Jeanne led them into the kitchen. He sat down in the chair she offered as though his feet had been cut out from under him. The walls, hung with plates, spun around him.
"Jean-Pierre? I can call you Jean-Pierre, can't I? After all, we're related. You look quite tired!"
"Yes. The trip-"
"Did you come a long way?"
"A very long way, yes."
He was overcome with dizziness. He closed his eyes, opened them, tried to smile. She'd turned her back on him and was heating water. Then, standing before the pantry shelves, she pushed aside empty jars and gave each white tin box a shake beside her ear.
"Let's see… No more tea, of course. No more real coffee, either. Herbal tea, then, or chicory."
Bit by bit, Manoir's dizziness wore off. The walls slowed their spinning, the plates grew still. There were three, covered with a thin film of grease and dust. The first showed an interior scene: a woman, like Jeanne at that very moment, busying herself in her kitchen. In the second a traveler from the last century, cane in hand, broad hat brim hiding his face, made his way through the woods. The last was a rebus. From where he was sitting he couldn't see the elements very clearly. A note on a musical staff, a pond…
"There, it's steeping. It's lime-blossom. Oh, wait, I've got a treat after all."
She pulled a plate from another cupboard. Manoir recognized the dark amber, almost brown sections she used to cut from a block of fruit jelly for his afternoon snack.
"I don't make it as often as I used to. It takes too much sugar. But Jean-Jacques loves it. Where has that boy gone now? Jean-Jacques?"
A clatter of steps echoed in the stairwell. Jean-Jacques appeared.
"What were you up to?"
"I was cleaning my room so I could show Uncle Jean-Pierre."
"But Jean-Pierre isn't your uncle. He's your father's cousin"
"Yes, but he said-"
"No, that's fine," Manoir interrupted. "I'm a bit too old to be a cousin.
"And we'll play, right? Like you said. I cleaned my room just so we could."
"Leave Jean-Pierre alone. Here, have some quince cheese. You, too, Jean-Pierre. Help yourself"
Man and boy started in. The pieces were a bit sticky. Jean-Jacques licked his fingers. Manoir hesitated, then, giving him a complicit glance, did the same.
"Manian?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Am I going back to school today?"
"Well… not this morning, at least."
"Not this afternoon, either!"
"We'll see. I'll see. Oh, the tea's ready" Jeanne had taken out two bowls. Jean-Jacques didn't much like herbal tea, and he'd just had breakfast. It didn't stop him from digging into the quince paste. For his part, Manoir was dying to have seconds but didn't dare.
"Help yourself, Jean-Pierre! Really!"
"With pleasure. It's delicious." He took a broken piece from the plate.
"Hey, are you coming back?"
They were in Jean-Jacques' room. Jeanne was working below. JeanJacques was lying on the linoleum near his toy chest. Manoir set down the little tin airplane he'd been studying.
"Of course, if your mother wants me to."
"She does, I know she does!"
"And why is that?"
"Because you're family. When you've got family, you visit, right?"
"I suppose so. I don't really know. I don't have any-except you ff two.
"Just like us-all we have is you"
Manoir leaned over the chest, and reached for a box of cubes. "But sometimes you live too far away to visit often."
"Do you live far away? In the free zone?"
"That's right. In the free zone."
"So we won't be able to see each other."
Manoir had opened the box of cubes. He'd already found three faces that represented parts of a single picture. A rodeo scene, no doubt.
"I'm moving."
"Really? Neat! So we'll see each other often, then? We could go boating. Maman won't take me. But you will, right?"
"We'll go everywhere! The circus, and the zoo, and the Ferris wheel at the fair."
"The Ferris wheel! It makes me scared to look around even when we haven't left the ground yet!"
"You won't be scared with me, right?"
"No! Definitely not!"
Suddenly the sirens screamed. Man and boy froze.
"Hear that? It's the bomb warning!"
Manoir checked his watch and nodded. Jeanne's urgent voice reached them from below.
"Jean-Jacques! Jean-Pierre! The sirens!"
"Come"
On the threshold, before closing the door, Manoir took one last look at his childhood room. The red eiderdown on the bed, the white mouse nibbling at the bars of its cage, the plaster coin bank in the shape of a dog on the dresser, the Kipling poem in its gilded pitchpine frame. Good-bye, good-bye forever this time.
They went down. Jeanne was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. She wasn't alone. The neighbor stood next to her. Curiosity had brought her over, and the sirens surprised her on the front step.
"Hurry up! Didn't you hear the warning!"
"Yes, but it's not for us. I bet they're going to bomb the station."
"We're just next door! Come over, my cellar's deeper underground, and my husband did a good job shoring it up."
"We don't have time;" Manoir cut in. "Listen-they've started!"
The engines' roar had grown louder. In a few moments, the squadron would pass right over the town. Muffled explosions broke out.
"It's the AA guns," Jean-Jacques shouted. "Blam! Blam! Vrrr! Vrrr! Blammm!"
"Hurry, downstairs!"
Jeanne grabbed the boy. She opened the cellar door and headed down the steps. Manoir stepped aside to the let the neighbor by.
Jeanne lit a small lamp. They were seated on old crates. The ground trembled without stopping. With each detonation, shockwaves shook the walls. In a corner of the cellar, empty bottles clinked.
"They're bombing the station. We have nothing to fear."
"If you say so!" The neighbor was missing her reinforced shelter and her sandbags. Jeanne was quiet. After a momentary brush with fear, jean-Jacques had regained confidence before "Uncle Jean-Pierre's" demeanor. Manoir smiled. He felt great peace within. Events once gone astray were about to resume their rightful course.
Above, a bomber had been hit. It veered, losing altitude. To lighten the load, the pilot ordered all bombs to be dropped. For a moment, the bombs rocked in the air as though uncertain, then the wind on their fins stabilized them. They were falling straight down now, with a whistling that grew ever higher in pitch. The first ripped the street open two hundred yards from the house. The second crushed a gas truck at the corner of the street. In the cellar, the neighbor, the bearer of bad news, opened her mouth to cry out. Jean-Jacques pressed himself against Jeanne, his face buried in her breast. Manoir rose, threw himself upon them, and held them.
Bures, 1980
The Dolceola Player
landeuil thought he should take advantage of his trip to Eparvay to ask his fellow natives what it meant to have been born there, rather than somewhere else. He saw now that a feeling of deep, intimate belonging to this place had never left him, even when he'd fled ten years ago.
Without a word to anyone, he'd taken the dawn local with his dolceola, still new then. The first scratches on its case dated from that day. God! So many others had followed…
It was nevertheless curious that flee was the word that sprang to mind. For, after all, he'd left neither jailers nor enemies behind. His parents had pampered him, he'd had lots of friends, and when they'd talked about the future, Xenia hadn't seemed to envision her own without him. He might have been within his rights to say he'd gone off to win fame and glory. And won it he had, in a way.
He bit the inside of his cheek, as he always did at the thought of the publicity given over to the event. Years had gone by since then, and he hadn't yet fully recovered; perhaps he never would. He had to harden himself and endure, was all. But he knew he never really could… Endure, yes, with great difficulty. But harden himself enough-no. Turn to stone-no. He'd always suffer from odd things, things that as a rule no one else suffered from, things they prided themselves on instead…