Page 33 of The Strawberry Thief
11
Tuesday, March 21
Reynaud, I remember that letter from Rennes. I still remember the day it arrived: the way the summer sun shone on the Tannes; the scent of petrol and smoke in the air; the solemn way the postwoman delivered the letter to my father’s hand. We didn’t get many letters. In fact, it was the first one I really remember. The paper, like pressed thistledown: the writing as neat and as decorative as carving on a gravestone. Letters were usually to inform someone of a family death, and my father had no family – except for Tante Anna, of course, and his brother Modeste, who had died very early on in the war, stupidly, during an ambush, leaving his widow to run the farm and to raise their three children alone. I’d heard the story many times, mostly from Tante Anna, who liked to bask in reflected tragedy, while feeling none of the grief for herself. My father had only spoken of it once, in passing; very briefly.
‘I already knew,’ he had said. ‘We were twins.’ And that was all he would say of Modeste, the brother he had never known.
The letter was from the Mayor’s office in Rennes. It informed my father of outstanding debts left unpaid by Mirabelle Dartigen, who had fled with her children some years before, leaving her farm and orchard to ruin. It warned my father that unless the money was paid by the end of the year, the farm and the land would be seized and sold to appease the debtors. Any remaining proceeds of the sale would go to the State, unless claimed by a blood relative.
Tante Anna was vocal in her disapproval. ‘You’re not going to go all the way to Rennes! Not with the work to be done on the farm! And what about the children? They’re wild enough as it is when you’re here. How do you expect me to handle them?’
But for once, my father would not retreat. ‘The boy can look after Mimi,’ he said (he always referred to me as ‘the boy’). ‘I won’t be gone for more than a week.’ And that was the entirety of his contribution. My aunt protested, exhorted, complained. My father was immovable. His brother’s widow needed him, and even though he knew nothing about her but her name, he went to her aid as if he’d known her all his life.
Of course, those days were different. Country custom dictated that a brother, if unmarried, should wed his sibling’s widow. Tante Anna told us this, with sour relish, while he was gone. ‘He’ll bring her back with him, mark my words,’ she announced over our lowered heads. ‘He never had an ounce of sense. Why should this time be different?’
I pretended not to hear. Mimi was eating green beans one by one, with her fingers. It was a childish habit that Tante Anna hated.
‘Eat your food properly,’ said Tante Anna, reaching out to strike at Mimi’s knuckles with the tines of her fork.
Mimi didn’t say anything, but looked at Tanta Anna from under her hair. She had very curly dark hair, too thick to comb; too thick to plait. ‘Cheveux de nègresse,’ Tante Anna would say, which I understood to be criticism, though for what, I did not know. Mimi had stopped eating. The back of her hand was bleeding: four little pinpricks of scarlet, like strawberry seeds on the golden skin.
‘She doesn’t understand,’ I said.
‘Oh, she understands,’ said Tante Anna. ‘Your father may tolerate this kind of behaviour, but while you’re living under my roof, you’ll mind your manners, both of you.’
I looked at Mimi and willed her to pick up the fork right now, right now. Mimi looked back with her head on one side, like a baby blackbird.
‘Eat your food, Naomi,’ said Tante Anna in a dangerous voice. ‘Eat your food like a Christian, not with your hands like a savage.’
But my sister just looked at her from underneath that bramble of hair. Then she smiled – a big, bright smile with not an ounce of malice in it, and yet Tante Anna must have seen something, something that made her swell with rage—
‘Are you laughing at me?’ she said.
I tried to explain that Mimi was nearlyalwayslaughing – she laughed the way a blackbird sings, without either malice or meaning – but Tante Anna wouldn’t listen to me. She grabbed hold of Mimi by the hair. Mimi started to struggle and scream.
I stood up, but Tante Anna froze me with a single syllable. ‘No!’ I remember her standing above me, with that little black cross in the lace at her throat shining in the lamplight. She looked over ten feet tall to me – a statue carved from basalt and ice, her eyes shining like the moon on the Tannes, cold and dark and menacing.
‘You will finish your supper, Narcisse,’ said Tante Anna, addressing me, ‘and Naomi will stay in your father’s room until she has learnt some manners.’
I should have spoken up for her. I tried, but at eleven, the adult world is a continent of monsters. The prospect of facing down Tante Anna in all her glacial majesty was too much for me to contemplate, so I lowered my head and tried to ignore Mimi’s screams as Tante Anna bore her away upstairs towards the bedrooms.
Five minutes later, my aunt returned, looking grim and rather flushed. The key to the bedroom was in her hand, and she hung it on the key chain that she always wore at her waist. She resumed her place at table, and made a show of finishing her green beans and potatoes. Then she poured a glass of red wine and drank it rather quickly, as I tried miserably not to cry, swallowing the tasteless food in painful, swollen mouthfuls.
‘There,’ said Tante Anna with a smile that was sickle-thin and cheerless. ‘At last, a little peace.’
I said nothing, but gave a sniff, tasting the brine at the back of my throat.
‘Use your handkerchief, Narcisse,’ said Tante Anna, pouring herself another glass of red wine. ‘If you’re getting a cold, I suggest you don’t go outside tomorrow.’
I said I wasn’t getting a cold.
‘Good,’ said Tante Anna. ‘Then you’ll be picking strawberries. They’re ripe, and I mean to make preserves to put down for the winter.’
‘What about Mimi?’ I said.
‘Don’t you worry about Mimi. That strawberry patch by the old well, under the big oak tree. That’s where you’ll be working this week. And if you work hard, I’ll let you lick the pan when I’m done.’
This was a rare indulgence, I knew. I was supposed to be grateful. And yet the thought of Mimi alone, locked in my father’s bedroom while I worked outside, was too much for me to tolerate.
