There was nothing I could say that would make him feel better. I tried, though. I bent to stroke Charly, feeling the closeness of bone to skin beneath my moving fingers. Some things can be healed. I made my fingers warm, probing gently, trying to see. The burr already seemed larger. I knew it was hopeless.
“He’s your dog, Guillaume,” I said. “You know best.”
“That’s right.” He seemed to brighten for a moment. “His medicine keeps the pain away. He doesn’t whine any more in the night.”
I thought of my mother in those last months. Her pallor, the way the flesh melted from her, revealing a delicate beauty of stripped bone, bleached skin. Her bright and feverish eyes – Florida sweetheart, New York, Chicago, the Grand Canyon, so much to see! – and her furtive cries in the night. “After a while you just have to stop,” I said. “It’s pointless. Hiding behind justifications, setting short-term goals to see out the week. After a while it’s the lack of dignity that hurts more than anything else. You need to rest.”
Cremated in New York; ashes scattered across the harbour. Funny, how you always imagine dying in bed, surrounded by your loved ones. Instead, too often, the brief bewildering encounter, the sudden realization, the slow motion panic ride with the sun coming up behind you like a swinging pendulum however much you try to outrun it…
“If I had a choice I’d take this one. The painless needle. The friendly hand. Better that than alone in the night, or under the wheels of a cab in a street where no-one stops to look twice.” I realized that without meaning to, I had spoken aloud. “I’m sorry, Guillaume,” I said, seeing his stricken look. “I was thinking about something else.”
“That’s all right,” he said quietly, putting the coins down onto the counter in front of him. “I was just going anyway.”
And picking up his hat with one hand and Charly with the other, he went out, stooping a little more than usual, a small drab figure carrying what might have been a sack of groceries or an old raincoat or something else altogether.
17
Saturday, March 1
I have been watching her shop. I realize that I have done so since her arrival, its comings and goings, its furtive gatherings. I watch it much as I used to watch wasps nests in my youth, with loathing and fascination. They began slyly at first, calling in the secret hours of dusk and early morning. They took the guise of genuine clients. A cup of coffee here, a packet of chocolate raisins for their children. But now they have abandoned the pretence. The gypsies call openly now, casting defiant looks at my shuttered window; the redhead with the insolent eyes, the skinny girl and the bleached-haired girl and the shaven headed Arab. She calls them by name; Roux and Zezette and Blanche and Ahmed. Yesterday at ten Clairmont’s van came by with a load of building supplies; wood and paint and roofing pitch. The lad who was driving it set the goods down on her doorstep without a word. She wrote him a cheque. Then I had to watch while her grinning friends lifted the boxes and joists and cartons onto their shoulders and bore them down, laughing, into Les Marauds. A ruse, that was all. A lying ruse. For some reason she wants to abet them. Of course it is to spite me that she acts in this way. I can do nothing but maintain a dignified silence and pray for her downfall. But she makes my task so much harder! Already I have to deal with Armande Voizin, who puts their food on her own shopping bill. I have already dealt with this, but too late. The river-gypsies have enough supplies now to last them a fortnight. They bring their daily supplies – bread, milk from Agen upriver. The thought that they might stay any longer fills me with bile. But what can be done, whilst such people befriend them? You would know what to do, pere, if only you could tell me. And I know you would not flinch from your duty, however unpleasant.
If only you could tell me what to do. The slightest pressure of the fingers would be enough. A flicker of an eyelash. Anything. Anything to show that I am forgiven. No? You do not move. Only the ponderous noise – hissh-thump! of the machine as it breathes for you, sending the air through your atrophied lungs. I know that one day soon you will awake, healed and purified, and that mine will be the first name you speak. You see, I do believe in miracles. I, who have passed through fire. I do believe.
I decided to talk to her today. Rationally, without recrimination, as father to daughter. Surely she would understand. We began on the wrong footing, she and I. Perhaps we could-begin again. You see, pere, I was ready to be generous. Ready to understand. But as I approached the shop I saw through the window that the man Roux was in there with her, his hard, light eyes fixed on me with that mocking look of disdain which all his kind affects. There was a drink of some sort in his hand. He looked dangerous, violent in his filthy overalls and long, loose, hair, and for a second I felt a thin stab of anxiety for the woman. Doesn’t she realize what dangers she is courting, just by being with these people? Does she not care for herself, for her child? I was about to turn away when a poster in the shop window caught my eye. I pretended to study it for a minute whilst secretly watching her watching them – from outside. She was wearing a dress of some rich wine-coloured material, and her hair was loose. From inside the shop I heard her laughter.
My eyes skimmed over the poster again. The writing was childish, unformed.
I read it again, slow indignation dawning. Inside the shop I could still hear the sound of her voice above the clinking of glasses. Too absorbed in her conversation, she had still not noticed me, but stood with her back to the door, one foot turned out like a dancer. She wore flat pumps with little bows on them, and no stockings.
I see it all now. Her malice, her damnable malice. She must have planned this from the start, this chocolate festival, planned it to coincide with the most holy of the Church’s ceremonies. From her arrival on carnival day she must have had this in mind, to undermine my authority, to make a mockery of my teachings. She and her friends from the river.
Too angry now to withdraw, as I should have, I pushed the door and went into the shop. A brightly mocking carillon heralded my entrance, and she turned to look at me, smiling. If I had not that moment received irrefutable proof of her vindictiveness, I could have sworn that smile was genuine.
“Monsieur Reynaud.”
The air is hot and rich with the scent of chocolate. Quite unlike the light powdery chocolate I knew as a boy, this has a throaty richness like the perfumed beans from the coffee-stall on the market, a redolence of amaretto and tiramisu, a smoky, burnt flavour which enters my mouth somehow and makes it water. There is a silver jug of the stuff on the counter, from which a vapour rises. I recall that I have not breakfasted this morning.
“Mademoiselle.” I wish my voice were more commanding. Rage has tightened my throat and instead of the righteous bellow which I intended I release nothing but a croak of indignation, like a polite frog. “Mademoiselle Rocher.” She looks at me enquiringly. “I have seen your poster!”
“Thank you,” she says. “Would you join us in a drink?”
“No!”
Coaxingly: “My chococcino is wonderful if you have a delicate throat.”
“I do not have a delicate throat!”
“Don’t you?” Her voice is falsely solicitous. “I thought you sounded rather hoarse. A grand creme, then? Or a mocha?”
With an effort I regained my composure.
“I won’t trouble you, thank you.”
At her side the red haired man gives a low laugh and says something in his gutter patois. I notice his hands are streaked with paint, a pale tint which fills the creases