Encore Provence Page 3

  ‘Tant pis,’ he said. ‘In that case, you can buy me a drink.’

  I find it hard to resist this kind of amiable effrontery, perhaps because I have very little of it myself, and so, two minutes later, Marius and I were sitting at a table at the back of the café. All our previous meetings had been in the car, when my eyes had been on the road; this was the first time I'd had a chance to take a close look at him.

  His face was a study in the brutal effect that too much weather can have on the skin: a complexion like flayed meat, ruts where other faces would have wrinkles, wrinkles where other faces would be smooth. But the eyes were bright, and he had a full head of hair, cut en brosse, spiky and grizzled. I put his age at around sixty. He took a big box of kitchen matches from the pocket of his army surplus jacket and lit a cigarette. I saw that the first joint of his left index finger was missing, probably a slip of the pneumatic secateurs while he'd been pruning vines.

  The first swallow of red wine went down, marked by a small shudder of appreciation, and he started to question me. I spoke French like a German, he said. He was surprised when I told him I was English, it being well known that the Englishman abroad prefers to stay within the familiar bounds of his own language, merely raising the volume of his speech to overcome any misunderstanding with the natives. Marius put his hands to his ears and grinned, his face collapsing into a web of creases.

  But what was an Englishman doing here in the winter? What kind of work did I do? It was a question I had often been asked, and the answer invariably prompted one of two reactions. Either pity, since writing is a notoriously precarious occupation; or interest, sometimes even tinged with the respect that the French still have for anyone who labours in the arts. Marius was in the second category.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘un homme de lettres. But clearly not poor.’ He tapped his empty glass.

  More refreshment arrived, and the questions continued. When I explained what it was that I liked to write about, Marius leaned forward, half-closing his eyes against the smoke from his cigarette, the picture of a man with confidential information to impart. ‘I was born here.’ He waved an arm in the general direction of his birthplace, somewhere outside the café. ‘There are stories I could tell you. But another time, not now.’

  He had a prior engagement. Apparently there was a funeral in the village that day, and he never missed funerals. He liked the measured pace of the funeral service, the solemnity, the music, the sight of the female mourners in their best clothes and high heels. And if the ceremony was to celebrate the burial of an old enemy, he liked it even more. The final victory, he called it, a testament to his own superior powers of survival. He reached over to seize my wrist and look at my watch. Time to go. Stories would have to wait.

  I was disappointed. To hear a good Provençal storyteller is to hear a performance given by a master of the art of verbal embroidery, a prince of the pregnant pause, the shocked expression and the belly laugh. Drama is extracted from the most mundane occasions – a trip to the garage, the gutting of a chicken, the discovery of a wasps' nest under the roof. Coming from the right person, these small moments can take on a dramatic significance more suited to the Comédie Française than a village bar, and I always find them fascinating.

  The next time I saw Marius, he was crouched over his Mobylette at the side of the road, peering into the fuel tank, his head cocked in a listening position as though he was waiting for it to whisper in his ear. Dry as a rock in July, he said to me as he folded himself into the car. But I could take him to the garage to get a bidon of fuel, non? And then I could buy him a drink, as it had been an exasperating morning. There was, as usual with Marius, the confident assumption that I had no pressing plans of my own which might interfere with my duties as his emergency chauffeur.

  We settled in the café, and I asked him if he had enjoyed his last funeral.

  ‘Pas mal,’ he said. ‘It was old Fernand.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘You know? They say he was one of the five husbands. You must have heard the story.’

  When I shook my head, he turned to call for a carafe of wine. And then he began. He glanced at me from time to time for emphasis, or to see if I had understood, but for the most part his eyes stared off into the distance, examining his memory.

  For some reason, he said, butchers and women often have this affinity, a closeness that goes beyond the simple transaction of buying and selling meat. Who knows why? It might be the sight of all that flesh, the pinkness of it, the slap it makes on the block, the promise of a choice cut. Whatever the reason, it is not unusual for a certain intimacy to develop between butcher and client. And when the butcher is young and good-looking there is often the added pleasure of a little flirtation over the lamb chops. This is normally as far as it goes, a harmless moment or two, something to bring a sparkle to a woman's eye as she goes about her daily business.

  Normally, but not always. And not in the case of the butcher whom we shall call Arnaud. At the time the story took place, many years ago, he was newly arrived in the village, having taken over when the old butcher, a glum, unsmiling man who was stingy with his meat, had retired. The local ladies were never quick with their opinions, but they gradually began to approve of Arnaud as news of what he was doing was broadcast from mouth to ear on the téléphone arabe. He transformed the little butcher's shop – repainting, replacing ancient fittings, installing modern lighting – and by the time he had finished it was a joy to go in there, to be greeted by gleaming steel and glass, the clean scent of fresh sawdust on the floor, and the smile of the young proprietor.

  He, too, was a considerable change for the better, with his shining black hair and brown eyes. But what set him apart from most other men of his time were his teeth. In those days, rural dentists were few and far between, and their techniques ran more to extraction than repair. Consequently, it was rare to see an adult without a gap or two, and those teeth that had survived were often in a sad way – crooked, dingy, stained with wine and tobacco. Arnaud's teeth, however, were startling in their perfection: they were white, they were even, they were all there. Women meeting him for the first time would come away dazzled, asking themselves why it was that such a beau garçon didn't appear to be married.

  Arnaud was not unaware of the effect he had on his female clients. (Indeed, it came out later during the investigation that he had been obliged to leave his previous place of work in another village after some complications with the wife of the mayor.) But he was a businessman, and if smiling at his customers led to more business, he would smile. C'est normal.

  It must be said also that he was a good butcher. His meat was properly hung and aged, his blood sausage and andouillettes plump and amply filled, his pâtés dense and rich. His cuts were generous, often a few grams more than had been asked for; never less. He even gave away marrowbones. Gave them away! And always, as he handed over the packages of neatly wrapped pink waxed paper printed with his name and the illustration of a jovial cow, there would be the sunburst of his smile.

  All through that first winter and that first spring, his popularity grew. The men of the village found themselves eating more meat than they had ever eaten in the time of the old butcher, and better meat too. When they mentioned this, their wives would nod. Yes, they would say, the new one is a great improvement. The village is lucky to have him. And some of the wives, as they looked across the table at their husbands and made an involuntary comparison, would catch themselves thinking about young Arnaud in a way that had very little to do with his professional skills. Those shoulders! And those teeth!

  The trouble started at the end of June, with the beginning of the true heat. The village was built on a hill, and the stone buildings that faced full south seemed to suck up the sun and store it overnight. In private houses, shutters could be closed against the glare and the steadily rising temperature, but commercial establishments were not so fortunate. Their display windows invited the heat, and magnified it. And so Arnaud was obliged to modify his wor
king methods to suit the climate. He cleared the window of anything perishable, replacing the usual arrangements of sausages and prepared cuts with a notice informing his clientele that his meat was being kept in the cool storage area at the back of the shop.

  Naturally, the butcher himself needed some relief from the heat, and by early July Arnaud had adopted a more practical uniform than the canvas trousers and cotton sweater he usually wore. He still kept his tablier, the long white (though frequently bloodstained) apron that covered most of his chest and extended down to his shins. But beneath that he wore only a pair of old black cycling shorts, snug around the hips and buttocks, and rubber-soled clogs.

  Business, already healthy, became even more brisk. Items hanging up on the hooks behind the counter were suddenly much in demand, since to reach them Arnaud had to turn and stretch, exposing a muscular back and legs to the waiting customer. Expeditions to the cool area where the rest of the meat was kept were also very popular, involving, as they did, close proximity to an attractive and almost naked young man.

  There were changes, too, in the appearance of Arnaud's customers. Everyday clothes and cursory grooming were replaced by summer dresses and makeup, even scent. The local hairdresser was kept unusually busy, and visitors to the village could be forgiven for thinking that the women they saw in the narrow streets were dressed for a fête. As for the husbands – well, those who noticed put it down to the weather. In any case, their wives were treating them well, with the extra attention that a touch of guilt often provokes, and feeding them like prizefighters in training. The husbands had no complaints.

  July continued like an oven, one rainless, blistering day after another. Dogs and cats tolerated each other, sharing pools of shade, too stunned to squabble. In the fields, melons were coming to ripeness, the juiciest for years, and the grapes on the vines were warm to the touch. The village sprawled on its hilltop, stifling in a cocoon of hot, still air.

  These were difficult days for the butcher, despite his flourishing business. He was finding that making friends in a small, closed community is a slow and cautious process. A newcomer – even a newcomer from a mere sixteen miles away – is treated with guarded politeness in the street but excluded from the homes of his neighbours. He is on probation, often for several years. He is a foreigner. In Arnaud's case, a lonely foreigner.

  To add to his problems, the demands of his business left him very little time to make the journey to Avignon, where the lights were brighter and social opportunities more promising. His working day started shortly after sunrise, when he would come down from his cramped flat above the shop to swab the floor, sprinkle it with fresh sawdust, evict dead flies from the window, arrange his cuts, put an edge on his knives and snatch a cup of coffee before his older customers, always the earliest, began to arrive just before eight. The hours between noon and two, while the rest of the world was taking its ease, were often spent picking up supplies. Wholesalers refused to deliver to the village; the streets were too narrow to accommodate their trucks. The afternoons were slow, early evenings the busiest. Arnaud was rarely able to close before seven, and then there was the grey torrent of paperwork: the day's receipts, suppliers' invoices, government forms requiring confirmation that the code sanitaire was being strictly observed, mutterings from the Crédit Agricole about his bank loan. It was a heavy burden for a man on his own. What he needed, Arnaud often told himself, was a wife.

  He had one in early August, unfortunately not his own.

  She was younger than most of his customers, and a good fifteen years younger than her husband. Her marriage, if not exactly arranged, had been vigorously promoted by the two sets of parents, whose vineyards occupied adjoining slopes below the village. What could be more satisfactory than a union of blood and earth, families and land? As each family made its discreet calculations, the savings on tractors, on fertilizer, on vine stock and on labour became delightfully apparent. A date was set for the wedding, and the two principals were encouraged to become fond of each other.

  The new husband, a placid man with modest ambitions, middle-aged from birth, found that marriage suited him. He was no longer dependent on his mother. He had someone to cook for him and mend his clothes and warm his bed on long winter nights. One day he would inherit both vineyards. There would be children. Life was good, and he was content.

  But his young bride, once the excitement of the wedding was over, felt a sense of anti-climax that gradually turned into resentment as the reality of everyday routine set in. She was an only child and had been indulged. Now she was a wife, with a wife's responsibilities: a house to run, a budget to juggle, a husband who came home each night hungry, tired, caked in dust from the fields, happy to spend the evening with his boots off reading the newspaper. Happy to be dull. She looked into the future and saw a lifetime of work and tedium.

  It was hardly surprising that she began to take increasing pleasure from her visits to the butcher, timing them for the afternoons when there was a greater chance that he would be alone. He was the bright spot in her day, always smiling and, she couldn't help but notice, a fine figure of a man in his abbreviated summer uniform – sturdy, unlike her scrawny husband, with a fine glow to his skin and a clump of thick black hair curling over the top of his apron.

  It happened suddenly one afternoon, without anything being said. One minute they were standing side by side as Arnaud was wrapping some rump steak, close enough to feel the heat from each other's bodies; the next, they were upstairs in the little flat, slippery with sweat, clothes on the floor.

  Afterwards, she let herself out of the shop, flushed and distracted, forgetting the meat on the counter.

  Speculation is the hobby of a small village, and information seems to travel by osmosis, seeping into the consciousness as surely as sunlight through gauze. Secrets never last, and the women are always the first to know. In the weeks that followed his afternoon with the young wife, Arnaud noticed an increasing friskiness among his customers, and a tendency to stand closer to him. Hands that had previously been businesslike, paying money and receiving packages, now lingered, fingers brushing against his fingers. The young wife began to come in regularly just after two o'clock, closing the door behind her and turning the sign so that it read Fermé. Others followed, picking their moments. Arnaud lost weight and prospered.

  It is not certain who first alerted the husbands. Perhaps one of the oldest women of the village, whose joy in life it was to denounce every irregularity she saw; perhaps one of the wives who was disappointed to have never made the hurried journey up the stairs to the dark, beef-scented bedroom. But, inevitably, gossip and suspicion grew, eventually reaching the husbands. Accusations were made in the privacy of the matrimonial bed. Denials were disbelieved. Finally, one husband confided in another, and he in another. They discovered that they were members of the same miserable club.

  Five of them gathered in the café one evening: three farmers, the postman, and a man whose work for the insurance company often involved nights away from home. They took a table at the back away from the bar, a pack of cards disguising the true purpose of their meeting. In low, bitter voices, they told each other much the same story. She's changed. She's no longer the woman I married. That little salaud has destroyed our life, with his greasy smile and the obscenity of his shorts. As they sat there, the cards forgotten in front of them, their outrage feeding on pastis, their voices grew violent and loud. Too loud. The postman, the least fuddled head at the table, proposed another meeting, somewhere private, somewhere they could talk about what was to be done.

  By now it was nearing the end of September, and the hunting season had begun. And so they agreed to meet in the hills the following Sunday morning, five friends with their guns and dogs in search of the wild boar that caused such havoc rooting through the vineyards every autumn.

  Within minutes of sunrise, Sunday was hot, more like July than September. By the time the five men reached the crest of the Luberon, their guns and bandoliers were weigh
ing heavy on their shoulders, their lungs burning from the climb. They found shade beneath the branches of a giant cedar tree, eased their backs, passed a bottle around. The dogs explored the undergrowth by nose, following invisible zig-zag paths as though they were being jerked along at the end of a cord, the bells on their collars chinking in the still air. There was no other sound, there were no other people. The men could talk undisturbed.

  To punish the wives, or to punish the butcher?

  A good beating, a few broken bones, his shop destroyed. That would teach him. Maybe, said one of the husbands. But he would recognize his attackers, and then the police would come. There would be questions, possibly jail. And who was to say it would stop him? Men recover from beatings. He would have the sympathy of the wives. It would start all over again. The bottle passed around in silence as the five men imagined living through long months, maybe more, in jail. If their wives were able to deceive them now, how much easier it would be when they were left alone. Finally, one of them said what they had all been thinking: it was necessary to find a permanent solution. One way or another, the butcher must go. Only then would their lives and their wives return to the way they had been before this young goat had put them to shame.

  The postman, always the most reasonable among them, was in favour of talking to him. Perhaps he could be persuaded to leave. Four heads shook in disagreement. Where was the punishment in that? Where was the revenge? Where was the justice? The village would laugh at them. They would spend the rest of their lives the target of whispers, the butt of jokes, five weaklings who stood by while their wives jumped in and out of another man's bed. Five men with horns and no guts.

  The bottle was empty. One of the men got to his feet and placed it on a rock before coming back to pick up his gun and slide a cartridge into the breech. This is what we do, he said. Taking aim, he blew the bottle to fragments. He looked down at the others and shrugged. Voilà.