“Ooh, I see,” said Rebekka ironically.
“Oh la-la la-la la-la!” exclaimed Paul, looking up from his pots and pans and laughing very heartily.
“So, did you meet a bear in the forest last night?” asked Edith, grinning as she passed a basket of freshly baked, buttery croissants.
“Or a ravening nymph?” added Mark. Everyone looked round the table, and for whatever reason, all eyes landed on Monica.
“What? Me?” she blurted out, spitting café au lait and croissant in her indignation. “With him? No way!”
The vehemence caused a gale of laughter in the gathering. Armin shook his head, trying to smile graciously and not meet anyone’s eye. He had never, at any point in his life, fancied any woman, Monica least of all, but even so, he thought there was no need for that tone.
“… a mere puppy, a baby,” Monica was heard to mutter in an indignant undertone among the laughter.
“Well then…” pondered Mark.
People looked at the beautiful Danish girls pensively. Josefine’s eyes went wide. Her mouth was full of croissant, and she could not talk, but she wagged her finger furiously in an emphatic negative, trying not to choke on her breakfast. Sofia said nothing, but to Armin’s confusion, she blushed a vivid crimson, which, to his even worse distress, made him blush in turn. He gave a strangled groan, looked at the girl’s father, who was watching him with narrowed eyes, and shook his head vehemently. The last thing he needed in his life right now was to get roughed up for mucking about with a fifteen-years-old girl.
“Well, it will have to stay a mystery,” said Mark smoothly.
Despite his best efforts, Armin met Van’s eyes across the breakfast spread, and Van grinned with a quick secret wink.
The hickey did not hurt. But it tingled and pricked strangely, like a low electric current pulsing just under Armin’s skin.
The night’s storm had left the air clean, cool, and fresh, and the trees, which had been dusty and dull the day before, gleamed and shimmered in the morning sun like enameled jewels. Outside the sheltered valley, the storm had wreaked disasters all over the region. Paul and Allie, who had driven in from two different directions, reported a number of fallen trees and wrecked power and telephone lines. Some trees had come down on the roads, but local farmers had gone out with tractors and chainsaws and cleared the mess without any need to involve the public services, something that impressed all the foreigners at the table. EDF trucks were already on the way to fix power lines.
In the garden, many of the softer plants had a soggy and flattened look, and the ground was littered all over with twigs and torn leaves. But nothing heavier had fallen, as if the valley was under an invisible protective spell.
The only trouble the storm had caused at Le Sureau Noir, it turned out, was that it had ripped out the tarp that covered the straw bale at the building site. The bale, which had been opened and somewhat scattered, had been reduced to a sodden, sticky mess.
“My fault,” said Allie miserably. “I thought I had fixed it, but clearly it was not enough.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Van. “I should have double checked everything and weighed it down. I was, ahem, distracted.”
“I’ll call Alain. He’ll bring another,” said Allie.
“He’ll be busy as hell with all the mess the storm has made. It’s no big deal. Start with what we have, anything that can be salvaged. You might find some dry stuff at the bottom. I’ll go get a few square bales to get us through the day, and he can bring a new big bale in the evening.”
“I will call. Maybe he can find a minute to drop in...”
“Nah, don’t bother. I’ll take the Vanva. It’ll be quicker. Armin, come with me. You can give me a hand to load them and bring them down.”
“What on earth is a Vanva?” asked Armin as they walked up the path to the house.
“It’s Michel Speech for Van’s van.” Van dipped quickly into the entrance and fetched a car key out of a box on a shelf then put on a pair of old combat boots that stood rather forlorn in the porch, collecting dust.
“Oh dear,” said Armin, blanching and then blushing, as he wore his immaculate Pumas. He had meant to jump Van’s bones the moment they were well out of sight of the garden, but the thought of being in a car hit him like a bucket of freezing water.
“What?”
“Nothing, I hate being in a car is all. Is it far? Perhaps I can follow you on foot? I’m a fairly good jogger.”
Van grinned. “Motion sick?”
“Always.”
“You drive, then. You’ll be all right.”
“Wh-what? I don’t even have my license with me!”
“Look around, child, how many gendarmes do you think are lurking in the trees? You can drive, can’t you?”
“Er, we-ell. Sort of. I mean, I learned, passed my test and all. Just in case I’d need it. But I don’t have a car, and I never drive. You don’t need to in Frankfurt, you know? We have, you know, infrastructure. Bus, underground, cabs, bike paths…”
“Well, time to refresh your skills then.”
“Listen, I’m really lousy at it. And I don’t know… The streets here are…”
“Perfect for beginners. Look. The craziest traffic we ever had on this road was a cow that escaped from her pasture six years ago. It took three people a whole seven and a half minutes to put her back in. It caused a stir. Everyone was talking about it for weeks. It would have gotten printed in the local paper. Only, there is no local paper.”
Van’s van was an elderly, small Citroën Nemo with only two seats and a surprisingly spacious loading space at the back.
“Oh dear. It’s a manual car,” groaned Armin, looking in.
“Yeah. I’ll take it up to the road so you don’t have to start uphill, okay?”
“How come you even own a car? Natural-living fellow like you?” asked Armin, putting on a brave face while he fastened his seat belt. He was downright petrified when Van started the car and drove it backwards on the drive all the way to the road.
“Backwards is the only way to get a car out on wet days, unless it’s a 4x4,” said Van, seeing Armin’s expression. “To be honest, I did quite well without a car for years on end,” he added, conversationally. “But it’s difficult to run a business around here if you can’t drive your own car. So I gave up. I don’t like it much, but it’s the way it is.”
“First a laptop then a car. Modern world catching up with you, eh?”
“A little. What can I say? Here we are.” Van pulled the hand brake as he parked the car at the side of the road just outside his drive. “Your turn.”
****
Van
The next minutes were painful for everybody involved.
The Vanva let out some dismal shrieks of protest as Van gave calm advice and silently agonized over whether he could afford a new transmission and whether it’d be cheaper to just change cars. Armin was close to tears with nerves and embarrassment, but finally the poor old Nemo began creeping unsteadily on the mercifully deserted road.
“Be a good chap and steer a little closer to the middle,” said Van, as they rolled on the grassy verge once or twice.
“Sorry. I’m more used to riding a bike than driving a car.”
“No harm done,” said Van mildly.
Armin kept driving with the ferocious concentration of a Formula One champion, at about fifteen kilometers per hour. Van had time to inspect an exceptionally beautiful southern white admiral that was flitting unconcerned alongside. Freshly hatched, by that nice blue sheen on his wings.
Armin, too, looked like something ready to break out of his cocoon and emerge in glorious beauty. Van, who had been unable to decide whether to talk about last night, or leave it alone until Armin mentioned it, or just wait until the evening, stole some glances at him, hungrily, but covertly. He didn’t want to distract the young man and have him, himself, and the van driven into a ditch.
“Are you sick?” he asked after a couple
of minutes.
“No. I am too terrified to be sick.”
Van laughed.
“It’s easy to get sick when you are not in control. Much better when you are steering, non?”
“Are we still talking about cars, or is this some kind of deep existential shit?” asked Armin a little sharply, both hands firmly on the wheel and his eyes madly focused on the road.
“Are the two mutually exclusive?”
Armin scoffed and accelerated a little.
“I think we might go crazy and shift into third gear before the poor old Vanva dies on us,” said Van.
Armin swallowed nervously, but after some fairly horrid grating, groaning, revving, and stalling, he finally got the van rolling along at a speed that might have made his great-grandmother almost a little alarmed.
****
Armin
What the fuck am I doing? thought Armin, his hands clasped so tight on the wheel that he might have been glued to it. Driving in a foreign country without even my driving license. This is stark-raving insanity.
All his good, orderly, law-abiding German instincts were ringing alarm bells in his head at the thought of this monstrous breach of conduct, not to mention his horrifying and profoundly embarrassing performance as a driver, but Van sat by quite unconcerned, looking at the woods outside as if he trusted Armin to be perfectly capable to keep the car on the street, and very gradually Armin relaxed enough to realize that driving along this deserted country road was actually quite enjoyable, nothing like his terrifying driving lessons back in his hometown. Würzburg was not as crazy as Frankfurt, but he still had detested driving in city traffic.
He was almost a little disappointed when Van pointed him to a chemin privé on the right, and after a minute of bumpy gravel, they arrived in a huge puddly farmyard. Even Armin could park a car in a deserted place the size of a moderate football pitch, and all the excitement was over.
As they left the van and went toward the farmhouse, he took a good look at Van. Old boots and ragged cut-off jeans were, as fashion statements went, something of a novelty to Armin, but he had to admit that Van managed to pull it off, if only by looking totally unconcerned about it. His ass was perfectly delicious, inside or outside his trousers, and Armin wondered, once more, how old Van was.
They were not five steps out of the car before a shutter opened and a middle-aged woman with short brown hair and a cherry-red face peeked out of a window, waved at them, disappeared, and reappeared at the door of the house. She came down the steps, talking French at such terrific speed that Armin didn’t catch a word after bonjour. She kissed Van on both cheeks, shook Armin’s hand, and went on talking like a video played at double speed, with much laughter and oh-la-las in between. Armin was almost dizzy when Van kissed her goodbye and gestured him to follow. They drove the van right into a huge barn filled with straw bales. There was a pyramid of rectangular bales much smaller than the round one they had had at the workshop until yesterday, and they loaded the van full with them. Armin managed to reverse through the barn doors without breaking anything, which, as far as he was concerned, was nothing short of miraculous, so he was in a rather good mood as he crossed the farmyard again.
“Let’s have some music,” said Van, pressing the CD player’s “power” button. Obviously there was already a disk in it, because it started immediately, and Van pressed the “forward” button quickly five or six times and raised the volume. “Favorite driving song,” he explained.
Armin, who had braced himself for pan flutes, or some airy-fairy New Age crap of the same sort, nearly drove on the verge again when the loudspeakers belted out some ridiculously spunky piano chords followed by an hilariously groovy piece of ... what was that even? Rock? Country? Boogie-woogie? Whatever it was, it had rhythms to make the dead dance.
He grinned and shook his head as he turned the van back onto the road to Le Sureau Noir with barely a thought about blinkers, hand brake, or shifting gears.
“Weren’t expecting that, were you?” said Van.
“No I wasn’t. What is this… thing?”
“The Tractors, “Baby Likes to Rock It.” 1994. Were you even born?”
“Oh hell no,” laughed Armin, who was bobbing up and down in his seat irresistibly with the drumming of the music.
“Dear Lord,” said Van, sinking his face into his hands. “I’m a pedophile, aren’t I?”
“How old are you, really?” asked Armin, grinning.
Van waved the question away, and then he smiled and said, “When nine hundred years old you reach—”
“Oh, wow. Master Yoda? Really? You know Star Wars?”
“Yeah. It’s made its way even to the Dordogne.”
“How? By pack mule?”
Van gave a snort of laughter, “Pretty much.”
“And you like it?”
“What? Star Wars? Oh yeah. Lots of cob houses on Tatooine. Sensible architecture on the big screen. And Yoda’s house, of course. I approve. The bits in between are a little boring. All those intergalactic wars, robots, and shit.”
Armin struggled not to laugh and to keep concentrating on the road. He was, of course, aware that Van was making fun of him—and himself—but only Van could watch the most famous sci/fi movies of all times, ignore all the space battles, exploding planets, and family drama, and zoom in on Tatooine’s architecture, of all things.
“Look. That’s our drive, on the right. It’s quite steep, and there’s some really big hard trees at the end. Take it in second and you’ll be all right.”
Armin could not have said why he felt so warm inside when Van said “our” drive.
When he stopped the car in the small clearing that served as a parking at Le Sureau Noir and made to open the door, Van suddenly palmed his neck in his hand, turned him around, and pulled him close to kiss him, a deep, devouring kiss that made Armin’s insides clench with longing. It was a minute or two before he was released and allowed to breathe.
“Rrr-roar,” joked Armin, smiling, his lips still barely grazing Van’s. “I wasn’t sure if last night was a… a one-time thing.”
“Mmm,” said Van, hugging him very tight and very long. He didn’t answer Armin’s implicit question, but he stroked his back with warm, firm hands and sniffed at his skin like a dog. “What is this thing you always smell of?” he asked after some seconds.
“Er…” said Armin, wondering if he was going to get some flak for the use of unlicensed toiletries now. “Kenzo Homme, eau de toilette. Are you going to tell me I am polluting the local environment?”
“I was going to tell you that it smells good. On you.”
Van smiled and kissed him again, just a small peck this time. Then he turned away and went to open the back of the car. Armin helped him unload the straw bales. He barely dared looking at Van. He wondered how he could go through the rest of the day and keep his hands to himself.
Well, I certainly never had so much fun in a car. There is that at least.
He shouldered a straw bale in a competently rural manner, grasped another by its cords, and started down the path to the garden.
****
Van
That whole day they concentrated on the arches on the north side of the building. It was heavy work, because it had to be made with carefully prepared, fairly stiff cob, which was harder to mix and had to be worked very thoroughly. The cool weather was very much a relief for everyone, however. They were all refreshed and full of wit and chatted along brightly while they worked.
It was good to see how the company had blended together. Even the more reserved of them were now fully involved in the chat and banter, and there was less of a fixed structure to the groups. The Danish parents had found a very good rhythm working with Monica and Mark. Rebekka was often with Meintje. They were both Dutch, although Rebekka had lived in France for so long she had almost gone native by now. They shared the same guest cottage, so it was understandable that they would strike a particular friendship, but Van had the impression tha
t they also genuinely liked each other. Both the Danish girls and the older women, as groups, liked to work with Armin. He was young enough that the elder Danish girls treated him more like a contemporary than a fully qualified adult—something that both amused and dismayed Van—while the other ladies doted on him in a rather more motherly fashion. Armin seemed to get along with them all very well by now. Van had to snap himself awake by main force once or twice when he got a little too lost in contemplation of the young man.
About mid-afternoon, the top of the first arch was completed. It was one of those little milestones in the making of a building that Van liked to celebrate, to keep the motivation high and give everybody a sense of achievement. It was unlikely that they would finish the building during the workshop, but it was important that everybody go away with the deep-seated feeling that they had achieved something worthwhile. Sculpting an arch was always magical. It was where people finally understood what cob was about, creatively and sensually. Anything could build a wall. Bricks, stones, cordwood, even factory-made shit like drywall. But cob lent itself to pure, essential creation, every form of life, shaped only by human hands. It responded to human touch almost like a living creature. It was more like growing a wall than building one.
They were all ecstatic.
So they opened a few bottles of sparkly cider—there were still a few hours of work ahead, but the cider was not likely to make them too stupid—and they toasted the new arch, some of them sitting around on overturned buckets and straw bales, some still standing.
“This is fantastic,” said Sofia, who could not stop gazing at the finished arch and stroking its elegant curves with the palm of her hand. “We’ll make arches like this in our house, won’t we?” she asked her parents.
“So you mean to make a cob house?” asked Mark to Frederic and Ella.
The Elder Man Page 13