by Nina George
The two shadows on the banks of the pool merged into one.
A week later, as Marianne was practicing her French vocabulary with Pascale while preparing dinner, Emile brought in his accordion. A red accordion with ninety-six buttons. No one had played it for decades, and the pleats of the bellows had become porous. Emile claimed that his Parkinson’s made it impossible for him to play, but maybe she could? When he opened the bellows, they wheezed and the keys refused to produce a single tuneful note.
Marianne lifted the accordion, passed the two leather straps over her shoulders, undid the buckles that pressed the bellows together, slid her left hand under the strap on the manual and pushed the air button, enabling her to pull the bellows apart without a sound. The instrument seemed to exhale.
She pushed the bellows together. An inhalation, a deep breath of heavy, nutritious air. Her ring finger felt for and came to rest on the only rough, raised button on the left manual—C. She flicked one of the five switches on the right keyboard manual.
Breathe in. Gently she pressed on C. Now she only had to pull the bellows to the left again and…She didn’t dare.
“So,” said Emile, “they say you only find out a woman’s true personality when she makes music. One will read music like a picture, analytically and coldly; the next imbues every sound with emotion. And some are cruel, because music is their only lover, the only thing on which they bestow truth and passion, mastery and control. No one else comes as close to them as music and the instrument they use to rule their love. How do you play the accordion, when you eventually get around to playing it?”
“I don’t. My husband finds it too loud and too obscene.”
Emile gave a sharp cough. “Sorry? Your husband? You have a husband?” The gentle ticking of the kitchen’s grandfather clock was the only sound.
“You ran away from your husband, didn’t you?” Pascale finally asked.
“From myself, more like,” said Marianne, her voice suddenly choked.
“Does Yann know that you—”
“That’s none of our business,” Emile interrupted his wife.
“Didn’t you love him anymore?” Pascale ventured.
“I was tired,” Marianne answered, unstrapping the accordion.
“Does he know you’re here?” Emile enquired.
Marianne shook her head.
“And it’s meant to stay that way, I guess,” said the Breton.
She nodded. She was ashamed; she felt like a cheat, a fraud.
Emile Goichon rubbed his face with his rough, healthy hand. “Anyway, let’s drop the subject.” He beckoned to Marianne to come to the garage. There, the light blue Vespa looked different. It had been cleaned, greased and filled up with petrol. Emile had put the scooter into working order.
“It’s a 50cc, so you just need to accelerate and brake. The accordion’s too heavy to haul all the way through the woods. I’ll lend you this thing for as long as…” He paused. “For as long as you want.”
In the kitchen, Pascale was acting as if she’d truly forgotten everything she’d just heard. Marianne agonized over how to explain herself. In one fell swoop, everything she had worked so hard to block out was back: Lothar, her bad conscience, her sense of guilt about not confessing her reasons for leaving him and their life together.
—
After the final guest had left Ar Mor, Marianne disappeared to her room without having her usual drink and daily language practice session with Jean-Rémy. She lay staring at the ceiling in the dark, observing the pools of moonlight, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had a rising feeling in her stomach of the kind one gets in a lift that is falling too fast.
She caressed the accordion. The bellows let out a sigh, a short off-key chord. She listened. It wasn’t possible: no accordion played itself. The moonlight shimmered on the instrument. Two thirty. Another three hours until sunrise. She pulled on her jeans over her nightdress and draped the bottle-green leather jacket around her shoulders. Then she picked up the accordion and sneaked out onto the breakwater.
The cat lay curled up on the seat of the Vespa, but at Marianne’s approach it immediately got up, its eyes glinting in the murky darkness.
Marianne swung the instrument over her shoulders. It was heavy against her back. The cat stared at her. It can’t ask you any questions. But it seemed to Marianne that this cat could.
She rode off into the night. She didn’t pass a single car, no cyclists, not even a gull. She heard only the scooter’s high-pitched buzz, tasted the dew on her lips and felt the nighttime chill creeping under her trousers and over her bare ankles. The weight of the accordion tugged her body backward, and the bellows seemed to open and close a few fractions of an inch at every bump in the road. There it was again: that sighing, the quiet chord.
When she stood on the edge of Tahiti Beach and gazed out over the blue-black waters of the Atlantic—above her only stars, beneath her only sand—she took the accordion from her shoulders, turned it around, strapped it to her chest and opened the bellows.
Breathe out. Breathe in.
She had always loved A minor. She moved her finger two buttons up from C.
Breathe out. Breathe in.
It was a lifetime since she had last played. Forty…no, a hundred years. She pressed down her ring and index fingers and eased the bellows apart. The melancholy chord rang out plaintively, nobly, majestically and boldly from inside the instrument, sending vibrations through her stomach and heart.
This was what she had loved so much—feeling the music in her stomach, her abdomen, her chest. In her heart. The sounds were transmitted to her body, and she pushed the bellows back together until the A minor chord transformed the night into music.
She released the buttons and let herself sink heavily onto the sand. It had taken the sea to wake the accordion from its stiff silence.
As with me.
Her thoughts had run away from Lothar so effortlessly, but now they swirled and roared around her all the louder.
Was he really such a bad husband? Am I not to blame in the end? Did I really try to change things? Did I perhaps not love him enough? Could we try to start over again? Hasn’t he earned another chance? And if love is about taking someone for what he is, did I truly do that?
She had been away from home for so long—but not long enough. She had swum into an entirely new life, yet the forty-one years with Lothar were overpowering in scale; she couldn’t shed them like an old nightie. They followed her wherever she went and with whomever she laughed. They were like this sea, gnawing away at the land, never leaving it in peace.
“Merde,” she whispered, hesitantly at first, then more vigorously, “Merde!” She screamed at the waves, “Shit, shit, shit!” and began to underscore every word with a chord. A tango de la merde. Her fingers didn’t immediately hit the right buttons, for everything was mixed up on the accordion: the F was below the C; the D was under the A; the G above the C. She cursed, she squeezed, and the accordion produced entreating noises, screams of hatred, passion and longing. She tamed them, gave them space and strength, allowed them to expand in the darkness. She let the bellows breathe in the salty air, and when she was too exhausted to continue playing, she rested her head on the instrument.
She breathed in. She breathed out. She thought she heard a woman’s laughter. Maybe it was Nimue, the lady of the sea? She looked up to find a crescent moon: a pale silver cradle, shrinking from the sun.
Her fingers started tentatively to move, trying to remember the most beautiful song she had ever heard played on an accordion—the song about the son of the moon. D minor, G minor, F, A7. “Hijo de la luna.”
—
Marianne practiced until her fingers could no longer defy the early-morning cold and damp. Her left arm ached from pulling and squeezing the bellows, and her back hurt from the instrument’s weight. Dawn had uncloaked the night, and behind her there were the first signs of the rising sun in the east.
Exhausted, she relea
sed the instrument. She was on edge. She didn’t know what was real and what was a dream. Slowly she played Piazzolla’s Libertango.
Still no answers. Nowhere. Questions; only questions.
Four days later, on 14 July, Ar Mor and the guesthouse looked to Marianne as if someone had turned them upside down. Since early morning they had been transporting tables, chairs, half of the kitchen utensils and a makeshift bar from the restaurant out onto the breakwater. On all sides colorful lanterns were hanging from strings, there was a covered stage on the quayside, and French and Breton flags fluttered from the windows.
Pascale Goichon was still chasing evil spirits from the rooms and purifying them of negative energy. She was going to round off by blessing the hearths—the fireplace in the lobby and the one in the dining room—and casting a protective spell.
“Are we throwing a big party to mark the reopening of the guesthouse?” Marianne had asked with amazement.
“Yes and no,” replied Geneviève. “We’re actually celebrating the national holiday, but is there any better day to celebrate a renaissance than that of the bal populaire?”
The Bastille Day ball! That meant moving every activity out into the street: eating, drinking, singing, music and dancing. That evening, waltzes and tango would ring out in Kerdruc, as well as gavottes and traditional folk music. Everybody would be celebrating in the open air. In every village in France, the whole day was given over to the ball.
Jean-Rémy and Marianne had been in the kitchen making preparations since five o’clock that morning. That evening there would be buckwheat pancakes and cider, steak frites and lamb cutlets, scampi and quiche, fish soup and lobster, cheese, lavender ice cream, mutton for the locals, and oysters, oysters and more oysters for the tourists.
Behind the open-air kitchen unit, a young man called Padrig was helping Jean-Rémy to serve. Laurine lined up bottles of apple cider, Calvados, pastis, champagne, rosé wine, Breton beer, Muscadet and large volumes of red wine.
Madame Geneviève was only partially satisfied with Padrig. The mason’s son was overly jealous and protective of the alcohol stocks, tempted to drink them himself rather than leave enough for the guests. She hadn’t been able to find any other temporary staff, though: Alain Poitier in Rozbras had already hired everyone she’d asked! What a sight it was over there. A bouncy castle in the form of a pirate ship, an ice sculpture of the revolutionary Marianne (scantily clad, with pert breasts) and a wooden dance floor with blue-white-and-red garlands. Geneviève cursed.
Marianne had been put in charge of tidying, washing up and providing regular food and drink for the musicians. She tried not to trip over the quintet’s instruments as she carried sandwiches and bowls of cotriade to the men on the open-air stage. She pointed to the wind instrument. “It’s a pommer, Madame,” said the smallest of the five men, who had bandy legs and a wrinkled face. He picked up the pipe and struck up a tune. The others set their soup bowls aside, took up accordion, violin and bass and began to play along. Marianne was catapulted back in time.
She was in Paris, in a dazzlingly lit hospital room, listening to music on the radio. Music you wanted to dance to. She saw old men dancing with young women; she saw a long, richly laid table, laughing children and apple trees, the sunlight on the sea at the horizon; she saw blue shutters on old thatched sandstone cottages.
When she opened her eyes, the vision had come true. She felt the warmth of the sunshine, and a wave of infinite gratitude swept through her. The men were in traditional costume—round black hats with silk ribbons, and cummerbunds—and they were playing a song just for her.
Without thinking, she shut her eyes, raised her arms and began to spin in time to the music. She danced and danced on her own, and let herself be carried away to a place where there were no lurking secrets, no questions, to a place where everything was fine.
She only stopped dancing when the musicians ceased their playing. She had been filled with a calm that blanketed every somber question.
“What’s your name?” asked the violinist.
She called it out.
“Marianne!” cried the musician, turning to his colleagues. “Our first lady, our beloved, the heroine of our republic, our revolution, our freedom. Gentlemen, freedom just danced for us!”
“Vive Marianne!” they shouted in unison, bowing low to her.
Marianne went back into the kitchen with the feeling that she had just taken a great step forward in her true life.
The ball wasn’t yet officially open, but the first Ar Mor regulars had already arrived: Marie-Claude, her highly pregnant daughter Claudine, Paul and the twins, who were watching them set up the buffet, Jean-Rémy nimbly, and Padrig with infuriating sloth.
Paul leaned forward to give Claudine’s tummy a gentle tickle. “Don’t you think Claudine looks fantastic? So…so pregnant.”
“I don’t want to look fantastic. I want to look slim,” grumbled Marie-Claude’s daughter.
“Why? You look great, especially your wobbly backside,” Marie-Claude said, laughing.
“My backside keeps flirting with men while I’m looking the other way, and there’s nothing I can do about it!”
—
When night began to cozy up to the day, the whole of Kerdruc sang the “La Marseillaise.” As the last note died away, the musicians launched straight into a tango, and the breakwater seemed to glow with a kaleidoscope of swaying dresses.
Paul was sitting with his arms crossed on Ar Mor’s terrace. He was watching Rozenn, who was standing on the margins, observing the couples spinning past her.
The boy, as Paul called her new young boyfriend, hadn’t danced with her once so far. She wouldn’t be happy about that. Rozenn loved dancing, especially Argentine tango. She channeled all her romantic emotions into her body—reserve, lust, fear and pride.
Paul knew that refusing to dance with a woman was tantamount to ignoring an important aspect of her personality, a slight that she would never fully forget. That was because she had something to offer—her devotion—and she would never truly reveal her soul to a man who didn’t dance with her. For Rozenn, Paul had taken secret dance lessons with Yann, who knew how a man should dance to make a woman fall for him.
Now Paul caught sight of the boy. Having just fetched two glasses of red wine from the bar, he had spied Paul at exactly the same time. He was coming toward him!
“Good evening, Paul,” he said with exaggerated politeness.
“My wife looks delightful tonight, don’t you think?” Paul cut him off.
“She isn’t your wife anymore.”
“Have you told her how beautiful she is?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” The young man turned to leave.
The musicians rounded off their up-tempo tango and struck up a plaintive gwerz. Couples who loved each other so achingly that only their bodies could express their emotion continued to dance; the others took refuge in their drinks or in their private thoughts.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to love my wife the way she needs to be loved,” said Paul to the boy’s back. The name he had managed so successfully to block out chose this moment to pop into his mind. Serge, the little milksop!
“She isn’t your wife anymore!” said Serge again, angry now.
“She still feels as if she is, though. Want to bet?”
Serge turned away a second time.
“Want to bet?” Paul repeated more loudly.
Now Serge turned to face him, his arrogance deflated. “Our love is greater than anything you ever had with her,” he hissed.
“In that case, you’ve no need to worry about the outcome of our bet. Or do you? Are you scared of an old man?”
Serge glared at him. Paul uncrossed his arms and smiled at the man who was sleeping with the love of his life, who woke up alongside her, argued with her and saw her laugh.
“What do you want?” snarled Serge.
“A dance. Just one.”
“That’s ridicul
ous.”
“I know. Nothing to be scared of.” Paul stood up, offered Serge his seat with a lavish gesture and then bent down to him one last time. “Watch and learn.”
—
Colette saw Paul call to the musicians. She spotted Simon walking toward her carrying something that looked like one of his peculiar presents, and noticed how he retreated when he saw her sitting so close to Sidonie. Yet she pushed everything she saw down into a part of her where it had no bearing. She and Sidonie were sitting on the renovated upper terrace of the guesthouse in silence.
Colette laid her hand in its short salmon-colored glove on the cover of the book lying in front of her, then pushed it across the table to her companion.
“For the anniversary of our friendship, 14 July,” she said. Her words rang stilted and hollow in her ears. Sidonie only reached for the book when Colette had withdrawn her hand.
“The Language of Stones by Roger Caillois,” she read under her breath.
Colette saw Paul approach Rozenn and bow to her. She saw her turn away, Paul say something to her back and Rozenn spin around as if she’d been slapped.
“Caillois was a philosopher and sociologist. In the 1930s he was a member of the Surrealists, and later founded the Collège de Sociologie with Georges Bataille,” Colette heard herself lecture in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.
“Oh,” said Sidonie. “How nice.”
“He sees stones as a counterweight to dynamics, for it is only through their immobility that man’s quest becomes visible. You see, without stones we wouldn’t notice that we’re moving and…” Colette paused. What on earth was she babbling on about?
“Stones aren’t immobile,” said Sidonie after a while.
They were both completely focused on Paul and Rozenn. He was steering his ex-wife toward the middle of the breakwater; he was half pulling her and she was half pushing him, their expressions a mixture of truth and pain. Onstage the violinist gave a signal, and the first chords of a tango could be heard, led and carried out into the night by the accordion, then taken up by the violin.