Divisadero (8 page)

The husband, smoking his
pipe, would walk the perimeter of the walled garden and consider how well the
pollarding of the trees had succeeded. He would eventually circle the house to
where the door leading to the back pasture would be open, and through the
opening see Anna hunched over the table writing, or reading some large book,
never looking up, never conscious of him a few yards from her open doorway, and
he’d shake his head and drift away. The woman was from America, his wife had
told him. When she stood up she was as tall as he
was,
lightcoloured hair to the neck. She looked strong and healthy. She had asked
him in her New World French where the good places to walk were, and he had
drawn a map with the best paths, routes that weaved through other properties
and crossed the river. He reminded her to close all the gates. When the owner
of the
manoir
came there, he’d always be driving off immediately— to
pick up
floc
from an Armagnac distillery or on some other errand. But
this guest was different. She had no desire to spend time in town. She was
content here. She might spend half an hour talking when they came their one day
a week, but then she would be back at the table, with her books. He knew she
walked into the village now and then. As a postman he travelled all the time,
it was in his blood. Staying in a house the whole day seemed unnatural. So when
she asked him into the back room, and escorted him through the lean corridor of
the house to the kitchen, where he saw the open door leading to the pasture,
which was where he had stood watching her work the previous week, and where now
she offered him a sheet of paper, he drew the map for her clearly and to
scale—his job had taught him exact kilometre distances and property boundaries
and stream beds. He drew the rectangle of the house and a quick oval for the
herb bed, then re-created the world outside, ending with distant copses and
deer forests, dismissing places she should avoid, those that tourists
inhabited. In Anna’s terms the map was a ‘keeper,’ and she might one day frame
it and hang it in her living room on Divisadero Street in San Francisco, a
private core of a memory. In some part of her mind, she felt that if worse came
to worst, she could always escape back here.

Anna carried the map with
her as she walked. Since the day she had met the four hunters, she wore jeans
instead of a skirt and shaved ten minutes off the ninety-minute walk. But where
she was now, alongside the gorse hedges, the path was uneven, broken with
stones, and she needed to slow down. Juniper grabbed her feet as she left the
path, throwing up its smell. Sunlight fell through the trees and as she paused
to look up at the splintered beauty, she heard music.

What she heard was a woman
singing. If she had thought there were men there, she would not have walked
towards the sound. But this was tempting.
A woman’s voice, a
tune that seemed to have no scaffolding, almost too casual to be good, although
the voice was clear, waterlike.
Anna stood where she was a moment
longer. She saw a sparrow leaping from branch to branch, clumsily, hardly
adept. She strolled towards the clearing, stopping once or twice, trying to
interpret the tune.

She came into the open
fi
eld, where there was a woman, and also a
man, sitting in a straight-backed chair, accompanying her on what looked to be
a guitar. They didn
’
t see her
at
fi
rst, but
they must have sensed something—a sudden quietness in the trees above her,
perhaps—for the woman turned and, when she saw Anna, stopped singing and strode
away, leaving the man alone in the open
fi
eld.

France had meant a quiet
and anonymous time for Anna. Apart from the visits of Monsieur and Madame Q,
she saw no one. And there was nothing in the house of the writer to remind her
of North America. She was escaping the various aspects of her professional
life—acquaintances, deadlines, requests for prefaces—all of which, if she were
in her real world, would be essential duties. The only thing that had truly
jostled her in the time she had spent so far in the Gers region of France was
the group of men at the crossroads with their dogs, the men’s tongues lolling
in parody and their fists twisting in the air as she walked away. She felt at
ease in the modest house, her curiosity almost aimless, as if she were
beginning a new life. She was enjoying the process of filling a notebook with
fragments and even drawings, something quite apart from her research. If there
was the sound of a bird through the open door by her table she would try to
articulate it phonetically on the page. She did this whenever she heard one
clearly enough. And when she leafed through her obsessive notes, Anna would
find a series of chords of birdsong, or her drawing of a thistle, or of the Qs’
Renault.

The man with the guitar
had turned his head to look at her. Feeling she needed to make a gesture to
avoid being rude, Anna moved forward to say something, and he watched the uneven
grass she crossed as she approached him.

Hello. I’m
sorry.

As if she had come here
and interrupted him to tell him she was sorry!
One thing, she felt completely safe. It was not the obvious fact that he was
holding a guitar and not a
weapon,
it was his look, as
though he had been just taken from refuge, and she was now insisting him back
to earth. While she walked those last few yards towards him, she realized she
must have also heard his playing when she entered the clearing, a subliminal
hum and strum, a rhythm and a melody—which was why the woman had needed none in
her song. The woman was accompanying
him.
So now it was as if everything
she had heard was being replayed in her memory, recalled differently. He had
been the one drawing her into the clearing.
It was a tattered guitar. When she got close she could see his hands had been
bitten by insects, were scarred. His clothes, which had looked formal from a
distance, were unironed, muddy at the cuffs; the waistcoat had lost buttons.
But it was the hands that were too lived in, overused.
She looked in the direction the woman had gone, and saw a caravan in the
shadows, within the trees.
This was the same clearing where Anna and her friend Branka had stood the
second night after her arrival at Dému, more than a week before. The grass had
felt like a
fl
at receptacle then, a moon pasture. She was wearing a sleeveless
dress, had just done a cartwheel and scooped up some golden broom, which had
been colourless in that light. She
’
d had no awareness then that there was a caravan or
any
inhabitant
in the vicinity, save for herself and Branka, who had driven her down from
Paris. Branka, an architect, was staying for only a day. It was she who had
helped Anna arrange the rental of the writer
’
s house,
through a contact in her
fi
rm. They had walked back to the
manoir,
clambering over the
low brush,
fi
nding gaps in the hedges that were clear in the moonlight.
If Anna came any closer to the man with the guitar, she would be encroaching on
his territory. If she remained more than four paces away, it would signal a
fear, though there was none. He seemed a contained man, and he had one arm over
his guitar as if it were a favourite hound.
I interrupted you, I’m sorry. But it was beautiful.
To be truthful, she hadn’t really felt that. It had been just strange music
coming through the trees to where she had been standing. It was something
unexpected.
So perhaps beautiful.
She had not quite
lied. The musical chords had calmed everything; even the insects had paused
their noisy needle and thread. She looked towards the quiet trees.
I didn’t know you lived here. I was here once before, one night.
The
fi
ngers of
his right hand swept over the strings, six notes spreading towards her like a
fan. He smiled brie
fl
y at her, then fell into a melody and seemed to be playing
everything—bells, drums, a missing voice.
This was a
fi
eld, he told her sometime later, that he had sat in as a boy,
playing alongside his mother
’
s
singing. He would look not at the strings but at his mother
’
s face in order to catch her rapid swerves
of melody; there would be no clue about her voice
’
s
darting, except in her eyes—this starling, that wood thrush—and still he would
be beside her, picking up notes as if counting kilometre stones as she
fl
ew down a road. As a boy he had always
felt that his musical lessons were a net for holding everything around him—the
insects in the
fi
eld, the weather shifting in the trees
—
so
that he could give it as a collected gift, like a hand cupped with cold water
held up to a friend.
When he
fi
nished,
he said, You did not sing. You did not join me.
No. I
’
d have been the extra
wheel.
Music has many wheels, that
’
s
what makes it joyous.
The other singer...
Anna did not know what to say, whether she should inquire.
She comes from the village for lessons. Once a week I give lessons. You came
from the house with the
pigeonnier
?
She nodded.
A bee landed on the neck of the man’s guitar, and he pursed his lips and blew
it off. When it returned after a quick circuit in the air, he
fl
icked it away with his middle
fi
nger, and it spun wounded into the grass.
My name is Rafael, if you want to know.
Ah yes, ah yes, I was told about you, by the owner of the
manoir.
He
said you might be here. She glanced behind. I should go, I suppose.
He said he would accompany her. But then he took no direct path towards the
house. He guided her, stepping over bushes. They had to bend almost double to
walk under the low branches of the trees. He ignored a clear path a few yards
to their right, as if he had the mind of a cow, or a crow in mid-air,
perceiving a more natural route. If anything, going this way, they took longer
to reach the house. The comfort she had felt in that
fi
eld was replaced by scratches, and some
annoyance towards him.
At the kitchen door she asked if he was thirsty and, under the gush of the tap,
fi
lled two cups and
invited him to sit down at the table. It was covered with books and papers. His
right arm pushed some of them aside to give himself more space, but he did not
look at what they were. Instead his eyes searched around the room, the way a
thief’s might. You did not invite strangers in for a drink like this, but Anna
hadn’t spoken to anyone for days. He was looking at furniture and pictures,
consuming them, the same way he had looked at her, with either curiosity or
pleasure. That was how he now regarded the red enamel cup he was holding in his
hands.
My father was known by some as a thief, he said, as though he had read her mind
about how he was looking around the room. But he never stole from houses he was
invited into.
That’s
civilized,
she managed to retort soon enough to
seem at ease with this information.
I think so too. Still, his craft taught him—and so he taught me—about the value
of things I am unlikely to own. To me, for instance, what is most valuable in
this room is this blue table. But I know it has no real value.
Does he live around here, your father?
He’s not from France. But after the war he didn’t go home, instead he met my
mother. He was injured in the war. He later organized a small group who
fi
lched
—
is that the
word?
—
from the houses they were not asked into. It had
been dif
fi
cult
during the war, and I think he felt that everyone who had fought was owed more
than they were given.
So he was a
‘
fi
lcher.
’
A quaint term. And what did you say
your name was?
Rafael.
And your father?
. . .
never
wished me to be a thief.
And your mother?
Was she a thief too? He was grinning
at her. Did they meet during a robbery?
Almost.
It was in a jail. She had a part-time job at a
police station. I believe he charmed her, even though he was older. May I have
more water?
Yes, of course. She moved to the sink with the red cup. I met some strange
hunters here, in the forest, the other day, she said.
There are terrible people, all over the place. Just like me.
She laughed then.
There’s a big garden here, isn’t there? I’d like to see it. I can cook you
something.
It’s out through that door. Pick anything...

Anna stood in front of the
fl
ecked mirror,
washing her face and arms, then rubbed her legs with a cold, wet washcloth.
Later, when she walked into the garden, she saw him smoking a cigarette,
looking over the rows of vegetables.

Who were those hunters?
Are they from the village? I cannot help you there. We keep to ourselves.
I suppose, then, you wouldn’t tell me even if you knew.... I