The Italian Teacher(39)



Barrows has never heard her boyfriend called “Pinch” and flashes him a quizzical half smile.

Bear resumes his account of coming here a few weeks ago and taking an unexpected shine to this dump. He has befriended a local butcher, and the lady at the boulangerie, and a Dutch couple who run a wine cellar. Foreigners dot this area, it turns out, mostly oddballs who drifted here for the cheap living.

“I always pictured Cecil completely alone,” Pinch says.

“He was. The hippies and trippies didn’t turn up till long after his day,” Bear explains. “Now have a sip of this poison, will you?” He pours three overfull glasses of C?tes du Roussillon. From the first gulps, Pinch and Barrows ease into this rustic cottage, making merry with a coarse red, cold ham, crispy baguette, local butter.

“Why can bad wine taste so much better than the good kind?” Pinch asks.

“It’s the company,” Barrows responds approvingly. “The drink only tags along.”

“Cheers to that, sweetie.” Bear clinks glasses. “Know what else, kids? The very day after I get here, I just got to paint. Something in the mountain air. I drive breakneck to Perpignan for supplies and am working that very night.”

“Me, thinking you needed help with the language!” Pinch says. “You probably get along better without French than I do with it.”

“You deserve some credit, Charlie—you’re the one convinced me to buy this place in the first place for your ma.” He squeezes Pinch’s shoulder, then turns to Barrows. “Always listen to this boy.”

Pinch, cheeks burning, presses his nose into the wine glass, inhaling happiness.

Bear leads them on a midnight tour of the property, flashlight beam skimming the lawn, up to the fringe of the forest, then around his art studio, a structure in disrepair. The painter opens its door only a crack, points his light inside for an instant, the floor littered with Cecil’s cracked pots, its air scented with clay dust and paint thinner.

“What are you working on?” Barrows asks, nodding at a large easel, the back of its canvas smudged with Bear’s handprints.

“We’ll never know,” Pinch answers. “Nobody goes into Dad’s secret chambers.” To his father: “I’m impressed you already found someone to pose for you.”

“These nutballs up here? They’re fighting to sit. Problem is they’re all smoking grass. Appointments mean nothing.”

“I’d turn up on time,” Barrows says.

“That so?” Bear says, expertly looking her up and down—a gaze Pinch has witnessed before.

As they all return to the main house, Pinch whispers to her: “His sitters pose nude.”

“Oh, come on—he’d probably just paint my arm or ankle or something. Isn’t that what he always does?”

“Even then, trust me, it’s nude. There’s a difference in how light reflects off fabric versus skin. It’s how my father works.”

“All right, kids, you get the run of the house. I’m camping in my studio for the duration. No arguing. It’s a democracy up here, and two beats one.”

“What if both of us vote for you to keep your house?” Barrows says. “We’ll be fine. We’re young.”

“Won’t hear of it.” He speaks as one who prevails, and adds that all his work is in the studio, and he can’t allow a couple of snoops to bed down there. “Not to mention, turp fumes’ll rot your college-educated brains.” He plants a good night kiss on Pinch’s forehead, another on hers. “Been busting to see you two.” He ambles off to his studio, crooning Sinatra for their benefit, a muffled medley of “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “Witchcraft” that persists until the lights go out up there, and it’s all blackness except the firefly dots of vehicles creeping around the valley.

They awaken to a woman’s voice. Pinch and Barrows peek out of the bedroom window, their cheeks brushing, both bedazzled by morning light. Bear is accepting a crate of apples from a middle-aged woman who speaks English with a Dutch accent. Overnight, a forested mountain grew behind the property.

Barrows opens the door to the back terrace and points to a gecko sunning itself on the flagstones. From behind, Pinch slips his arms under hers, cupping her breasts, hugging her to him. She twists around, licks his bristly cheek. “Starving.”

“I’m not entirely edible.”

So they wolf down ham-and-baguette leftovers while Pinch—his expectations about their future regenerated from a single night with Dad—drifts into embryonic-professor mode, telling her about Catalonia, how Basque Country lies to the west, Spaniards to the south, and how isolated terrain propagates obscure languages and dialects. In these parts alone: Anares, Gascon, Aragonese, Euskera, Occitan, Catalan.

A car kicks up pebbles and dust—the Dutchwoman driving away. Only then does it occur to Pinch that his father has no way of breakfasting—theirs is the sole kitchen. They hasten to his studio and apologize.

Bear isn’t perturbed, just delighted to see them. In the cottage kitchen, he prepares a lavish midmorning feast of farm eggs and cheese and gnarled apples, which he slices with his Opinel penknife, wiping juice on the thigh of dirty jeans, his empty pipe poking from a hip pocket. Around noon, a bearded Swedish hippie arrives from a nearby farm with his Irish girlfriend and her two kids from two previous hippies. Bear and they gab away, leaving Pinch and Barrows to lounge on sun chairs.

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