Amour Provence (9 page)

Rachida had always wanted to see the inside of the pink-turreted château that had been an object of fascination for her since she'd first arrived in France, but she knew that Mohammed wouldn't allow her to meet with a strange man, much less work for him. Amina cajoled her. “Come, Rachida! At least speak to him. Then if you're interested you can discuss it later with Mohammed!”

The temptation to see the grand house was overwhelming. Rachida put Mohammed's objections out of her mind and agreed to meet her friend there later that day. She dressed in her very best clothes, a perfectly pressed abaya the color of apricots that fell from her shoulders to her toes and a light veil that draped over her head. The veil was just a token that completed the ensemble, not a required covering as it had been at home, and her gleaming black hair was fully visible. Rachida removed the golden chain Mohammed had given her, fearing it might appear ostentatious to
the eye of her potential employer. Then she folded everything away in a drawer of the small bureau that contained her meager possessions, a heavy djellaba for winter, a few extra blouses and pants for work, and some plain abayas that her husband enjoyed seeing her wear around the house.

“You always keep the place so neat,” he had told her many times. There wasn't room to fit a folded spiderweb, as her mother would have laughingly said if she had ever seen their home. Neither of her parents, nor her brothers and sister, had visited, and Rachida had not yet returned home to Morocco to see them. She hoped she and Mohammed would be able to go during the winter of the following year.

That afternoon, as the sun beat down upon the thin layer of clay tiles that served as their roof, Rachida found herself perspiring beneath her light cotton robe. She powdered her underarms knowing that it wasn't just the heat that was bothering her. Since their marriage, she had never done anything to displease Mohammed. As she smoothed the bedcover one last time before leaving, she tried to convince herself that if the house was left in perfect order she could ignore the painful fact that she was going against her husband's wishes. Mohammed was a reasonable person and she hoped to be able to change his mind if she decided she was interested in a job at the château. As a young woman, Rachida's hours had been filled by a multitude of chores completed under the eyes of her observant parents. If she'd married someone from her home village, her life would have been even more constrained. “In Morocco, a woman needs her husband's permission even to laugh!” was how
Amina put it. But there, her days would have been full of activity surrounded by people who had known her all her life, quite a change from the lonely hours she often spent waiting in the tiny house for Mohammed to return from his day at work.

Rachida opened the front door and felt the metallic pain in her belly that had begun to trouble her. She sat down for a moment until it subsided and then she rose and locked the door behind her. It was a steep climb to the top of the village, and as she made her way past the houses piled like a disorderly jumble of sugar cubes, her sandals sank into half-melted tarmac. She kept to the narrow backstreet, glancing here and there, hoping not to encounter anyone. Even in the bright afternoon light, it was as if a protective blanket had fallen around her and she feared anyone penetrating it. When she'd first arrived, she hadn't understood the things that were said to her on the street, but now she comprehended the unfriendly words and rude gestures all too easily. Her black hair and tanned complexion were a red flag to certain of her neighbors. They didn't care who she was, they just knew she was from North Africa, the Maghreb, and they didn't want her, or anyone like her, living nearby. She was especially careful to avoid the center of town, where villagers lingered on benches beneath the shady sycamore trees or stood around chatting with their neighbors at the butcher shop or the newspaper stand.

Just after her arrival in Beaucastel, she had eagerly explored the little village that Mohammed said was to be her new home. In the market square she'd spied a wicker basket in front of the
épicerie
filled to the brim with oranges. Their
fresh green stems and shiny leaves reminded her of her father's citrus grove and she'd run forward to buy some. When she'd chosen two and entered the dusky interior of the shop, the woman behind the counter had flicked her fingers at Rachida as if she was a dirty cat, motioning at her to leave. Outside she'd tried to replace the fruit, but the woman ran after her, shaking her hands and shouting. When Rachida got home she stood staring out her lone window wishing she had never left her family and her quiet village. Even though she'd grown up in simple circumstances, she'd never experienced such treatment. She peeled and ate both oranges for her lunch that day, even though the effort not to cry tightened her throat and made it difficult to swallow the bittersweet morsels.

That evening, Mohammed had kissed her hair, annoyed that he hadn't been able to protect his wife from the thoughtless cruelty of others. As he pressed her to him, he tried to explain in a sensible way why things were the way they were. “You know that France ruled most of North Africa for over a hundred years,” he told her. “In Algeria, there was war for independence and much violence. After many deaths on both sides, the French colonists were finally forced to leave and they lost everything—land, homes, businesses. Some had lived in the Maghreb for generations! When they look at an Arab face, it reminds them of all they've lost.”

As Rachida mounted the path to the château that day, the church spire jutted against the cobalt sky, reminding her of the minarets that sprang from the domed mosque near the place where she'd been born. And then, turning onto the
path just above, she saw Monsieur Le Lièvre, the one Frenchman who had been friendly to her right from the start. Even when she'd understood not a word of the language, he'd always passed her with a smile and spoken in a soft and gracious way so that she knew what he expressed was meant to be kind. He was a very pale man, unusual for the Midi, and especially unusual for a farmer, which she knew he was since he always carried a burlap sack of potatoes or onions on his back that he sold at the outdoor markets in surrounding villages. In addition to his white skin, he had a shock of snowy hair that fell in tufts over his forehead, making him look like a schoolboy even though he must already be an old man.

“Salut, ma belle,”
he said to Rachida as they neared each other. “You look ravishing in that beautiful robe!”

“Merci, monsieur,”
Rachida replied. She knew that everyone called the man “Lapin
,
” a name that meant rabbit. But she didn't know why and felt it might be rude to use a nickname, so she always addressed him formally.

“Terrible heat today,” he said. Despite the temperature, he was wearing a flannel shirt and a thick denim overcoat along with a large black beret, wide as a tart pan, that he wore flat on his head. “I hope you're going someplace nice and cool!” he said, giving her a nod. She smiled at him and continued on.

At the top of the hill, her friend Amina stood waiting at the iron gates of the château. She was dressed in a gray djellaba trimmed with gleaming embroidery. The robe made her look bigger and much older than her thirty-eight years, since it accentuated her large bosom. But she looked distinguished,
her chin held high, and her eyes, elongated with kohl, glinted with pleasure as Rachida approached. Their very first meeting had been at the town's
lavoir
, where most of the Arab women gathered in the morning to wash their laundry. Mohammed had brought Rachida there early on, knowing she'd be well looked after, since, like her, most of the women had come to France as young wives with little knowledge of the culture in which they would be living. Standing at the basin where water gushed from a metal spout, Amina and the other women had taught Rachida her first French words:
L' eau. Savon. Soleil!
But it had been Amina who had taken Rachida under her wing, and despite the fact that Amina was nearly her own mother's age, they'd quickly become close.

Amina lived in a cinderblock house at the edge of town where she'd raised her two boys, Fahmy and Mustapha, with her husband, Tariq. In the garden were the same pots of peppers that Rachida's mother grew, fiery red and green capsicum shaped like squiggling snakes, along with purple aubergines and heavily fruited tomato vines held in place with twine just like at home. The first time Rachida saw it, she'd had to cover her face to hide her emotion. Amina had made a pot of steaming mint tea that they drank together at a low table outside. “Don't worry,” Amina had told her. “You'll see. It's better here. A woman can earn her own living!”

Amina had showed Rachida the resident's permit that allowed her to work, along with the card that gave her free medical care, and most astonishing, a driver's license, a thing almost inconceivable in the Moroccan countryside,
where one almost never saw a woman behind the wheel of a car. Rachida hoped that someday she too would have the special papers that granted so many privileges.

Once a week, the friends went together to the outdoor Arab market to buy vegetables and halal meat from the butcher there. Amina lent her the French cahiers that she'd saved from her children's schooling and spoke to Rachida only in French so she would learn. But Amina was often out at her various jobs and most days Rachida found herself striding over deserted paths, up through woods and vineyards, and quite often lingering at the chained and padlocked gates of the rose-colored château whose towers poked like the sharp horns of some mysterious beast squatting beyond the clustered leaves of a grove of live-oak trees. Mohammed told her that the place had originally been built by crusaders, men who fought the Arabs centuries ago. “They say a treasure might be buried somewhere up there,” he'd said, and Rachida thought of the tales she'd heard as a child of wealthy sultans and casks of gold.

That afternoon, the château gates were open. When Amina kissed her, Rachida recognized the familiar perfume of oil-of-argan soap. “You're right on time,” Amina said. “That's good because Monsieur Descoing is always in a rush. You'll see. He constantly checks his watch!” Rachida's heart, already beating from the climb, pumped even more strongly and she whisked away a drop of perspiration that was coursing down her cheek.

Amina took her arm and said, “I know he's going to like you.”

Together their feet crunched over the graveled driveway where rosemary hedges bristled along the length of a stone wall.

“They say that where rosemary grows well a strong woman is in residence,” said Amina. “But Monsieur Descoing is a bachelor. I don't know if he's looking for a wife.”

They went through an arched doorway into a garden where a fountain in the shape of a child's face spouted water into a moss-covered basin. Rachida breathed in the moist air, remembering the shaded gardens of Morocco where there was always a fountain or pool exalting the luxury of pure flowing water. Here there were neither mosaics nor marble inlays like they had in her country, just the natural world gone wild. It was obvious that the garden had been untended for years. Dead bushes protruded from flattened beds invaded by weeds, while across the lawn sea-colored ivy wrapped its strangler grip around the few specimen trees that still graced the hillside. But the savage riot of the living and the dead only made Rachida long to plunge her fingers into the rich brown earth, so different from the hard blanched clay in the vineyards, where clods broke and crumbled like loose cement beneath one's feet.

As they crossed the stone terrace, the white peak of Mont Ventoux rose through distant cloud cover. The land beyond the garden sloped gradually downward to a vineyard of dried-up and broken grapevines overgrown with tall grasses. Rachida's robe billowed and she felt chilled by the sudden breeze. She shivered, thinking she shouldn't be in this place at all, betraying Mohammed's trust. A part of
her wished that she could fly away with the wind and disappear into the clutch of trees below, but she kept pace with her friend.

“Come on, don't be nervous,” Amina whispered.

Rachida turned toward the fortified towers whose massive stone bases were splayed like giant elephant feet. The two women climbed low steps to a wooden portal that had been left ajar. From there they passed through a hallway into a vast, light-filled room where a pair of French doors opened onto a balcony facing west. A smallish man with black hair slicked into place with pomade lounged shoeless on a white velvet couch. Monsieur Descoing. On the ground next to him sat a large black telephone that looked like an outsized toad. The only other furnishing was a marble dining table the size of a ship with a dozen or so chairs around it. Except for an enormous stone fireplace, all was light and air with high ceilings decorated with entwined plaster leaves painted white. Tall windows on three sides let in the blazing afternoon sunshine.

Descoing glanced over as if surprised to see them and then looked at his watch. Out of the corner of her eye, Rachida saw Amina smile, and her nervousness and guilt were momentarily dispelled. The man had full lips like the clowns depicted on posters advertising traveling circuses, and as he turned to Rachida his marine-blue eyes rapidly traced their way over her, obviously deciding things before she'd even had a chance to speak. He did not get up and Rachida felt grateful, fearing the idea of shaking hands with a strange man.

“This is my friend Rachida,” Amina introduced her.

“I didn't expect you to be so young!” Descoing said. He crossed his leg and drew it toward him with soft, manicured hands. “But you look intelligent. Amina told me you are. I like that because I want to hire only the best people to work for me. It will just be a few hours a week at the beginning, but later I will need full-time employees. I'm beginning renovations on the château soon. In the meantime, I want some things planted in the garden before I begin landscaping next year. Do you know anything about gardens, Rachida?”