A Place in Normandy (26 page)

*   *   *

After he died, in September of 1939, my grandfather Frieseke, newly baptized, was buried in a plot chosen for him by the
curé
and located as near as possible to the children on the north side of the church, under the only remaining vestige of the original structure. This Thérèse pointed out to us, a Romanesque arch with a Saxon-looking zigzag of decoration resembling pointed teeth.

Sarah Ann O'Bryan, Paris, ca. 1901.

“He was a man of such innocence,” the
curé
had said. Of the people who now stood in the rain, only Thérèse had known him; I myself had him only through the testimony of his paintings and stories told by others, in which my vivid grandmother tended to predominate.

I knew him and his attractive wife rather well, back when this century was in its swaddling clothes.… They were a curious couple in a way, with diametrically opposite characters and, as frequently happens, were devoted to each other. He was slightly introvert, a profound reader, with rather strong opinions which however he generally managed to keep in rein. She was … pretty, intelligent, very chic and possessed of a highly developed sense of elfin humor, verging on the diabolic. The following is an illustration of that last quality—an incident which despite their rather retired life
[in Paris]
got around and had quite a success at the time.

On a warm, summery day, she was carrying some parcels and window shopping on the Boulevard des Italiens when she realized she was being trailed by a typical boulevardier of the period—top hat, boutonnière, probably a monocle et al. When she stopped to look in a window he seized the opportunity to exclaim dulcetly how deeply it grieved him to see such an exquisite example of femininity loaded down with parcels. Would she not grant him the great favor of being allowed to carry them for her? She would. With one of her alluring smiles she handed them over—and on they strolled. When they came to the Trois Quartiers she said she had one or two other things to get. Would he mind? On the third floor she bought a large, cheap paper lampshade, had it wrapped up and handed it to him. On the way down she espied a very large sponge which was just the thing Freddy had been looking for, bought it and added it to her
cavaliere serviente's
collection. Out in the sunshine again, her gallant said
“Eh maintenant, chère Madame?” “Maintenant, c'est tout, je crois, chez moi, si vous voulez?” “Parfait!
Then if Madame permits, I will call a
fiacre.”
“Oh, it is such a lovely day and it really isn't far. Don't you think it would be nice to walk?” So, walk they did, across the Tuileries, across the Seine, up the Rue du Bac and up the entire length of the Boulevard Raspail and finally up the elevator to their apartment. There she pressed the button and when their maid opened the door, shooed her back, turned to her boulevardier with a last, captivating smile, said “Just a moment, please,” went in, found her husband in his studio in smock and slippers and said, “Freddy, there is a man out there who brought home some parcels for me. Do give him a good tip.”
*

The Mesnil graveyard was the somber standard French somnolent flock of huge granite or marble sarcophagus-sized tombstones, on many of which were placed the china flowers or
“Regrets éternels…”
tablets available in stores everywhere.

I was touched by the presence of a group of these on my grandparents' stone—and simultaneously shocked and chagrined to see how disreputable the monument's cement foundation had become.
“A mon neveu”
(“To my nephew”), read one of the tablets, decorated with plastic pansies. I could not think, for a moment, what uncle or aunt of my grandparents, here in Mesnil … impossible.…

“It's the children,” Thérèse explained. “They move them around at night, for a joke. Children think death has nothing to do with them.”

Margaret was looking down at the grave with her own desolation. “I suppose whoever takes on the house gets the grave, too?” she volunteered.

Fresh flowers bloomed at the foot of the Chevaliers' stone, a pot of geraniums that Thérèse herself must have put there. The stone was shipshape, and the gilding legible—in contrast to that above my grandparents, which was now worn away completely. Anyone who wanted to find them would have to know what he or she was doing.

“When it gets too bad, the mayor's office declares the grave abandoned,” Thérèse told me. “Then it's assigned to other tenants. That would be sad—a loss for the town.”

I took note that I could no longer put off making arrangements with Sanson et Fils, the
pompes funèbres et marbrerie générale
(funeral home and monument maker) in Pont l'Evêque. The state of my grandparents' tomb was a public disgrace, even more shameful than, if similar to, the present condition of their fences.

“The names you see now are often ones you would have found in the sixteen hundreds as well,” Thérèse told her audience as we strolled together between monuments. “Leconte, Lecouturier, Leproux, Prévost, Lemercier…”

Ruth walked with Andalouse along a cast-iron ornamental enclosure that paralleled the wall between the churchyard and the kitchen garden kept by the English people in back of their presbytery. They already had lettuce coming into head, and Mme. Vera's garden next to the
douet
was not even planted yet. “Is this the unconsecrated ground?” Ruth asked.

“Just the opposite. It's for the people from the château,” Thérèse said.

Since it was raining harder now, Thérèse gave us a ride home.

THIRTY

They'd have to lift the stone and start again, the people at Sanson's
pompes funèbres
told me. They'd want to redo the housing of the vault, and replace the rotten cement with black granite, didn't I think, to match the stone? They showed me samples.

I could hear it echoing out of the Old Testament somewhere in Ben's voice, a vatic statement perhaps from the lost Book of Julia:
You have to raise the stone and start again.

We'd all driven into Pont l'Evêque after lunch, once we had satisfied ourselves that the plumbers had returned. My guests were going to shop in the mostly closed stores (Tuesday, the day after market day, remember?) or look around or collect schedules at the train station or stand gazing from a bridge into the Yvie, or the Calonne, or the Touques, or consider the (closed) public library (once the Hôtel Montpensier), a seventeenth-century solidity in brick and stone with a graceful double entrance staircase, the erstwhile proud home of the Fresnays, whose basement I happened to know smelled just like mine. I, meanwhile, would make some inquiries concerning repairs to funerary monuments.

The people at Sanson's, being in the sympathy business, were more helpful and reassuring than M. Thouroude in the
quincaillerie.
But as I quickly understood, I was also shopping for something a good deal pricier than a chicken-wire fix to keep owls out of the chimney.

Nothing could be done, I learned, while the ground was wet, but meanwhile they could certainly look and let me have an
estimation.
Monsieur was leaving the country when?

A momentary spasm of rebellion struggled against the inanimate weight of all I was flirting with taking onto my shoulders. I could, if I played my cards right, get out from under it, take the train tomorrow, and have a day or two in Paris before my plane home. I could look at other people's pictures, be cooked for by my friend Madeleine and talk about family, consider the world with Tom, listen to the entertaining fables my godson Gabriel was preparing for me, worry about nothing, wash my clothes—
Merde,
I thought (that much of my French, at least, returning),
I've got all those sheets to deal with.

“Depending on the weather, and in principle, the day after tomorrow,” I said, and gave them my phone number in Mesnil. “Early in the morning.”

I found everyone in the cider and calvados store, which, since it was designed expressly for tourism, was obliged to be open. Ben, who knew wine, was bemused by this store's specialization in the Norman
vin du pays.

“They want you to wait until the calvados is twelve years old,” he said, studying a leaflet. Naturally the price increased with the age. The store offered dusty bottles, and dustier bottles, and newer ones that could be put away for future use; and sweet cider called Bréavoine made by the family of a former mayor of Mesnil; and pear cider; and pommeau, a mixture of calvados and cider consumed as an aperitif by persons who did not care that the drink, if not exactly dead, seemed to be living only by galvanic action. There were bottles of something in which the apple was present in its entirety. Growers surrounded the set fruit, at its beginning, with the bottle, which was then tied to the branch while the fruit grew. I liked to think of these trees covered with hanging bottles when the wind blew.

“The calvados we've been drinking from the Intermarché,” Teddy said, his Nordic height threatening the top shelves, “the one you've got that rabbit marinating in for tonight—what's wrong with that? It's only two years old. And as for cider, if we're basically talking festered apple juice, what difference…”

The assistant, a young man with clean hands and an education, in white shirtsleeves and a tie, who had enough English to take umbrage at Teddy's indifference to his specialization, approached and delivered himself (as if having memorized it in school) of a tract, anointing me as his interpreter: “Believe me, there are growths [
crus
] of cider as different from each other as growths of wine, and the cider of the Vallée d'Auge is especially appreciated. Already in the seventeenth century, were they not remarking a distinction among the ‘spicy' [
épicé
], the ‘sweet' [
doux
], le Vesque, and le Guillot Roger? Monsieur, you must understand, the kind of apple trees, the nature of the earth, the care applied to the collection of the fruit and to its crushing—all of these have an enormous influence.”

He trembled, rose up on his toes, and glowed crimson. Then he gesticulated frantically with both hands, as if he were conducting some independent-minded cygnets in
Swan Lake
who thought this was only a dress rehearsal.

“Doré, tirant légèrement sur le rose, le cidre doit pétiller sans mousser, et surtout être d'une parfaite limpidité”
(“Golden, but tending slightly toward rose color, cider should effervesce without foaming, and be above all of a perfect clarity”), he pronounced (or quoted).
“Le digne accompagnement d'un bon repas sera le cidre du pays, justement célèbre”
(“A worthy accompaniment to a good meal will be the region's cider, justly celebrated”).
*

“In that case, we'll take two bottles of the Bréavoine,” Ben said, “if you think it will go with rabbit.”

“You could do nothing better for your rabbit. This I swear.”

THIRTY-ONE

On the drive back, my guests persuaded each other that in fairness to the occasion and to the countryside, they ought to do some tourism before they left the next day, though sitting in the house, or marketing, or walking in the rain, or even just watching the strollings of cattle or the activities of birds seemed plenty to justify the term “vacation”—especially if plumbers or Mme. Vera and her rifle added dramatic tension and variety.

They could drive to Bayeux and see the cathedral and Queen Mathilde's tapestry of triumph and desolation (a copy of it decorated my upstairs bathroom, installed as a frieze by Gabriel); or check Pegasus Bridge, liberated on D day by Britain's Fifth Parachute Brigade; or take in any of a dozen castles; or drive about the countryside; or visit Deauville, which wouldn't be cranked up for racing and swimming and the casino life until August, but which still offered a stretch of the long gray Atlantic, shallow and warmed by the Gulf Stream. Or whatever.

In the event that I opted out of their excursion to Honfleur, I could commend to them its wooden church built by ship's carpenters; its active fishing harbor; its museum dedicated to Boudin (the painter, not the sausage—though the variety to be found between one sample and another of either commodity, I warned them …). They'd have tea and come back late, they said, unless I needed help with the rabbit.

I didn't have long. I didn't have long to be here, or to think. I'd done nothing but work since I arrived, and none of the work had brought me closer to knowing anything more exact than that I could not bear not to have that work to do. If the decision had been mine, or only mine—but it was not, and in any case, taking over the house was not like a decision, but more like a common-law marriage that a couple of goodwill has backed into, and keeps working on, making thousands of small decisions all the time, if never that big one spoken in the defining moment of “I do.” As to the implications … “I'll be all right,” I told them. “You go ahead.”