Amour Provence (4 page)

That night his parents went to dinner with friends in the valley. Didier ate his meal alone and then waited until well past sundown. He took the low route around the town, down through the patches of vineyard that belonged to many neighbors who had owned the land for generations, the Viguiers, the Doumencs, the Roux, the Pelouzes, and finally, the large parcel that belonged to his family, the Falques. When he reached the curve in the road that revealed Sabine's farmhouse above, he saw with shock that the hulking mass was lit up like an ocean liner on a black sea. Every window blazed, even the ones upstairs, and the door to the garden, brightly illuminated by a spotlight he'd never noticed, was ajar. Didier quickly crossed the road into a low grove of olive trees and crouched amid them. He thought he saw Manu peering from the garden doorway, so he backed farther behind one of the thick olive trunks, but then the young man reentered the house and the door closed with a clack.

After waiting nearly an hour, but seeing nothing, Didier stood up. If he walked by the house it wouldn't be a crime. No one could accuse him of anything. Even if someone spotted him it wouldn't look strange, a young man out by himself on a Saturday night. Nothing unusual in that. So he began to slowly wend his way up the hill. When he arrived at the front of the house, the windows remained as brightly illuminated as ever and he surreptitiously glanced inside, trying to see if Sabine was there. The living room window was almost completely blocked by the morning glory that had twirled its way around the shutters, still alive even at the very end of the season. The flowers closed at nighttime and in the light that came from the interior they looked like shriveled insects. He saw no one. Neither was there a soul in the garden, nor anyone near the thorny quince. He continued on up the hill, remembering the day he'd first gone into Sabine's house and wondering what could possibly be happening at the Dombasles'. And then, coming down the steep path before him came his friend Jeannot's parents, Louis and Marie Rose Pierrefeu. Louis, who was the
garde champêtre
, the village policeman, had his arm linked with his wife's as they proceeded down the hill.

“Hello, Didi,” said Madame Pierrefeu when they came abreast of him. “What are you doing up here so late?”

“Oh, I had something . . .” He made a vague gesture toward the vineyard below.

“Ah.” She nodded.

And then Louis Pierrefeu said, “There's been some bad news. Have you heard?” When Didier shook his head, Louis abruptly blurted, “Bruno Dombasle has been killed.”

“What?” asked Didier, hardly able to comprehend what Louis had told him.

“Yes, in Romania. Apparently he was shot while hunting. An accident.”

“Does the family know?”

“A telegram was delivered earlier. It's a terrible thing. And can you imagine that all this is happening just at Toussaint!”

Didier stood there, his hands cold as rocks, his bare arms covered with goose bumps. He wanted to rush into the house to grab Sabine and run away with her forever. But instead he stood immobile in front of the Pierrefeus. Finally, Marie Rose patted him on the shoulder and told him to go home.

Unable to sleep that night, Didier fell into a deep doze just before dawn. When he came downstairs his parents were finishing their breakfast. His mother poured a splash of coffee into a bowl and then added hot milk before placing it in front of him.

“Have you heard about Bruno Dombasle?” his mother asked. When he nodded she said, “Poor Sabine. I'll visit her later today.”

“Don't be sentimental, Patou,” Didier's father said. “Dombasle probably deserved it.” His father broke a baguette in two and divided it down the middle with his pocketknife.

“You hated him that much?” asked Didier, shocked to hear his father speak that way.

“Of course not. Even after the land dispute, I never hated him,” said his father. “I simply did not respect him. It's well known that he's
been playing around with women for years. Apparently, one of the jealous husbands might have been along on this hunting trip in Romania. People are saying that it was no accident.”

“You mean someone murdered him?”

“Could be,” said his father, carefully smoothing butter onto the crust with the thick steel blade. “It wouldn't be the first time a thing like this has happened. Years ago Dominique de Laubry disappeared hunting up on Mont Ventoux. Some say he'd been having an affair with someone else's wife. Anyway, everyone knows Dombasle's been with a string of women.”

Didier turned to his mother and abruptly asked, “What time are you going up to see them?” He didn't dare use Sabine's name.

“I thought about eleven o'clock.”

“I'll come with you.”

“There's no reason any Falque has to go pay his respects to the Dombasle family,” said Didier's father.

Patou pulled out her chair and sat down with an angry grunt. “You're very wrong about that, Guillaume. We've known these people forever. They're our close neighbors. It's the correct thing to do.”

Didier shaved, showered, and dressed in a jacket that he hadn't worn since the previous Easter. It pulled at his shoulders and his arms bulged awkwardly against the fabric. He and his mother walked up the hill, through the Porte de la Bise and down to the other side of the village together. At the Dombasles', Manu opened the door to them. In the main salon the windows were open and the shutters thrown wide.
Didier hardly recognized the place in the glaring light, he was so used to the gloaming that Sabine preferred, the shutters closed to block out both night and day. There were a few people sitting in chairs against the wall—vintners, their wives, and some others from the nearby town of Beaucastel—muttering softly among themselves. Didier didn't see Sabine.

“Will your father be brought back to the house?” Patou asked Manu in a low voice. Manu looked at them both and then he blurted, “His head's practically shot off. They'll keep him at the funeral home until the burial.” An anguished sigh escaped from Didier, who covered his mouth as bile rose into his throat.

“Is your mother resting?” asked Patou.

With a motion of his chin, Manu indicated she was upstairs. “She didn't sleep last night.”

“That's understandable,” said Patou. “Please let Sabine know that I'd like to help her in any way that I can. If you would like something to eat, I'm cooking a daube today. I can bring it up this evening.”

Manu bowed his head and said, “That's kind of you, Madame Falque.”

“Call me Patou,” she said.

Didier glanced at his mother. She was tall and slender with her hair cut short so that it surrounded her head in a burst of mahogany curls. He realized that she was still pretty. Had Manu noticed? What if he found her attractive? Didier wondered with horror what would be the circumstances in which his mother might succumb to a man's attentions.
As he turned away it occurred to him that Sabine was quite different from a gentle woman like his mother, and that, in truth, his lover was a mystery to him.

Didier wished he could sit down in a chair and loll against the wall like the other visitors. But the idea of seeing Sabine was unbearable. Still, he wished he could wait there all day, bide his time, breathe in the same air that she was breathing. Maybe he'd hear her footsteps, see her shapely calves on the staircase, her knees, the curve of her hip. How would her face look if she saw him there?

His mother put her hand through his arm and they walked to the door. Was it possible that she could have perceived his pain and desolation?

“It's a terrible thing, a violent death like that,” Patou said when they were outside on the street. “It's a stigma that the family will have a time getting over.”

“Does
Papa
really believe someone killed Dombasle out of jealousy?”

“That's what the rumors are in the village,” said Patou.

“But who would know the truth?” asked Didier. Was it possible that everyone in their little village really knew the totality of everybody else's business; that the Dombasles, both Bruno and Sabine, were involved with other people? Did they know that he was one of those people? Didier felt a frosty rivulet of sweat run down his rib cage.

“Your father predicts that by tomorrow we will have some news,” Patou continued. “That's when the other men on the hunting trip get back. They've been delayed by the Romanian police.”

When they returned to their house, the streets were deserted. Didier sat outside on the fieldstone stoop. There was no one he wanted to see, but he didn't want to be inside, so he took his chances sitting in the shadow of the doorway. Anyone might walk by. It could be a painful encounter or it could be a pleasant diversion. That's the way it was in the village: you never knew who might stumble around the corner. Didier didn't care. But in his heart he wished that Sabine would appear in front of him wearing her lavender espadrilles, dressed in that light shift, with a smile on her face and her pretty teeth gleaming.

Bruno Dombasle was laid to rest in the village cemetery. The stone tombs, all aboveground because of the unbreakable mountain rock beneath, were covered with a profusion of violent colors, pots of magenta, gold, white, and orange chrysanthemums, the floral offering of choice for the Day of the Dead.

Didier had installed himself beside the wrought-iron gates at the entrance. He refused to attend the service in the small chapel into which his mother had slipped to pay her respects. He couldn't bear the idea of being crushed in with others to watch Sabine seated at the foot of her dead husband's coffin.

Soon enough, Manu came up the hill pushing a rolling catafalque along with a few family friends. Sabine walked just behind the simple oaken box that held Bruno Dombasle's remains. She wore a silvery dress that shimmered
and reminded Didier of the defenseless belly of a fish. A black jacket covered her pale arms and shoulders, while her face, strained and bloodless, was bent forward. Was it sadness or the shame of facing everyone who knew that Bruno had been an unfaithful husband?

When the coffin turned upward and passed through the gates, the gravel shifted with a dry crunch beneath the skidding wheels of the cart and Sabine looked up. Her eyes zigged over Didier's face and her dry lips parted for an instant before she looked away. Didier felt his hands clench. He wanted to touch her, to stroke her arm, to grab her to him and make love to her until she forgot, until they both forgot about the horror of the situation in its entirety. But he suspected it would no longer be possible to make a connection, or even to extend a sympathetic hand, and certainly not possible to achieve any sort of abandon together.

One of the Dombasle cousins, a mason who lived on the other side of the Rhône, had already chiseled open the edges of the flat stone that held the blackened coffins of Bruno Dombasle's parents. The mortuary attendants slid in the casket next to the others, and after a few brief words from the priest, the mason began to cement the opening shut again.

Didier went up to the village each night, over the cobbled stones and down the long street to the ruined tower that loomed just above the Dombasle house. He could glimpse through the lit windows that people were there. He never saw Sabine, though once he spotted her speeding down the mountainside in Bruno's car. Sometimes in the
evening he would perch in the field below looking up at the house and the darkened garden hoping for some sign. Once, when it was late and the air had turned wintery, he found the place in total darkness and imagined her shut up inside. He waited in the deep shadow of the stone wall and then jumped into the garden, where he dared to make a few birdlike calls, calls that had once made Sabine laugh when he'd practiced them while they were alone together. It was nearly eleven o'clock and there were no lights around him, either from the houses perched in the village above or from the valley below, and there was no response to his forlorn chirping. Didier hoisted himself over the wall and crept to Sabine's front door, where he listened. He thought he could make out the faintest sound of music, but it could have come from somewhere else. He gave a small, hesitant knock on the door and put his ear against it again. In a moment he heard light footsteps. But the door didn't open and there was no sound. After a moment Didier couldn't resist and gave a harsh whisper, calling her name. When the door abruptly opened he nearly fell over the sill. There was Sabine in the darkened vestibule, her face contorted, ugly as a reptile. “Leave me alone, you little creep. Don't come around here again!
Emmerdeur.
” And she slammed the door in his face.

Didier didn't try to see her again. But he still gazed up at her shuttered windows when he was working in the fields below. There were times when he remembered with longing how she had been with him, and though he felt an overwhelming desire to try to reignite something, he stayed away.

In the New Year there was a school dance and he asked Berti Perra to go with him. She said yes and an easy friendship developed between them. They began to meet and talk together in the courtyard after school. He managed to speak to her in a normal tone, not the nervous, dominating voice that had formerly been his mode. In February, the almond trees bloomed as usual and spring came early that year.