The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

  By the time Pascale got back to her feet, the slightly dreamy look had vanished from her eyes; they were now alive with intelligence and alertness.

  “You must think me a strange woman,” she said.

  “I think you’re a special woman.”

  “Isn’t ‘special’ another word for ‘strange’?”

  “Your German’s good, but not that good,” countered Marianne.

  Pascale laughed. “I think you’re a special woman too, Marianne. Come on, pass me that fowl.”

  “What did you just do?”

  Pascale glanced down at the little heap of earth. “Oh, that. One of those old traditions. A woman from the village brought me her newborn granddaughter’s umbilical cord. Ask a witch to bury your child’s umbilical cord under a rosebush, and you can be sure that the child will have a fine voice.”

  “And that’s true?” Marianne remembered helping her grandmother with home births. They would burn the umbilical cords in the stove so that the cat didn’t get hold of them.

  Pascale flashed her a mischievous grin. “It depends. There’s nothing more real than your most fervent dreams. Am I right?”

  Through the ivy-surrounded transom window Marianne could see Emile Goichon sitting reading at his huge desk. He looked up, but his impassive face showed no particular joy at seeing her there. He turned back to his book.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a hint of sadness. “I’ve never hoped for much.”

  “You poor woman! Well, it’s good that you’ve finally made it here then. We’re always hoping for everything; it’s in our blood.”

  Pascale laid the crow on the worn garden table and covered it with a napkin. “This land…You see, the Bretons are proud of their superstitions, which is why they sometimes feel superior to other people. Here, we are at the world’s outer extremity, the penn-ar-bed. This is where the sun goes down, and everywhere we feel the breath of death, Ankou. It’s the everyday half-shadow inside us all. We like mystery, the unusual. We long to discover a wonder behind every stone and every tree.”

  Pascale preceded Marianne into the kitchen, which looked as if it would have been the height of fashion sometime back in the thirties.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “I’ll make it,” Marianne said. She put the enamel kettle on to boil and tipped some coffee into the cafetière. Pascale was rummaging in the cupboards and drawers. “Where have they got to?” she asked impatiently, handing Marianne a packet of flour. “Is this what you drink coffee from?”

  “No.”

  “How about this?” This time she was holding up a pot of jam.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “How odd one becomes. I cannot find anything. I don’t even know what that is!” she said, pointing to the softly humming fridge.

  Marianne thought back to the Post-it notes she had stuck on the equipment and appliances in Jean-Rémy’s kitchen on her first working day. She found a sheet of jam stickers in the cool larder. While Pascale was sipping her coffee, Marianne wrote words on the stickers and attached them to the cupboards and shelves before attacking the larder. Pascale observed her and then studied what Marianne had written. She pointed to some jars. “Honey! Right?”

  “Perfect.”

  “And that over there is sugar?”

  “Exactly.”

  Marianne was caught off guard when Pascale impetuously hugged her. When the older woman released her, she caught sight of Emile standing sullenly in the kitchen, inspecting the notes on the cupboards, pots and machines. His dark eyes bored right into Marianne.

  “What do you want here?” he asked in guttural Breton.

  Marianne looked helplessly from him to Pascale, who translated for her. “He’s very happy.”

  Marianne didn’t believe a word of it. “I…I was trying to help.”

  Pascale translated again. Marianne didn’t look away. If she did, she sensed that she would shrink in this tight-lipped man’s estimation. Time seemed to expand to a bursting point. There was no movement on Emile’s face; he was as inscrutable as the rock of the prehistoric cliffs.

  “You’re German,” he said gruffly, and Pascale translated.

  “You’re unfriendly,” replied Marianne in French.

  It was the corners of his mouth that decided to twitch first, then Emile blinked, and finally the ghost of a smile spread across his face, lending it a magical glow for a couple of seconds.

  “I’m Breton,” he corrected her in a slightly milder tone before turning on his heel.

  “I think he likes you,” Pascale commented, adding with a sigh, “Don’t hold it against him. For our generation the Germans aren’t simply northern neighbors. They were occupiers; they bled our land dry.”

  Marianne didn’t hold anything against him. He reminded her of her father, and yet her heart was pounding like that of a rabbit in a trap. She had been surprised by her own courage.

  Pascale clapped her hands. “So what are we going to do now?”

  “I…I must go back to Ar Mor. My shift’s about to start. It’s the summer holidays, and everyone’s eating like mad.”

  Pascale’s face crumpled. “Oh. I thought we might…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Should I come again tomorrow?” Marianne enquired gently.

  “Oh yes! Oh please do!” Pascale snuggled into Marianne’s arms. “See you tomorrow, Marianne,” she mumbled happily.

  A new little bell seemed to be chiming over Marianne’s head, and it had a courageous, impatient ring to it.

  It was already the third afternoon she had spent with Pascale before her evening shift at Ar Mor—Emile had barely dignified her with more than two or three words—and she was attempting to put the overgrown garden in a semblance of order. As the two of them, dressed in dirty red overalls reminiscent of those worn by aircraft mechanics, pulled up weeds and chucked them into the wheelbarrow, Pascale told Marianne, in her lilting German, more about these people at the end of the world. A lughnasad, a Celtic harvest festival with a convention of druids, had taken place the previous night a few villages away.

  “Druids? You still have druids here?”

  “Brittany is teeming with them! There must be thirty thousand, all very Dionysian, and the convention was called to organize the samhain—the night from 31 October to 1 November when the living meet the dead. It needs planning.” Pascale ran her fingers over her chin, and a few clumps of soil stuck to her skin.

  “And how does one meet the dead?”

  Pascale pensively stroked the blue flowers of a hydrangea, then appeared to pull herself together. Her voice was soft, as if she were revealing a secret for the very first time.

  “On the night of samhain, when heaven and earth, life and death are aligned, the gates between the worlds stand open. The ancient gods and the new ones step out of the other world, bringing the dead with them, and we are permitted to visit their realm.”

  She made a vague gesture toward the garden. “From the sea, through wells or stone circles. There the fairies wait for us, the trolls and the giants. The veil between the worlds is gossamer-thin, like cobwebs. Yet some of us are able to push that veil aside on any day of the year.”

  “Why do the dead come to us during the samhain? Do they have…some advice to give us?” Marianne thought of her grandmother and her father. How she would love to see them again and confide in them.

  Pascale looked grave. “Making contact with souls in the other world is not as easy as making a phone call! Some of us can hear them with our hearts; others need a druid or a witch to do so.”

  Emile shuffled out of the house, holding a tray with three glasses of cold chouchen on it. With labored steps he carried it over to the wrought-iron table under the apple tree bearing pinkish fruit, and nodded briefly to Marianne.

  Pascale stood up, melded herself to her husband and closed her eyes. Marianne sensed how equal their love for each other was. Feelings of tenderness and affection welled up inside her.

  Pascale continu
ed to talk as she caressed her husband’s expressionless face. “Whenever someone had a problem with this world or the other, they would call a druid. One person might have a problem with his wife, another with a demon, the next with his health. Druids were the guardians of all knowledge, religious, moral and practical. Even tribal chiefs sought their opinion, and the druids had an answer to everything.”

  “Were there female druids too?”

  “Of course. Women could be priestesses as well. It was customary to send girls to priestesses for two seasons so that they could be trained as soothsayers, healers or druids. Yet they could do so on one condition only: they had to decide between a position as a high priestess and life at a man’s side. Love and wisdom were mutually exclusive.” She gave Emile another kiss, and he withdrew into the shade of the pergola without a word.

  Pascale played with a buttercup. “Every woman is a priestess,” she said abruptly. “Every single one.” She turned to Marianne, her eyes as clear as water. “The major religions and their shepherds have assigned to women a position that isn’t ours, making us second-class citizens. The goddess became God, priestesses whores, and any woman who put up resistance was branded a witch. And the special quality of each woman—her intelligence, her capacity for augury, healing and sensuality—was, and still is, debased.” She brushed off the soil that was hardening on her trousers. “Every woman is a priestess if she loves life and can work magic on herself and those who are sacred to her. It’s time for women to remind themselves of the powers they have inside. The goddess hates to see abilities go to waste, and women waste their abilities far too often.”

  Together they went into the cool kitchen. Marianne was pensive as she began to prepare tasty fillets of meat and fish for the dogs and cats on the delicate china plates. When they were ready, she walked outside, clapped her hands and called, “Ladies and mistresses, revered fruit and vegetables! Dinner is served!”

  As soon as she placed the plates on the ground, the pack of dogs and cats fell upon them like a swarm of piranhas. Marianne smiled at the sight of her special orange-white cat, its coat shining like polished marble. “That little tiger doesn’t have a name, does he?”

  Pascale rested her head on Marianne’s shoulder. “No, he’s a traveler. But this wandering soul will give him a name,” she whispered, looking at Marianne with unfathomable eyes. “Won’t she?”

  Marianne felt a shudder run through her. “Yes,” she said. “When she has figured out where the journey leads.”

  “Thank you for not finding me repellent,” murmured Pascale. Suddenly her face lit up with joy. “Yann!” she cried, all her melancholia streaming off her like water, and she went to meet the painter with outstretched arms. Yann gave her a big hug.

  Marianne felt herself blushing for unaccountable reasons. She hid her dirty hands behind her back, and for one absurd moment she wished that she wasn’t standing there in baggy overalls with a floppy hat on her head and grass stains on her face.

  “Yann, this is Marianne, my new friend. Marianne, this is Yann, my oldest friend.”

  “Bonjour,” Marianne managed to squeeze out. What was wrong with her all of a sudden?

  “Enchanté, Marianne,” mumbled Yann.

  They both fell silent and stood staring at each other. Marianne’s brain had frozen: she couldn’t think at all.

  “What’s up with you two? Have you turned to stone?”

  He was taller than she was, and through his glasses she saw the sea in his eyes. His mouth was made up of two curling waves, one on top of the other. A dimpled chin. Countless deep wrinkles, radiating across his cheeks from his bright eyes like rays of light. Those eyes were beaming at her, drawing her into them.

  “I think I ought to go now.” Marianne had to control herself to avoid panicking and running inside. She felt a stupid, untenable smile trying to take over her face, so she swiftly covered it with her hand and walked indoors with her head bowed.

  When she had finished changing her clothes, she was tempted to slip out of the house without so much as a “kenavo.” Then she remembered that her handbag was still on the terrace, so she walked stiffly out to say goodbye.

  She didn’t dare to look at Yann as she nervously picked up the bag. She was too hasty, though, and caught hold of only one handle. It flew open and her beloved Kerdruc tile slid out. Yann caught it nimbly and turned it to catch the light.

  “Hold on, this is…” He looked at the inscription with bemusement.

  “It’s one of your very first Kerdruc tiles, Yann!” cried Pascale.

  Yann passed the tile to Marianne, and their fingers touched as she reached for it. It was like a tiny electric shock, and as she looked into his eyes, she knew that he had felt it too.

  The next day, Marianne didn’t dare to go to Pascale and Emile’s as she had promised. She paced restlessly up and down in the Shell Room after her lunch shift. The orange-white cat sat by the window, observing her. Marianne took a quick look at herself in the curved mirror above the chest of drawers. She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t chic; she was merely an old woman among strangers. What on earth had happened there with…Yann. His name was Yann.

  Something wobbled in her stomach when she thought of his face and the nice, full warmth of his hand. She’d never experienced this feeling—a sweet, nagging commotion, like bubbles bursting in her chest.

  “What am I doing here?” she said to herself, letting the soft question hang there in the room.

  Her original wish to die had turned into something different, something much more banal: she had run away, absconded. Wasn’t it time to ring Lothar? Hopefully Lothar thinks I’m dead.

  What should she say to him? I’m not coming back? I want a divorce? And then? Was she going to spend her life as an assistant chef in a restaurant until she was too old to lift a cooking pot? With a friend who was a witch and forgot from one moment to the next who Marianne was? And yet it felt so good to hear and speak her own language.

  Marianne longed to have a friend, one like Grete Köster had been. She deeply regretted the fact that she’d never shown as much trust in Grete as her friend had in her. But who knows: maybe friendship was the most patient form of love. Grete had never pried with Marianne; she’d accepted that Marianne never expressed how she really felt. She had appreciated Marianne as a listener, and had never attempted to talk her out of her marriage. “If someone suffers and won’t change, then they need to suffer” had been her sole comment on the matter. That had hurt Marianne, and she’d told Grete that it wasn’t so simple. She’d wanted to explain why she kept delaying the breakout from her self-inflicted misery from one year to the next. Soon, her explanations had begun to sound hollow even to herself.

  She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt dry and wiry. She went over to the wardrobe and inspected its meager contents: a few T-shirts and cheap blouses from the local supermarket, two pairs of plain trousers and some no-nonsense underwear, a pair of linen shoes and two high-necked nightshirts.

  She studied her face and the notches left by the years: the vertical line above the root of her nose; the crow’s-feet around her eyes and the creases at the corners of her mouth; countless freckles, of which she hoped very few were liver spots. And her neck. My God, her neck.

  There was nothing she could do about it: she was an old woman. But did that preclude her from longing for a little beauty?!

  Within the hour, Marianne was sitting like an excited schoolgirl in Marie-Claude’s hairdressing salon in Pont-Aven. She didn’t consider for one second that it might have been the strange feelings and sweet commotion that had brought her here.

  Marie-Claude slid her fingers searchingly through Marianne’s graying long brown hair.

  “If you could just give it a bit of shape,” Marianne asked timidly.

  “Hmm, it’s more like reincarnation you need. Mon Dieu, you got here just in time,” the hairdresser muttered as she beckoned to Yuma, her assistant, and gave her some quick instructions that Marianne didn�
��t understand. Secretly Marianne hoped that she wouldn’t end up with the same red locks as Marie-Claude. The hairdresser looked identical to her lapdog Lupin, who was enthroned in an elegant basket on a sort of podium next to the till.

  Marianne closed her eyes.

  —

  When she reopened them an hour later, Yuma was blow-drying her new hairstyle. Next to them Marie-Claude was busy picking nits out of the hair of one of the local farm lads. She was chatting to Colette, who was having her snow-white pageboy hairstyle trimmed in the next chair. The urbane gallery owner was wearing a salmon-pink suit, white python-leather gloves and white slingback pumps.

  Colette raised her glass of Bellini to Marianne. “You look magical! Why did you hide it so well?” she called, then, turning to Marie-Claude, “she needs a drink.”

  Marianne’s heart skipped a beat as she studied herself. Her mud-colored mop of hair was nowhere to be seen; in its place she sported a feathery bob that curved around to her chin and had taken on the color of young cognac. Yuma had arranged it to emphasize her heart-shaped face. Lisann had plucked her eyebrows too, although the unexpected pain of the tweaking had brought tears to her eyes, and the dyeing of her eyelashes had stung them.

  Marie-Claude was now standing next to Yuma, examining Marianne critically through screwed-up eyes.

  “Something’s missing,” she concluded, and motioned to Marianne to take a seat at the makeup station with Lisann. Marianne found this both ludicrous and wonderful. She took a long swig of the Bellini that Yuma had brought her; the champagne went straight to her head, and everything around her began to glow.

  When Lisann had finished her work and passed her a mirror, Marianne realized that she liked her eyes. And her mouth. As for the rest…Well, she looked different from how she felt inside. Only a few weeks ago she’d felt half dead. Now she felt as if she were forty. Or thirty. Like someone else. And tipsy.

  She questioned Lisann about possible remedies for wrinkles.

  “Lipstick during the day, lipstick in the evening, and a lover at night,” Lisann piped coquettishly. “Or the other way around: two lovers and one lipstick.”