Vacations From Hell (8 page)

“He never said that. He said he’d be here as soon as he could. He has someone bringing us food twice a day—really good food—and we’re in a beautiful house….”

“Beautiful?” I repeated.

“…we’re in a house in the middle of the French countryside. It’s important to try to adapt to a different way of life, a different pace. Quiet is good.”

I shuddered.

“I hate quiet,” I said.

She flipped a page, to whatever disorder it is that is characterized by a hatred of being in quiet, remote places.

“Why don’t you come?” I asked.

“Frogs,” she said. “I’m fine here.”

I went outside and sat down on the path with my legs out in front of me and let the little frogs jump over my ankles. They really seemed to like this. My ankles were clearly the best thing that had happened in tiny frog land for a while. It felt better to be outside at least and out of the airless house. I started walking back to the road. It was a pretty view, no question. But even the prettiest view will wear on your nerves if you’re feeling very cut off and bored and uncertain about what the hell is going on. So while I appreciated the soft yellow sunlight spread out over the white hills around us, the bright stripes of purple lavender crops, and the heady smell of pine…what I
wanted
to see were bars in my cell phone display.

I walked for at least two miles, with nothing but the beautiful view to keep me company. No people, no signal. I passed through an olive orchard, the trees heavy
with fruit. I saw some fuzzy little animal scamper across the path. Otherwise, nothing.

I finally came to a small red cottage, one with an actual person milling around in front of it. I say milling because that’s really what he was doing. I’d never seen real
milling
before. Done right, real milling has a shambling quality to it, a true aimlessness that can be felt by any spectator. He was circling the lawn at the front of the house.

The miller was nice enough looking, in his twenties or thirties, with longish, artsy hair. He was covered in dirt, on his knees and shorts and hands, like he’d just been working in the garden. There was a plastic basketful of large tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants sitting on the stone front step. He had a look of total confusion on his face, and a nervous way of smoking, like he just couldn’t get enough nicotine and had to suck in quick, greedy gulps. He saw me, blinked a few times, waved stiffly, and said
bonjour
. I said
bonjour
back…but when he started speaking rapid-fire French, I shook my head and came closer.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t speak—”

“Oh,” he said quickly. “You are English? American?”

“American,” I said.

The man’s English was perfect, though he was clearly French. His accent was light—it just tweaked the ends of his words.

“My dog,” he said. “I’m looking for my dog. He often
goes out hunting rabbits, but he has been gone for hours now. Have you seen a dog?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He bit his lower lip thoughtfully and stared at the trees again.

“I am afraid he may have gotten stuck in a hole or hurt,” he said. “I call and call, but he does not come.”

He sucked the last of the cigarette down to the butt and dropped it to the grass, still burning. It snuffed itself out.

“You are visiting?” he said.

“Yeah…my sister and I…we’re at the cottage up the road, and our cousin—”

“I know the cottage,” he said.

“I’m trying to make a phone call. Our cell phones don’t work out here. No reception.”

“Cell phones? Ah…mobiles. Yes, they do not work here. I’m sorry. I have no other phone. My name is Henri. And yours?”

“Char—” Everyone calls me Charlie. But it seemed like I should use my real name in France, to forge my new, Frenchier identity. “—lotte.”

“Charlotte. But you are thirsty? It is very warm. Would you like a drink?”

He waved me indoors without waiting for my answer, picking up the basket as we went inside.

“Did you grow those?” I asked.

He looked down at the basket. It seemed like he had forgotten he was holding it.

“Yes,” he said distractedly. “We have a very good garden.”

The door opened directly into a large farmhouse kitchen with a rough-hewn wood floor, dried bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and a huge red stove with massive, flat burners covered by heavy lids. The basket went onto the table.

“I have lemonade,” he said. “It is very nice.”

I thanked him, and he poured me a glass. It was certainly very authentic—so tart that I almost started weeping. But I felt like I had to get through it somehow, just to be polite.

“You are here with your family?” he asked.

Again, he said it vacantly, picking up another cigarette from the pack on the table, lighting it, and sucking it quickly.

“Just my sister, Marylou,” I reminded him. “Well, actually Marie-Louise.”

Henri’s eyes came fully into focus, like he was seeing me for the first time. He slowed down on the smoking, taking an easy drag and setting the cigarette down in an ashtray.

“Your names are quite funny,” he said. “Very historical.”

“They are?”

“Do you know much about the French Revolution?” he asked.

“A little,” I said. And by “a little,” I meant almost nothing, but it looked like he was prepared to do most of the talking, so I was okay.

“Well, as I am sure you know, the people overthrew the king and queen and killed off most of the aristocracy. There was a period called the Terror, where thousands of people were killed. Then there was the Law of Suspects. It meant that any citizen determined to be an enemy of the people could be locked up at once or executed. I suppose now we would call them terrorists…. Anyone could be accused. Anyone could be killed. Anyone could be capable.”

I was nodding away, wondering where this was heading, but mostly I was trying to figure out how to drink the lemonade without getting it on the part of my tongue that really reacted to the sourness.

“Marie-Louise was the name of the Princesse de Lamballe, the confidant of Marie Antoinette. She was killed in the September Massacres in 1792. Do you know what they did to her?”

“No,” I said.

“They dragged her from the prison at La Force. A mob descended on her, ripping her to shreds. They sliced her head from her body and took it to a hairdresser to have it…how would you say it…styled? Then they put it on
a pike and carried it to Marie Antoinette’s window and stuck it inside, like a puppet. And Charlotte…that is the name of the most famous murderess in all of France. Charlotte Corday. She stabbed Jean-Paul Marat in the bathtub. There is a very famous painting of this.”

“Right,” I said. “But our names are kind of common.”

“They are, of course. This is true.”

He lit up another cigarette, and I noticed that Henri was a bit on the twitchy side. He had to work his way through four matches before he could get it lit. I sort of knew what he was talking about, but now I was ready for him to be done. This was maybe more than I had bargained for, conversation-wise, and I was done with the lemonade. I still had no cell phone signal, and I was going to have to hurry back if I was going to make it on time for Bob l’éponge.

“This is just French history,” he said. “You learn it as a child. But it has always proved a point to me: anyone is capable of murder. Anyone. Many in the revolution said they killed to be free, but this does not explain the mobs…. The people who raided the houses, who dragged screaming people to the streets and tore their flesh, the washerwomen who cried for blood at the guillotine. Completely normal people, average citizens. The revolutionary spirit, it was called. It was never the revolutionary spirit. It was the spirit of murder. It is in France, it is everywhere….”

There was something officially weird about Henri now, at least to me. Maybe this was just a French way of being friendly: a little story about famous mass murders of the past to break the ice. He went on and on about various atrocities until I felt I simply had to bring a halt to the proceedings.

“Would you mind if I used your bathroom?” I asked as he took a breath between sentences.

This request caught Henri off guard for a moment, and he fumbled with his cigarette a little.

“Yes…of course. The toilet is at the top of the stairs.”

Henri’s house was much nicer than ours, but that made sense, as he actually lived there. The living room was very neat. There was no television in there—just a lot of bookcases, some camera equipment, a massive printer, and what seemed to be a nice stereo. The walls were covered in artsy photographs: some of the landscape and some of Henri and a woman, who I presumed was his wife. In one, near the top of the stairs, the woman was completely naked…but it was very tasteful and French and kind of touching. There were piles of books absolutely everywhere and a few dog toys on the floor.

The bathroom was right at the top of the steps, as he said. It was a stark room with blue tiles. There were no towels, no bath mat, no curtains, no toilet paper, no shower curtain—nothing soft. No soap, even. It was as if
no one lived here, no one used this bathroom at all.

When I came back downstairs, Henri was standing in the wide-open doorway. A wind had kicked up, and the big red door banged away on the hinges into the face of the house. The wind whipped into the hall and sent things fluttering all over the place. None of this seemed to bother Henri.

“A storm, I think,” he said. “I think tonight. Can I offer you something to eat?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I should get back. My sister…she’ll worry.”

“Ah, yes. Your sister.”

“The pictures are really nice,” I said. “Is that your wife?”

He looked as if he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

“The pictures along the stairs,” I said, pointing back at the dozen or more framed prints.

“My wife,” he repeated. “Yes. My wife.”

“We’ll be around for a while,” I said, slipping past him and out the door. “And I’ll keep an eye out for a lost dog.”

I walked back toward our house quickly, wanting to put as much distance between Henri and me as possible. The wind blew like hell the whole way back, throwing dirt and pollen in my eyes. I was a half-blind wheezing mess when I got back to our bedroom, where Marylou was in
the same exact position, her tiny feet tucked up on the chair. She had closed the heavy blue shutters on the bedroom window to block out the wind, so now the room was fairly dark, lit only by an ancient lamp in the corner.

“People around here are weird,” I said.

Marylou looked up from
The Big Book of Crazy
.

“Define weird,” she said.

“Weird as in I passed one house on the way, and the guy in it was just standing around like a zombie looking for his dog, and all he talked about was the French Revolution and the spirit of murder and something about some suspect law. He was very creepy. He didn’t have anything in his bathroom—”

“Charlie,” she said, putting her thumb in her book and closing it. “I thought you stopped that.”

“I’m serious.”

But it was clear that she didn’t believe me.

“We should just go back to Paris,” I said. “Get back to town, take the same train we came in on. This place sucks.”

“Except that Claude’s probably on his way here. So we’d get there and have nowhere to go. Didn’t you have any luck with the phone?”

I shook my head.

“Well, Erique brought the groceries while you were out. We should eat, I guess.”

Erique had brought delicious food for us—roast
chicken, bread, tomatoes, and soft cheese full of lavender. There was yet more warm Orangina. The wind battered the house as Marylou set our Hobbit-y table with the heavy blue-and-white plates from the cupboard. She closed the kitchen shutters as well, and the room went dark. I sat on one of the benches, staring at the pattern of knots and ridges in the wood of the table.

“Come on,” she said. “Eat. It’s not that bad here. Try this.”

She tore off some of the chicken with a fork and cut me a hunk of the cheese and bread. It was all delicious—the crisp chicken studded with thyme, the cheese with the pretty purple flecks of lavender. I think I should have felt content and French, safe and snug inside, with the wind whistling outside. But I didn’t. I felt just slightly sick.

“What is with you?” she asked.

“It was that guy and his weird-ass story.”

“All right,” she said, spreading cheese thick on a piece of bread. “What did he say that freaked you out so much?”

So I told her everything I could remember about Henri’s story, going to great lengths to stick to the facts exactly as I’d heard them. When I finished, Marylou just shook her head.

“So he likes history,” she said. “And he’s a little morbid. You can’t just write him off as crazy, Charlie.”

“That’s not the word we like to use,” I corrected her.

Marylou laughed at this. I felt a little better once I’d gotten the story out. The wind didn’t seem so blustery. I took a big piece of chicken, and we talked about other things for a while, like the fact that Marylou had found a set of Ping-Pong paddles and balls when I was gone and how we could convert our table into a Ping-Pong paradise. We were just finishing up when we were startled by a knock at the door. Marylou jumped to answer it.

It wasn’t Claude, as we’d both been hoping. The news was actually a bit better than that. It was a guy, maybe Marylou’s age. He was tall and lanky, with dark curly hair cut short but uneven. He was wearing a threadbare Led Zeppelin T-shirt and ragged jeans chopped off at the knee. He had a sprig of green something or other in his hair, something off one of the many forms of plant life around us. And he was sweating profusely. All of that aside, he was pretty good looking. Well, very, actually.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I got there first, just to get it out of the way.

“Sorry,” I said. “We don’t speak French.”

“My English is so-so,” he said, coming into the room shyly and looking around our little Shire kitchen. “I am Gerard. I live in the village. I saw you earlier, walking the path. I thought I would come, say hello.”