Free The Rose Café by John Hanson Mitchell

off to one side as if it had been broken a few times. Pierrot kissed his stubbled cheeks and introduced me.
    â€œFabrizio Porto, my father,” he said.
    The old man smiled, revealing a piano keyboard of gold and yellowed teeth, pumped my hand heartily, and spit out a long sentence in a thick island dialect that I couldn’t understand. He chased out the donkey and waved us in. I could smell wine on his breath, and garlic.
    The interior was cool and squalid, the floor littered with straw and donkey droppings; it had a few bare shelves, a black stove with a pot on it, and a small wooden table with a red-checked oilcloth cover. Pierrot took down a big, dark flagon of red wine and three cheap glasses, and proceeded to argue with his father about the wine. The old man didn’t want any, or didn’t want Pierrot to have any, I couldn’t tell which. But Monsieur Porto apparently liked me. He kept smiling and shook my hand again, repeating Americano proudly over and over. I think he liked the Americans.
    After we had an introductory toast, we went out and sat at a rickety table in the shade. The wine was terrible, and I could feel one of those sleepy midday headaches coming on, but Pierrot’s father was warming up: He addressed me in the familiar and talked nonstop, placing his hand on my arm and squeezing periodically, whenever he wanted to make a point.
    â€œYou must understand,” he said, speaking now in French. “We are the last of the great Porto clan. My people, they married into the family of Napoléon. We had generals in the Grande Armée, skilled militarists who took the fields at Austerlitz and Marengo. We had big villas here and all through the south as well.” He lifted his head toward the ruin across the former courtyard. “Now, nothing. Only the name. And Pierrot, here, he’s the last of a great line.”
    He turned to Pierrot and spit out a torrent of dialect. I caught the word “girl.”
    â€œWhat’s he say?” I asked.
    â€œNothing,” Pierrot said. “Same as always.”
    â€œHe should marry,” the old man said to me in French. “He’s the last. He should marry. And have ten children, all boys. And why not?” He winked at me and made an obscene gesture.
    â€œI will Papé, someday I will, but give me time. I just have to find the right one,” Pierrot said.
    â€œHe always says that,” Fabrizio muttered. “Too much work, too little time, no girl around, at least not any good Catholic girls like he wants. All reading books now, and getting ideas. Better in the old days, eh? Womens is strange now. I can tell you that. Do you know how old is Pierrot?”
    â€œNo. Mid-twenties?”
    â€œThirty-one. No one is not married at thirty-one except priests and Nancy boys.”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” I said.
    â€œPierrot, he wanted be a priest but quit. And he’s not a fairy. You’re not a fairy, are you Pierrot?”
    â€œNo, Papé, I like girls—you know I like girls.”
    â€œSee what I mean?” the old man said. “He’s no fairy, so why not marry and have children?”
    This brought the conversation down to individual families in the region and their available daughters, and then we began to gossip with him about the regulars at the Rose Café, all of whom seemed to be well-known to old Fabrizio, and all of whom had either wives, or steady mistresses, or many girlfriends. Fabrizio had lived in Ile Rousse, and he knew their fathers and mothers and all their cousins and aunties all the way back, and knew also the daughters of all the cousins and aunties, among whom, as he pointed out, were many marriageable women.
    We finally got around to rich families in the region and then finally to the question of le Baron, who was, Fabrizio said, a newcomer to these parts but an important one.
    â€œWhy is he living out here in the countryside? Do you know? And how did