The Elder Man Read online

  There were some giggles again, but Van’s mellow voice was uncommonly deep and portentous right then, and people exchanged some nervous glances. Armin could not have said if they were awed and a little uneasy or just embarrassed by all the mystic abracadabra or aware, as he was, that the topic, fascinating though it was, had raised some hackles in the gathering. Monica was obviously not happy about the shift in the conversation. This all sounded very patriarchal, sure. And Jean-Pierre got up briskly and said he’d fetch more wine. Allie followed him quickly to the kitchen, saying she’d make tea. The new bottle passed ’round, the wine was praised, and those who preferred tea hastened to go and help with the tray and mugs. The talk moved back to Brexit, the US elections, and work-place discrimination and media representation and cultural appropriation.

  Armin scooted carefully closer to Van.

  “Please define Underworld,” he said, a little skeptically but also interested. He spoke in a lower tone this time, isolating their conversation from the general chatter.

  Van shrugged, but he answered kindly, with great composure. “Who knows, really? Some would say it’s the world of the dead. Before the Christians, you understand, it would not have been Hell and Heaven. Many Gaulish legends speak of a place where the souls of the dead lingered awhile before they left the world entirely or before they reincarnated. The Welsh and the Irish speak about marvelous lands of youth and everlasting wealth. Golden apples, silver branches, and whatnot. And there are all those magical realms where time moves differently and the hero spends three nights there, just to return and find that he’s been away a hundred years. How would you explain that scientifically? There is no match for it in accepted physics. I think. I am not a physicist. But it crops up so often in the old tales that one wonders, non? It is fascinating.”

  Van’s eyes were as kind and warm as usual but also disconcertingly intense as they held Armin’s gaze in a lock.

  Armin was silent. This hit rather close to home in a twisted way, and he was at a loss for words. He wondered if it was just coincidence, or if Van knew more about him than he had suspected. Had Anja sent him news of Armin’s debacle? Was Van supposed to draw him out and then lecture him about the madness he had committed?

  But before he made up his mind what to say, Van shrugged again and in a much brisker tone he said, “Or it might be that the underworld, or otherworld, is nothing more than a different state of consciousness and the old horned chap is merely a clever shaman with a fancy hat and a good eye for certain funny mushrooms.” He grinned.

  “Well, perhaps,” said Armin. He was, after all, disappointed that Van had chosen to back away from the former, more challenging train of thought, but he realized that it was not a very fitting topic for the present company, and he didn’t want to monopolize their host. He made a mental note to come back to it when he had a chance to talk to Van alone.

  “By the way,” said Van with a wink, “sorry about the kick.”

  “Oh, I think it was a good idea to kick me,” said Armin.

  Van laughed, regarding him with what seemed genuine affection.

  Later, as he helped tidy the tables and the small kitchen, he happened to be alone with Jean-Pierre for a minute. Jean-Pierre looked like a botched-up drawing of a very handsome man. He was muscular, but a little too short to be imposing, and he had a nice, regular face that nonetheless lacked sharpness. His hair was just a bit too dark to be blond, and his eyes were on the gray side of blue, so that, on the whole, he seemed somewhat colorless. He had an engaging, slightly gap-toothed smile, when he smiled, but he was almost permanently scowling, and right now, he was positively incensed.

  “Van,” he scoffed. “Il n'est pas stupide, mais…” He tapped a finger to his temple to indicate that, in his opinion, Van was a little touched in the brain pan. “When ’e builds houses, ’e makes sense, if you like all zat sort of ecological woo-doo, but when ’e starts going on about tous ces dieux cornus de merde…” He shook his head and went on muttering darkly for a while.

  Armin thought that Jean-Pierre’s beef with Van had more to do with his girlfriend than with Van’s views on ancient religions. He rather thought that if Van had wanted Allie for himself, he could have had her any time he wished, judging by the star-struck looks Allie was always giving him. And Michel would certainly not stand in the way. But he didn’t think it was his place to say so to this bristly, glowering Frenchman nor that it would be much of a comfort if he did, so he just made a noncommittal noise and went on washing cups. Fortunately, Meintje came into the kitchen, and Jean-Pierre did not press the matter further.

  “Here’s the last of the mugs,” she said with a smile.

  “Thank you,” Armin replied, remarking again on how good she looked tonight. She wore great gold hoops at her ears, which had an air both tribal and sophisticated and seemed quite bold in a woman of her age. Her hair was cropped very short, a courageous cut that was at odds with her generous, motherly form and gave her a sharp, alert, smart look.

  “Shall I finish washing up?” she asked.

  “Nah,” he said. “I don’t mind playing house in the kitchen.”

  She laughed and squeezed his arm affectionately.

  “I am really sorry about your husband,” he said quietly. “What was his name?”

  “Bernard,” she said.

  “How are you doing? Really?” asked Armin.

  Meintje looked at him with deep, unflinching eyes, as if gauging if he meant the question or if he were just engaging in chitchat. He held her gaze.

  “I thought I would die,” she said after a second or two. “I wanted to, for a while. And you sort of … hang on, you know? To the loss and the absence. Because it’s all that is left. And you feel like finding peace is a betrayal almost. But ultimately there is just so much grief a heart can take before it breaks or heals. Healing is not necessarily the easier option. Or the most desirable. But it happens, eventually, whether you want it or not. Life goes on.”

  He wanted to say something, or maybe just touch her, a half-hug, a pat on the shoulder, anything. He didn’t know how. She smiled at him fondly and squeezed his arm again.

  Later as people began to stir and make their goodnights, Allie fetched Michel, deep asleep, from Van’s bedroom. She had a heavy bag of dirty clothes, the kid’s and her own, over a shoulder and a generally harassed and exhausted look.

  “Do you want me to carry him to the car?” asked Van at the door.

  “I’ll carry him,” said Jean-Pierre rather stiffly and plucked the child out of Allie’s arm brusquely.

  Michel stirred and whined unhappily. Van frowned. Armin thought that Jean-Pierre could simply have taken the bag and saved everyone the little nasty scene. But it’s none of my business. He said his own good nights and slunk off to the palace and blessed solitude.

  ****

  Allie

  Allie trudged up the path to the parking place, feeling glum and ready to weep with sheer exhaustion. She remembered the brief time, two years or so, when this had been the path to her home.

  Van’s home, of course, not hers, but he had made a place for her at the time when she—and Michel—needed it most. And even if that place was perhaps not quite as deep in his heart as she would have liked, it was still there. And there were times, even now, when she wished she could just go and curl up in the little guestroom where she had lived and bask in the warmth of Van’s friendship.

  Well, I can’t.

  So she walked to the car, opened the door, put Michel in his seat, buckled him up, and drove home, to the house she now shared with Jean-Pierre. They had come in two different cars and drove home in two different cars.

  I love Jean-Pierre, she thought staunchly as she drove in the night, following his taillights down the narrow winding road. He was caring, responsible, open, and uncomplicated. And hilariously funny and truly nice, at least when he was not behaving like a jealous prick, which was to say when Van was not around.

  It was difficult for Allie not to be
around Van, however.

  Allie had met Van fifteen years earlier, in the summer of 2004, while on a long vacation at her parents’ cottage in the Correze.

  Her mother’s old friend Carol had invited her to her summer house in Padirac, enthusing over the phone, “I have this amazing guy over for a few days. He’s building me a pizza oven in the garden! He’s a bit of a wild man, really, but you should come and see!”

  “A pizza oven?” Allie had said, perplexed. You could buy ready-made pizza ovens in any garden center and assemble them in a couple hours. It didn’t seem worth traveling over twenty kilometers just to see one being built. But Carol’s home was a wonderful eighteenth century mansion in the beautiful countryside of the Quercy. Padirac was within walking distance of all manner of great historical and natural sites. If the oven building turned out to be a bore, there were other things to do. So she had gone.

  The oven building was not a bore.

  As it turned out, the pizza oven was not going to be a ready-made concrete one but an amazing hand-sculpted thing made of clay dug from the property, sand, and straw.

  The builder looked wild indeed, with that mane of brown hair and an unkempt brown beard, which parted, often and irresistibly, to show a dazzling smile. Allie had watched him working for three minutes in the wet sticky clay and had been immediately engrossed. He had been willing, nay delighted, to teach her and a few other people that wandered in and out of the house and the project for the few days it took to complete. The incredible design of the oven had been his and so, of course, had been the expertise, and yet he had somehow managed to make them all feel accomplished. They all had learned something real and important, not just on how to build an oven but about the relationship between the ground, the place, the value of things they had always taken for granted—like time and soil and sunlight—and the making of bread had become something sacred, something of a miracle. On the last night they had lit the fire in the belly of the rising phoenix and watched sparks and smoke rising out of her open beak—the out-stretched neck of the bird had been cleverly made into a chimney. Curled up into the warm benches in the phoenix wings, they had felt like the earth had gathered them close to her fiery heart and taken them in.

  Well, that was how Allie had felt, at least. The wine might have had something to do with it, and Van’s deep, smooth voice and his smell, which had something of moss and mushrooms, something somehow cleanly dirty, like clay, like hay, like a forest after a rainy day.

  Looking back objectively, she had to admit that he smelled also of those vile cigars he smoked. She had never managed to get him to quit, even after Michel was born.

  Allie had been only twenty years old, a student in economics from a very good, very conventional and tolerably well-off family from Sussex. The full extent of her youthful rebellion until then had been a tentative interest in yoga, meditation, essential oils, and the healing properties of crystals. Van had been in his mid-thirties, or a bit older—Allie was not sure—and solidly anchored to the ground by a number of invisible but very real roots to do with his building and his gardening and foraging and very practical no-nonsense knowledge of herbs and their uses, although he could spin a wondrous tale about herbal folklore and ancient mythologies when he was in a storytelling mood. Allie had immediately responded to that rootedness and to a primal, earthy sort of energy in him that was not exactly sexual but was nonetheless magnetic and tantalizing.

  She had learned he was going to build a small meditating cabin on the property of a different friend—all British expats in the area were more or less connected—and made sure to be invited there, too, to help and learn. In truth she was well and hard in love. He was not a typically handsome hunk, but he was the type that grew on you with acquaintance, with his warmth, his smile, his incredibly expressive eyes, his quiet charisma, and she had followed him around, to her parents’ dismay and her own surprise, from project to project, more like an adoring puppy than like an apprentice, although she did learn much, and well.

  In retrospect, Allie had to admit that Van had navigated that explosive situation with admirable delicacy, treading a wonderfully thin line between brotherly complicity, playful banter and strategic, tactful retreats. Allie had finally come to the conclusion that either she was not his type, that he was not, so to say, on the market, or that he was one of those surprising people described by the A of the ever-increasing LGBTQPA acronym. She had finally taken a year off from it all, traveled to India, and come back with her head screwed back on the right way again, ready to share with Van the deep friendship that still united them to this day almost fifteen years later and with the bizarre idea of turning Van’s sparse, more or less spontaneous bouts of teaching into a shared business. She had the networking skills and practical sense needed on the logistic side of things and had learned enough to be of material help in the workshops. He had his amazing talent. It made sense. Even so she had been astonished when he had taken her idea seriously and even more amazed when the firm, after a faltering start, took off to the point that they could pick and choose their commitments and set a fair price on their services.

  Then she had met Damien, and married, and her life had been just … perfect.

  And then Damien’s car had flown upside down into the night over the edge of the D673 just outside Gourdon, right in front of l’Abbaye Nouvelle. There were signs all along that road. Slow down, dangerous curves ahead, frequent radar speed controls. But Damien had always been a bit of a daredevil.

  And Michel was born without a father to raise him.

  ****

  Van

  Van finally put them all out the door, scattering a few goodnight kisses among the children and women—this was France after all—and made his way to his bedroom where he fell face first into the pillows without even undressing.

  He groaned with exhaustion and frustration and made, not for the first time, two resolutions.

  One, not to engage in further discussions with Monica. It’s not worth it, it’s not worth it, it’s not worth it. If I could just strike her dumb with a bolt of lightning and be done. Now, that would be a handy trick. But as things were, there were only two ways about it, ignore her tirades or fuck her. It would certainly sweeten the woman down a little, but jeez, there is just so much I am willing to do, even to preserve the general harmony of the workshop.

  And two, please, please try not to hit Jean-Pierre in the teeth with a crowbar. As a means of persuasion, it lacks a certain finesse, and it always upsets the nicer ladies.

  He finally rolled over onto his back and took a deep, deep breath, reaching for inner peace. By the third breath or so, he was calm enough that his jaw relaxed and the tight frown between his eyebrows unknotted itself a little. He sat up, pulled his t-shirt off his back, shed his pants, socks, and briefs, and creeped under the blankets. He was tired, but he could not fall asleep yep.

  He was both sorry and worried for Allie, and wondered, not for the first time if he should have done things differently years ago when they first met and later also. Even now. He wondered in fact, as he had done before, if he should have accepted her love and settled for her or shut her out of his life for good.

  It was difficult for a man who wasn’t an asshole to turn down the advances of a delightful girl he liked. But he had never been in love with Allie. She was everything a friend should be and a very beautiful woman, even—no, especially—after she had put on some weight with her pregnancy. Plumpness suited her. She was the very picture of the northern girl, more Scandinavian than English, blonde, clear skinned, and sunny, and there was a sort of deep cleanliness to her. Even when she was covered in clay, she still shone out, pink and gold, like an icon. And she was such a thoroughly good girl. Too clean and too good perhaps, at least for his tastes, and although he did not mind having a one-night stand between two grownups that fully understood each other, he did not wish to do that to a really young girl, or even, later, to a grownup woman, who was obviously head over heels in love with him an
d would attach a meaning to the event very different from him.

  So he had navigated the choppy waters of their early friendship with as much care as he could. He had done so because he genuinely liked her, in a perfectly non-sexual way.

  He had been terribly relieved when she had stopped being in love with him and had started behaving like a sensible woman. He had been even more relieved when she had met the right man and married him. And he had been heartbroken when he died. Heartbroken and in a whole lot of trouble. It would have been so easy in the next year or two, just after Michel’s birth, to slip from being her friend to being her lover, just out of a wish to comfort her and be a father to her child.

  But he still did not love her. Not that way. She just wasn’t the one he was waiting for.

  He had a secret feeling that both Michel and Allie could do better than Jean-Pierre. But they could do much worse too. Jean-Pierre was a good man, genuinely devoted to Allie, and he was doing his best with Michel, hindered only by the fact that Michel adored Van.

  Well, is it my fault? What was I supposed to do with him? Push him away, keep him at a distance, as I kept Allie at a distance as much as I could? Maybe I should have. But, well, I could not, after all. I can be cool, but even I am not that cool.

  Of course Allie’s friendship and Michel’s love for Van rankled Jean-Pierre to no end. He was awfully and ungraciously jealous. Van was irked by the jealousy. It was immature, impercipient, and so damn archaic. Much worse, it was embarrassing to Allie and hard on Michel. And it was undeserved and misguided since Van really didn’t want to shag his girlfriend, nor she him.

  At least I hope so. I hope we are well past that.

  But that wasn’t the sort of thing you could just tell a bloke. He had to work it out for himself, somehow.