The Rose Café Read Free

dressed that evening in tight blue capris, a white blouse with a plunging neckline, and silver hoop earrings. Just above her cleavage she had suspended a tiny silver crucifix. It hung there like a talisman, as if to warn off ill-intentioned suitors.
    Chrétien rushed to the bar as she settled and, before she even asked, prepared a citron pressé in a tall glass with a china saucer and placed it in front of her, waving his hand with a flourish. This was, after all, Marie, the current love of his life, the reigning belle of the Rose Café.
    â€œIt was hot today on the rocks, no?” Chrétien asked.
    â€œToo hot,” Marie said. “I came in early for my bath.”
    â€œOh, but I am so sorry,” Chrétien said. “Naughty sun.”
    Marie had arrived with her parents a few weeks earlier and although she had many admirers, she had selected Chrétien as her consort. At the time, he happened to be the only one around the café who was about her age. He was a lanky young man with crinkly black hair and long-lashed, somewhat effeminate blue eyes who was a distant cousin of the patron , Jean-Pierre.
    Just before the dinner push, I walked down the narrow path to my room behind the restaurant to get a clean shirt. I saw the German guest they called Herr Komandante standing on a promontory above the cottage where I lived, his arms folded over his chest and one leg cocked forward. He was a portly man, dressed now in a blue-striped bathrobe and white espadrilles. His thinning, sandy-colored hair was wet and slicked back from his high, smooth forehead.
    â€œBeen for a swim?” I called.
    â€œYes. And now I shall prepare for my dinner,” he said.
    â€œJean-Pierre has done a good rabbit fricassée,” I told him.
    He considered this silently, nodding. One of his pastimes here was eating.
    â€œAnd what fish?” he demanded.
    â€œThe usual,” I said. “But Vincenzo has just come in with a big grouper.”
    â€œGood,” said Herr Komandante. “I will take that grouper. Grilled. And I shall begin with a plate of urchins, or perhaps the fish soup, and also a green salad,” he added. “You will tell Micheline, please. I will have one salad. Chestnut flan for the dessert.”
    â€œI will tell her,” I said.
    â€œAnd coffee.”
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œAnd I will take my digestif on the terrace this night,” he said as an afterthought.
    People at the Rose Café used to mock Herr Komandante behind his back. It was said, among other unfounded rumors, that along with his love for food and sun he had an eye for young boys. But I suddenly felt a wave of compassion for him, here alone on a French island, a German in the midst of a people with long memories, isolated by language and culture, and seeking only to enjoy a few sensual pleasures. Who could blame him?
    Back in the kitchen, the evening meal was in full swing. Chrétien and Micheline were rushing in and out, shouting for plates. Jean-Pierre was sweating and smoking, the ash salting his standard dish of grilled rascasse , a spiny red fish that he would season with myrtle, bay, rosemary, and other herbs brought in from the countryside. Micheline had started to spout her Sunday litany of complaints about the idiosyncrasies of certain diners; Vincenzo shifted his pans at the stove like a timpanist; and his wife, Lucretia, who helped on busy weekends, wandered in and out, talking loudly in patois and contributing little more than gossip about the diners.
    I filled a copper tub with boiling water from the stove and prepared for the evening onslaught, and soon the dishes were coming in, one load after another like wounded soldiers from the front: first a table setting of soup bowls, then a few smaller plates, then some dinner plates, and forever, like foot soldiers, the silverware.
    There was a perennial shortage of settings at the restaurant; it was not the cooking of Jean-Pierre and