I

 

 

“Just look,” said the owner, “don’t you see the stamp is from America? Santiago, on the island of Cuba. And this is an official letter, no mistaking that. What should I answer?”

“Well,” Rouge said. “If I were you, I’d let her come.”

“You think so?”

The two men were talking near the glass door which opened out onto the terrace and which was wide open, even if this was only March, because it was bright and sunny that day. They were the only two in the café. And Milliquet re-opened the letter, which was machine-typed and on letterhead, something which impressed him.

“No doubt… Georges-Henri Milliquet, 54 years old, died 23 February 1927 at the Santiago de Cuba Hospital… Georges-Henri, that’s definitely my brother.”

He continued reading aloud: “To carry-out his last request… a sum of 363 dollars, subtracting travel costs, unless we receive notification of your refusal… Oh! Rouge, what should I do?”

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen.”

“That’s a fine age.”

“Yes,” said Milliquet, “But God knows how she will have been raised and what habits she will have taken up in those hot countries, those Negro countries… there’s also the problem of climate.”

“Well, she’ll arrive in summer.”

“Sure, but…” he stammered, nodding his soft flabby face; a face covered in folds which moved upward from his chin across his jowls like lines in a notebook. “It’s just no one’s heard from him (speaking of his brother) in at least 35 years; I’ve believed he was dead for a while now…”

“Well! Now you know he wasn’t and you were wrong,” Rouge said. “That happens. And it seems your brother didn’t think the same of you since he’s the one who gave your address to the consulate… And, you know, a brother is a brother… You can’t just leave your niece to those Americans.”

Milliquet shrugged his shoulders beneath a thick-cabled russet hunter’s vest which he’d buttoned all wrong over a collarless shirt.

He said, “You see, only 363 dollars… and once we deduct the cost of the trip… what could a trip like that cost? And how long does it even take? You have any idea, do you?”

“Just look at the stamp.”

“Three weeks. Okay, now count. The boat ticket, the train ticket, food, the hotel…”

“That’s not the issue. If you abandon your niece, what will everyone think of you? And then this poor man, think a bit about him; picture yourself on your death bed… you’ve got no family, no friends, you’re about to die, you’re leaving a daughter behind; you’re leaving a daughter behind and no money… Oh! Think about it, Milliquet, who else would you turn to at a time like that if not your family and your native land, even if you’d left it all behind a hundred years before? He said to himself, ‘Luckily I have a brother… ’ maybe he only had enough time to call the consul.”

“But,” said Milliquet, “he didn’t even know my address.” And he showed Rouge the envelope with its several corrections and messy ink-stains.

But Rouge answered, “What does that matter? I’m just telling you one thing, and that is that he died calmly because he believed he could count on you. Everything else doesn’t…”

Milliquet sighed again; he brings his hand to his neck and rubs up and down a few times. “What is my wife going to say?”

Rouge emptied the rest of his three deciliter carafe into his glass; he doesn’t answer. He had a fat red face, a brushed leather sailing cap with a visor and a nearly white mustache. He was wearing a blue knit wool turtleneck which buttoned on his shoulder. Short, fat and square, he was leaning forward on his stool and puffed from time to time on the pipe he held in the corner of his mouth.

He didn’t answer, he only said, “Yes.” He said it a second time.

Putting his pipe in the palm of his left hand, he took up his glass and emptied it; he clucked his tongue, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “You haven’t seen Décosterd by any chance?”

Milliquet shook his head.

“I’ve got to go see what he’s doing.” He gets up. And that’s when he said, “The consul didn’t tell you whether she was pretty?”

He tugged on his sweater which had rumpled around his heavy body and lifted one side to take out his wallet.

“As for your wife,” he began again, “tell yourself you’ll have a scene no matter what you do, but you’re used to that… See you later.”

He goes out through the terrace.

Milliquet was still holding the letter in his big chubby hand with its reddish hairs. The big bright sun was shining; the light reflected back off the lake. We could see the bare branches of the plane trees stretched out horizontally from one tree to the next like the beams of a ceiling; they threw their shadows all the way onto the tables in the café where they broke in half on the table edges, throwing their remaining halves onto the floor boards. The light from the lake came in over the wall that bordered the terrace and hit the branches and the great green tree trunks from top to bottom. Milliquet took one step in his knitted slippers, then he took another: What to do? Oh Lord, what to do? He had a colorless little mustache and a sparse pale beard across his fat, drooping, brown-spotted cheeks.

He took another step forward with his right foot, and then with his left…

His wife would have definitely ended up suspecting something, so he was right to tell Rouge about the letter and the girl; if he needed it, Rouge could always give him a hand…

He moved his left foot, then his right. “And well, so be it, so be it. She should come… She…” He stopped himself for a second and then, speaking out loud again (now about his wife), “Well, her, she’s a problem. Better deal with her right away.”

He called, “Rosalie! Hey, Rosalie!”

Mrs. Milliquet appeared on the stairs.

And what happened next was that for the whole rest of the afternoon the neighbors were treated to a violent discussion.

It’s this letter from America, and a niece that Milliquet had over there, and who’s just dropped into his lap. In the village, though, we were all saying that he was right to say yes…

We were all saying it just like Rouge, “A brother is a brother…”