The Rose Café (5 page)

The last invasion of Corsica, and the one most talked about, took place in 1940, when more than ninety thousand German and Italian troops attempted to take control. The presence of truckloads of Nazi soldiers patrolling the streets, the increased attention to curfews, increased scrutiny of personal documents, and certain liberties taken with virginal Catholic girls from Corsican families already known for inventive vendettas only served to encourage the resistance. As always, the rebels survived well enough with the traditional local support from the peasants, and the Axis forces met with such stiff resistance they found it necessary to install one soldier for every two residents, and that included all the women and children as well as males of fighting age. By 1943, the Italians surrendered. Berlin lost interest in the huge expenditure of forces needed to hold the resistance at bay, and in mid-September of '43, Marshal Kesselring began pulling out his troops and tanks.

Back at the Rose Café, there was a small, pretty Englishwoman with messy blond hair sitting by herself with a glass of beer. She had apparently wandered out to the island from the town and liked the look of the café and stopped for a drink. In spite of the fact that she was alone, she seemed content in her place, comfortable in her skin, as the French idiom phrases it. I noticed that a few of the male guests were looking over at her. The Rose Café was not the sort of place a woman alone would stop off for a drink. It was out of the way, isolated from the town square, and populated mostly with couples or the company of regular cardplayers who would collect there each evening.

Chrétien was in the interior dining room preparing the settings for the evening meal when I returned. He slowly passed from table to table, carefully placing each knife and fork and then staring at his work and making very minor adjustments, looking again at his handiwork from a distance, and only then moving on to the next table.

He was a graduate student in philosophy in Paris who had come down to work for the season and was a familiar here, having worked at the Rose Café the season before. He was fond of all things Spanish and used to spin off long quotes from García Lorca and sing traditional flamenco melodies after he had had too much red wine.

As soon as I came in he began to chatter on about his new girlfriend, Marie, who had been staying at the auberge earlier but had returned to Paris with her parents. She would be coming back soon, he said, deposited here during the week while her parents worked. The idea was that they would come down for long weekends.

“It will be a good season. She is very pretty, like a young gazelle, but she is inhibited by the presence of her parents. With them gone …”

He held up a spoon and cocked an eyebrow.

He explained that Marie had failed the dreaded baccalaureate examination that is required for graduation from the French equivalent of high school, and her parents had settled her here in this isolated place, away from her many friends, to study for her second try.

“Their thought was that there would be no social distractions here,” he said. “Nothing to do but study. A tutor will be coming periodically, but he has yet to arrive. Of course, I could help her, I passed the
bachot
with honors …”

He winked again.

Back in the kitchen that evening Jean-Pierre was preparing a ragout of wild boar, one of the island specialties. He had been marinating the chunks of boar meat in wine and vinegar laced with cloves, juniper, and mashed garlic, and he was now mixing together a sauce of onions, more garlic, carrots, and celery with what seemed to me a very generous helping of eau de vie. Periodically he would dip up a spoonful to taste the marinade. I noticed that his eyes would always assume a vague, unfocused look whenever he was tasting anything, and he would stand staring at the smoke-blackened wall behind the stove as if reviewing a beautiful landscape.

Island cuisine has four recurring staples: wild boar, seafood, chestnuts, and sheep's cheese, the best known configuration of which is a farmer's cheese called brocciu. Local wines, most of which were made from grapes grown on Cap Corse, just northeast of the Rose Café, were favored by the islanders, although less respected by French tourists except for a few rosés and a very good muscat, also from Cap Corse. Periodically, usually at some quiet midday meal when there was no one around, the staff would sit down to a long midday dinner and on these occasions Jean-Pierre would bring out an unlabeled bottle of a light-colored red made from a grape known as the sciaccarellu, which was local to Corsica and produced a wine that had, as so many local products did, a hint of the flowers of the maquis.

All these commodities had their seasons. Autumn was the best time to hunt and eat the truly wild boars. But in the interior of the island there were many feral pigs, and these the hunters would bring into the markets at any season. Like their conspecifics, the wild pigs would feed on roots and tubers and the aromatic vegetation of the maquis, which gave their flesh a unique flavor that was decidedly different from any farm-raised hog. In autumn, the people would round them up and slaughter them to make spicy pork sausages called
figatelli
, which were coveted by locals and visitors alike.

Jean-Pierre, who was the chef and owner of the Rose Café, had worked briefly as a journalist but had left France with Micheline for Mexico, where they attempted to live for a time with the mountain-dwelling Lacandon Indians. Things hadn't worked out as they had planned, so at the recommendation of a well-placed uncle, Jean-Pierre went to cooking school in Burgundy for a while. Before finishing his course he and Micheline gave up on this new career and came down to Corsica to raise goats and make cheese. That didn't work out either, and somehow they found the money to acquire the Rose Café.

As far as I could tell (I cannot say that I had a refined palate in those years) Jean-Pierre was a decent cook. But he had what I believe was either a local, or perhaps unique, custom of quickly braising almost everything in local olive oil and herbs of the maquis, finished with a splash of wine. The process would send up a fragrant thyme-scented cloud in the kitchen that would set my mouth watering autonomically, like a Pavlovian dog. Occasionally, he and Vincenzo would outdo themselves and prepare some elaborate local dishes—quail in a mint sauce, for example, or a boar haunch baked in Cap Corse muscat, or veal or boar with a sauce of bolete mushrooms.

The local types that frequented the Rose Café were not exactly there for the food, however atmosphere played an important role in Jean-Pierre's cuisine—that and the fact that the restaurant was at a remove from the village and served as a place apart, where any local could retreat and escape the tangle of gossip and intrigue of the village cafés and restaurants.

As Jean-Pierre was working, Vincenzo came in from the harbor carrying a couple of freshly caught fish, which he took back to my scullery and cleaned himself. Then he set to work on a squid stew he was preparing.

He and his wife Lucretia worked weekends, although I could not see that Lucretia helped very much other than to assist Micheline and Chrétien with malicious gossip. Vincenzo was dark-eyed, with a brush mustache and curly black hair, and his wife was an Italianate woman with a full-bosomed, nineteenth-century figure. The two of them spoke to each other in a mostly incomprehensible patois of Italian and Corsican and would sometimes get into shouting arguments at the busiest hours in the kitchen. None of us knew what they were fighting about, but in due time they would simmer down and by late evening they would all be out at the card game, Lucretia included.

Unlike Jean-Pierre, who seemed more or less indifferent to my presence, Vincenzo had taken me on as his charge, and when he had the time taught me sauces and the uses of certain wild herbs that Lucretia would bring in from the maquis, hugging them to her breast in great redolent bundles. She herself had the odor of wildness about her—you could smell bay and laurel rose in her hair whenever she brushed by you, and she too took a liking to me, and used to pinch my cheek affectionately and kiss my innocent forehead, spouting long phrases in dialect, presumably approving.

While we were preparing the evening meal, Herr Komandante poked his head in the back door of the kitchen.

“Tonight?” he asked in broken French. “What is?”

“A wild boar civet,” Jean-Pierre said.

“Ah, perhaps,” he said. “And what other?”

“
Rascasse grillée
.”

“Good. And as entrée?”

“
Soupe de pecheur
, if you like. Sea urchins.
Salade de crevettes
,” Jean-Pierre said.

“
Wie Sie wollen; alles ist gut
,” Chrétien said in passable German.

“Good. And then. What cheese?”

Jean-Pierre listed a few local cheeses, including the standard brocciu, a soft sheep or goat cheese seasoned with herbs that made its way into almost all the local dessert dishes.

“All right,” the interrogator said. “It is good. All is good.” He bowed, tipping his head to one side and nodding, and backed out.

This was a Friday, and a few new guests had come in from Calvi, where there was a daily ferry. There was a pale man from Paris who wore tinted glasses and sat with an equally unhealthy woman, perhaps his wife, who had brought her own tisanes and her own bottles of water, which she had asked Micheline to boil for her. (After three days of this, Micheline or Chrétien would simply serve her local water from the kettle on the stove; she never seemed to notice.)

There was a stylish couple, also from Paris, who were clearly not happy with the isolation of the place, and also a quiet young couple from the north who were on their honeymoon and spent most of the time either in their bedroom or out in the isolated coves of the second islet where the Genoese watchtower was located.

Also in residence was a shy dentist named Eugéne, with clean-shaven, chipmunk cheeks who had come out bearing a number of new suitcases and new summer clothes, apparently purchased for this particular vacation. He asked many questions about the region when he first arrived and seemed reluctant to venture off on his own.

The evening meal was quiet; only a few of the guests showed up for dinner, and washing the dishes was a simple matter. I was done shortly after the desserts were served, and toward the end of the meal Vincenzo brought in a tiny glass of marc and set it on the counter for me, a sort of communion ritual that indicated that the desserts were finished, coffees were served, and the real work of the evening was over.

I went out with it after my chores were done and sat on the terrace, watching the lights out in the bay.

The blond English woman I had seen earlier in the day was there, sitting with a tall man with an aquiline nose and reddish hair, swept back from his forehead. They were staring out at the harbor, not talking to each other. Herr Komandante was enjoying a cognac and a cigarette, smoking slowly and reflectively, holding his cigarette to his lips for a long time.

Chrétien and Micheline were sitting at one end of the terrace, seeking a breeze. I joined them there with my glass.

“So I guess you heard, Marie is coming in a few days,” Micheline said casually to Chrétien after a few minutes.

“
Olé
!” he shouted, slapping his thigh. “Marvelous. Is she coming alone or will her parents be here?”

“Her parents will be here, but only for a couple of days, you'll be happy to hear.”

“Oh my God but that is good. Don't you think?” Chrétien said. He turned to me. “You hear that? Belle Marie, the beautiful antelope. I cannot wait. You will be so pleased to meet her.”

He blathered on, using animal metaphors to praise the beauties of said Marie.

“I don't know,” Micheline said tiredly, “I think that you place too much confidence in her. I think you love her too much. She's going to fall for someone else as soon as her parents leave. Maybe that dentist from Lyon.”

“Never!” Chrétien shouted. “She loves only me. I can tell.”

Micheline lit a cigarette. “You know her?” she asked.

“What do you think?” he said. “She is too Catholic. She even attends Mass. She says she is a virgin.”

Micheline snorted and blew out a dismissive cloud of smoke.

“And anyway,” Chrétien said, catching Micheline's joke. “The dentist?” He began to laugh. “You cannot mean the dentist.” The laughter consumed him, he slapped his thigh, repeating the word “dentist” over and over again.

Micheline merely looked over at him blankly.

A whisper of breeze rose up from the harbor and died of its own accord on the terrace. A gecko snapped up an insect from the stuccoed wall. Out in the harbor, the steady throb of a fishing boat engine fell silent.

I decided it was time for bed.

The moon was illuminating the mountains on the other side of the harbor and behind the town, just above the dark sweep of the foothills, I could see the three rounded, lower peaks that stood together in a line, like hooded, cowled figures. The locals termed them “the three nuns,” and they looked down on the town as if in judgment of the world of human affairs. Above the nuns, touching the sky, rose the higher peaks of the interior. This was spring, and they were still snow-capped and glowing, white against the black sky. They hung there as if suspended above the earth, a realm of gods, who unlike the judgmental Christian nuns, were indifferent to the follies of the mortal fools below.

chapter three

Marie

Around ten o'clock, on an otherwise quiet day when the heat was high enough to force anyone who was left around the place into a reclining position, I went to the kitchen and picked up an old fork, a mask and snorkel, and a fruit basket, and walked down the narrow path through the red rocks to the cove below my cottage, to collect sea urchins.

In the interior of the island, local game such as wild boar made up the signature dish of many of the restaurants, but on the coast, seafood was the specialty of the house. One of these delicacies was the sea urchin, which would appear on the tables of the coastal restaurants in spring, sometimes already cut in half for the guests, or served with a pair of scissor-like double-bladed pliers you could use to open the shells. Inside there were strips of red, salty meat that the locals would eat with bread and cold rosé or muscat.