Amour Provence (18 page)

“I know you,” the woman said when she was close enough for him to hear her over the wind and water. Her deep, cracked voice was the sort that evolved only after quantities of cigarette smoke and alcohol had funneled through a person's throat. She bumped lightly against him, and as she looked up into his face Didier smelled the sweet gasoline smell of cheap liquor.

“You live up in the village there.” She pointed in the direction of the illuminated ruin that stood on the highest peak above Serret. “You're Didi Falque!”

He didn't acknowledge his surprise, just kept to the low steady tune. She grabbed hold of the railing and lowered her head to look down at the turbulent waters. And then her eyes came back to Didier's with a slight squint as if she was pondering something. “I like to sing too!” She laughed and tapped her chest with her fingers. And then she grunted, “Tah-rumph!” which went along with the cadence of his song.
She smiled up at him, her sun-darkened skin rendered into various shades of gray by the darkness. Between the fast-moving clouds, a hint of moonlight gave her mouth a wet, pinkish gleam. “And I like to dance!” She stepped in a surprisingly lithe twirling box step. No doubt she had the body of a girl, but Didier had seen her rough, worn face in the daylight.

“Tah-rumph!” Didier mimicked, and stuck out his foot as if he were a toreador about to enter the ring.

“Aha!” she said, placing her foot next to his and lifting her arms. He took one of her hands, and as her other hand curled around the back of his neck, he pulled her close and lifted her off her feet in a frantic whirl. She was so unexpectedly light, light and hard as a dry stick, that he almost lost his balance. Her clothes fluttered about her like dead leaves. When he put her down she clung to him, looking up into his face. “Yes, that's the way to dance,” she said, giving him a wide smile. Behind her incisors were two gaps where teeth had once been.

Didier stepped back, but she was on him like a vine, her small feet on top of his boots. “More,” she said like a child. And he danced again, galumphing roughly to the end of the bridge and then down onto the riverbank, where there was a cluster of wild boxwood between road and river. As he twirled her, they were raked by a pair of headlights from a passing car, and suddenly he found himself rolling on the ground with her. She didn't seem to mind and laughed as his big body vaulted over hers, she on top for a moment and then underneath again. When they stopped, he felt a wet kiss on his neck. As he sat back on his heels and started to
get up, she grabbed at his crotch and Didier was surprised that instead of lust he felt only sadness mixed with compassion. He moved her hand away and stood. The wind came on so strong he almost lost his footing again on the muddy riverbank.

“I like you, Didi Falque,” she said, lying there. She stretched her arms over the sparse tufts of grass. “I see you walking around at night. I see you and I wonder what you're looking for.”

“There's nothing to look for,” said Didier. “You should go home now.”

“I don't want to. I'd prefer to stay with you.” And then she rolled slowly over to her side, pulling her knees to her chest. Her clothes were damp with mud, and she sighed like a little girl. “I'm all wet and dirty!”

“I'm sorry,” said Didier. He held out his hand to her. “Let me help you up.” But she shook her head in a desultory way. Then, to his surprise, she fell immediately into a deep sleep right there on the muddy earth, perhaps knocked out by the alcohol and whatever else she might have consumed that evening.

Didier bent and gave her shoulder a shake, but she was dead asleep. He turned and looked across the bridge at the caravans. There were no lights. It wouldn't do to bring her back into that thieves' den. The wind blew hard and warm, bringing with it the odor of river water, rank and metallic. The stars and moon were hidden. It must be the filthy
vent du sud
that brought gray clouds, not the cold and cleansing mistral wind that cleared everything away. He looked back at the sleeping woman, thinking that same evil southern
wind must have brought her to him. But then he stripped off his Windbreaker and tucked it around her. She'd be all right there on the high embankment until she woke up and found herself all alone.

He took the long way back to the village. When he got within the bounds of Serret, he was panting from the steep climb and every pore of his body exuded an icy sweat. The church tower tolled once. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath. His hands were brown with mud and the knees of his trousers were also coated. Christine would be certain to notice in the unlikely chance that she was still up. He decided to go straight through the village so he could stop by the fountain, where he could at least wash his hands and face and take a minute to compose himself. He quickened his pace as he passed Manu Dombasle's property and rounded the curve that led to Sabine's farmhouse above. Almost immediately came the first blessed drops of a cool rain bursting over him. Didier passed his hands over his face and neck and through his damp hair. And all at once something pulled him hard, causing him to stumble backward, and he thought that perhaps the peanut roaster's woman had somehow followed and grabbed hold of him. But as a blow fell against his shoulder blade, he pivoted and saw that it was Manu Dombasle. Before he could take a step back, a fist pounded into his belly. Didier doubled over and vomited a stream of cognac-tainted bile.

“Fils de pute!”
Manu hissed in the darkness. “You bastard pervert! I know what you've been up to. Interfering with my mother!
Putain!
” Manu hauled back his thick forearm, ready to throw another punch, but Didier managed to deflect
it and get out of the way. “I'm going to make you pay,” said Manu. “I saw you leave
Maman's
house the night of the fête. She wouldn't say anything against you, not for months, but I finally forced it out of her. How dare you take advantage of an old woman! You can't disgrace the Dombasles! Your life in this village is over, Falque!” And as thunder cracked over their heads, Manu threw a roundhouse punch.

Didier wasn't sure if it was blood or rainwater that he wiped from his streaming cheeks. At home, he bathed his face in the kitchen sink and then lay silently down on the living room sofa while rain spattered madly against the glass awning on the terrace, keeping him awake for most of the night.

The rain continued as the commune slept. In the area of the Drôme, the Ouvèze River, swollen by overflowing brooks and streams, became a teeming floodwater. That night, the swell descended into the region in successive waves like an out-of-control oceanic tide that inundated riverside landings, washed away cars and roads, and in the end killed thirty-two people, including a mother and her newborn who were captured by the violent deluge. In Saint-Maxence, the Roman bridge withstood the onslaught, though in the nearby towns of Vau and Beaucastel, smaller bridges were swept away along with everything constructed or parked in the vicinity of the great black roll of water whose destruction would take years to put right. It was reported that a group of caravans was pulled under by the raging torrent. All the bodies were eventually found, battered and waterlogged, some unidentifiable.

Only a few suspected that the woman who was washed
away with the others near the stone quarry hadn't been with her companions that night. Someone mentioned seeing Didier Falque down by the river before the floodwaters raged, but this was never verified. And for most, the woman was considered just another unfortunate victim of that wild and unpredictable event.

T
he mistral swirled up the mountainside, shaking the cypress trees so their tops crooked like the backs of old men. Aurélien Pierrefeu watched from within the high garden walls that sheltered him from the wind's buffeting force. The iron-gated portal was open to the south, giving a view over the yellowed vineyards and a stunted but hardy peach tree that marked the edge of their two hectares. Beyond, low hills rolled down to the river valley. On the opposite side, a thin, tarred track mounted to the village of Serret, encircled with stone ramparts that had once served as a barricade against marauding hordes. Auri had been born in Serret and at the age of three months had been chosen to portray the infant Jesus in the Christmas pageant sung in Provençal, the language of the southern poets that his grandparents still spoke between themselves. Like most French people, Auri was not even faintly religious, yet he'd always been pleased whenever his parents described that
winter day when he had been such an integral part of the town's festivities, swaddled in the straw-lined manger where he'd been surrounded by admiring shepherds and angels played by village boys and girls just a few years older than him.

That afternoon, sitting at the plank table his father, Jeannot, had built, Auri flipped desultorily through his history book. In November, it was too cold to eat meals outside in the garden anymore, so they ate in the kitchen, where his mother's peach, apricot, and blackberry jams decorated the open shelves like jeweled mosaics. But spending time with his family had recently ceased to be a pleasure. In fact, it was getting so that Auri was having trouble even being in the same room as his father.

That year, just after school had started, his friend Marcel had said, “My parents say your father is a
marginal.
Somebody who lives on the fringe.”

Auri had squeezed his fingers into fists even though Marcel was a pal.

“My dad works,” Auri had retorted. “He works all the time.”

“I know, but always at different jobs. That's what they meant.”

And it was true. His father wasn't out working that day, but instead was inside the house putting the final touches on a room with a separate bath that Auri would soon have to himself. For the present, the family was all lumped together upstairs, Auri in a tiny room at the end of the corridor, his younger sister and parents on the other side. But Auri didn't give a damn about the new bedroom downstairs, nor did he
care that he would no longer have to share the single bathroom with the rest of them. He just wished to be lifted up and spirited somewhere far, far away. The best he could do at the moment was escape to the enclosed garden, where the clematis that crept atop the iron gate rattled its dried-up tendrils, the glowing magenta blooms that had graced it that summer withered and forgotten.

His father, Jeannot, always said the mistral could drive anyone crazy. The unrelenting
vent du nord
whirled down the Rhône River, pounded maddeningly in one's ears, distributed dust and detritus under doorways, and endeavored to flatten everything in its path. Auri felt disturbed by the wind's evil mischief despite the fact that he was safe within the garden walls constructed hundreds of years before, when people knew the importance of sheltering themselves from the violent sun and wind of the Midi. His open book barely fluttered, but he felt the wind's creeping breath and had the uncomfortable feeling that something was sneaking up on him from behind. After a particularly fierce gust, he began to distinguish the distant grind of a tractor as it drew closer. The driver, their neighbor Manu Dombasle, was not a friend despite the fact that he and Auri's father had known each other since childhood. Dombasle owned a vineyard that adjoined theirs, and Manu desperately wanted to add Jeannot's two hectares of vines to his own, believing that his former classmate should sell it to him for a song. But the old
paysan
who had sold Auri's parents the house insisted the vineyard remain attached to the property and Jeannot had respected his wish and told Dombasle no.

The house had been practically a ruin when they'd first
moved in three years before. It sat on a mounded hill overlooking the valley. Everyone knew the place was a sacred spot because a temple had stood there when the Romans ruled Gaul. The idea of living amid such ancient stones had at first excited Auri. His father had showed him the carved capitals of once majestic columns, some of which had been used in the construction of their house. Jeannot explained that there were certain sites with spiritual power that just naturally attracted people to them, especially people who were in tune with the elements. After the Romans, the temple had been transformed into a chapel dedicated to Saint-Félicien. Eventually that had also fallen into ruin and for a period it was used as shelter by shepherds. But for Auri, the place had lost the charmed aspect that still captivated his father. The main room had been polluted by the absurd pottery tiles that Jeannot made for fun in the same kiln where he baked his large earthen pots and sculptures. Dancing bears, stinging scorpions, crowing roosters painted in black on the glazed ocher tiles that had been stuck up on the walls made the place look like a comic strip for infants, not a home where normal people lived.

The same crazy work made its appearance in his parents' bedroom that was up the stone staircase, a spare, whitewashed space whose one window looked east. In there, tiles depicting ancient gods like Pan kicking up his hooves and Bacchus with his bunches of grapes and bulging stomach lined the walls. Auri used to admire the goddess Diana, with her bow and arrow and moon-shaped breasts, but now he simply found the motley assortment embarrassing. His father laughed and claimed his creations were his way of paying
tribute to the ancient soul of the place. He was in the habit of doing a wild celebratory dance up and down the stairs of the house or in the garden, especially when the mistral was blowing its worst. His father always seemed to be in perpetual motion, making his pottery, doing all sorts of odd jobs, even going to Paris or Berlin to help his artist friends install their paintings in galleries where he would sometimes show his own work. And, of course, Jeannot was busy renovating their house.

Just after they moved in, while digging a trench for a water pipe, Jeannot had unearthed the stone-covered tomb of a chevalier, one of the twelfth-century crusaders who had returned from the Holy Land. He'd been buried with a metal lance that still rested against the dust of his breast. There weren't even bones left, just the corroded metal of the long saber and what might once have been armor made of chain mail. After the discovery, his father had heaved the great stone back over the grave site out of respect. “The dead have a right be in their own place,” he'd told Auri. The warrior had been given a ritual burial. “You see,” said Jeannot, pointing. “He faces east. They say Christ will come with the sunrise to raise the dead on the Day of Judgment. That's why they placed him that way, so he'd be ready.”