Vacations from Hell

“This is just French history,” he said. “You learn it as a child. But it has always proved a point to me: anyone is capable of murder. Anyone. Many in the revolution said they killed to be free, but this does not explain the mobs…. The people who raided the houses, who dragged screaming people to the streets and tore their flesh, the washerwomen who cried for blood at the guillotine. Completely normal people, average citizens. The revolutionary spirit, it was called. It was never the revolutionary spirit. It was the spirit of murder. It is in France, it is everywhere….”



There was something officially weird about Henri now, at least to me. Maybe this was just a French way of being friendly: a little story about famous mass murders of the past to break the ice. He went on and on about various atrocities until I felt I simply had to bring a halt to the proceedings.



“Would you mind if I used your bathroom?” I asked as he took a breath between sentences.



This request caught Henri off guard for a moment, and he fumbled with his cigarette a little.



“Yes…of course. The toilet is at the top of the stairs.”



Henri’s house was much nicer than ours, but that made sense, as he actually lived there. The living room was very neat. There was no television in there—just a lot of bookcases, some camera equipment, a massive printer, and what seemed to be a nice stereo. The walls were covered in artsy photographs: some of the landscape and some of Henri and a woman, who I presumed was his wife. In one, near the top of the stairs, the woman was completely naked…but it was very tasteful and French and kind of touching. There were piles of books absolutely everywhere and a few dog toys on the floor.



The bathroom was right at the top of the steps, as he said. It was a stark room with blue tiles. There were no towels, no bath mat, no curtains, no toilet paper, no shower curtain—nothing soft. No soap, even. It was as if no one lived here, no one used this bathroom at all.



When I came back downstairs, Henri was standing in the wide-open doorway. A wind had kicked up, and the big red door banged away on the hinges into the face of the house. The wind whipped into the hall and sent things fluttering all over the place. None of this seemed to bother Henri.



“A storm, I think,” he said. “I think tonight. Can I offer you something to eat?”



“No,” I said quickly. “I should get back. My sister…she’ll worry.”



“Ah, yes. Your sister.”



“The pictures are really nice,” I said. “Is that your wife?”



He looked as if he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.



“The pictures along the stairs,” I said, pointing back at the dozen or more framed prints.



“My wife,” he repeated. “Yes. My wife.”



“We’ll be around for a while,” I said, slipping past him and out the door. “And I’ll keep an eye out for a lost dog.”



I walked back toward our house quickly, wanting to put as much distance between Henri and me as possible. The wind blew like hell the whole way back, throwing dirt and pollen in my eyes. I was a half-blind wheezing mess when I got back to our bedroom, where Marylou was in the same exact position, her tiny feet tucked up on the chair. She had closed the heavy blue shutters on the bedroom window to block out the wind, so now the room was fairly dark, lit only by an ancient lamp in the corner.



“People around here are weird,” I said.



Marylou looked up from The Big Book of Crazy.



“Define weird,” she said.



“Weird as in I passed one house on the way, and the guy in it was just standing around like a zombie looking for his dog, and all he talked about was the French Revolution and the spirit of murder and something about some suspect law. He was very creepy. He didn’t have anything in his bathroom—”



“Charlie,” she said, putting her thumb in her book and closing it. “I thought you stopped that.”



“I’m serious.”



But it was clear that she didn’t believe me.



“We should just go back to Paris,” I said. “Get back to town, take the same train we came in on. This place sucks.”



“Except that Claude’s probably on his way here. So we’d get there and have nowhere to go. Didn’t you have any luck with the phone?”



I shook my head.



“Well, Erique brought the groceries while you were out. We should eat, I guess.”



Erique had brought delicious food for us—roast chicken, bread, tomatoes, and soft cheese full of lavender. There was yet more warm Orangina. The wind battered the house as Marylou set our Hobbit-y table with the heavy blue-and-white plates from the cupboard. She closed the kitchen shutters as well, and the room went dark. I sat on one of the benches, staring at the pattern of knots and ridges in the wood of the table.