“It’s a confusing time for the group,” I went on. I was thinking of them watching us last night, as we filed into the bar, me among that group, inside it.
“Because we suddenly don’t know who to trust. There’s a fear that someone at Le Moulin is talking to the authorities,” I said. “It might be Pascal,” I added.
Françoise was so wounded by his rejection that I might get away with this.
“I don’t believe that,” Denis said. “Impossible.”
“Denis, anything is possible,” Françoise said.
“I didn’t believe it either,” I said. “And I’m still not sure. There is a small group of us who feel we need to watch out for the larger community, and not set us up for arrest.”
I named a bunch of people, including Aurélie, who were in on our plan. I cautioned to please say nothing.
“We knew it was Moulinards who set fire to that equipment at the reservoir,” Françoise said. “And because of that, we removed the SIM cards in our phones in Sazerac, before we arrived in town. You don’t show up and make yourself traceable when you’re already under a certain amount of heat, as we are. We are not sloppy.”
They told me they had set up a tent in a stand of woods on a hill behind a bus shelter off the D79. I arranged to meet them there in a few days’ time.
“WHAT WERE YOU TALKING TO THOSE FOLKS from Susa about?”
It was Nadia, emerging from the church as I walked to my Škoda.
She must have parked in some hidden spot. I had not noticed her car. Was I the one becoming sloppy?
“We need people to support the action in the works,” I said.
Sometimes it feels so good to be honest. Especially when it’s in service to a lie.
“What action?” Flames licked up into her eyes, and I could see that the old wound of being rejected was there with us now.
“I don’t know much.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
I told her about the mass disruption planned for the fair. I said that it would be a large-scale protest and that Pascal’s pick-me method of including people didn’t adhere. This was a question of bodies. The more of them the better.
“So that the cannon fodder will get kettled, I’m certain!” she said. “Hauled off in buses, for mass arrest. Hmmf! No thanks, Québécois! Those two will learn the hard way that Pascal doesn’t reject people and treat them like dirt only to pick them back up for no reason. He’s a user to the core! But far be it from me to interfere. They should know better. But they’re too in thrall to Pascal to give up on Le Moulin and see the truth. If they were smart, they’d get the hell out of here, which is what I’m doing.”
She said she and Bernadette were headed down to the Vaucluse, whose truffle season would be starting soon, and from there, they would work their way back north.
We said our goodbyes.
A FEW TIMES, exchanges between Pascal and the library boys fell to silence when I arrived, as if my presence were a candle snuffer, depriving their talk of air.
And once, as I joined Aurélie’s table in the mess hall, a conversation she was having with another woman dropped off upon my arrival. They both looked at their food. Unlike that day at our swim hole when Sophie and Paul had whispered, she did not later apologize.
Either these silences indicated that people were planning a melee, as I hoped, or the silences meant I was under suspicion. Whether they were promising or ominous, I pretended not to notice them, and not to notice the inconsistencies in the Moulinards’ treatment of me.
Pascal was always including or excluding people in little conversations and moments; this was how he moved through the social atmosphere of Le Moulin. And if he and the boys occasionally went mum on my arrival, there were times when Pascal seemed to shun them and favor me.
One evening he invited me, and right in front of Jérôme and Alexandre, to visit Jean, to discuss plans for the fair, which was seven days away.
Pascal and I were leaving to walk to Jean’s place—he lived outside the village—when Burdmoore appeared.
“Are we taking off for Jean’s?”
There might not have been a particular reason Pascal didn’t want Burdmoore joining us, but Burdmoore’s insistence on coming along was reason enough for Pascal to try to shed him.
“I don’t want to impose on him,” Pascal said, “by showing up with a bunch of people. I think it’s best if it’s just me and Sadie.”
“It’s not ‘a bunch’ of people. It’s me. I saw him yesterday and he invited me.”
I’d had my eye on the dynamic between Burdmoore and Pascal, still uncertain if it was based on mutual affection or some kind of enmity. It was seeming like the latter.
Jean’s place was a twenty-minute walk from Le Moulin, on the other side of Vantôme, where the village gave way to a patchwork of small hilly farms. The three of us set out.
“ ‘I’m a dream in seek of a dreamer,’ ” Burdmoore recited. “That’s Jean. Something he wrote in ’68.”
“He wrote that much earlier,” Pascal said.
“Well, he wrote it, is my point. And it took on a life of its own. Fah-Q heard about it. Put it all over the Lower East Side. Fah-Q was like Debord,” Burdmoore added for me, “but the Puerto Rican version. With guns.”
Pascal inhaled, as if steeling himself to stay quiet.
I heard a car behind us.
Pascal turned around.
It’s not her, I didn’t say, knowing he feared this could be Nadia Derain, who had already left for the Vaucluse.
