Nadine Gordimer - Burger's Daughter

Madame Bagnelli had not yet shown her guest Alzieri’s olive oil mill, the last of the old ones still in use, but she and Rosa had taken pan-bagnat and wine and spent the midday hours in the olive grove that was Renoir’s garden. The valley of his view to the sea was raised to a new level with cheerfully ugly flat buildings. — People don’t want gardens they have to work in, they want balconies to tan on, to be just as good as the tourists who can afford to come here only to bronzer . That’s democracy in France — The flesh of Madame Bagnelli, dozing on her back on the grass, wobbled a little with laughter. — But look — the way the light falls on us, it’s the light he painted, isn’t it?—

The caretaker came to describe his noises in the head to her; she must have been in the habit of going there often. Rosa fell asleep and woke, under a tree that hung a tarnished silver mesh of foliage over its black trunk and her body. — Were they growing here before the house?—

— Oh probably before the revolution. If you live in Europe… things change (a roll of the untidy head towards the cement glare in the valley) but continuity never seems to break. You don’t have to throw the past away. If I’d stayed…at home, how will they fit in, white people? Their continuity stems from the colonial experience, the white one. When they lose power it’ll be cut. Just like that! They’ve got nothing but their horrible power. Africans will take up their own kind of past the whites never belonged to. Even the Terblanches and Alettas — our rebellion against the whites was also part of being white …it was, it was. But here you never really have to start from scratch… Ah no, it’s too much to take on. That’s what I love — nobody expects you to be more than you are, you know. That kind of tolerance, I didn’t even know it existed — I mean, there: if you’re not equal to facing everything , there…you’re a traitor. To the human cause — justice, humanity, the lot — there’s nothing else.—

— Had you decided that when you went away?—

The older woman sat up slowly, enjoying the leverage of muscles, rubbing upper arms, marked by the grass, like a cat grooming itself after a sand-bath. — Oh I don’t know. I accept it. But there is the whole world… I have forgotten I ever thought of myself like that. — The girl might have been showing curiosity about an old love affair. — To live with a man like Ugo — how can I explain—? He was in his life as a fish in water, with him you just stopped gasping and thrashing around… In Europe they don’t know what conflict is, now, bless them.—

At the bar Grosbois’ voice was always unmistakable; while he talked he kept his right hand slightly in the air ready to intercept interruptions from his wife. — Thirty years? — what is that? Are we all dead? We don’t remember? What have we French to be ashamed of that we don’t celebrate what we fought for, any more? If Giscard was worried about offending the Germans, that’s too bad. I’m not worried. The French people are not worried, êh. They took our food, they moved into our houses. We hid in the cellars and the mountains and came out to kill them at night in the streets. Should we forget all that? — The little house across the street from us, a boy of nineteen was taken hostage, they killed him — his mother is still living there. — I walk through Paris and see the plaques where they shot down people in ’44—

— He’s right, he’s right.—

— Yes, but what does the 8th of May celebration every year mean? Just another demo in the streets…—

— Exactly —no public recognition of the glory of the French nation, all that is thrown away — pouf! The President of the Republic finds it vulgar, êh. Thirty years ago we rid our country of the Nazis and that is nothing to go on marching in the streets about. But the students, êh — the clerks from the Banque de France, the PTT — every little man who wants a few francs more a month — that’s a spectacle for Paris.—

— In Vincennes they’re showing fascist films to the students—

— Ah, no, Françoise . That’s something different. That’s to warn them—

— Oh yes? She’s right — what’s the difference, the kind of film they’ll see and the way they already behave? They smash and destroy their own universities. They — excuse me, êh — they actually piss on the desks of their professors. It can only encourage them—

— What? Nazis kicking Jews and dragging women off to the camps—

— People don’t see anything wrong with violence. Since May ‘68, it’s a general way to get what you want. Am I wrong? You saw on television last night — that gang in Germany. The trial that’s begun… The Baader-Meinhof lunatics — they are the result of what happened in ’68. People only disapprove of each other’s aims, maybe, nowadays. They all use the same methods, hijacking, kidnapping—

— What was the name of the boy, the redhead, you should see, he’s become quite fat and middle-aged! (Gaby’s blown-up jowls in the mirror.) Really. There’s an interview with him in Elle —

— She means Cohn-Bendit.—

— In your women’s magazine? What do they dig him up for?—

— But of course! Ponia’s lifted the interdiction against him, he’s in Paris autographing some book he’s written.—

— Pierre, I’ll show you the article. It’s in the bathroom — I was reading while my tint was taking. Nobody’s noticed my hair…isn’t it a sexy colour?—

A young man came over to look more closely. — What did you use? I want to streak mine.—

— I’ve got half a bottle left, Gérard. Come past tomorrow morning, you’re welcome to it—

— They charge 60 francs in Nice. And I’m going to have to move out of my room, as it is—

— No? But why?—

— She can get double for it in summer. She needs the money, too. Her husband’s on pension and the granddaughter’s got herself pregnant, stupid little nana , I could see her asking for it.—

A man Rosa Burger greeted as she did many people because they passed one another so often in the village, at last came up to her in the bar with the formality with which Frenchmen approach women as a prelude to expectations of intimacy. Would she have a drink or a coffee with him?

— You are English? — Ah? I had a friend who went down there, in the building trade, like me. He’s making a lot of money. 12,000 francs a month — new francs, I’m talking about. But there’s trouble there, êh?…I don’t want trouble… And you like France? The coast is beautiful. Of course. There are some good places to go dancing — you’ve been to Les Palmiers Bleus, it’s just near Cap Ferrat? Don’t your friends take you dancing?—

She had seen a man and girl at a café table, tossing a snapped-off flower back and forth between them; the exchange, in any language, was as simple as that to manage. — I’m staying with Madame Bagnelli.—

— That’s the one in the little house just above the old Maison Commune? But she’s an English lady.—

— Only the name’s Italian.—

— No, no, Niçois, plenty of French people with those names around here. My name: Pistacchi, Michel Pistacchi — you can say that? I’ll take you to Les Palmiers Bleus — you’ll like it. Why do you laugh? You find me funny?—

— We won’t be able to talk — you can hear I don’t speak French—

— I am going to ask Madame’s permission to take you dancing.—

— Ask her? What for?—

Like most gregarious men, he was drawn to girls who appeared to be set apart from the company in which he noticed them. As if to confirm his instinct for such things, the foreign girl’s face broke with vivid amusement, she was generously promising when she laughed.