Well, by now you will have the scene in mind: a warm late night at Chez Lulu, Honorine and I seated together at a small wicker table at the edge of the sand; the young accordian player and of course Lulu already making spectacles of themselves on a low, crude, wooden stage facing away from the sea and toward the animated crowd of Lulu's favorite patrons old and young; the protective matting of bamboo strips rustling above our heads; the colored lights strung like a bright fringe about the perimeter of the place; the tide going out beyond us in the sultry darkness; Lulu well-launched into the predictable early stages of his exhibitionism …. Yes, everything was conducive to what Lulu had promised us would be a night of surprising and superlative entertainment.
Preliminary to this entertainment, a secret event he had been anticipating for us the entire week, Lulu was in the midst of telling one of his rare, evocative stories which always caused Honorine to smile and settle herself more comfortably into her own special attitude of languor and expectation. The story, as we began to discover, concerned a man who had been sent out by his mistress one rainy afternoon to sell a spray of mimosa on one of the town's busiest thoroughfares. The mistress was a beast of domesticity, the rain was heavy, the street was crowded (mainly with children), the man had a face of amazing scars and was so small and stolid that he was not much better than an impressive dwarf. But most important of all, this maltreated and ridiculous figure was the possessor of a left arm nipped off and drawn to a point at the elbow by one of those familiar accidents of birth that are so prevalent in a nation that still lies under the wing of medievalism.
On he talked, our Lulu, now contributing illustrative gestures to his story, which was punctuated occasionally by a few disrespectful notes of the accordian. Well, the stubborn and resentful lover, such as he was, attempted to sell his enormous branch of mimosa in the rain. He held the mimosa first in his right hand and then in a furious grip in the armpit of his offended partial arm, then in an agony of self-consciousness he shifted the mimosa from armpit to angry hand and back again. The children laughed (as did we of Lulu's audience), the hatless man was wet to the skin, a small but elegant automobile drove past with an enormous heap of gleaming, yellow mimosa covering its entire roof. Well, this story had no ending, of course, but afforded the perspiring Lulu a good many artful strokes along with an increasing number of sour notes to the accordianist. And though Lulu wiped his face and laughed and apologized for being unable to reach the moral of his story, no matter how fast and sonorously he talked, still each and every member of his audience smiled in immediate and pleasurable recognition of that moral, which says in effect that we are a nation of persons not only unashamed of the handicapped but capable, as a matter of fact, of making fun of them.
But now came the moment of the rare entertainment that we were all so primed to receive. The laughter faded, Lulu wiped his partially visible bare chest as well as his face with his handkerchief, the accordianist bestowed upon us a great, gleaming sweep of fanfare music, Lulu made a brief but enticing announcement about the spectacle we were now to see. Then he turned and drew aside an ordinary bed sheet which, throughout the story of the unglorious lover, had concealed the rear portion of the small makeshift stage which, I may now assure you, is all that remains of the long- since abandoned Chez Lulu.
But that night, and at that moment, already we saw no signs of impending physical decay. To the contrary, because there before us on that little stage stood three young girls who were delightfully natural, only moderately shy, and appealingly dressed in the most casual of clothing-in undershirts designed for boys, that is, and in tight denim pants. The families of those young girls were in the audience, each member of the audience knew each one of those most reputable young girls by sight. Need I mention the clapping that followed the removal of the sheet? Need I say that the smallest and most attractive of the girls was our own Chantal?
So she was, and barefooted, like the other two, and like them attired to affect simplicity and to erase undesirable differences between the three. As a matter of fact, Honorine and I were pleasantly and simultaneously aware that these three young, innocent girls were already more provocative, more indiscreetly revealed, than most professional seminude girls in a chorus line. You can imagine the activity which this combination (the adolescent amateurs, the public performance) sent rippling through the audience at Chez Lulu that night. What, we wondered, had he trained our girls to do? And what were we to make of the three large, orange carrots suspended small end downward approximately a meter apart by lengths of ordinary white twine tied to a slender beam affixed overhead? What "act" could Lulu possibly have in mind?
Well, we had not long to wait. Lulu clapped his hands, the accordianist set aside his great gaudy instrument, we of the audience craned or crowded forward, some of us going so far as to leave our tables and sit informally in the cool sand at the foot of the stage. And then, while the two men bustled about, whispering to the girls and positioning them in an exact giggling line across the impromptu stage, so that each one stood directly behind the particular dangling carrot which had previously been designated as her own, suddenly and as if by prearranged signal, all three girls knelt as one with their faces raised, their knees apart, and their hands behind their upright backs. The tips of the immense carrots hung barely within reach of the three sets of pretty lips which, we noticed, had been freshly painted with a glistening red cosmetic for this debut on the stage. There were whistles, random volleys of clapping, more jockeying for better and closer locations from which to see. But what now, Honorine and I asked each other with smiles and raised eyebrows, what now- blindfolds?
Yes, they were indeed blindfolds, and at the first sight of them, and while Lulu and his grinning assistant were tying them like broad, white bandages over the eyes of the young trio kneeling as if awaiting the revolver of some brutal executioner, the audience voiced its approval and curiosity in a new and sudden spurt of informality. By now we knew what was coming, of course, and that we were about to witness some sort of competition or game which would involve the men, the girls, and the carrots. We could hardly have been more aroused or appreciative.
Lulu called for silence, and in the next moment one could hear even the lapping of water against the flanks of an invisible sailboat or the sound of insects in the bamboo matting overhead. All faces were admirably attentive. We watched as the three girls, now illuminated in the bright beam of a single spotlight, shifted nervously in their kneeling positions and gathered their muscles, so to speak, and raised their pretty, blinded faces like sniffing rabbits. The girls waited, Lulu raised his thick right arm, the assistant composed him-
self behind two of the girls as might a sprinter. Already the three charming contestants had begun to perspire. Music from a car radio came to us faintly across the little midnight harbor.
Then Lulu shouted, flung down his arm, and thereby sent our trio of sweet girls into an unbelievable flurry of agitation which, we saw immediately, was all the more pronounced and even feverish because of the ground rules by which the girls were forbidden to move their spread knees. In the previous few moments each of us in the audience had made his firm choice, his loyal commitment, and had fixed upon that particular young girl whose efforts he would champion to the very end. And now, even at the mere outset of this simple sport, the shouts of encouragement were deafening.