The Black Brook Page 9

  The United States built a racketeering case and its prosecution took two years. The government’s attorneys lost interest in the forged paintings once they understood that Paul could and would describe the money laundering of the Record syndicate. When the trial ended, Mary and Paul were moved to Spokane, which never did work out. They could not find decent jobs and could not get a feel for the city. The truth is they probably would not have liked wherever they moved to. When a protected witness finishes testifying and moves to a safe place, his or her sense of purpose, if any, falls to zero overnight. And then Mary was driving along one day in Spokane when a Sunbird came out of a side street and spun her car twice. This was not gangland retribution but only a careless dental assistant named Sylvia. When Paul got to the hospital, Mary lay on a rolling bed with an orange brace on her neck and tears running down her temples and into her ears. She faced the ceiling and looked at him from the corner of her eyes. “Oh Mary,” he said. “What’s happened to you? Who did this?” The accident confirmed their feelings about Spokane, although they knew that accidents happened everywhere. When they left the United States, Scratch, the cat that Carlo and Miriam had given them, went to live with Paul’s parents.

  7

  The inn that Mary and Paul ran in the Forest of the Ardennes stood, and still stands, outside the town of Vertige, on the former site of a religious society that had been established in the thirteenth century by the Mangeurs d’Herbes Folles, or Weed-Eaters, a group of radical monks whose desire for maximum austerity had led them to shun even the crudest forms of agriculture. The Weed-Eaters had broken off from the Premonstratensians (who themselves had agreed to disagree with the Augustinians) and built a stone campus that lasted almost seven hundred years, only to be shelled to the ground on Christmas Eve, 1944, during the Battle of the Ardennes.

  The present hotel was a whitewashed brick house with a red tiled roof, red shutters, and a balcony on two sides of the second floor. It was called Auberge des Moines, or Inn of the Monks, and sat crooked on the wooded lip of the deep and narrow valley of the Torchon River. A barn sheltered cows, goats, and chickens. Vertige had a pharmacy, a tavern, a florist, St. Cecilia’s Cave, a Porsche dealership, a Catholic church, and two dusty ­museums — one for artifacts of the wars and one for the composer Henri Poilvache (1899–1961), a native who had moved to Paris and written the ballroom standards “Quelle Bêtise” and “Faute de Mieux” — but there was no train station and the Torchon was too rocky for excursion boats, and so when tourists came to Vertige, they tended to be lost or after something very specific.

  Mary’s cousin Gustave had run the inn before Paul and Mary took over, and he now held a note on which they made monthly payments. Everyone but Gustave himself agreed that the inn had done badly under his direction. For some reason, he had concentrated almost solely on the flower beds that rose in terraces to the meadows behind the house, had concentrated on them to the neglect of the inn when, after all, as Rosine Boclinvile, the housekeeper, had observed, no one was paying to sleep in the flower beds. Gustave had evidently decided that the inn would become famous for the gardens, that the gardens of the monks would draw crowds from all over Europe — and perhaps this dream might have come true if at the same time that Gustave had been planting the elaborate beds he had also been building a railroad to Vertige or dredging the Torchon River for excursion boats.

  Now the gardens had gone to seed and Gustave was a partner in a spring-water distributorship in Liège. He and his clients would come down to the inn for free and stand around as if the place were still Gustave’s. Paul wanted to have this out with Gustave, but Mary disagreed. She said that her cousin had suffered depressions all his life and that he had once smashed up the kitchen of the inn with a hoe because a bottle of soda that he liked had disappeared from the refrigerator and no one would admit to having taken it. Now, said Mary —just as Gustave was getting somewhere finally with this mineral-water thing in Liège, to the relief of his family — now was no time to make him feel unwanted.

  Languages were all mixed up at Aubergc des Moines. Paul and Mary spoke English. Mary and Rosine spoke French. Gustave spoke French, Flemish, and English. Rosine would speak English to guests but only French to Paul, who did not understand French unless it was spoken very slowly, and even then he had trouble, and she seemed to enjoy the fact that he could not fathom much of what she said. Paul had tried to learn French from an elementary phrase book but could not master the verb forms or the gargled r. He had got sidetracked by the melancholy poetry of the sentences to be used in times of trouble.

  Help!

  It’s an emergency’

  There’s been an accident!

  Call a doctor!

  Call an ambulance!

  I’ve been raped.

  I’ve been robbed!

  Call the police!

  Where is the police station?

  Go away!

  Thief!

  I am ill.

  My friend is ill.

  I am lost.

  Where are the toilets?

  Could you help me, please?

  Could I please use the telephone?

  I’m sorry. I apologize.

  I didn’t realize I was doing anything wrong.

  I didn’t do it.

  I wish to contact my embassy/consulate.

  I speak English.

  As linguistically disabled as Paul felt for never getting more than a phrase or two of French, it was the availability of English speakers that gave the inn such popularity as it had. The only guidebook to list the Auberge des Moines had given it a B for food, a B– for furnishings, and a C+ for prices, but had also noted that the owners had come from the States, and so American and English tourists would arrive with the gratitude of those who had found a haven, albeit one with food that was just all right and with high room rates. And those residents of Vertige and the surrounding towns who wished to learn or maintain their English would come for supper.

  Sometimes people from the former Allied countries came to see where their ancestors or they themselves had fought in the wars. The English who wound up in Vertige seemed in a hurry to leave when their memorial duties were done. One summer an old man from Battersea named Geoffrey stood at supper and denounced some of the kings of Belgium. He was a large and jowly man who had little good to say about Leopolds II and III, although he admired Albert I, who had toughed it out in West Flanders during the German occupation in the First World War. Paul knew some of the history but could hear only fragments of the analysis as he carried in plates of beef carbonnade.

  “There have been few leaders to compare with the soldier-king Albert,” said Geoffrey. “I remember when he fell off the mountain. A great tragedy, really.”

  There were seven others in the dining room: a party of four from Vertige, a young French schoolteacher, and a middle-aged couple named Bob and Michelle from Kansas City.

  “Where was this?” said Michelle, who wore coral bracelets and had the fierce and friendly aspect of someone who was going to have a good time no matter what.

  “Why, in Belgium,” said Geoffrey

  “I mean, where he fell off the mountain,” said Michelle. “Was it around here?”

  “That’s a good question. It just may have been.”

  Mary came into the dining room with a wooden bowl of asparagus and onions. “Up by Namur. The Rocher du Roi.”

  “But then, as I say,” said Geoffrey, “Leopold III surrendered to Germany in the Second World War, after which his own country became suspicious of him.”

  “Let the debate begin,” said René Avaloze in a bored voice. This was a common phrase in the town and meant the opposite of what it appeared to mean. René ran the pharmacy in Vertige and enjoyed playing the part of the contrarian.

  “Well, from what I understand, the English monarchy was not a very
smooth operation either,” said Michelle. “Bob and I saw a production of Richard III in Kansas City and the whole thing seemed to be stabbing and lying from start to finish.”

  The Englishman laughed loudly. “Very good,” he said. “You’ve snared me in my own hoop.”

  “England used to matter, but no more,” said René Avaloze. “England is an empty glass left on the night table of Europe.”

  “He says that about all the countries,” said Paul.

  “Let’s eat,” said Bob from Kansas City

  The dining room was narrow, with a single long table that lent itself to moments of silence and self-conscious conversation, and on this particular evening the discussion turned to the differences between the English spoken in the States and that of the United Kingdom.

  “When you say ‘quite good,’” said Geoffrey to Bob and Michelle, “you mean ‘unusually good,’ whereas I take it to mean ‘try again.’”

  After supper Geoffrey lit a cigar which drove everyone except Paul, Michelle, and Bob from the dining room.

  “What do you do in Kansas City?” said Paul.

  “Run a screw company,” said Bob. “One of the things I’m hoping to accomplish this year is to identify some concessions to demand from our workers. All the companies in the States are demanding concessions from their workers and I’m under a lot of pressure. The problem is our workers don’t make much and their benefits aren’t generous to begin with. There’s not a lot for them to concede. So partly we’re a victim of our own success, but try telling that to the board of directors.”

  “Make them work in the dark,” said Paul. “In the winter try turning off the heat.”

  “We have turned the heat down before, but never off. We’re already perceived as fairly rigid. One time, in the middle of negotiations the newspaper in Kansas City ran a story — and I had no qualms with the story, the story itself was fair — but the headline said, ‘Management Makes Offer to Screw Company Workers.’”

  “An unfortunate choice of words,” said Paul.

  “Bring back child labor,’ said Geoffrey. “That would be quite a concession. Sir, could we get something to drink?”

  “What would you like?” said Paul. “We have Stella Artois, Diekirch, Loborg, Tuborg, Kriek, Framboise, Rochefort, Chimay, St. Sixtus, Blanche en Hoegarden, Grand Cru de Hoegarden . . .”

  “Chimay.”

  Paul fetched bottles from the kitchen.

  “I’m not sure how we ended up in Vertige,” said Michelle. “We thought we were going to Dinant, but I seem to have misread the map or the traffic signs or something.”

  “The highway numbers have changed,” said Paul.

  “That must be it,” said Bob.

  Geoffrey pressed his belly and the heels of his hands to the edge of the table. “I came to see the cemetery,” he said. “In London everyone said, ‘Oh, don’t go to Belgium, it’s so dull. It’s so remarkably dull in Belgium.’ I said, ‘But this is the Ardennes,’ and they said, ‘Oh, that’s the dullest region of all.’ But I have friends in the cemetery. I was in the Second Army. We wore white so as not to be seen against the snow.”

  Later, in the parlor, the Englishman recited “Gunga Din” and wept:

  “. . . But when it comes to slaughter

  You will do your work on water,

  An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it. . . .”

  Gustave arrived the next morning, to spend the weekend. By now Paul and Gustave could barely stand being in the same room. Paul thought the rate of the note was too high; Gustave thought that Mary and Paul’s trips to the United States were wasteful and nostalgic. Gustave thought Paul should spend time tending the gardens; Paul considered it better to let the milkweed run wild. Gustave had found a mounted boar’s head for seven thousand francs that Paul refused to hang in the dining room. And so on. Gustave did not live at the inn anymore but he could not find it in himself to let go of it. Like many houses, the inn always had something that needed fixing, and Gustave seemed to take pleasure in seeking out and reporting these problems. “The toaster is shot,” he would say “The floor shakes in this area.”

  That morning he complained about the washing machine. “Something’s gone wrong,” he said. “It is making a noise like a gun.”

  “What were you doing in the laundry room?” said Paul.

  “I don’t go near the laundry room,” said Gustave. “The washing machine is making such a noise that it can be heard from any point in the house.”

  “The floor of the laundry room slants,” said Paul. “It was built badly.”

  “M. Duprix built the laundry room,” said Gustave. “He was the best carpenter in Vertige for many years.”

  “Mary said he drank.”

  “What did he drink?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Americans understand nothing about drinking. If he is drunk on whiskey, he could still be an able carpenter. On wine, however, he could not be persuaded to pick up a hammer. Nothing can be wrong with that floor.”

  “Take a level and check it,” said Paul.

  “How can I check the floor of the laundry room when it is off limits to me?”

  Paul went upstairs. Mary lay on their bed with a washcloth on her forehead.

  “Man, that Gustave,” said Paul. “I could shoot him sometimes.”

  “You can’t know what it’s like to be Gustave,” said Mary. “He was such an unpopular boy, and even when he was older, he started a cycling club and no one would join. He ordered red and white jerseys with little bicycles on them and they just sat, week after week, in a box in the front hall. That box of shirts was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  It was later that season that a young woman named Lisa Pren­dergast came from Virginia to walk in the footsteps of her grandfather, who had died in the Battle of the Ardennes. She wore orange hiking boots and a big nylon backpack that made her arms hang in front of her body like the arms of Frankenstein. What happened between Paul and Lisa Prendergast seemed harmless enough on its surface, but it pushed Paul and Mary farther apart than they had ever been.

  It all began one night when Paul saw Lisa walking back from Vertige. Paul sat on the porch of the inn, listening to a portable radio playing softly. Lisa Prendergast slipped off her pack and leaned it against the wall. She sat beside Paul and began unlacing her boots. The sun had fallen below the far side of the valley, leaving red light in the air. The chickens ate with quiet intensity in the yard as the cows stepped slowly down the hill.

  “You missed supper,” said Paul.

  “What was it?”

  “Eel chowder.”

  “I ate in town.”

  “Did you get to the war museum today?”

  “It’s very superficial,” said Lisa.

  Paul shrugged. “I get a kick out of the wax figures.”

  “There are no maps and no mention of economics. All wars are about economics. My God, that’s just elementary.”

  “Have you been to Grenier?”

  “Grenier has some interesting exhibits. They’re not first class, but they’re better than what’s in Vertige.”

  “You ought to go down to Bouillon. They’ve got an incredible son et lumière at the castle.”

  “This trip is not panning out,” Lisa said. “Here’s my grandfather’s picture.” She handed him a small photograph in a thick and tarnished metal frame. A smiling soldier, his uniform cap set at an angle, leaned toward the camera as he held an apple. The picture had been fixed in its frame by means of a scrap of newspaper from 1943, folded and taped to the back of the frame.

  “Where did he die?” said Paul.

  “In a cave,” said Lisa. “All we know is he died with two other American soldiers in a cave. Only they didn’t die, and the
y weren’t American soldiers.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, it turns out that German soldiers would come into the Ardennes dressed in the uniforms of the Allies.”

  “Sneaks” said Paul.

  “It was a desperate measure,” said Lisa Prendergast. “I’ve been to St. Cecilia’s, but it doesn’t feel like the place.”

  “You have to be careful in there.”

  “I mean, it just gets smaller and smaller and darker and darker. I was following along and I said, Wait a minute. Let’s think this through. This is how people get lost.”

  “And they do,” said Paul.

  “So I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “There is another cave,” said Paul. “It doesn’t get the attention that St. Cecilia’s gets, because it’s harder to get to, and it’s more of a geological formation than a real cave. Kids go up there to drink and smoke.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I could take you.”

  “Yes, why don’t you.”

  It rained for two days straight, and on the third day the rain held off long enough for Paul and Lisa to hike off in search of the cave or geological formation where her grandfather might have died. They rode in the inn’s pickup truck to a clearing along the highway. Across the road a cow lay chewing grass beneath the branches of a tree. They followed a path that climbed steeply among blueberry thickets and fanning ferns and mica flecks glittering in the rocks. Their boots thudded on the packed path as if the ground were hollow. Twice they emerged from the forest onto high smooth ledges from which they could see the surrounding country the highway that went into Vertige, and the curve of the ridge along which they were traveling. The sun broke through the clouds and a steady breeze pushed against their faces.

  “What do you do in Virginia?” said Paul.

  “I work for the Office of Monetary Allocation Studies,” said Lisa. “But don’t ask how the economy is going. That’s what everyone asks me, but I don’t know any more about it than what’s in the newspapers. We’re having a conference in Vienna next year, so I’m going to run over and do some advance work after I get done here.”