The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

  She looked taller. More beautiful. Inaccessible. He took a long swig of lager, and when he lowered his glass, he had lost sight of his wife, his view blocked by a phalanx of black backs. Those damn nuns again!

  —

  Geneviève elegantly climbed the steps onto the stage, lifting the hem of her red dress a touch. One of the gavotte musicians gallantly led Marianne by the hand to the stool on which she was to sit. Geneviève reached for the microphone and announced, “Let the fest-noz begin!”

  “E flat,” Marianne whispered to the musicians. She let her eyes wander over the crowd, and there, next to Jean-Rémy, she saw Yann with a sketchpad in his hand. Beside him was Grete, who gave her a double thumbs-up, and beside her was Simon, although his eyes were glued to his neighbor rather than to the stage.

  Paul had stepped into the center of the dance floor with Rozenn, as if the musicians were playing for them alone. The nuns were looking kindly and affectionately at Marianne. Father Ballack’s grin revealed his jagged teeth. Marianne felt herself relax under their benevolent gazes, and she saw the glow in Geneviève’s eyes and the desire in Yann’s. She saw Pascale and Emile, who was standing there with his hands folded, as if he were praying that his monstrous accordion might produce a decent sound; and she saw Colette hand in hand with Paul’s granddaughters. She thanked the goddesses of time past for this instant when she could bathe in such warmth.

  The drums struck up an urgent, intense beat, and Marianne shut her eyes, imagined she was by the sea and began to play the first chords of Libertango. The bass took up her notes, and she opened her eyes. The drums picked up the tempo, and Piazzolla’s best-known tango grew in power and depth. Like waves surging higher and higher. Like fire leaping from one heart to another, kindling flames in each. Like an avalanche of singing stones.

  The dance floor was already packed with spinning couples, and as the violin took up the melody, the waves of sound hit those who were sitting at the tables over mussels and wine. They swayed back and forth as the concertina captured the passionate accents and syncopation.

  Paul and Rozenn crisscrossed the floor with heads held high and precise tango steps. Marianne’s fingers flew accurately and easily over the keys, and the sea rocked before her. A sea of bodies—everyone was moving, and beneath the red lanterns it seemed as if imps and fairies were celebrating their departure for Avalon. Even Claudine was twisting her belly as if in a trance. Everyone was dancing, happy to be alive at the same time.

  Everyone except for one man, whose silhouette seemed rooted to the ground.

  “I have to go over there,” Laurine said. She stepped toward the edge of the quayside, took a deep breath and swung her arms behind her. Alain, taking one great stride, was only just in time to stop her diving headlong into the water and swimming across the Aven.

  He held the waitress back. “Laurine!” he whispered insistently. “He must come to you! Let him take the first step, and if he doesn’t, there’ll be no need to take any further ones together!” He held her tight until she had stopped struggling and had come to a complete rest in his arms.

  “And that’s from someone who stands still himself!” There was no longer any trace of hesitation in her voice.

  Alain looked at her briefly, then let go of her and ran down the steep quay steps to the boats.

  —

  The clapping almost knocked Marianne off her feet, and there was an even greater swell of applause when the bandleader led her to the front of the stage to take a bow with the musicians. He took the microphone and said, “And that, my dear delighted ladies and gentlemen, was Marianne, the high priestess of tango, and a magnificent sea whisperer, who will continue to urge you tenderly to break all the rules.”

  He turned, and the drummer breathed in and struck up a new tango rhythm, accompanied by the bass player, who skipped every third beat. The bandleader played the first few chords of “Hijo de la Luna” on his concertina—D minor, G minor—and the crowd let out an enthusiastic roar. Marianne sensed when the moment had come to lay down a second strand of chords over the beat and add the tune. The violin joined in softly, sending the melody of the moon’s song out into the night.

  The full moon floated above their heads, couples twirled and Marianne glanced at the concertina player. They locked eyes, and with every nod of his head to emphasize the beat, the outlines around her blurred and she melted into the music. He led and she followed, until it was only their instruments flirting with each other, just as the sea hurled itself onto the land and then retreated, an alternating series of ecstatic passion and tender emotion. The air was filled with the crackling of women’s silk stockings and the sound of men’s breathing and steps on the wooden floor. No one spoke, everyone danced, and people’s bodies obeyed their will and their passion.

  Marianne’s soul took flight and was free.

  Those present that evening swore for many years afterward that they had seen a white aura around Marianne’s body. The blue of her dress appeared to blaze with white-blue flames. A glow had formed around her, they said, and it was as if a priestess stood before them, calling to the moon with her song. Everyone danced themselves into a trance like none anyone had ever experienced. They loved life more than ever before and knew that it would never end.

  At the end of the piece, Marianne gave a bow. The applause continued on and on, and joy coursed through her veins, illuminating her eyes like two blue gas flames. She felt as if she were floating as she strode off the stage into the crowd. She searched for Yann, but instead she spied Geneviève on the edge of the breakwater, away from the light and the warmth, staring out to the cold and the silence and the blackness.

  “How I love you,” Geneviève whispered to the wind.

  —

  Alain untied the mooring ropes with deft fingers and then paused. He had felt something close to his ear. Something warm. A voice? He looked up with irritation. Genoveva? There it was again…Love…

  Laurine hung back beside the stone wall, her fair hair gleaming in the nighttime wind like a bright flame. “Why don’t you swim?” she called down to him.

  “Because I can’t!” he yelled angrily. He turned back toward Kerdruc. The music was tugging at his nerves, tearing his heart from his chest. He longed to grow wings and fly to her, to Geneviève.

  …Love…

  At last the rope came loose, and Alain reached for the oars. He stood in the middle of the boat as it slid out into the stream, trying to ignore its violent rocking, and cupped his hands to form a megaphone. “Genoveva!” Then more loudly, “Genoveva!” Nothing moved, apart from the dress fluttering in the wind. “I! Love! You!”

  He started to row, and with every stroke he roared, “Genoveva. I. Love. You!”

  Love me. I want your love!

  The red shadow faded into the swirling black and gray, and Alain was left alone on the current. He paused for breath in the middle of the river. Now he had become a smudge and he kept shouting the same words, hoarsely, desperately. “Genoveva, je t’aime. Je t’aime, Genoveva. Love me back!”

  —

  Geneviève didn’t move, staring wordlessly out over the river. She barely reacted when Marianne touched her on the arm. Her eyes were full of despair and fear.

  Marianne turned to the priest from Auray, Father Ballack, who had joined her. “Father, can you row?”

  He looked at her in disbelief. “Of course I can.”

  “Then please take Madame to her beloved. She has been waiting for thirty-five years to offer him her love again.”

  The priest tried to hide his shocked surprise. Marianne gently laid her left hand on Geneviève’s shoulder. “It is time.”

  The older woman took the priest’s hand, and he led her to a small red boat whose sails were ready to fill on command. Geneviève didn’t move as the clergyman began to row them out into the middle of the river, where Alain was waiting. Her body was like a candle riding on the water.

  Unnoticed by the dancing throng on the breakwater, the two
boats glided toward each other. Alain quickened his strokes. Geneviève didn’t let him out of her sight as he drew closer with every pull of the oars. With a gentle jolt the two prows met, and Geneviève stretched out her hand to him.

  Meanwhile, Yann had stepped up behind Marianne and put his arms around her. She pressed herself against him. “Look,” she said softly, as Alain leaned forward and his fingers touched Geneviève’s. But as they watched, a current pulled the boat from under him with a jerk and their hands separated.

  Geneviève screamed, “Alain!”

  Not now. Oh please, not now!

  Before her very eyes, her beloved toppled to one side, into the deep.

  Oh please, no! He couldn’t swim! If he drowned, she knew she would follow him, and with the same certainty she knew that her hate would all have been in vain. She would have grown old without him. Her fingertips burned with the memory of her one and only lover. Alain!

  She leaped into the water.

  Marianne squirmed out of Yann’s arms and ran along the quayside.

  Geneviève’s red dress billowed on the dark water, but she swam toward Alain until she had caught hold of him. Clinging tightly to each other, they spun in the current.

  As Marianne turned to fetch help, she ran into a gray wall. Lothar?! She pushed past him to the harbormaster’s office, ripped the life buoy from its holder on the wall and sprinted back along the breakwater until she had reached the end. Where were they? There! Two bright faces inches above the waves. It was low tide, and if they kept drifting downstream, the sea would suck them out of the estuary and carry them far from the shore.

  Lothar grabbed the ring from her hands. “Let me do it,” he said. “You won’t be able to.”

  Their eyes met for a split second, then Marianne hissed, “You have no idea of all the things I can do,” and seized back the life buoy. She hurled it far out into the Aven, along with her overwhelming ice-cold fury. It sailed almost ten yards through the air and landed right next to the shimmering patch of red. She had attached the rope tightly around her waist. She felt her strength waning as the river tugged at the life buoy and she staggered.

  Lothar stepped in front of her and began to reel in the rope, inch by inch. She stood next to him, at a loss to explain why she was becoming stiffer and more numb with every minute she spent in his presence.

  Geneviève and Alain clung to the buoy until Father Ballack had rowed up and helped them to clamber over the boat’s low gunwale to safety. Only then did they toss the buoy back over the side, and Lothar pulled it to the bank.

  “Thank you,” Marianne said to her husband, brushing his arm with her fingers. It was an effort even to raise her hand.

  Lothar replied with a terse nod—the light touch had sent an electric charge through him—and then smiled tenderly at her. “You played absolutely beautifully,” he said.

  His wife had a lover. She looked ravishing, and she was liked, even loved—that much he had seen in the faces that had turned toward her like flowers to the sun. She belonged to this land as if she had been born here, he thought, as if the people here had been waiting for her. Something began to crumble inside him. He raised his hand and ran his thumb over Marianne’s lips. He bent forward and, leaving her no time to evade him, gave her a peck on the mouth.

  Over his shoulder, Marianne glimpsed Yann, a mixture of pain and hope in his eyes. “Lothar,” she said to her husband. “Can we talk later?”

  “Whatever you want,” said Lothar. “I’ve taken three days off work.” He turned and looked with narrowed eyes at the man who had been embracing his wife so tenderly and familiarly on the breakwater a few minutes earlier.

  He gazed after Marianne as she walked along the breakwater, and felt as if he were looking at a familiar stranger who had kept herself hidden from him jealously for many decades. Yann stepped up beside him.

  “We should probably talk now,” the painter began tentatively, “or would you prefer a duel?”

  Lothar shook his head. No, he wanted his wife back. He couldn’t figure out how Marianne had concealed her beauty from him.

  Father Ballack walked toward them along the quayside on his own. “They wanted to be alone,” he remarked apologetically. “A near-death experience usually arouses, um, the flesh.” He grinned.

  Marianne watched the rowing boat as it faded into the darkness downstream. It was as if Geneviève and Alain were looking for the source of the river that had given birth to their love. She had no doubt that between now and daybreak they would find it.

  The red dot was swallowed up by the night.

  —

  Marianne wished that she too could become invisible. Whereas half an hour earlier she had felt sure about every aspect of her life—playing the accordion, staying in Kerdruc, loving Yann—now that had been reduced to a thick ash, blocking her nose and ears and mouth, and all in the space of those few seconds when Lothar had taken the life buoy from her hand. It was as if he had unmasked her, revealing what really lay beneath the dress, the makeup and this whole sham.

  A hand in a leather glove gripped her upper arm. Colette! Their embrace was tight but tender. Marianne’s eyes searched for someone behind the gallery owner.

  “Sidonie isn’t here anymore,” said Colette quietly. “She knows she will find peace tonight. She sent me away, saying that I should celebrate life.”

  The world stood still inside Marianne, and her soul cowered.

  “What should I do?” whispered Colette.

  Marie-Claude’s daughter Claudine forced her way between them without noticing that she was interrupting something. “Tell me if it’s going to be a boy,” she demanded from Marianne. “My mother says you can do that.” She laid Marianne’s hand firmly on her stomach, which curved up almost to her breasts.

  “It’s going to be a girl,” said Marianne in a voice from the tomb.

  Marianne brushed aside the hands that tried to catch hold of her in the guesthouse, on the breakwater and on the way to the car. Yann’s hands, Lothar’s hands, the nuns’ hands. The hands of fest-noz guests wanting to thank her, wondering why her wolf-like eyes seemed so dim, and why she hurried off into the night without a word.

  Colette tried to object during the quick journey, insisting that they had to respect Sidonie’s decision, as one should any last wish.

  Without looking at her, Marianne blurted out, “I’ve seen four hundred and thirty-eight people die, and not a single one wanted to be alone when the moment came.”

  They found Sidonie in her studio. Her hand was clutching a pebble she had picked up in Malta, near temples that were older than the Pyramids. Her breathing was visibly strained, but she kept her eyes open for as long as she could, and stared at Colette—at her eyes, her mouth, her soul.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for not listening to me.”

  This woman’s face was the sight that Sidonie had wanted to see on this last of all days, and on every previous day. Always, ever since she had first laid eyes on the gallery owner. And Colette had come back after she had let her go.

  “One’s whole life is actually dying. From the first breath it goes in one direction, toward…death,” Sidonie said in a voice that seemed to come from very far away.

  Now Marianne held Sidonie’s other hand. She was not scared by the cold current she felt in her arms and her neck and even in her heart. She recognized this chill: it was the icy stream of death.

  Sidonie’s eyelids fluttered and she sat up. “The stones,” she whispered weakly to Colette. “They’re singing.”

  Colette couldn’t cope. She despaired, she wept and she groped for Sidonie’s hand, but Sidonie tried to draw her fingers away to close them once more around the pebble. So Colette gripped her hand, the stone clenched between their two palms. Marianne reached for Colette’s free hand, and together the three women went part of the way toward the frontier from where Sidonie would have to continue alone, as everyone before her had, and everyone after her would too.

 
They listened to Sidonie’s shallow breathing. Suddenly, as if she could already see the mists of the other world, she whispered her late husband’s name in surprise. “Hervé?” She smiled happily, as if she had caught a glimpse of eternity and what she had seen there held no fear.

  The icy, prickling sensation under Marianne’s hand where she was holding Sidonie’s fingers broke off as suddenly. The pebble clattered to the floor.

  Sidonie was gone.

  —

  It was long after four o’clock in the morning when Marianne left Colette alone with her friend’s peaceful body, and set off back to Kerdruc on foot. She was cold in the sleeveless blue evening dress, and in her hand she held Sidonie’s pebble.

  She stumbled toward the black horizon. Streaks of lightning flickered in the sky, but without the usual thunderclaps that followed; only a distant rumbling came from the dark clouds. A ghostly calm hung over the land, and the silent lightning illuminated the noiseless meadows, the gray streets and the unlit houses. Only from Kerdruc harbor came a red glow.

  You cannot tell love to come and stay forever. You can only welcome it when it comes, like the summer or the autumn, and when its time is up and it’s gone, then it’s gone.

  The lightning flashed, striking out around her. The sky was ablaze.

  Like life. It comes, and when its time is up, it goes. Like happiness. Everything has its own time.

  Marianne had had what was due to her, and that would have to suffice. She tried to imagine in whose arms she might find peace, but discovered that she couldn’t do it. Lothar? Yann?

  Lothar had looked at her in the way she had been hoping for years that he might. He was her husband, after all!

  Oh Yann, what should I do?

  Just as she was reaching the outskirts of Kerdruc, a small shadow detached itself from a tree, jumped down onto the road and stared at her. It was Max, the cat—he had been waiting for her. He rubbed against her legs, but before she could pick him up, he slipped from her grasp and ran off. Glancing back, he stared at her again and then trotted away, as if to say, Come along now! Quickly, or else we’ll miss everything!