The Elder Man

by Katherine Wyvern

  “You can draw with a piece of charcoal or scratch with a nail. Or just start sculpting and let the shapes draw themselves. Your best sculpting tool for this is your hands. And an old spoon for burnishing the clay and carving the finer bits. If you work with finer plasters, like kaolin, lime or tadelakt, that’s a different story.”

  Plastering was easy. Sculpting less so. “Don’t try to make bulky heavy things. You can’t do that with just fine plaster. You need rough, long-straw cob and a structure of some sort for a large sculpture to hold its weight while it cures. Stick to bas-relief.”

  Even bas-relief was tricky. Armin, who had not made any preparatory drawing on the wall and was just thinking of random shapes, pressed a long sausage of clay to the previous plasters, thinking of Van’s swirling designs, and the whole thing just peeled off and flopped to the ground. “It doesn’t stay stuck,” he wailed in frustration.

  “Wet the wall again, and don’t try to get a finished shape to stick. Get a good bond between the two layers first, then shape it.”

  He demonstrated, pressing handfuls of wet unformed clay with the heel of his palms in an easy curve, working each handful smoothly into its neighbors and then shaping the whole into a neat, sharp swirl with his thumbs and fingertips. It looked fantastically simple when he did it. “Work the new clay into the old. Then draw the shape out from it. It must be all one, the wall and the sculpture. Don’t try to glue your design on like a sticker. It doesn’t work like that.”

  They all got the gist of it in time, if not that amazing facility. Before they even went to lunch, the whole outhouse looked like a band of deranged graffiti artists had descended on it. Some had tried to imitate Van’s swirling, fractal trees and winged dragons. Others had gone their own routes. It looked patchy and messy, beautiful in parts and gruesome in others, and Armin wondered if Van would let it stand like that or plaster it all over again. Van himself, in between teaching and helping the others, had begun a sort of climbing, twirling vine that curled and spread around the door, each tendril ending into an elegant spiral. Rebekka had created a fascinating pattern of waves and curves that was praised and admired by all. It looked like flames or maybe sea kelp. Maja and Michel had built a whole village street of little houses along the base of the wall, house after little house, some tall and thin, some squat, with tiny windows and doors and chimneys. They went all round the outhouse, crawling among the legs of the grownups and giving everyone no end of attitude when accused of being in the way.

  Monica had made a square frame and scratched a rigid square grid within it. She poked holes in it and made tokens from bits of wood so it could be used as a chessboard. It looked awful and wrong among all the curves, and seeing how it was unlikely people would want to spend an hour bending under the eaves of the outhouse playing chess, also rather pointless. But Armin didn’t say a word.

  It had been by far the most fun day they had had in the workshop. It was easy work, not so hard on the back, and full of creativity. Even Armin, who had always sucked in art class, could see how one could get carried away and sculpt a whole house from top to toe.

  That was also the day when Armin noticed his acne had gone.

  He hadn’t given it a thought since arriving at Le Sureau Noir, partly because there were not many mirrors around, and those there were, were often in such poor light that there was not much to be seen in them, and partly because he and everyone else at the workshop were so muddy, filthy, and unkempt half the time that he had forgotten to obsess about his personal appearance.

  But that morning he suddenly realized that there were no taut painful pimples anywhere on his face, and after lunch, he finally made a point to hunt down a mirror in the house and look at himself closely with a flashlight. There were scars, some old and some fresh enough. But nothing like the usual sore mess his face was.

  “Fuck me,” he whispered. He could not remember ever having been free from painful, bulging pimples since hitting puberty.

  Later, as he loaded more clay into a wheelbarrow with Van, he leaned a moment on his shovel, frowning.

  “Van, hey, listen.”

  “I’m listening,” said Van mildly, still shoveling clay.

  “My acne is gone.”

  “Shit. Do you think it was stolen?” asked Van, topping up the wheelbarrow with a last shovelful of clay and then stopping to look at Armin.

  “No seriously. It is gone, isn’t it? I’m not dreaming?”

  “Well, it looks like it,” said Van, cupping Armin’s face in the palms of his hands to turn him this way and that in the sunlight. Armin stood very still, savoring the touch of Van’s hands, hoping he would hold him a moment longer, even if somebody might walk up on them any moment.

  “How? Did you do something?”

  “Me?” asked Van.

  “You know all the plants and things. Did you put something in my tea? Or my soap?”

  Van laughed. “It’s not like the flu, you know. I don’t think you cure acne with a cup of herbal tea. I don’t know how to cure acne. I haven’t had a pimple since… oh, I don’t know, the Bronze Age or thereabouts. Although burdock is helpful, in case it comes back. Just saying.”

  “But then…”

  Van shrugged and cut him off, but not unkindly. “I don’t know, Armin. I don’t know why you had acne in the first place. Could be stress. Could be you are allergic to something. There’s so much chemical shit in town you’ll never know what’s poisoning you. You come here, prance around in the sunshine, eat organic stuff fresh from the land, sleep on clean sheets, roll in the mud… it’s all good for a mammal’s body. It’s as toxin-free as it gets nowadays. Basic common sense really.” He shrugged.

  “I sleep on clean sheets at home, too, you know?” said Armin, a little peeved.

  “I doubt it very much. Washing machines, bleach, harsh detergents, softeners, descalers… definitely not what I would call clean. Extremely polluted, in fact.”

  “Oh come on, that’s just New Age crap.”

  “No it isn’t. We evolved as organisms living around mud and grass and wood and stone for millions of years. We didn’t evolve to process synthetic chemicals. We don’t have the right guts for that. Not to mention that all these chemicals are designed to kill bacteria. And in case you didn’t notice we have whole bacterial ecosystems within us. Symbionts. Which you are all busily exterminating with your bleach and things.”

  He took the wheelbarrow and started toward the outhouse again.

  It was true that Armin had been somewhat hygiene obsessed for years, bleaching everything within reach in a desperate attempt at destroying whatever filth was causing his face to erupt into a painful stinging horror. In retrospect, it was obvious that it hadn’t done much good. But he was not ready just yet to accept that it had actually been the cause of all his woes.

  “So, what are my bed sheets washed with?” asked Armin, catching up with Van and deciding that the conversation was verging on the fanatic and trying to get back to simple facts.

  “Marseille soap.”

  “Is everything washed with Marseille soap around here?”

  “Some things are cleaned with ash. Anything metal takes a nice shine with fine ash. And the windows. And I buy toothpaste, I confess.”

  “Ah! You are slipping, my friend,” said Armin with mock severity.

  Van grinned but didn’t rise to the bait. Armin was still peeved by the absurdity of it all. But his face didn’t hurt, and it did feel wonderfully smooth, except for his very sparse stubble. It was the first time in over a decade that he was, literally, comfortable in his own skin.

  “Why toothpaste?” he asked as an afterthought.

  Van smiled. “Because Marseille soap tastes vile. Stand aside.” He shoveled the clay from the wheelbarrows into buckets and tubs, and Armin went to fetch water, shaking his head in bemusement.

  Before dinner, after washing himself, Armin looked at his face in the mirror, considering. He hadn’t shaved since coming to France. In Normandy he had be
en too sick with the flu, and since arriving at Le Sureau Noir, he had been too tired and somewhat discouraged by the strictures about toilette products. His face was beginning to bristle with a sparse reddish stubble, which was almost a first, since he had always kept himself clean-shaved. It was rather pathetic, as beards went, especially compared to Van’s wiry abundance, and he soaped his face to get rid of it. I might as well pretty up for the last evening. But then he stood with his razor poised, uncertain, and finally shaved only his cheeks and throat, preserving the tentative beginning of a moustache and goatee. After he had washed and dried his face, he stared at the mirror and gave a hesitant grin to the stranger in there. Well, hello, handsome, he thought, and walked down to the kitchen with a new bounce in his barefoot step.

  On that last evening, P’tit Paul left the cooking to Van.

  He had kneaded bread dough and fired the dragon oven since five in the afternoon, but it was Van who did the bread baking and made the most amazing crispy pizzas for everyone.

  It was to be a night of revelations.

  When the oven was blazing hot Van pushed the remaining embers at the back, feeding just a little flame over them, rolled out some dough thinly, and laid it on the heated bricks with a well-practiced swipe of a long-handled wooden paddle. The smell of baking bread was mouth-watering. He offered the first pizza, with a bow and a flourish, to Paul, who was sitting with his feet spread wide, a beer in his hand, and a tired but happy grin on his round face.

  “Thank you for feeding us all week, kind master,” said Van. He was smiling, but Armin thought it was something more than a jest.

  Paul took the offered pizza, sliced it, and passed the dish round. There was something ritual in this. They all shared and said yum and nam-nam and delicious and licked their fingers, and then they clicked glasses of wine, toasting the cook and Van and each other, whooping and laughing, but they all exchanged looks and smiles that were somewhat more fond, more personal, more meaningful than is normal even at the cheeriest party.

  Armin had no doubt whatsoever that all these people, himself included, would remain in touch for the rest of their lives and that the bonds of friendship created this week would never quite break.

  Armin stood by Van, observing, and then began to help, rolling dough, adding pizza toppings, slicing, spicing. He had flour and olive oil on his hands, and his fingers smelled of fresh rucola and fresh goat cheese and olives, onions and herbs. He managed to rub chili in his eyes, and he laughed a little and wept a little.

  “Armin, what is the time?” asked Van.

  “I don’t know? About nine-ish?” said Armin, squinting at the sky through slitted eyes, wiping chili tears from his face with the back of his hand.

  “No, I mean, exactly? Don’t you have that devil phone of yours on you?”

  “Er, no, I don’t actually. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen it all day. God, I hope I haven’t lost it in some bush. Or dropped it in the outhouse bucket. Ew.”

  Van suddenly had a slightly guilty expression, but then he grinned.

  “Ah—no, it’s not lost, er, don’t worry. I think I know where it is. Oh well. Let’s say 9 PM, then?”

  “Yeah,” said Armin. “What’s this about, man? Why does it matter?”

  “It matters because it means the workshop is officially over. I am not a responsible person any more. I am just a dude having dinner with friends and guests.”

  “Ah,” said Armin, and a smile began spreading on his lips as he caught on to Van’s meaning.

  Van hugged him and kissed him, on his eyelids, neck, forehead, cheek, and lips, again and again.

  Since most people were gravitating around the dinner table, it was a minute or two before a gasp of surprise was heard, and then the whole company was staring open-mouthed at them.

  “What?”

  “Wicked!”

  “No way!” squealed Maja, Sofia, and Josefine at the same time.

  “Well, look here! The Hickey Mystery Case finally solved, Watson!” joked Mark.

  Armin grinned sheepishly and blushed a little.

  “Teacher’s own favorite boy, eh?” said Ella, smiling.

  “Really? Oooh, that’s so sweet!” giggled Edith, clasping hands.

  “Non! Vraiment?” said Jean-Pierre, utterly astonished, and then, deliriously cheerful, he grabbed a wine bottle, popped it open, toasted Van, toasted Armin, toasted toute l’Allemagne, putain, from Michael Schumacher to Madame Merkel, toasted them all, laughing and spilling wine down his front in his merriment.

  Given how anxious he had always been about Van and Allie, that Van might actually like boys came obviously as the best news in the world to him.

  Monica looked like she had sat on a hedgehog. Allie was white, utterly white, like a ghost. Then she blushed crimson and flopped down into a chair and stammered, “You could have just said… It was enough to say it… I never thought… You don’t seem like…”

  “Er,” said Van, “I am not actually, you know—”

  Armin kicked his ankle hard under the kitchen table.

  “I mean,” said Van, eyes watering, “yeah, sorry, what can I say? It just didn’t occur to me, that’s all. Ahem, now you know, right?”

  Armin smiled approvingly. It was the best thing in the world for Allie if Jean-Pierre thought Van was gay. No point mentioning he was actually just open-minded and start the whole trouble all over again.

  Allie gave a little unsteady laugh. “Oh my,” she said. “Oh my. Can you, er … explain to Michel?”

  “Michel,” said Van smartly, still rubbing his ankle. “You know Armand, right? Well, I love him, and he’s my boyfriend now, okay?”

  “Tres bien,” said Michel. “C'est sympa, Armand. Puis-je avoir un peu de pizza, s'il te plait? ”

  And that was it. Big talk over.

  Allie drank a glass of wine and then another, and then she laughed easier.

  There was quite a lot of wine flowing in and out of mugs that night.

  Then Van produced a bottle of something murky brown and poured it in small glasses. “Liqueur de noix. It’s traditional around here. You find it in all the tourist shops, but this one is homemade. From my own nuts.” He snorted. “Okay, it sounds disastrously inappropriate when you say it like that.”

  They were all in stitches. It was the kind of night when one’s face hurts from so much laughing.

  Nobody could sit still at dinner. They all stood about, chatting, but they all ate their fill.

  Eventually, Mark found one of the omnipresent pan flutes and began playing an idle tune, something halfway between a waltz and a lullaby. Paul began tapping on an upturned saucepan and drumming along. Monet found an empty wine bottle and began blowing into it, providing a soft, breathy drone. It was the most pitiful and ragged orchestra ever, and yet, be it the wine, the stars, the love in the air, the music they played was beautiful.

  It was the kind of night that you remember not for what it was but for what it started, and in years to come, in the recollection of many of those people, it seemed that it was a night steeped in far more happiness than any one single night could possibly contain.

  Van put loaves of bread in the oven, closed the door, and sank onto a bench with a tired sigh.

  Ella and Frederic were dancing slowly in a corner. Meintje and Rebekka sat arm in arm, staring at the dancers with smiles on their faces. Allie and Jean-Pierre were snuggled together and drank wine in turns from the same glass. Michel was fast asleep on a bench, still clutching a slice of pizza. Jade was snuffling around, weaving in and out of table’s and people’s legs. He gently took the pizza from Michel’s hand without waking up the child and disappeared into the night.

  Armin laid his head on Van’s shoulder and curled up against him when Van gathered him close.

  “Sorry for the kick,” he said softly.

  “No, no, you did well to kick me. Quick thinking there. Good instincts. Good kick too. You remind me of a mule that I had—oh, many years ago, sometime in the 192
0s, I am sure.”

  Armin grinned in Van’s neck. “Sure, whatever. Van,” he whispered, “am I really your boyfriend?”

  “Do you want to be?”

  “I kinda do. I don’t want to leave tomorrow.”

  “Then don’t,” said Van, rubbing his whiskered chin on Armin’s forehead.

  Armin put his arms around Van’s waist. “I can stay? Really? For how long?”

  “For as long as you need,” said Van softly. “For as long as you want.”

  “What if I want to stay forever?”

  Armin turned to look up at him, and Van smiled and kissed him on the lips and then deep, deep in his mouth.

  Later, much, much later, when everyone had finally gone to bed, Van and Armin locked the ducks in their house and Armin put an arm around Van’s waist and started off in direction of the house.

  “How do you feel about having a walk?” whispered Van softly in his ear.

  Armin yawned. It was well past midnight. They had worked hard every day for a week. He was exhausted, and he wanted only to be in bed with Van.

  “A walk where? Another tree?” he asked, his words a little slurred by sleep and wine.

  “A very special tree.”

  Armin yawned again, but he was too sleepy to protest and he let Van lead him out of the garden and down a forest path.

  He made an effort to wake up a little to see where he was going, because there was almost no moonlight here under the huge spreading oaks.

  “Are you sure about this? Can’t we go tomorrow? Or fetch a flashlight?” he asked once or twice, but Van was as relaxed as a man walking along the corridor from bedroom to kitchen, and Armin gave up on worrying and just hung on to him, so as not to get lost or stray out of the path in the brambles and other spiky things. He was severely tipsy and had trouble keeping his balance on the steep uneven path, but Van was there.

  Van had gotten rid of his t-shirt. Armin didn’t know when, or why, for that matter, but it tickled his lust, even tired as he was.

  Van seemed able to see in the dark, and he seemed so tall and so strong, strong enough to hold Armin up by force when he slipped or stumbled. Armin felt a wave of desire washing over him and, at one point, turned to hug him, kiss him ravenously, and he ran his hands in Van’s hair, and he thought his fingers touched something hard, but he thought it was a low branch.