Amandine Read Online Free Page A

paramour. I was his paramour
.
    How effortlessly you took me, dear Fabrice. A sweet from a proffered tray. Or was it I who took you? Supreme vendetta against my father, who’d said, “Don’t bother packing too much, a dress for evening, one for daytime strolls along the sea.” No cottage by the sea, only the burnt-milk stench of sorrowful halls. The good sisters of the Carmelites. “I’m doing this for you, my dear,” he’d said
.
    Yes, I was his dear, my father’s darling dear, plain as dirt save my beautiful hair. Lovely hair piled and massed like cream, white-blond waves of it caught in the stones of Maman’s marcasite clips. It might have been enough, my hair, Papa, it might have done for Jean-Jacques, it might have done for him or for the one who came from Béziers with the wood, the one who kept his eyes on me while he drank the marc.
“Bonsoir,
Mademoiselle Annick
. Bonsoir.
” My hair might have been enough. And for you, Papa, wasn’t I enough for you?
    Twelve-forty-five—no sooner, no later—pluck the radishes with the greenest leaves from the wet, black earth. Ten beauties into the lap of my apron. In the kitchen, shake the clinging dirt into the sink, rinse them under the cold-water tap, dry them on the blue and white towel, lay them, one by one—roots and stems untrimmed—onto the Char-bonnier footed plate with the rust-colored flowers. Three prints of butter to the side, the
salière
in the middle. From the baker’s boy, from the deep, narrow basket tied to his bicycle, I would choose
un baton ben cuit,
hold it to my lips to catch the broken blisters of its crust, open my hand, which clutched the two sous for him
. Bonjour.
    “Annick, Annick
. Pour vous,
” the baker’s boy would shout then as I was already running back into the house
.
    Straddling the bicycle, his feet flat on the road, he’d pull two barely burnt croissants from the pockets of his smock, hold them in his fists like pheasants by their feet. I would turn round, take his gifts
. “Merci, Émile. À demain.”
For Émile, too, my hair might have been enough. But back to your lunch. Tie the
baton
about its middle with the pale blue napkin, lay it above your fork. Five minutes before I call you, no more than five, draw wine from the barrel. A full balloon, cool, clear, smelling of apples and thyme
. “Papa, Papa. Déjeuner, Papa.”
I was plain and you were poor, Papa, too poor to buy a husband for me with a dowry, but my hair might have been enough
.
    “How close are we to the sea, Papa? I think I can see it, Papa. Is that it, is that the sea lying there beyond the hills? It is, it is. Ah, I can smell the sea in the breeze now, Papa.” You pulled short the reins, turned the carriage down a smaller road. Not even a road. Away from the sea. “But, Papa, where are you going?” Like a whip, your hand. The first time you’d raised it to me. “I’m doing this for you.”
    “But will they take my hair, Papa? Tell them not to take my hair.”
    Malicious laughter when we should have been asleep. “Would you like to join us, Annick?” They sniggered, my fellow novices, even as they wrapped it about my skirts, that heavy, sweat-smelling templar’s cloak, and as they folded the pointed hood low over my face. Twittering upon their pallets, then, “You’ll not be a novice for long, Annick.” One pull of the bell’s rope, my heart wingbeat on quiet water, head bowed, hands folded, mincingly I would follow the old monk through the black satin darkness to your private chapel, Fabrice. How old were we then, Your Excellency? You, the young, brilliant monseigneur, I, a month, two months under the veil, how old were we? How peccant were we, fiendishness spicing the lust? “I’m doing this for you, my dear papa,” I said under my breath. Mother of God, pray for us all
.
    And when I could no longer acquit my own shamelessness and tried to quit you, you cajoled me. You and then the abbess. “We all have our private misfortunes,