The Rose Café (2 page)

Two days later I took the night ferry back to Corsica and stood on the afterdeck watching the lights of France sink below the horizon.

I have been thinking to write about my sojourn in that singular place for nearly forty years now, and the story that has finally emerged is probably all the richer for having aged. It's certainly more realized than it would have been had I written it when I was twenty. The only drawback is that the world has moved on since then. Characters such as those that once frequented the Rose Café hardly exist anymore in Europe. Language, social mores, attitudes, seemingly eternal fixed customs and beliefs have all changed dramatically. So has the landscape of Corsica. Thanks mainly to a huge influx of tourists in recent years, there are more restaurants and hotels, although the clifflike high-rises that have destroyed the Riviera have yet to appear. And yet, despite these changes, the mountains and hills endure, the maquis continues to exhale its scented breath, and the dream of the place that was is well remembered.

chapter one

The Libeccio

Before dawn that day, one of the older fishermen from the village puttered out of the harbor in one of the brightly painted little fishing smacks known as a
pointu
and headed northeast toward the continent and the fish meadows west of Cap Corse. When he failed to return in late afternoon, the others went out looking for him. Just before sundown they found him. He was dead at the tiller, his boat still motoring along, describing a wide circle in the empty green sea.

Other than that sad event it had been a normal afternoon at the Rose Café. Nikita the dog raised his head once and, without lifting himself from the terrace, issued an obligatory bark at a passing horse-drawn wagon.

At two in the afternoon the cat, Figaro, rose from his shaded haven in the corner of the verandah and sauntered across the sun-blasted desert of the terrace to a cooler oasis.

Down in the cove, Vincenzo caught three fish.

At three, Micheline and Jean-Pierre emerged from their afternoon tryst to drink a coffee.

And by late afternoon Marie returned from her daily sunbath on the flat rocks beside the cove and began to prepare for her evening entrance into the dining room.

But this also happened to be a Sunday, and by early evening everything had changed. Out in the harbor, the fishing boats were scudding home to port below the mountain wall; the ferry from Nice was just rounding the jetty; the sun was just skimming the jagged peaks that rose above the foothills; and down in the squally kitchen of the Rose Café, things were not going well.

Micheline was shouting at Jean-Pierre; Vincenzo was shifting saucepans at the stove; the waiter, Chrétien, was passing slowly from table to table still laying down settings; and Lucretia was leaning on the frame of the back door to the kitchen, smoking and shouting in dialect at her husband, Vincenzo. Within a few hours the weekly ferry would be leaving for the night crossing to France, and departing tourists and sojourners were already streaming down the quay. The residents of the upstairs rooms of the Rose Café, already familiar with the Sunday night push, were selecting the best tables for themselves and calling for service from Chrétien even before the outbound passengers began to arrive.

A Dutch family burst in, much burned by the sun and happy. Three Italian men in striped sailor jerseys seized a table for two, and then with the arrival of two women in their party, with much flourish and debate and squabble, began removing chairs from other tables and calling for service.

A party of French, probably Parisian, moved cautiously up onto the terrace, reviewed the scene, decided the place was not to their liking, and retreated. A worried English couple in sensible shoes came nodding politely forward. Swiss. A party of Germans. A swarthy couple whose language I didn't know, and on and on, as the crush on the single road out to the quay at the head of the jetty filled with traffic and handcarts and barking dogs and little troupes of families with children prancing ahead, and all the happy holidaymakers, homebound now for all parts of Europe.

Once the diners were seated and launched into their entrées, a young woman with a pixie haircut and hazel eyes appeared at the door to the interior dining room where the bar was located. She poised briefly in the doorframe, backlit by the lights on the terrace, glanced around the room to see who was there and who was watching, and then, with a light balletic stride, she approached the bar.

She had dark hair and full lips and was dressed that evening in tight blue capris, a white blouse with a plunging neckline, and silver hoop earrings. Just above her cleavage she had suspended a tiny silver crucifix. It hung there like a talisman, as if to warn off ill-intentioned suitors.

Chrétien rushed to the bar as she settled and, before she even asked, prepared a
citron pressé
in a tall glass with a china saucer and placed it in front of her, waving his hand with a flourish. This was, after all, Marie, the current love of his life, the reigning belle of the Rose Café.

“It was hot today on the rocks, no?” Chrétien asked.

“Too hot,” Marie said. “I came in early for my bath.”

“Oh, but I am so sorry,” Chrétien said. “Naughty sun.”

Marie had arrived with her parents a few weeks earlier and although she had many admirers, she had selected Chrétien as her consort. At the time, he happened to be the only one around the café who was about her age. He was a lanky young man with crinkly black hair and long-lashed, somewhat effeminate blue eyes who was a distant cousin of the
patron
, Jean-Pierre.

Just before the dinner push, I walked down the narrow path to my room behind the restaurant to get a clean shirt. I saw the German guest they called Herr Komandante standing on a promontory above the cottage where I lived, his arms folded over his chest and one leg cocked forward. He was a portly man, dressed now in a blue-striped bathrobe and white espadrilles. His thinning, sandy-colored hair was wet and slicked back from his high, smooth forehead.

“Been for a swim?” I called.

“Yes. And now I shall prepare for my dinner,” he said.

“Jean-Pierre has done a good rabbit fricassée,” I told him.

He considered this silently, nodding. One of his pastimes here was eating.

“And what fish?” he demanded.

“The usual,” I said. “But Vincenzo has just come in with a big grouper.”

“Good,” said Herr Komandante. “I will take that grouper. Grilled. And I shall begin with a plate of urchins, or perhaps the fish soup, and also a green salad,” he added. “You will tell Micheline, please. I will have one salad. Chestnut flan for the dessert.”

“I will tell her,” I said.

“And coffee.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And I will take my digestif on the terrace this night,” he said as an afterthought.

People at the Rose Café used to mock Herr Komandante behind his back. It was said, among other unfounded rumors, that along with his love for food and sun he had an eye for young boys. But I suddenly felt a wave of compassion for him, here alone on a French island, a German in the midst of a people with long memories, isolated by language and culture, and seeking only to enjoy a few sensual pleasures. Who could blame him?

Back in the kitchen, the evening meal was in full swing. Chrétien and Micheline were rushing in and out, shouting for plates. Jean-Pierre was sweating and smoking, the ash salting his standard dish of grilled
rascasse
, a spiny red fish that he would season with myrtle, bay, rosemary, and other herbs brought in from the countryside. Micheline had started to spout her Sunday litany of complaints about the idiosyncrasies of certain diners; Vincenzo shifted his pans at the stove like a timpanist; and his wife, Lucretia, who helped on busy weekends, wandered in and out, talking loudly in patois and contributing little more than gossip about the diners.

I filled a copper tub with boiling water from the stove and prepared for the evening onslaught, and soon the dishes were coming in, one load after another like wounded soldiers from the front: first a table setting of soup bowls, then a few smaller plates, then some dinner plates, and forever, like foot soldiers, the silverware.

There was a perennial shortage of settings at the restaurant; it was not the cooking of Jean-Pierre and Vincenzo that slowed the service, it was the lack of plates and silverware. I had to wash, dry, and return settings as soon as they came in or there would be nothing for the guests to eat from. It was not so bad on ordinary nights, but sometimes on weekends, in the rush, the flood of plates and the swirl of dirty water and the outcry from Chrétien and Micheline for more plates came on relentlessly. No one was proud at the Rose Café. When a backlog built up and the main courses were served, Jean-Pierre himself would wander back and wash a few of his pots; so would Vincenzo.

In due time, as the departure hour for the ferry grew nearer, the incoming stream dwindled, as it always did. Chrétien sat in the corner for a few minutes, drinking a coffee and gossiping about the diners, his long legs stretched halfway across the narrow kitchen. Micheline brushed back her hair and goosed Jean-Pierre as she slipped by him with a tray of desserts, and then Vincenzo loomed behind me in the scullery door with a small glass of marc, which he set on the stone sink.

“Drink up, old man. It's over for the day,” he said.

Now, in the quiet darkness of the terrace, the geckos emerged and waited in the little pools of lamplight on the white stucco walls, snapping at insects. The few lingering guests sat with their chairs pushed back, enjoying a coffee or a glass of marc and the night air coming in off the harbor. Herr Komandante stepped out from the warm interior of the dining room and stood at the edge of the terrace, gazing outward at the black wall of the mountains beyond the harbor, his hands jammed into the side pockets of his blazer. A fishing boat came in, its lights fragile against the vast darkness of the water, and slowly, one by one, the guests disappeared, and we were alone with the sharp perfume of salt air and the high black screen of the night.

It was at these times, just as the quiet little village on the other side of the harbor was putting itself to bed and the lights began winking out in the bedrooms, that the life of the Rose Café would begin to stir. Now the night crowd began to collect.

Max was the first to come in. He mounted the steps to the terrace slowly, favoring his right leg—an old war wound, they said. He extended his hand to me, limply.

“It goes?” he asked.

He was an amiable sort who always asked after my well-being and spoke English, although he tended to translate literally and had such a thick accent it was necessary to know French to understand him. Max had a pencil-thin mustache and always dressed in loose gabardine slacks and sandals with socks and a white shirt, open at the neck. He was from Ajaccio and, like many on the island, claimed to be a descendant of Corsica's most famous son, Napoléon. The rumor around the café was that Max had played an important role in one of the local resistance networks in the south and had been in charge of surreptitious arms shipments from North Africa. But maybe that was just another story.

Max walked over and shook Vincenzo's hand and then sat down heavily at a table at the edge of the terrace and stared out at the harbor.

Two more figures materialized at the far end of the causeway, walking slowly, one with a coat draped over his shoulders. This was André, who was accompanied that evening by a man with a long, sad face named François, who sometimes joined the nightly card game. The two of them shook hands all around and took their places.

André slapped a deck of cards on the table.

They stared out at the harbor.

André was fair, with blond hair and blue eyes and a slow, somewhat studied gait. In the hot light of the day he always wore sun-faded blue shorts and a sailor jersey. He was soft-spoken and smoked lazily, and would often sit at the edge of the verandah in the shade, nursing a coffee, his eyes ranging among the guests in search of newly arrived pretty women. I had heard that when he was young, at the insistence of his grandmothers, he had studied to be a priest and had worn short wool pants and little schoolboy caps. But he left the church altogether as soon as his grandmothers died.

The night drew closer; something splashed in the darkness of the outer bay, and then we heard the whine of an engine on the road to the town. A speeding motorbike darted out onto the causeway and streaked toward the café, its headlight bouncing on the rough road. It pulled up abruptly, and a small man with high cheekbones and narrow blue eyes bounded up the stairs to the terrace. This was the sometime glassmaker, Jacquis. He was a wiry type with extravagant gestures and fiery delivery, and whenever he won at cards, which was often (I suspect the others let him win), he would slap the table and shout victoriously, even if it was two in the morning and the guests were sound asleep overhead. Jacquis had many stories of criminal families who had devised ingenious revenges, cruel police, and hideous atrocities committed by the Nazis against the
maquisards
, the local resistance fighters.

Jean-Pierre ambled out from the interior of the kitchen. He had removed his stained apron and toque, and he wore faded blue trousers, a short-sleeved shirt, and worn-down espadrilles that slapped on the terrace when he walked. He took his place at the table.

“OK?” he said. “Shall we begin?”

André passed the deck to Jacquis, who snatched it up and dealt with practiced speed. The players fanned out their cards, eyeing them through their cigarette smoke.

Every night this same troupe would come out to the restaurant to play a card game known as
brisca
, a local variation of the Italian game
briscola
, which is played with a forty-card deck with suits marked with coins, cups, batons, or swords. Sometimes the troupe came out early, just before dinner, and would wander back into the kitchen sampling Jean-Pierre's sauces with hunks of fresh bread, brought in that morning by Pierrot, the little walleyed bread man. Sometimes they arrived with obscure women from the hill towns, and from time to time one of them would show up with a new consort from the continent. With the women present, they would play the courtier, holding out the chairs, bowing and scraping, making introductions proudly, and fetching glasses of cold rosé from the bar. On some weekend nights a band would appear, and the regulars would dance on the terrace, holding their partners cheek to cheek and bending forward in the
apache
two-step dance style that used to be popular with Parisian lowlifes in the old days.