The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

  She leaned back; she felt safe here. Safe from questions, safe from answers. Why had she run away from Yann? Where was she to go? Why was she still not dead?

  “I wanted to kill myself,” she began quietly.

  There was no response from the other side of the grille.

  “Damn! I’ve done everything wrong! I actually wanted…”

  What did I want? I only wanted to live. Just live. Without fear. Without regrets. I want friends. I want love. I want to do something. I want to work. I want to laugh. I want to sing. I want…

  “I want to live. I want to live!” she repeated out loud.

  The whites of the priest’s eyes gleamed fiercely on the other side of the grille.

  “You see, I have a husband I can’t bear to be with anymore. I had a life I can’t stand anymore. But I no longer want to end it all,” whispered Marianne. “That’s…too easy.”

  Sixty. It definitely wasn’t too late. It’s never too late, she thought. Never, not even an hour before the void.

  “I want to get drunk at last!” she said more loudly. “I want to wear red underwear! I want a family. I want to play the accordion. I want my own room and my own bed! I’m so fed up of hearing, ‘You can’t do that! What will people think? You can’t have your cake and eat it. Dreams are all an illusion.’ Mad—my husband thinks I’m mad, that’s what he announced on television! I feel so ashamed, and I hate him for making me feel that way.

  “And now I want to sleep with Yann again! Do you know how long it had been since my last orgasm before Yann? So long! I want a man who’s interested in how I feel. I want desire and Yann and to eat lobster with my fingers.” She got up, bumping her head. “And I don’t want to leave Kerdruc. There you go!”

  Oh no, I’m not going to leave Kerdruc of my own free will. They’ll have to catch me and tie me up and carry me away.

  She let herself fall back onto the bench before addressing the priest again. “Thank you, you’ve really helped me.”

  “You’re welcome, madame,” the man said in a low voice. In German.

  Marianne jumped to her feet in shock and hurried out of the wardrobe at the same time as the priest. It wasn’t a priest, but a man in a black roll-neck sweater with thick glasses, thinning blond hair and a notepad in his hand.

  “I live out in Cabellou for half the year. I’m from Hamburg and I’m a writer. I’m sorry I didn’t immediately…I was so surprised when you came in and sat down. And then you were in such full swing that…Good grief, no one could make up those things you said!”

  Marianne stared at him. “Of course not,” she said. “It’s true.”

  “I wonder if my wife sometimes thinks I’m not really interested in how she feels. Do you think that we men don’t respect women enough as women?”

  “Do you have a car?” she asked instead of answering.

  The writer nodded.

  “Could you drive me to Kerdruc?”

  When she had got back from Concarneau, her room was exactly as she had left it: the bed messy, the wardrobe open, roses in the vase. The only thing missing was Yann. The imprint of his head on the pillow was still visible.

  The view from her window to the sea over Kerdruc’s breakwater, the old thatched cottages, the colorful boats and the swaying waters was just as it had been the first time she had seen it—so unsettlingly beautiful that it made the rest of the world difficult to bear.

  She unpacked her bulky suitcase, went down to join Jean-Rémy in the kitchen, tied her apron around her waist and began to prepare batter for the pancakes, both sweet and savory, as if nothing had happened.

  Jean-Rémy stared at her, his mouth gaping at first, then with a never-ending beaming smile. Geneviève Ecollier came into the kitchen and gave her a testing look. “Welcome back,” she said. “You’ve walked a long way to reach us at the end of the world.”

  “And this is exactly where I want to stay,” replied Marianne.

  “Fantastic. Champagne?”

  Marianne nodded, and as they clinked glasses she said, “You can waste half your life only ever looking at the man who has caused you the greatest pain.”

  “That’s typical of us women,” said Madame Ecollier after a while. “We think it’s a mark of bravery.”

  “Thinking that someone else’s life is more important than your own?”

  “Yes, it’s a reflex. Like the twelve-year-old girl who is placed at the exact position in the family where she disturbs everyone the least, punctually sets the table and clears away after her father, and waits patiently to be loved, as long as she behaves herself.”

  “I think that’s stupid.”

  “But only recently, right? Before that, you were stupid too and you didn’t even realize it. Everything was more sacred than yourself, and your own longings were the least sacred thing of all.”

  Marianne thought of Lothar and nodded.

  “You’ve changed,” said Madame Geneviève, her voice interrupting Marianne’s train of thought.

  “People never change!” Marianne retorted. “We forget ourselves, and when we rediscover ourselves, we merely imagine that we have changed. That’s not true, though. You can’t change dreams; you can only kill them—and some of us are very good murderers.”

  “Have you rekindled your dreams, Madame Lance?”

  “I’m still looking for the rest of my dream,” whispered Marianne. And the part of me that dares to seize it. Oh Yann, forgive me. Please forgive me.

  “Where’s Laurine got to?” she asked, trying to regain her composure.

  “She has a job interview in Rozbras.”

  “What? Why?”

  Geneviève pursed her lips and left the kitchen. Marianne found Jean-Rémy smoking a joint outside the back door. She stood up as straight and tall as she could. “What. Have. You. Done?” She grew angrier with every word.

  Jean-Rémy blew a smoke ring into the air.

  “Slept with another woman,” he said with studied casualness. “It’s better that way. I’m not made for one woman, and definitely not for one like Laurine.”

  Marianne pulled back her arm and dealt the young chef a resounding slap, which sent the joint spinning from his hand. His face twisted with suppressed anger, but he picked up the joint and hid his resentment behind an impassive expression. “Yann Gamé didn’t exactly look overjoyed when I saw him earlier either.”

  Marianne slumped onto the stone step beside Jean-Rémy.

  “Do you know what men do when they’re suffering, Marianne? They drink. They sleep with other women if they’re lucky enough to get it up despite their grief, and then they wait until things improve.”

  He passed her the joint, and she took a quick drag, then a longer one.

  “Merde,” she said disconsolately.

  “Ya,” agreed Jean-Rémy.

  The flush on Laurine’s cheeks bore witness to her exertions, her fury at Jean-Rémy and her aching heart. The waitress lowered her gaze as she gave Alain Poitier the outstanding reference letter that Genevière had handed to her with a stony face.

  When Jean-Rémy had made his blunder, she’d felt as if something had sliced through her soul, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  Alain studied her. “Mademoiselle, you’ve been working at Ar Mor for years.”

  “You know all there is to know, Monsieur Poitier,” replied Laurine. “And I know that you own the restaurant in Rozbras and that you’re Madame Ecollier’s competitor. You make life difficult for her. But I wanted to leave, and so here I am.”

  Alain was confused by Laurine’s straightforwardness and honesty. “Is that what she says? That I make life difficult for her?”

  “She doesn’t say anything about you, monsieur. Nothing bad and nothing good. Nothing at all.”

  —

  Alain hadn’t expected Laurine’s words to affect him so deeply. Genoveva…It was a long time ago, yet nothing had diluted his memories. He had fallen in love with Geneviève Ecollier at first sight. She had been twenty-five, he twen
ty-eight, and one heat-soaked summer day she had pierced him to the very core of his being with an intensity that put everything else he had ever desired in the shade. That was the day Geneviève Ecollier had celebrated her engagement to Alain’s brother Robert.

  Alain had come from Rennes to get a first glimpse of the woman Robert had told him about on the telephone and in his innocent, gushing letters. He had believed only a quarter of what his brother had said, and had braced himself to find a charmless farm girl. Yet Geneviève was nothing of the sort. She had a provocative sensuality and a lively manner, with cherry-red lips and dark eyes that bore into a man until he heard his heart snap in two.

  Alain had spent the entire evening of the party in silence. He had been angry—with Robert for not lying to him about his bride, and with Geneviève simply because she was who she was, and was doing nothing to ensure that Alain did or didn’t fall in love with her. He had observed how she behaved with Robert, full of gentle attentiveness, and with her parents and his parents. She managed to convince his austere mother, who distrusted any female that approached her sons, to treat her like a daughter who, on the contrary, needed protecting from men’s nastiness. His father acted as if he were personally responsible for his son’s success in attracting this wonderful woman, and displayed an almost dog-like devotion to Geneviève.

  Later, Alain had mustered enough courage to ask Geneviève to dance. If he had merely been confused beforehand, he was hopelessly lost the moment Geneviève’s body brushed against his in her red dress. They didn’t speak, they simply gazed at each other, and their breathing intensified during the dance. He had felt her warm skin with his fingertips through the silky fabric; he had felt the heat that radiated from her eyes and her bosom. There was nothing to say that would not have belied the language of their glances and their hands. The longer they danced, unspeaking, the harder it became to find words. He knew, however, that they both felt something that their reason would not admit: I. Want. You.

  Yes. Take. Me.

  Their shared desire had tipped him over the edge.

  Alain had always been the family hero: he had won everything, and his intentions had always been clear. He had never needed to cheat or lie to get what he wanted. With Geneviève, however, he lost his hero status. He lost everything, and now he would surrender his soul. All this was clear to Alain, not in words but in the depths of his conscience, as he and Geneviève twirled around the room to the music—in the very room in which there was to this day a painting that ran around the walls. In the old guesthouse.

  Later, Geneviève had bought the hotel, as if she didn’t want to relinquish to strangers what had occurred that evening.

  —

  When you’re young, and don’t yet know anything about love and the world, it’s natural to think and act stupidly. Not that Geneviève, his Genoveva, had ever been stupid. No, but Alain had. He had loved his brother’s bride fervently and purely.

  What about her? Geneviève was smart enough not to act upon it straightaway. She had been like July in Brittany, with its days that will not give in to the dark, bracing their bright streak against the darkness until midnight. Alain, with all the fieriness of youth, had refused to accept this. He had decided to stay in Kerdruc. He had pursued her with his lust, overwhelmed her with his love and seduced her with his longing. Passion was threatening to drown them both when Geneviève surrendered four weeks later.

  —

  Alain and Geneviève had had three summers together, three autumns, two winters and two springs. They loved each other desperately, earnestly, deeply. But neither of them had had the heart to tell Robert the truth. He joined the navy and was away for months on end—wonderful months!

  Then one day when a bitter, bullying south-westerly wind was blowing, Robert came home three days before they expected him, as the ship he served on as an officer had to go into dry dock early. He found his bride and his elder brother wedged together on the floor in Geneviève’s kitchen in Trégunc. They didn’t notice him, and he was able to watch them for long enough to realize that this wasn’t the first time they had done this, and also that their sensations were unlike any that he had known or experienced with Geneviève, or ever would. He stepped over their tangled legs and opened the fridge to pour himself some cider. And that was when Alain messed everything up.

  He had tried to let Robert have Geneviève, begging him, telling him that the wedding was in ten days. “And this,” he had said, pointing to the kitchen floor, “this will stop.”

  Geneviève had said nothing, simply staring at Alain as he promised his younger brother that he could have Geneviève all to himself. She had got to her feet, still naked, and given Alain a slap, followed by a second one.

  To Robert she had hissed, “The wedding’s off,” before grabbing her clothes, snatching her shoes and running out into the south-westerly wind. Only then had Alain understood that he had betrayed her love with his stupid wish to undo everything that had happened. When it came down to it, he had given in to guilt and fear. Not she, though: Geneviève had remained true to her love.

  Twelve years after that last kiss on the kitchen floor, Alain had moved to Rozbras, and he had now been living on the other bank of the Aven river for twenty-three years. For thirty-five years Geneviève had refused to forgive him for his treachery.

  —

  Alain looked at Laurine. She must be the same age now as Geneviève had been when they were so passionate, believing they had reinvented the meaning of love. He hoped that Laurine would never meet a man as stupid as he used to be.

  “Are you in love?” he asked her.

  “Not at the moment,” she admitted after some hesitation. “Well, actually I am, but I don’t want to be. Not anymore.”

  “I could do with a good waitress,” said Alain.

  “Can I start right away?”

  At first it was only the scent of dust and electricity, but then gusts of wind tore around the eaves of houses and through the gaps in door frames, lifting the tablecloths in Ar Mor and sending glasses smashing to the floor. It was shortly after eleven o’clock at night.

  Old Bretons battened down their shutters and drove their animals into their sheds. The men went around the houses looking for unattached objects that might be swept away. They leaned into the wind as if they needed it for support. Children and cats took fright, even if they couldn’t remember the events of Boxing Day morning ten years previously, in 1999, when a hurricane had crashed through Brittany. It had been the fiercest hurricane since records began. Its name was Lothar.

  The clouds hung low and black, and the first raindrops were as thick and heavy as blood. Jean-Rémy, Geneviève Ecollier, Madame Gilbert and her husband (both on their anniversary date) were with Padrig (the temporary kitchen help), and Marianne at Ar Mor. Jean-Rémy didn’t dare to look at Madame Gilbert.

  “You shouldn’t drive in this,” Madame Geneviève said to Madame and Monsieur Gilbert. She had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the rain pounding on the windowpanes.

  “Do you still have a suite available?” asked Monsieur Gilbert. He was an ethnopsychologist and extremely proud of the fact that he could put entire countries on the couch. He saw migrants setting fire to cars in Paris as an expression of their cultural depression. Madame Gilbert let the smoke curl from between her red-painted lips.

  Geneviève smiled. “King-size bed, double bathtub and a mirror on the ceiling.”

  “That would be just the right thing for our special day, don’t you think, ma tigresse?” Monsieur Gilbert suggested to his wife, and she nodded, smiled and hugged him, all the while looking Jean-Rémy in the eye over her husband’s shoulder. Geneviève gave them their key.

  There was a massive clap of thunder, followed by a hiss, a bang and a blinding flash that lit up the breakwater. The electric lamps flickered briefly, then went out. Now the only light came from the table candles. In the intimate darkness, Jean-Rémy saw Monsieur Gilbert’s hand feel its way down to his wife’s bum.<
br />
  Suddenly the door flew open with a crash to reveal Laurine. She was completely soaked, her shirt transparent. Padrig stared at her, Monsieur Gilbert stared at her, and Jean-Rémy felt like murdering them all.

  “Padrig!” he called angrily. “Give me a hand in the kitchen. I have to start the back-up generator for the cooler.”

  The rain was now beating against the windows with such force that Geneviève had to shout. “Another Calvados to warm you all up.” She poured six shots.

  The sky was piled high with red-black towers of cloud. A streak of lightning split the blackness of the sky like a seam.

  —

  Jean-Rémy and Padrig started the generator, and the lights flickered into life again. The dusky, sensual magic that had filled the room a moment earlier was banished by a cruel neon blaze.

  “What’s that?” asked Padrig, pointing to a half-hidden box of flowers and letters in the cooler. Without a word, Jean-Rémy held out the envelopes to him. Each bore Laurine’s name and a date. Dozens of love letters.

  “And you never gave them to her, you idiot?”

  “I’ll never be able to now. I’ve hurt her. None of these will mean anything to her now.”

  Padrig shook his head in exasperation.

  —

  Laurine had put on her jacket and fetched the rest of her belongings from her locker in the staff toilets.

  “Will you drive me home, Padrig?” she asked firmly, not deigning even to glance at Jean-Rémy. Madame Gilbert had her eyes trained on him, though, and Monsieur Gilbert was watching his wife and smiling, as if he knew everything and had come to terms with his wife’s desires. He drained his glass.

  The storm rumbled on; the rain was coming down almost horizontally, slicing through the air. Padrig and Laurine vanished into the wall of fog, and Madame Gilbert and her husband ducked underneath the awning with Geneviève and scurried up the stairs into the guesthouse. Jean-Rémy and Marianne stayed behind in the kitchen with a bottle of Calvados and a pile of unsent love letters.