The Chateau Read Online Free Page A

was Algerian and had no name, so he couldn’t write it down in his little notebook.
    When they went up to their room, the images started coming once more. Their eyelids ached. They felt strung on wires.
    The street outside their window was as quiet as a cemetery. They undressed and sank sighing into the enormous bed, so like a mother to them in their need of rest.

    A FTER TEN O’CLOCK there was no sound in the little hotel, and no traffic in the street. The night trucks passed by a different route.
    At midnight it rained. Between three and four in the morning, the sky cleared and there were stars. The wind was off the sea. The air was fresh. A night bird sang.
    The sleepers knew nothing whatever about any of this. One minute they were dropping off to sleep and the next they heardshouting and opened their eyes to broad daylight. When they sat up in bed they saw that the street was full of people, walking or riding bicycles. The women all wore shapeless long black cotton dresses. An old woman went by, leading her cow. Chickens and geese. Goats. The shops were all open. A man with a vegetable cart was shouting that his string beans were tender and his melons ripe.
    â€œIt’s like being in the front row at the theater,” she said. “How do you feel?”
    â€œWonderful.”
    â€œSo do I. Do you think if I pressed this button anything would happen?”
    â€œYou mean like breakfast?”
    She nodded.
    â€œTry it,” he said with a yawn.
    Five minutes later there was a knock at the door and the waitress came in with a breakfast tray. “Bonjour, monsieur-dame.”
    â€œBonjour, mademoiselle,” he said. “Avez-vous bien dormi?”
    â€œOui, merci. Très bien. Et vous?”
    â€œMoi aussi.”
    â€œLittle goat, bleat. Little table, appear,” Harold said as the door closed after her. “Have some coffee.”
    After breakfast, they got up and dressed. She packed while he was downstairs paying the bill. The concierge called a taxi for them.
    â€œI hate to leave that little hotel,” she said, looking back through the rear window as they drove off.
    â€œI didn’t mean for the taxi to come quite so soon,” he said. “I was hoping we could explore the village first.”
    But he was relieved that they were on their way again. Six days on shipboard had made him hungry for movement. They rode through the flat countryside with their faces pressed to the car windows.
    â€œJust look at that woodpile!”
    â€œLook how the orchard is laid out.”
    â€œNever mind the orchard, look at the house!”
    â€œLook at the vegetable garden.”
    Look, look.…
    Though they thought they knew what to expect, at their first glimpse of the medieval abbey they both cried out in surprise. Rising above the salt marshes and the sand flats, it hung, dreamlike, mysterious, ethereal. “Le Mont-Saint-Michel,” the driver said respectfully. As the taxi brought them nearer, it changed; the various parts dissolved their connection with one another in order to form new connections. The last connection of all was with the twentieth century. There were nine chartered sight-seeing buses outside the medieval walls, and the approach to the abbey was lined on both sides of the street with hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops.
    The concierge of the Hôtel Mère Poulard was not put out with them for arriving a day late. Their room was one flight up, and they tried not to see the curtains, which were a large-patterned design of flowers in the most frightful colors. Without even opening their suitcases, they started up the winding street of stairs. Mermaid voices sang to them from the doorways of the open-fronted shops (“Monsieur-dame … monsieur-dame …”) and it was hard not to stop and look at everything, because everything was for sale. He bought two tickets for the conducted tour of the abbey, and they stood a little to