“I’m an equities analyst for an investment bank. I assess the worth of companies.”
“It sounds terribly complicated and mathematical.”
“It isn’t, really. The computer does most of the work; I just plug in the numbers. It’s all done by statistical models….”
“That’s not true,” Isabelle says with her mouth full. “She travels all over the world and has a huge expense account.”
“I wish,” I say. “I’m in emerging markets, so I get to go to interesting places sometimes.”
“Like Prague.”
“That’s the glamorous part. Then there’s Warsaw in February.”
“A capitalist who reads French novels and travels to exotic lands.”
“I’m not sure Warsaw is exotic,” I say.
Across the table, Isabelle widens her eyes at me. I make a little shrug as if to say, I can’t help it, he keeps talking to me. Jim, on her other side, is absorbed in conversation with Odette, but Isabelle finds him boring anyway. Finally she leans right across the table. “Follow me to the kitchen,” she hisses across a startled Philippe. I excuse myself and, picking up the empty bread basket for cover, head out after her.
“Can’t you see that Odette is flirting with Jim?” she says indignantly as soon as I’ve joined her by the sink. Her cheeks are flushed, a sure sign that she’s plastered.
“So what, she flirts with him all the time. It’s the only way she knows how to talk to men.”
“I’ll tell you why you didn’t notice: It’s because you’ve been wrapped up all night in conversation with our mysterious neighbor—not that I mind you monopolizing the only available man in the house, even though you already have a boyfriend….”
“You’re drunk,” I say.
“Of course I’m drunk: That’s what people do at dinner parties—in Europe at least. I guess in New York you just sit around drinking mineral water and talking about the stock market.”
I find myself observing her with almost scientific detachment. In the kitchen’s sallow light, I notice for the first time the creeping signs of middle age: the fine webs at the corners of her eyes, the puffiness beneath, the softening chin. I wonder why this is so disconcerting until I realize that I must have believed she was ageless, like the goddesses she’s so often been compared to.
I say, “Anyway, don’t be silly, he’s just talking to me because you intimidate him.”
She hesitates. “Do you really think so?”
“Absolutely. Why would he be interested in me?”
Isabelle’s face crumples with guilt. “Oh, Constance, I’m so sorry, I’m such a pig. Oink.”
“Don’t mention it,” I say.
Back at the table, I stun Richard, who is on my other side and has been talking quietly to Jane all evening, by turning toward him and asking him about the Millennium Dome, the only topic that springs to my mind. Isabelle, I see from the corner of my eye, doesn’t lose a second.
“It’s good old British class warfare,” Richard says. “The toffs hate it because working-class people enjoy it.” Of course Richard is a toff, but like most Brits I know, he fancies himself a socialist.
“What nonsense are you spouting, darling?” At the sound of his wife’s voice, an irritated spasm constricts Richard’s brow. “The reason people can’t bear it is because it is, quite simply, vulgar beyond belief.”
“I see your point,” I say to Richard.
“Actually,” Philippe says, “the French felt the same way about the Eiffel Tower when it first went up. It seems that what we think of as good taste is just another product of acculturation.” Isabelle, at this latest contretemps, glowers and sulkily slops more wine into her glass.
“I don’t agree with you at all.” Lucy’s voice has grown animated. “Good taste has to do with an innate sense of aesthetic harmony!”
“What a snob you are, darling.”
“I agree with Philippe,” Jane says. “Good taste has become just another commodity. I think it’s very healthy the way the Americans have debunked the myth of aristocratic graciousness with their Ralph Laurens and Martha Stewarts. It turns out it can all be bought.”
“You can’t buy good manners,” Lucy exclaims, “or a sense of color, or perspective! How can you say these things as an artist?!”
“As an artist, I deal in illusion.”
“And illusion is the same as reality?” Lucy says.
“The point has been debated,” observes Philippe.
“God, listen to you,” Isabelle says loudly. “Half the world is a total mess and you’re worried about good taste.”
“While you, on the other hand, are actively engaged in making the world a better place,” Lucy says.
“More than you are.”
“Yes, well, we haven’t all had the great good luck of being married to an authentic Eastern European dissident,” Lucy says sarcastically.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Jiri was more involved in the opposition than you’ll ever know.”
“When he wasn’t off at the pub with the blokes.”
“He was in jail.”
“No one is disputing the terrific glamour of Jiri; I was asking about your personal contribution to the greater good….”
“Girls,” Odette warns.
“Easy for you to criticize, sitting on your trust fund in Kensington.”
“Delicious salad,” Yolande says. “So clever to add orange segments.”
“My wife has never found a recipe she couldn’t improve upon,” Richard remarks acidly.
I glance at our neighbor, who looks like he’s finding this all very entertaining.
“At least she didn’t add peanuts.”
“Isabelle, ça suffit!”
“Golly, can’t anyone take a joke anymore?”
“I think,” Odette says firmly, “that it’s time for dessert.”
Jim and I have sex again that night. Maybe it’s the only thing we have in common, the way others might share an interest in gardening or philately. In the middle of this detached coupling—all the more intense for its pure physicality, so that we both come violently—I close my eyes and picture Philippe thrusting inside me. When I open them, I find Electra staring at us from the doorway. We must have woken her up; the girls’ room is right above ours. I know I should cover myself but instead I stare back, willing her to go away, though she makes no motion to do so. Her eyes meet mine and I detect something in her unblinking gaze, a fleeting expression that, accompanied as it is by a twitch of her pale lips, I could swear is amusement. Groggily, I lift my hand in a little wave—it seems to me then to shoo her away—but I wonder now if in fact I wasn’t acknowledging a kind of complicity between us, as if, I in this animal state and she trapped in all that flesh, we had, for a moment, met in the same place.
CHAPTER twenty
The next day, the sirocco sets in, like a hot stale breath, so that I’m not sure whether to blame my headache on last night’s wine or on the advancing low-pressure system. Jim is out of sorts himself. He’s usually up earlier than me, but this morning he shifts restlessly in his sleep, muttering into the pillow. I tiptoe out, trying not to make noise as I creep down the stairs. Not that I have anything to worry about: Odette sleeps like the dead, and when I pass Isabelle’s door, I hear her snoring.
A gust flaps the Perettis’ canvas awning as I step out, startling the two cats who slink up when I unlatch the door. The dish the girls set out for them yesterday is empty but for a crusted bone that’s already attracting flies. Monsieur Peretti’s olive tree rustles irritably, its leaves silvery in the weird light. I head for the stone steps. On the way up I pass Madame, out hosing her patio again, her bonjour vitiated by the fish-eye that accompanies it. For all of Ross’s efforts, we’re not from here and never will be. Even Yolande, with her obsession about the locals siphoning off her electricity, seems to understand this.
I emerge by the snack bar where Toto-the-halfwit’s cousin Frédé peddles soft drinks
and ice cream to passing motorists. According to Yolande, the mayor gave Frédé the concession after he came back from jail in Canonica, hoping it would keep him out of trouble. He’s not allowed to serve alcohol, which suggests what at least part of the trouble may have been. At this early hour the stand is still shuttered, as are the four rather graceful turn-of-the-century houses on the main road that leads to the place. There was once a prosperous bourgeoisie in Borgolano, before trade with Genoa declined in the nineteenth century. The mayor is always going on about how today’s youth have no interest in working, and if Frédé and Toto and Eddie are anything to go by, he seems to have a point. Above the still slumbering Marmite, I hear signs of matutinal stirrings: the creak of a shutter and a thwacking sound that, when I glance up, turns out to be old Madame Andreani beating a carpet on her balcony. Next door, Monsieur Paoli appears in a singlet at his window and thoughtfully scratches his armpit.
Since the Winnebagos aren’t out yet, I head in the opposite direction of my jogging route, the more scenic choice, with dramatic sea vistas that are a favorite photo backdrop with the RV set. Just outside Borgolano, a weatherworn placard advertises the long defunct Auberge du Bon Pêcheur. Years ago the Marmite crew tried to branch out into waterfront dining, in one of the fishing cabins now owned by Yolande. A spray of rusted bullet holes pocks the sign’s surface, a sad testimony both to the enterprise’s downfall and to the mental acuity of Toto, who got carried away one night and forgot that he was supposed to shoot at French road signs, not placards advertising native-owned businesses.
I stop and peer down at the restless sloshing sea. I feel restless, too, distracted by my thoughts and the rustling underbrush, which is no doubt why I don’t hear Eddie’s van until it’s right below me on the beach road. He must have swerved down from the highway while I was looking out at the water. Why, I wonder, is Eddie heading down to the beach on a day like this? At this hour of the morning he should be doing his rounds. I follow the little red van as it negotiates the first bend, disappearing for a few seconds and resurfacing on the last stretch before the fishing cabins where it comes to a halt. The air goes still again and I hear one car door slam, then another, then a third as Eddie and Toto pull a package out of the back and slam that door, too, before vanishing down the footpath. They must, I tell myself before turning back, be making a delivery. Maybe one of Yolande’s tenants is having a barbecue.
I’m not all that surprised when I run into Philippe back on the square. What I hadn’t expected is how flustered I feel, as if he could somehow read my mind.
“Hello, Constance,” he says, that little smile playing on his lips. “You’re up early.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say. “It’s too hot.” He looks as if he’s just woken up himself, his jaw shadowed with stubble and his hair unruly, and I repress the urge to reach out, as if touching him would somehow breathe life into our ephemeral intimacy. I notice that his eyes are not hazel but gray, and that he tans in the effortless way of Mediterranean people. His half-buttoned shirt reveals a fine tracery of dark curls. Jim’s chest is as hairless as a newborn’s.
“Miserable, isn’t it? It’s such an intemperate wind, the sirocco, very un-European.”
“Well, it’s from Africa, isn’t it?” I say, looking into those strange gray eyes that, it strikes me, are the color of the pebbles on Orzo beach.
He meets my gaze and holds it. I’m sure women stare at him all the time. “Yes, our brush with the desert…. I was thinking this morning of those Bedouins whose skin turns blue from the dye in their robes.”
“Are you writing about Bedouins now?”
“Oh, no, when I get bored with my story, my mind drifts off. I should pay attention, it’s probably my subconscious speaking…. But I’m glad I’ve run into you: I wanted to thank you again for the superb dinner.”
“Don’t thank me, Odette did all the cooking.”
“Well, then, it was terribly kind of all of you to take pity on a poor bachelor.” His smile turns amusingly self-deprecating.
“Are you—a bachelor?” I ask.
“My wife and I have separated. I’m not sure what that makes me, technically.”
“My sister is getting divorced,” I say.
“Is she? How sad.”
“Yes,” I say, “I guess it is.”
“Ah,” he says, looking past me, “here is your fiancé.”
“My what?” I follow his gaze across the place to where Jim has just appeared and is waving enthusiastically in our direction.
“Excuse me, is he not your fiancé? I thought your sister said …” His voice trails off uncertainly.
“Well, not exactly,” I say, but Jim is already upon us, Odette’s yellow string shopping bag dangling from his hand.
“Hey, guys! You headed toward the store?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Philippe says. “And here is the bread truck—perfect timing!”
The blue boulangerie van has indeed just stopped outside Madame Peretti’s shop, its back door flung open to reveal the stacks of plastic cases full of sticky pastries and floppy sheets of pizza that are dispersed daily around the cap.
“Dooz croysents ay weet bugettes seel voo play,” Jim yaps eagerly. “Odette has been teaching me French,” he explains. “How do I sound?”
“Very convincing,” Philippe says.
“Hey, those peaches look good! How do you say peaches?”
“Why don’t you just point?” I suggest.
“Pêches,” Philippe says amiably.
“Hey, thanks, man: ay oon keelow pehsh.”
“Il est sympa, votre ami,” remarks Madame Peretti, carefully picking out six bruised peaches and putting them in a bag.
“What did she say?”
“That you’re a nice guy, and a sucker. She just unloaded all her beat-up up fruit on you.”
Beaming, Madame Peretti offers him a bunch of bruised bananas.
“You’re so cynical, Connie.”
Philippe arches his eyebrows.
“Whew, it’s hot!” Jim exclaims, but my mind is elsewhere. I just noticed the design on the strap of his Teva sandals: little rainbows, spanning his hairy toes.
CHAPTER twenty-one
For as far back as I can remember, the mayor had been trying to sell Ross the abandoned shepherds’ hamlet above Borgolano, a bunch of ruins with spectacular views of the Mediterranean and, he kept assuring him, excellent water pressure. The fact that it was only accessible by beaten path was un détail, surely not the kind of thing to bother a visionary like Ross Wright. (Was Manhattan accessible when the Dutch first bought it from the Indians?) Ross never did take him up on the offer, but he enjoyed hiking up there and marching around the ruins, playing King of the Mountain and making plans, all with the enthusiastic participation of Lucy, who had visions of restored cottages and organic potagers and no Costas next door. Above and beyond that, she was tormented by the thought that someone else would snap it up if he didn’t.
“Anyone up for a walk to the hameau?” she suggests that evening.
“Too hot,” Isabelle moans, fanning herself with a copy of Paris Match, a topless Stephanie of Monaco on the cover.
“Nonsense, there’s a breeze. Besides, it’s much cooler up there.”
“I’ll go,” Jim says.
“Okay,” I say, “but just for a walk. No picnics.”
“Then who will light the barbecue?” Odette coyly asks. I think she’s joking at first but, the next thing I know, Jim has changed his mind and it’s just me and Lucy.
We head up to the road and take the stairs behind the post office, which lead to the upper part of Borgolano and then onto a rocky path that wends its way up through several levels of terraces and into the underbrush. “Ah, smell the air!” Lucy cries, throwing her head back and breathing deeply. The heat does seem to have concentrated the scent of myrtle and broom that gives the air on the cap its resinous sharpness; as we push deeper into the underbrush, I begin to feel light-headed. You thi
nk of nature as being quiet, but the Santerran maquis has got to be one of the loudest forests on earth, abuzz with bees and crickets, the ground underfoot rustling with skittish lizards and, all around, the sound of trickling water. It’s also a great hiding place, as the Germans found out during World War II. It took them so many troops to police the island that they finally gave up.
At a brisk pace, the hike up to the hamlet takes a half hour, but Lucy keeps stopping to sniff the air or break off a rosemary branch or wax botanical: “We must come in the spring, when the gorse is in bloom…. You can’t imagine how lovely it is, masses of bright yellow flowers, completely transforms the landscape!” or “Look at that, wild marjoram!” I’d forgotten how restful she can be in one of her expansive moods, if for no other reason than that she keeps the entire conversation going by herself. By the time we’ve reached the top, she’s clutching various bits of shrubs and rambling on about how you could live for months in the maquis on roots and herbs and you wouldn’t have to kill a single animal! Lucy is fiercely opposed to hunting—a generational issue in England, I gather, since her mother Daphne is an avid fox-murderer.
As we approach the hamlet, her brow furrows. There’s a flat expanse before the entrance that’s a favorite gathering place for Borgolano’s teens, drawn by the beer-cooling properties of an old stone trough that abuts a collapsed stable. They must have had quite a party last night: The ground is black with the remains of a bonfire, the dirt littered with cigarette butts and beer cans and what looks suspiciously like a condom wrapper.
“Would you look at that! You’d think they’d have the decency to clean up after themselves!” With two fingers, Lucy lifts a can from the brimming trough—it’s fed from an underground spring through an old pipe that sticks out of the wall—and, having glanced helplessly around, sets it upright on the stoop. I dip my hand in the icy water.
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