Shibumi

A third woman joined the two. Who is that girl showing her legs? We know nothing about her—except that she is a whore from Bayo

True, true.

As she passed, Ha

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” they chanted together, smiling in the open Basque way. “You are giving yourself a walk?” one asked.

“Yes, Madame.”

“That’s nice. You are lucky to have the leisure.”

An elbow nudged, and was nudged back. It was daring and clever to come so close to saying it.

“You are looking for the château, Mademoiselle?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Just keep going as you are, and you will find what you’re looking for.”

A nudge; another nudge. It was dangerous, but deliciously witty, to come so close to saying it.

Ha

She returned to the gate where an old gardener in blue working apron was peering out from the other side of the barrier. “I am looking for M. Hel,” she explained.

“Yes,” the gardener said, with that inhaled “oui” that can mean almost anything, except yes. He told her to wait there, and he disappeared into the curving row of trees. A minute later she heard the hinges creak on one of the side gates, and he beckoned her with a rolling arm and a deep bow that almost cost him his balance. As she passed him, she realized that he was half-drunk. In fact, Pierre was never drunk. Also, he was never sober. The regular spacing of his daily twelve glasses of red protected him from either of those excesses.

Pierre pointed the way, but did not accompany her to the house; he returned to trimming the box hedges that formed a labyrinth. He never worked in haste, and he never avoided work, his day punctuated, refreshed, and blurred by his glass of red every half hour or so.

Ha

When she reached the foot of a double rank of marble steps ascending to the terraces, she stopped, uncertain which way to go.

“May I help you?” a woman’s voice asked from above.

Ha

“Well, come up, Ha

They shook hands in the French fashion, and Ha

“No, not really. My uncle was a friend of his.”

“And you are looking him up in passing. How thoughtful of you.” She opened the glass doors to a su

“Just leave your rucksack there in the corner, Ha

With sunlight flooding in through the French windows, walls of light blue, moldings of gold leaf, furniture blending Louis XV and oriental inlays, threads of gray vapor twisting up from the teapot through a shaft of sunlight, mirrors everywhere lightening, reflecting, doubling and tripling everything; this room was not in the same world as that in which young men are shot down in airports. As she poured from a silver teapot into Limoges with a vaguely Chinese feeling, Ha

For no reason, she remembered feelings of dislocation like this when she was a child in school… it was summer, and she was bored, and there was the drone of study all around her. She had stared until objects became big/little. And she had asked herself, “Am I me? Am I here? Is this really me thinking these thoughts? Me? Me?”

And now, as she watched the graceful, economical movements of this slender Oriental woman stepping back to criticize the flower arrangement, then making a slight correction, Ha

That’s odd, she thought. Of all that had happened that day: the horrible things in the airport, the dreamlike flight to Pau, the babbling suggestive talk of the drivers she had gotten rides from, that fool of a café-owner in Tardets, the long walk up the shimmering road to Etchebar… of all of it, the most profound image was her walk up the cedar-lined allée in subaqueous shadow… shivering in the dense shadow as the wind made sea sounds in the trees. It was another world. And odd.

Was it possible that she was sitting here, pouring tea into Limoges, probably looking quite the buffoon with her tight hiking shorts and clumsy, Vibram-cleated boots?

Was it just a few hours ago she had walked dazedly past the old man sitting on the floor of Rome International? “I’m sorry,” she had muttered to him stupidly.

“I’m sorry,” she said now, aloud. The beautiful woman had said something which had not penetrated the layers of thought and retreat.

The woman smiled as she sat beside her. “I was just saying it is a pity that Nicholai is not here. He’s been up in the mountains for several days, crawling about in those caves of his. Appalling hobby. But I expect him back this evening or tomorrow morning. And that will give you a chance to bathe and perhaps sleep a little. That would be nice, wouldn’t it.”

The thought of a hot bath and cool sheets was almost swooningly seductive to Ha