"Rotten headache." Houston squinted in the blinding lights. Their humming was a dentist's drill.

  "Here, wait a second," Jan said, searching through her purse. She found a metal tin of aspirins and pried at the lid. "I've got some coffee left."

  He swallowed tepid bitter coffee with three pills. He set the cup down, closed his eyes, and waited, hoping for the pain to shrink.

  "I promise satisfaction, Mr. Houston. I'll find out what happened."

  Houston raised his eyelids, peering through the sharp light toward the superintendent.

  "You're a teacher, Mr. Houston. Did you say that?"

  Had he? He could not remember. "Yes. In Indiana."

  "High school?"

  "College. Dunston College. It's a private school near Evans-ville."

  "That's almost in Kentucky."

  Houston's interest rose. "That's how did you know?"

  "I was raised in Louisville. I haven't been back home since well, since I was stationed here. They tell me the smog is worse."

  "Believe it."

  "Progress. Lord preserve us. You teach . . . ?"

  "Creative writing."

  "You're a writer?" Andrews seemed impressed.

  "I've had four novels published."

  "Which is how you could afford to travel overseas?"

  Houston felt his spine begin to tingle. Something fluttered in his stomach.

  "You're not asking questions for the hell of it. You've got a reason." He glared at Andrews. "If you think I'm imagining all this, that just because I write, I'd make this up "

  "No, Mr. Houston, I'm not thinking that at all. But please bear with me for a moment. I'm assuming you've never been to France before."

  "If I had, I'd have come to see my father's grave."

  "But coming to your father's grave was not the reason for your trip to France."

  "I've lost you."

  "When the two of you sat down to plan your trip, your major purpose wasn't "

  "Coming to this cemetery? No, my mother died. After the funeral I had to get away."

  "And then you figured that since you were here in France you'd pay respects."

  "Death was on my mind. I don't see what all of this "

  "You didn't come prepared. You don't have any details that would help me. For example, your father's serial number. Do you even know his rank?"

  "Corporal."

  "That helps. When you get home, search through your family's records. Make a copy of the War Department's letter to your mother, any other documents that you can find."

  "They don't exist."

  "I beg your pardon." Andrews blinked, astonished.

  "My mother burned them all, the letters my father sent, his photographs, the notice from the War Department. Everything. She loved him very much. I guess she broke down. She tried to cancel every memory. Whatever could remind her of him was destroyed."

  "I hear you, but I'm having trouble understanding."

  "I just told you she loved him."

  "No." Andrews said it firmly. "I don't understand how you can be so positive he was buried here."

  "She told me."

  "When?"

  "As I grew up. When I began to ask her why I didn't have a father."

  "You're relying on your childhood memory?" The superintendent's face contorted in bewilderment.

  "She told me often. See, by then she'd regretted what she'd done. She wished she had his pictures and his letters. He became a kind of legend for us. She repeated tales about him, word for word. She made me promise to remember all the details. 'Peter,' I can still recall her saying. 'Peter, though your father's dead, he still exists as long as we remember him.' "

  Andrews tapped a pencil on the desk.

  Chapter 3

  "He thinks I'm crazy!" Houston said.

  He stood with Janice near the Citroen. The wind had died. The clouds had disappeared. The sun glared.

  "No, he doesn't," Janice told him, staring at him, troubled. "But in his place what would you do? Did the military screw things up, or did you simply misremember?"

  "Hey, I told you "

  "I believe you. You don't need to prove to me how well you can remember things. I've seen the way you don't need lecture notes in class. I don't need convincing. But the superintendent does. To him, a fact isn't a fact unless it's written down and double-checked. As far as he's concerned, he did the best he could for you, considering the nature of your evidence."

  "Which means he thinks I'm crazy."

  "No. Mistaken."

  Houston pushed his fingers through his hair. He faced the oppressive white building in confusion. "Fine, I'll grant him that much. Possibly I'm wrong." He turned abruptly toward her. "Not because I misremember. But my mother could have misremem-bered."

  "We can't ask her."

  "Is that it then?" Houston asked, in pain, reluctant, unaccept-ing. "We simply leave it like this?"

  "We can write the War Department when we're home."

  "We're here, though. Within walking distance, somewhere close, my father's buried."

  "If you find some evidence, Andrews can at least locate the grave in case we come back. And anyway, you said it earlier: What difference does it make?" She blinked, as if she suddenly considered what her words meant. "Forget that last part."

  Houston stared at her. "To me, a man in middle age, I guess it doesn't make a bit of difference. Hell, my life won't change because I stand before his grave.

  But to that boy who grew up haunted by the father . . . Dammit, what's the matter with me?"

  "Nothing. You're sentimental. It's attractive."

  Houston smiled at her. "You do know what to say."

  "I ought to. We've been married long enough."

  He kissed her.

  Glancing once more toward the building, he saw someone watching far back from a window.

  "It's not me who's wrong," he told the distant shadow.

  "What?"

  "I just . . . This damn headache. Why don't you drive?"

  Houston climbed inside the Citroen. They'd left the windows closed. The seat was hot, air stale and cloying. As he rolled the window down, he felt a thought uncurl.

  Jan drove through the iron gate. She angled up the curving blacktop toward the summit.

  Though he sensed the graves behind him, Houston didn't turn to look. He had this other thing to occupy him, this persistent nagging thought that there was something he had not remembered.

  "There was a Frenchman," he said.

  "Where? I didn't see him. You don't mean I almost hit him."

  "No. Not here. There was a Frenchman. I remember now."

  "Remember what?"

  "A Frenchman. Then. In nineteen forty-four. My mother said she got some letters from him."

  Now his mind was clear. The deep black corner of his recollection was illuminated. Houston's stomach burned excitedly.

  "Do the letters still exist?" Jan said.

  "I doubt it. If she burned the other things, she would have burned those letters too. It doesn't matter. I remember what she said about them." His exhilaration rose. "The Frenchman said his people felt obliged to all those soldiers who had died to liberate this country. Every member of his village had selected a different grave. They vowed to tend the graves, to see there were flowers planted. Each fallen soldier seemed a brother or a son to them."

  Jan frowned. She reached the top and concentrated on the road.

  "This Frenchman chose my father's grave."

  "I don't see how that helps us."

  "He'd remember. We can ask him where the grave is."

  "If he's still alive, and if There isn't any sense to this. We don't know who he is."

  "I do know who he is."

  "You can't expect me to believe "

  "Pierre. That was his first name. That's why I remember it. Pierre de St.

  Laurent."

  "The village where we're staying. St. Laurent. But why would you remember that his first name " She stared at him.

  "Of course. My mother said to me, 'And Peter, if it's any consolation, just remember that the man in France who tends your father's grave is Peter. Just like you. Pierre.' "

  Chapter 4

  The village stretched on both sides of a languid river. In the middle of the afternoon, the sleepy sunshine settled on the shops and houses, making Houston feel he'd returned to normalcy. He smiled at flower sellers, fruit vendors, old men smoking pipes in cottage doorways. If it hadn't been for traffic, phone poles, and electric cables, he'd have been convinced that he was in the seventeenth century.

  Jan drove across an old stone bridge. Beneath it, two boats drifted lazily. In one, a man and boy were fishing. Straight ahead he saw the village square, where tall expansive trees contrasted with a slender rigid obelisk the monument for World War Two. He brooded past a group of children toward the bleak plaque on the obelisk the roster of the village war dead.

  "Aren't you getting out?" Jan asked him.

  Houston roused himself. She'd stopped beside their hotel, which faced toward the park and then the river.

  "I can read a menu over here," he said. "And I can find the men's room. But I don't think I can trust myself to ask the proper questions, let alone translate the answers."

  They walked toward the entrance to the hotel. Years before, the place had been a manor. Now the tourists ate and slept where nobles once had ruled the land.

  "Europe puts things in perspective," Janice had remarked when they arrived.

  "This place was built before America was founded."

  In the high-beamed lobby, they approached the counter. Houston used his halting French to ask the manager if an interpreter could be employed.

  The man responded slowly that monsieur should take advantage of this visit to perfect his knowledge of the language. An interpreter would make him lazy.

  Pardon the impertinence. The manager continued smiling.

  Houston laughed. The manager relaxed.

  "D'accord. Je sais. Mais nous..." Houston faltered. "We have business to conduct. I need to understand precisely. Precisement."

  That was a different matter altogether. If monsieur would kindly wait . . .

  "I'm starving," Janice said.

  Pete told the manager where they'd be waiting.

  In the dining room, they sat beside a window that looked toward the huge trees in the park. They ordered dry white wine, cold chicken, a salad.

  Pete felt a shadow. Glancing up, he saw a woman standing by him at the table.

  "Mr. Houston?"

  She was thirty, maybe less but certainly no more. A tall, thin, dark- and long-haired woman with attractive eyes; a full curved mouth, a smooth deep voice.

  "My father is the manager. He says you need someone to interpret."

  Her arrival was so unexpected that for several moments Houston failed to realize she spoke English without any trace of foreign accent.

  "Yes, that's right."

  "If I can be of help to you."

  "Sit down please. Would you like some wine?"

  "No, thank you." When she sat, she tucked her skirt beneath her. She wore sandals and a yellow sweater with the sleeves pulled up. She crossed her hands on her lap and waited.

  "This is Janice," Houston said. "My name is Peter." They shook hands.

  "Simone," she said.

  "Your English is remarkable."

  "I studied hotel management at Berkeley. In the sixties. When the campus riots started, I came back to France."

  So I was wrong, he thought. She isn't thirty. More like thirty-five. You'd never know it. He explained what he wanted, though he avoided mentioning what had happened at the cemetery.

  "So you want to thank this man," Simone rephrased. "For tending to your father's grave."

  "We're in the neighborhood. I figure it's the least I can do."

  Simone frowned. "Thirty-seven years."

  "I know. He must be dead."

  "It's not just that. If he's alive, he might be hard to locate. Many people in this village come from families so old that their last name is St. Laurent.

  Descendants of the St. Laurents who settled here. You might as well be looking for a certain Smith or Jones back in America."

  "But Pierre de St. Laurent. That helps to narrow things."

  She thought about it. "Please wait here a moment." She stood smoothly, with aristocratic poise, and left the room.

  "Attractive," Janice said.

  "Oh, really? I didn't notice."

  "Fool, you'd better eat your lunch before you get yourself in trouble."

  He grinned. They finished drinking coffee by the time Simone came back.

  "I checked the village phone book," she said. "Remarkably, there's no St.

  Laurent with such a common given name. If we were in the States, we could consult a local census list. But here in St. Laurent we have none."

  "Then there isn't any way?"

  Simone seemed troubled.

  "What then?" Houston asked.

  "One man possibly can help you."

  Houston frowned at her reluctance.

  "He's old. He isn't well. But he knows everything about this village."

  Houston stood. "Let's find him."

  Chapter 5

  Houston's nostrils flared from camphor fumes. The drapes were closed. The room was dark except for glowing embers from a smoking log inside the hearth.

  The ancient priest sat in a chair before the fireplace. His name was Father Devereaux. He was frail and wrinkled, almost shrunken, his wispy hair reminding Houston of a spiderweb. He coughed from deep inside his chest; he did so often, and each time the effort gave him pain. He raised a crushed but ample handkerchief from underneath the blanket that he clutched around him, wiping at his mouth. He could only muster strength for short, slow phrases, but his voice was soft and thin and almost soundless, so that Houston though he didn't understand the language found that he was leaning close.

  "So long ago. So much has happened." Turning from the priest, Simone translated for them.

  "Tell him I appreciate his effort. Tell him anything he remembers might be useful," Houston said.

  Simone spoke French. The priest responded.

  "He recalls the man you're looking for."

  Now Houston glanced toward Janice, trying to subdue his quick excitement.

  "But he's sorry. He can't help you."

  "Why?" Houston said. "If he remembers."

  "He apologizes. But the man you seek was young then. He himself was young. Too much has happened."

  Houston stiffened. "There's something wrong. You're sure he understands?"

  "Oh, perfectly."

  "Then why . . . ? Look, ask him this. The man I'm searching for, does he still live here in this village?"

  Simone explained. The priest slowly shook his head.

  "Now what does that mean?" Houston said. "He either doesn't know, or else he isn't telling."

  Father Devereaux coughed. He wiped the bulky handkerchief across his mouth and closed his eyes. Houston shuddered sympathetically. Simone spoke briefly and received what, from the priest, was an elaborate answer.

  "Some of that I understood," Jan said. But Houston waited, anxious for Simone's translation.

  "He is ignorant, he says. He doesn't know where this man lives or even if he lives. What's more, he doesn't care. He says he knows that in this matter he has not fulfilled his obligations, but he asks the Lord to make allowance. As a pastor, he is duty-bound to watch each member of his flock, but in this case he is indifferent. He must love a God-created soul but does not have to like the man who harbors it." A spark cracked in the fireplace.

  "I don't understand," Houston said.

  The priest began to speak again. His voice dimmed. Then he coughed so deeply that the rattle clawed through Houston's stomach.

  "He must rest, he says. He can't answer any more questions."

 

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