The Rose Café

by John Hanson Mitchell

  We at the Rose Café seemed to provide a stopover and hideout for those in flight from these various political intrigues (myself included in some ways, I suppose). Uprooted African families sometimes alighted at the café restaurant. A Cuban refugee named Mendoza spent a couple of weeks there later in the season. A mysterious man named Dushko without an apparent country would often come out to the bar. And toward the end of the season, in September, a young French woman with mouse-brown hair arrived, in flight from Indochina, which the French had given up on in the mid-1950s. Russians and Eastern Europeans who had wandered out of the postwar camps for displaced persons that were scattered all across Europe occasionally stopped in, bearing with them their unfortunate histories; and southeast of us, below Bastia, the French government was providing agricultural lands for the pieds-noirs, some of whom would periodically spend a night or two with us in the upstairs bedrooms.

  Corsica itself was slowly emerging out of the old traditions of weighted Catholicism, clans, vendettas, and insurgencies. In fact at this period, for the first time in two thousand years, there were no enemy invaders lurking off the coasts—other than French and Italian yachtsmen, who were generally tolerated since they brought in money.

  I shared the news of the Algerian independence with Pierrot when he arrived with his bread delivery. He wondered about this momentous event for a while and then wondered aloud if that meant that more Arabs would be coming to the island. It turned out he was worried about losing his job.

  Pierrot had invited me to accompany him into the maquis that day to visit his father, a man whom he talked about often over our bread and coffee. The two of them shared a flat on the back side of Ile Rousse, but in summer the old man spent most of his days up in the hills, on an old farm property that he owned.

  Pierrot picked me up at the café later that day after his deliveries, and we puttered out the causeway from the café, motored around the plaza, and took a narrow street through the town that led back into the hills. As we passed little, faded wooden doorways, Pierrot shouted out the names of the people who lived there, including the names of a few of the regulars who would come each night to the Rose Café. Here was the house of André. Over there was where Jacquis lived, and around the corner was the place where Max was staying.

  Beyond the town the road began to climb, and at one point below the hillside we passed a drive lined with cypress trees, with a sand-colored villa with a red-tiled roof at the end, set among landscaped gardens.

  “Le Baron’s place,” Pierrot shouted back over his shoulder. “I have delivered bread there. A mute ogre guards the garden there. There is a woman in there, but she never leaves the garden.”

  The village gave way to cultivated fields, the fields to maquis, and the maquis to an upland forest of holm oak and beech. The road climbed higher, and we began to motor around terrifying bends over green chasms, some marked with crosses where people had failed to make the sharp curves. At some turns, half-wild pigs and cows loomed ahead of us and jerked out of the way at the last minute.

  After a half-hour, Pierrot pulled up to a small collection of stone buildings where the narrow, paved road twisted up into a valley. From here, a stony, rutted track fit mainly for sheep and goats wound up to the left. We bounced over the rough terrain until the ruts grew too deep.

  “Now we walk,” Pierrot said.

  It was hot in the sheltered valleys, the sort of greeny midday heat that undoes the local dogs. The high stridulation of the cicadas was filling the air, and we could hear the jangle of goat bells ringing from the surrounding hills and the clatter of loose stones in the gorges as sheep or mouflon, the native wild sheep, scattered. Deep, rocky brooks cascaded below us, stubby-winged buteos coursed above, and the air was thick with the tang of vegetation.

  In time we came to a well-worn trail leading across some pastureland into the dense shrubbery. In the middle of the open ground I saw a small crumbling heap of stones, the ruins of a tower.

  “Torri,” Pierrot said. “They are from the original people, a tribe who lived here two thousand years ago and practiced human sacrifice. My father says they are still living here in the gorges. He says they stole my older brother before I was born. Or sucked his blood. I don’t remember which. He died before me.”

  We hiked on. Pierrot had a net bag of bread for his father slung over his shoulder that bounced rhythmically from side to side as he tripped along, and finally we broke out of the thickets and entered a pasture where a donkey was grazing. Around the clearing lay the ruins of old stone buildings, as if the area had once been a small town square or a large estate. At the south end there was a larger building without windowpanes, an open door gaping ominously. Looking out the door, as if he lived in the house, was another donkey. An old man emerged from behind the donkey and slapped its haunches to clear the way. He was dressed in traditional black corduroys and a wide-brimmed black hat, and had tucked his trousers into high calfskin boots. He had small, coal-black eyes and a crooked nose, canted off to one side as if it had been broken a few times. Pierrot kissed his stubbled cheeks and introduced me.

  “Fabrizio Porto, my father,” he said.

  The old man smiled, revealing a piano keyboard of gold and yellowed teeth, pumped my hand heartily, and spit out a long sentence in a thick island dialect that I couldn’t understand. He chased out the donkey and waved us in. I could smell wine on his breath, and garlic.

  The interior was cool and squalid, the floor littered with straw and donkey droppings; it had a few bare shelves, a black stove with a pot on it, and a small wooden table with a red-checked oilcloth cover. Pierrot took down a big, dark flagon of red wine and three cheap glasses, and proceeded to argue with his father about the wine. The old man didn’t want any, or didn’t want Pierrot to have any, I couldn’t tell which. But Monsieur Porto apparently liked me. He kept smiling and shook my hand again, repeating Americano proudly over and over. I think he liked the Americans.

  After we had an introductory toast, we went out and sat at a rickety table in the shade. The wine was terrible, and I could feel one of those sleepy midday headaches coming on, but Pierrot’s father was warming up: He addressed me in the familiar and talked nonstop, placing his hand on my arm and squeezing periodically, whenever he wanted to make a point.

  “You must understand,” he said, speaking now in French. “We are the last of the great Porto clan. My people, they married into the family of Napoléon. We had generals in the Grande Armée, skilled militarists who took the fields at Austerlitz and Marengo. We had big villas here and all through the south as well.” He lifted his head toward the ruin across the former courtyard. “Now, nothing. Only the name. And Pierrot, here, he’s the last of a great line.”

  He turned to Pierrot and spit out a torrent of dialect. I caught the word “girl.”

  “What’s he say?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Pierrot said. “Same as always.”

  “He should marry,” the old man said to me in French. “He’s the last. He should marry. And have ten children, all boys. And why not?” He winked at me and made an obscene gesture.

  “I will Papé, someday I will, but give me time. I just have to find the right one,” Pierrot said.

  “He always says that,” Fabrizio muttered. “Too much work, too little time, no girl around, at least not any good Catholic girls like he wants. All reading books now, and getting ideas. Better in the old days, eh? Womens is strange now. I can tell you that. Do you know how old is Pierrot?”

  “No. Mid-twenties?”

  “Thirty-one. No one is not married at thirty-one except priests and Nancy boys.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Pierrot, he wanted be a priest but quit. And he’s not a fairy. You’re not a fairy, are you Pierrot?”

  “No, Papé, I like girls—you know I like girls.”

  “See what I mean?” the old man said. “He’s no fairy, so why not marry and have children?”

  This brought the conv
ersation down to individual families in the region and their available daughters, and then we began to gossip with him about the regulars at the Rose Café, all of whom seemed to be well-known to old Fabrizio, and all of whom had either wives, or steady mistresses, or many girlfriends. Fabrizio had lived in Ile Rousse, and he knew their fathers and mothers and all their cousins and aunties all the way back, and knew also the daughters of all the cousins and aunties, among whom, as he pointed out, were many marriageable women.

  We finally got around to rich families in the region and then finally to the question of le Baron, who was, Fabrizio said, a newcomer to these parts but an important one.

  “Why is he living out here in the countryside? Do you know? And how did he get so rich?” I asked.

  “Le Baron?”

  “Yes.”

  He waved his left hand and blew out a soundless whistle.

  “He is very rich,” he said.

  “I know, but why did he settle out here?”

  He avoided the questions for a while and then reluctantly explained.

  “I will tell you. But it is not pleasant, so don’t think about it too much. And anyway, that was all in the past. Now he shares his wealth. He has helped us from time to time, eh Pierrot? Isn’t that so? He has helped us. He pays the tax on this land here. And we up here, we like to let bygones be bygones, if you take my meaning. He is good to the local people. Not a bad type.”

  But there was a dark side. According to the old man, the seemingly kind Baron had been a part of the Vichy government during the war. He and his informants, Fabrizio said, had identified all the Jewish families in the towns between Vence and Nice. Many of these families were rich, and these le Baron had befriended. He visited them often, sharing the stories of privation and the atrocities of the ruthless Milice, the local vigilante police.

  “But then,” Fabrizio said, “you know the story. There were commandments from Berlin. From Pig Hitler. They want the French to turn in their Jews. So Vichy and the Milice and the Nazis they set out to do the work; willing too, I tell you. In the meantime, le Baron, he makes his usual rounds of certain property-rich families in the towns just ahead of the Vichy operatives. He warns them—and it was true—that orders have come down from Germany and they are in danger of deportation. But he says he can arrange the necessary papers, letters of transport, exit visas. He tells them—and this was true too—that he knows people in Paris, that he has influence. He can obtain letters. Visas will surely follow, along with the permits, and even the tickets from Marseille to Morocco and on to Lisbon.”

  Fabrizio said that in the process of the various exchanges and forgeries and permits, le Baron also managed to legally acquire titles to the properties as a cover.

  “Temporarily, eh?” Fabrizio said, scrunching up the side of his mouth and clucking. “We know what that means. Shortly thereafter, eh? The Milice show up. Families are marched to the town squares, and, whoosh, off they go into the trains and on to we don’t know where.”

  He swept his hands together and pointed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the beech woods.

  “Some Baron, eh?” he said. “But now …”

  He lowered his head, looked me in the eye, held out his right hand, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Le Baron, il a du fric. He’s got dough …

  “Of course, we had our own problems up here back then,” he continued. “But we’re good hunters here in the country. A well-placed shot. One less Nazi. But we get by. We’re used to that. The Italians, they see the way things are going and switch camps. They throw away their uniforms and dress like the locals. Even marry locally. You hear that, Pierrot? Even the little Italian fascist conscripts with no family name. They find womens.”

  Back in the town square, the old men were bowling. They formed a double line and watched as a middle-aged man in a serge suit stepped forward. He eyed the cochonnet at the end of the pitch. He crouched and swung back his arm, hooking the ball underhanded, stepped forward, and then, with a long swing, let fly.

  The ball arched over the course, struck ground, and rolled toward the cochonnet.

  “Ai yo,” the spectators shouted. “Not bad. Not too bad …”

  Another took his place, crouched, swung his arm back, and threw. The ball arched, landed, and knocked the first ball away.

  More shouting.

  Another player. Another round.

  At my table in the square, the hunchbacked barber watched.

  “Not so bad,” he said. “Fiero is good. But just watch this one.”

  An old, one-armed man with his sleeve tucked into his left suit pocket came forward. He stood erect, contrapposto, the ball held in his hand and facing outward against his right hip, and eyed the situation. Silence descended. In the double line, the old warriors held their breath. Sparrows took flight. Glasses clinked behind me. A waiter stepped out from the bar.

  Slowly the one-armed man held the ball forward, formally, as if in presentation to the gods. He drew back his arm, curling the ball with his hand facing his chest, and made his throw. The ball arched high over the pitch. It crossed in front of the shops at the north end of the square, it flew over the allée between the sand-colored buildings, black against the blue-green harbor beyond. It sailed onward, descended, and plunked down next to the cochonnet, knocking off the closest ball—the one Fiero had thrown—and then it rolled two inches forward to stop, nestled against its target.

  “You see what I mean,” the barber said.

  And so it went. Winners and losers. War played with six balls and a little pig.

  The English woman and her tall gentleman friend whom I had had seen at dinner earlier showed up the next day to ask for rooms. I happened to be the only one around the restaurant that afternoon, so there was no one else there to check them in. The English woman, who seemed to be the one in charge of things, said they had booked a room the night before and had reserved for a couple of weeks. I checked the book and found an indifferent, almost indecipherable, scrawl in Micheline’s hand and finally analyzed the details. I showed them to their room and took their passports, which I studied after they left.

  Her name was Magda and she had been born in Poland in 1926, which would have made her thirty-five years old. Her husband’s name was Peter, and he had been born of English parents in Tunisia in 1925. The two of them lived now in London and were presumably married, although Magda did not have a ring, I noticed.

  They stayed up in their room unpacking and within the hour, Peter appeared in his bathing trunks, carrying a net bag with flippers, as well as a mask and a mean-looking fish spear. He asked where he might do a little spearfishing. I told him about the cove behind my cottage, and he set off down the path. He reminded me of a gangly giraffe.

  Magda came down to the bar a few minutes later and asked for a Campari and soda, which I mixed and set before her. She cupped her hand around the sweating glass, and then lifted it to her right cheek and closed her eyes.

  “So cool, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s been beastly coming over from Calvi. Steaming.”

  She was small and angular, with high Slavic cheekbones, blue eyes, and wavy blond hair, one strand of which often fell across her left eye and which she habitually flipped back in place. She had strangely elongated canine teeth that gave her an engaging, sad look whenever she smiled. Her husband was a sculptor, she told me, a former student of Henry Moore, and she was a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics. They had no real plans in Corsica, she said, but had come over from Menton because they thought it too crowded and had heard about this place while they were in Calvi, which they also thought too crowded.

  “We are just looking for some place to lie low. And here …” she lifted her head toward the harbor. “It’s quite beautiful really, with this view back to the little town and the hills and high peaks. And that island behind us, with the old crumbling tower. Lovely.”

  The Ile de la Pietra, the high island just beyond the restaurant, was the second g
em on a necklace of the two islets suspended from the long causeway that ran out from the town. Except for a modern lighthouse and the ancient Genoese watchtower, this outer island was steep and unhoused, and cut with tiny green coves where cormorants floated. Near the tower there was a crumbling ruin, the site of the chapel of Sainte Agathe, which had been constructed at the site a thousand years ago. It was the presence of this red-granite island that gave the town Ile Rousse its name, Isula Rossa, the rose island. Beyond this outer island there were three other small islets, also unhoused. The whole complex of cliffs and islands, and the grand views to the west and back to the port, made the area into something of a sanctuary. It was a good place to be alone.

  Magda, who I learned was known as Maggs, was a willing talker and was very good at initiating conversation about small, immediate things, such as the flight of the house martins that were beginning to build a nest in one corner of the verandah. Like many of the people I was meeting outside of Paris or Nice, she was interested in contemporary life in the United States, which at that time was out of the range of most Europeans and still existed as a mythic isle where cattle and bears lived side by side with a crass, commercial, empty-minded culture with no traditions and bad food. Maggs was intrigued by the current youth culture, which, unfortunately, I didn’t know much about since I had been out of the country for over a year at that point. I had never even heard of the dance called the twist, which was all the rage at that time, for example. She told me that she had been a teenager during the war years, and had grown up in Warsaw, where, as she hinted, she had seen some repulsive atrocities at the hands of Nazi soldiers. I gathered from her descriptions of her life back then that she had come from a family that had some money. She herself had not suffered privations, she said. She merely lived side by side with adversity, which apparently was bad enough.