The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [72]
– This little coffee house is my friend Paweł's place, it's like my living room to me.
He held the door for her. The smell of roasting coffee rushed past them into the night. Inside the empty café, a man, slight and pale, in a wax-white short-sleeved shirt, was sitting behind a wooden bar, reading. Beside him was a music dictation book, the kind that schoolchildren use. On the antique cash register was taped a slogan in the same handwriting as the sign in the window: I do not presume to tell you what your sight has cost you. Do not presume to tell me what my blindness has cost me. Behind the bar, a wall of tiny windows like an automat, filled with gleaming beans, oily and aromatic.
– Paweł knows his coffee, said the Caveman proudly. He's a vintner with his vintages!
Paweł stopped reading and looked up.
– Paweł, I'd like you to meet – this is … a girl with a trowel.
Paweł looked at them and took in Jean's muddy knees, her canvas shoes, and her planting bag with the torch-trowel sticking out. He saw how the night clung to them both. He quickly closed his book.
– Ewa's home tonight. Stay as long as you like. Just lock up, Lucjan, when you go. Leave the light on over the bar so the mice won't trip.
Jean sat at a small table. Everywhere was mismatched furniture, wooden tables and chairs of kitchen vinyl, frayed upholstered silk, wicker, plastic netting.
– Would you like Brazilian, African, Jamaican, Argentinian, or Cuban? asked the Caveman.
– Or Polish, said Paweł, quickly closing the door behind him.
– Have you ever seen a man, said the Caveman, so happy to be going home to his wife?
– Were they just married?
– Paweł and Ewa? They've been married since they were children – at least twenty years now, said the Caveman.
– What's Polish coffee? asked Jean.
– Instant, said the Caveman. Without the water!
The Caveman sunk a metal scoop into the beans.
– I read about your paintings in the newspaper, said Jean. The anonymous ‘Caveman’ … they were praising your work … Someone offered a commission …
– Okay, said the Caveman. That's too bad! But I won't dwell on it. Never dwell on good news! He took another long look at her, smiling. And now, before anything else, tell me why you plant things secretly, a nun leaving a signal for her lover.
Jean looked down at the table guiltily. Then, the quick defiance to speak the truth.
– When I'm planting, said Jean, I'm leaving a kind of signal. And I'm hoping that the person it's meant for will receive it. If someone walking down the street experiences the scent of a flower they haven't smelled for thirty years – even if they don't recognize the scent but are suddenly reminded of something that gives them pleasure – then maybe I've done something worthwhile.
Jean looked at him miserably.
– But what you evoke could be something painful, said the Caveman. When you plant something in people's memories, you never know what you'll pull up.
He saw the look of dismay in her face. He thought for a moment.
– Maybe you should work in a hospital.
– Why paint Lascaux? Jean asked. But as soon as she spoke, she felt a twinge of understanding. He had found the life within the fence – using each scar, adapting the animals to their environment. She felt an intimation of something she would realize later, that this was not about Lascaux but about exile and the seizing of joy that will not come of its own accord.
– My husband told me about a church in a little town in the centre of Italy, said Jean. From the outside it's a dirty stone box, not a single ornament. But when you step inside, plummeting into darkness from the Italian sunshine, as your eyes adjust to the dimness, the scale of the place unfolds; the church grows in front of your eyes! The statuary leaps out. I think they must have all been after the same thing – the early Christian grottos, the painted caves – to bring the stone to life.
The earliest churches were just enclosed space, said Jean, I think what really changed Christianity was when someone first put a chair in that space. People no