Forgetfulness (3 page)

Florette had cleared the dishes, made a pot of coffee, and slipped out the back door for her walk, having a pretty good idea that the conversation would remain in LaBarre, Wisconsin, of which she had heard quite enough. Thomas had thoughtfully located his hometown in an atlas but she could not visualize it, a black dot in an unfamiliar region of an immense country. A river with an unpronounceable Indian name ran nearby, flowing into a great lake. Minnesota was north, Iowa west; such strange place names. St. Michel du Valcabrère had not changed since she was a girl and her mother said the same thing, yet it was also true that tourists came to take photographs of the church and the pretty square and the memorial to the fallen of the Great War,
Mort pour la France,
thinking them quaint. She had paused at the kitchen door, pleased by the afternoon light streaming into the courtyard, in use since the middle of the eighteenth century, scuffed cobblestones the size of melons underfoot. Thomas and his friends were speaking a kind of pidgin German, remembering their childhoods in once prosperous LaBarre before the Hispanic Anschluss. Russ was the one who had kept up, exchanging Christmas cards with high school classmates, privy to the news: one passed away, another in jail, a third a superior-court judge. Beautiful town to grow up in, Russ said, no town to stay in; and so we left it without a thought because there was nothing to look forward to except decline, and now we remember it as a kind of lazy American paradise where the days seemed to go on forever to the rhythm of crickets. Florette thought America had a cult of restlessness, people moving on as a matter of course. If you didn't like the hand you were dealt—the wife, the job, the color of your hair or the shape of your bosom—you dealt yourself another. She herself had shuffled the cards, bewitched by an article in
Paris-Match
that described a couturier in Place Vendôme, merchant to the haute monde. But when the
chance came to go to Paris she had done nothing. She had thrown in her hand. Place Vendôme was not beyond her wildest dreams, in fact it was her wildest dream; but it was only a dream and so she had stayed behind.

In the spirit of a mariner who wished above all else to visit the caves at Altamira, Florette had tried to encourage Thomas to take her to America, New York City with a side trip to LaBarre. You haven't seen your country in ages, she said. Aren't you curious to see what's become of it? How people are getting on since the attacks? The sense they make of them? I suppose they won't like it when you tell them you live in France. Probably they'll think you're a traitor and have changed sides. But still. So much has happened in so short a time. Aren't you interested? He looked at her with a strange smile and said, There isn't anyone I want to see in America. Maybe sometime, for you. But sometime never arrived because both she and Thomas were gripped by the stubborn inertia that came with living in an out-of-the-way place, hard to get into or out of. Mountains limited the horizon. Naturally there was more to it than that but Florette did not feel she could insist. She had lived all her life in St. Michel du Valcabrère and a few more months or years would make no difference. In any case, they were content where they were. Florette had never been outside France and only recently had begun to think about travel to America. She wanted to see the empty place where the twin towers once stood and see the Statue of Liberty up close. She wanted to stay in a fine hotel and ride a Fifth Avenue bus and visit Saks. She wanted to go to the opera in a long black dress, Thomas in a tuxedo. And she wanted a long detour to Thomas's birthplace. She wondered if provincial LaBarre had a town square with a stone monument to the fallen,
Mort pour l'Amérique,
and a church that was as beautiful as the one in her square.

Florette moved stiffly on the stretcher and put her hands to her temples. She could not remember the name of the church, the one she was baptized in and attended every Sunday of her life. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard but the place in her mind where the church was, was suddenly blank. She did not understand
how this could be. She thought and thought and when she finished thinking she looked up with an expression of the most poignant embarrassment.

Florette noticed pinpoints of light in the forest and knew they were smoking again. The Gitanes smell reached her, hung a moment, and disappeared. She thought she heard one of them laugh but dismissed it as her overheated imagination. These were not men who laughed casually, unlike Thomas's rowdy American friends. She closed her eyes, knowing her mind was wandering, reeling actually, stuttering from one subject to another. Her mind seemed to have a will of its own. She was so very cold, it was hard for her to concentrate. She wanted desperately to pee but did not know how to go about it. She was not all in one piece but scattered, a skein of yarn that had unraveled. She knew she must stay alert so that she could call to Thomas when he came for her with the men from the village. His sixth sense would tell him she was injured and in danger. Thomas would never allow her to be mistreated. She missed him so, his good humor and generosity, his easiness, his sincerity in most things, his superstitions (a knock on wood, his habit of placing pebbles on the gravestones of strangers) despite his professed atheism, his touch, and his excitement. She even missed his absent-mindedness, his habit of being there and not-there at the same time; she called it his equilibrium. She wished he took better care of himself and like all men he covered things up. As the women in the village said, his shoes were full of stones. Gaps in the biography, Thomas called it. Missing years, years that had dropped from sight, interregnum years when he was, as he said, absent without leave. Out of the way. In the evening after dinner he would disappear into his not-there state, a private smile appearing from nowhere, lingering awhile before it disappeared and he took up his book once again, and settled in. The smile infuriated her; you could almost hear the rustle of bedsheets. She didn't mind that he'd had a prior life, everyone did. He was past fifty when she met him and past sixty when they married, his manner suggesting a life very much spent in the
world. His face looked it: laugh lines in combat with worry lines, the laugh lines winning but only barely. However, she did not like the private smile. One night she asked him about it, what he was thinking when he was smiling privately. And he told her it was a passage in the book he was reading and then he recited the passage. Of course he knew what she was asking and added that he had drawn a line between past and present, the present beginning the winter Sunday when they met in the church at St. Michel du Valcabrère and walked across the square to the café for a tisane. Remember the snowflakes in the air? The café windows were misted over. Most everyone wore their Sunday clothes, dark suits for the men, flowered dresses for the women. He had decided not to go to Mass that day but promised to meet her outside when it was over. He sometimes went to Mass because he liked the music and the carved figures of the saints behind the altar, St. Michel's foot worn smooth by the touch of thumbs, supposedly good luck, a propitious thumb-touch. They walked across the square to the café and took the table next to the pinball machine. Old Bardèche arrived with the tisane almost at once, smiling, complimenting Florette on her dress.

Thomas kept his right hand in his jacket pocket, fingering the small square box that contained an engagement ring. He had decided to ask her to marry him but did not know exactly how to go about it. He was as nervous as a teenager. Thomas reminded her of the first day they met and had gone across the square to the café and he had explained to her that he was an artist, a portraitist who had traveled all his life and was content now to settle in a farmhouse in the country. And she had said yes, she knew his house, the property next to the Englishman. Florette remembered that Thomas lit her cigarette with a gold lighter and gave her the lighter, and the next day they went for a walk on the mountain, trading personal histories; and a week after that she moved from her little house in the village to his farmhouse next to the reclusive Englishman's. They had not been apart since. That afternoon Thomas reached into his jacket pocket and said, I have something for you—

They both looked up, aware suddenly of a contretemps at the table next to the door, three men, two women, expensively turned out, tourists from the look of them, though this was not the season for tourism. One of the men was blind, talking loudly to old Bardèche, thumping his fist on the table for emphasis. The women seemed to be egging him on. The sightless man was complaining about the wine, racehorse piss, he said. He wanted another bottle, something drinkable, and did not intend to pay for the bottle in front of him because it was racehorse piss, give it to the racehorses. Old Bardèche looked from the blind man to the women and back again, understanding only that the wine was not wanted. He was short-tempered in the best of times and now Thomas watched his face color. The other two men lounged insolently in their chairs, their arms folded, as the young women—one blond, the other dark—watched avidly with the expressions you saw on spectators in the ringside seats. Whenever the blind man mentioned racehorses, the quartet laughed unpleasantly. One of the men began to pick at his fingernails while his friend yawned. They behaved as if they owned the café and everything in it. When the blond woman stuck out her tongue at old Bardèche he pointed at the door and told them in French to get out, they were no longer welcome. Take your whores with you, Madame Bardèche said from her position at the caisse. The men looked up. The blind man rose then. He was built like a stevedore, broad in the shoulders and half a head taller than the Frenchman, eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, a black baseball cap with the legend
NYPD 9/11
pulled low over his forehead. He wore a tan chamois jacket, expensive from the look of it, black jeans, and leather ankle boots. He stood with his fists loosely at his sides, his head moving left and right. The racket of conversation ceased, the café grown abruptly silent, old Bardèche at a loss as to how to proceed with the American.

He said, You. Garçon.

Thomas turned to Florette and said, Excuse me. I have to see to this.

Who are they, Thomas?

My countrymen, alas.

Garçon, the American said again. Come here.

The patrons of the café were nonplused, divided by their natural sympathy for a sightless man and appalled at his behavior. Surely he had reason for grievance but old Bardèche was not the cause and he was not a garçon, either. It was well known that Bardèche had no sympathy for Mussulmen. None of the villagers did. They looked at each other and wondered what was expected of them. This blind man was spoiling for a fight, and for what? Suddenly he lunged at the Frenchman, who easily sidestepped, and the blind man crashed into the table, cursing loudly as glassware shattered. His four friends remained seated, content to let their comrade settle the matter. That seemed to be the agreement among them. Honor was at stake. Now most of the men in the café were on their feet, prepared to come to old Bardèche's aid, but in the general uproar Thomas got there first.

Thomas said, It's best if you and your friends leave before there's serious trouble.

Who the fuck are you?

Thomas saw that the blind man did not look directly at him but off to one side. He was trying to judge Thomas's position by the sound of his voice. Thomas said, I live here.

Fuck you then, the blind man said, and Thomas saw that his face was pockmarked by dozens of tiny scars and one long scar that ran from the outside corner of his right eye to his chin. He had once been a handsome man, except for the sneer. Thomas wondered if the sneer had always been there or if it was a consequence of his injuries. He must have suffered terribly.

I think you're outnumbered, Thomas said equably enough, as though this were a casual misunderstanding among friends.

It's racehorse piss.

Try the café in the next town, why don't you.

The blind man swung at him and missed and the friends at the table laughed once more. One of the women clapped her hands sarcastically.

Old Bardèche had come up behind Thomas with a heavy alpenstock but hesitated. He did not sincerely want to use it against a blind man but he was running out of patience. He only wanted the Americans out of his café.

Forget it, Jock, one of the men at the table said.

We don't care about them, his friend added.

Nobody cares about them, the blond woman said. Crummy little café in the back of beyond. She slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table and gathered her coat. Let's get going. I'd like to be in Andorra before midnight.

Good advice, Thomas said.

He's right in front of you, Jock.

The blind man swung again but he was off balance and the blow landed on Thomas's shoulder, hard enough to turn him around but not so hard he couldn't push back, and the blind man went sprawling into the table again. Blood leaked from a tear in the chamois jacket but he was oblivious.

Get him out of here, Thomas said to the blond woman.

Don't fuck with us, one of the men said.

What's your name? Thomas said.

Harry.

Well, Harry. It's time for you to go. He looked at the blind man, who appeared disoriented; Thomas's face was reflected in the sunglasses. Look, he said finally. I'm sorry about your friend. Was he a policeman?

Cop? No, he wasn't a cop. Jock sold insurance. Except in New York City we're all cops now. You wouldn't understand that.

He was in the twin towers?

Look at him, Harry said. What do you think?

The blind man said, Go to hell. He was seated now, one elbow on the table, his hands clasped in his lap, his face soft as putty. It was impossible to know what he was thinking or if he was thinking anything. Thomas noticed that his hands were scarred. Blood continued to spill from the tear in his chamois jacket. Everyone noticed but no one said anything. Thomas felt tremendously sorry for him even as he wanted him out of the neighborhood.