Fiction: Pays des merveilles

A wave passed; the water tensed, then flattened.

The next one came in skewed, lifting the sea at one end and tilting it along a long, shallow arc. The sun collecting on its surface thickened as the angle to it shrank. Near parallel, it was like white paper. Suddenly it collapsed, and the light dissolved; at its nadir, flat as glass, one saw through it a thousand mauve mesogleaic bulbs, pulsating, peristaltic, glow.

A figure stood from the butter-colored rocks billowing like steam off the sea, looking up to a pair of legs dangling over a bluff further up the shore.

“No good, Éloise,” it called out in a voice that was used to saying that sort of thing. “Jellyfish everywhere. We’re not getting in today.”

Up above, in the shadow of an overhang, Éloise let her pale legs dangle in the sun, phone on one knee. Her sunglasses were enormous but one could tell even without her eyes that she was reading. A bit of pique rose up from her brow from which the rest of her hung, suspended.

He clambered up the rocks in a chimpish motion, dragging his long, whip-thin body up with both hands, scrabbling for gentle footholds. At the terrace just beneath her feet, he turned to face the water. On a long slip of land on the other side of the bay, an unbroken chain of automobiles traced the heights through the dense thickets of pine and fir. “Not that that’s stopping anyone else.”

Éloise did not look up from her phone as he came up beside her but clicked off the screen and said, “It’s chaos in Paris. I read that the police can’t even get east of Bastille anymore. Everyone’s running away.” She looked up at the traffic. At this distance, it undulated in the heat. “Maybe that’s them.”

Victor blew a raspberry. “Fat chance. Those people are on vacation, and nothing, not God, war, or revolution is going to stop them from soaking up their rightful due of sun.”

She turned one leg over to look at an angry red welt on the far side of her knee. “What if there are refugees? What do we… do?”

“They’re not sleeping in my room, that’s for sure.”

“What would we tell Bonne Maman?”

 “Unless they’re Germans, we’d say they were cousins. And if they are Germans, we’ll say they’re Swedes.”

They were quiet then, staring, in the way one does when there’s nowhere to look. Sky, stone, sea: the sun had stripped them of euphemism, leaving only their stuffness in its dullest immanency. Even time seemed to have lost its shape in the heat: all but its instants sloughed off into a run of slag.

“I got eaten alive last night,” said Éloise. “Look—” She gestured to her calf, forearm, shoulder: furious red swellings the shape of walnut shells.

“Me, too. See?” He had a line of angry welts running up out of his swimsuit and around his waist. “Juliette had them all over her back. She was supposed to ask the doctor about it in Marseilles.”

Abruptly he reached in the bags in the shade behind Éloise for his phone. “We should go back. The signal is shit here.”

Éloise, palms on her thighs studying the backs of her hands, took one last look at the water, shrugged, and stood. “It’s too hot anyway,” she said.

Behind the bluff the rocks gradually faded into a shallow inlet around a round white stone and the salted trunk of a tree. Éloise went over the stone in one familiar bound; Victor hovered on it momentarily, one foot still on the shore, looking down into the channel at the viscid purple mass moistened by what little water remained.

When he was over he found Éloise where the path through the grass began. “All together like that, they look a bit like blood. Like those artistic renderings they do of cells under a microscope.”

“They come from Africa,” she said.

“How’s that?”

“Well, where else?”

He chuckled. “Can’t argue there.”

They passed through wild carrot and tall grass and junipers to a dirt path that led through a thicket full of trumpet flowers and spheres of three-pronged straw, and other secret, superlative things. The path ended at a wall of stubby evergreens; a low hole took them past a large pot filled with yellow flowers into a garden of white stones at the foot of a house of lapis shutters and primrose clay, in the shade of pinyon and sumac and mimosa trees.

Against an earthen ledge terraced by a wall of stone, at a table with a view of the sea, sat an old woman in an open saffron robe strewn with roses. Every so often the breeze lifted it from her and revealed the bare bones in papyrus that were all that was left of the body beneath.

“’Lo there, Huguette!” Victor called out. The old woman stirred, turned to the sound, but her robe did not move with her.

“She isn’t even dressed!” hissed Éloise and ran over.

Victor rolled his eyes. “Who’s going to see?”

The old woman, eyes closed and chin lifted, remained as she was. Éloise sat down quickly in the chair next to her and pulled her lapels closed. Huguette swatted at her a little but she paid no mind. “Bonne Maman, are you alright?”

Her eyes parted like a frog’s, capillaries the same red as her robe. “Of course,” she said. “I was just enjoying the birds.”

Her robe wanted to come open again. It was unbelted, and stayed together only by catching itself in the join between her clavicle and shoulder bone.

“Let me get you a belt, Bonne Maman,” said Éloise.

Her grandmother waved her away; Éloise held onto a lapel.  “Where is everyone?” Huguette asked. “I came downstairs and the house was empty.”

“Juliette went to Marseilles. Victor and I were on the rocks.”

“Victor.” She spoke the word as it were a strange taste. “But why Marseilles?       

“She went to the doctor,” Victor said. “Just for a check-up. She explained at breakfast.”

“Oh yes,” Huguette agreed; it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yes, of course. The doctor….” Something incised itself on her face then, an anguish, that one has heard but not understood. “But—but—she’s not well, Juliette?”

He patted her shoulder. “No, no. Nothing to worry about. She’s fine.” He smiled at Éloise but she flinched at first, only then attempting the same in return. He eyed her curiously.

Huguette breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. It’s good that she’s well.”

Éloise, looking at her grandmother’s feet, asked, “Do you want to stay out here, Bonne Maman?”

“Yes, but we might eat if we do.”

“I’m sorry we weren’t here to prepare lunch. It’s been a—a strange day. There’s some salad in the fridge. And melon, I think.”

“Do we have any saucisse?” the old woman asked.

“No, there isn’t any still.”

“They say we can buy it, of course. That the pigs are alright,” said Victor. He’d taken a seat at the other end of the table. “But who trusts what they say about what’s healthy or not. We don’t even know where the animals come from. Probably from China. You know I saw a thing on Arte that half the pork in France is actually Chinese?”

“What’s he talking about, Éloise?”

Éloise pressed a loose wisp of her grandmother’s hair back down, ignoring the swat. “A farm disease, Bonne Maman. All the animals got it. Many died. It was very sad.”

“A whole year’s worth of pork, beef, gone—like that! Worked out great for the Chinese.” Victor had his phone out, was far down his chair with his legs crossed over the back of another, scrolling. “Massive blockages on the road to Marseilles. Protestors.” He spat the word out as if it burned his mouth. Then, eyes suddenly incandescent, he said: “But not for long. The president’s said: Take down the barricades or we will. Was worried she might cave. You know, it’s easy to run on defending the nation but they’re all so afraid to be called a Nazi. Well, so what if that’s what these people say? Don’t give them an inch. Better a boot instead.”

“What is he talking about, Éloise?” Huguette repeated.

“Just the news, Bonne Maman. Don’t worry. I’ll go downstairs and make lunch. And I’ll see if there’s some saucisse hidden somewhere.” 

Victor got up to follow. “And I’ll see if there’s anything to drink besides water. Water’s no good, right Huguette? Makes you rust.”

Éloise glared at him, but it got a smile out of the old woman all the same.

They came back with a bowl of salad and a plate of orange melon and a yellow glass carafe with a clear gray liquid inside. Éloise also had a sash that she made Huguette, grumbling, sit up to wrap around her.

An insistent, interlocutive warble came from within the house. “The radio’s at the Bastille interviewing protestors,” Victor explained, pouring for Huguette. Éloise tried to tilt the bottle up early but both parties declined. “Apparently they have a leader. A young man. Fils-something. Cheers.” Victor chin’d Huguette, who looked very cheery; Éloise had refused the rosé but touched her empty glass to his.

“Where does he come from?” she asked when the others had finished drinking.

“Oh, God knows. The university, I’m sure. Or Russia. Probably a minister’s son. Here, I’ll turn it up.”

At first there was only static, then a subtler drone rising in pitch and intensity to a wail and gnash that abruptly resolved into speech: Of course, we’re the ones who should be reasonable….

Éloise forked some melon onto Huguette’s plate, but the old woman showed interest only in the wine in her glass.

…reasonable, reasonable: think of the little shopkeeper, the cafe owner, the delivery man! Why smash their windows? They only want to work, to eat. That’s always the line: Think of the consequences, the Gross National Product! Ha! Fuck your product. It’s all gross to me.

“This rosé’s really not bad. Not bad at all,” said Victor, allowing himself a second.

The president sneers at us: You’re nothing but a bunch of whiners, malingerers. What did she say? ‘Instead of throwing a brick through a window, try stacking it. Then you have a house.’ Very clever. Only my father, you see, he was a poor man. All he had was a hammer, and all he taught me was how to use it. So if bricks are what your houses are made of—well, Madame President, be afraid.

“‘My father was a poor man’,” Victor mocked. “‘Our house was barely even in Neuilly.’”

“Some salad, Bonne Maman?” Éloise offered her the bowl, but Huguette said nothing; she seemed in a trance.

Your hearts are hard as stone. Well, so are we. You’ve beat us black and blue, and now we don't feel a thing….

Abruptly the signal seemed to twist and fray; it was the din of furious applause, drowning the microphone; with great exertion the speaker’s voice fought its way one last time above the fray: —t’s out of our hands— too late— is already destroyed—

The line went dead, all but for a thin hiss. Then an abrupt motif in F minor appeared from the warm, complacent hum of a concert hall. Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the interruption….

Victor sawed the last strip of melon off the rind. “Can you believe all that shit he was talking? Beaten black and blue? Where, at the library?” Melon in his mouth, he snarled: “How seriously he takes himself. A little bobo prophet. They’ve got no shame at all. Not even a bit.”

“How do you know he’s bourgeois?” Éloise asked.

“Oh, they all are.”

“But also, so what if he is? You’ve seen the news. Things are hardly going well….”

Victor scoffed. “The world’s always ending. Always. Just one more day, and it’s sure to be over this time.”

Then, as if play had been pressed on an old tape machine, Huguette began to speak: “When the students were rioting in Paris, I was living on the Rue de Grenelle on the 4th floor. I was six months married and three months pregnant. It was evening, and I heard a noise in the courtyard. I looked through the window and there was a boy down there. Someone had left the door to the street open and he’d gotten in. He’d been hit on the head; he was bleeding very badly. He must have felt that he was being watched, because he looked up and saw me. Then he said: ‘Please, madame, the police thugs are looking for me. And if they find me, they’ll kill me. Please can you let me in. I’m afraid.’ But I was also scared. What if it was a trick? So I told him that I couldn’t. He kept begging me, but I said, No, I’m sorry, I’m a woman alone and I don’t know you. Then I closed the window and went away to the bedroom. But I heard shouts from down in the courtyard, and cries that sounded like the boy’s. And in the morning there was nothing there.”

Éloise and Victor looked at each other, at Huguette, at each other again for good measure.

A shadow fell over the old woman’s eyes as her brow crumpled. She sagged in her chair. “You’ll have to excuse me. I'm very tired. I wonder if I might not take a nap.”

Éloise stood. “Of course, Bonne Maman. Let me help you to your room.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Huguette suddenly seized her granddaughter by the arm, hard enough to make her suck in a breath. The capillaries in her eyes were swollen and the blood made them glow. “It’s no good pretending, Éloise. That’s lying. And it’s no good to lie, is it Éloise?”

Éloise looked askew; rather helplessly, she answered: “No, Bonne Maman. No it’s— Come, let’s go upstairs.”

When she came back up, the heat had gone out of the sky and with it the high tones of day; the long, low note of dusk rung like a bell over the shore and sea.

Victor was pouring himself more wine. He offered the carafe to her, but she shook her head.

“Are you sure? We can’t swim, there’s no car, the pantry’s empty except for that nasty German bread, and even that’s stale. Why not get drunk?” And to show her what he meant, he downed his glass.

Éloise sat a few chairs from him. She folded her hands onto her lap. “You shouldn’t let her drink. It’s not good for her.”

“What, do you think if she doesn’t she’ll get better?”

Éloise frowned. “No, but— Look what it did. That story.”

He drew circles round his head, whistling. “Something she saw in a movie, probably.”

“I don’t know. The way she got in the end….” She tapped the tabletop. “I don’t really know her anymore. She’s so different now. She won’t even let me touch her.”

“She never let anyone fuss over her. You remember Noë’s birthday—when she fell—the way she screamed at Sabine for trying to put up her foot—”

“She was always—hard, yes. But she’s just from a different era. And besides, Sabine’s so annoying when she wants you to do something— It’s just that she was always nice with me.”

The rosé was beginning to work on him. He was up as if alert, but his eyes swayed. “She was never nice to you, Éloise.”

Éloise started as if she’d been slapped: and she might’ve slapped him too, only looking at him, at his leer both reflexively provocative and at the same time unsure of why, something in her gave way before she could be angry.

“That’s why Juliette’s always so cold with her, you know.” His tone was apologetic. He’d seen. “For you.”

“Funny. She always loved Juliette,” said Éloise.

Her eyes wandered among the garden stones. She shivered, rubbed her arms; the air had a chill. “I was painfully shy. I think she just wanted me to be more confident.”

“By being cruel to you?”

So base a silence, it burned.

“Ah—shit—” Victor, crossing his arms, had spilled a full glass onto his lap. He dabbed ineffectively at himself, shrugged, then reached for the carafe and poured with aplomb. “Lucky there’s plenty left. Cheers.” But her silence persisted, dampening his cheer, and the taste of the wine did not soften the lines at his eyes or nose.

Finally he asked, “You haven’t heard anything from Juliette?”

Éloise, turned to the sky, said: “No.”

“She never said anything to me. About—it.” His voice stuck in his throat, catching him by surprise: and Éloise, who stared at him eyebrows raised. He hid his mouth behind the glass. “Never. Even though— I mean the needles, all of the— How many times—” Now words failed to arrive at all. His throat was so tight it made him cough; he managed to go on only after a very long and very obvious pause. “Thank God it finally worked. Thank God it was—at least it was worth it after all.”

There was a tear in his eye, then on his cheek. “You know, we still don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. We couldn’t—” But that was as far as he could go.

Still Éloise said nothing. Her pale face was drawn towards that little dark spot in the center of her brow. But she reached out for his hand with hers, took the fingers, all she could manage, her own were trembling, and squeezed.

Victor looked down, looked up, wiped his face. His smile was simple in its gratitude. “Yes,” he said, nodding as if she were waiting on his agreement, “at least it was worth it.”

Then he remembered his full glass. And down it went in one.

“Right,” he said, squinting though there was hardly any more sun. “I believe I'm a little drunk. How about a toast? To Juliette? Or the president?” He raised his glass. “Here’s to you, Madame President! I hope you come down on this country like the fucking Mongols. Tear each and every last one of them, Putin’s stooges, tear them all to shreds. The whole goddamned lot, the whining, disloyal— A whole generation that doesn’t want to pay its dues, screaming gimme, takes what it wants, gimme now, for free— Never pays, never knows, never—,” his right index finger trembling viciously, “—how much it— just what the cost can really be.”

He’d gotten to his feet: he was not talking to Éloise anymore, he was facing the cooling sky, or what they could see of it through the needled branches.

“Fuck them,” he said, jabbing up. “You hear me? Fuck them!”

Suddenly he threw down his glass; Éloise retreated against her seat; with balled-up fists he opened his mouth to shout—

But he was thrown down into his chair and from there to the bottom of his chest by an immense eruption of dense, dark sound, the world seemingly detonated at once and all around.

“Christ— What the shit was that?” Victor moaned.

They both waited, tense, in an aftermath shot through with echo—until, from all directions and all at once, they were harried by a furious wind.

Victor shouted, but it was lost immediately; branches snapped, rocks tumbled; the shutters on the house reeled from wall to frame and back again. The world had been conquered by dust and sound. He tried squinting under his palm but it was impossible; he reached out blindly, looking for Éloise, when he felt her grab his arm and drag him to his feet and pull him away.

As soon as they were inside she made a beeline for the stairs while he struggled to get the windows closed. He was halfway finished when an enormous crash came from above. He ran up to find both windows of his bedroom emptied onto the breakfast table below. Wrapping his hand in a t-shirt, he managed to hook the panels closed and get the bolt across. But when he reached for the shutters, something hit him—hard. He yelped.

A shape, white, fell outside the window: then another, and another, in time with a new thudding on the roof, gaining speed.

He ran into the hall and shouted: “Éloise!”

She was at the bottom of the stairs. There was something in her hand: a globe of ice the size of a peach. Wide-eyed, she held it up for him to see.

Huguette appeared at the door to her bedroom. “Hello,” she said. “Did you know that it was hailing? You can see it from the balcony.”

It was cool on the terrace; the tiles chilled their bare feet. They stood at the back by the door as the hail dashed itself madly on the stone arcade above. Down below the trees and bushes were writhing in agony, and past that, raving like a madman, the sea.

“Incredible,” marveled Éloise. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you, Bonne Maman?”

The old woman closed her eyes. “Once. Maybe. A long time ago.” She frowned, shook her head. “Or maybe that was a flood.”

“This really is a hell of a summer,” said Victor.

“Yes,” said Éloise. “Plagued.”

Everything went white; lightning had wiped out the sky, thunder booming even before it cleared.

“That felt like a strike,” said Victor, shielding his eyes a second later when another strike obliterated their view.

“Look!” Éloise was pointing down the hill.

Thrashing, trembling, lunging at the wind by which it was so relentlessly whipped, a fire had begun in the bush, thick, vaporous heat already distorting the storm’s descending chill.

“Jesus-fucking-Christ. What the fuck do we do? Call the fire department?” Victor yanked his phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got no signal. Éloise?”

She took hers out, pressed the side button; her eyes, flicking over the screen, rested for something more than an instant; Victor caught her eyes as she looked up. She shook her head. “No.”

Suddenly she went for the door. “We should go downstairs, make sure the shutters are tight. If any embers get in—”

Victor didn’t move.

In a new and curious voice, he asked: “Éloise—just now, on your phone— What were you reading?”

She shook the question off. “Nothing, just a—a weather alert.”

“Éloise— Hey—” He stepped towards her. “Was it a message from Juliette? Éloise, please, tell me: Was it from her?”

He had her backed up against the door. “I said,” she insisted, but her head was between her shoulders like a boxer on the ropes. “It was nothing.”

He was pressing hard now, electric in his eyes. “Éloise—I saw you. I just want to know.

Please, just tell me. Why won’t you tell me?”

He’d taken hold of her wrist. And though his voice was soft, his grip was not. “Please.”

She looked at him: wild, a stranger—

Just then something outside squealed, rolled, ground.

Victor let go. “That’s—" He threw open the door and took off across the house, shouting:

“Juliette!”

Éloise looked desperately to her grandmother. But the old woman remained silent and sentinel. Her eyes never left the storm.

Éloise ran out after.

By the time she caught up to him he was already halfway down the drive, where a little white Citroën was idling, its driver staring in bewilderment at the half-crazed man hurtling towards him.

“You! Victor shouted, reaching directly through the window to seize the man by the collar. “Who the FUCK are YOU?”

The man stammered: “We were on the road— We skidded, the hail— Please, we just pulled off because it wasn’t safe—”

Victor’s eyes were nested circles, socket, retina, iris. Through teeth so gritted they squeaked, he hissed: “You have no right to be here. No right. Get out. Get—the fuck—OUT.”

The woman in the passenger seat pressed her hands together in supplication. “Please, sir, please— We just need to stop, to wait out the storm. Please—”

“GET OUT OF HERE!” Victor screamed. “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET—THE FUCK—”

“OUT!”

At that the driver threw the car into reverse and flew back up the driveway around the bend to the road, tearing Victor off the door and hurling him to the stones.

Éloise watched all of this from afar. Her hand clenched her mouth; only when the car was gone did she look down and see blood on her fingernails.

When she looked up, Victor was on his hands and knees, head down. He didn’t move.

“Victor,” she managed at last, “Victor— Come inside.”

Still, he did not move.

“Victor— Juliette— She’s not coming. Not today. I couldn’t tell you—”

She seemed to have lost control of her voice: and though she spoke to him, it was at a volume only she could hear.

“Victor—”

All at once he was on his feet; he whipped around to stare at her; though a paroxysm of such deep distress had run through his features that it seemed the cruelest parody that this man facing her was her brother-in-law.

Without saying another word, he took off running down the drive and around the turn, and disappeared.

“Victor! VICTOR!” Éloise took off after him, shouting until the name tore at her throat. “She’s not coming back! She’s at the hospital— Victor—”

But actually she was barely running. She was barely moving at all.

“She’s not there—she’s not coming—she lost it—him—he’s gone—it’s over—”

He was gone. She was alone in the drive. And she became aware that of the sudden silence: the wind dead, the hail stopped. A world singularly still.

Suddenly she jerked to the side and swatted her hair.  She looked at her hand, at the ground, as if expecting to see a chunk of the sky. But there was only grass, except—

A shadow leapt up and down and disappeared.

She frowned. A second’s pause: then again the silhouette jumped, this time two hops towards her, straight into a little spill of moon.

“Ugh, God,” she moaned, recoiling. “What is that?”

It was an insect as long as a forefinger, the same color as a banana and half as thick, with thin forward and hind legs, the latter reversed at the knee.

In its huge, many-sided eyes there seemed only to be her.

Then it leapt so high that it landed on the branch of an overhanging tree. Éloise followed it up, up with her eyes—

Very quickly she began backing away.

Through the little moonlight that made it past the inky clouds, tens of thousands of other banana-colored insects, and twice as many many-sided eyes, sat in the branches of the pinyons and the sumac and the mimosa trees.

“Oh no, no, no,” she pleaded. “Please, God, no—”

As if that were their signal, all at once the creatures took to the air.

Eloise tried to stand, one hand shielding her eyes from the sudden swarm; but it was all too much, her knees gave way, she fell to the ground.

“HELP!” she screamed. “PLEASE, SOMEONE— HELP!”

She was on the grass now squeezing her body into itself as if to shrink it down small enough to disappear into the dirt; but no, she was there, and the insects too, all over her, though she grabbed at her ears, her hair, though she shook, sobbed, screamed. “Bonne Maman,” she wept, “Bonne Maman— Please—

“Éloise.”

She opened her eyes. Her grandmother stood over her, still in her open robe with its little roses, her breasts hardly anything but creases in her rice-paper skin, neither smiling nor frowning, the insects flying over and around her, blotting out the sky.

“Bonne Maman,” she choked, throat rebelling, panicked, revolted, “Bonne Maman, something’s happened, something awful’s happened. The fire—the hail— It’s all falling apart. Please, Bonne Maman, please— I’m scared.”

Huguette took Éloise’s shoulder in hand. Her grip was light without yielding. 

“Bonne Maman, please.” Éloise lay like a child weeping in the grass and dirt. “Please. I don’t know what’s happening— I don’t know what to do.”

It was black all around, with night, with wing, with ash.

Huguette’s eyes opened: clear.

“Éloise,” she said, clicking her tongue, “please stop crying. It’s very ugly when you do.”