The Rose Café (12 page)

“He claims to know of my mother and father. Or at least their writing,” she said.

“What does he think?”

“I don't think he likes their politics very much.”

I told her I thought it strange to have a type like him out here in the middle of nowhere. “If he were in Nice, or Cannes, you wouldn't think twice,” I said. “But out here—out in the maquis, with all those feral pigs and peasants.”

“Micheline told me there is a strange, one-eyed guard out on his property. A mute who only grunts at people and limps. Also a big dog. A mastiff,” she said.

She leaned over my knee again as a shadowy form spirited out from a crevice and disappeared with some fish innards—an octopus, I think.

“My parents, they are coming back next weekend. I will ask them. They know everything. If he's a big enough crook they will know. Or just ask Micheline again. She knows him quite well. She knows the house.”

“Micheline goes out there?” I asked.

“Of course, you don't know that? She used to go out often, she and Jean-Pierre. Then just Micheline.”

She glanced up to see if I was listening.

“I think they had an affair,” she whispered.

That at least helped to explain Micheline's curious caginess whenever I asked her about le Baron. It did not explain how he got so rich, though, and why he had chosen to live such an isolated life. It always seemed to me a great irony that he would dress so formally out here in this casual little outpost—paisley cravats and pressed trousers, starched shirts, expensive Belgian linen suit, or a houndstooth sport coat with a hint of Savile Row.

“What do you think of that?” she asked.

“What, that they had an affair?”

“Yes.”

I hesitated. It was interesting. But that kind of thing was no longer shocking to me. I was more concerned with le Baron's story at that point.

“You are such a cowboy,” she said before I could answer, “so polite and innocent.”

Then, suddenly, she kissed me.

“There,” she said. “Cowboy.”

“No cowboy,” I spluttered into her cheek.

“American cowboy,” she said. “Horse.”

She kissed me again and then tried to push me forward into the water, down into the jeweled sea tangle, among the darting predators and the octopus and the fish scales. As I fell, I turned and grabbed her wrist and dragged her down with me. She fell on top of me, and then, struggling, she grabbed my head, pushed me under, and held me there.

She was strong for such a small sprite, but she brought me up, kissed me quickly, and then pushed me under once more.

“Water horse,” she shouted. “Cowboy who cannot swim.”

I managed to break free, grabbed her waist, lifted her, and skidded her out into the deeper water, and she sank beneath the surface and didn't come up. Only a silent line of bubbles, the gulls circling above. I could see her down there, a shimmering, glowing form in the blue-green shallows, so I swam over and lifted her out. This time she lay in my arms, limp, not breathing, her mouth open, feigning death. Her tiny silver crucifix was skewed from her chest and lay gleaming against her right shoulder, her dark wet hair was flattened at her temples. Full lips, high cheekbones, she was a Gallic beauty, softened by a thousand years of civilization. But she sprang to life, grabbed my head, pushed me down again, and held me there for a long time, her small hands tightening on the back of my neck every time I tried to rise.

I too came up dead.

“
Mortu
?” she asked in dialect. “Dead?”

“
Si.
”

“Then I will kiss the frog prince to bring him back to life,” she said.

There followed a soft, evolving kiss.

This was hardly the embrace of a fairy queen or a virginal Catholic teenager. It was the practiced kiss of a Parisian sophisticate.

Just before dinner that night two tall, dark-eyed men carrying instrument cases came in the back door of the kitchen and asked if Micheline was around. They were serious types, without the usual ebullience of island people, and once I had directed them to the dining room where Micheline was talking with some clients, they walked off without so much as a nod.

“Who were they?” I asked Vincenzo.

“Those are the gypsy musicians. Micheline picked them up in the market yesterday. They're going to play tonight.”

The two men were directed to the nook beside the bar—an area usually used only for drinks or light fare. Chrétien was instructed to lay out two settings and once they were in place, Micheline brought them a bottle of vermentinu from one of the Cap Corse vineyards. They drank sullenly, without grace, and talked quietly to each other in some dialect I couldn't understand.

All that day Jean-Pierre had been preparing a
stifatu
. This was a specialty dish, a roll of stuffed meats, prepared from a mix of goat and lamb combined with herbs from the maquis and in some cases locally trapped blackbirds. It was served with grated cheese and was rather time-consuming to prepare. Spotting it on the menu, the regular diners had been ordering the dish, and we were down to the last serving when Micheline scurried in and announced that the gypsies had ordered that particular plate.

“Too late,” Jean-Pierre said. “I'm just about to send out the last order to one of Chrétien's tables.”

“Well, send it to the gypsies. I will tell Chrétien to say there is no more of that dish.”

“Why should we serve two itinerant gypsies with limited palates one of our finest dishes? Why waste it?” he said.

“Why not?” she spit. They were about to have one of their rows, I could see, and so I quietly retreated with a load of dirty dishes and began washing. I could hear the argument from the scullery, but I noticed later that the gypsies got their stifatu.

In spite of the unpleasantness in the back room, out in the dining room and on the terrace things were livening up. A lot of local people had come out along with the usual card sharks, and many bottles of muscat and local rosés were opened and served, and the talk back and forth between the tables was loud and riotous. The place was full; I had vast amounts of dishes and silverware pouring in at me, and had to work furiously to keep up with the flow. I was drenched from the work, and the stone floor of the scullery was slick with grease and bits of rice and peas and fish bones. Toward the end, as I was finishing up the pans, I could hear the music start up, the whiny, sad sound of a gypsy violin.

Vincenzo came in with my usual glass of marc.

“Come out soon,” he said. “They're very good.”

When I went back to my cabine to get some dry clothes I saw a couple in an embrace up on the promontory. They broke apart quickly when they saw me pass and turned to face the dull red glow of the last of daylight over the western horizon. I tried not to look too closely, but the woman had the same build as Maggs, and the man she was with was a short island type, not her tall, rangy husband. I assumed I was mistaken, and when I came back out to go up to the festivities, they were gone.

The gypsies were still running through slower numbers when I finally managed to get out to the terrace. In contrast to the two surly individuals who first appeared, they had now transformed themselves. They played mostly American popular tunes from the 1950s. One played the guitar in the chopped, pulsing style of Django Reinhardt, smiling to show two golden teeth. The other played in the jazz fiddle style of Django's partner Stephane Grappelli, bowing forward at the low notes and rocking back on his heels, head to the sky, on the higher notes. When I got to the terrace, they were working through a slow, Eastern European, gypsy-like lament, the guitar walking along rhythmically, the violin wheeling up to higher registers and then slowly sinking in a sad minor key to its lowest possible range. People at the tables were listening, still finishing desserts and coffee. Others had had their tables cleared and had pushed back their chairs to get a better view of the performers. As the last of the coffees and local ratafias were served, the music began to heat up. A young couple from the town finally could not sit still any longer, pushed their table aside and began to dance. This inspired another couple, then another. And then Micheline eyed me and swung her head to Chrétien, indicating that we should help the customers move some tables aside—something we would do periodically when some pick-up dance band came out from the town. Chrétien and I set to work and cleared a circle in the center of the terrace, and even before we finished our work, people jumped in.

The island women wore wide, flouncy skirts and peasant blouses in an outmoded style from the 1950s, and the men were dressed in dark trousers and white collared shirts or tight jerseys, although there were a few older locals there who still wore baggy pants, a beret, and a striped sailor's jersey. Some of the younger people danced the jitterbug, but during the slower numbers they all swept into one another's arms and danced in the old
apache
style, leaning into each other, cheek to cheek, legs moving together in a quickstep. The guitar pulsed steadily along with a chug-a-chug dancer's heartbeat, and the fiddle wound through the night air, jumping in a jagged swing melody from time to time, and surging out over the harbor. It was a still night, a moist night, and I daresay the older townspeople lingering along the promenade that ran along the harbor beside the town square could hear the violin complaining and whining as it shimmered across the bay and mixed with the soft lap of the waters on the rocks.

The gypsies went on for over an hour with no break, and all the while we pulled big pitchers of beer, cracked open bottles of champagne and prosecco and a sparkling variety of local muscat, and wove among the dancers with laden trays of drink orders. The music chopped onward, the gypsies playing some of the older popular American numbers—“St. Louis Woman” and the “Beale Street Blues.” The Chinese lanterns we had strung around the terrace swayed with the rhythm, chairs tipped over, people sat along the terrace wall in the hot, humid sea air, and we could hardly keep up with the drink orders. There appeared to be no sign of an end to the evening.

Inside, in the quieter space of the dining room, a few of the regulars, driven indoors by the wild scene on the terrace, were also dancing and drinking, albeit in a far more subdued manner.

Maggs was there, stepping around the cleared floor with Peter in a stylized English manner. Eugène, the dentist, sat at the bar with Herr Komandante, trying to communicate above the noise in whatever common language they could find; Jacquis was inside too, dancing in the apache style with a very sexy woman in a tight skirt and a low-cut blouse.

Marie was out on the terrace dancing a hot caper with a couple of local boys who had seen her in the town periodically. She was wearing a red skirt, cut close at the hips but flared just below her knees, and she had on a tight, striped sailor's jersey, cut square at the neck, and big hooped earrings and dark little ballet slippers. Every time I would go out to serve a table she was there with a new partner, swinging her hips, twirling under his arm, swaying back, and then reuniting with her partner, cheek to cheek, only to break away again and spin off into a twirl. She put them all to shame, old and young alike, with her speed and her lithe turns and dips.

After the events of the afternoon, I felt a little resentment seeing her out there with questionable local toughs from the village, but I was too busy to dance with her anyway. In any case, this sentiment was nothing compared with the green eye of jealousy that was piercing the night from Chrétien. Every time he went out on the terrace with a tray he glared at her. At one point, she floated past him in a slow number, cheek to cheek, and for a second perceived his venomous glare. She turned quickly and spun into her partner's arms, and the two of them twirled off, their bodies molded together.

It occurred to me that the young town boy was lucky that Chrétien was a civilized graduate student in philosophy at the Sorbonne whose parents had a big flat on the Champs Elysées. Up in the isolated hill towns, incidents of this sort still begat knife fights. As it was, he retreated to the bar and was downing a glass of fiery marc when I came in for more orders.

“Not worth it,” he muttered. “Not a chance. She's a tease. A mindless, egotistical little tease. A nanny goat coming into estrus but not yet ready to receive the male. I'm through with her.”

I tried to find the French idiom for “there are many fish in the sea,” but I couldn't come up with it.

At one point, later in the night, I saw le Baron sitting at the bar with Max. He was dressed as always in his clean linen suit, and he had turned to face the dance floor. I noticed that he was eyeing Maggs, who was at this point dancing a slower number with Peter and looking rather bored, I thought.

“Busy night, isn't it?” le Baron said to me when I passed.

I agreed and carried on, and when I passed by him again, he said, “I hope you'll get some time to dance. There are some pretty little dark-eyed Corsican girls out there for you, no?”

I laughed and carried on. “No time so far,” I said.

Slowly, the night began to calm. The gypsies took a break and sat on the terrace wall drinking beer and smoking privately. Micheline went over and sat with them for a while sharing a cigarette, and I saw them eyeing her in a way I didn't like when she left them and walked off across the terrace. She had on her Moroccan striped trousers, masses of clanky jewelry, and she looked good that night, flushed, with coppery skin and her fall of uncontrollable hair.

One of the gypsies said something out of the corner of his mouth to his partner as he watched her walk away, and the other smiled and snickered through his nose.

After a break they picked up again but started playing slower numbers. The dancers clung together now, circling the floor as the music swept along—pale rose petals, floating across the stone terrace under the half-light of the Chinese lanterns.