The Crowded Grave
paste that he added, little by little, to the
navarin
until he judged the sauce thick enough. The buzzer sounded on the timer, and he added the vegetables to the stew and left it to simmer gently while he served the soup into two bowls and followed her to the big table in the living room. He brought the glasses, lit the candles and sat.
“Bon appétit,” he said, and her lip trembled.
“If you knew how often I remembered you saying that whenI was in the hospital,” she said, and tried to laugh. “Those history books you sent me brought me back to earth, but I’m glad you read the Prévert.”
He stirred rouille into his soup, added some cheese and croutons and raised his glass to her.
“It’s good to see you at my table again, and I really appreciated the Prévert, even when a poem made me think of you.”
“Which one?”
“ ‘L’automne,’ ” he said, and recited:
Un cheval s’écroule au milieu d’une allée
Les feuilles tombent sur lui
Notre amour frissonne
Et le soleil aussi
.
“Yes, that one,” she said, her voice wistful, looking into her wineglass. “And the one about the sun disappearing behind the Grand Palais, and my heart following it.”
He recited:
Comme lui mon coeur va disparaître
Et tout mon sang va s’en aller
S’en aller à ta recherche
.
“How do you remember them?” she asked softly.
“It was the kind of schooling I had, old-fashioned provincial teachers, lots of things to learn by heart,” he said. “I can still recite Napoléon’s speech at the battle of the Pyramids about how forty centuries looked down upon them. Come on, enjoy your soup while it’s hot,” he said, changing the mood. He knew it wasn’t his schooling that made him remember the poems. It was reading and rereading them aloud on wintry evenings asGigi slept before the fire and thinking of Isabelle in the hospital with her thigh smashed by a bullet.
“They weren’t crazy, those teachers. A pity we’ve lost all that.”
“I must have been one of the last generation to be taught that way.” He removed the empty soup bowls and came back with the casserole. He raised the lid and the scent of thyme and rosemary from the bouquet garni he’d made began to fill the room. He excused himself and went out to his herb garden, turning on the outside light to pick some of the new parsley that was emerging. As he returned, Bruno smiled at the sight of Gigi slipping out past him to patrol the grounds, pausing by the chicken coop with his ears up and one paw raised, a good sentry going on duty.
He tore up the green leaves to sprinkle them on each of the plates she had served.
“This looks wonderful and smells better,” she said. “I can’t think when I last had
navets
. It reminds me of my childhood. Is that where the word
navarin
comes from?”
“Some say it comes from the battle of Navarino against the Turks, but I prefer to think it comes from the
navets
. You can use any spring vegetables but if you don’t include
navets
, then it’s not a
navarin
,” he said, pouring the red wine from the carafe. “Tell me more of your life in Paris. I can’t really imagine it.”
“There hasn’t been much of it. Not long after I started in the minister’s office, I was sent to Luxembourg to get into the bank accounts of that mysterious food company that turned out to have been set up by our own defense ministry. You remember that?” She began to eat. “This food is wonderful, and this wine. It’s your usual Pomerol, no?”
He nodded. “It’s the ’03, from the heat-wave year, so it won’t last much longer.”
“Mmm … delicious. After a month or so in the office they deployed me to London to liaise on joint operations against illegal immigration, and then I got shot at Arcachon and was in the hospital for nearly two months. I could still be on convalescent leave, but I was bored and they let me come back to do office work.”
“Friends?” he asked, and offered her a second helping. She shook her head, but held out her glass for more wine.
“Some from school and childhood who’ve moved to Paris,” she said. “Some other women who were at the police academy with me and a few colleagues in the office, that’s about it. There’s a book club at the ministry that I’m thinking of joining, and I go to a lot of
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