The first installment of this story was my 250 word contribution to an online game of Consequences (each successive entry begins 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 a longer-than-expected illustrated short story which will finish whenever "The End" comes up on my mental screen.
June 15, 2009
La Vie en Rosé (provisional title) by Natalie d'Arbeloff
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
Marcel Lafitte’s immediate impulse was to pull away from Susan’s urgent grip but he had just been mulling over something he overheard earlier in the day, a couple of old parishioners talking about him.
“He’s so farouche, Père Lafitte. I always have the feeling he has to make a big effort just to say bonjour.”
“Beh! He should have joined the Trappists instead of coming here.”
Père Lafitte 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! S’il vous plaît.”
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 minimal 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. There was something about this Englishwoman’s tipsily desperate determination which moved him. She was middle-aged but seemed childlike, bewildered.
“Would you like a cup of coffee pour le moment? We can talk about the nunnerie.”
“ Yes! Oh oui! Please. Thank you.”
“Come along, then. I will make coffee.”
Père Lafitte moved away at his usual brisk pace, Susan stumbling on her high heels several paces behind 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 confessing without the shelter of the confessional! But when Marcel Lafitte decides to do something he does it, and in the past half hour he decided to be more responsive to people. Père Lafitte does not like people. He likes God who is silent and demands nothing.
THREE
The walls of the priest’s kitchen were stained brown and black - tobacco brown, soot black, with a patchy patina of grease like badly applied varnish.
“Like those old brown paintings by forgotten artists lining the walls of remote museums,” Susan said aloud, talking to herself. Alcohol had always given her words and thoughts which she would never have expressed 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, triumphantly, the hot strong 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 one bottle of Courvoisier was safely stored away to be eked out slowly on winter nights. He was not about to let itdisappear down this woman’s greedy gullet. Susan smiled, reading his mind.
“I am a vampire. But I crave alcohol, not blood.” She leaned forward, inspired. “I am a vampoholic!” Susan laughed, suddenly unreasonably happy. “Vous comprenez? Vampoholique!”
Père Lafitte was not at ease. Such uninhibited behaviour, such joking, came from a world that was not his world. He smiled guardedly.
“Oui, je comprend. But the couvent, the nunnerie, you were serious?”
Susan’s face darkened. She did not want to be reminded of George or of anything at 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.
“Non. I was born in Toulouse. My mother became ill. I looked after her many years. Many years. Then she died. She left me un terrain, a piece of land, near here. I became a priest. I became the village priest. I am sixty-three years old. Voilà. C’est tout.”
FOUR
Marcel Lafitte was used to silence, he craved it as others craved 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?" He could not hide his irritation."The problem? 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 was surprisingly encouraging. "I was looking out the window. My husband and yet another other woman. All these voices were chattering around me and suddenly I couldn't understand anything. Nothing real. C'etait pas vrai...you know? So I drank all the booze and walked out."
"You went looking for a nunnery."
Susan shrugged. "I was drunk. I am a drunk. A reformed one, at least until tonight. Three whole years! Trois ans j'ai pas touché la bouteille! Not even a sniff. "
"Alors, what is your next step?"
"I have no fucking idea!" She laughed. "What kind of a priest are you? You're supposed to be telling me what to do next."
"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 an 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, Padre. Thank you for your hospitality." She extended a limp hand which the priest shook politely, 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 generously and time-worn cobblestones massaged her tired feet. Everything about this evening felt heightened, momentous, as if she had stepped outside her usual life and seen it from another angle.
"It's not just the booze," she said aloud.
The party was still on at the Morrison's house. Susan could hear familiar English voices making loud party noises in the back garden. Apparently her absence had not been noticed or if it was, had not caused much concern. Susan couldn't remember how long she'd been gone. It seemed a very long time. Her car was still parked in front. No doubt George's conversation with Mrs. teetotally bitch had progressed to a quickie upstairs. The thought of re-entering all that stress made her feel sick. Susan decided to walk home. Let George take the car. She wanted to hold on to the new calm 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, a 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 like Lafitte. He's completely free from bullshit." Susan was talking to herself, caressed by a warm breeze. "Rare in anybody but in a priest, that'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 over-excited 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. Whoosh! 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. And decisive she became. 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'd 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, as if her own life depended on it.
* * *
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."
"Look,' George said, turning away and closing 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 the sounds of breakfast-making, sounds which sent the unmistakeable message up the stairs and into her ears: "Why aren't you doing this for me?" Dimly through the hangover blur she remembered that George was leaving for America today. One of those lucrative lecture tours she had become expert at setting up for him. Susan sighed, rolled out of bed and pulled on a tee shirt.
In the kitchen, George was drinking coffee and eating toast. "Do you want scrambled eggs with or without Alka Seltzer?" he said, giving her his best smile, the melt-in-your-heart smile. Susan began breaking eggs into a bowl, glancing sideways at George. Freshly shaved and showered, carefully-casually dressed, he looked alert and mischievous, the look he always had when going off on another adventure. Why did he have to be so damned attractive?
"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 Husband In A Burqa And Save Your Marriage. Brilliant. Work it out while I'm away. Make some designs. We'll start a business." He noted 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."
George pushed his chair back, making a harsh screeching sound on the tiles.
"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 Bazaine, 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 clean and shiny. Besides, he liked talking to the famous writer, perhaps one day he would write about Henri.
"Bonjour Monsieur, vous allez bien?"
Instead of sitting next to the driver as usual, George got into the back of the car. He didn't really want to sleep but neither did he feel like chatting. "Bonjour Henri. Oui, 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 over the years from the Anglo expats and summer tourists.
George smiled at Henri's turn of phrase. 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 and nothing could shake his faith. George felt a wave of irritation 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 was she focusing so relentlessly on his sexual habits? George hated the word promiscuous: he simply took what life generously offered him. And why the hell not? Susan demanded honesty. But what purpose could disclosure possibly serve? 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, a fiction, and polygamy would be unutterably 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 commitment enough and little trips down interesting side-roads didn't mean you were leaving home or had any desire to leave home. 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, me. 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, leaning back and 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 abandoned scrambled eggs scattered over the red tiles filled her with unbearable sadness. She began to cry. She desperately wanted to run after George, stop him from leaving, make love to him and, just as desperately, wanted to kill him.
The desire for a drink took possession of Susan with such force that she found herself standing in the pantry reaching for a bottle of red as if she were remotely controlled. Floating above the gentle chirrup of early morning birdsong a familiar, monotonous sound suddenly erupted into her consciousness: a dog barking - an idiotic bark barkbark, pause, bark barkbark, pause. Susan stood still, listening intently, remembering as if it had been a dream a sepia-stained kitchen and the priest's calm, reassuring silence.
She put the wine bottle back on its shelf. Upstairs she dressed quickly in jeans and trainers, took her rucksack and sun hat off the hook. At the front door she hesitated for a moment, 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, absurdly, she was always driving. Now she would walk, just walk and walk. There were intriguing side roads she had never explored.
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 also 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 recognise Susan. She was coming down the road just as he was about to turn into the narrow track leading to his property and her features were blurred in the shadow of her broad-brimmed straw hat. When she saw him a wide smile broke over 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 well today?" He dismounted and stood awkwardly, leaning on his bike.
"Je suis Suzanne, Père Lafitte, not Madame, and I'm much better today. I'm sorry for my behaviour last night, whatever it was. I can't quite remember!" She laughed. "Where are you off to if I may ask?"
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! C'est merveilleux!" Susan said, stepping 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 but she loved it. Before she died she told me: C'est à toi. It is yours."
Susan sensed that the priest did not want commentary or questions and this suited her mood perfectly. She followed him down a well-trodden mossy path snaking between the trees, ending at what appeared to be a solid green wall. On closer inspection 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 a magical tableau: a clearing - a large, grassy, almost circular open space, 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.
"The first time I saw this place I sat down on one of those rocks and I cried. Even now, every time, every day, it is like.....Je ne sais pas." He opened his hands in that Gallic gesture which can mean helplessness or 'words are inadequate.' "Vous comprenez?"
Susan looked at the priest with an expression that was almost reverence. "Oui, je comprends. And I don't know how to thank you for letting me see this extraordinary spot. I'm sure you don't want many people to find it."
"C'est vrai. Je suis très égoiste. I am very selfish. But perhaps le bon Dieu gave me this space to speak with him, to dream." As if sleepwalking, Lafitte sat down on a rock near the pond. He seemed to accept Susan's presence yet to be simultaneously oblivious to it. After a long silence broken only by bird and insect sounds, he said softly, almost inaudibly, "You have heard about Le Facteur Cheval?"
Susan smiled. "The postman horse? The horse postman? The postman on a horse? No, I'm afraid I haven't."
"He is very famous. Ferdinand Cheval. You can find him on your inter nette - what you say? Gogle." Lafitte rose to his feet, suddenly severe. "I must be getting back now. I'm sure you have things to do too, Madame."
"Mon Père, we Brits are always making jokes! I didn't mean to offend you," Susan pleaded. "Please tell me about Facteur Cheval. I'd really like to know." Lafitte gave her a sidelong glance to check her sincerity then sat down again with a sigh.
TEN
Torn between regret at having brought a stranger into his secret oasis and the impulse to share it, Lafitte hesitated. Susan’s eager attentivenesss touched him and suddenly he realised that his mother was the last person he had spoken to about things close to his heart and by that time, she could only smile and nod in the absent way of those who are already out of life's reach. He stood up, coughed to clear his throat which felt tight and prickly, and began speaking as if he were in his pulpit, delivering the Sunday homily.
“Since I was a young boy, I read in a book about people who did fantastique exploits. Comme ça. For no reason. In this book I learn about le facteur Cheval, a simple postman in the village of 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 – how you say?”
“A wheelbarrow.” Susan leaned forward, absorbed.
“Walking more than 30 kilometres every day Ferdinand Cheval collects small and big stones and begins to build something. Something éxtraordinaire. A castle, a palace, le Palais Idéal. He constructs this miracle completely alone, sometimes by the light of an oil lamp in the night. It takes him thirty-three years.“
Père Lafitte, hands behind his back, gazed up at the clouds moving in slow motion across the cerulean blue sky.
“What does it look like, the palace? You’ve been there?“
“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, it makes no sense. But I became a priest for the same reason le facteur Cheval built his Palais Idéal. Comme ça.”
“And when you are here, in your garden, you feel what le facteur Cheval felt.” Oh yes! Susan thought, I too 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 had instantly grasped something which he had never mentioned to anyone. In a rush of enthusiasm he continued.
“Oui, c’est ça! When I come here I dream about what I would build. In my mind I have constructed many beautiful things, so many! But en réalité, I will never be like Ferdinand Cheval. I will not carry the stones.”
“But.... you could…………”
Lafitte interrupted firmly: “Please! I do not need to make dreams real. I love my Palais Idéal as it is.” He held out his hand and Susan grasped it in both of hers.
“I must go back to my church now. You can stay here a while longer if you wish. You may come back when you like. But I ask you, s’il vous plaît, do not speak to people of this place. Please. You understand? ”
“Mon Père, don’t worry. I will carry your secret treasure close to my heart. You have no idea what a gift you’ve given me today. Merci beaucoup, more than I can say." Susan followed the priest out through the opening in the green wall. "Now I will go home and get to know Monsieur the postman.”
ELEVEN
Photo of Ferdinand Cheval and his wheelbarrow from here. Drawing of Susan by NdA.Walking home, lost in her thoughts, Susan tripped on a broken bottle dropped on the road by a drunken driver's drunken passenger. Cursing at the top of her lungs the selfish human race, cars, motorists, country roads, drunks, her own clumsiness, she carefully picked up the offending object and looked for a safe place to dispose of it. Behind the boarded-up factory an open pit had gradually become filled with the village's detritus. Susan read the label remaining on the jagged lower half of the bottle before flinging it onto the sad, chaotic pile of consumer rejects.
"Ha! Chateau Le Raz rosé!" she said, "Serves me right. Hair of the dog!"
The answering machine 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 appeared on the screen, she dabbed at her skinned knee with disinfectant and began reading, clicking on one link after another until all the blanks in her imagination had been filled in by the astonishing facts. It was only while watching a video tour of the Palais Idéal that she listened to George's message.
"I'm sitting in the airport being stared at by beautiful women. But don't worry, darling, I'm wearing my burqa. I want a pinstriped one, okay? If you behave yourself I'll call you from New York."
Susan smiled, feeling strangely detached and very tired. She went upstairs, got into bed and fell asleep almost 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 but Susan herself.
