Forgetfulness Read Free

Florette DuFour, and Florette DuFour had never been north of Toulouse. So her dream was deferred and upon graduation from secondary school she arranged for a job at the post office and at night knitted sweaters, which she sold at the Saturday market in the square at St. Michel du Valcabrère. She designed a label,
Florette
in cursive script, pink on a white background. She sold as many as she could knit during slow times at the post office and at night. She hoped that a couturier from Paris, perhaps on vacation, perhaps only passing through, would admire one of her sweaters and offer to take a consignment.
Florette
sweaters would become as desired as a Schiaparelli evening dress, and in due course
Paris-Match
would take notice and schedule an article, "Florette of the Saturday Market." That was how film stars were discovered; why not sweater makers? But it seemed that couturiers were not in the habit of visiting St. Michel du Valcabrère because she was never discovered, in that way or any way, except as a village artisan admired by her neighbors. Instead, she married the postmaster, an older man, most considerate, who insisted she resign from the post office so that she could stay at home to look after the many children they were sure to have. But there were no children and ten years later the postmaster developed a cancer and died, leaving her a little money, not much, enough to live on; and of course she continued to knit sweaters.
    For the longest time she believed that no man would ever look at her, thirty-five years old, a widow, plump around the hips, a trace of gray hair at her temples. Men would look through her as if she were
a pane of windowglass. She would live for Saturdays at the market and dinner alone or with her girlfriends (some of them widows as well), talking about their absent husbands and the life that lay ahead. St. Michel du Valcabrère was not a village that renewed itself. Handsome strangers did not arrive on horseback, as in American movies. Most families had lived in the district for generations, and it went without saying that everyone knew one another and there were the usual feuds and friendships handed down through the years. So it was hard to start afresh in the village because everyone came with a history, intimately known and impossible to revise, and the same was true of reputations. Not long after the postmaster's death, Monsieur Bardèche, father of three, husband to hatchet-faced Agnès, came by her table at the market and bought a sweater, and the next week he bought another and suggested they were so well made and nice-fitting that he might want one tailored to his own specific dimensions, a bespoke sweater, and to that end he would be happy to come by her house any time for the fittings, although Monday would be best because he closed his café early on Mondays; that would give him ample time for the fittings. So it was not true after all that men would look through her like a pane of windowglass. She had many such opportunities and was extremely choosy about which ones she accepted and which she declined but her Monday evenings were filled, mostly. All this reminiscence was in and out of Florette's memory in seconds, and she was left wishing she had taken one of the sweaters with her, the white cardigan or the blue turtleneck, when she had begun her walk that afternoon. She smiled when she thought of the article in
Paris-Match
and how she had read so carefully each word and examined the photographs, particularly the one of the handsome atelier on the second floor of the building at Place Vendôme across from the Ritz. Beautiful automobiles were parked nearby; strollers had stopped to peer into the windows of the jewelry store close to the second-floor atelier. Her eyes filled with tears. And then she heard a rustle in the woods, and someone cursing, and returned to present time.
    These four were rough, not casual hikers out for a Sunday stroll.
She thought probably