Good old Pietro. He’s a treasure. If there’s anything nicer than a French accent, it’s a French accent with an Italian twist. How cute is that? And remember, if you get bored buying champagne, my offer of a research job still stands. What could be more interesting than poking around old French attics?
Other than a few chatty e-mails from Hugh and her mother and a couple of friends in Napa, Rosalyn felt very removed from the world. Very alone.
But she did not feel lonely. In fact, it was only when she was by herself that she didnotfeel lonely.
She’d finished the three paperbacks she’d brought with her, and tried reading more on her computer but her eyes glazed over. Her e-reader had broken the day before she left California, when she set it on the roof of her car while searching for her keys, forgot it, and drove off. Yet one more example of not paying attention, of breaking things, tripping over nothing, walking into walls. Grief brain.
The village of Cochet remained quiet, the only signs of life the occasional workers guiding tractors through the fields.
She continued to wake early in the morning, which made no sense. Her body should have adjusted by now. But perhaps it already had; when she was at home, Rosalyn frequently woke up before dawn. Dash had died at four twenty-seven in the morning, and formonths afterward, she had startled awake at that moment, precisely. Perhaps it was as simple as that.
On a few occasions when she walked in the cold silence of dawn, Rosalyn saw the same farmer tending to his vines; the two exchanged waves.
Feeling as if she should be working, Rosalyn continued to send out e-mails, leave voice mails, check inventory, and respond to inquiries from Hugh’s other reps, who were watching over her accounts while she was out of town. But her phone calls and e-mails to local producers went unanswered. Hugh seemed unfazed, and urged her to relax and enjoy her time away.
Time slowed down. Sometimes annoyingly so.
At last it dawned on her: This was what she had wanted. To be alone, surrounded by silence. No questions, no comments, no one to answer to.
Her very own hermitage in the French countryside.
As she began to embrace the solitude, Rosalyn felt an urge to capture some of the local scenery on paper and started sketching close-ups of the barren grapevines in winter, landscapes of the gently rolling hills, the villages tucked into shallow valleys. She drew the man on the tractor at dawn, the memorial in the village square overseen by the Madonna, and a grave marker she found near a pond in the woods.
Rosalyn had always preferred painting to drawing; with paint she could lay down swaths of color versus the hard lines of the pencil.
But now she had no taste for color. The harsh contrast of the dark graphite against the creamy white paper suited her mood as she worked at capturing the myriad hues of gray.
Although she didn’t catch another glimpse of him, Pietro kept the kitchen stocked with the basics. Food simply appeared, as though delivered by an Italian elf: a plump farm-raised chicken one day,thick pork chops wrapped in white butcher paper the next. Baskets of winter vegetables, squash and kale and potatoes.
For the last few years, Rosalyn had lived on takeout, frozen food, leftovers from office functions—anything that didn’t require time in the kitchen. Cooking was something she had done for Dash, and it was so central to their life together that she couldn’t bear the thought of preparing meals just for herself. But now, faced with fresh food, a large kitchen, a huge stove, and no fast-food options, she put some music on, grabbed a sharp knife, lit the stove, and started chopping. Adhering to the old adage “When in Rome,” she tried her hand at a classic French dish from a recipe she found on the Internet:coq au vin. It was surprisingly simple, and Pietro had provided her with all the ingredients: bacon, pearl onions,champignons de Paris—button mushrooms—and thyme. She found an inexpensive burgundy in the cupboard to use for the sauce.
Soon the kitchen/tasting room was filled with the homey aromas of food bubbling on the stove. She felt self-conscious sitting down to such a formal dinner all by herself but was pleased by the results of her labor.
Later, as she lay in bed, Rosalyn realized she had enjoyed the act of cooking again. It did not feel like betrayal; it didn’t feel like anything more significant than a good dinner.
The next day she drove to Reims to check out the capital of the Champagne region. A few stores were open, but by and large the town was as sleepy as Cochet and the other villages. There were similar soggy leftover Christmas ornaments, though on a larger scale. The massive Gothic cathedral reminded her of Paris’s famous Notre-Dame; she almost stopped to take a look inside, then decided against it.
Dash holding her hand as they climbed the winding steps to visit the gargoyles at the top of Notre-Dame, making the whole tour group laugh by calling out for “Sanctuary!”
As Rosalyn toured Reims, she drove past the impressive mansionlike façades of the Mumm, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, Taittinger, and Ruinart champagne houses. In Champagne, the major wine houses were located in large towns rather than in the vineyards, as they are in Napa and in the rest of France.
The Pommery champagne house—now called Vranken Pommery Estate—was a vast gray-and-red Elizabethan-style mansion, complete with turrets. It was closed to tourists for the holidays, of course, but Rosalyn pulled her Renault up outside the tall iron gates and spent a few minutes studying the formal buildings and manicured grounds.
Somewhere under these buildings was where Lucie Maréchal had sought shelter from the German bombardment.
Rosalyn tried to imagine what it would be like to move one’s whole life underground. Had the moment of decision been borne of panic? Or had it been the only sensible option, given the circumstances? Had entire neighborhoods relocated? Why hadn’t they already evacuated the city?
Or, she wondered, was the decision assumed to be a temporary solution to an immediate problem that had, instead, altered their lives in untold ways?
Chapter Twelve
Lucie
First the Reims Cathedral, and then Villa Traverne.
Thinking back on the home that was Villa Traverne, I still find it hard to believe that such a fine, sturdy building would collapse.
But then, even great stone castles fall under the constant barrage of a wartime siege, do they not?
