She returned his handshake and smiled. “I was silly as an undergraduate.”
Justin looked at her, perplexed.
“I, too, did a year in Paris, but I didn’t have a love affair.”
Justin was still grinning when he got to the restaurant. He looked at his watch—ten minutes early—opened the heavy glass door, and walked in. His publisher had booked the quietest table possible. Justin introduced himself to the hostess and followed her long legs as she led him through the nearly empty restaurant, to a table in its own snug room. The walls were painted a golden hue, the lighting was subdued, and wine bottles in wooden niches ran, floor to ceiling, around three sides of the room. It bothered Justin that the room wasn’t climate controlled, but perhaps these were cheap wines or bottles that sold easily. “There’s a curtain, if you need more privacy,” the hostess said, pulling lightly at the beige velvet drapes on either side of the room’s entrance.
“Thank you,” Justin said. “We’ll leave them open until my, um, acquaintance arrives.” He had almost called Valère Barbier his friend. Too much hyperactive Clothilde influence. Trop cuuute! “He’s elderly, kind of. Sixtysomething. With thick white hair and a French accent.”
The hostess nodded. “Would you like to drink something while you’re waiting?”
“Water, please.” Justin coughed, realizing how nervous he was. “Sparkling.” May as well go all out, he thought. It’s my first expense-account dinner.
“Forget the sparkling water,” an accented voice sounded from behind the hostess. “Bring two glasses of your house champagne.”
Justin quickly stood up, and the hostess coolly nodded to the Frenchman and walked away.
“The house champagne will be good, non?” Valère Barbier asked in perfect but accented English.
“Oui,” Justin said, coughing again. “Il est très bon.”
“We can speak English,” Barbier said. “I lived in New York for five years, to escape the French press after my infamous genre switch.” He smiled. “How do you know that the house champagne is good?”
“I looked up the wine list before coming. It’s Drappier.”
“Excellent!” Valère said. “You’ve done your . . . devoirs!”
“Homework. Yes, I hope so. Please, have a seat.”
Valère Barbier sat down across from the editor. He was taken aback by his youth, but, then, Clothilde had said Justin Wong was a friend, so of course they must be roughly the same age. Almost thirty. Valère realized that he himself had done much by that age. “I like people over eighty and under thirty. One of my best friends in Aix-en-Provence is eleven years old. The ages in between are full of la merde! How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-nine,” Justin said. “One year away from becoming une merde.”
Valère slapped the table. “Énorme! Quel garçon!”
Justin smiled, wondering if the author had been drinking before he came. But it didn’t matter. The hostess returned with two flutes of champagne. Valère reached over and swiftly plucked them from the platter. “Merci beaucoup!”
“Tell me, which of my books is your favorite?” Valère asked, lifting his flute to Justin’s and giving it a strong tap. “Santé!”
“Well,” Justin began. “When I found out we were going to meet, I started reading An Honorable Man.”
Valère leaned forward. “And are you finished?”
“Halfway.”
“Énorme, ce garçon. You won’t lie and say that you love all my books?”
“No,” Justin replied.
Valère took a big gulp of champagne. “So why did you start with that one?”
“It was your first, and you wrote it when you were my age. Twenty-nine. Before you—”
“Before I became a shithead!” Valère yelled.
Justin smiled awkwardly; that wasn’t the way he had intended to finish the sentence. “Let’s get down to business,” he said.
“Négociations? Déjà?”
Justin laughed. “No, M Barbier. Let’s look at tonight’s menu and wine list.”
* * *
Justin was careful not to argue too much about the wine. He was there to try to sign Valère Barbier as an author, not to show off his own knowledge. He had asked for the market list instead of the impressively thick reserve list, not wanting to spend all of the publishing house’s money. That was the way he had been raised. But he also surmised that one should be able to find a great wine at a reasonable price in such a good restaurant. He shared this second line of reasoning with Barbier, who was impressed and agreed. Valère silently thought that any other editor would have chosen from the reserve list. They agreed on a burgundy, a few years old, from Puligny-Montrachet.
“We’re showing off,” Valère said. “Even if the price is good, eh?”
“I know,” Justin agreed. “But I’ve never had it.”
Valère laughed. The waiter, a young man with freckles and dark-red hair, walked in and announced the amuse-bouche, “Peekytoe crab in a cucumber roll,” placing dishes in front of each diner, “with smoked corn chowder and a yellow-tomato sorbet with balsamic vinegar.”
“Merci,” Valère said as the waiter left. He leaned over to Justin and asked, “What is this peekytoe crab?”
“It’s all the rage in New York right now. It’s just an Atlantic crab whose legs curve inward.”
Valère raised an eyebrow and said, “You seem to know a lot about food and wine. When I was your age, my books were selling, but I was still counting my centimes.”
Justin smiled. “I like to read foodie magazines. But always on a full stomach.”
Valère laughed, selected a spoon, and dipped it into the tomato sorbet. “Bon appétit.”
“Same to you,” Justin said. “I love the look of this sorbet. It’s like egg yolk.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Valère said. “It could almost be zabaglione. Very imaginative . . .”
Justin set down his spoon when he had finished and looked at Barbier. “I’ve read a lot about your life, but I have questions.”
Valère set his own cutlery down and looked at the young man. “Go on.”
Justin saw something in the writer’s eyes change. Up to now he had been a bon vivant, a man without a worry in the world. All of a sudden he looked older and more pensive. His large brown eyes narrowed, and a few wrinkles appeared on his forehead.
Justin said, “This château you bought in Aix-en-Provence—”
“Bastide,” Valère corrected. “La Bastide Blanche.”
“Right. I’ve read a few articles about the fire and everything that happened this summer. I became a little obsessed by it.”
“Tell me what you know,” Valère said.
“Well, that the bastide burned down, and, no offense, that some people accused you—though that was never proven.”
“No, it wasn’t proven.”
“But you were there when it happened.”
Valère nodded and began eating. “I can’t remember much from that night,” he said. “They tell me I was yelling something about Agathe—”
“Your late wife.”
“Right,” Valère replied. “There was a time when Agathe was more famous than me. But only very briefly. Do you know anything about her?”
“Well,” Justin began, “I know she was an artist, that you guys were married a long time, and that she died in 1988.” He resisted using the word “mysteriously” after “died.”
Valère smiled and picked up his wineglass. “Do you believe in ghosts, Justin?”
Was Barbier talking about Agathe? Justin rested his chin on his folded hands and tried to think of an honest reply that would also get Barbier talking. He now remembered reading that Barbier claimed the house was haunted on the night of the fire. “Yes. Yes I do,” he answered. “I believe the dead prance around old buildings
at night because they think they are still living there. When I was in high school we had to memorize a poem. I chose Shelley. All I can remember now is ‘When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness.’”
“Night’s weird sounds . . . I couldn’t sleep at La Bastide,” Valère said, sighing. “It was their busy time.”
Justin asked, “Their busy time?”
“It’s a long story,” Valère said, draining his champagne. “But we have all night. If I’m going to write one last book, my potential editor needs to hear, and believe in, my story. Are you up for it?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
Chapter Two
New York City,
September 22, 2010
Valère Begins His Story
As its name implies, La Bastide Blanche had a stucco facade, painted white but cracked and peeling by the time I bought it. The house was perfectly symmetrical, as bastides usually are: a wooden front door—three feet across—in the center, flanked on each side by two tall windows. Above that were two windows in the same configuration, and over the front door another window, bigger than the others, with a Juliet balcony. A large B was woven into the balcony’s wrought-iron railing. The third story, not as tall as the other two, allowed room for five bull’s-eye windows, ovals set on their side rather than vertically. The red-tiled roof—obligatory in Provence—was a patchwork of new and old tiles, replaced over the centuries, each one a different shade of red, orange, and even yellow. Sometime in the future, I imagined, I would restucco the crumbling facade and paint it yellow; the shutters, a faded red, would be olive green.
When I bought La Bastide Blanche last winter, I was prepared for Provence’s hot and dry summers. We had vacationed in the South often enough that I could remember the early morning ritual of closing the shutters and windows in every room and opening them up again late in the evening. Agathe used to be quite insistent on getting the houses we’d rented closed up by 7:00 a.m. I am by nature lazy and enjoy my morning sleep-ins. Among my most cherished memories of Agathe is her standing over our bed, hands on hips, telling me it’s time to get up. “Les volets! Les fenêtres!” she would say, reaching down and tickling my toes under the cotton sheet. I would try to argue, “Je suis en vacances!” and pull up the sheets. But the truth of the matter was that Agathe was a harder worker than I have ever been. She was physically stronger too. She was a potter—or I should say, a ceramist. But you know that.
One of my first memories of La Bastide Blanche was on the fourth of July—when all the trouble started—opening the windows, then the shutters, and yelling, “Turn it off!” I had remembered the heat but forgotten about the cigales. I can see you look confused. Cicadas. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and they were screeching. I stuck my head out one of the three enormous bedroom windows and unlatched the weathered shutters. More cigales joined in, their song sounding like dozens of Parisian car alarms or thousands of tiny chainsaws. I yelled out once more, for theatrical effect, “I said, turn it off!” and closed the shutters and then the ancient single-paned window with a purposeful loud bang. I felt like Agathe was watching me, annoyed that it was already nine o’clock. I raced across the tiled floor, which felt cool on the soles of my feet, and closed the shutters and windows of the two south-facing windows.
When we’d vacationed in Provence, I’d found the cigales charming—a symbol of the South, of summer, of friends and rosé wine, of endless lunches, siestas, aperitifs, and dinners. We’d been on holiday then, not working. That night I had worked until three and fell asleep around four.
And it was not a restful sleep. But more about that later.
Just before closing the last shutter, I looked at the landscape, trying to remind myself why I’d bought this grand house. Just below the garden lay a pebbled terrace, which I had furnished with expensive wrought-iron furniture bought from a pretentious antiques dealer in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. The terrace was edged by a single row of lavender, which at the time my story begins was in full bloom. Below the terrace was a silvery-green olive orchard that I had intended to cultivate on my own. How hard could it be to pick olives every winter? And beyond that, the rolling vineyards, some of which belonged to me and the rest to a neighbor whose golden-stone farmhouse showed, at the edge of the vines, its newly painted white shutters. The village of Puyloubier sat at the edge of the vineyard, for centuries poised firmly on its bed of white rock. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive to Aix, a fact that attracted me to the house. I can’t think of many towns as small as Aix—what does it have, 150,000 people?—that have the same beauty, serenity, and culture. And so it’s ironic that that summer I hardly ever got into town.
That morning I carefully made my bed, resisting the temptation to crawl back in. Looking around the vast room, I sighed at the work ahead of me. Cardboard boxes were stacked against the walls, waiting to be unpacked. Books mostly. Suitcases of varying sizes, from when we used to travel. Surely those could go in an outbuilding? Or in the attic? My clothes were heaped beside the bed in a crumpled mess. I bent down, picked them up, then walked across the room and threw them into the wicker laundry hamper.
I then remembered that I had—very uncharacteristically, I might add—invited the neighbors over for tea that afternoon. I had met them at the foot of the drive the day before—our mailboxes were side by side. I knew that Hélène made wine—I recognized her name and face from the better wine magazines. Her husband was a big brute of a fellow, with a bald head but brown puppy-dog eyes with long, dark lashes; their daughter, who looked to be about ten or so, was, well, completely charming. She was why I invited them over, spur of the moment. Kids have never moved me one way or another. And when Agathe and I found out that I shot blanks—excuse the expression—she didn’t seem upset. She already had a son—an oaf who will make an appearance later in my story. But this girl, Léa, was bright, and original.
The winemaker, Hélène, was clearly nervous when she shook my hand—I was used to that. Her husband feigned indifference, and I was also used to that. But their daughter jumped out of the car to look at the grapes hanging in big fat bunches from their gnarled, ancient limbs. She took no notice of me or the scorching dry heat. “Léa, come meet our new neighbor,” Hélène said, taking her daughter by the hand and bringing her over. Léa smiled, and I bent down so that she could give me the bise. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said, kissing my cheeks. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”
“Extraordinary,” I replied. I felt her chubby cheek and could smell fresh air, dust, and something else. Apples.
“The grapes are green but will soon turn red,” Léa continued. “You’ll see.”
“Come for tea,” I said, before I could stop myself or change my mind. I’d been on my own at the new house for a little over a week and was lonely. “Tomorrow afternoon, around four. There’s no electricity yet, but I have a gas stove and can at least make tea.”
“Thank you. I’ll bring cake,” Hélène offered. “The boulangerie in the village is quite good, and they make a few cakes. We’re lucky.”
The big guy smiled and put his arm around his wife. “Tomorrow, then,” I said. I fumbled while trying to get my mail out of the box as quickly as I could. Hélène and her husband pretended not to notice, but Léa watched me. She saw my embarrassment. Since Agathe died, I have had a hard time looking happy couples in the face.
So that morning as I made my way down the wide stone staircase, still in my pajamas, to the kitchen, I said aloud, to no one, “What a ridiculous house.” The mid-eighteenth-century fresco in the stairwell needed repair. Two white-wigged ladies and three gents peered out at me, pretending to push aside a heavy red velvet curtain, as if they were on stage. Behind them was a Provençal landscape, much like the one I had just seen through the bedroom window. The painter had been an amateur: in the foreground, the slender cypress trees were as tall as the noble men and women, and the buildings in the distance looked more Venetian
than French. But the figures were charming, especially the tall woman dressed in pale pink chiffon, in the middle of the group, who appeared to be about to leap over a stone balcony and onto my staircase.
Matton, my lawyer, almost fainted when he first saw the out-of-focus photographs of the bastide, minutes before the auction began. He said, “If you don’t buy it, Barbier, I will.” Matton has been my lawyer for decades, and we’ve always, like schoolboys, called each other by our surnames. I’ve only just realized that now.
The auction photographs hadn’t lied—the house came complete with wall and ceiling paintings, centuries-old tiles on the floors, multipaned windows, and marble mantelpieces in most of the rooms. But the photographs also revealed broken windowpanes, a family of doves that had proudly taken over the salon, and the beer bottles and fire pit that had been left in the middle of the dining room by village teenagers. One of them had even tagged the faux-marbled walls: “Dylan et Maéva toujours!” “What ridiculous names,” I complained to Matton.
When the auction was over—we somehow outbid a fashion designer and a Chinese billionaire—Matton congratulated me, and leaned over and whispered, “Don’t worry. I have a niece who lives near Puyloubier who can have the house cleaned for your arrival. My gift.” Gift? Maître Matton was handsomely paid to accompany me to the auction, his presence required by French law. Still, this was something. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never been a generous man, which, come to think of it, was why I wanted him as my lawyer.
I had to admit that Matton’s niece had done a good job with the cleaning. I began making coffee on the stove top. She had left a short note on the kitchen counter, signed Sandrine Matton, that said I should call her if I needed more help. There is still much to be done, she added, after her telephone number. There was a spelling mistake, but Sandrine was obviously organized, and I knew that I should call her. I had lived among cardboard boxes for too long, and the EDF was giving me trouble about the ancient wiring, so I still didn’t have electricity. Sandrine had even gone to IKEA to buy all the necessary things she correctly thought I might not bring from Paris: brooms and dustpans, kitchen utensils, a set of perfectly adequate white plates and bowls, bath towels and tea towels, and white linen sheets. Uncle Guillaume must have paid you well and given you some money up front, I thought. Linen sheets were expensive, even at IKEA. I looked over at the dish set’s box, which now sat empty on the floor. The label read, in that black blocklike font that IKEA always uses, “Starter Kit.” I smiled. Yes, at sixty-eight years of age, it was a little bit like starting over. Or just starting.
The Secrets of the Bastide Blanche Page 2