Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Sabine and Marlow stepped back onto the Mirabelle square with their luggage. Her mum struggled a bit with her purse, suitcase, and all that paperwork. Sleeping for an hour on forbidden grass had only made the jetlag worse and had given Sabine a headache.
“What the—” said Marlow.
“I know,” said Sabine.
“I mean—”
“I know.”
“How will we even find our house? I don’t have Wi-Fi or data, which means no Google maps, which means wandering around like idiots. And I might need the bathroom. My stomach’s upset, like that time I got a call from Revenue Canada because I’d forgotten to file—”
“Your stomach’ll settle, Mum. Give it a second. Let’s just go and poke around.”
“I don’t want to.”
“There’re only five or six streets—look at the size of it.” Sabine squinted through the sunshine at the tiny village.
“Still,” said Marlow. “She couldn’t have given us a map?”
“We’ll find the house, and if we don’t, there’ll be someone to help. And if there isn’t, we’ll come back and ask.”
“She just said she’s closing shop. Look, it’s a ghost town!”
“It’s not a ghost town. We’ve met four people already.”
“Three. Luc, Guillaume, Rémy the devil incarnate. Three.”
“I met some guy while I walked around Nenier before, so four. And last resort, we can call a cab to take us to the hotel.”
“Do you see any cabs? And I don’t have cell service to call an Uber—”
“It’s going to be OK.” Sabine didn’t really believe that. For a second.
“Is it?” said Marlow. “That Rémy’s enjoying this. Let’s bring two unsuspecting foreigners five thousand kilometers across an ocean, plunk them in the middle of nowhere and see how they make out. Maybe there are hidden cameras, and we’re part of some cruel reality show. I mean—”
Why did people get something stuck in their mind and go over and over it until you wanted to scream or run away or both?
Sabine’s grandmother did that, and her mum had inherited the habit, as much as she was determined not to be like Grams. Sabine vowed to avoid all mental ruts.
Mind you, not having a clue what to do with your life was a rut, so best not judge.
All Sabine had done for the last year other than finish school was search for a university program that interested her.
To her mum, she’d presented a list of five options, with acceptances and scholarships to all of them, but to Willa, Sabine referred to it as “ the mild list”: undergrad programs that only mildly interested her.
“Can I escort you to your house?” said Guillaume, coming out of the mairie.
“Do you know where it is?” Marlow asked. “We don’t want to be an inconvenience.”
“I do, and it would be my pleasure,” he said, smiling.
Wow. Were these two flirting? Sabine and Marlow had been in France all of a minute.
“That would be very kind,” said Marlow, smiling back.
Definitely flirting. Well, good. Her mother was on holiday and deserved some fun. Maybe Sabine would find some fun for herself, too.
Most of Mirabelle’s houses were sad and dark, with an “à LOUER,” or “à VENDRE” rental or for sale sign in the window or on the door. And yet, it was an artist’s rendition of an ancient, miniature town, drawn with no clean, straight, modern lines: a picturesque yet empty playground.
“What would make a beautiful place like this lose all its inhabitants?” asked Marlow.
“There are old reasons and new ones,” said Guillaume. “Years ago, the main industries here were wine and cabinetmaking. This area was covered in vineyards until the phylloxera problem.”
“What’s that?” asked Sabine.
“A small insect, like an aphid. A parasite on the vine’s roots, imported to England on American vines in the 1860s, which spread to Europe, devastating our economy.
This region used to be called Champagne-Ardenne—it is now called the Grand Est, but in its former name you see how we made a living.
With phylloxera, we lost everything. Growers had to treat the land, dig up the vines, replant, change practices …
The struggles have lasted. If there are no vineyards where people can work, they must leave.
If there are no people, there is no need for cabinets. ”
“And new reasons?” asked Marlow.
“Let me ask Sabine,” said Guillaume. “Would you live somewhere with no internet?”
“Probably not,” she said.
“When we choose where to live, we consider earning a living, connecting with others, having places to shop. But no internet is a problem. Speaking of which, if you need it, you can find a signal in the square, because the mairie has internet. But not up here.”
“Why doesn’t anyone install a tower?” asked Sabine, eyeing the fort ruins at the top of the hill. “That’d be a perfect place.”
“No one wants to be responsible for the expense or the planning,” he said, turning a corner. “Not even Rémy.”
“How do you know where the house is?” asked Marlow, following. “Did you know the family?”
“I did. Monsieur Dubois. He was very old.”
“And his family doesn’t want it?”
“No. He had one son who moved away, oh, twenty years ago?”
“And why is it called Maison Perdue?” asked Sabine.
“Because no one could ever find it,” said Guillaume.
“Monsieur Dubois had been told there was a house for sale in the village, but up and down the streets he went, looking, and he kept missing it, so jokingly he called it La Maison Perdue. At that époque, when someone new moved in, the villagers assembled in the square and had a party. They put out tables and hung lights, had food and drink. Monsieur Dubois announced that he would keep the name for his new home. The villagers said, this is a sad name, no? But he was a poor worker in the vineyards, happy to find a tiny house he could afford, in a village of welcoming people. He said, if this is where I am lost, then it is the happiest day of my life. So that night, every villager gave their house a name, too. And then it was possible to make your way without numbers on the houses as in big cities, but rather, ici vous trouvez La Maison Perdue, ici, La Maison des Grandes Pierres, and so on.”
Guillaume turned into a passage between two houses of sand-colored stone.
He walked up narrow steps to a landing where there were two small, arched wooden doors on either side.
The house to the left, closed off to the world by dilapidated shutters, had a mossy courtyard the size of a postage stamp.
In it, behind a rusted gate, was a decrepit lean-to shed.
“Et voilà,” said Guillaume.
Marlow had vague memories of seeing the place on the website when she’d drunkenly bought it, but all they’d shown was the gnome-sized door, and the lovely view from the living room windows.
The house was so tucked away, they would never have found it on their own.
Marlow tried three keys on the ring before finding the right one.
The lock opened with a ka-chunk. She pushed open the door, and they stepped in.
They were greeted by the smell of mold and possibly dead animal.
Marlow flicked the light switch. Nothing.
Guillaume opened the windows and wood shutters, pushing them to either side.
They instantly came off their hinges, falling onto the stones outside and shattering into their component slats.
Kindling, basically. But that let in daylight to help get their bearings.
A few hooks constituted the front hall closet.
Marlow and Sabine parked their bags and took in the kitchen.
There was fake wood paneling for wainscotting and peeling mustard yellow walls.
A grimy microwave, toaster oven and coffee maker stood on a warped counter.
A broken office chair sat at a table missing a leg.
An old wood stove stood under a large stone hearth where, once upon a time, there would have been a fire and a spit for roasting a beast. And inside the fridge, door swung open, was a desiccated rat. Marlow was overtaken by disappointment.
“Shall we continue?” asked Guillaume, keeping his face neutral, ducking through a low doorway into the dark, dank living room.
Again, Guillaume opened the windows and shutters to let in the light.
On this side of the house, Marlow could see out past mossy red tiled roofs down into the valley.
Its patchwork of light green farmland, delineated by clutches of rich dark green forest, its low, wispy clouds sidling through the valley basin, transported her back to the pastoral paintings she’d studied in film school to learn how to capture an other-worldly feeling in shot-making.
They made ant-like tracks through the thick dust on the dark wood flooring, past an antique sideboard displaying sad, chipped plates: Monsieur Dubois’ good Sunday dishes, waiting in vain for family that had long ago stopped visiting.
Guillaume made his way to the bathroom, bowing his head to miss the cobwebs hanging off the ancient light fixture. Marlow and Sabine followed suit.
The light didn’t work in there either, and there was no window.
Guillaume used his cell phone flashlight to illuminate seven different kinds of cracked tile, an ancient chain-pull toilet with no water in the yellowed bowl, and a shower stall with no curtain.
Marlow tried the tap. It coughed, the pipes groaned, and brown water shot out in spurts.
In silence, they climbed narrow, circular stone stairs using a thick rope as a banister.
The second floor had low ceilings of bubbly, stained plaster—signs of a leak—amidst thick, square wooden beams. The first bedroom had peach-colored wainscotting, cracked pea-green walls, an ancient radiator, wall-to-wall orange shag carpeting, an old purple velvet armchair beside a boarded-up fireplace, and an antique double bed with a mattress under plastic.
A large armoire on carved feet reached right to the ceiling, doors swung open, empty save an ancient manual typewriter, plastic grocery bag, hat box, and a plaster figurine of a wild turkey.
“How did they even get this armoire in here?” asked Marlow.