The Chateau Read Free

pocket dictionary. They saw a big blond man with blue eyes and bright pink cheeks. They saw a nice motherly woman. They saw a building with a sign on it:
Café de la Gare
. The station was new. In a moment this tiny world-in-itself was left behind. He looked at his watch.
    â€œWhat time do we change?” she asked, smothering a yawn.
    â€œAt two. It’s now seventeen minutes of one.”
    â€œWe’d better not fall asleep.”
    He felt his right side and was reassured; his wallet and their passports were in his inside coat pocket, making a considerable bulge. “Is it the way you remembered it?” he asked anxiously. “I know there weren’t any ruined buildings, but otherwise?”
    â€œYes. Except that we were in a car.”
    That other time, she was with her father and mother and two brothers. They went to England first. They saw Anne Hathaway’s cottage, and Arlington Row in Bibury, and Oxford, and Tintern Abbey. And because she was sick in bed with a cold,they left her alone in the hotel in London while they went sight-seeing, and she had a wonderful afternoon. The chambermaid brought her hot lemonade with whisky in it, and it was the first time she had ever had any whisky, and the chambermaid took a liking for her and gave her a gold locket, which she still had, at home in her blue leather jewel case.
    After England, they crossed the Channel and spent two weeks in Paris, and then they drove to Concarneau, which they loved. In her snapshot album there was a picture of them all, walking along a battlement at Carcassonne. That was in 1933. The hem of her skirt came halfway to her ankles, and she was twelve years old.
    â€œWhat is Cinzano?” she asked.
    â€œAn apéritif. Or else it’s an automobile.”
    Â â€¦Â five, six, seven. Knowing that nothing had been left behind, he nevertheless could not keep from insanely counting the luggage. He looked out of the train window and saw roads (leading where?) and fields. He saw more poppies, more orchards, a church steeple in the distance, a big white house. Could it be a château?
    The yawn was contagious, as usual.
    â€œWhere do you suppose the Boultons are now?”
    â€œSouthampton,” he said. “Or they might even be home. They didn’t have far to go.”
    â€œIt was funny our not speaking until the last day—”
    â€œThe last afternoon.”
    â€œAnd then discovering that we liked them so much. If only we’d discovered them sooner.” Another yawn.
    â€œI have their address, if we should go to England.”
    â€œBut we’re not.”
    She yawned again and again, helplessly.
    They no longer had to look at each hedgerow, orchard, field, burning poppy, stone house, barn, steeple. The landscape, like any landscape seen from a train window, was repetitious. Justwhen he thought he had it all by heart, he saw one of Van Gogh’s little bridges.
    Her chin sank and sank. He drew her over against him and put her head on his shoulder, without waking her. His eyes met the blue eyes of the priest across the aisle. The priest smiled. He asked the priest, in French, to tell him when they got to Carentan, and the priest promised to. Miles inland, with his eyes closed, he saw the gulls gliding and smelled salt water.
    His eyelids felt gritty. He roused himself and then dozed off again, not daring to fall sound asleep because they had to change trains. He tried willing himself to stay awake, and when that didn’t work, he tried various experiments, such as opening his eyes and shutting them for a few seconds and then opening them again immediately. The conductor came through the car examining tickets, and promised to tell him when the train got to Carentan. Though the conductor seemed to understand his French, how can you be sure, speaking in a foreign language, that people really have understood you?… The conductor did come to tell them, when the train was slowing