“Sometimes water is better than wine,” she said. She looked around. “The tourists don’t come?”
Glancing in the direction of the proprietor, Jules said, “He keeps it out of the guidebooks. How he does that, I don’t know, but it’s almost like a private dining room. I’ve always preferred modest restaurants. They’re somewhat like women in uniform. Clothes can be a great frame for beauty, but when a woman is in uniform – military, police, nurses – the only thing that matters is her face, and you see the real person, freed of plumage. Although sometimes, I admit, the cut and tailoring of clothing adds to a woman’s beauty in a breathtaking fashion.” élodi was reddened from having been in the sun, and she was wearing the dark navy-blue dress with white piping. Jules never smiled in photographs, because he felt that he looked like an idiot when he did. But when élodi smiled – he had seen pictures of her in chamber music programs tacked to the bulletin boards and kiosks in the Cité de la Musique – she looked not merely beautiful but brilliant.
Like a sinking swimmer grabbing the side of a pool, he returned to the subject of restaurants. She was aware that when he had spoken of the beauty in a woman’s face he had not been able to take his eyes off her, and she was also aware that she herself was almost glowing.
“I like station restaurants, cafeterias, the places where truck drivers and construction workers eat, or fishermen, or poorly paid clerks.”
“No Michelin stars?”
“Not a one, and very few deathly sauces. The same simplicity for hotels. For years we vacationed in Contaut ….”
“Where is that?”
“Do you know Hurtin, or Hurtin Plage?”
“Normandy?”
“Aquitaine, the Gironde. North of the cut above Arcachon are beaches and forests that are as empty as if they were on the coast of Africa. French and German tourists crowd Hurtin Plage, but south of it for sixty kilometers there’s nothing. When you get to Contaut you can turn north to Hurtin Plage, or south on sand roads into the forests and dunes. For eight or nine years it’s been a national reserve, but before that there were a few shacks near the beach. We used to stay there for two weeks in August, returning in the last two weeks, when Paris is empty and quiet.
“No running water or electricity – kerosene lamps. You could hear the waves and the wind day and night. There’s no sleep like sleep lulled by the waves. Other families vacationed in nearby shacks. The fathers were street cleaners, road workers. Our daughter played with their children, we shared fish that we caught, and we watched out for each other. It was a kind of paradise, and if you compare it to a five-star hotel in Nice or Saint-Tropez it would rank so much higher in every way that is truly good that it would make you wonder why people try so hard to dress up and impress – when heaven is to be had in simple things.”
She knew that his difficulty in getting to what he wanted to say was because of her. It was wonderfully dangerous.
“I still don’t understand why you have no boyfriend,” he said from out of the blue – awkwardly, insultingly – hoping and yet not hoping that she would contradict him and say that she did. “Why?”
Her answer was mysterious. “Facial hair.” But then he got it.
“You mean the studied, three-days’ growth, as if they think it’s what makes a man? I suppose it hides their callowness. Instead of pretending, they should wait until they’ve suffered and endured. Until they’ve raised a family, faced death, lost the ones they loved. Then, effortlessly, their faces would show character. Hair is not character.”
“Exactly,” élodi said.
“But they’re young, and you’re young.”
“I prefer character. Life is short. I’m not interested in a man who has to costume himself as a man. Besides, it strikes me as dirty. Did it used to be like this?”
“No. People looked like that only when they were shipwrecked or in battle, which is, I suppose, the look young men who have hardly lived want desperately to cultivate.”
“I mean everything: civilization.”
“Yes, more or less. It’s not worse, but it’s not better. It depends on the duration of the sample. With a broad enough perspective, things seem to stay the same: periods of advance and decline, peaks and valleys. It’s as if we’re in an exquisite jungle with pools of fresh, aerated water beneath white waterfalls, colorful and fragrant flowers, calming greenery, fruit on the trees. But there are also tigers, jaguars, and snakes lying in wait. To forget that they’re there and may at any moment rip you apart is to live in an illusion. And for fear of them not to see the paradise all around is a greater illusion still. The white froth of the falling water, the fragrant blooms, the tiger burning bright, waiting in the tangle of waxy green, are together necessary and complete. In the gap between them is the spark that makes life.”
She looked at him for a moment in which nothing was spoken. “I‘d like to go to Contaut someday, and live as you describe.”
“You can’t. The shacks are gone. It’s a national reserve, regulated for the public good. Those days are over for me, but you’ll find other places.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“In a way, yes. But, as difficult as it may be, I have to be more specific.”
“You don’t, really. I think I understand.”
“I know, but I’ve said it so many times to myself – and I’m so practiced – that I want to tell you.” He paused. “You know about votive candles?”
“Of course.”
“Have you lit them?”
“When I was little. Not since.”
“I noticed this about how a candle in a glass jar will burn. For ninety or ninety-five percent of its ever-diminishing life, the paraffin is white and opaque. But at the end, just before it burns out, it becomes entirely transparent. Just before the end, everything clarifies.”
“That’s true, as I remember.”
“To tell you exactly would be the right thing. I want to.”
She waited. He couldn’t divine anything about what she thought, except that she was still, and breathing lightly. He tried to remember that she was so much younger, and probably would be in uncharted territory, but on the other hand he himself felt a certain terror. “I’ll be matter-of-fact,” he said.