It will always be like this, she thought. Silence in this house.
The door opened and Jean and Etienne emerged with a flickering torch and an axe.
—We will take you back, La Rousse, Jean said. I must speak with your father.
He handed a piece of bread to Etienne.
—Take this bread together and give her your hand.
Etienne tore the bread in two and gave the smaller piece to Isabelle. She put it in her mouth and placed her hand in his. His fingers were cold. The bread stuck in the back of her throat like a whisper.
Petit Jean was born in blood and was a fearless child.
Jacob was born blue. He was a quiet child: even when Hannah smacked his back to start his breath he did not scream.
Isabelle lay in the river again, many summers later. There were marks on her body from the two boys, and another child pushing her belly above the water. The baby kicked. She cupped the mound with her hands.
—Please let the Virgin make it a girl, she prayed. And when she is born I will name her after you, after my sister. Marie. I will fight everyone to name her that.
This time there were no warnings at all, no bells, no sense of eyes on her. He was just there, sitting on his heels on the river bank. She sat up and looked at him. She did not cover her breasts. He looked the same, a little older, with a long scar down the right side of his face, from his cheekbone to his chin, touching the corner of his mouth. This time she would have smiled back at him if he had smiled. The shepherd did not smile. He simply nodded at her, cupped his hands, splashed water on his face, then turned and walked in the direction of the river’s source.
Marie was born in a flood of clear liquid, her eyes open. She was a hopeful child.
When Rick and I moved to France, I figured my life would change a little. I just didn’t know how.
To begin with, the new country was a banquet where we were ready to try every dish. Our first week there, while Rick was sharpening his pencils at his new office, I knocked the rust from my high-school French and set out to explore the countryside surrounding Toulouse and to find us a place to live. A small town was what we wanted; an interesting town. I sped along little roads in a new grey Renault, driving fast through long lines of sycamores. Occasionally when I wasn’t paying attention I thought I was in Ohio or Indiana, but the landscape snapped back into itself the moment I saw a house with a red tile roof, green shutters, window boxes full of geraniums. Everywhere farmers in bright blue work pants stood in fields dusted with pale April green and watched my car pass across their horizon. I smiled and waved; sometimes they waved back, hesitantly. ‘Who was that?’ they were probably asking themselves.
I saw a lot of towns and rejected them all, sometimes for frivolous reasons, but ultimately because I was looking for a place that would sing to me, that would tell me my search was over.
I arrived in Lisle-sur-Tarn by crossing a long narrow bridge over the River Tarn. At the end of it a church and a café marked the town’s edge. I parked next to the café and began to walk; by the time I reached the centre of town I knew we would live there. It was a bastide, a fortified town preserved from the Middle Ages; when there were invasions in medieval times the villagers would gather in the market square and close off its four entrances. I stood in the middle of the square next to a fountain with lavender bushes planted around it and felt contained and content.
The square was surrounded on all four sides by an arched, covered walkway, with shops on the ground level and shuttered houses above. The arches were built of long narrow bricks; the same bricks made up the top two levels of the houses, laid horizontally or diagonally in decorative patterns between brown timbers, held together with dull pink mortar.
This is what I need, I thought. Seeing this every day will make me happy.
Immediately I began having doubts. It seemed absurd to decide on a town because of one beautiful square. I began to walk again, looking for that deciding factor, the sign that would make me stay or go.
It didn’t take long. After exploring the surrounding streets I entered a boulangerie on the square. The woman behind the counter was short and wore a navy blue and white housecoat I’d seen for sale at every market I had visited. When she finished with another customer she turned to me, black eyes scrutinizing me from a lined face, hair pulled back in a loose bun.
‘Bonjour, Madame,’ she said in the singsong intonation French women use in shops.
‘Bonjour,’ I replied, glancing at the bread on the shelves behind her and thinking: This will be my boulangerie now. But when I looked back at her, expecting a warm welcome, my confidence fell away. She stood solidly behind the counter, her face like armour.
I opened my mouth: nothing came out. I swallowed. She stared at me and said, ‘Oui, Madame?’ in exactly the same tone she’d first used, as if the last few awkward seconds hadn’t occurred.
I hesitated, then pointed at a baguette. ‘Un,’ I managed to say, though it sounded more like a grunt. The woman’s face modulated into the stiffness of disapproval. She reached behind her without looking, eyes still fixed on me.
‘Quelque chose d’autre, Madame?’
For a moment I stepped outside myself and saw myself as she must see me: foreign, transient, thick tongue stumbling over peculiar sounds, dependent on a map to locate me in a strange landscape and a phrasebook and dictionary to communicate. She made me feel lost the very moment I thought I’d found home.
I looked at the display, desperate to show her I wasn’t as ridiculous as I seemed. I pointed at some onion quiches and managed to say, ‘Et un quiche.’ A split second afterwards I knew I’d used the wrong article – quiche was feminine and should be used with une – and groaned inwardly.
She put one in a small bag and laid it on the counter next to the baguette. ‘Quelque chose d’autre, Madame?’ she repeated.
‘Non.’
She rang up the purchases on the cash register. Mutely I handed her the money, then realized when she placed my change on a small tray on the counter that I should have put the money there rather than directly into her hand. I frowned. It was a lesson I ought to have learned already.
‘Merci, Madame,’ she intoned with a blank face and flinty eyes.
‘Merci,’ I mumbled.
‘Au revoir, Madame.’
I turned to go, then stopped, thinking there must be a way to salvage this. I looked at her: she had crossed her arms over her vast bosom.
‘Je – nous – nous habitons près d’ici, là-bas,’ I lied, gesturing wildly behind me, clawing out a territory somewhere in her town.
She nodded once. ‘Oui, Madame. Au revoir, Madame.’
‘Au revoir, Madame,’ I replied, spinning around and out the door.
Oh Ella, I thought as I trudged across the square, what are you doing, lying to save face?
‘So don’t lie, then. Live here. Confront Madame every day over the croissants,’ I muttered in reply. I found myself by the fountain and reached over to a lavender bush, pulled off a few leaves and crushed them between my fingers. The sharp woody scent said: Reste.
Rick loved Lisle-sur-Tarn when he saw it, and made me feel better about my choice