Had I known at the time, I could also perhaps have learned a lot more about the culture of the interior from the Englishwoman Dorothy Carrington, who was living down in Ajaccio at that time and was perhaps the best English-speaking authority on the old traditions of Corsica. She set down her observations in her 1971 book, Corsica: Portrait of a Granite Island. Unfortunately I didn’t know she even existed until her book appeared.
Every year in September, the town would sponsor a big costume ball in honor of nothing in particular, as far as I could determine. We out at the Rose Café were invited, of course, as were our current guests, and as the weekend of the festival approached, people set to work making costumes.
Marie determined she would go as Medora, the Greek slave girl from the ballet Le Corsaire. Chrétien, who was fond of all things Spanish, intended to be a Sevillian caballero, and Vincenzo said he wanted to be a pirate.
Maggs, who was generally enthusiastic about local events, was less interested in costuming herself and sat around the terrace in the afternoons, drinking beer and walking out to the Ile de la Pietra all alone. I think there had been some manner of showdown with Peter. She was spending more time with him, and once or twice even went out spearfishing with him and spent the time swimming and sunbathing while he cast to and fro among the rocks below the surface, looking to kill fish. André was not coming out to the café as often, I noticed, and when he did he seemed to avoid Maggs.
We had a more or less normal Saturday at the restaurant, but we posted a notice that we would be serving only a light, early dinner that evening so that we could all take off for the big event.
The morning was clear, but in midafternoon ominous yellow clouds began breaking over the mountain peaks, and the wind picked up. The scirocco, the hot, sandy wind off the Sahara, was preparing to blow in.
After we cleaned up from the light dinner, we all assembled and walked into town as a group. Jean-Pierre and Micheline led the loosely formed procession of our staff and guests. Jean-Pierre came as himself—more or less—dressed in a clean, white high-button tunic and a toque. Micheline wore Turkish harem pants tied at the waist with a red sash and a multitude of colorful scarves wrapped around her head. Chrétien was walking with Karen in his Spanish costume, and Karen—somewhat daringly given the fact that she was to be mixing with Corsican males from the interior—came as a streetwalker, wearing a short red skirt, net stockings, and a low-cut blouse that revealed her ample bosom.
Marie had fashioned for herself a light-spangled bra and a gauzy, transparent green skirt that rode low on her hips and was held up by a flamboyant cloth belt, onto which she had sewn cheap baubles that she had purchased in town. She wore a silk-scarf headdress that was held in place with a twisted, brightly colored headband, and she had made up her face garishly with red rouge, lipstick, and an overload of mascara. In a burst of enthusiasm, she had painted a starburst of arrows above and below her eyes.
Marie had wanted me to go as a cowboy but although we tried, we could not find any cowboy boots, chaps, or ten-gallon hats. In the end I borrowed one of Pierrot’s blue jumpsuits and an old paint-stained beret and came as a laborer. Hardly much of a disguise.
We also had with us, for safekeeping perhaps, Herr Komandante, who was dressed as a flaneur from the Riviera in white canvas trousers, a blue blazer, and a paisley cravat. I noticed also that he had rouged himself subtly, but he looked good that night, healthy from the sun, and well fed and recovered from his shame. Amusingly, Giancarlo, who was walking with Herr Komandante, had assumed a costume that divulged a certain amount of self-mockery. He came as the old pedant, il Dottore, from the commedia dell’arte.
In town, rather than weave through the streets, we followed the Promenade a Marinella along the harbor, and then turned up the Rue Louis Philippe to the Place Paoli, thus affecting a grander entrance to the square.
No one noticed.
There was a big stucco public building with green shutters at the eastern end of the central plaza where the dance was to be held. Posters had been plastered here and there around the cafés and public places, inviting all to attend, and officials had decorated the building with bunting, and the double doors were flung open and secured against the rising scirocco. Inside, in the warm light, we could see a riotous fling of color.
I thought I knew, from the wild Halloween parties I had attended back home, a little about costuming. But my experience paled in view of the scene in the hall before me. Here were the usual pirates in headscarves and earrings and eye patches, dressed in baggy red pantaloons and wide-sleeved shirts, some with big country daggers stuffed into their bright sashes. There were many harem girls with exposed midriffs and translucent skirts writhing to the music, and a woman attired as Mérimée’s Colomba danced a wild jitterbug with a bandit d’honneur in his black corduroy and bright red cummerbund. Joan of Arc was there, dancing with a half-naked peau rouge—a red Indian. Madame du Barry was dancing with Louis XV, and many Hawaiian fire leapers in sarongs danced with hula-hula girls. The Queen of the Nile sailed through; several pharaohs paraded with Nubian slaves with golden armbands and charcoal-blackened faces, and all the characters from the commedia dell’arte were there too, dancing furiously—Columbine with Harlequin, Pantalone and Pierrette. The great braggart, Captain Scaramouch, frolicked in his seven-league boots, and big-bellied Punchinello with his huge crooked nose courted a fat maiden in a formal, bowing two-step. There were many monsters and devils and goat men of all types, and priests and nuns, cardinals—and even the Pope himself, a de Gaulle—like figure whom I had seen around the boule pitch from time to time. Here was a bright explosion of all the accumulated characters of European culture, all in motion and whooping and cutting up the floor to an American jazz number. It seemed to me that old Europe had collected here in some pantomime of history.
As soon as we entered, Marie grabbed my hand and dragged me out to the floor and began an energetic jitterbug, interspersed with sinuous turns and leaps and pirouettes, presumably imitating steps from Le Corsaire. I could hardly keep up with her, but she stayed with me, leading me around the floor, spinning off and ducking under my arm, freeing herself for a pas de chat or a jeté, and then returning to the pattern of ballroom steps. And when that number ended, finally, she fell into my arms, already in a sweat.
We went over to the back of the hall where there was a bar and picked up a beer, half of which she drained before I could get a sip.
“It’s good here, no?” she said.
Thankfully, the band, which consisted of a piano, drums, a bass, an electric guitar, and a clarinet, started a slow French number, and Marie and I slid out onto the floor, the first ones out, and we twirled around, cheek to cheek, in a foxtrot. She was easy to dance with, so light on her feet I felt she was floating just above the floor. Periodically she fixed my eyes while we danced as if to say you are the only man in all the world, you exotic American cowboy.
We weren’t alone for long, out on the floor. Harlequin danced by with Columbine, Madame du Barry swept past, a few pirates with slave girls or captured countesses tripped through. Chrétien danced cheek to cheek with the slatternly poule, the erstwhile contessa, much fallen from grace now. They were laughing together and throwing back their heads and gyrating to the music. I spotted Herr Komandante nearby, dancing in perfect form. He was with a heavyset woman about his age, who was dressed in a cheap evening gown and draped with costume jewelry. I noticed a line of uncostumed older men leaning against the east wall of the room, casting a cold eye on him. They needn’t have worried. Herr Komandante loved women as well as boys, and danced all night with the older single ladies of the town, who were happy to glide around the floor in the arms of a powdered continental roué, no matter what his sexual persuasion.
The slow number segued into a jitterbug, and the crowd was off again. I tried to keep up with Marie, but she was tireless. So was everyone else. It was as if the hot wind of the scirocco had worked its way into the hall and was whipping up the dancers i
n spite of themselves. On and on it went in a hot caper, one jump after another, and whenever we took a break, or whenever there was a slower number, we could see the rough apache dancers, leaning together, arms clasped around one another’s necks. Jacquis was here, in a striped jersey, dancing with a tight-skirted woman with spit curls. André went by, cheek to cheek with a drunken German woman in white sailor’s trousers and a man’s yachting cap pushed to the back of her head. Many other people from the yachts were there too, easily distinguished by their makeshift costumes—deck mops for hair, men dressed as women, a soldier with a ship’s cooking pot for a helmet, women clothed in minimalist bikinis, heels, and pounds of jewelry. Even old Giancarlo was dancing. He had found a woman about his age—dressed in a 1920s sequined black gown and much rouged, as if for the stage—and they twirled around the floor during the slower numbers. I also saw tall Peter escorting Maggs in her schoolgirl outfit. Once I saw her look up at him and laugh, and later I saw her lay her head on his chest. They stuck together, drank too much, and tried to imitate the local dance style. I saw them kissing during one of the slow numbers, and at one point I saw Maggs purposely avoid eye contact with André, who was standing by the bar in the back of the hall, one foot propped back against the wall, squinting through his cigarette smoke.
And all the while out in the square, the scirocco was hammering at the shutters. One of the front doors broke free and slammed shut. When it flew open again, I saw a figure in white standing in the half-light of the plaza. Moving slowly, le Baron entered and slipped along a side wall, found a spot, and propped his foot back and lit a cigarette. He watched the dancers silently with a vacant, abstracted expression, smoking idly, his right arm supported at the elbow by his left hand.
Jean-Pierre and Micheline had been dancing off and on throughout the evening, sometimes disappearing out to the plaza to talk to friends, sometimes moving together in the slower numbers. Jean-Pierre was easy to spot in his tall white toque, as it floated through the turbans, Harlequin hats, and the great feathered Gainsboroughs and Mexican sombreros. At one point I saw le Baron catch Jean-Pierre’s eye, and he and Micheline danced over and stopped to chat with him. They stood talking for a while and then shook hands, and he kissed Micheline on both cheeks and made to leave.
Just before he went out, he turned and looked back at the hall of revelers. The scirocco was whipping his hair forward, and he stood with his weight on his left leg, his right hand in his suit-coat pocket. For a minute he reminded me of a tired knight looking out over a field of battle where lately all human energies had been expended.
Then he turned and walked into the night, his white suit fading into the shadows.
It was the last time I saw him.
The evening rose and fell, the scirocco hammered at the shutters and then, uncharacteristically, weakened into a hot stillness. One by one the numbers slowed, and then finally the band announced the last dance.
Some people had already moved out to the plaza, and the remaining couples were blown across the floor like errant leaves swept by squalls and gusts. They clung together, their costumes askew, tired and half-drunk but reluctant to let the night go.
The music ended and the dancers sauntered offstage, arms draped around one another as the musicians packed their instruments.
When we came out to the plaza, it was strangely still without the surge of the scirocco. The cafés were emptying, the last of the coffees and aperitifs served, and the people were disappearing down back streets and along the promenade leading to the port where the dinghies for their yachts nosed each other at the quay.
Marie put her arm around my waist and leaned her head on my shoulder, and we went over to the promenade and walked away from the town. Farther along, the walk gave way to an unpaved track, and we followed this eastward toward the wilder shores on the opposite side of the harbor. There was a sandy spit below the track, and we crossed through the scrub and sat on the beach for a while, watching the lights wink out across the bay at the Rose Café and the great circle of constellations wheeling around the North Star.
Beyond the bay, I could see the shark-fin outline of the rocky coast and hear the lonely cries of night-flying shorebirds, the first of the southbound migrants, headed across the coasts for Africa.
“Are you going back to Paris after this?” Marie asked after a while. She sounded older somehow, more serious.
I told her yes, later, maybe sometime in early October, I would go back to school.
“Will you look me up? Will I see you again?”
“Sure,” I said. “But this sounds like some kind of an ending. Are you leaving?”
“My parents. They are coming back. It won’t be the same, and then when they leave, I have to go with them. It’s so sad.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. I was struck by an odd loneliness, a little frisson of fear. Whatever would I do now, in this remote, forbidding country, alone?
“I don’t like it,” I said.
She looked over and fixed my eyes. “Neither do I. I didn’t expect this.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
She kissed me suddenly and flung her arms around me and held on desperately and wouldn’t let go. I grabbed her, and we rolled down together into the sand. I could smell her distinctive perfume mixed with salt and summer and the wild scent of the maquis.
The beach was still warm; the harbor was protected and calm; and the waters merely slapped at the shore. But out beyond the Ile de la Pietra, the hammer blows of the scirocco were still making themselves known, and the pitched waves were throwing themselves against the ancient Corsican granite again and again in a steady, rhythmic pulse, as if marking the passage of time.
In the end we stayed there all night.
chapter sixteen
Le Mistral
Marie’s parents showed up the following Thursday, as expected, and immediately wandered off to the village and the shops and bars with their restless Parisian energy. Marie withdrew and became bored and moody, and merely rolled her eyes heavenward whenever we were together with her parents, as if to say, have you ever met anyone as stupid as they are? Nevertheless, she was gracious about including me and admitting, in so many words, that this American cowboy was her petit ami, her current boyfriend.
One night, having made some arrangements with Jean-Pierre, they invited me to a dinner in town at a restaurant just off the plaza that specialized in island cuisine. Giancarlo came along, and they selected a table on the verandah from which we could look down across the square to the building where the dance had been held the weekend before. I couldn’t help but think back on the bright revels of that evening and my night with Marie on the beach. She sat across from me and we exchanged glances from time to time, probably sharing the same memories.
Giancarlo and Marie’s parents spent the evening analyzing the current political situation, with Franco and Salazar in control on the Iberian Peninsula, a right-wing coalition of generals and colonels waiting offstage down in Greece, and, more importantly as far as they were concerned, the OAS blowing up apartment buildings and gunning for de Gaulle and planning for some kind of new France, which would be very like the old France—only worse. Marie’s parents feared a second wave of fascism, but Giancarlo, who had the advantage of age, was arguing the bigger picture.
“My dear friends,” he pronounced at one point. “Not to worry. It will all come to a sad and simpering end. I accept your point on the dangers of fascism, of course. But I must disagree with your concept of the communal state and the redistribution of property.”
He sipped his wine, replaced the glass carefully on the table, touched the sides of his lips with his napkin, and announced that he would continue.
“In point one, I must argue that power by means of violence is a great disorder, but that that disorder begets an order of sorts. Id est, the streets are clean. The trains run on time. No crime in the streets. But you will of course agree that a perfect order is, enfin, disorder, and whet
her that order is sustained by monarchy, despot, or the Comintern makes no difference. I mean to say that the leader is dead in our time. There shall be no more Caesars. The Führer is dead by his own hand! Il Duce is hung upside down in a square by his people. All dead. And now Europe will give birth to a benign liberal democracy.”
He paused again.
“You can see the modern-day progenitor of this new world aborning, there below us.”
He waved his arm and spread his hand to the statue on the square.
“Behold! Pasquale Paoli, with his mad idea of a liberal constitutional government. And now, from the sperm of that first failed revolution, a new form of king shall be conceived and that king shall be named ‘Charter.’ And Charter, like Saturn, will consume all its children: the nations and the kingdoms and the empires and all the borders in between.”
I looked down at the square with its statue of the Corsican liberator. But I could not help but also notice the two ice cream stands on the north side of the square, and near the statue, the blinking lights of the carousel circling round and round, carrying its passengers to the next generation.
I had had perhaps too much to drink that night, and for the first time, deigned to venture an opinion.
“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream,” I said.
They all turned on me with blank stares. Marie laughed and covered her mouth.
“What is that you say, my son?” Giancarlo asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just a quote from an American poet.”
They all nodded politely and dashed headlong back into their various predictions.
The next day, a Friday, Giancarlo took a hired car down to Calvi and left on the afternoon ferry. On Sunday, Marie spent most of the morning packing her bags. I hadn’t seen much of her over the weekend. It was the end of summer and turned out to be a busy period. I had a lot of fish to clean, and the tables were full throughout lunch and dinner. I was constantly at work. Whenever we managed to get a few minutes together, Marie seemed sad and pouting.
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