The priest’s eyes were damp with fury and fear, but he shoveled forkful after forkful into his mouth and swallowed as rapidly as he could.

“If you choose to stay in this corner of the world, Father, and if you do not feel prepared to join your God, then this is what you will do. Each time we meet in a village, you will leave that village immediately. Each time we meet on the trails, you will step off the track and turn your back as I pass. You can eat faster than that!”

The priest choked on his food, and Hel left him gasping and gagging. That evening, he told the story to Le Cagot with instructions to make sure it got around. Hel considered public humiliation of this coward to be necessary.

“Hey, why don’t you answer me, Father Esteka?” Le Cagot asked.*

* Esteka is Basque for “sexual deficiency.”

The priest rose and left the café, as Le Cagot called after him, “Holà! Aren’t you going to finish your piperade?”

Because they were Catholic, the old men in the café could not laugh; but they grinned, because they were Basque.

Le Cagot patted the hostess’s bottom and sent her after their food. “I don’t think we have made a great friend there, Niko. And he is a man to be feared.” Le Cagot laughed. “After all, his father was French and very active in the Resistance.”

Hel smiled. “Have you ever met one who was not?”

“True. It is astonishing that the Germans managed to hold France with so few divisions, considering that everyone who wasn’t draining German resources by the clever maneuver of surrendering en masse and making the Nazi’s feed them was vigorously and bravely engaged in the Resistance. Is there a village without its Place de la Resistance? But one has to be fair; one has to understand the Gallic notion of resistance. Any hotelier who overcharged a German was in the Resistance. Each whore who gave a German soldier the clap was a freedom fighter. All those who obeyed while viciously withholding their cheerful morning bonjours were heroes of liberty!”

Hel laughed. “You’re being a little hard on the French.”

“It is history that is hard on them. I mean real history, not the verité à la cinquième République that they teach in their schools. The truth be known, I admire the French more than any other foreigners. In the centuries they have lived beside the Basque, they have absorbed certain virtues—understanding, philosophic insight, a sense of humor—and these have made them the best of the ‘others.’ But even I am forced to admit that they are a ridiculous people, just as one must confess that the British are bungling, the Italians incompetent, the Americans neurotic, the Germans romantically savage, the Arabs vicious, the Russians barbaric, and the Dutch make cheese. Take the particular manifestation of French ridiculousness that makes them attempt to combine their myopic devotion to money with the pursuit of phantom gloire. The same people who dilute their burgundy for modest profit willingly spend millions of francs on the atomic contamination of the Pacific Ocean in the hope that they will be thought to be the technological equals of the Americans. They see themselves as the feisty David against the grasping Goliath. Sadly for their image abroad, the rest of the world views their actions as the ludicrous egotism of the amorous ant climbing a cow’s leg and assuring her that he will be gentle.”

Le Cagot looked down at the tabletop thoughtfully. “I cannot think of anything further to say about the French just now.”

The widow had joined them at table, sitting close to Le Cagot and pressing her knee against his. “Hey, you have a visitor down at Etchehelia,” she told Hel, using the Basque name for his château. “It is a girl. An outsider. Arrived yesterday evening.”

Hel was not surprised that this news was already in Larrau, three mountains and fifteen kilometers from his home. It had doubtless been common knowledge in all the local villages within four hours of the visitor’s arrival.

“What do you know about her?” Hel asked.

The widow shrugged and tucked down the corners of her mouth, indicating that she knew only the barest facts. “She took coffee chez Jaureguiberry and did not have money to pay. She walked all the way from Tardets to Etchebar and was seen from the hills several times. She is young, but not too young to bear. She wore short pants that showed her legs, and it is said that she has a plump chest. She was received by your woman, who paid her bill with Jaureguiberry. She has an English accent. And the old gossips in your village say that she is a whore from Bayonne who was turned out from her farm for sleeping with the husband of her sister. As you see, very little is known of her.”

“You say she is young with a plump chest?” Le Cagot asked. “No doubt she is seeking me, the final experience.”

The widow pinched his thigh.

Hel rose from the table. “I think I’ll go home and take a bath and a little sleep. You coming?”

Le Cagot looked at the widow sideways. “What do you think? Should I go?”

“I don’t care what you do, old man.”

But as he started to rise, she tugged him back by his belt.

“Maybe I’ll stay a while, Niko. I’ll come back this evening and take a look at your girl with the naked legs and the big boobs. If she pleases me, I may bless you with an extension of my visit. Ouch!”

Hel paid and went out to his Volvo, which he kicked in the rear fender, then drove away toward his home.

Château d’Etchebar

After parking in the square of Etchebar (he did not permit automobiles on his property) and giving the roof a parting bash with his fist, Hel walked down the private road to his château feeling, as he always did upon returning home, a paternal affection for this perfect seventeenth-century house into which he had put years of devotion and millions of Swiss francs. It was the thing he loved most in the world, a physical and emotional fortress against the twentieth century. He paused along the path up from the heavy gates to pat the earth in around a newly planted shrub, and as he was doing this he felt the approach of that vague and scattered aura that could only be Pierre, his gardener.

“Bonjour, M’sieur,” Pierre greeted in his singsong way, as he recognized Hel through the haze of his regularly spaced glasses of red that began with his rising at dawn.

Hel nodded. “I hear we have a guest, Pierre.”

“It is so. A girl. She still sleeps. The women have told me that she is a whore from—”

“I know. Is Madame awake?”

“To be sure. She was informed of your approach twenty minutes ago.” Pierre looked up into the sky and nodded sagely. “Ah, ah, ah,” he said, shaking his head. Hel realized that he was preparing to make a weather prediction, as he did every time they met on the grounds. All the Basque of Haute Soule believe they have special genetic gifts for meteorological prognostication based upon their mountain heritage and the many folk adages devoted to reading weather signs. Pierre’s own predictions, delivered with a quiet assurance that was never diminished by his unvarying inaccuracy, had constituted the principal topic of his conversation with M’sieur Hel for fifteen years, ever since the village drunk had been elevated to the rank of the outlander’s gardener and his official defender from village gossip.

“Ah, M’sieur, there will be rain before this day is out,” Pierre chanted, nodding to himself with resigned conviction. “So there is no point in my setting out these flowers today.”

“Is that so, Pierre?” How many hundreds of times had they had this conversation?

“Yes, it is so. Last night at sunset there was red and gold in the little clouds near the mountains. It is a sure sign.”