Bella... A French Life (7 page)

A woman in a long white dress, her hair under a black turban, walked up to our table. She slapped a deck of tarot cards down in front of me and asked me to draw a card so she could tell me what the future held for me. She wore a death-head silver ring; the eyes were red stones.

It was strange but before the woman walked up to us, sitting there opposite Jean-Louis at Chez Eugène, I wondered what the future held for him and me, indeed whether we had one - as a couple.

When I was at the high school in Nantes I had dabbled with mysticism. My mother nearly fainted when I started to speak of guardian angels, spirit guides and the
beyond
. I was doing that because there was this girl in my class whose mother was a medium and one weekend when I stayed over at their house her mother had held a séance. My classmate, her mother, I and some neighbours of theirs sat at a table holding hands and suddenly a man’s voice came from what sounded like underneath the table. The man spoke in a drowsy, heavily-accented voice. He said he was Bella’s grandfather. He said his name was Johann Wolff. He wanted me to listen to what he had to tell me. It was that Adolf Hitler was a good man. My grandfather had been a Brown Shirt during - no - before World War Two had broken out even, but as it was something which was never mentioned at home, there was no way my classmate’s mother could have known that or anything else about my grandfather. I had told my mother what my Grandfather Wolff had told me and she had very nearly fainted again. “Bella, all I need in my life is for you to go believe in such crap!” she shouted. I do not know whether she had told my father what his deceased father was seemingly up to.

My classmate’s name was Flora and she was as dainty as her name implied and she telephones me occasionally to offer me guidance because she claims to possess the power to speak to the deceased as her mother had done. I, however, no longer believe in such things. Not after I had kept my eyes closed for hours on end trying to get my guardian angel to speak to me, to tell me which questions I would be asked in my
baccalaureat
school-leaving examination, and to give me the answers into the bargain so I would not have to do any revision, but no one had replied.

I smiled at the tarot reader.

“No thank you.”

“Pity,” she said, “because my spirit guide tells me you will very soon be very happy.”

“I hope you do not believe in nonsense like this, Bella,” said Jean-Louis.

He motioned to the woman to leave me alone, and she, her black turban having slipped over her eyes and temporarily blinded, stumbled as she walked away.

I felt sorry for her.

-0-

“Why are you single, Bella?”

We’d finished our first course of avocado and were cutting our way around the leg of the duck of our main course - a
confit de canard -
and at a nearby table, the tarot reader, having pushed the turban away from her face, was telling the future of the lady who had had her portrait painted earlier.

“Of course you reply only if you want to,” said Jean-Louis.

I put my knife and fork down.

“I’ve never loved a man enough to marry him.”

“How much must you love a man for that?”

“I must believe that without him the sun will never shine again.”

I had replied without hesitation.

He swivelled the wine in his glass.

“Could you love a man like that?”

He’d been looking down at his wine glass, but he looked up and straight into my eyes.

Quickly, I looked down, swivelled the wine in my glass and suddenly the wine looked as red as freshly spilled blood. The thought of spilled blood, so much part of my life, made me shiver slightly.

“I do not know if I could, Jean-Louis.”

“Come on, look at me,” he urged.

He took the glass from me and put it down on the table.

I looked up.

“Jean-Louis, I do know my mother loved my father like that. He was a
Wehrmacht
soldier. She had become a horizontal collaborator for her love of him.”

He put his glass down beside mine. The wine in it also looked as red as freshly spilled blood.

Again, I shivered.

He sighed.

“Bella, love is not ideal,” he said. “It is a road covered in potholes.”

What to say?

A woman in platform heels and lacquered
chignon,
her eyebrows thin black arches, walked over and stopping at our table she began to belt out Edith Piaf’s
Non, Je ne regrette rien
to the accompaniment of an accordion played by a man in baggy grey flannels, black hair greased back and greying sideburns.

Non, rien de rien
...
Non, je ne regrette rien … Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait … Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal … Non, rien de rien … Non, je ne regrette rien … Car ma vie, car mes joies … Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi …
 

She had the pronounced guttural
r
of Provence just as Piaf used to have.

“Beautiful,” said Jean-Louis. “I adore the late Piaf.”

The waiter with the crooked bow tie rushed up and appeared to enjoy the performance as well but after the woman’s final
aujourd’hui, ça commence avec toi
, which had drowned all conversation at the tables, he whispered something to her and she and the accordionist walked away, her platforms noisy on the cobblestones.

“Too much disturbance here tonight. I apologise,” said the waiter to no one in particular.

“We enjoyed that,” Jean-Louis told him.

“Sorry …,” said the waiter, “but the boss does not want the guests to be disturbed.”

Some new arrivals sat down at the table next to ours and a red-faced man took a packet of still sealed
Gitanes
from his pocket.  He ripped open the blue packet and lit up, and turning to face our table, he blew white rings of smoke into our faces.

“Now, this
is
disturbance,” I said.

Jean-Louis asked the waiter for the bill.

“And no halving, Bella.”

It was close to midnight and Place du Tertre’s artists had already packed up their easels and had wandered off, and the tourists had also begun to leave and the waiters were clearing the tables and chatting and laughing at whatever they were talking about.

Jean-Louis pointed in the direction of Sacré-Coeur Basilica. Only the spire of its tallest bulbous white dome could be seen over the rooftops.

“Let’s walk that way, Bella.”

Overhead clouds had gathered and at the foot of the Montmartre hill Paris was shrouded in a dark veil like a woman, her religion obliging her to cover herself from the world.

The funicular from the hill down to the cobbled streets of the
Butte
had already stopped running for the night and Jean-Louis and I descended by the steps to red-light Pigalle where the
p’tites femmes
were still plying their trade, their mascara-lined eyes red with too many
pastis
or perhaps only with exhaustion after having had to satisfy too many men for one night.

“I’ll go home now,” I told Jean-Louis.

“So will I.”

I still did not know where he lived.

“Where is your apartment?”

“Eiffel Tower. Bordering the Seine.”

It was a long Métro ride from Pigalle and a noisy drunk made conversation impossible. We reached Concorde station where both of us were to change to different lines but Jean-Louis said he will escort me to Saint-Michel station, there where I had bid him goodnight a week earlier. At the station we both descended.

“Shall we do this again?” Jean-Louis asked.

We were standing on the same spot where we had stood the week before.

“That would be nice,” I replied.

“If this were a Claude Lelouch film this is where we kiss, Bella.”

Above our heads the moon had crept from behind a white cloud.

“But life is not a Claude Lelouch film, Jean-Louis.”

“I know, dear Bella, I know,” he murmured.

Like the week before, he planted a kiss of goodbye on each of my cheeks, and I, on his, and he ran down the steps back into the station, but he halted and turned around.

“Thank you, Miss Wolff.”

He waved.

And I waved too.

I quickly turned and set off for my apartment.

-0-

Chapter Ten

“What is it with the French and black coffee?” asks Colin Lerwick.

“I don’t know but I do know I should be cutting down.”

“Did your doctor tell you that, because, I believe, one should not take too much notice of what doctors say?”

“I am a doctor.”

“Oh Lord,” he says, “I will have to apologise for having said that.”

“I am not now working as a doctor.”

We are sitting facing one another at the work table in my kitchen. He’s drunk a first cup of tea and has accepted a second. I put a plate of
sablé
biscuits dotted with tiny morsels of chocolate on the table and he has already eaten several and has just helped himself to another.

He has a fine forehead; my mother would have said that such a forehead portrayed intelligence. He is looking at me as if waiting for the right moment to make a statement or ask for a favour; his eyes are brown like those of Jean-Louis, and like his, they are most extraordinarily penetrating.

“This is a most beautiful house,” he says.

“Thank you. It is my home and not an investment.”

“Do you need a large staff here?”

“At the height of summer, yes.”

“They did not tell me down in the village - what’s its name? - that you were closed.”

He has told me this already.

“They should have.”

“I am looking for a place to stay for a couple of months. Perhaps longer. I have to finish a book. I write. I am a writer.”

“You said you were a journalist.”

His cheeks are clean shaven and shiny as if he had shaved just a moment earlier.

“Writer. I write. Articles. Books. I am writing a book about Boris Pasternak. The Russian poet.”

“I know who Pasternak was.”

“I’m sorry. I did not mean to imply that you did not.”

“That’s ok.”

“My agent and publisher are waiting for the manuscript. I need total peace and quiet. I can’t write with people around me.”

“So a guest house would not be suitable.”

“A guest house which is closed, yes, that would be.”

“I sing when I put the machine over the floors in the morning.”

“Will you allow me to stay, Miss Wolff? I will pay the bill in advance, of course.”

“And you will not be a nuisance. You will make your own bed, clean your room, bathroom and toilet yourself, and - cross your heart and hope you die.”

He smiles.

“You will not even know I am here, Miss Wolff.”

“My supper is the same every night, Mr Lerwick.”

“I can boil an egg. And I learnt how to make a bed when I did my military service in the R.A.F.”

“We French have a soft spot for the Royal Air Force because of how its young men came to help us during the war, but I’m sorry, I still have to insist that I can’t allow you to stay. I do really close each winter and if I have to make an exception to that rule this winter, next winter more people will arrive wanting to stay.”

The door bell rings again. It will be Samy. I did not hear his van drive up.

“Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

“Let myself in, Miss. Hope you do not mind,” says Samy.

He is already halfway across the drawing room.

Always impatient, always in a hurry, he says he will go straight down to the boiler room and come and see me afterwards. The pungent odour of a blocked drain clings to him; it always does which might explain why, at twenty, despite that he is good-looking with his curly black hair and blue eyes he does not yet have a girlfriend.

“I will be in the kitchen, Samy,” I tell him.

I find Colin Lerwick in the courtyard.

“I hope you do not mind. I stepped out to admire this splendid corner.”

“It is lovely, is it not?”

“Reminds me of Spain. I lived in Madrid for a couple of years. Was based there for the news agency I was with.”

“I was inspired by Frida Kahlo.”

“Frida Kahlo! Strange. Before I decided on the Pasternak book I was toiling with the idea to write about her. The Trotsky connection - you know. Or to write about Trotsky for that matter.”

“I think you made the right decision to have settled on Pasternak.”

“I was in Peredelkino this past summer - research - and I went to Pasternak’s grave. I will show you the photos I took of the grave - but of course I will not be staying ...”

“I would like to go to Peredelkino one day.”

“You should go by train from Moscow. Pasternak had always taken the train there. I have photos of his
dacha
too.”

How pleasant to be talking to someone with the same interests.

“How far are you with your book?” I ask.

“I ought to be able to write ‘the end’ by the end of the year. Well … if this is to happen, I ought to be on my way or ...”

Overhead the sky has darkened to the colour of chocolate ice cream.

“Look up,” I interrupt him, “look how dark the sky’s become. It is going to rain.”

Now what made me tell him that?

He groans.

“I do not relish the thought of being on my bike in the rain.”

Should I let him stay?

-0-

“Miss, your friend … one will say he is an English lord,” says Samy.

We are standing beside Samy’s van. I left Colin Lerwick sitting in the kitchen with another cup of tea.

“Thank your boss for me, Samy.”

He is in the blue cotton overalls and blue cap of a French worker.

“The boss will bill you, Miss, and I will come to check that all’s working well just before Christmas.”

He lifts his working man’s blue cap in greeting. Curls fall over his forehead.

He gets into his van and holds the door open with his foot.

“That’s a man you can trust, Miss, if you will allow me to say so.”

He is flipping his head towards the house behind us.