Free The Rose Café by John Hanson Mitchell Page B

But just watch this one.”
    An old, one-armed man with his sleeve tucked into his left suit pocket came forward. He stood erect, contrapposto , the ball held in his hand and facing outward against his right hip, and eyed the situation. Silence descended. In the double line, the old warriors held their breath. Sparrows took flight. Glasses clinked behind me. A waiter stepped out from the bar.
    Slowly the one-armed man held the ball forward, formally, as if in presentation to the gods. He drew back his arm, curling the ball with his hand facing his chest, and made his throw. The ball arched high over the pitch. It crossed in front of the shops at the north end of the square, it flew over the allée between the sand-colored buildings, black against the blue-green harbor beyond. It sailed onward, descended, and plunked down next to the cochonnet, knocking off the closest ball—the one Fiero had thrown—and then it rolled two inches forward to stop, nestled against its target.
    â€œYou see what I mean,” the barber said.
    And so it went. Winners and losers. War played with six balls and a little pig.
    The English woman and her tall gentleman friend whom I had had seen at dinner earlier showed up the next day to ask for rooms. I happened to be the only one around the restaurant that afternoon, so there was no one else there to check them in. The English woman, who seemed to be the one in charge of things, said they had booked a room the night before and had reserved for a couple of weeks. I checked the book and found an indifferent, almost indecipherable, scrawl in Micheline’s hand and finally analyzed the details. I showed them to their room and took their passports, which I studied after they left.
    Her name was Magda and she had been born in Poland in 1926, which would have made her thirty-five years old. Her husband’s name was Peter, and he had been born of English parents in Tunisia in 1925. The two of them lived now in London and were presumably married, although Magda did not have a ring, I noticed.
    They stayed up in their room unpacking and within the hour, Peter appeared in his bathing trunks, carrying a net bag with flippers, as well as a mask and a mean-looking fish spear. He asked where he might do a little spearfishing. I told him about the cove behind my cottage, and he set off down the path. He reminded me of a gangly giraffe.
    Magda came down to the bar a few minutes later and asked for a Campari and soda, which I mixed and set before her. She cupped her hand around the sweating glass, and then lifted it to her right cheek and closed her eyes.
    â€œSo cool, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s been beastly coming over from Calvi. Steaming.”
    She was small and angular, with high Slavic cheekbones, blue eyes, and wavy blond hair, one strand of which often fell across her left eye and which she habitually flipped back in place. She had strangely elongated canine teeth that gave her an engaging, sad look whenever she smiled. Her husband was a sculptor, she told me, a former student of Henry Moore, and she was a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics. They had no real plans in Corsica, she said, but had come over from Menton because they thought it too crowded and had heard about this place while they were in Calvi, which they also thought too crowded.
    â€œWe are just looking for some place to lie low. And here …” she lifted her head toward the harbor. “It’s quite beautiful really, with this view back to the little town and the hills and high peaks. And that island behind us, with the old crumbling tower. Lovely.”
    The Ile de la Pietra, the high island just beyond the restaurant, was the second gem on a necklace of the two islets suspended from the long causeway that ran out from the town. Except for a modern lighthouse and the ancient Genoese watchtower, this outer island was steep and unhoused, and cut with tiny green coves