•
It rained for days on end in Saint-Lô, that fall fifteen years ago, making large puddles in the barracks yard. He had accidentally stepped in the middle of one and felt an icy shackle grip his ankles.
His tin suitcase in his hand, he saluted the orderly. When he reached the street corner, he could not help turning around to look back at this brownish building that would never again be any part of his life.
His civilian clothes — a gray flannel suit — pinched his armpits and were too tight around his thighs. He would need a winter coat and, especially, shoes. Yes. Shoes with thick crepe soles.
Brossier had said they should meet at the Café du Balcon, around seven. The thought suddenly came to him that he had known Brossier for two months; Brossier was lying to him when he’d said he was only passing through Saint-Lô. Why had he extended his stay here, if his “business” was calling him back to Paris?
He had met Brossier for the first time at this same Café du Balcon, when he was killing time until midnight before going back to the barracks. That afternoon, he had walked along the ramparts, then followed the highway out toward the Haras National horse farm and wandered off into an area of shacks to the right. On his way back into the city, he had stopped at the Café du Balcon and sat down, and the mirror next to the bar reflected an image of himself in uniform, with short hair and crossed arms. Brossier was reading a newspaper at a nearby table, and his eyes came to rest on him.
“Bagger a while yet?”
He used slang words that Louis did not always understand.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty next July.”
They were the only customers in the café, and Brossier said with a shrug that the streets of Saint-Lô were deserted at this hour.
“If you can even call them streets.”
He suddenly gave a bitter smile.
“It must be no fun, ending up a bagger here, hmm?”
Brossier’s age? Forty, barely. When he smiled he looked younger. Blond hair, very pale eyes, flushed skin. He doubtless owed that coloring, and the chubbiness of his face, to a weakness for Belgian beers.
He lived in Paris, he explained, but was spending a few days with his family in Saint-Lô, where his elder brother owned a notary public office. He had not been back here for more than ten years and people had forgotten about him. Anyway, he was using his holiday to put his affairs in order. A guy from Cherbourg wanted to sell him a whole batch of American equipment: old jeeps, old army trucks. Brossier worked “in cars.” He even ran a garage in Paris.
That night, he had walked Louis back to his barracks. He was wearing a raincoat and an old Tyrolean hat with a reddish-yellow feather stuck in it. And as they walked down the street lined with new buildings, every one the same gray concrete, Brossier told him, as though sharing a secret, that he no longer recognized the city of his childhood. They had built a new city after the bombardments of the last war, and Saint-Lô wasn’t Saint-Lô anymore.
•
At the Café du Balcon, the cigarette smoke and the noise of the conversations made his head spin. Cocktail hour. He quickly caught sight of Brossier with his Tyrolean hat. He went over to him, slightly uncomfortably, put his bag down, and took a seat.
“So? Demobbed?” Brossier asked him, beaming.
“Yup, demobbed,” he said in an undertone, since using military slang had always embarrassed him.
“Any demob’s a party, old boy,” Brossier said. “Look, I’ve already gotten started.”
He pointed to his glass, half filled with a red liqueur.
“What’ll you have?”
The man’s patter was like a traveling salesman’s, but then his guttural voice would suddenly turn affected. When he brought up furniture and books. He would explain that he used to work for several antique dealers in Paris. One night, he sententiously listed for Louis the ways you could tell a Regency armchair from a Louis XV, and even showed him, pencil in hand, what to look for to judge the quality of the backs and arms. As for books, well, he liked first editions. At these moments, Brossier was no longer himself; he was wholly under someone else’s influence and doubtless repeating his words and gestures.
“Here’s to your demob!” Brossier said after the waiter brought their Camparis.
They clinked glasses and drank. He did not have the courage to tell Brossier that his shoes were soaked.
“What are you thinking about, Louis?”
He was thinking about just one thing: Taking off his sodden socks and shoes, throwing them in the garbage, and being absolutely certain that he would never have wet feet again, thanks to his new crepe-soled shoes.
“What a pain!” he blurted out.
“What, old boy?”
He had been obedient for two years, behaved well, put up with the barracks, the quarters, the uniform, the leaky shoes, and now that it was over he had no idea how he’d been able to stand it.
“I need new shoes.”
“All right…”
“Shoes with thick crepe soles.”
Brossier looked surprised. He gulped down what was left of his Campari.
“Sure,” he said, “let’s go find some.”
They left the Café du Balcon and walked back down to the commercial street to the right. A row of shops, one after another, under cement arcades. In the last window, they saw moccasins and women’s shoes on display. The shopkeeper was just lowering the metal grate.
In the shop’s little showroom, they sat down next to each other, Brossier still wearing his Tyrolean hat.
“They’re for the young man here,” he said.
“I’d like a pair of shoes with crepe soles.”
The shopkeeper explained that they didn’t have many of those left, but he could show him a “range” of Italian moccasins, the best quality.
“No. Crepe soles.”
He decided on the ankle boots with crepe soles more than an inch thick. To try them on, he took off his soaking wet socks.
“You don’t have a pair of socks, do you?” he asked.
“Yes, tennis socks.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He pulled them on and conscientiously tied the laces of the new shoes. Brossier took out his wallet and paid. The shopkeeper handed Louis a package containing his old shoes and wet socks in a plastic bag.
Outside, he threw the package in the gutter, and this ceremonious gesture marked the end of a phase of his life. He still needed a coat, of course, but that could wait.
“Let’s have dinner at Neuvotel,” Brossier said to him. “I’ve reserved a table. And two rooms.”
“With bath?”
“Yes. Why?”
A private bathroom — it was incredible, after the long sink in the barracks like a trough in a pigsty, with the drains always blocked. A bathroom, after two years of squat toilets with badly fitted doors banging in the icy wind of the courtyard…
“That means I can take a bath?”
“As many baths as you want, old boy.”
The rain was falling again, but so fine it barely wet his hair. They followed the street’s gently curving slope along the ramparts.
“It’s funny,” Brossier said, pointing out to him a place on the ramparts. “One time, when I was kid, I climbed down from up there on a knotted rope… So how are your shoes?”
“Great.”
A few hundred meters to the Neuvotel. They passed the Drakkar cinema, at the end of the street, before crossing the bridge over the Vire. But Louis didn’t mind a long walk, and he felt a certain pleasure in putting his feet down right in the middle of all the puddles. There was nothing, and no one, to fear with these crepe soles.
•
Soft music was coming from a loudspeaker. The hotel dining room was deserted, except for him and Brossier at a table in the back. Brossier was just opening a bottle of Burgundy when the waiter offered them the cheese plate.