Free Claire Marvel by John Burnham Schwartz Page A

fields.
    A plain white sign. A hamlet of six old houses. And at the back, standing apart behind a low wall, two structures made of stone: a barn in the shape of an ancient granary, built up the slope, with a tiled roof like an oversized hat; and a simple two-story house with a steeply pitched roof and blue shutters. Beyond the buildings there was a raked field of walnut trees. Then, gradually descending all the way to the valley floor, there were more fields and walls, and the distant, dreamlike, gray-blue gleam of the river.

fourteen
    T HE INDELIBLE MOMENT OF ARRIVAL . Stepping through the doorway with Claire as if it was ours. The ancient house. Dust in the air, cold in the stones, cobwebs shivering at the tops of windows, scars and slants of furniture, the warping of the floor beneath its covering of worn straw matting.
    Claire stood in the center of the open room, her eyes radiant, turning from one object to another with rapture on her face.
    The hearth was tall and wide. A cast-iron bucket a yard deep held moss-covered logs of plum and walnut. The mantel was set high as a man’s head, burled and not quite level. Claire ran a hand over it, searching yet absent, as if looking for something whose shape she couldn’t remember. Then she turned and stared out through the glass panes of a back doorto a small terrace—perhaps imagining the delicious meals we’d eat out there, if the weather was warm enough. Though the weather wouldn’t matter; we were here, had traveled all this way together, had left everyone else behind.
    She did not seem to notice the thick coating of dust that her fingers had picked up from the mantel, how nothing in the house was clean. She stood in the light that came in from the valley. And when she turned and asked me how I felt, I could smile and declare honestly that I was happy too.

    Then up the creaking, ladderlike stairs to stand with our bags on the landing between the two bedrooms and the bathroom. An unavoidable moment—the bigger of the rooms contained a double bed while the smaller held a narrow single. Yet we hadn’t envisioned this possibility or discussed it and we paused now, too awkward to catch each other’s eye.
    I stood debating with myself. Exhaustion, the long journey, a too-familiar cloud of romantic uncertainty—all this made me numb. Should I step forward or hold back? To set myself up for rejection now could mean the end of something. On the other hand, if I refrained from forcing the issue, perhaps she might feel compelled to reach out.
    “I’ll take the single,” I said.
    “You’re sure?”
    The question was too quick. I’d made it too easy. Disappointment brought the full weight of my exhaustion down on me and I turned away. Lifting my suitcase, I stepped into the room with the single bed.
    There, standing with head ducked under the eaves, I heard her drop her bags in the other room. Heard her as she opened the tall windows that looked out over the valley. Heard through the thin wall that now divided us, the complex silence of her listening.

    We’d agreed in advance that neither of us knew how to cook. Nevertheless I made an omelette for our first dinner—plain, empty as a fist, in the inelegant shape of something dropped on the floor—and we ate it at the lopsided kitchen table with slices of the thick-crusted local bread and half a bottle of a rough Cahors.
    The kitchen was large and drafty. Nothing about it was remotely modern. The floor tiles were scuffed and pockmarked. From one corner of the ceiling curled a strip of flypaper still dotted with the wizened corpses of bygone summers. The dishes were chipped, webbed with hairline cracks. The refrigerator was half-sized and slope-shouldered. The gas stove had the sturdy rounded presence of an old pickup truck.
    At the end of the meal, raising her glass, Claire awarded me two “Marvel” stars for my effort. She held out the promise of a third. I bowed, looking up at her through the flame of a candle stub,