Georges Lavoie and Henri Pulis arrived first, a little after eight o’clock, and we sat by the front window looking out over the field that lay between my home and the road, some seventy-five meters away. Through some fluke the oaks that surrounded the house did not mar the view out of this window, though with the wind and the swirling branches the scene was neatly translated from the pastoral to the Gothic. From time to time one of the lower branches would sweep across the window like a hand. Twice the wind was strong enough to throw a hail of acorns into the glass, sounding for all the world like the tapping knuckles of that passing hand.
It was, I suppose, a rather strange collection of guests that came every week to my house and shared my beer. We were not confreres by occupation or age; indeed, we had almost nothing in common except a love of beer and companionship. I was by far the eldest, except for Marcel, and the only one of us with any wealth. Usually, we would drink and talk, often playing cards, until midnight. Sometimes Paul Anser would read something he’d just written, horribly translated. He was a great joker and kept the nights far from being dull. Now, with the war, we never ran out of news to discuss, though some nights we still would just sit and read, as in an English men’s club, with of course the notable exception of Tania.
Henri Pulis looked like what he was—one of the hard-working bourgeoisie. Though he was some fifteen years younger than I, his hair was nevertheless starting to streak with gray, and his face was set in creases punctuated by a large, drooping black mustache. He always sat slumped over, and this made him look even shorter than he was. Now he sat, nervously yet methodically wiping the foam from his mustache with his left hand, holding the beer in his right.
He’d come to Valence as a young man, perhaps ten years ago, after working for a time as a ship’s mate. It was even rumored that he’d deserted from the Greek navy when his ship had docked at Marseilles, and he had moved north, lying low for some months until he decided it was safe to appear. After two or three years, he’d saved enough to open his own shop. We had met because he sold the supplies I needed for the beer, and though he was not as witty as the others, he was no less popular. He often seemed uncomfortable until he’d had a few beers; then he would relax and entertain us with crude jokes that we were all secretly ashamed of enjoying. He had originally come when I’d asked him, he said, to get away from his wife and six children, and though by now we were all friends, I was still not completely convinced that he so much treasured our company as that he considered it a respite from his family’s.
