Stanley Elkin - Van Gogh's Room at Arles

Miller continued beside the man as he moved at a brisk pace through important districts of the city.

They came to the port and stared at the great yachts, little smaller than small cruise ships some of them. The brother- in-law pointed to individual yachts and called the names of their globally rich owners, powerful fortune celebrities. Sometimes he would repeat the name. Miller nodded appreciatively with a look of great understanding, as though Rita’s kinsman had delivered himself of some sober, clever gloss. He seemed to wait until he was certain Miller had taken it all in and then coughed his readiness to resume their tour. Miller smiled agreeably and they renewed their inspection of the city.

They made their way to the flower market, which now, in the late afternoon, was apparently experiencing a second wind as proprietors of the various stalls — each putting forward a featured variety — began to grant heavy discounts on great bunches of flowers.

The brother-in-law pushed roses on Miller, tulips and mums and daisies and carnations. He handed him dahlias and sprays of orchids.

“No no,” Miller said, returning them, doling francs but protesting, “what would I do with them? I go back in three days.”

His guide told Miller but my God, man, flowers of without the sun march in only fourteen years, this is certainly truly isn’t it? and pressed another bouquet on him. Miller handed the new bouquet back to the brother-in-law, who then gave him another new bouquet which Miller again returned. They looked like jugglers.

The fellow shrugged and (Miller had lost track by now of where they were in relation to their starting point) they continued walking.

This is the arrondissement of tomatoes and apples, said Rita’s relative.

They seemed to be in the heart of the produce district. As in the flower market, business had pretty much wound down for the day. The few people still picking over the somewhat faded fruits and declining vegetables were older, less chic than anyone Miller had yet seen in Cannes, and seemed to deal with the merchants from a position of strength, beggars who could afford to be choosers, hard bargainers who openly scoffed at the men who, even as their trucks backed up to haul off the unsold produce, countered all offers with proposals of their own, as indiscriminately, almost high-handedly, they continued to sweep their unsold merchandise into crates and cardboard boxes probably intended to hold distinct varieties (let alone classes) of produce. It was apples and oranges, thought Miller. Potatoes and cauliflowers. And smelled this faint mash of garden liquor, fermented earth chowder.

Just as one of the merchants was about to load a last carton of mixed fruits and vegetables onto the tailgate of his truck the brother-in-law spoke up.

Make halt! he declared. Please! he implored. If the mister demanded to steal the fruits of without the sun march, he thought he, but a poor miserable, could give for the most grand strawberries and others, say, many many thousands of francs.

It’s good, the merchant agreed, and gave over the carton to Rita’s bus-driving relation. Who, in turn, handed the fellow maybe four dollars American.

For the soups of my spouse, the brother-in-law said, and they were out of there.

They saw the district where chefs came for their meats in the early morning before the sun had risen, and a place near the docks where fishermen brought their catch to market. They even went into a church, not an old church but a large modern one, built after the war, no earlier than the late sixties probably, but by this time the bus driver was beginning to tire from carrying the not inconsiderable carton of day- old fruits and vegetables and he suggested that they arrest for a whiskey.

They stepped into a hotel.

They were looking for the bar when they heard music, a romantic, companionable melody of the easy-listening variety, and they made for its source.

They found a table in the almost empty bar and sat down. On a narrow stage in back an orchestra was playing and, beneath it, three couples moved across a polished, circular dance floor, which might comfortably have accommodated perhaps five or six times that number. Somehow, there being so few dancers gave the place an air (like so much of Cannes: the flower stalls and produce kiosks where commerce was winding down for the day, the moored, empty fishing boats by the docks and shutdown meat and fish markets, even the big and graceless church) of having been used up, some vaguely off-season sense of things, the dancing couples clutching each other out there on the floor not so much licentious — beyond licentious — as anachronistic, caught between day and night, in desperate, now-or-never, off-joint time.

Miller thinking as he drank his drink: How mysterious, something mysterious here.

Which is just when the brother-in-law nudged him, laying into him conspiratorially, even intimately (which Miller was certain he wouldn’t have tried with any of the other Fellows) with his elbow.

Attention beyond, he said. Attention beyond, attention beyond.

Miller looked at the bus driver, noticing for the first time that Rita’s relation bore, though he was at least thirty years younger, a striking resemblance to Van Gogh’s portrait of the peasant Patience Escalier. Both looked more Mexican than French.

“Non non, Monsieur,” he hissed, “ la-bas, la-bas,” pointed toward the dance floor.

Miller looked where he pointed.

Jesus Hans, wearing her Borsalino, was dancing with Inga Basset, his hands loosely cupping the psychiatrist’s rear end as though he held it in a kind of sling.

Inga’s thigh was planted in Jesus’s crotch and he rocked in place, slowly rising against it to the beat of the easy listening.

The scene was stunning to Miller, incredible, immense. Even the logistics were stunning. How had Hans gotten her away from Basset? How, if the idea to hook up with Jesus had been Inga’s, had she known where the tea dance would be?

The band finished its set. There wasn’t time to ponder the big questions. Neither Miller nor the driver wished to be discovered in their discovery and, without a sign passing between them, both rose at once to quit the bar and get the hell out of the hotel. Miller even picked up the brother-in- law’s carton for him, handing it over only after the man had found his bearings and Miller knew that they were well on their way back to the rendezvous at the hotel where Rita’s brother-in-law had given the keys to the bus (Rita’s bus! Miller suddenly realized) to the doorman.

They were about forty minutes early.

Miller spotted Russell and Hartshine at a table in the outdoor café. Indicating he was going over to meet them he gestured that the driver was welcome to join him, but the fellow declined, pointing from his watch to the carton.

The fruit is getting late, he explained to Miller. The apples of the ground were falling fast and it was necessary for some of the vegetables to make the bus.

Miller nodded and crossed the boulevard.

“How was your show?” he asked Hartshine and Russell. “What about it, boys? Was it worthwhile?” What he wanted most was to tell his colleagues what he and Rita’s brother- in-law had seen in the hotel.

Hartshine, without even looking at him, touched the points of his shirt collar. He appeared to straighten his bow tie.

Miller repeated what he’d said when he’d told Russell it was too nice to spend the day cooped up in a movie. He said that he and the driver had decided to go on this walking tour of Cannes.

“That guy,” Miller said. “He knows this town like the back of his hand that guy.” He told them about the stalls in the flower and produce markets. He told them about the yachts and the district where the chefs came to inspect the fish and meats they would be preparing for their restaurants. What he was dying to tell them was about Jesus Hans and Inga Basset. He wanted to tell them about the thigh Inga had thrust between Jesus Hans’s legs and the way Jesus held Inga’s ass as he dry-humped her to the accompaniment of some soft show tune. What stopped him, he realized, was that he’d be going back to Indiana soon and he understood how very complicated it was to speak one’s mind or make overtures into mysteries at the last minute.