The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

  Marianne felt momentarily as if destiny had determined this instant long ago. It was like waking in the middle of the night between two dreams, the moment when you grasp reality for what it truly is, not as it appears in the daytime. Blessed by fate.

  Back on land, the group moved on to Jozeb Pulenn’s house. Garlands of shells were draped from the apple trees. Yann talked to the fisherman’s widow, and as they bade farewell, he spoke the sacred words: “Jozeb was always true to three things: himself, his family and Brittany.” Then he took Marianne by the hand and they left the funeral, which now more resembled a garden party, with children playing catch and pulling cats’ tails.

  Back in the car, they exchanged a brief look.

  “That was wonderful,” Marianne said in a low voice. “Thank you.”

  Yann gave a sigh of relief as he turned the key in the ignition.

  —

  They drove on in his old Renault to Quimper, the county town, and visited the art museum. Yann didn’t try to explain the pictures to Marianne: he wanted to see how the pictures explained themselves.

  Lucien Simon’s painting Le Brûlage de Goémon, which showed women burning seaweed in front of Penmarc’h’s squat chapel while the sea foamed around them, the sky bent glowering over them and the wind billowed their headdresses and aprons, sent a shock wave through Marianne. It wasn’t only that the Notre Dame de la Joie chapel still stood in Penmarc’h and looked exactly the same as it had in 1913 when the artist had painted it; it looked exactly as it had when it was built five hundred years ago. The simple, beautiful church would still exist when Marianne no longer did, when Yann, Colette, Lothar and everyone else had been wiped from the face of the earth. They would all die: only stones and art were immortal.

  She suddenly felt an incredible fear of dying prematurely and not having had her fill when her final day came—her fill of life, up to the top and over the rim. She’d never felt such lust for life: the pain of having missed out on so much was threatening to blow her heart asunder. Never had the act she had considered committing struck her as more egregious: she had tried to put herself to death long before her time.

  All this the picture told her.

  Yann put his hand on Marianne’s back, and her heart was pumping and beating, as if to say: it’s far from over. Every second can mark a new beginning. Open your eyes and see: the world is out there and it wants you.

  She turned and threw her arms around him. She had not exchanged more than four or five words with this man so far, and yet she felt as if he understood her better than anyone ever had.

  Marianne roamed through the garden that she and Pascale had transformed over the past week by tirelessly planting bushes, saplings and seeds—columbine and godetia, poppies and hollyhocks, oleander and myrtle. They had fed the hydrangeas with lime and dug over the vegetable patch. The heavily laden fruit bushes were in magnificent shape, the hawthorn and anemones winked among them and the ground was covered with ranunculus, violets and tiny strawberries that had not yet ripened.

  How she loved to burrow her bare hands into the soil! In fact, since she had been out at sea with Yann, she loved everything she did. She loved the enchantment of this part of the world, forged from granite and quartz, water and light. Magic was everywhere, even in butter cake, known as gâteau breton or kouign-amann. Mix flour, fresh eggs, salted butter and sugar in more or less equal parts, and don’t knead for too long. Some said that it took a sprinkling of magic to make a kouign so good that it would enchant a person’s heart forever, so they would never forget where they had eaten their first slice.

  “White witches should be very skilled at baking,” Pascale said as she showed her how to prepare the gâteau breton, but however hard she tried, Marianne’s cakes never tasted as luscious and as enticing as Pascale’s.

  Marianne, who had never liked washing dishes, loved Ar Mor’s scullery. She even loved the obdurate Jean-Rémy, whom she forced to write a love letter to Laurine every evening after work. He could never bring himself to send the letters, though, hiding them instead in an old lettuce crate in the cooler.

  In the Goichons’ stone shed Marianne found a scythe that was perfect for licking into shape the grass along the drive and between the holly bushes and apple trees, as the quails and orioles sang a song for her. She saw Emile peering out of the kitchen window as she set about mowing around the garage. She gave him a nod. She noticed that he was trembling a lot today, but she’d realized that he preferred her to pretend she hadn’t seen anything.

  Shortly afterward, the old Breton appeared at her side and motioned to her to follow him. They went over to the garage, whose door he opened with a squeal of hinges. In the half-light, Marianne could make out an old white Jaguar, and beside it, against the wall, a dusty Vespa, a bicycle, petrol canisters and some gas cartridges. He handed her a slip of paper and pulled some banknotes from his pocket.

  Marianne stared at the list. Lightly salted butter, milk, goat’s cheese, oranges…

  Emile tossed the car key to her.

  “Monsieur, I can’t drive that truc.”

  Emile rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue in irritation. He pointed to the car, opened the driver’s door and gestured to the seat.

  “I…I can’t do it! I’m not allowed to! I’m never allow—” Once she was inside, Emile slammed the door shut. Marianne started to cry.

  —

  A quarter of an hour later, she was steering the British-built sedan along a narrow bumpy track through the woods.

  “Open your eyes!” Emile ordered, as the car bounced through a tight gap between two beeches and the right-hand side mirror was knocked inward. She raised her eyelids.

  She had sobbed so hard that Emile felt as if he’d behaved like a complete pig. Finally he had passed her his crumpled handkerchief and laid his left hand on hers on the gearshift. When he pushed down, she depressed the clutch, and he guided her hand and the stick into the next gear.

  “Come on, accelerate!” The Jaguar leaped forward. She slammed on the brakes and took her foot off the clutch, and the engine stalled. “Not like that!” Emile clapped his hands angrily. “Again.”

  She started the engine and they jerked forward out of the woods and onto the street that ran through Kerdruc.

  “Madame, there is a third gear,” groaned Emile, “and a fourth. Put your foot down. Allez!”

  They sped along the main road toward Névez. Marianne stared wide-eyed at the asphalt: it looked like a gray waterfall flowing under the wheels of the car. Little trickles of sweat had formed under her armpits.

  She put the pedal to the floor, and Emile screwed up his eyes. His speechless gestures ensured that they made it to the supermarket in Névez, where Marianne swung the car to a halt across two parking spaces. She peeled her trembling hands from the leather steering wheel. “Phew!” she gasped, her eyes glowing.

  Emile was smiling as he got out of the car, but he turned his face away before Marianne could catch his expression. He wasn’t finished with her yet. Once in the supermarket, he introduced her to Laurent, a jolly-looking man behind the well-stocked meat counter. Laurent had a perfectly spherical head, a waxed mustache, twinkling chestnut eyes and a thin wreath of hair.

  “Enchanté, Madame Marie-Anne,” he said, winking as he stretched his hand across the counter. This done, Emile nodded to Marianne, gave her the money and the list again, and sat down in the small café between the car park and the petrol station to wait until Marianne had finished. He didn’t intend to help her with the shopping. If this woman truly wanted to stand on her own two feet, then there was no way he was going to carry her!

  —

  When they had driven back to Kerdruc and tidied away the shopping into the larder and the fridge, Marianne wound up for a thank-you speech, but Emile cut her off with a dismissive wave. “Thank you,” she said anyway. “For that, and for the driving lesson.”

  “E-keit ma vi en da sav, e kavi bazh d’en em harpañ,” Emile whispered, as if reading her
mind. As long as you can walk upright, you will find a walking stick. As long as you are brave, someone will help you.

  She glanced at the gnarled old man. This was the first time he had wasted so much breath. Furthermore, he was smiling kindly at her.

  Pascale came tottering out of the bedroom in Emile’s pajamas and a pair of rubber boots. She bent forward to kiss Emile, sighing, her eyes half shut. He loved her so much.

  “Do you still want to kill yourself, Marianne?” asked Emile, and Pascale raised a hand to her lips in shock, ready to stifle the cry that was trying to spill out of her throat.

  Marianne turned pale. “How do you know about that?”

  Emile tapped on his heart. “Why did you come here to die?” He asked it as calmly as if he were enquiring about her plans for dinner.

  “I wanted to see the sea,” answered Marianne.

  “The sea,” repeated Emile. His eyes were focused on Marianne’s. “The sea contains both turmoil and profound silence. There are no ties between it and us, yet we still yearn for it to understand our thoughts and actions. And did the sea want you?”

  “I would gladly have drowned in it,” Marianne said quietly. “It would have buried everything. First it would have swept over my head and then it would have forgotten me. That’s how it was supposed to be: I was on a quest for death.”

  “But then?” Pascale asked anxiously.

  “Then life intervened.”

  —

  Marianne made it back to the restaurant just in time for the evening shift, and found a white rose in front of her door. It had a delicate scent of raspberries. Next to it lay a postcard of Penmarc’h chapel, which had given her such a powerful reminder of her desire to live.

  Yann.

  Marianne wondered if she deserved to be so happy. Since their excursion, she and Yann had seen each other every day. He came for lunch to Ar Mor, waited until her shift was over and then spent the afternoon with her until it was time to go back to her pots and pans. On the days she visited Pascale and Emile, either he would accompany her and sit on the terrace to draw, or he would wait until late evening when Jean-Rémy let her leave work. Usually, though, he came to see her twice a day, in the afternoon and the evening.

  Marianne learned French from him more quickly than from anyone else, which might have been due to the warm, two-toned timbre of his voice. She loved driving around the countryside with him in his Renault, visiting a fishing village or one of the many castles and remote chapels. She also loved watching him walk away from her, admiring the powerful shoulders better suited to a carpenter than to a painter.

  They were like two addicts, diving recklessly into each other and drinking in the other’s presence as if there would soon be nothing more to drink.

  She got used to the man with the marine eyes drawing her. He never showed his pictures, but for now his gaze contained everything she needed to see: how he saw her.

  He filled pad after pad with sketches of Marianne’s face and hands as she went about whatever she happened to be doing at that moment: cooking or gardening, sitting still so as not to disturb the cat curled up on her lap, or singing gently as she peeled vegetables.

  So far they had not shared a single kiss. Marianne was in no hurry: she knew it would mark the dawn of a new era. One kiss would become two, and two a flood. They would not want to linger for long on the other’s mouth, and their kisses would move tentatively downward. And that scared her.

  She quivered inside at the thought of Yann undressing her, seeing her naked, aging body: the skin, the folds and pleats, the bays and other offensive peculiarities the aging process held in store.

  And yet…at the same time her yearning grew to feel Yann’s hands not just on her cheek, arm and lips. But how horrible and terrible it would be if she did not please him! No, there was still a lot of time for kissing.

  —

  On a Monday, traditionally the quietest day at Ar Mor, Jean-Rémy gave her some time off. She and Yann drove east toward the magical forest of Brocéliande. As they traveled along the winding roads to Paimport, twenty-five miles west of Rennes, Yann broke the already familiar, cozy silence. He shut the road atlas on Marianne’s lap.

  “The grove of Brocéliande doesn’t feature on any ordinary map: it is only to be found in our hopes and dreams. In our world it is known as ‘the wood at the bridgehead,’ but in the world of magic it is the enchanted forest of Merlin, a realm of fairies and the bridge into the underworld.”

  “The underworld? Is that the same as the other world?” asked Marianne.

  Yann nodded. “The Holy Grail of Arthurian legend is buried in Brocéliande, and it is there that the spring of eternal youth rises. Anyone who drinks from it will live forever. It is said that through the fairy mirror—a completely smooth lake—lies the path to Avalon, where King Arthur waits for Brittany’s call. Another legend says that at the bottom of the water-lily pond lives Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, in a crystal citadel.”

  Marianne listened and reflected on these words. The Lady of the Lake. She had never heard that name before, but as Yann spoke, she had the feeling that this lady had merely slipped her mind. “Who is she?” she asked in a low voice.

  “She was the one who took away all Merlin’s magic powers, offering him her eternal love in return. She pulled him down into the depths for a never-ending banquet that lasts to this day.”

  Marianne saw in her mind’s eye a glass castle, surrounded by water and shifting shadows.

  —

  Silvery shreds of mist greeted Marianne and Yann as they made their way under tall, ivy-clad trees, through the drooping foliage of oaks and birch thickets, into the enchanted forest. It was silent. An expectant silence. Another twenty minutes and they reached the Fontaines du Barenton.

  “This is where Merlin and Viviane first met,” whispered Yann, as if he feared disturbing the creatures of the forest. Marianne noticed bubbles rising gently through the crystal-clear waters from the gravelly bottom.

  “The spring is laughing,” said Yann. “It doesn’t always, only when it sees two people like Merlin and Viviane who…” He didn’t finish his sentence.

  Who love each other.

  Marianne looked down into the water. This was exactly how it felt in her chest: delicate bubbles sparkling up from the underground spring, then gently bursting. Inexplicable. Wonderful. Her heart laughed like this spring when she was with Yann.

  Hand in hand they wandered through the silent woods, which seemed to Marianne to be exactly as they must have been a thousand years ago. Dense, bewitched, gloomy. Moorland, bogs and lush green grass. Paths that no forester ever leveled. The wind murmured in the mighty oaks, and the sun cast light-green shadows on the soft ground. Marianne felt as if their every step were dissolving time and space. Eventually they came to a circle of standing stones, surrounded by hawthorn trees. “Merlin’s grave,” whispered Yann. “His beloved banished him here.”

  He must have accepted this imprisonment joyfully, Marianne thought. An amazing man, who exchanged his powers for a woman’s love. Merlin’s grave was girded with megaliths, into whose many chiseled cracks rain-soaked slips of paper had been inserted. Marianne didn’t dare pull one out.

  “Wishes,” Yann explained. “This is a nemeton—a place of gods. Sometimes they look kindly on the secret wishes we put to them.”

  Marianne stared at the grave, then tore a strip of paper from the yellow notebook she used for vocabulary. She glanced at Yann more intensely than she had ever done before. Enquiringly, determinedly and yet so distant.

  She jotted a few words on the slip, folded it carefully and pushed it into a crack alongside some others. Yann didn’t ask what she had wished for from the gods, and in any case she would not have told him. Yet something inside him hoped that he might be able to make her wish come true.

  They took a break beside the lily pond, not speaking, rapt with indescribable emotions. Marianne turned her face to the warm sun. Her features were relaxed as she sat there
as if filled with a profound sense of peace, and Yann thought she looked like a dreamy sprite.

  “When a fairy falls in love with a mortal man, she often worries that he will forget her the moment he leaves the magic realm,” his mother had said when she told him fairy legends as a boy. “Fairies die if their beloved no longer remembers them. That’s why a fairy always attempts to bind a man to herself. However, it is only if the fairy gives the man a dark, lethal kiss that she can keep him forever. In this world he dies, and he can therefore remain by his fairy’s side in the other.”

  A sweet death awaits every Celtic hero in fact, thought Yann. It doesn’t matter what he was before—a king, a hero or a simple painter. In the hands of a fairy, he is nothing but a man. A man who has given up everything he once held dear in life: fame, honor, money, power, recognition.

  Yann observed Marianne again. Her face, the play of the light on her hair, her hands that were always warm. Yes, he decided, the smartest move for any man was to forget his foolish hankerings for power, put his fate in a woman’s hands and let himself be absorbed by her.

  Marianne held his gaze. More strongly than ever, Yann had the impression that he was facing a lady of the lake, and he was ready for her to confer immortality on him with a kiss. Now that he was an old man, he fully understood the legend of Viviane and Merlin. Women loved, and their love was so much greater and so much more lasting than power or manhood would ever be. He imagined how wonderful it would be to be loved by Marianne beyond his death.

  Getting to her feet and covering the short distance between them in two strides, she felt as she stretched out her hand to Yann that he was offering his entire being to her as humbly as if she were a queen.