A few minutes later, on my way to meet Daničle, I mailed it.
Daničle took me to a restaurant called La Grotto Fraiche, the only one, she said, that stayed open all year round, the restaurant the locals used. Afterward, we went to the apartment she shared with three other girls. Her bedroom was next to the main room, where two of them were watching television. As we made love I could hear the television through the wall, and occasionally the voices of the girls. When we were finished I thought only of Sue, and regretted everything. Daničle sensed that I was triste, but did not inquire. She put on a housecoat and made some coffee brandy. Soon I was walking back to the hotel.
I saw Daničle again in the morning, when I collected the Renault. She was wearing the Hertz uniform, was friendly, bright, unremorseful. Before I drove away we exchanged the double-cheek kiss.
VIII
I drove inland from SaintTropez, wanting to avoid the heavy traffic along the coast roads. The Renault was difficult to drive at first, the gearshift stiff to move and placed on the right, breaking my coordination. To drive on the right demanded constant attention, especially as the road wound sharply through mountain country. At Le Luc I joined the main autoroute and headed west on the broad divided highway, and driving became less of a strain.
I knew I was moving farther and farther away from Sue, but we had agreed on our rendezvous, and my main concern now was to see her again.
I drove along the autoroute as far as Aix-en-Provence, then turned south toward Marseilles. By lunchtime I had checked into a small pension in the dock area, and spent the afternoon wandering around the city. Well before six o’clock I went to our agreed rendezvous, the Gare Saint-Charles, and waited for her in as prominent a place as I could find. At eight, I went to find dinner.
I had another day to kill in Marseilles. I visited the Quai du Port, with its streetcars and wharves, the three-and four-masted barks lined up against the docks, the whole place deafeningly loud with the noise of the steam cranes. In the afternoon I went on a tourist boat for a tour of the great waterfront, passing the grim edifice of Fort Saint-Jean, then out into the calm bay to circle Château d’If. I spent the early part of the evening wandering on the concourse of the station, staring anxiously at the crowds whenever a train arrived from the Riviera. I was worried I would not recognize her.
IX
I came to Martigues, a short drive from Marseilles. Martigues was on a narrow but hilly isthmus between the Mediterranean and Etang de Berre, a vast freshwater lake. The center of the town was the original village, but nearby oil refineries had swelled the size and the population all through the twentieth century. It was impossible to drive into the center, tie Brescon, because a number of small but picturesque canals took the place of streets. I left the Renault in a town parking lot, then walked with my suitcase to find somewhere to stay.
This was the last agreed meeting place with Sue; if she did not appear here, I knew I was on my own.
The village was no place to be lonely. Many other visitors were there, walking along the narrow alleys or cruising through in boats, and it looked to me as if everyone else was in couples or groups. I began to dread the evening, knowing Sue would inevitably let me down. The worst of it was the persistent hope, weakening my determination to put her behind me.
The Quai Brescon was the place we had agreed, the opening of the main canal to Etang de Berre. I went there as soon as I arrived, to familiarize myself with it, and returned several times during the day. It was a placid backwater of the town, the houses built directly against the water, with numerous small rowing boats and skiffs tied up along the narrow towpaths. Few of the visitors found the quai, and there were no restaurants, shops or even a bar. Here the old people of the village gathered, and when I arrived for my evening vigil they had already assembled, sitting outside their peeling houses on an assortment of old wicker chairs and boxes. The women all wore black, the men wore weathered serge de Nimes. They stared at me as I sauntered along the quai, their conversation dying around me as I passed. At the mouth of the canal, looking out at the smooth black water of the lake, I could smell sewage.
The warm evening darkened, night fell, lights came on in the tiny houses. I was alone.
X
I drove around the Camargue to the village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the site of a shrine. I wanted to go to a place I had not mentioned to Sue, somewhere she could not find me if she tried. I also wanted to be by the sea again, to throw stones at waves and wander moodily along a beach.
But it was a mistake. The tiny village was crowded, and buses blocked the streets and parking lots. I found a place to leave the car and walked around for a while. The shrine, a miraculous well, was contained in a stone-built chapel, handwritten testimonies to its healing power attached to every wall. I read a few of these pathetic, joyful messages of gratitude, then returned to the bright and sunlit streets. Almost every building in the center was a commercialization of the shrine: effigies, candles, crosses, replicas were sold in every place. The only restaurant open was a vast modern cafeteria—plastic-topped tables and metal trays. I went inside seeking lunch, but was driven out by the crowds and the flies.
As I walked down to the beach I was attacked by the largest flying insect I had ever seen; it was yellow and black like a grotesquely swollen wasp. I assumed it was a hornet, and managed to elude it. From then on I kept a watchful eye open for more, but I did not stay long. The beach was open and flat, not used by the visitors, and when I reached the water the tiny waves broke feebly on the white sand. Just then I hungered for an ocean beach, with rocks and waves and sea wind, a sense of natural drama.
XI
The next day I went to a town called Aigues-Mortes. When looking at the map with Sue I had noticed the name and wondered what it meant. We had looked it up and found it was a corruption of the Roman name: Aquae Mortuae, “the dead waters.” The town turned out to be a walled city, massively fortified in the Middle Ages and surrounded by a number of shallow lagoons. I parked the car outside the wall, then in the humid heat followed the course of the former moat. I soon tired of this and climbed a low hill close by, staring back. The town had a monochrome quality, like an old sepia-tinted photograph: light fell uniformly, blurring colors. I could see the roofs within the walls, and in the near distance beyond the town there was an industrial site with a number of high but unsmoking chimneys. The lagoons reflected the sky.
It struck me then that this was what France had become for me: without Sue to enliven me, it was a flat, silent and unreal place, drifting past as I traveled, locking into immobility when I stared. If I thought back over the last few days, Sue dominated everything. I remembered her company, her laughter, her love, her body. But behind her, almost unnoticed, were my images of France. Sue had distracted me from them, first by her presence, then by her absence. The empty plazas of Nancy, the old-fashioned restaurant in Dijon, that mountain sight of Grenoble, the modest bathers of SaintTropez, the docks of Marseilles—they were static in my mind, moments I had passed through with my thoughts elsewhere. Now Aigues-Mortes: frozen in the shimmering sun, like some vestige of memory, it had an arbitrary, random quality, its stillness reflecting some forgotten thought or image, something distinct from Sue. France was haunting me, semiglimpsed beyond my preoccupations. How much more of France had I not noticed, how much more lay ahead?