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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781550961478 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Exile Editions |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2011 |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
"Are you going to help me, Nela? I'm with the basil."
She interrupts her piano exercises.
"Here I am, my Lord. I shall comb Your head of basil, I shall pluck Your leaves, a little, a lot, passionately ... and I shall peel Your six cloves of garlic and will crush them for You. And now I shall grate Your two pieces of cheese: the Parmesan, so white, the red edam, so dry."
"Thank you. Everything is ready for the mixture. Give me the oil."
"Which one?"
"Which one? The olive oil, of course!"
"Here it is: Moulin Saint-Jacques, from the valley of Baux-de-Provence, AOC, extra-Holy Virgin Mary, cold pressed ..."
She could have added fruity, soft, with a scent of fresh almonds.
A drop on the tip of the finger, the finger on the tip of the tongue.
"It's perfect! Well, maybe a bit more."
"Thank you, Nela, you can go back to the piano."
"And you, Chef, to the stove. When will it be ready?"
"Twenty minutes, maybe. It's barely ten o'clock, don't worry."
"I'm not worried, but you should be. You always say that pistou is better heated up and that you have to let it sit for at least half a day before serving."
"I'm right on schedule."
Once, my Aunt Virginie tried to use a blender, given to her by I don't know who. "Never again! All those modern things that turn too fast, I tell you! Vé, all it does is make your pistou dizzy!" And Uncle Eugène agreed, and went on to damn "blenders, electric whisks and other mixers, nothing but insensitive robots, executing their tasks me-cha-ni-cal-ly ... a mortar, a pestle made of olive wood, nothing else! They speak the same language as the garlic, the oil and the basil, they're friends, partners, and that adds a dash of magic. No, never again! A pistou made by hand, gently, with the tools of the land." Always a poet, my uncle.
In Toronto, I have my own tools, bought in Aubagne a long time ago. The pestle turns in the mortar, stirring the basil along with memories, some of them terrible.
In those dark days, despite the tense atmosphere even a child could feel, I still knew nothing of evil and death. Gérard's unclear and often impatient explanations that tried to translate the sad news around us never really helped me understand.
"Yesterday, the Krauts took Riez."
"Who are the Krauts?"
"Are you dumb or something, Dodo?"
After all, all the members of our family were still quite alive – Grandma Rose, the oldest, and also Aunt Marie, her oldest daughter who'd be the first to join her father, Grandpa Félix, whom I knew nothing about except that he'd often given me a ride on his knees, if I was to believe an old picture and my mother's moving memories. And then Dad, the only one who wasn't there, but he'd gone on a trip, right?
Death made its entrance in my life during our first autumn in Moustiers, one "fine" morning in 1943 – I would soon turn seven. An official letter was handed to my mother by a white-gloved policeman. A letter that said that my father had succumbed somewhere in Germany during a "train transfer." As she spoke to me of Heaven, of pink clouds and white angels, though I didn't understand a word of it, my mother slipped the fateful letter into her bedroom dresser, between two sheets that smelled of lavender and that were probably too small to serve as handkerchiefs, for at night, through the wall, we could hear her softly weeping.
My young innocence had suffered its first wound.
My first metaphysical questions date from a year and a half later. On that day, on the platform of the Saint-Charles train station, I saw my father's walking skeleton come toward me and bend down to pick me up. A huge smile lit up the bottom half of his face and his teeth seemed awfully impressive. At that moment, I must have understood that our species had received a reprieve.
All in all, my Popaul (that's how I called him later, when I was an adult, in our closest moments) had been lucky. Of the whole family, he was the only one, up until now, to have returned from the afterlife – for a second life that lasted forty years. As for Gérard, I've been waiting ten years for him to come back.
Last night, before going to sleep, I reread several of Lafontaine's fables, including "The Young Widow." Despite the profound admiration I've always felt for these wonderful texts full of telling remarks about human nature and illuminated by poetry (my admiration goes back to my first days in school, in Moustiers), I've never been able to read this particular fable without thinking of my mother, and with a serious and grudging reticence about the misogynous comments that show their teeth throughout.
A husband's death brings always sighs;
A few things bother me straight away. Sighs: a word without sufficient strength today. The widow sobs, sheds tears: my mother rarely asked for pity through her sobs, and allowed herself to feel grief only away from our eyes. Then dries: too quickly this is said, too casually. Borrows wings: hmm ... this verse is much too beautiful – too sublime – to be criticized. Pleasure: pleasure does not return without its share of pain.
A first difference between my mother and this young widow, both of them in their prime, wasn't that my mother never really was a widow – in her heart and her mind she was one, completely – but that her husband, my Popaul, was handsome, charming, young, like in that photo from his days in the Navy when, under the tassel, his glowing smile has the exact proportions of the golden mean.
Besides, to say that And time returning pleasure brings and that The frolic band of loves / Came flocking back like doves. / Jokes, laughter, and the dance would be a striking lie for my mother. For her, there was no triumph of levity and concupiscence, but the triumph of Life through Love. She honestly loved, I've never doubted it, this man ten years her senior (yet still young, barely forty years old) who timidly came knocking on her door, hat in hand, to tell her of days to come and modestly flirt with her, offering a bouquet of wildflowers. Who was able to make her see, through her tears, the buds in the bramble, and convince her that, in their time, flowers would grow again. He accompanied her patiently, hand in hand, on the climbing, broken, uneasy path of rediscovery of her emotional life – there was no shame in being happy. Dear Uncle Roger.
The last lines of "The Young Widow" seem to ring true:
And thus, by night and morn,
She plunged: voluntarily, with tenacity. Because we must survive.
And my Popaul, on his end, did the same – but in war, without flirtation. With determination. Holding fast. In humid quarries and locked train cars. Never letting go, resisting. Sometimes in minus thirty, in the four rotten corners of the kingdom of Germany.
CHAPTER 2Nela pokes her head in the kitchen, inspects the situation at a glance and, reassured by the approximate order that reigns therein, compliments me on the good smell that fills the room. Pure consideration on her part: when a good pistou is boiling, there's no need to put your nose near the pot to smell it. She sits down by me and helps by breaking the peapods in two to remove any strings. My soup will be perfect, or it will not be. I feel Eugène looking over my shoulder: it will be perfect!
"Almost done!"
"Do you have a wine in mind for tonight?"
"Yes, a Bandol."
"Have you tasted it?"
"This morning, before putting it in the fridge. The first taste was nothing special."
"A Bandol. At least it'll be in the same palette."
"I hope so. It was expensive enough – thirty dollars. At that price I have to treat it with respect. Would you like a drop?"
"No, thanks."
"Now that it's cool, it's much better. It makes your taste buds tingle. Look at its nice colour, pink running to brick. Taste it."
"Just a drop, then."
"Floral and fruity! Blackberry, blackcurrant, redcurrant and rosemary, with a touch of lavender. What do you think?"
"You know me and wine ..."
"Not too bad at all. Its bouquet is a bit short, and so is the finish, unfortunately."
"Remember we have to go to the Portuguese to buy bread."
"You want to go to Nova Era?"
"Why not? We could leave around noon and get a bite to eat there. I could buy some dough for the filhós while we're at it. When we get back around three, we'll finish the preparations."
"All right, around noon, then. And the bite seems like a good idea – um a bifana, um pastel de nata e um galão."
"Dominique, make sure the soup has cooled before you put it in the fridge."
Dominique, Nicou, Nico, Dodo, Coco ... Ah, the story of my nicknames!
"Hurry up, ensuqué! D'you hear the church bell? Quarter to six and we're still in the scree. Your mother's going to kill us if we're not back by six. I don't want to be punished again because of you!"
Gérard was right about that, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The unfairness of his reprimand stung me; I opened wide the doors to a legitimate and pressing anger that charged out of me like a bull into an arena.
"Because of me? And who wanted to come here in the first place? Not me! To the scree! To get bitten by snakes!"
Surprised by my vigorous counterattack, Gérard didn't even try to argue.
"Ô fan, gounflaïré! Stop sniffling, it slows you down."
This time my cousin went too far. I refused to take another step.
"And now you're sitting down? And crying? That takes the cake. What is it this time?"
"I'm fed up, you're mean to me."
"Mean? Why are you saying that, Dodo?"
"Because you're always giving me mean names."
"Like what?"
"Tòti, ensuqué or pégon ... And gouflaïré, what you just said to me."
"That's not mean, silly!"
"Not mean? You said it with your teeth stuck out, like Nicolas' dog."
"Don't exaggerate!"
"At school, you always call me Dodo, so everyone calls me Dodo now. Except Madame Dupuis, she's the only one who calls me Dominique. Dominique is nicer, don't you think?"
"And Dodo isn't nice? My father, my mother, and Félix all call you Dodo. Don't you like it?"
"Yeah, but Aunt Virginie and Uncle Eugène don't say it the same way. And they always say plenty of nice words like coco, gàrri, and bìcou."
"And maybe you like it when your mother calls you Dominique."
"Of course not, she calls me that when she yells at me."
"You see!"
Gérard stood before me, a huge grin on his face, an offered hand, and just like that I was back on my feet again, consoled.
That day, he wasted precious time calming me down, promising never to call me bird names again.
"Swear to God and hope to die. Just Dodo or Dominique. Now, get a move on, longagne!"
Oops! He covered his mouth with his hand and hunched his shoulders. "It just sort of slipped out ..." Then he laughed happily, which swept any hint of maliciousness from my mind. Once again, like during recess and even in the village streets when he would come to my rescue (even if it was Nicolas' dog or big Jauffret looking for trouble), my dear cousin proved he was on my side. To calm my anxieties, he joked all the way home.
The path was endless: a boulder lay across it and forced us into a detour higher up. Sometimes we tripped over rocks and then kicked them down the slope, where they waited for us, setting traps. Sometimes he took me by the hand, other times by the shoulders, but Gérard helped me quickly make my way through the scree. But even at our fastest, it took too long.
"Do you know what time it is?"
It was half past by the time we got back. Worried sick, giving me a "You're going to get it, Dominique," and Gérard a peremptory "Consider yourself warned," my mother rang out the hour. And she rang our bells hard.
CHAPTER 3Suspicion had only grown in my family since the night when, less than a week after my father's arrest, a mysterious Mister Moretti had come to see us at our house at 38 Rue Chaix, in the steep Saint-Victor neighbourhood. We were living in a small apartment built above number 36, a detached house where Grandma Rose and Aunt Henriette lived. This strange visitor arrived late, after the curfew had thrown the city into complete darkness. He told us he'd escaped the Gestapo and had been my father's cellmate for several days. Yes, Paul was doing well. But the interrogations were more and more frequent, and more and more violent. "Look here, on my arm, cigarette burns!" They'd been inflicted on him at SS headquarters at 425 Rue Paradis by a torturer known as Max the Pervert. "And here, my eye!" That had been a gift from a Marseille militiaman named Tortora (you can't make up a name like that; it fit him like a boxing glove). But we shouldn't worry, Paul was built tough, he took pain well. Tough indeed, and resistant in both meanings of the word: he'd leave the Marseille Gestapo several weeks later with only two crushed fingers, a leg broken in three or four places, and a busted knee, thanks to the triangular ruler ... Injuries that wouldn't help his career in the concentration camp.
I can still picture Moretti. About fifty years old, bilious eyes in a sunken face. A ferrety look about him.
He asked my mother, "Joseph Millet, have you ever heard of him?"
A wily voice, like the fox in the fable.
"No. I don't know anyone by that name."
If my dear mother didn't tell him, it was because she had nothing to hide.
"Are you sure?
"Yes."
"And if by some chance they came searching the house, did Paul leave anything incriminating behind?"
"Nothing. I mean, except for a few Gaullist pamphlets and the fake IDs."
"Ah! Of course, the fake IDs ... They were for the Resistance and the Jewish associations, right? You have to get rid of them right away. Where are they?"
"They were all burned."
"Who burned them?"
"My brother-in-law."
"Good. Is he in the Resistance, too?"
"I don't think so."
"And nothing else besides those pamphlets and the IDs?"
"No."
"What do you know about the arms cache your husband was responsible for?"
"Arms? That's the first I've heard of it. Where is it?"
"I don't know. That's the trouble!"
"Why didn't you ask him?"
"I didn't have the time. We weren't alone in the cell ... Please, make an effort to remember ... Those weapons are important to us. We must continue the fight, whatever the cost."
"I know absolutely nothing."
He stroked my head with his limp hand – it was awful!
"I'll come back the day after tomorrow, in the evening. That is, if I haven't been picked up first."
He wasn't, and he did come back. But he found only Uncle Eugène in the apartment. Of course, he had nothing to tell him, since he was never involved in the Resistance. With a nose like his, Eugène had quickly smelled a rat.
"So you were with my brother-in-law at the Gestapo?"
"Yes, I was Paul's cellmate for three days."
Well, well! He'd just said "Paul." He knew his real name, though he'd been arrested under his Resistance pseudonym, Claude Baccio.
"You knew him before?"
"No, our networks are well separated. Mine is in Fréjus. That's where I was arrested. But tell me, you must know something about the arms cache he was in charge of. As you can imagine, we're cruelly short of everything, weapons, munitions, explosives ... It's hard to steal from the Krauts, and London barely supplies us."
How could Moretti have known? Eugène himself knew nothing. My father had never told him about the arms cache, hidden in a mausoleum in the Saint-Pierre cemetery. Only Jo knew: he, and he alone, helped my father receive and distribute the merchandise. Among other feats, in December 1942, the weapons had contributed to an impressive show of fireworks. Three explosions in the Gulf of Lion had deprived Rommel's Afrika Korps of a few hundred men, a few thousand litres of gasoline, and quite a few boxes of ammunition, and at quite an opportune moment too, barely a month after the September 8th Anglo-American landing in North Africa, as the German Field Marshal struggled to keep the advantage in that theatre of operations.
First, my father and Jo had taken the explosives out of the cache and brought them to Bonnet. He, a dock worker and middleman, brought them to the harbour and gave them to Sandre, also a dock worker, but a diver by trade, who attached the explosives to the ship's hull as it was leaving for Libya. Then, once the boat had left Marseille, boom!
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Pinch of Time"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Le Cherche Midi Editeur.
Excerpted by permission of Exile Editions Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
The Curtain Rises,
The Curtain Falls,
Afterword,
Endnotes,