moment once. A draughty café on rue de la République, a morning spent reading old newspapers, consuming one cup of coffee after another. (His eyelids twitched for weeks.) As the hour approached, he’d lost his nerve and fled. They met again in the dark night of a serious injury when Piers lay close to death. It was Gabriel who’d kept him talking while others took care of his wounds and it saved him. So much for the body, what about the soul?