they were smugglers of drugs since they did not carry heavy packs. Whatever contraband they were transporting was lightweight, probably penny-ante goods, though the men themselves had an air of seriousness about them. She wondered if they were Berbers. They were dark-skinned and bearded, generally unkempt. She did not like the sound of their language, guttural and hard-edged, a sneering language, no music in it. The one with the lisp spoke so softly he could barely be heard, but his voice was coarse all the same, a sandpaper voice filled with menace. His tone reminded her of her long-absent father, a man whose anger was so deep it seemed prehistoric, the dumb anger of beasts, indiscriminate anger on eternal simmer until suddenly it boiled over. He had a head filled with golden curls and transparent blue eyes. Her father's soft voice and sly smile were always an announcement of violence, his accusation a quotation from Scripture, most often Psalm Forty-seven: For The Lord Most High Is Terrible. He Is A Great King Over All The Earth. He Shall Subdue The People Under Us, And The Nations Under Our Feet. He Shall Choose Our Inheritance For Us ... Her father recited from the Bible as he advanced from one room to the next, her mother retreating before him, hissing like a cat; and then a clamor, a table overturned, a dish smashed, and her father's low monotone. Florette was told to remain in her room until the storm passed but she never forgot her father's words and her mother's cat-hiss, the house filled with discord. He is not one of us, her mother said. He is an alien. Who knows where he comes from or who made him. He said he was born in the Alsace, son of a missionary. His name was Franc DuFour. His father's mission was in one of the former German colonies in East Africa. He worked with the heathen who lived on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. One day the father went away to Africa and never returned. The missionary's son turned up in St. Michel du Valcabrère, a dealer in farm implements, which he sold from the back of a prewar Renault truck.
As Franc was attractive, her mother said, I married him.
I did not know he was a lunatic.
I thought he would provide for us.
Instead, he had a bad outlook on life.
I think he was badly brought up.
Soon enough, Florette and her mother went to live with Tante Christine in Toulouse. When they heard that Franc DuFour had left St. Michel du Valcabrèreâa dispute with a farmer over an invoiceâthey returned to the house in the village. Florette never saw her father again. She was just five years old and her mother told her to forget about him. He was a lunatic with a bad attitude. He was violent and untrustworthy, mean with money. Pretend he does not exist, she said. And that was what Florette did and after a time she ceased to think about him in any specific way, except when she heard a soft voice with a lisp. Then he returned to her whole, his head full of golden curls, his ice-blue eyes, his heavy hands and wide shoulders, his broad brow, and his terrifying words from the Bible. She remembered the only phrase that he had ever said to her personally. She had no recollection of the occasion, only the words themselves: "Tidy up." Those must have been the words he lived by. Florette was distressed that the memory of her father was with her now. She did not want his memory anywhere near her but when she opened her eyes he was still there in the darkness, his bulk, his heavy brow, and his shoulders as wide as an ax handle, his lisp when he recited Psalm Forty-seven, and of course the curls and the evident necessity to tidy up. Her mother told her he was dead and Florette wanted to believe her, but didn't, quite. Well, they were both gone except for the life they maintained in Florette's imagination. This gave her an obscure satisfaction. She was lying injured on pine needles in the snow, her mind teeming with stories. They were her own stories, personal property. No one could take