APRIL CAME AND WARMED THE STREETS OF AVIGNON. In the sun, on certain days, it almost felt like summer, and I decided it was high time to go to Alba. As it happened, a friend of mine from Asheville was teaching English in a high school an hour north of Alba, and he offered to help me open the house. So when Grant’s classes let out for spring break, he met me in the train station in Montélimar, and we took the bus to Alba, or rather to the bus stop about a mile and a half away from the village. From afar, the castle and La Roche looked particularly fantastical and imposing in the orange-tinted late-afternoon light, and I felt gleeful and proud to show him the house.
But Shakespeare was right about April’s uncertain glory. As soon as we walked under the archway to the rue de la Double, the quiet strangeness of the place struck me. Unlike Avignon, where the sun had melted all but the slightest of chills, La Roche felt as if it had accumulated a winter’s worth of dark and cold and was hanging on to them grimly. The contrast from the sunny parking lot we had just crossed was so stark, it felt as if we were dropping down a well. When we got to the house, I scraped the cobwebs off the doorknob and pushed the door open across the uneven stones, breathing in the sweet, slightly mineral scent of the abandoned house.
It was late afternoon, and the daylight was fading fast; we walked down the dim, gray-green hall and tried to get our bearings. I felt a strong wind hit me and heard Grant call out. When I stepped over the threshold into the back room, I saw that all its windows had been smashed. So much debris had blown through the jagged, empty frames that it looked like the back garden had staggered in and died all over the floor: everything was carpeted in dead leaves and vines, dirt and stones.
“It must have been kids,” Grant speculated, picking up a rock and turning it over in his hands. He held it out to me, and I took it and dropped it onto the floor again, kicking it away from me as if I could punish someone with the action.
We realized there wasn’t anything we’d be able to do about it that night, so we bolted the door and went back to the front room.
“We can do this,” I affirmed.
Grant nodded. “It’s not that bad.”
I regretted my decision not to buy a sleeping bag. We kept ourselves warm by cleaning and reduced the level of filth to the point that we didn’t shudder when we touched things. We sat down to a cold dinner of cereal, milk, and bananas, which felt even colder once we realized the gas tank for the kitchen stove wasn’t empty. Then we pulled the curlicued metal bedstead to the center of the room, as if by doing so we could escape the cool seeping in through the walls or imagine a fire in the sooty, abandoned fireplace. Grant climbed into his sleeping bag, and I wrapped my down vest around my feet and pulled Grant’s coat over my shoulders. I was still freezing. It was so cold that the air seemed colored by it, as if the room were unable to absorb the chill. Unable to sleep, I stared into the dark and thought about my grandmother, lost in the chaos of the capitulation, looking for a place to stay.
I was dumped into the Village Square and handed the paper given me in Amélie-les-Bains to the Gendarme who met me. Everyone around viewed me with suspicion. The Gendarme, with a grim smile, informed me that nowhere was a room to be had and I better not camp out. What to do?!
I believe it was the village priest, present in the square at the time, who advised me to try the Veuve Flamand. This pertained to a café in a sidestreet whereto I was directed. Below street level, I entered an empty long room, dimly lit, with rows of tables and chairs along the walls. It was cool and I was exhausted. Mme. Flamand met me and I explained my presence. She was short, rotund, wearing dark clothes. Her face was round-squarish, riddled with smallpox scars, her eyes were brown and shrewd. Knowing the history of the disease which scarred her face for life, I recognized a survivor in front of me. She interrogated me tightly while also telling me much about herself. She was a Republican Spaniard who had worked in France … and had married old “drunkard” Flamand to get the house with café and some small landholdings.… She didn’t believe I was a physician. Certainly I didn’t look like one in my disheveled, exhausted state. She never mentioned her disbelief, but I knew. Finally after I had a cool refreshing drink, she said she only had an attic room she could let me have, but she didn’t think it would be suitable. I asked to see it. Two flights up, the last dusty and dirty beyond belief At the top a rickety door, poorly closing, giving into a room with a large window closed and shuttered, over the street below. Mme. F. opened window and shutters to reveal a thickness of dust inches deep covering the floor and every other surface. A rusty metal frame bed with mattress and what looked like rags heaped on it. A washstand on a primitive half table, a chair, completed the room’s furnishings. Mme. F. with a broad smile questioned me without words. This was it or spending the night where?
I asked if I could get a pail of water, some soap, a broom and rags and maybe a hammer and nails to drive into the wall for hanging up a few of my belongings as there was neither an armoire nor a chest of drawers, after I had cleaned the rooms. Mme. F. stared at me, collected what was on the bed, saying the mattress wasn’t too bad and she’ll give me bedding. I don’t know if it was then and there, that what I later on called the “university of my life” started. Surely without my war experiences I couldn’t have become the person I am today. I followed Mme. F. downstairs and this time into the kitchen with a large open hearth, where cooking was done on tripods supporting the soot-stained pots. A very large table and chairs stood on the dirt floor. A sink with running cold water was placed under large South-oriented windows. I got the pail filled in the sink, was given a large piece of soap (savon de Marseille, the best in France) as well as plenty of clean rags. I can’t remember how many trips up and down and how many rags it took to remove the dirt and dust, air the mattress, and organize the room. Mme. F., huffing and puffing up the stairs, brought me coarse, but very white and fragrant sheets and even a bedspread. She admired—with looks, no words—my accomplishment. I asked about the price and with full pension, three meals, it was five francs a day, if I looked otherwise totally after myself. I was determined to stay as at this price my meager savings could last quite a while. I understood that Mme. F. was regarded by the villagers as an outsider and opportunist. She seemed well intentioned toward me, saw me also as an outsider, not being a French citizen.