the restaurant to customers. And in fact it became a good night out, since Juliette, as she circulated among the tables, had told Vandoosler that his three nephews were attractive, and he had passed the message on, with embellishments. This had immediately changed Lucien’s view of his surroundings. Marc had been touched by the compliment and Mathias had no doubt appreciated it in silence.
Vandoosler had told Juliette that only one of the three was really his nephew, the one in black, gold and silver, but Juliette was not one for technical or domestic intricacies. She was the kind of woman who started to laugh before the end of the joke. This made her laugh a good deal, which appealed to Mathias. A very pretty laugh. She reminded him of his elder sister. Juliette was helping the waiter to serve the dinner and rarely sat down herself, by choice more than necessity. By contrast, Sophia was demureness itself. From time to time she looked at the three diggers and smiled. Her husband was sitting beside her. Vandoosler’s gaze lingered on this man and Marc wondered what he hoped to discover there. Vandoosler often looked as if he was discovering something. Police tactics.
Mathias, for his part, was looking at Juliette. She was exchanging remarks quietly with Sophia, now and then. They looked as if they were enjoying themselves. For no particular reason, Lucien wanted to know if Juliette Gosselin had a man in her life, a boyfriend or some such. Since he was drinking rather a lot of a wine which had found favour in his sight, he thought of putting the question to her directly. And did so. It made Juliette laugh, as she explained that somehow or other she had ended up without anyone, but didn’t really know why. She was a woman on her own, OK. And that made her laugh. That’s the kind of attitude to have, said Marc to himself, envying her. He would have liked to know how she did it. Instead, he learned that the restaurant took its name from the wine-cask shape of the cellar, which had an arched stone ceiling, so that huge casks of wine could be stored there. The rooms were very fine: 1732, according to the date on the lintel. The cellar itself would be interesting to see. If the advance on the Eastern Front kept up progress, he might go and have a look.
The advance did make progress. Somehow or other, as sleep overtook other people, by three o’clock in the morning the only ones left, sitting round a table covered with glasses and ashtrays were Juliette, Sophia and the inhabitants of the ‘disgrace’. Mathias was next to Juliette, and Marc thought that he had managed this deliberately but discreetly. Oh no, the fool. He was sure that Juliette had excited feelings in his friend, even though she was five years older than the three evangelists-Vandoosler had found out her age and passed it on. She had fair skin, round arms, soft plump cheeks, long blonde hair, a clinging dress and, above all, that infectious laugh. But it had to be admitted she wasn’t trying to seduce anyone. She seemed perfectly content with her single status, running her bistro, as she had said earlier. But Mathias was on the way to being smitten. Not seriously, but a bit, all the same. When you’re down on your luck, it isn’t very clever to fall for the first woman you run into in the neighbourhood, however charming she may be. It only complicates life, and this was not the moment. And it leads to other things. As Marc very well knew. But perhaps he was mistaken. Mathias had the right to be attracted to a woman without it leading to anything in particular.
Juliette, not noticing how still and attentively Mathias was sitting, was telling anecdotes: about the customer who ate his potato crisps with a fork, or the one who came in on Tuesdays for instance and looked at himself in a pocket mirror throughout his meal. At three in the morning, everyone is indulgent towards this kind of story, whether you’re telling them or listening to them. So they allowed Vandoosler senior to tell them about a few criminal cases. He spoke slowly and persuasively. Lucien set aside his worries about rebuffing the advances from the Eastern and Western Fronts. Mathias went to fetch a glass of water and sat down again at random, without choosing a place, not even one from which he could study Juliette. That surprised Marc, who was not generally wrong about even the passing afflictions of his friends. So Mathias was not as easy to read as other people after all. Maybe he was operating in code. Juliette whispered something to Sophia. Sophia shook her head. Juliette appeared to insist. Nobody else heard what they were saying, but Mathias said:
‘If Sophia Simeonidis doesn’t want to sing, don’t press her.’
Juliette looked surprised, and Sophia, on hearing this, changed her mind. A rare moment thus came about, for the benefit of four men sitting in a wine cask at four in the morning, Sophia Simeonidis sang, in private, accompanied on the piano by Juliette, who was quite talented, but who seemed chiefly to be used to playing for the singer. No doubt Sophia was in the habit of giving such secret recitals, after hours, far from the stage, for herself and her friend.
After such a rare moment, one doesn’t know what to do. Tiredness seeped back into the muscles of the trench diggers. They stood up, and pulled on their jackets. The restaurant was closed and everyone walked home together. Only when they reached her house, did Juliette remark that one of the waiters had let her down two days before. He had left without warning. Juliette hesitated, before going on. She was thinking of advertising the job the next day but, as she seemed to have picked up a hint that…
‘That we’re down on our luck?’ Marc completed her sentence.
‘Yes,’ said Juliette, her face clearing, after getting over the worst of the difficulties. ‘So tonight, as I was playing the piano, I thought that after all a job is a job, and it might interest one of you. When you’ve been to university, a job as a waiter isn’t exactly what you dream about, but to tide you over…’
‘How do you know we’ve been to university?’ asked Marc.
‘It’s very simple, when you haven’t been there yourself,’ said Juliette, laughing in the darkness.
Without knowing why, Marc felt put out. Easily identifiable, a marked man, and slightly cross.
‘What about your piano-playing?’ he asked.
‘Ah, the piano’s another matter,’ Juliette replied. ‘My grandfather was a farmer, but fond of music. He knew all there was to know about beetroot, flax, wheat, music, rye and potatoes. For fifteen years he pushed me to study music. It was a sort of obsession with him. When I came to Paris, I worked at cleaning people’s houses, and there was no more music. Only years later did I take it up again, after he died and I inherited a lot of money from him. Grandfather had plenty of acres and plenty of ingrained ideas. He had set a condition before I could inherit: I had to take up the piano again. Of course,’ added Juliette with a laugh, ‘the solicitor said the condition couldn’t be enforced. But I wanted to respect my grandfather’s wishes. I bought this house and the restaurant and a piano. So there you are.’
‘That’s why you often have beetroot on the menu?’ smiled Marc.
‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘Beetroots in C major.’
Five minutes later, Mathias had been hired. He smiled, squeezing his hands together.
Later, going up stairs, Mathias asked Marc why he had not told the truth, pretending he couldn’t take up the offer, because he had something else in mind.
‘Because it’s true,’ said Marc.
‘No, it isn’t, you haven’t got anything else lined up. Why didn’t you take it?’
‘Because it’s a case of finders keepers.’
‘What do you mean “finders”… Oh blast! where’s Lucien?’
‘Oh-oh, we’ve left him at the bottom.’
Lucien, who had drunk the equivalent of twenty plastic cups, had not been able to get past the first few stairs, and was asleep on the fifth. The others hoisted him up under an arm apiece.
Vandoosler, who was in perfect shape, had seen Sophia home, and now walked in.
‘What a beautiful sight,’ he remarked. ‘The three evangelists all holding onto each other to attempt the impossible ascension.’
‘Why the hell did we give him the third floor?’ said Mathias, heaving Lucien up.
‘We weren’t to know he drinks like a fish. Anyway, there wasn’t any choice, remember, if we observe chronology. On the ground floor, there is the unknown, primeval chaos, total confusion, i.e. the shared rooms. On the first floor, the first stirrings of conscious life, man in his nakedness stands erect and silent for the first time, that’s you, Mathias. Moving up the ladder of time…’
‘What the hell is he on about?’ asked Vandoosler senior.
‘He’s preaching,’ said Mathias. ‘And why not? There’s no curfew on public speaking.’
‘Moving up the ladder of time, as I was saying, we jump over antiquity and land straight in the glorious second millennium, with the contrasts and the audacity of the Middle Ages, that’s me on the second floor. Next the age of decadence and collapse, contemporary civilisation. This one,’ said Marc, shaking Lucien by the arm. ‘Up on the third floor, bringing the strata of history and the staircase proper to an end, with the shameful Great War. Even further up, we have the godfather who continues to disrupt the present day in his own special way.’
Marc stopped and sighed.
