The car responded joyfully to the effort Antoine demanded from it. Its tyres squealed in the bends and it leapt up the hills and grumbled on the descents with that sweet musical sound that only a Bugatti makes. Behind it trailed aerial pools of castor oil-scented air. Antoine drove through Cannes and Nice without stopping. They were towns for winter visitors, deserted during the summer. Beyond the port at Villefranche, signposts indicated Menton and the high corniche road. He slowed down. Night was falling on Mont Boron. At altitude and this time of evening, the Bugatti’s engine was at its best and would take off at the slightest pressure of his foot, but Antoine was no longer in any haste. In three days, time and space had lost their meaning. After he had seen Geneviève he might go on to China. This admirable machine, so precise and eager, would never develop a fault. At La Turbie he stopped near the Trophy of Augustus to look down at the coast, where the yellow lights trembled and twinkled along the sea like a rosary. A bit further on, at Roquebrune, he noticed at the roadside a little restaurant whose terrace overlooked a slope sown thickly with plum tomato plants. The patron stood at the door in a singlet and linen trousers. An enormous, still-pink scar cut across his face like a stripe, deforming his mouth. He spoke with difficulty. Antoine sampled soupe au pistou, stuffed fleurs de courgettes and fried anchovies. The man served him with a weary casualness. In the kitchen, behind a bead curtain, two women were moving around busily: they could not be seen, but their shrill voices were audible, one young, one old. They did not appear, and once dinner was over they slipped away without passing through the restaurant. Antoine requested a digestif. The patron brought a bottle of Italian grappa and two glasses and sat down opposite him.
‘So you travel like that, eh?’ he said. ‘Leave us poor devils standing.’
Raising a hairy hand, he stroked the awful scar on his face with his fingertips, sighed, and gulped down his glassful.
‘What about you? What did you get?’
‘Oh, practically nothing. A few splinters in my right shoulder. Six months ago another piece came out. I’m not complaining.’
‘Except for hunting …’
‘Except for hunting.’
‘Where did you get to?’
‘Army of the Orient. What about you?’
‘Verdun. Douaumont. Do you like this grappa?’
‘Not bad. A bit young. I’m from Normandy, calvados is my drink.’
‘I wouldn’t say no. They used to give us a glass before we went over the top.’
They drank for a while, silent, then carefully exchanging a few words that let each place the other. Antoine would willingly have finished the bottle, but there were still a few kilometres to go, and the smashed face in front of him depressed him terribly. So many soldiers went to war with the idea of sacrificing their life, or possibly their left arm, but not one imagined that they might as easily come back with their face a pulp, and look like a monster for the rest of their days. He was conscious of his own cowardice, but without cowardice, as without lies, life was impossible. It looked as if there was a night of reminiscing ahead, scenes and stories spilling out in bulk across the tablecloth, stoked by the warmth of the grappa.
‘Were you an officer?’ the man asked, his expression wary.
Antoine felt sorry for him. He had no desire to leave a bad impression, or deepen the certain bitterness of this defeated man.
‘No,’ he said, ‘corporal. Finished as a sergeant.’
‘Like me. Stay a bit longer.’
‘I need to get to Menton.’
‘She’ll wait for you …’
‘It’s my daughter.’
‘Ah! I understand. Well, come by again one day. We don’t stick together enough. My name is Léon Cece.’
Antoine got back into the car and freewheeled down to Menton. The cicadas sang in the pine woods and tomato fields. The town was already deeply asleep. It felt like the sleep of a sick person, so respectful was the silence of the deserted streets. The fragrance of lemon trees in blossom and the dimmed glow of the streetlights were redolent of hospitals. The houses were hidden deep in jungly gardens, walled behind high gates. Not a fishing boat moved in the dock. Antoine drove cautiously along the Promenade and eventually found a passer-by who told him the way to the clinic, a large turn-of-the-century detached house deep inside a silent park. The windows were shuttered and the doors locked. He switched off the engine, turned up the collar of his jacket, rested his head and arms on his steering wheel, and went to sleep.
It was not the dawn that woke him, but the sound of a pair of shutters opening on the balcony above his head. Geneviève appeared in a white nightdress with a ribbon in her hair. She seemed terribly thin to him, and pale, but more beautiful than before, a creature so fragile that the morning breeze or a shaft of sunlight might kill her.
‘It’s you, Papa!’ she said. ‘I thought it was. I was sure I heard the sound of a Bugatti last night. Is it the new one?’
‘Well, it’s the new one for now, the Type 22, four cylinders. Bugatti’s planning to replace it soon with the 28, which is apparently a marvel.’
‘I already like that one!’
Antoine puffed himself up. ‘Do you want to go for a spin?’
‘It’s difficult so early. The door’s still locked. A bit later, if you like.’
‘I’ll go and have a coffee. Look, I’ve brought you some nougat.’
He tossed two boxes up to the balcony, and Geneviève retrieved them.
‘Thank you! It’s so sweet of you to think of spoiling me. I adore nougat. When you come back, could you be really kind and bring me cigarettes and matches?’
‘You smoke? That’s not good.’
‘Nothing is good from where I’m standing.’
‘Really? I thought you felt better. You’re worrying me.’
From her pout he recognised his daughter from several years before, his little girl whom he had kissed on the doorstep of La Sauveté on the morning in August 1914 when he had left to join his unit. She had changed quite suddenly: now she was this frail young woman with an oval face and loose blond hair, who made him feel shy and intimidated.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
‘But you won’t get better!’
‘Do we get better?’
He realised that he wasn’t sure enough of the answer to be able to convince her. He could only think of distractions.
‘Do you need perfume?’
‘Well, if you can find something fairly modern …’
‘I’ll try.’
A figure in pyjamas appeared on the next balcony, a dishevelled man who began to gesticulate, showering them with insults.
‘What the hell is going on? Are you mad? There are people
