Forgetfulness

by Ward Just

  He was occupied with his friends. She tried to remember why the Americans were with them for lunch. Yes, of course. They had come for the funeral the day before. The funeral of the Englishman who lived in the farmhouse adjoining their own. He was over one hundred years old when he passed away in his sleep. Thomas and his two friends were pallbearers at the service, sparsely attended, only a few loyal neighbors and the mayor besides herself and Ghislaine, the village woman who cooked and kept house for the Englishman. The abbé was circumspect in his eulogy, a generic affair that took account of Monsieur Granger's long life and quiet death, his modest habits and unobtrusive character, before commending his soul to the grace of God, though the abbé's manner suggested that God might wait awhile before attending to it. The light was soft inside the church, yellow flowers banked beside the casket. Florette had picked them herself from the Englishman's greenhouse. Thomas and his American friends listened attentively, solemn expressions broken now and again by raised eyebrows. They buried the Englishman under the cherry tree by the wall in the meadow beside his house. There were no tears because the Englishman had led an agreeable life for a very long time, and if he had a complaint no one ever heard it. Ghislaine had turned to Florette and said that the Englishman had left her nothing, not a sou, after all the years she had looked after him and his wretched dogs, cairn terriers, filthy brutes, biters, six in all over the many, many decades he had lived in St. Michel du Valcabrère. Ghislaine looked after the dogs and the dogs graves, can you imagine such a disagreeable chore? The dog remains were on the south side of the cherry trees, while he will be on the north. They were all under the shade of the tree. Wasn't it appalling and unwholesome? And that was not all. He left the farmhouse and its contents, including the wine cellar and the English silver, to a niece in America and she was selling everything sight unseen. They had never met, Monsieur Granger and the American niece. They were perfect strangers. Yet for me, there's nothing. An irregular situation, Ghislaine said. She had only come to the funeral so that she could curse him silently and in person, another foreigner who arrived unbidden to enjoy French hospitality but refused to honor his debts. Debts were for other people. Also, he was not amiable, was untidy in his manner, often curt, one of those who thought the French owed him something. Yes, that was true. He had a grudge against us. He believed all France should be grateful that he chose to come and live among us, as if it were not his choice but our choice. They think we are innkeepers to the world! That was the way with foreigners estranged from their own countries. Wasn't it true that a person deserved to die under his own flag, among his own people? He will never be at rest. And I will say this also, Madame, between us two only. He had a stone in his shoe, something concealed. He had a dark past, that one. As with so many foreigners. He should not have been here. Ghislaine heaved a great shrug, her mouth turned down at the corners. No one asked him to come. Yet here he was.

  When Florette repeated the conversation to Thomas, he was unsympathetic. Ghislaine had done all right for herself while the old man was alive. She has no cause for complaint. It was true that Captain St. John Granger had a personal history that was not entirely comme il faut, but Ghislaine was in no position to judge. The Englishman was both more and less than he seemed. He had arrived in St. Michel du Valcabrère in 1919, evidently having done his service in the war. He was slender as a walking stick, with a thin mustache and a cap of fine yellow hair, dressed up in a blue blazer and flannel trousers, a regimental tie at his throat. Owing to his clothes and his bearing, people were certain he was a lord, perhaps a second son obliged to leave his homeland. Many veterans had migrated to the region, attracted by its privacy, its distance from the world, its wild beauty and extreme climate, its taciturnity. In the beginning, he was the only Englishman in the valley. When other English people arrived, he became yet more reclusive, growing vegetables, tending his flowers, rarely leaving his property. He had no visitors from the outside and gave the impression he was without family, an Englishman who had severed all ties to his native land. In any case, he seemed content living alone in a plain style, reading constantly. The Englishman had a beautiful library, books mostly of the nineteenth century, the century of invention, adventure, and capitalism. Once a month Thomas was invited to dinner, the meal cooked and served by Ghislaine. A companionable game of billiards finished the evening. Thomas always returned home tipsy and thoughtful and when Florette asked him what they had talked about, he replied that the Englishman was spare with words. He spent them as a miser spent money. He had a fine sense of humor but used it infrequently, being easy with silence. Despite his great age, the Englishman's mind had not lost its edge. He quoted Trollope and Dickens from memory and also Proust but with a Mayfair accent. He talked about books while Thomas retailed what village gossip he had—the schoolmaster's mysterious disappearance, the quarrel between the gendarme and the mayor—but the Englishman was more interested in books than he was in gossip. Gossip was interesting only if you knew the personalities involved and the Englishman had but a nodding acquaintance with the inhabitants of the village. However, he did have an intimate attachment to Ghislaine. Thomas was certain of this because one evening at table, pouring wine, she had straightened his shirt collar, in the circumstances a most private gesture. The nature of the intimate attachment could only be guessed at. But the Englishman pretended not to notice and continued the conversation as if nothing had occurred.

  Florette said, But Ghislaine is nearly seventy years old.

  And Granger is—over a hundred, Thomas said.

  So what manner of "intimate attachment" do you suppose it is?

  Billiards, Thomas said. They play billiards together.

  Very funny, Florette said.

  When Thomas's friends arrived on their visits he took them to the Englishman's for tea. Florette declined to go on grounds that it was a masculine occasion and she would be in the way, by which she meant that the conversation would bore her. The Americans brought news of the outside world, NATO capitals and the Middle East, the famished nations of the equator and the awakening of the East, China and the Indian subcontinent. The Englishman was always attentive, leaning forward in his chair, his hand cupped at his ear. He liked stories of international fuckups, especially if they involved Americans, but rarely volunteered any of his own. But of course he had been disengaged from the world, having lived in Aquitaine for a very long time. He had no firsthand knowledge of current events and rarely read a newspaper. His prewar radio did not receive the BBC. If asked, he could not have been able to name the American vice president or the British chancellor of the exchequer. He volunteered that he had once seen Winston Churchill from a distance, and as a child had been introduced to T. E. Lawrence. Boyish face, iron handshake. Shame he isn't around to settle the present mess, what? When Russ Conlon professed disgust at the promise of paradise for Muslim suicide bombers, the Englishman smiled and said that people who had nothing must be promised something. And they would believe the promise because God was both great and benevolent. No God would condemn a man to live as wretchedly in the next life as he lived in this one. That would make a hoax of life and of God also. Surely that would not be God's will. And so the imams promised paradise, and who is to say they are not prophets? Revenge has many forms, would you not agree? Revenge is the animating principle of our world. And in the division of the spoils is it not logical that if the faithful merit heaven, the faithless merit hell? In the puzzled silence that followed, Thomas observed that for that one moment the Englishman had abandoned his attitude of ironic detachment and spoke from the heart. And then his attention wandered and he began to doze in his chair. The Americans left shortly thereafter, promising to return again next year, when they could once again discuss the connection between faith and murder because neither would disappear in their lifetimes. Revenge would figure in the discussion as well.

  Florette listened to Thomas's dry account and wondered aloud why he never invited the Englishman to dinner. She was a good cook
and enjoyed having people in. Thomas replied that the old man preferred dining at home, at his own table among his own things, Ghislaine cooking according to his specific diet. Florette was not satisfied with this answer. Thomas should insist. Hospitality should always be repaid. Was he ashamed of her? Their table? Their cellar? Not at all, Thomas said equably. It was only a question of what the old man was prepared to undertake. He lived to suit himself. He did not go out of his way for other people and did not expect other people to go out of their way for him. He lived by his own rules, simple rules but immutable. Thomas added, unhelpfully, that Captain St. John Granger was a species of ghost and that was why they got on so well, because he, Thomas, was a species of ghost also, except he preferred the term "displaced person."

  Florette heard a rustle in the underbrush and guessed they had finished their conversation and were ready to move once more. She listened hard for the voice of the pig-eyed conquistador, the one with the lisp, but heard nothing. She called again, louder, for a Gitane but her voice was husky, barely above a whisper. Her voice was gone and no one heard her. The pain in her chest interfered with her vocal cords and she found it difficult to breathe. She noticed that the pain in her leg had almost vanished, replaced by a heavy numbness. Snow was falling again, softly, a slow-motion fall, and a great silence had settled over the forest. The horned moon had vanished. The wind died. She felt someone touch her arm but when she looked up she saw only the snow and the white-limbed trees. The touch felt like her mother's hand but when she spoke aloud, Mama, Mama, are you there? and heard no reply, she knew the touch was imaginary, her mind wandering again. It was confusing for her, looking through the snowflakes, collecting now on the boughs of the fir trees, settling in blankets. In this country it often snowed for days, roads were closed, communications disrupted, the hills and fields motionless in white; and when that happened it was possible to believe that time had hurtled backward at great speed, centuries dissolving, Merovingian kings ruling still in Aquitaine, the community returned to the tenth century where it belonged. The trees resembled overweight women in white aprons, and she thought again of dear Tante Christine. She called again in her weak voice, speaking French so that her aunt might understand and come to her aid. She had waited such a long time. She raised her voice and promised the men reward money if they delivered her safely home. Her house was not far, barely an hour's walk. Thomas would be grateful. Thomas would reward them if only they would pick up the stretcher and carry her down the trail. Please, she said, remembering her manners. Didn't everyone deserve courtesy? But there was no sound in the forest, not even a whisper of wind. She waited, holding her breath, feeling time whirl backward, listening for the man with the lisp, the conquistador who reminded her of her absent father. His voice was unmistakable. She would know it anywhere.

  Snow continued to fall, collecting on her legs and stomach, collecting on her fingers as she raised her arms to the unseen stars, time continuing to reel backward until she saw herself quite clearly as a young girl, seventeen years old and dressed in white, listening to church bells on a sunny Sunday morning, everyone gathered in the square, talking companionably as they waited for Mass. She was standing with friends, classmates, and a boy she was interested in. The boy thought she resembled Jeanne Moreau, star of that year's wonderful film Jules et Jim. The boy's idol was Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Breathless Belmondo, the Belmondo with the swagger, the leer, the truculence, and the mountainous nose. She could not take her eyes off the boy and thought of him as her personal Lord of Misrule. He wore his trousers short, his thumbs tucked behind his belt like an American cowboy, a black hat. He had plans. He intended to move to the Pigalle district of Paris and begin a career as a gangster so that he could afford fast cars and late nights in cabarets. Adieu, St. Michel du Valcabrère. He wanted to live according to his own desires. Tante Christine discouraged her interest in the boy, an unsuitable boy, louche and unstable and without prospects. What would life be with such a boy? What would become of her? Such boys existed in every village in France, perhaps in every village in every country of the world, and no good came of them. Florette could do ever so much better, she was so attractive and well disposed, warm and likable to a fault. And abruptly the bells receded and fell silent and the people filed into the church until the square was empty except for Jean-Paul Belmondo insolently astride his motorcycle.

  It took Florette a few moments to realize she was alone, and a few moments more to understand what that meant. The men had abandoned her, gone back to wherever they had come from or wherever they were going. She began to shiver, turning painfully on her side, wrapping her arms around her chest. My God, it was cold. She had never been colder in her life. She waited and waited some more, she had no idea how long. She could not bear to think of dying alone, so she worked hard to keep her wits intact, banishing all thoughts of her injuries and dying in the mountain forest. She wanted to look at her wristwatch, for she had no idea of the time. She brought the dial close to her face, squinting, and saw the hands upright, forming the number 1. That would make the time six o'clock, and how surprised she was. It was only early evening and she had imagined the hour to be nine or perhaps ten, well past the dinner hour. She was suddenly filled with hope, the hour seemed to her a lifeline, time at last on her side. Thomas was certainly en route now with men from the village, so she needed to remain alert to the present moment, as elusive as that moment might be—and in that state of euphoria, as she found herself grinning like a circus clown, she began to pee. She did not understand this, why her body relaxed just then, like flopping into an armchair after strenuous exercise. She peed and peed some more, such a strange sensation lying on her back but so welcome; and at last she was done, her bladder empty, and she wondered how she had endured it as long as she had. But the men were gone. She had nothing to fear, nothing at all save for the possibility that Thomas would not find her. The mountain was as broad as the world itself.

  So she clasped her frozen hands and prayed to God, first in French, then in English, finally in Latin. Her English was not good enough for the prayer. She thought she had forgotten her Latin but she spoke as fluently as any cleric at the altar of her church, until she forgot where she was in the prayer, the sense of it, what she was saying and whom she was saying it to and why. The words had flown away. She was forgetting even as she lay alone in the darkness, unquiet, diminished, snow collecting all around her. She was dependent on the mercy of others and that made her cross. She had shied from turmoil her whole life, even as a little girl; there was turmoil enough within the four walls of her own house. Her regret was that she had no children but that was God's will, and now she was being punished again for no reason she could understand. She had never been adventurous, and now she was lying frozen on a mountainside waiting for rescue. Other people were adventurous. The boy she had been interested in had ridden away on his motorcycle one afternoon in the spring. He promised he would write her from Paris. When he was settled he would send for her. They would conquer the capital together, just like all those provincial characters in Balzac's novels. If you pushed hard enough, Paris gave way. They would work as a team, she preparing her assault on the Place Vendôme, he at Place Pigalle. And if she failed—well, a great film director would see her one day on the street and offer a screen test. She would be the new Moreau, her face on the cover of magazines and her voice on the radio. They would have a fine apartment and he would be a respected gangster with men of his own and money to burn. They would take midnight drives in the Bois du Boulogne in his yellow Alfa-Romeo convertible, she with a summer breeze in her hair, and over his left shoulder the tapering candle of the Eiffel Tower. But she never heard from him and always wondered whether he had gotten to Paris, and if he had, what he was doing there. Had her Lord of Misrule realized his dream? She hoped so. Tante Christine believed he would be driving a bus, that was what happened to boys from the country who ran off to Paris to make their fortune. Boys never understood the odds. Boys did not know how hard Pari
s could be when you arrived there alone, penniless, frightened, friendless, every hand turned against you. Montparnasse station was the gate to perdition. Florette had smiled at her aunt's vehemence, the natural contempt of the country woman for the city. Of course she spoke the truth as she saw it. But even so, Florette wanted to think of him as a great success in his chosen life of crime, a respected gangster with men of his own and money to burn, driving his yellow convertible through the Bois du Boulogne at midnight, the Eiffel Tower over his left shoulder.

  Florette's mind continued to reel, memories tumbling from it, her spirit becoming lighter as it freed itself of its burdens. What once was thick was now loose; and all this time her thoughts were escaping and dispersing like a plume of breath on a cold day. The yellow convertible in the Bois du Boulogne disappeared. She could no longer remember the boy's name. She was further inside herself than she believed possible but this was comforting. She was no longer so cold and was content now to wait. The present moment slipped away, irretrievable. She tried now to gather her memories but they continued to elude her, dancing away into the night. They were quicker than she was. Florette was consoled and in limbo and that was all she could think about as snow continued to fall, tiny flakes as hard as gravel. She closed her eyes, concentrating, but there was nothing to concentrate on. Her memory began to drift away, shuddering, almost vacant, and weightless. She saw herself from a great height, the horned moon over her shoulder. She knew she was falling asleep because she was no longer cross and no longer remembering. She was not conscious of time except for the faint beat of her heart. Then the Gitanes smell was close by and something warm against her throat.

  What is your name?