Old Bones Read Free Page B

de foie gras
and bread. "Wait until she gets him alone. She’ll eat him alive." He snickered at this witticism and glanced at his mother, who busily aligned her rings.
    Jules’ words, coming as they did in a moment of silence, carried further than he had intended. Claude Fougeray jumped out of his chair, brushed away his daughter’s hesitantly restraining hand, and marched quickly to the du Rochers.
    "Do you want to repeat that?" he said flatly, staring down at Jules, his thick fists held at his sides.
    Superficially they were somewhat alike, short and stubby-limbed, with torsos like beach balls, but Claude, older by thirty-five years than his distant cousin, was tense and compact while Jules was soft, flaccid, and spreading.
    "Apologize," Claude said.
    Jules coughed and blinked. Uneven streaks of red mottled his round cheeks.
    "I apologize."
    "Louder."
    Jules glanced dartingly at the others in the room: at his parents; at Claire Fougeray, who looked utterly miserable; at the dark, grave servant who stood against the wall watching impassively; at another threesome that sat looking on silently from a grouping of carved wooden chairs on the other side of the Louis XIV billiard table.
    "I apologize," he repeated, his eyes on Claude’s belt buckle.
    "Louder," Claude said again.
    "Really," Mathilde said, pulling at her pearl choker.
    René du Rocher echoed his wife weakly, reflecting her gesture with a tug at his little moustache. "Really…really, my dear man, this is really—"
    "No one’s talking to you," Claude said savagely.
    "Well…well, I was only—"
    "Don’t encourage him," Mathilde said under her breath in German, her face stiff. "Ignore him. He doesn’t know any better, the—"
    "Speak French!" Claude shouted suddenly enough to make the three of them jump. "You’re in France. Don’t give me any of that damned Boche! Ik-bik-blik-bluk!"
    "Who in hell are you to say that to anyone, you collaborationist bastard?" The speaker was one of the three people on the other side of the table, a square, big-boned woman of fifty in a functional tweed suit. She had observed quietly until that moment, then leaped to her feet and shouted, her husky voice strained with emotion.
    Claude turned on her. "Don’t you ever say that to me!"
    The woman was on the edge of angry tears, but her voice held steady. "I just said it." She lifted a trembling chin. "Do you want to hear it again? Collaborationist bastard!"
    "And—and what do you know about it, Sophie?" Claude shouted. "You were a baby; you don’t know anything. Why don’t you go back to America where you belong, where everything is so wonderful? You and your—your cowboy husband."
    He was losing his momentum. Jules, who had been sitting rigidly, sank inconspicuously back, flowing into the crevices of his soft chair like melting butter, as if he thought he might escape Claude’s notice altogether.
    Claude stared menacingly around the room, as if to ward off attack, and leveled a stubby finger at the woman. "You know how much worse it would have been around here if I hadn’t gone along with the Boches? Sure, all the heroes were running around the hills singing songs with the
Maquis,
but I was the one kissing Nazi asses and saving lives. If not for me—"
    "If not for you," the woman said, "Alain would still be alive."
    An electric silence gripped the room. Mathilde jerked sharply and gasped.
    Claude stared at Sophie, paralyzed with rage or shock; it was impossible to say which.
    Sophie began to speak again, then closed her mouth as her eyes filmed over with tears. "Oh, the hell with it," she said in English, and then turned away from him and strode out of the room.
    Her two companions, still seated, looked uncomfortably at each other. After a moment, the older man stood up, grayhaired, and rawboned like his wife, and went quietly out after her. The younger man continued to sit, embarrassed by the intensity of a scene he had imperfectly comprehended. Then he too stood up, and