I spent all afternoon making spinach and cheese ravioli. Claudine and Hugues were in the village with friends, so there were only five of us at dinner. M. Durebex’ hearing-aid whistled fiercely, and Mme Durebex and I talked about food over the top of it. He caught the word garlic and said to his wife that, as usual, she hadn’t put enough in the salad dressing.
What perverse acuity. The salad dressing was Mme Durebex’ only contribution to this meal. Françoise said she thought the dressing tasted perfect. Mme Durebex said the garlic must have been old. She assured her husband she had put in the required two cloves.
Everybody frowned at the foreign word.
– This ravioli is tasteless, he explained in French. Then he got up and took some ham from the fridge. He grabbed a large knife and began to cut the ham into his ravioli. Shreds of it dropped around his plate. The knife wobbled dangerously in his little fingers. I hoped Laurent would cut himself, then hoped he wouldn’t, because of the fuss that would ensue. His mother watched him nervously, then began to tell her husband that the taxi driver had charged her five francs more than he should have that afternoon.
– They’re thieves!
– Oh là là là là. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? he rebuked. A measly five francs. I hope you didn’t say anything.
– Yes, I said they were thieves.
– Give me the knife, chéri, Françoise coaxed Laurent. I’ll do it.
Françoise cut ham into her bowl as well. All over my beautiful ravioli. It didn’t matter anyway – the aura of punishment had ruined everybody’s appetite. We sat there motionless, looking at our food.
– Oh là là, I’m never going down to the village again! It’s a disgrace, do you hear me? Une honte!
– But I only said it in the entrance, Victor.
– The driver didn’t hear you, Mireille, Françoise reassured her in a whisper.
But now M. Durebex was shouting, waving his arms.
– T’AS PAS HONTE? Oh là là là là, five francs, I’m never going to show my face in the village again. C’EST UNE HONTE!
The silence over the table hardened – water into ice. Françoise and I sent looks to one another. Mme Durebex began to clear, quietly soothing her husband.
– All right, Victor. All right.
Did he realise how loudly he yelled, or was he that deaf it felt like talking to him? Even when he muttered, poking around the entrance outside my bedroom door because a light had been left on, I could hear his oh là là’s as clearly as if he were in the room with me.
He was just like my own father, pacing around irritably, unable to rest if a light had been left on. Such waste! Was this how the rich got rich? When I moved back home Dad would pass my room as I read late at night. Without pushing the door open to check, his hand would come feeling down the doorframe to switch the light off. I might as well have not been there at all.
It was too hot to sleep. I’d left the heater on all day. The skin on my face prickled, my whole body itched. I peeled off the long johns I’d bought Matthew last winter at Prisunic. I didn’t know how they’d ended up with me. I thought that when we broke up, everything we’d shared had been equally divided. But there was still evidence of things left behind. The socks, the scarf. I was positive now he’d taken that scarf – surely I hadn’t just given it to him. Too bad for him about the long Johns. They made good pyjama pants.
I opened the window and let the cold air hit my face. I became aware of the muffled shifting silence of snow falling. My reading lamp illuminated the stalactites along the eave, and layers of snow on the branches of the fir tree.
I picked up the Maupassant and continued reading: ‘Certes, je rencontrai beaucoup de pauvres filles cherchant aventure …’ But my eyelids were drooping, my head was beginning to ache in the cold air. It was three-thirty by my watch. I closed the window and tried to sleep again.
Three-thirty, the dead hour of night. Three-thirty on a summer day in Barcelona, the streets are dead. I am in the hotel room with Matthew. Sunlight through the shutters ladders the bed in which we lie. Restless, I watch the corrugation of his ribs shift as he sleeps. Silence tells me all the other guests in the hotel are sleeping too. I want to go for a walk; I know it’s siesta time but I can’t adjust to this daytime sleeping.
I am on the other side of the Ramblas, the seedy side. The streets twist, dark and narrow. Hookers lurk, dealers hiss, Matthew comes running up behind me crying, This is awful, this is ominous. We’ll get mugged, let’s go back.
I turn in surprise. I say, I thought you were such an adventurer, but you’re being a wimp.
Matthew insists we go back to the bar near the hotel, and so we go, me thinking, This is the last time. It’s a small dim bar where men sit all day playing cards and drinking sharp wine. The kind of bar where Matthew feels safe and I feel suffocated.
I take Matthew to the station. I negotiate tickets and times. He stands beside me looking ridiculous in the sewn-up long johns from Prisunic. The train pulls out and he leans from a window, watching me sadly. I walk rapidly away down the platform and Chantale grabs my arm.
– Sophie, you can’t leave now! He’s waving!
– I have to leave, I say, I have to get the recipe for paëlla.
– But I don’t eat paëlla! Matthew calls.
I just keep walking.
I continue along the platform – it’s long, very long. I’m interested only in procuring this recipe and am vaguely troubled by this, thinking it’s Matthew I should be interested in.
I approach the ticket gate. My father is waiting in a ticket collector’s uniform. Anxiously, I feel in my pockets for the ticket I know isn’t there.
– Well, my father smiles at me, you’ve been through a bad time, and now you’re coming out of it.
– What? I stop in surprise. The words seem kind. He repeats them.
– You’ve been through a bad time, and now you’re coming out of it.
He walks away laughing. The laugh is nasty. I’m rooted to the spot. I call out, What do you mean?
M. Durebex turns and says, Shona? What sort of a name is that? C’est une honte!