“Bon courage, Madame! May God go with you. Greet him from us and tell him that he may stop by whenever he likes.”
Emile waited until he heard the heavy oak front door click shut and the sound of the sharp, quick footsteps on the gravel die away. Then he pushed himself up from the old leather armchair and hobbled down the long corridor and past the fireplace in the living room. He spotted the shattered dish of cream on the sideboard, and next to it the sugar tin with a pistol handle poking out of it. He found the telephone in the bread bin, the bread in the laundry cupboard and a tidy pile of towels in the fridge, but he couldn’t find any matches.
Pascale was sitting in the larder, rocking back and forth with her legs drawn up to her chest. Emile sat down awkwardly beside her on the cold stone floor. He had known Pascale for his whole life. He had seen her in her prime, during her golden age of strength and beauty, and had enjoyed every stage. He knew every woman she’d ever been.
He thought of the sharp knife in the kitchen. He wasn’t going to cut the gas supply to the stove and he didn’t lock the front door either. He wouldn’t humiliate Pascale by protecting her from life and death.
Death was a strange thing. Emile had always hoped that he would one day be so fed up with life that the thought of Ankou—the end to which all paths led—would weigh less heavily upon him. But no, he wanted more than ever to live! He was irritated by signs of his decline: the biting drafts of the house in the woods, his diminishing strength, the Parkinson’s. Such wicked twists of fate! No sooner has the mind reached maturity than the flesh begins to wither.
He kissed his wife behind the ear, the way she liked it. She giggled. He struggled to his feet and went off to look for a Maria Callas record. Her voice was one of the few things capable of getting through to Pascale when she withdrew so deep inside herself.
—
Shock had stopped Marianne dead in her tracks. A furious woman came striding along the path toward her, muttering sullenly and angrily to herself. She didn’t deign to look at Marianne.
Now she heard strains of opera coming from the woods and walked hesitantly in its direction. After crossing a clearing, she reached a beautiful property surrounded by towering deciduous trees with a vine-covered flagstoned terrace and rounded windows. However, wherever she looked in the overgrown vegetable patch, the lettuces had run to seed and the rosebushes were choked with weeds.
Then she noticed hordes of cats climbing trees or lounging in the cool shade, and dogs sprawling in a corner of the gravel drive. She walked around the outside of the house as Maria Callas’s voice spiraled into the heights.
“Hello? Anyone there?” she called over the aria.
A woman came toward her. She was carrying a tray with small plates on it.
“Guten Tag, I am your steward on this Lufthansa flight from Rome to Frankfurt,” the stranger said to Marianne with a smile. “Please fasten your seat belt and keep it fastened throughout today’s flight.” She set down the plates of lobster tartar before the lounging cats, as if she were handing out drinks thirty thousand feet up in the sky.
The woman had spoken German! How long had it been since Marianne had last heard someone speak her language?
“How…how long is our flight?” she asked, also in German.
Pascale Goichon gave her a smile that immediately faded.
“I’ve no idea,” she said unhappily. “I have to tell you that I’ve grown a little forgetful.” Joy and grief tussled briefly on her face, with neither scoring a decisive victory. She turned away and began to reel off the names of the cats as she set down little plates in front of their noses. Petit Choux. Framboise. She leaned toward Marianne, as if about to confide in her. “They’re the souls of the dead and of witches. Or of living people who felt lonely and sent out their cat soul to search for a home.”
Marianne followed the woman into the kitchen, where she picked up the next tray. Marianne guessed that this was breakfast for the dogs she had seen. She took the heavy tray from the woman’s hands and followed her outside.
Pascale stroked a greyhound. “Madame Pompadour. She founded a theater and a china factory, which is why her dinner is served on Sèvres porcelain. Do you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Official mistresses,” Pascale lectured as she fed the dogs, “were the rulers of kings. They decided more questions of state with their vaginas than historians would care to admit.”
“Oh,” said Marianne, feeling herself blush.
A strawberry-blond poodle with a cauliflower ear came strutting toward her. “Anne of Brittany. Our queen. She married the king of the Franks in order to protect her lands from him. She created the House of Princesses with nine courtesans and forty noble maidens. A state brothel.”
Pascale gave the poodle’s tummy a proud tickle, then introduced the other mistresses to Marianne: Madame du Barry; Julia and Vannozza, the mistresses of Pope Alexander VI; Lady Jane Stewart. Lastly, she pointed to a dachshund with perky ears and a jaunty tail. “Julie Récamier, who gave her name to the récamière chaise longue. It was her friend, Baroness de Sta?l-Holstein, who called Germany ‘a land of poets and pinschers.’?”
“Poets and thinkers,” Marianne corrected her.
“Oh, same difference,” answered Pascale. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Marianne Lanz.”
“Aha, Madame Lance. My name is Pascale.”
“What’s going on in your garden, Pascale?”
“What do you mean?”
“I never had a garden like this.”
“What did you have?”
“A lawn.”
“A lawn? What kind of a flower is that?”
Marianne realized that this approach wouldn’t get her very far. “Do you have anyone…living here with you?”
Pascale thought for a while. “I don’t know,” she said sadly. “All I know is that I don’t tick properly anymore. But you know, Marianne…the worst thing is knowing and being unable to do anything about it. It just happens: one moment I’m here, and then everything’s gone.” She reached for Marianne’s hand. “In America, people confiscate their stupid grandma’s passport, cut the labels out of her clothes, drive her to the next state but one and leave her there. Granny-dumping, it’s called. Not very kind, is it?”
Marianne shook her head. Although she knew Pascale was exaggerating, the thought made her shudder.
—
Emile watched from the terrace with crossed arms as the two women roamed through the garden. He had the feeling that the woman he recognized as Ar Mor’s new cook would not be put off by his crazy wife. Who knows, maybe she was crazy too. Crazy people had it easy in Brittany: it was ordinary people who found it tough. Still, she wasn’t from Brittany; she wasn’t even French! And as with most older Frenchmen, he didn’t take too fondly to Germans.