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La Vie en Rosé - Page One Natalie
d'Arbeloff
The first installment of this story, posted on June 15, 2009 on Blaugustine, was my 250 word contribution to an online game of Consequences (each successive entry in the game began with the closing lines of its predecessor). But because some readers encouraged me to continue where I left off, somehow it just grew and became this illustrated story, which will finish whenever it finishes. New installments are added in consecutive order whenever I write a new one. Your patience is appreciated. ONE “We gulp what is here and ours and nobody’s and nothing’s” George said, handing her his glass of rosé. That’s how he talked. She couldn’t understand him half the time but he was a poet so she had learned not to ask for explanations. “Guard it with your life,” he added, “I’ll be right back.” Nothing he says ever means what it sounds like, Susan thought. 'Right back' could mean ten minutes, three hours or even three months. She surveyed the drinks table: two bottles of the local wine, two Perriers, two Evians and fourteen cans of sugary fizzy kid stuff. Their hosts were strictly teetotal and stingy to boot but the isolated expat community never turned down an opportunity to socialise so the room was buzzing with familiar talking heads. Through the window to the garden Susan could see the teetotal host’s teetotally blonde wife in intimate tête a tête with George. Susan leaned back and tipped the wine down her throat. Three years on the wagon and five years of compliance suddenly vanished as she poured the remains of the first bottle into her husband's glass, drank it, then dispensing with formalities, expertly guided the rosy stream into her mouth straight from the neck of the second bottle. Oblivious to the guests' shocked stares, Susan stumbled out of the house and down the village street just as Père Lafitte was passing by. She grabbed his arm, shouting: “ Portez-moi à une nunnery! “
TWO The old priest's immediate impulse was to pull away from Susan’s urgent grip but he had just been brooding about a remark he had overheard from one of his parishioners. “He’s so farouche, that Père Lafitte! It's like he has to make a big effort even to say bonjour.” He hesitated then took Susan’s hand and holding it in both of his, looked steadily into her tear-smudged face. “Une nunnery!” she repeated, “Une couvent.Tout suite! Please!” Père Lafitte’s English was slightly better than the French of les Anglais who had gradually moved to La Rive in search of a paradise which does not exist anywhere on earth. Although none of them were church-goers, he knew them all sufficiently to engage in small talk whenever he met them, thankfully not too often. Of course there was the gossip, dished out by the ladies who cleaned the church, but he paid no attention to it. Something about this Englishwoman’s tipsily desperate determination moved him. She was middle-aged but seemed childlike, bewildered. “You would like a cup of coffee perhaps? We can talk about the convent.” “ Oh oui! Thank you.” “Venez alors, I will make the coffee.” Père Lafitte moved off at his usual brisk pace. Susan, stumbling on her high heels, stopped to remove her shoes. Barefoot on the warm cobblestones she caught up with him. “Padre,“ she whispered, “I am a bit drunk....and I should not be.” Bon Dieu! he thought, I will have to listen to drunken confession without the shelter of the confessional. But when Marcel Lafitte decides to do something he does it and in the past half hour he had decided to be more responsive to people. Père Lafitte did not like people. He liked God because God is silent and demands nothing.
THREE The walls of the priest’s kitchen were stained brown and black, tobacco brown, soot black, with a shiny patina of grease. Susan looked around with interest, relieved to be somewhere so radically different from the party. “Reminds me of those old brown paintings by forgotten artists lining the walls of provincial museums,” she said. Alcohol had always given her words which she would never say when sober even if they ocurred to her. The priest did not respond, absorbed in ritual coffee preparation: the struggle to open the rusty lid of the tin, the search for the measuring spoon, never where it should be, the rinsing of the pan still ringed with the morning’s grounds, the boiling of the water and finally, the hot black grainy liquid poured into chipped, thick-rimmed cups. “Voilà. You take milk?” He sat down at the rough wooden table. Susan’s eyes were searching the crowded shelves above the stove. “Vous avez le brandy? Le cognac?” “Non,” the priest lied. His bottle of Courvoisier was safely stored away, to be eked out slowly on winter nights. He was not about to let it disappear down the woman’s greedy gullet. Susan smiled, reading his mind. “I am a vampire but I crave alcohol, not blood....I am a vampoholic!” She giggled, suddenly unreasonably happy. “Vous comprenez? Vampoholique!” Père Lafitte was not at ease. Such behaviour, such joking, came from a world that was not his world. “The couvent....you were not serious?" Susan did not want to be reminded of George or of anything all outside this reassuring room. She looked up at the halo of summer insects circling the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. “No. I was not serious. Well, yes, I was. But not now.” She wrapped her hands around the hot coffee cup. “Were you born in this village, Father?” The priest sighed wearily. Here we go, he thought, la biographie obligatoire. “No. I was born in Toulouse. My mother became ill. I looked after her for many years. Many many years. Then she died. She left to me un terrain, some land, near here. I became a priest. I became this village priest. I am sixty-five years old. Voilà. C’est tout.”
FOUR
Père Lafitte was used to silence. He craved it as others crave communication. But the insistent, demanding silence which now inhabited the room oppressed him. C'est toujours la même chose avec ces gens, he thought, le sexe, l'argent, le mécontentement. "Alors c'est quoi le problème? Sex? Money? Discontent with yourself?" Susan stared at him. "The money's fine, the rest is a mess." The priest's lack of social graces pleased her. "I was looking out the window. My husband with another woman…. another other woman… All these voices chattering around me and suddenly I couldn't understand anything. Nothing was real. C'etait pas vrai....you know? So I drank all the booze and walked out." "To go and hide in a convent?" Susan shrugged. "I was drunk. I am a drunk. A reformed drunk, at least until tonight. Three whole years! Not even a sniff. " "C’est bien..... Alors, what is your next step?" She laughed. "I have no fucking idea! What kind of a priest are you? You're supposed to be telling me what to do!" "Madame, this collar does not give me wisdom. A gendarme's uniform does not make him obey the law. I have little experience of the life you speak of. And I must retire now, I have the early Mass tomorrow. Do you wish me to accompany you back to your friends' house?" Susan stood up reluctantly, disappointed, like a child being sent to bed. "No, I can manage on my own. Thank you for your hospitality." She extended a limp hand which the priest shook gravely. "If I can be of any assistance, you can always find me here or in my church. Bonne nuit, Madame." Swaying a little, Susan walked out into the warm night, carrying her shoes. The village street was deserted, lit only by the moon.
FIVE In the distance a dog barked once, twice, paused for ten seconds, barked again twice then repeated the whole pattern until Susan stopped counting. Crickets sang their crickety tunes, lavender, thyme and oranges dispensed their perfume and time-worn cobblestones massaged her tired feet. Everything about this evening felt heightened, magnified. "It's not just the booze," she said aloud. The lights were still on at the Morrison's house, Susan could hear familiar voices making loud party talk in the back garden. Her absence had not been noticed or, if it was, had not caused concern. Susan wondered how long she'd been gone - it seemed a very long time. Her car was still parked in front. No doubt George's chat with teetotal blonde had progressed to a quickie upstairs. The thought of re-entering all that stress made her feel nauseous. Let George take the car. She would walk home and hang on to this new detached mood as long as possible. * * * Père Lafitte finished his evening prayers and reached up to a shelf high above his bed. He pulled down the book he read every night, the book he had stolen, aged thirteen, from the public library. He was not sorry for the theft because the book was meant for him: of this he was certain. It was his companion, his entertainment, his inspiration: Exploits Etranges et Extraordinaires. He turned to his favourite story. No matter how many times he read it, each time it was new and thrilling. As he settled back in his narrow bed, the heavy book propped up against his knees, Père Lafitte heard a dog barking once, twice, pausing for ten seconds, barking again twice then repeating the whole pattern. The priest smiled contentedly. Every night the dog performed this ritual. Every night Marcel Lafitte read the same book. Every morning he would say Mass. Things were as they should be.
SIX
"I likePère Lafitte. He's completely free from bullshit." Susan spoke aloud in the silent street. "Rare in anybody but in a priest it's a bloody miracle. I should have got to know him sooner." The way home was through the village and then twenty minutes down a pot-holed road with a boarded-up tile factory and a couple of abandoned farms as the only scenic attractions. When they decided to move to France, minimal traffic was the first item on George and Susan's list. All the picturesque places shown to them by the estate agents could only be accessed in summer if you were willing to spend hours sitting nose to tail in traffic queues longer than those in London. So they went off on their own, driving randomly around the country, drinking a lot of wine and following hunches until, eventually, they found La Rive and an unremarkable house with potential to become their home. Susan shivered, one of those sudden, mysterious shivers not caused by the weather but by some inner climate change. George. She did not believe in love at first sight and it was not love when she first laid eyes on him. Only a certainty that all the affairs and occupations which had crowded her life until then were merely rehearsals and that here, at last, was the role she was meant to play. No question, no hesitation. Her past was swept off the map and the future was clear: George. She had no illusions. He was so transparent, you knew immediately that he was trouble. No matter. He was the only unambiguous decision she had ever made. Susan seduced him slowly, trusting her instincts, ignoring all obstacles, especially those designed by George to make her fail. I'm not your man, he would say repeatedly. But year by year, denial after denial, he grew to depend on her. Susan was making an adequate living as a free-lance proof-reader and typist and he had come to her recommended by a friend. George was well-enough established among the cognoscenti but he was no literary superstar and too disorganised to go after superstardom, though he craved it. Susan, he discovered, was an excellent organiser and it was foolish to keep on resisting when she was so eager to take on the task of ensuring his immortality. * * * By the time George got home from the party Susan was asleep. "You could have told me you were leaving," he said, getting into bed, "I looked all over for you." "No you fucking didn't! You were busy entertaining la Morrison." George turned away and closed his eyes, " If you want to go back on the booze, that's your choice, Susan. But I'm not going down that road of paranoia with you."
SEVEN Susan awoke to a clatter of reproachful sounds, sending an unmistakeable message up the stairs: "Why aren't you making breakfast for me?" Through the hangover blur she remembered that George was leaving for America today, another of those lucrative lecture tours she had become so expert at arranging. This one was going to last three months. Susan sighed, rolled out of bed and pulled on a tee shirt. George was drinking coffee, standing by the stove. "Do you want scrambled eggs with your Alka Seltzer?" he said, giving her his best smile, the melt-in-your-heart smile. Freshly shaved and showered, carefully-casually dressed, George looked alert and mischievous, the look he always had when going off on an adventure. Why did he have to be so damned attractive? Susan began breaking eggs into a bowl. "Why can't there be burqas for men?" she said, "For women to put on their men when they go out. So that other women can't lust after them." "That's a brilliant idea! Put your man in a burqa and save your marriage….Genius! Work it out while I'm away, we'll start a business!" He saw the weariness in Susan's face. "I'm serious, Susan: do it!" "Here we go. Always giving me a project when you're about to leave so you won't feel guilty. Not that you ever feel guilty!" Susan poured the beaten eggs into the pan and stirred angrily, the wooden spoon like a weapon in her hand. George pushed his chair back, making a screeching sound on the tiles, his smile frozen into a thin, hard line. "I'll have breakfast at the airport. Keep this up and I won't come back." He picked up his suitcase which was ready and waiting in the hall. Susan moved towards him, still holding the frying pan. "Wait! Eat your eggs at least!" George opened the door and walked out into the misty morning without a backward glance. The taxi driver, Henri, was already waiting for him at the bottom of the dirt track leading to the house. The airport was almost two hours' drive away and Monsieur Georges was a generous tipper so Henri made sure he was always on time and that his old Renault was tuned and shiny. He liked talking to the famous writer, perhaps one day he would write about Henri. "Bonjour Monsieur Georges, vous allez bien?" Instead of sitting next to the driver as usual, George got into the back of the car. "Bonjour Henri, ça va mais je suis fatigué. I'll sleep for a bit, if you don't mind." "But of course Monsieur Georges! I will be quiet as a pin drop." Henri was proud of his English, picked up from the Anglo expats and summer tourists. George smiled. Mistakes were so much more interesting than correctness. He leaned back and closed his eyes. A cloying smell of rose-scented air freshener filled the car although the windows were open. Henri believed in air freshener and in all other synthetic miracles. George felt a wave of anger rising from his chest into his head. If Susan was going to start drinking again everything would go haywire, the order she had brought into his haphazard life would disintegrate. Why did she have to focus so relentlessly on his sexual habits? George hated the word promiscuous: he simply took what life generously offered him and why the hell shouldn’t he? Susan demanded honesty, the details - who, where, when, how? Pointlessly cruel honesty. George's denials were a form of courtesy, protecting Susan's feelings. So-called open marriage was a sham and polygamy would be boringly predictable. The charm of affairs was that you never knew if or when or where one might happen and whether or not you would give in to temptation. The decision to marry or live with someone was surely commitment enough and little trips down side-roads didn't mean you were leaving home or had any desire to leave. Susan had always understood this but since their move to France she had begun to play the jealous wife and he couldn't bear it. The only kind of fidelity I understand, George thought, Is fidelity to one's work. No one can tempt me away from the muse. "Henri, are you faithful to your wife?" "Ah Monsieur! I am the most faithful type, moi. Mais c'est les femmes who do not be true. My wife she trumped me with another man. Now I have another wife mais je ne la trust pas non plus." George laughed, closing his eyes again. He was getting impatient to be in the air, on his way.
EIGHT As the door slammed shut, Susan's hand loosened on the heavy frying pan, tipping its perfectly cooked yellow guts onto the kitchen floor. The sight of the scrambled eggs scattered over the red tiles filled her with unbearable sadness. She desperately wanted to run after George, stop him from leaving, make love to him, and just as desperately wanted to kill him. The need for a drink took possession of her with such force that she found herself standing in the pantry reaching for a bottle as if she were remotely controlled. Floating above the gentle chirrup of early morning birdsong a familiar, monotonous sound suddenly erupted into Susan's consciousness: a dog barking - an idiotic bark barkbark, pause, bark barkbark, pause. She stood still, listening intently, remembering as if it had been a dream the sepia kitchen and the priest's reassuring silence. She put the wine bottle back on the shelf, ran upstairs, dressed quickly in jeans and trainers and took her rucksack and sun hat off the hook in the hall. At the front door she hesitated, staring at her car. She wished the car would become invisible and reappear only when absolutely needed. In London she had walked rather than take any form of transport but here, out in the country, she was always driving. Today she would walk. Père Lafitte on his bicycle, hair and cassock flowing in the wind, looked like some strange black bird, especially when he took both hands off the handlebars, stretching his arms out like wings as he coasted downhill, exhilarated. Every morning after mass he would get on his bike and pedal purposefully, always taking the same route along the winding country lanes. When parish duties prevented a morning ride, he would find time for it in the evening. He could not let a day go by, whatever the season, without a visit to to his own private paradise. The villagers were used to le Père sur son vélo whizzing past, so intent on his mission that he would forget to greet them. They shrugged, muttering about his eccentricity. Everyone knew about his mother's legacy, that piece of land he was so attached to. Some had tried to buy it from him and been brusquely rejected. Questions about what, if anything, he intended to do with it were severely brushed aside. Le terrain du Père Lafitte came up in village gossip as regularly as the tide and just as regularly receded. At first Lafitte didn't notice Susan. She was coming down the road just as he was about to turn into the narrow track leading to his property, her features blurred in the shadow of a broad-brimmed straw hat. When she saw him a wide smile lit up her face. To his surprise, he found that he was pleased to see her. "It's fate," she said, "You're exactly the person I wanted to run into this morning." "Bonjour Madame. You are better today?" He stepped off the bike, smoothed down his cassock and stood awkwardly, keeping a tight grip on the handlebar. "Je suis Suzanne, Father, not Madame and I'm much better. Sorry for my behaviour last night, whatever it was. I can't remember!" She laughed. "Where are you off to?" The furious debate in Lafitte's mind was quickly resolved. "I am visiting mon terrain. Would you like to see it?" "There is nothing I would like more, mon Père."
NINE
The narrow dirt track was bordered by open fields on one side and a speckled curtain of trees and hedges on the other. The dregs of last night's alcohol still lingering in Susan's blood had made her legs sluggish and she struggled to keep up with Lafitte's brisk pace. He led the way, pushing his bike before him and eventually stopped in front of a gap in the green curtain. He lifted the latch of a rusty iron gate and held it open, waiting for Susan to enter. "Voilà, c'est ici." " It's wonderful! " Susan stepped gratefully into the cooler air and dappled shade of a wood. "My mother inherited it from her father. They say he was a nobleman, un Marquis. They say she was his fille naturelle - not légitime? " Lafitte shrugged. "I don't know what is true. It does not matter to me. She never knew what to do with the gift. Before she died she told me: C'est à toi. It is yours." Susan sensed that the priest did not want commentary and this suited her perfectly. She followed him down a well-trodden mossy path snaking between the trees, ending at what appeared to be a solid green wall. Up close it proved to be a fence, a strong lattice of branches deftly woven together and thickly covered with climbing vines. Lafitte leaned against a section of the wall and pushed at it lightly with his hands. A door opened with a burst of sunlight, revealing an unexpected tableau: a large, almost circular clearing, protected on all sides by sheltering trees and bushes. At the far end a pond sparkled, birds skimming and swooping around it. The beauty and tranquility of the scene gripped Susan like a pain. She walked over to one of the smooth flat rocks which dented the gently undulating carpet of grass and sat down, trying to hold back inexplicable tears. Lafitte rested his bike against a tree and stood perfectly still, his eyes closed as if in prayer. "I was a young boy the first time I saw it. I sat down......I cried. Even now, each time, it is ...." He opened his hands in that Gallic gesture which can mean words are inadequate. Susan looked at the priest gravely. "Je comprends très bien. I'm so grateful that you allowed me to see this place. I'm sure you don't want many people to find it." "C'est vrai. Je suis égoiste. But perhaps le bon Dieu gave me this space to speak with him." Lafitte sat down on a rock near the pond. After a long silence broken only by bird and insect sounds, he said, almost whispering, "You have heard about le facteur Cheval?" "The postman on a horse? No, I'm afraid I haven't." "Ferdinand Cheval. He is very famous. You can find him on your gouguelle." Lafitte's tone abruptly changed . "I must be getting back to my church now. I'm sure you have things to do too, Madame." "Father, wait! We Brits are always making jokes....I didn't mean to offend you. Please tell me about Facteur Cheval. I'd really like to know." Lafitte glanced at her sharply, checking her sincerity, then began walking around the perimeter of the clearing, his hands behind his back.
TEN Torn between regret at having brought a stranger into his secret oasis and the impulse to share it, Lafitte struggled to speak. Susan’s childlike eagerness touched him and he suddenly realised that his mother was the last person he had spoken to about things close to his heart. But by that time she could only smile and nod in the absent way of those who are already out of life's reach. “Since I was a child I read a book about people who did great things, comme ça, for no reason. In this book I learn about le Facteur Cheval, a simple postman in a village called Hauterive. One day in 1879, during his walk to deliver the letters, he begins to collect stones. First he takes them in his pockets, later he carries them in a basket and then in a brouette – you say?” “A wheelbarrow.” Susan was leaning forward, eyes fixed on the priest as he continued his perambulation. “Walking more than 30 kilometres every day Ferdinand Cheval collects small and big stones and begins slowly to build something. Something éxtraordinaire. A palace. He calls it le Palais Idéal. He builds this miracle completely alone, sometimes lighted by an oil lamp in the night." Père Lafitte gazed up at the clouds moving in slow motion across the cerulean blue sky. "It takes him thirty-three years.“ “What does it look like, the palace? You have seen it, Père Lafitte? “ “No, I have not been there. I do not need to go there. It is enough for me to know that Ferdinand Cheval existed and that he did this. Vous voyez, Madame, it is possible to live one’s life in the enchantment of a magnificent no sense. Le Bon Dieu, to some people, he makes no sense. But I became a priest for the same reason le facteur Cheval built his palace...Comme ça!” “And when you are here, in your garden, you feel what le facteur Cheval felt.” Oh yes! Susan thought, I know about magnificent no-sense! The unfamiliar experience of talking about himself had exhausted Lafitte and he was now confronted with another unfamiliarity: l’anglaise seemed to grasp something he could not explain even to himself. In a rush of enthusiasm he continued. “Oui, c’est ça. When I come here I dream. In my mind I have constructed many beautiful things, so many. But en réalité, I will never be a Ferdinand Cheval. I will not carry the stones.” “But.... maybe………” Lafitte stopped in his tracks. “Please! I do not need to make real a dream. I have my Palais Ideal right here.....I must go back to my church now, Suzanne. You can stay a while longer and you may come back when you wish. But I pray you, do not speak of this place. You understand? ” Susan grasped the priest's hand in both of hers. “Don’t worry, mon Père, I will keep it in my heart. You have no idea what a gift you’ve given me today." She followed him out through the opening in the green wall. "Now I want to go home and look up Monsieur Cheval. ”
ELEVEN
Walking home, lost in a reverie, Susan tripped on a broken bottle. “Bloody fucking crazy drunken selfish stupid bastards in your stupid cars, go to hell and stay there!” She stood up, examined the scratches on her leg, brushed the dirt from her clothes and carefully picked up the offending object. Behind the boarded-up factory an open pit had become the village dump and Susan read the label remaining on the jagged lower half of the bottle before flinging it onto the chaotic pile of consumer detritus. "Chateau Le Raz rosé! Ha! Serves me right….hair of the dog." The telephone was blinking in her study but Susan ignored it. She switched on the computer and began searching for Facteur Cheval. As the the postman's life story scrolled on the screen, Susan dabbed at her knee with disinfectant, wrapped a scarf around it, and began reading. She followed one link after another until all the blanks in her imagination had been filled by the astonishing facts. It was only while watching a video tour of the postman’s Palais Idéal that she finally listened to George's message: "I'm sitting in the airport being stared at by beautiful women. But don't worry, I'm wearing my invisible burqa. I want you to make me a real one, pin-striped, okay? Send it to me special delivery…Susan, are you listening? If you behave I'll call you from New York. If not, not.” Susan clicked the Delete button on the answer-phone and went upstairs, got into bed and fell asleep immediately. She dreamt about a man pushing a wheelbarrow filled with pink bottles. The man looked like Père Lafitte, then like George, then it wasn't a man at all but Susan herself. |
