Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
“Non, mais! Bruno! Va-t-en! Casse-toi! Dégage! Go away!” Titi said, as Bruno climbed into the right bed and presumably tried to embrace him, oblivious by this point to the fact that there were some ten people in the room, plus dogs. Titi, either remembering the audience or not a fan of drunken passion, was adamant in his rejection, though. “You stink! Tu pues des fesses! Tu pues du bec! Tu pues du cul! Tu pues l’oignon! You stink from the butt! You stink from the mouth! You stink from the ass! You stink of onion! Go away!”
Sébastien, also in his underwear, had crawled under the covers with me and was shaking so hard with laughter it felt like being enveloped by an earthquake. I remembered, a long time ago, thinking the French were all gloomy, cynical, manic-depressive, and snobs to boot.
“Bruno! You stink from the ass! You stink from the beak!”
I know Bruno eventually gave up, because Titi eventually shut up, the dogs eventually calmed down, and we women eventually ran out of hysterical laughter and fell back asleep. I dreamed of being attacked by a horde of kebabs wielding yellow bow whips, but I think everyone else slept peacefully.
Thirty-three
Meeting the mayor didn’t prove hard. She lived directly across the minuscule street from Titi and Bruno. When we spotted her blond hair moving around under her plum trees, we hallooed over the stone wall a few times and then went around to join her on the terrace.
A robust woman, with a fair, easily flushed face and frizzy blond hair fluffing out around it, she welcomed us with friendly competence. We swapped delighted stories about how well the plums were bearing this year, and she photocopied our birth certificates and proofs of our previous weddings. She did not at any time break out into guffaws at our organizing a fourth wedding ceremony, although her lips twitched from time to time. She asked a few questions so that she could get her facts straight for the speech, she said. Her lips didn’t twitch that time at all.
We found the curé easily enough, too. An old, well-fed man with a flushed face and a slight stoop, he reminded me of my childhood priest, and in fact was near the same age old Monsignor would be now if he had not died three years before. At eighty-two, the curé should long since have retired, but the Church needed all the priests she could get. After following him from Mass to Mass all morning, only to have our promised post-Mass conversation replaced by a forgotten Baptism each time, we finally hit on the idea of waiting outside the presbytery where he lived with an old woman who made his meals. We timed it for 12:30, right after his final Mass for the day, and caught him as he headed home for lunch.