On the way up to the highway, I get a suspicious glance from Madame Peretti, out hosing down her patio in her housedress and slippers. Santerrans aren’t big on physical fitness, not that you’d know that from looking at them: They’re actually a fairly attractive people, lean and muscular in a way that you can’t achieve working out twice a week. I guess risking your life in traffic just isn’t their idea of a good time. The highway is, however, the only place where you can run, goat paths not being suitable for this purpose; and, if you hug the shoulder, it’s reasonably safe. Much more lethal than the local kamikazes in their tiny Renaults are the tank-size recreational vehicles driven by Dutch and Germans, bristling with bikes and surfboards as they lurch like Cyclopes astride the one and a half lanes that snake around the peninsula. One of these rumbles by as I round the bend, missing me by less than a foot and causing me to wonder afresh why American tourists get such a bad rap when Northern Europe affords so many fine examples of obnoxious holiday-making behavior. Traffic aside, though, this stretch of the road is quite pleasant, canopied by trees that create a cool green nave. Rather less picturesque is the illegal garbage dump on the left beyond the village, a tangle of old car parts, defunct washing machines, and other inorganic refuse that is only partially obscured by foliage.
Ross was bedeviled by the Santerrans’ indifference to the environment, not so much out of any deeply held ecological principles as out of incomprehension at self-defeating behavior. In this he found an ally in the mayor, who appreciated the dissuasive effect of rusted bedsprings on tourist dollars. They even devised a scheme together wherein people would get a tax break for the proper disposal of refuse, a brilliant idea that got nowhere since it had to be proposed via official channels to the central authorities in Canonica, where it has languished ever since. In the end, their only successful initiative was the green plastic recycling bin that sits halfway up the road to Borgolano, empty of all bottles and cans except those that Lucy dutifully lugs up every week.
I can feel the sweat trickling down my back as I pick up speed. After the next bend, the forest ends and the pointe comes into view up ahead, its black flank cascading into the sea. The magic of the moment is instantly dispelled by the appearance of Eddie’s camionette, announced by a roar at my back and the screech of brakes. Toto is in the passenger seat.
“Salut, Constance,” Eddie yells out before speeding up again. He drives like all Santerrans with his elbow sticking out the window; you’d think the island would be full of one-armed people. I wave back. Judging by the time of day, he is on his delivery route. Many of the smaller villages don’t even have a store, so the groceries have to come to them—at a premium, of course—and both Eddie and the Perettis are happy to oblige. I reflect once again that there is something fundamentally disturbing about the thought of Eddie and Toto careening around the cap in a refrigerated van full of dismembered animal carcasses. A couple years ago there was some kind of unpleasantness involving a Danish tourist they picked up hitchhiking. The details are swathed in lurid speculations, but according to Yolande, Eddie spent six months in jail. Toto, it seems, was deemed not responsible for his actions—an even scarier concept, if you ask me.
The sun is starting to beat down in earnest, so I turn back, sticking again to the mountainside, though I’m not sure what makes me think that being crushed against a rock by a German Winnebago would be any better than being tossed over the cliff. This stretch being uphill, I’m panting for breath by the time I reach the woods before Borgolano. After the glare of the open road, the sudden plunge into shade is a little disorienting, which no doubt explains why I can’t immediately make out the object hanging from a branch overhead. Squinting, I slow down and peer up. The object is a dog, or rather the corpse of a dog, hanging upside down by one hind leg. I stop, frozen by a visceral revulsion that quickly turns to outrage. I consider cutting the thing down until I realize I have neither the means of reaching it nor a knife. In the end I push on, deciding that I’ll alert the police. Borgolano actually has a small gendarmerie, along with a post office. It’s not until I’ve reached the village that I realize that the only car I saw coming from the direction of the woods besides the Germans’ was Eddie’s.
Back at the house, I find Lucy and Yves deep in conversation over coffee.
“Constance,” Lucy says excitedly, “it turns out that Yves restores old furniture!”
“Imagine that.” I pour myself a glass of water and gulp it down.
“Attention,” Yves cautions, “you will catch a cold!”
“Right,” I mumble, “in July.”
“Amazing we never knew, and with all this work we need done—the dining room table, for instance.”
“There’s a dead dog hanging in the woods,” I say.
“Really, Constance, how revolting!”
“Quoi?”
“And I strongly suspect that Eddie and Toto put it there, though I can’t fathom why. I’m going up to tell the police.”
“I don’t think you should do that,” Yves says.
“Why not?”
“It is not a good idea to interfere in the local customs. Besides, the gendarmes will do nothing.”
“For Christ’s sake, it’s not like we’re talking about some charming bit of local folklore!”
“Perhaps they are trying to warn someone,” Yves says. “I would advise you to stay out of it.”
“I think he’s right, Constance,” Lucy says with a worried look. “Yves knows rather more about these things than we do.”
Well, well, when did this turnaround occur?
“I guess you’re right,” I concede. I’m not going to dispute the fact that Yves knows the locals better than we do, from all his hanging around at the Marmite. Besides, I am beginning to feel really creeped out. Suddenly I find myself wishing that Ross were here. This was just the kind of thing he knew how to handle.
By the time the others have returned from Flore, I’ve forgotten all about the incident. Odette is obviously as perplexed as I am by the sudden cordiality between Lucy and Yves, who are going over all the furniture in the living room with measuring tape and pencil.
“He restores antiques,” I explain.
“Ah bon? I had no idea.”
Some old friend, I think. At the sight of Richard, Lucy becomes even more gushy, making me wonder if this sudden interest in Yves is aimed at pissing her husband off. All the new attention, in any case, has rendered Yves positively expansive. I guess no one is at their best under a constant diet of withering scorn.
“Constance, please help me put the groceries away—Ah, thank you, Jeem, I think the wine is still in the car.”
“No problem, I’ll get it.”
“Such a nice young man,” Odette observes to me. “You are lucky, Constance.”
“Why am I lucky?”
She ignores me. “How nice that Lucy has found a project. Perhaps it will keep her occupied. Now, Jeem has promised to build me a fire so we will have grilled lamb for dinner, and roasted potatoes—”
“Don’t you think a gratin would be better?” Lucy pipes in from the doorway.
“Not in summer. I think tomates farcies as well, no?”
I wonder if our neighbor has any idea of all the hoopla he’s causing. Isabelle, humming to herself, has already disappeared upstairs to wash her hair again and no doubt mull over whatever piece of undress she’s going to appear in tonight. Odette, peeling an onion, is flushed and gay. Even Lucy seems caught up in the general good humor.
“Can someone chop the garlic?” Odette asks.
“I’ll do it,” hastens Lucy, who hasn’t given up on sharing the culinary mantle. “Odette, if you want I could make the tomatoes …”
“Ah là là, go ahead … just don’t put peanuts in them.”
“Why on earth would I put peanuts in a Provençal dish?” Lucy says loftily.
“If I’m not needed, I’m going up on the roof,” Jane announces.
“I’ll go with you,” I say.
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I take a seat on the ledge and watch her set up her easel. In a typically schizophrenic display of Santerran weather patterns, the sky has turned periwinkle again and the air is lambent with late-afternoon sun.
“Are you going to do a pastel?”
“Yes, I think so. Watercolor wouldn’t do it justice. Look at that yellow!” Swiftly, she traces the outline of the rooftops, the jagged mountains beyond, purple in the buttery light. Her big hands with their chewed nails are surprisingly graceful. “It’s almost too pretty, isn’t it?”
“What’s wrong with pretty?”
“Ugly is more interesting. So, how’s your romance coming along?”
“I don’t know. He seems more interested in Richard.”
“Poor Richard. He needs a friend,” Jane says distractedly.
We sit in silence, Jane frowning as she rubs at the edge of the yellow wall with her thumb, smudging it with violet. When I was little I thought that art consisted of drawing the outline and then filling it in. In fact, if you look at Jane’s work close-up, it’s hard to tell where anything begins or ends. My eyes drift beyond her out to the water where one lone fishing boat bobs listlessly. I’m reminded that, for all its turquoise loveliness, the Mediterranean is an exhausted sea, overfished and depleted, old as the world. Our East Hampton house looked out over the rambunctious surf of the Atlantic—more Ross’s element, you would think—and yet, he always preferred Santerre.
“Do you ever miss Dad?” I ask.
“Sometimes. We didn’t have much in common.”
“Neither did he and Lucy.”
“Lucy has a weakness for big men.” She frowns. “Shit, I’ve botched the Paolis’ house. It’s that bloody bougainvillea; I never get the color right.”
“Right, that’s why she married Richard.”
“Not to marry. She always wanted a father more than a husband.”
I watch the fishing boat some more. “Why did Daphne marry Ross?”
Jane looks at me like I’m stupid. “Why do you think? He was irresistible.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t have to marry him. I mean, you’d think she would’ve had more sense.”
“She’s just like anyone else,” Jane says, turning back to her drawing. “She wanted what she couldn’t have.”
“Is that why Lucy hates Odette?”
“Lucy hates Odette because she can’t bear that anyone so common could replace our mother,” Jane says flatly.
“Well, you know, sometimes I think that’s the secret of her success with Ross.”
She looks at me. “You mean she lulled him with her banal feminine wiles?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling, though Jane isn’t. “How is Daphne?”
“Oh, she’s fine. She’s got her garden and her dogs. I’m going out to stay with her in August; Lucy, too, I expect. Surrey’s a nice change from Santerre.”
Sometimes I think Jane is more interested in shapes than in people—that this is the secret to her equanimity.
“I guess I’d better go get ready for dinner,” I say, but I don’t think she hears me.
CHAPTER nineteen
“A barbecue!” Philippe says, accepting a whisky from Richard. “Takes me back to my days in the States….”
“Better not tell Odette,” I say. “She might infer that you’re expecting a hamburger.”
“But I adore hamburgers!”
Isabelle chooses this moment to make her appearance. In a silk slip the color of apples, she looks like a tropical Titania and smells like coconuts, from the hair conditioner that she can’t get in Prague and that I bring over in big tubs from Duane Reade.
“Salut, Philippe….”
“Ah, good evening, Miss Wright. You look charming.”
“You’re allowed to call me Isabelle, you know,” she says playfully. “I’m glad to hear you’re a meat lover; we don’t think much of vegetarians in Prague….”
“Then I am most relieved,” Philippe says. “I would tremble at the thought of being held in low regard by you.”
Isabelle plants herself in front of him. “That’s why I had to leave America: If they think something is bad for you, they make it illegal. Who wants to live a life without vice?”
“We all know you don’t,” Lucy says, joining us. “How nice to see you, Philippe. I see you’ve been given a drink.”
“On n’est pas des sauvages,” my sister says.
“Ah, the drama begins!” Philippe exclaims. We follow his gaze out to the horizon, which is gearing up for one of Santerre’s spectacularly lurid sunsets. Personally, I’ve always found them a little over the top, like being stuck inside a postcard or a Douglas Sirk movie.
“Shockingly vulgar, isn’t it?” Lucy says.
“Pure decadence. You must find it inspiring, Miss Nicholson”—Philippe turns to Jane, who has just joined us—“the thin line between the garish and the sublime.”
“I’m not that subtle,” Jane says.
“Oh, please let’s not talk about aesthetics,” Isabelle moans. “I get enough of that in Prague….”
Lucy, evidently of another mind, opens her mouth but is instantly cut off—as is all further hope of bracing intellectual discussion—by the eruption of Yolande Van Langendonck on our little gathering.
“Coucou, bonsoir! Is the sunset not fabulous! Odette, get your camera, I will take a picture of the whole family!”
Odette demurs, claiming she has no film. Liar.
“Ah, quel dommage … it would have been nice for the girls.”
“How nice of you to stop by,” Lucy simpers with her fakest smile.
“Yes, so kind of Odette to invite me, taking pity on a lonely old woman …” Yolande winks, a motion that crinkles all the makeup around her eyes and makes her look arrestingly like a cockatoo.
“Mais non …”
Lucy glances furiously at Odette, though in fact Odette assures me later in the kitchen that Yolande invited herself, adding philosophically, “Besides, she harms no one.”
“Alors, Monsieur Kahn, aren’t you the lucky dog, with all these beautiful girls next door!”
“I count my blessing daily, Madame.”
“And witty too!” She wags a playful finger in his face. “Attention, though: Odette watches over them like a hawk….” Isabelle rolls her eyes toward me at this preposterous assertion, simultaneously indicating with a nod that I should follow her inside.
“Better get back out there,” I advise her, having caught up with her in the kitchen. “Lucy’s homing in on him.”
Isabelle makes a dismissive gesture. “Look,” she says urgently, “we’ve got to keep him away from Jane.”
I eye her suspiciously. What kind of a threat can Jane possibly be? “I don’t have anything to do with the seating arrangements,” I say. “You’d better tell Odette.”
“Oh, all right, just make sure and grab the other seat next to him. If he ends up by Jane, they’ll talk about art all night and I won’t be able to get a word in edgewise.”
So that’s what it’s about. I don’t suggest that maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
With what I assume is the collusion of Odette, Philippe, in the place of honor at the table’s end, ends up hemmed in by me and Isabelle, at a safe distance from Jane, who gets stuck between Richard and Lucy and, I’m sure, would be most amused by all these machinations. Jim lands on the other side between Isabelle and Odette, leaving Yves at the other end with Yolande on his left.
“So,” Philippe addresses me as Odette serves the salad, “still absorbed in Flaubert?”
“Not exactly. I haven’t picked it up since you last saw me.”
Isabelle leans forward. “What haven’t you picked up?”
“My book. I keep getting distracted.”
“Your sister is most commendably reading Madame Bovary in French.”
“I never could finish it,” Isabelle says airily. “Another novel about a bored housewife …”
“Well,” Philippe says with a li
ttle smile, “Flaubert did say that she weeps in twenty French villages.”
“I’m reading Gombrowicz’s diaries. Do you know Gombrowicz?” Isabelle has been lugging Gombrowicz’s diaries on vacation for three years now. Jiri considers them to be the highest flowering of Central European literature, along with The Man without Qualities, of which she also owns a virgin copy. Talk about boring.
“Intimately: I taught a course on him.” Uh-oh, trouble … I’d be surprised if she’s reached page ten. But my sister is not to be underestimated.
“Really? I thought people only read him in Eastern Europe.”
“Oh, no, he’s very popular in France. We’re great appreciators of morbid Slavic humor.”
“Believe me, if you lived there you wouldn’t find them humorous. It’s all a front for self-pity, really,” my sister asserts.
“Oh, we French are quite comfortable with self-pity.”
“What an interesting remark,” calls out Lucy, who, though at the other end of the table, is still within earshot. “One doesn’t think of the French as feeling sorry for themselves.”
“But I assure you that we do. America has rather taken the wind out of our sails this past century,” Philippe says with a mischievous smile.
“Ah non, no politics! Jeem, could you go check the meat, please?”
Jim hurries out. It seems they do a lot of barbecuing in Kansas, and he has, under Odette’s tutelage, become something of an accomplished grill chef, taking to heart her admonitions on the inedibility of well-done meat. The lamb cutlets he reappears with are pink and succulent within, their fragrant juices oozing appetizingly onto the blue and white platter.
“Bravo, Jeem! And how lovely they smell.” Jim grins happily. He’s become Odette’s little pet, which doesn’t seem to bother him in the least. In fact, he laps it up.
The arrival of the food thankfully focuses everyone’s energy on eating: Odette and Lucy in teeny, measured bites, Yolande with the gusto of one no longer concerned about her figure, and Isabelle like a slob. My sister has some of the worst table manners I’ve ever seen: You’d think she’d been raised in an orphanage. I read somewhere though that men equate all appetites, so no doubt Philippe will read the dribble of sauce on her chin as a sign of sexual voracity, as if she hadn’t given him enough hints already. He turns to me again: “What does this impressive-sounding job of yours consist of, exactly?”
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