The Elder Man Read online

  “Yes,” said Allie again. “They have this nephew. Armin. He’s a very bright young man. Gifted.”

  “But?” asked Van.

  He was frowning deeply and reaching for one of his thin cigars. Allie frowned even deeper and pointed at Michel, and Van gave a little sigh and left the cigars where they were.

  “But … well, he’s going through a rough patch. They think it might do him good to, you know, get out of his head a little. Get his hands in the dirt. He needs grounding. Something real to do.”

  Van said, “Meh,” picked a handful of mud out of his bucket, smeared it around an almond-shaped opening in the wall, and effortlessly molded it into an elegant swirl, one of many. He was sculpting a complicated, fractal sort of spiraling tree that enveloped a scatter of small organic-shaped openings, so that one might peek out of the tangled branches into the next room, through a twirling fretwork of clay stucco.

  “Look. It’s not that I don’t give a shit, but this is not a therapy center, you know? I teach people how to build cob houses. I don’t run a rescue business for stray youths. I really don’t need that sort of drama. Certainly not here.”

  Here was Le Sureau Noir. That was Van’s own home and property, some twenty-five or thirty hectares of pastures and forest, with its own water source, two in fact, nestled into a gently sloping, sheltered valley. Van was usually a man mild almost to a fault and exquisitely hospitable, but Le Sureau Noir was as fiercely protected from trespassers—infrequent—, mushroom-pickers—a real nuisance in these parts, where people were willing to get shot for a good bolete, chanterelle, or morel—flower pickers—lilies-of-the-valley were often plundered on May Day, and everything else trampled in the process—and most of all from hunters, who regularly neglected signs, property boundaries, fences and even a landowner’s remonstrations, especially when in hot pursuit of a good trophy. Some altercations verged on open violence. The authorities were informed and did nothing.

  The Dordogne was rural France, at its best and worst.

  Most workshops were organized elsewhere on a client’s site and became the foundation of their future house or a guest cottage or outbuilding. Sometimes Vezere Bauge was hired by local administrations, and the buildings would become a small library or a community center.

  Once in a while, however, he would consent to do something on his own grounds. He was picky about participants in such cases. Le Sureau Noir was so intensely his own private place. He was reluctant to let people in and even more reluctant to have inferior workmanship in his own buildings. Workshops at Le Sureau Noir tended to be both demanding and especially satisfying. Van always gave a lot as a teacher and as a host, but here people were allowed to see and touch first-hand what cob could truly do in skillful hands. Aside from the ruins and remains of ancient stone walls that crisscrossed the valley in every direction, everything at Le Sureau Noir—the main house, the guest cottages, outbuildings—was built and hand-sculpted from cob, in the strong local clay that blended dull brown in the forest shade during day but flushed orange-red in the evening light, magically, as if glowing with the sunshine that had soaked into.

  Just being at Le Sureau Noir was a mind-boggling experience. Allie, who had known this place for over a decade and lived there for two years, had helped in building some of the houses and tearing down others, seen new walls being created and old ones being repaired, still was not absolutely sure that Van had not used some kind of magic to make this place. She was also not sure how long exactly he had lived here. He could be a little vague about his youth, which seemed to have been somewhat adventurous, and Allie, all things considered, preferred not to know.

  “I think he will be okay. This young man, I mean. It’s not like he’s some crazy hothead or drug addict. He’s a writer, of sorts. Freelance journalist, actually. But, well, he seems to be a little burned out and off his trolley right now. Anja wants him to come to France for a few weeks to her place, take the workshop, and write an article for the magazine. She thinks it might help him to sort his head out. She thought it might do him good to go somewhere quiet, build something solid. And of course, the article might be good for us. For the company.”

  “Meh,” said Van, still unconvinced.

  “I thought,” said Allie carefully, “that he could drop in for a day or two, at least to observe. If it does not work out, I am sure he’ll decamp pretty quick.”

  “Observe,” said Van in disgust. He was a teacher that liked to fully involve his pupils, get them to splash in the mud first thing at a workshop. “The cottages are all taken, you know?”

  “Well, yes, but he could stay in the palace, if you don’t mind having him around as a house guest. It’s just for a few days. He should be quite comfortable.”

  “Only if he’s a gnome,” said Van, with a hint of a wry grin barely curling his lip. You had to know him very well to detect that nascent smile under his moustache. Allie relaxed, knowing that Van was relenting.

  The mention of gnomes caught Michel’s attention. He was sitting on a spread of old newspapers, making a cluster of little houses from some clay stucco he had wheedled out of Van’s bucket. Other children had Play-Doh, but in Van’s house, a little boy grew up with good old-fashioned mud. He looked up from his little village with a suspicious frown. “If you put a gnome in the palace, can I still play there?” he asked, making Van smile wider.

  The palace was their joking name for a minuscule building just outside the back door of Van’s house that had been built to experiment with new roofing materials and had then been converted into an emergency guest room. With its diminutive size and mushroom shape, it was a favorite with children. Michel always kept some toys there and had wanted a copy of it built as a playhouse back home.

  Allie shut up. There was no point pushing. She was sure Van would come around by the time the workshop started in less than three weeks. He was not always good at keeping in touch with his former clients and students, but he did retain his own sort of sparse affection for them, when he was reminded of their existence, and Allie was sure he would certainly do Anja this kindness.

  Chapter Two

  Monday

  Allie

  The days leading up to the workshop were so busy that Allie had almost forgotten about the young German journalist until Sunday evening came around bringing all the workshop participants wandering in, Brits, Dutch, and Americans, in ones and twos from the airports in Bergerac and Toulouse, the train stations of Gourdon and Sarlat, and one whole family, Danish, who drove over in a rented car from Brive. Meintje Visser’s flight from Amsterdam was delayed, and she missed her train. Public transport in the Dordogne was almost inexistent, and a missed train could leave a traveler stranded for a day or more. Last-minute arrangements had to be made, and everything became a little hectic. In a country where public transport was convulsed by strikes and protests almost every week, it practically always did.

  And Armin wasn’t there. A brief text arrived instead, saying he was stuck at Anja’s place in Normandy and he’d be a day late.

  That was not a good start. Even if he was not an official participant in the workshop, the delay would still throw a wrench in the works.

  “It’s my fault,” said Allie. “I should have told Anja that he must not be late, on any account. I thought she’d know that.”

  “Well, it’s the way it is,” said Van, who was obviously peeved, but stoically patient. “Just make sure he does arrive tomorrow, or he can stay in Normandy.”

  “He will. I’ll have to fetch him from the station though. I can’t send Jean-Pierre again. He’s working.”

  “If you have to,” said Van with a sigh.

  The German did arrive next day. His train was due at around 6 PM, which meant she had to leave Le Sureau Noir long before the end of the working day and that she would miss dinner with the participants. There was nothing for it.

  She ran into the small train station in Gourdon with Michel held tight by the hand. She wished she could have left him at Le S
ureau Noir, but it was bad enough to leave Van alone with the still new, raw group without him having to look after the child too. The first day of a workshop was always the hardest.

  The station was so small and lonely that the young man standing by the ticket machine, staring into his smartphone, earphones stuck in his ears, was hard to miss.

  Oh dear, she thought. He’s definitely not a gnome. I hope he fits in the palace at all.

  The young man was taller even than Van, at least one meter ninety.

  He had a shock of ruffled gingery hair, the sort of thickly framed glasses people wear to advertise their superior intellectual powers to the world, a laptop bag hanging from his shoulder, and a duffel bag at his feet.

  “Are you Armin? Armin Loewen?” asked Allie, walking up to him, and he gave her a suspicious and slightly contemptuous look. She realized that she was sweaty, dirty, wild haired and out of breath, with a mud-spattered child hanging from her hand. But even so, the look annoyed her. He was tall, lanky, much too thin, in fact, dressed in immaculate jeans, an off-white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, and brand-new Puma sneakers. He reeked of detergent, aftershave, and possibly eau de toilette. Allie knew she was oversensitive to chemical scents after years of living on remote homesteads, but even so, she felt that this young chap was overdoing it.

  She gestured to him to remove his damn earphones so she could talk, and finally he took off one.

  “Sorry, did you say something?” he asked loftily.

  “Are you Armin?” she repeated, irritation mounting.

  “Ah, yes?” he said interrogatively, as if the fact was rumored but not quite firmly established. Where is this guy’s head? She had to resist the urge to snap her fingers in front of his eyes.

  “Hello? I’m your ride to the workshop? Remember? The cobbing workshop?”

  “Hi. Oh, dear, yes of course, you must be… Allison?”

  “Just Allie. Please,” she said, slightly mollified. When he talked, he seemed a lot less lofty and much younger. Behind the glasses, the eyes were a startling cornflower blue and very tired. His voice was hoarse.

  “You have all your luggage? Shall we go? We’ll miss dinner with the others, but I am sure there’ll be something left, or Van will knock something together when we get there.”

  “Um, sure,” he said and coughed. She wondered if he was alarmed to be driven around by a woman or what. He slid his phone into his shirt’s breast pocket but didn’t remove the second earbud from his ear. Allie wondered what he was listening to.

  She was astonished, and indeed a little alarmed, by how young the man was, little more than a boy, in fact. Perhaps in his mid-twenties, no older. He still had a full crop of pimples scattered on a pale face and was positively sniveling. His nails were bitten to the quick.

  She had expected someone ten years older, and this youth in stylish jeans, with his smartphone glued to his palm and headphones in his ears, made her anxious. Van had that thing about smartphones, and well-groomed, internet-dependent city youths did not always cope well at Le Sureau Noir, with its spotty 3G connection and somewhat primitive facilities.

  “Well, how are you liking rural France so far?” she asked with manic cheerfulness as they walked out of the train station into the parking place.

  “It is very… er … picturesque,” he said huskily, pulling his right earphone off finally and then blowing his nose noisily into a tissue. He coughed again once or twice. Allie knew enough city people to understand that picturesque was a diplomatic way to say primitive, rustic, unswept, and uncomfortable. But she tried to take comfort in the fact he was at least trying to be polite about it. She started having a terrible hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of introducing this sniffling youngster to Van.

  Fitting Armin Loewen into her minuscule old Peugeot was like folding a garden parasol in a broom closet.

  The drive to Le Sureau Noir took over one hour up and down smaller and smaller winding roads across countryside that was increasingly less cultivated and more forested. Luckily the days were long, and the light was good. She could drive in the dark, but it made her anxious, especially since Damien’s accident and especially when Michel was with her. But most of all, the lingering afternoon light allowed her to point out landmarks, which made it possible for some sort of conversation to go on since Armin seemed unwilling to start any topic or ask questions and mostly answered in gritted monosyllables.

  She was dead tired of him by the time they got at the parking place of Le Sureau Noir.

  ****

  Armin

  Shut up. Shut up. Shut up and just let me die, thought Armin for the hundredth time as they went round another twist in the road and she pointed to a decrepit far-away pile of yellow stone with some pointy towers on top. Some chateau or other. Armin had lost count of them. They must have passed twenty or thirty of the damn things, all of them amazingly interesting and wonderfully historical. It was as if nobody around here had ever built anything new since the Hundred Years War. And wasn’t that incredibly fascinating?

  Allie had a tendency to lay on the superlatives rather thick.

  It wasn’t that what she was saying wasn’t interesting, but he was exhausted, he’d had this awful flu for a week, and he was the worst passenger ever. Even a cab drive across town made him motion sick. Being tossed about in this ancient, ill-sprung tin can, with his chin practically between his knees, over bumpy roads that twisted about like a dish of spaghetti was likely to be the end of him and all his woes.

  He tried to listen to her and wished he could ask pertinent questions and look alert and reasonably intelligent, but—well. He was not sure what would come out if he opened his mouth. He didn’t remember the last time he had been so sick. Should probably just let go and puke all over myself. That would shut her up at least. Good conversation gambit for a cornered introvert. Open your mouth and hurl.

  The thought almost did make him puke, and he clasped a hand over his mouth in utter desperation.

  The last abrupt plunge, down and left into a steep, shadowy downhill drive under tall huge trees, was nearly his undoing, but after rattling along a dirt road barely wide enough to let the car through, they came to a clearing where three or four other assorted vehicles stood about. Nothing else. No house, no signs, no garden gate, nothing but bloody trees all round.

  “Last bit’s on foot,” said Allie pulling the hand brake with some emphasis.

  Armin exited the car with unspeakable relief and took a few tottering steps toward the edge of the wood, wondering if he was going to manage and hold it together or if he would, after all, vomit himself inside out in the bushes. Just having his feet on the ground again made him feel a bit better though, and with a sigh of relief, he went and fetched his bags from the car.

  Allie led the way down a narrow dirt path among the trees —she didn’t bother to lock the car—and Armin followed.

  “You really should take off your shoes and go barefoot as much as you can. It really helps when you start cobbing if your feet are used to the rough ground,” she said as they walked down the path. The little kid had kicked off his sandals the moment they left the car and was sauntering down through the trees, almost out of sight.

  “Er… maybe tomorrow,” said Armin, who didn’t like the look of the forest soil at all. Dirty. Very untidy. Never been swept. Probably poisonous scorpions lurking under every leaf. That kid should be wearing stout boots and be held by the hand, surely?

  Very irresponsible mother. Typical, crazy, New Age nutters.

  “This is the outhouse. The toilet, you know?” said Allie as they reached a small building that looked like a toy hobbit house, the first sign of human habitation in this wilderness. She showed him inside. It was all made of a dark orange clay, sculpted in strangely organic shapes. There was no door, but the seat was discreetly concealed behind a curvy wall. “You do your business,” said Allie, matter of fact, “and then you spread some of this on top.” This was fresh, yellow pine shavings from
a bin that stood nearby.

  “Er… you don’t flush?” he said.

  “Nope.”

  “Where does it go, then?”

  “To the compost, eventually. There’s water and soap, here.” There was a water tank outside, under the deep eaves of the roof, with a small tap, a basin, a piece of soap in a dish, and a towel. Wow. Mittelalterfest. Welcome to the Middle Ages. Don’t forget to wear your plague mask, ladies and gentlemen.

  “While you are here, by the way, you will have to stick to plain soap. Van will give you some. No detergents, no fancy toiletry. The gray waters go directly into the garden, and Van is a stickler for these things. Marseille soap and black soap. Nothing else.”

  She sounded so tight and bossy that Armin didn’t bother to answer. He had his own toilette bag, of course. He wondered if it would be confiscated. Anything was possible with these eco-fanatics. But he wasn’t going to wash with a piece of old flaky soap. That was just absurd. Don’t these people know that old flaky soap positively breeds bacteria? Yuck.

  They had just stepped out of the outhouse when a great baying started in the bushes, and then a huge shaggy black dog with pale green eyes bounded up the path at a run. Armin’s heart jumped up to his tonsils, but Michel ran to meet the beast with a delighted squeal.

  “That is Jade,” said Allie, unconcerned. “Van’s alarm system. Other than making a lot of noise, he’s a wretched guardian, though. Don’t be afraid of him. He’s very friendly.”