by Ward Just
They both looked up, aware suddenly of a contretemps at the table next to the door, three men, two women, expensively turned out, tourists from the look of them, though this was not the season for tourism. One of the men was blind, talking loudly to old Bardèche, thumping his fist on the table for emphasis. The women seemed to be egging him on. The sightless man was complaining about the wine, racehorse piss, he said. He wanted another bottle, something drinkable, and did not intend to pay for the bottle in front of him because it was racehorse piss, give it to the racehorses. Old Bardèche looked from the blind man to the women and back again, understanding only that the wine was not wanted. He was short-tempered in the best of times and now Thomas watched his face color. The other two men lounged insolently in their chairs, their arms folded, as the young women—one blond, the other dark—watched avidly with the expressions you saw on spectators in the ringside seats. Whenever the blind man mentioned racehorses, the quartet laughed unpleasantly. One of the men began to pick at his fingernails while his friend yawned. They behaved as if they owned the café and everything in it. When the blond woman stuck out her tongue at old Bardèche he pointed at the door and told them in French to get out, they were no longer welcome. Take your whores with you, Madame Bardèche said from her position at the caisse. The men looked up. The blind man rose then. He was built like a stevedore, broad in the shoulders and half a head taller than the Frenchman, eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, a black baseball cap with the legend NYPD 9/11 pulled low over his forehead. He wore a tan chamois jacket, expensive from the look of it, black jeans, and leather ankle boots. He stood with his fists loosely at his sides, his head moving left and right. The racket of conversation ceased, the café grown abruptly silent, old Bardèche at a loss as to how to proceed with the American.
He said, You. Garçon.
Thomas turned to Florette and said, Excuse me. I have to see to this.
Who are they, Thomas?
My countrymen, alas.
Garçon, the American said again. Come here.
The patrons of the café were nonplused, divided by their natural sympathy for a sightless man and appalled at his behavior. Surely he had reason for grievance but old Bardèche was not the cause and he was not a garçon, either. It was well known that Bardèche had no sympathy for Mussulmen. None of the villagers did. They looked at each other and wondered what was expected of them. This blind man was spoiling for a fight, and for what? Suddenly he lunged at the Frenchman, who easily sidestepped, and the blind man crashed into the table, cursing loudly as glassware shattered. His four friends remained seated, content to let their comrade settle the matter. That seemed to be the agreement among them. Honor was at stake. Now most of the men in the café were on their feet, prepared to come to old Bardèche's aid, but in the general uproar Thomas got there first.
Thomas said, It's best if you and your friends leave before there's serious trouble.
Who the fuck are you?
Thomas saw that the blind man did not look directly at him but off to one side. He was trying to judge Thomas's position by the sound of his voice. Thomas said, I live here.
Fuck you then, the blind man said, and Thomas saw that his face was pockmarked by dozens of tiny scars and one long scar that ran from the outside corner of his right eye to his chin. He had once been a handsome man, except for the sneer. Thomas wondered if the sneer had always been there or if it was a consequence of his injuries. He must have suffered terribly.
I think you're outnumbered, Thomas said equably enough, as though this were a casual misunderstanding among friends.
It's racehorse piss.
Try the café in the next town, why don't you.
The blind man swung at him and missed and the friends at the table laughed once more. One of the women clapped her hands sarcastically.
Old Bardèche had come up behind Thomas with a heavy alpenstock but hesitated. He did not sincerely want to use it against a blind man but he was running out of patience. He only wanted the Americans out of his café.
Forget it, Jock, one of the men at the table said.
We don't care about them, his friend added.
Nobody cares about them, the blond woman said. Crummy little café in the back of beyond. She slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table and gathered her coat. Let's get going. I'd like to be in Andorra before midnight.
Good advice, Thomas said.
He's right in front of you, Jock.
The blind man swung again but he was off balance and the blow landed on Thomas's shoulder, hard enough to turn him around but not so hard he couldn't push back, and the blind man went sprawling into the table again. Blood leaked from a tear in the chamois jacket but he was oblivious.
Get him out of here, Thomas said to the blond woman.
Don't fuck with us, one of the men said.
What's your name? Thomas said.
Harry.
Well, Harry. It's time for you to go. He looked at the blind man, who appeared disoriented; Thomas's face was reflected in the sunglasses. Look, he said finally. I'm sorry about your friend. Was he a policeman?
Cop? No, he wasn't a cop. Jock sold insurance. Except in New York City we're all cops now. You wouldn't understand that.
He was in the twin towers?
Look at him, Harry said. What do you think?
The blind man said, Go to hell. He was seated now, one elbow on the table, his hands clasped in his lap, his face soft as putty. It was impossible to know what he was thinking or if he was thinking anything. Thomas noticed that his hands were scarred. Blood continued to spill from the tear in his chamois jacket. Everyone noticed but no one said anything. Thomas felt tremendously sorry for him even as he wanted him out of the neighborhood.
Racehorse piss, the blind man muttered. But now his friends had their hands on his elbows and were moving him toward the door, awkwardly, as if he were a heavy piece of furniture. They took their time, five finely dressed American tourists, out of place in the café. They were through the door at last when the blond woman turned and looked Thomas up and down as if she were appraising a piece of meat.
You were a big help. There was a time, Americans stuck together, members of the same tribe. Cut one, the others bleed.
I don't remember that time, Thomas said. When was that? Pearl Harbor?
New York, she said. Right now. This minute. It's beautiful.
So is St. Michel du Valcabrère, he said.
What's that?
The village you're in.
Shit, she said and laughed.
He said, It was a terrible thing, nine-eleven, but—
But nothing. But nothing. Jock's life is ruined. And he's angry. He's going to stay angry and that's his right because his life is ruined. He might have been you, except you don't live in New York. You jerk.
The others stood in the doorway, listening. The blind man, towering above them, had his back turned so he was facing the street, though perhaps he didn't know that.
Come on, Helen. Leave them to their racehorse piss.
Old Bardèche asked Thomas to translate.
Thomas said, They're sorry for the damage.
Bardèche said, Tell them to leave at once.
They're leaving, Thomas said.
Watch your mouth, asshole, the woman said.
Close the door behind you, Thomas said.
The blind man turned. Thomas noticed that in his mirrored dark glasses, the interior of the café was caught in a frozen moment. He moved his head left and right. It seemed to Thomas that he was straining to see what was before him.
Goodbye, Thomas said.
Bardèche watched them leave, then slowly turned and walked back to his place behind the bar.
When Thomas returned to their table, Florette embraced him. Everyone in the café was talking, the noise level rising like that of an excited theater audience at the end of a powerful performance. No one knew precisely what they had just witnessed. Did the gravely injured have special
rights? There was something mortifying about the blind man, lunging and missing, swinging at Thomas and missing again. He must have had a terrible ordeal, the tiny scars and the long scar and the sneer on his mouth. You sympathized with him even as you realized he was out of control. Well, they were gone now but there was no guarantee they would not return. Men crowded around their table congratulating Thomas. They had no quarrel with Americans generally but these Americans were no good. There were bad apples in every nationality, the Germans and the Belgians especially, and the Dutch. All nations had bruta figuras, even Italy. When old Bardèche sent over a bottle of the racehorse piss, everyone drank to Thomas's good health and Florette's also.
When they were alone at last, Thomas and Florette sat in a zone of silence, working the incident in their minds. There seemed nothing of it to discuss usefully except the question of forgiveness, mercy offered to a man living in darkness and hating every second, knowing all the while that those most directly responsible were dead and could not be called to account. He was an awful son of a bitch but his situation was not enviable. Grievous injury did not ennoble a man except in special circumstances. Later they would refer to the incident often, how it began and how it ended and Thomas's role in the departure of the Americans, everyone in the café crowded at the windows watching them climb into their Mitsubishi van and speed away, the blind man in the front passenger seat, the others in the two rear seats.
Will you marry me? Thomas asked.
Of course, Florette said.
Her body showed no signs of exhausting its pain ration but the memory of the Sunday afternoon in the café with the wretched Americans and his proposal at the end of it warmed her and brightened her spirits. Thomas would not fail her but she wondered again what had detained him. They were so close. Thomas was always within earshot, working alone all day long without interruption except for lunch. He worked in the downstairs room that looked south up the couloir, the land rising until the roads ended and the snow-covered summit began, the route of smugglers for many centuries and refugees of the Napoleonic War at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Francisco Goya's war. There had been a stream of refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Thomas claimed that at the end of the day when he looked up from his easel to the panorama beyond his window he could hear the sound of marching feet, the strangled cries of the wounded, and the creak of leather and weapons. Thousands fled Catalonia in the miserable years 1937 and 1938, settling mainly in Aquitaine. A few were still alive, men and women of very great age, and their descendants were scattered all over southern France, a Spanish diaspora. Not even Franco's death could reconcile them to their homeland because so much had been lost, too much to forgive. Forgiveness was a blasphemy. Thomas thought often of the Spanish refugees when he was working because he was a species of refugee himself, a displaced person.
He told her that with no explanation.
And you still feel displaced?
Not often, he said. Almost never.
Florette heard piano music and immediately raised her head to discover its source. The notes rose and faded away and when her head fell back to the canvas she realized the music was inside her, refugees abruptly assuming the guise of a tune that she could not identify, though it stayed with her, the tempo resembling a heartbeat or the pain-throb in her ankle. She lay still, trying to imagine herself in other circumstances. She wondered what Thomas would do and what he would be thinking; at least he wouldn't have to worry about a pee. Thomas was good under pressure, as he had been that day in old Bardèche's café. She had never told him about Bardèche-on-Monday-evening—where was the need to do so? Certainly that was not the occasion, the afternoon in the café when he shyly proposed to her. You never knew how men, even worldly men, would react to such a declaration. It was always a mistake to believe you knew someone's heart, even if it was the person closest to you in all the world. Publicly, Thomas kept his thoughts to himself, using courtesy to disarm his adversaries. Now and then people came to the house to see him. Thomas said they were journalists and sometimes they were, critics from newspapers and magazines eager to know whom he was "doing." But there were others who didn't look like journalists, in their business suits and city hats, their polished shoes, always carrying briefcases, even the women; the smaller the woman, the larger the briefcase. They were often brusque. Thomas would usher them into his office where they could take account of the photographs on the walls, Thomas in a variety of locations and wearing a variety of hats, a bowler, a trilby, a beret, a kaffiyeh, a topee, before being directed to admire the view, the mountain route of refugees.
A trail of misery, he would say.
And what the refugees found was scarcely better than what they had left behind, except for the killing.
Thomas would close the door, having arranged with Florette to knock in one hour and propose tea. She would bring in the tea tray and watch while the visitor, with evident chagrin, switched off the tape recorder; and all this time Thomas was looking at her and beaming, as if tea at four P.M. were the most important moment of the day. Thomas poured the tea and made small talk before explaining that he and Florette had chores, a trip to the market or the post office, a long-delayed visit to the dentist because a molar was acting up. And the visitor would look appropriately crestfallen, how disagreeable for Mr. Railles. Then, rising reluctantly, the visitor would point to the canvas on the easel and say, Very interesting. It definitely has your signature. Who is it? And Thomas would reply, An old friend. Does the friend have a name? the visitor would inquire, offering an encouraging smile. And Thomas would reply, I have been painting him for many years, in his youth and now in his old age. As for his name, I have forgotten it. As you can surmise from our conversations, my memory isn't what it was. The years wash into one another, a watercolor memory. One fact bleeds into another. Emotions bleed. Faces bleed. I am forced to make lists, the latest list of familiar train stations, Santa Lucia in Venice, Keleti in Budapest, Atocha in Madrid. I have inventories of the natural world also, mountains and rivers, deserts, seas. It helps having a list of hard facts, don't you agree?
Facts anchor the work, whatever it is you're composing, a picture or a piece of music or a novel or poem.
But memory has to anchor the facts, alas.
And so I fall short.
Florette can vouch for that, can't you, chérie?
And the visitor would turn to her with a pained expression and she would give him chapter and verse on simple things her husband forgot, bills unpaid, letters unanswered, ordinary tasks ignored. She spoke with conviction because everything she said was true. The visitor would smile and Thomas would smile back and murmur something ambiguous. Forgetfulness is the old man's friend. Forgetfulness is a dream state, wouldn't you agree? When the visitor took one last look at the canvas, Thomas announced that the portrait was far from completion. He needed more time, perhaps a lifetime's worth. This man's personality changed with each season. Probably he would never finish it. The portrait would be an uncompleted work of great but unfulfilled promise, like Mahler's Tenth Symphony or Fitzgerald's Last Tycoon. The other portraits were safely locked away elsewhere, in another region of the country. Arson and theft were common in St. Michel du Valcabrère, owing to the many itinerant travelers, so often undocumented.
Then the visitor would leave and the portrait returned to the closet, where it would remain until the next inquiry. Florette thought these briefcase-wielding visitors were colorless people, with the closed and locked faces of suspicious landlords. She objected to them. She didn't like them in her house but Thomas insisted it was altogether easier talking to them for an hour than refusing to talk to them at all. They were persistent. They could make things difficult for him, and for her, too, if they chose. Trouble was, they didn't know specifically what they were looking for. There was something they wanted but they didn't know precisely what it was. Unk-unks, in government argot: unknown unknowns. Still, they had to say they tried. They had to make the journey. And they're gone no
w, he said, touching wood.
We can be ourselves again.
You were superb, chérie.
Would you like a tisane?
Florette listened now for his step but heard nothing except the movement of the men in the woods. She had forgotten where she was. She opened her eyes and saw that the snow had ceased. Stars burned overhead and off to the south. Through the branches of the trees she saw the horned moon. She was counting the things she had and the things she was missing, a warm coat and gloves, wool socks, a cigarette, and the company of her aunt, always a welcome presence. When she was young and ill with the usual childhood diseases, Tante Christine was always on hand to nurse her. Her own mother couldn't be bothered. Her mother was not on speaking terms with illness. When illness was in the house, her mother went away and Tante Christine arrived. Tante Christine had a saying about the horned moon but she couldn't remember what it was except it was lewd. One more lost story. She and Thomas forgot things all the time and now she knew that in her life she had forgotten much more than she remembered, fragments of herself gone forever. Soon she would be a tree stripped of leaves, bare to the winter wind. Thomas claimed that things were never forgotten, merely stored in momentarily inaccessible places, usually in l'esprit profond; so it was not unknown for the inaccessible to become accessible, such as when you were in a dream state or otherwise bewitched. She supposed that was why he made his lists of train stations and the rivers of the capital cities of central Europe. Thomas was so American. Nothing was ever lost, only misplaced; and when something unwelcome entered his mind, he knocked wood. Now she craved a cigarette. The Gitane smell was close but wafted away. She shut her eyes and put her hands on her face, her hands like claws, her fingers so very cold against her skin. Her nails were like chips of ice and she wondered if she was feverish. Her throat was sore, constricted as if a hand had closed around it. She did not understand why Thomas did not come for her. She was waiting for him.