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| Maurice: a bit of a bore. |
Louis Shalako
Maurice
Maintenon and his wife Aurélie
lived in a two-story house on the outskirts. According to him, he and his older
brother Alex had worked the farm together for many years. When the older
brother just couldn’t do it any longer, they’d leased out the land, rented out
the old family farm house, and Alex, a widower, had eventually gone into the
old age home. Maurice and the family had moved into town,
living on the margin between profit and loss, or so he said. Given time, he’d
own this house too. He ran it all, his life even, as a business, as he said. If
nothing else, he didn’t have to work anymore, and commodity prices were, in
general, going up with the improvement in the economy after years of depression
and a halting recovery.
Everyone knew there was some kind of a war coming, what with Germany’s Anschluss with Austria, Mussolini going into Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, just on the other side of those mountains, Japan invading China, and all of that sort of thing. Their tenant-farmers were clearing brush and planning to increase production, of which he took a small share as well…it also improved the value of the land, and at their own expense and labour to boot.
The house, was two and a half stories tall, a stolid cube of a building, all in a kind of sandy-coloured brick, with a portico, mature trees, and a curving drive out front. The lot was quite large, but then they were used to Paris with its boulevards lined with four and five-storey maisons. Standing shoulder to shoulder, block by block. Something as simple as a front lawn was practically unheard-of. There was another building out back, what might have once been stables with servants’ quarters above was now probably a three-car garage, with room left over for other things.
The room was big, with three-metre ceilings, cove moldings, a big plaster rosette around the chandelier, a fireplace that smelled a little but hadn’t been lit in a while, and a good hundred and fifty pictures. These were all ornately framed, in a huddle and a muddle on every available centimetre of every available wall and panel. The curtains were heavy and dark. There were cushions scattered around, and doilies on the backs of the chairs, there were figurines and bric-a-brac, beautifully ornate little lamps, and it very much reminded Hubert of his grandmother’s house. To go into a bedroom and to open the closet would be to get a good dose of moth-balls right in the honker. His grandmother had never thrown anything away in her life, as he recalled, in what had been a standing family joke.
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| To grandmother's house we go. |
The wallpaper was black, with creamy vertical lines and arabesques of pale white lilies that spoke more of death rather than any great, spring-like vision of life and loveliness. The sitting room was something of a museum-piece, better yet, a mausoleum, in a homage to better times…or maybe just other times.
Maurice had turned out to be something of a bore. Hubert hadn’t taken a note in fifteen minutes, yet it would have felt rude to simply snap shut the note-pad and stuff it away. It would have also been futile, that was for certain. Here was one person who would not be able to take a hint. The man smoked a pipe, which at least meant they could smoke too.
They were going to need it.
“The last great female presence in the life of Louis XIV, Madame de Maintenon was first brought to the king’s attention by Madame de Montespan. Serving at first as governess to Louis XIV’s illegitimate children, well away from the prying eyes of the court, she later married the king in secret. Eventually Madame de Maintenon deposed her rival and became the dominant female force at Versailles, where she imposed a new sense of order and propriety. Her real name was Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then.” LeBeaux, fucking LeBeaux, the idiot still seemed to be encouraging him, and it seemed as if the old man would talk all day.
Tall, spare, with wisps of white hair sticking out here and there, there wasn’t even much of a family resemblance.
“Louis’ first impression of her, it appears, was that she was unbearable.” The man was inexorable, as the dark brown eyes regarded them with a trace of moisture as he warmed to the subject. “Eventually, he cozied up to the lady.”
“I always thought that horse racing was the sport of kings.” Hubert was appalled, he’d been positively biting back on sarcasm, but luckily, it seemed like Maurice didn’t get the joke.
He was tempted to say something about the sexually over-privileged, but thought better of that one.
As for LeBeaux, choking on a sip of tea, a laugh was the last thing on his mind. He needed air, and badly—
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| "...oh, really, that is extremely interesting..." |
They waited for the coughing and sputtering to go away.
Unlikely loves happened, according to Maurice, due to something called propinquity; a sort of desert island effect. This was about as close to humour as the fellow had gotten so far; but with the odd little glint in his eye, and eyes on Hubert’s for a moment, maybe he had gotten the joke after all. How that applied to kings and queens, lovers and mistresses was utterly beyond Hubert, but the man just kept going, like some kind of steamroller.
Oh, God.
As for his own wife, she’d long since retreated back to the kitchen.
The family, as it turned out, were in no way related to Madame de Maintenon, the famous mistress and ultimately, rumoured to be the mother of at least some of the children of Louis XIV, who as everyone knew was different from the one that got beheaded…thereby leading to the French Revolution. At least in Hubert’s own imperfect recollection…
The only problem was that it had taken the man fifteen or twenty minutes to get this far, the dreaded family album still unopened in his lap, and it was as if the man enjoyed telling stories that didn’t seem to have much of a point. Perhaps it all went towards showing character, whose, exactly, he couldn’t quite make out. It struck him that this was the man’s way of dealing with the grief, a grief which he shared. Still, it was definitely different. The peasant way of life revolved around birth, death, marriage and innumerable church holidays, he knew that much. Blood and topsoil was the key to understanding. More than anything, they wanted to provide for their children’s future, hence the brisk little trade in land when times were good. The lifestyle, the values, were largely centred on the belly, the family, (and the Church), rather than any great philosophy of living, as he thought of it. But this was one man, who really should have gotten an education…it might have done him some good, which was not the most charitable of thoughts.
Maurice had just lost his baby brother, of whom he must have been very, very proud, and that helped with the perspective.
And now the lady bustled in again, with a tray, and tea, and sticky little cakes and supressing a long, drawn-out groan, Hubert, for the sake of politeness, or maybe just necessity, settled in reluctantly for the long haul. It was the least he could do.
With Maurice momentarily distracted, Hubert snatched a glance at his watch. Ten-eleven a.m., and they were burning daylight at a phenomenal rate.
Lord, have mercy upon my soul—but this was just the first name on the list. They were hundreds of kilometres from home, the scene of the crime, or at least one crime, and it was all irrelevant, and it was about as close to quitting as he had ever been. Certainly in a long time—
And what in the hell did I ever do to deserve this—
All the unshriven sins of his lifetime passed before his eyes, figuratively speaking.
Well, Gilles must have left town for some reason, all of those long years ago, and perhaps this was one of them.
The word stultifying came to mind. And if this was a brother, what had the old man been like? Or the mother?
It was admittedly difficult to visualize Gilles, wearing rubber sheep-boots, driving a tractor, better yet, a team of horses, slopping the hogs, feeding the chickens, and listening to this shit over the dining room table…every fucking day for the rest of his life. Perhaps the choice had been easier than one would have thought…and maybe it was no choice at all.
“…now, if you think about it, when Louis XVI, former King of France since the abolition of the monarchy, was publicly executed on the twenty-first of January; ah, 1793, during the French Revolution, ah, when he was beheaded, and the Revolution began in earnest, to be related in any way to the Royal family or any kind of nobility, was to carry the mark of the Beast…there was that mob mentality, the popular imagination…”
Hubert ground his teeth and waited for it all to end.
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| Poor old Hubert, all the unshriven sins coming home to roost. |
For that reason, it didn’t pay to be too closely associated and that’s probably why the Maintenons had moved down here in the first place…
The eyes sought him out.
“Yes, you know, when Gilles was a very young man, he was quite the mountain goat, tramping all over these here hills. It was like he was gone all day sometimes, but he always came home for dinner!” At last, a trace of humour. “It was a funny thing. Gilles was never afraid of work. He did his chores cheerfully enough, most of the time, yet he’d skip school as often as he thought he could get away with it. He really did fish, too, all the boys did. Yes, they all did all the usual things. You know, at one time, he dreamed of being in the Tour—cycling, don’t you know, ah, honestly, he was like a big cat on that bike. Think of the downhills, where you’re going anything up to eighty or ninety kilometres per hour. He had the legs for it, at least back then, and you do have to climb too. Of course a young man has to have a job, as our father always said…a real job I mean, and this was when he thought of police work. All them books, don’t you know…”
Oh, God, would it never end.
“…be that as it may. So, when you think about the guillotine, certain moral questions arise, and I know Gilles thought about that very much, considering his employment, but that was really Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake and all of that. Look what it got her in the end…”
And it went on, and on, and on. Fuck, would it never end.
“I see, yes, oh, really, hmn.” And fucking LeBeaux was still there, still nodding, still prodding, still listening, and still encouraging the old man in the rather forlorn hopes of getting anything, anything at all.
Fuck. There was at least one other brother, and at least three sisters that they knew of…
Argh.
END
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