The Promenade

Short Story

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The other day Roger Garland, one of our clients, phoned to say he was interested in buying Crazy Cleansers, my husbands lucrative little soap business which, no pun intended, he was glad to wash his hands of. Roger was wintering in Gstaad and asked us to join him there. In our excitement we did a dance in our pajamas, shouting that we’d be rich. The recession had hit us like a big, frozen leg of lamb to the head, and we could do with the extra pocket money.

Our excitement diminished somewhat the following morning when in our driveway we found my mother peering into our bedroom through her binoculars. Somehow she had gotten word of our alpine plans and she demanded to come with us. She was one of those elderly women who felt the most comfortable in her past, and since she had spent many summers in Gstaad throughout her adolescence, she thought it was obvious that she should come with us.

My husband simply despised my mother, and, I admit, she could be a trifle irritating at times. For example, her little mannerisms, I wish she would abandon them all. Especially the way she points her long, thin finger at my husband to emphasis a point. He is built rather small and a gesture like that, preformed by a woman like my mother, is quick to intimidate.

The car ride to Gstaad was exhausting, my mother told us all about her time in the Swiss alps. And since she could only remember so much about her childhood, she was prone to tell the same story twice.

Once we arrived at around 2 p.m. I made the disastrous mistake of taking her out for a drink in town as my husband got himself ready for his meeting. It was one of those chilly, bright afternoons which came around occasionally after a morning of rain; there was not a breath of wind.

My mother, of course, wanted to sit outside, on the terrace overlooking the promenade. She’s an incredibly dramatic woman and though it is possible that she was once pretty, now her face lay loose around her skull and each individual feature — the nose, chin, eyes — was buried under folds of skin. Everything besides the mouth, which reminded me of a large tuna fish.

We both ordered a glass of wine and slowly, methodically, set about getting ourselves drunk. It was our usual ritual, and there wasn’t much to it besides drinking.

“Quick, look over there,” she hissed, her usual finger pointing not at all discreetly at an elderly couple making their way along the promenade.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Belinda and Markus Steinbok,” she said matter-of-factly.

I looked across our small, round table at her, “are you sure?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course I am sure. They are dreadful, really. Especially that man. Never stops telling jokes, or stories, or something.”

“Where’d you meet?” I asked.

“Oh, some time ago. He came to sit next to me as I was reading the newspaper on some bench somewhere. Started talking to me as I was reading!”

My mother, who grew up in a noble household on her step-father’s side, was very conscious of her breeding, and often quick in her judgements of strangers who were nice to her. Especially balding men. As a rule, I do not like balding men either, and though her assessments were often right, I felt this time she was misinformed. Markus was plump with a very red face, and cheeks so fat they drooped downward on each side of his lips like a spaniel. All indicative of a benevolent fellow with a good sense of humor.

“He seems like a kind little man,” the statement slipped out before I could stop myself and I regretted it immediately. I never provoke my mother if not absolutely necessary. There was a short pause as I stole a look in her direction — the compact, yellow face became even more compressed and gained that familiar acidic look I knew so well.

“Well, he isn’t. He smells funny too, and breathes through his mouth. She seems perfectly awful as well, though she must be if she can put up with him.”

They past our table slowly as my mother followed them with her two round, grey eyes, a spark dancing slowly in each.

Once out of sight she went on drinking in her usual manner, in small sips that became steadily larger. She asked how I was holding up with my new job, though she could not quite remembered what it was. She was one of those terribly busy humans who found time to both manage her own concerns while simultaneously keeping track of all those around her. Yet she never remembered anything about me. Before I had the chance to answer her eyes reverted to a spot behind my head, and narrowed into two unrecognizably small slits.

At the table to my right sat a man with bushy black eyebrows, a wrinkled red face and a pink tongue which occasionally came out to lick his black and grey mustache, as though in search of a last drop of his rum.

My mother gave him one of her suspicious looks. She is a very suspicious person, my mother. Her chin tilted upward as she stared down at him along the length of her nose. It was a fearsome thing, that frosty stare and I never quite got used to it.

“That is Linus Möser, people say he isn’t really Swiss, but from some far off Eastern European country. Can you believe it? Why would someone lie about their place of birth? Very strange.”

I looked around at him. Yes, he did have a broad face with high cheekbones and a coarse, wide nose, accentuated by two pointed ears which protruded sharply from either side of his head, none of which appeared altogether Swiss. And then there was also the question of his small, round eyes. Perhaps he was Polish...

“Strange,” I echoed.

“Very strange,” she said again.

“He looks nice though.”

“Well, he’s not.”

In three short swallows she tipped the wine down her throat, then raised her eyebrows making her forehead look like the bellows of an accordion, and signaled at our waiter for another two glasses. By the time they were set on the marble table before us I was already feeling somewhat drunk and as if my feet did not quite belong to me. My mother, on the other hand, appeared to have had nothing but grape juice.

While we drank she spoke about something, I no longer remember what, until she was once again rudely interrupted by herself, as she noticed yet another person she knew. There was a slight sneer around the corners of her nose, and the longer she spoke, the more it looked like she was nibbling on a lemon.

“Listen carefully, I can tell a good person from a bad person by sniffing the air around them. It’s really quite a simple procedure once you familiarize yourself with the subtle mechanics of your olfactory system.”

I nodded solemnly.

“Really, one can become a sentient sniffing machine if only one knew how.”

I nodded again, not quite sure what she was getting at.

“With her,” she said, pointing at a beautiful woman making her way casually down the promenade, “with her, Rosalind McPhilemy, everything smells wrong.”

She sniffed the air again, demonstrating, and for a moment she really did look like some kind of short, squat, sensitive smelling-machine, filtering and analyzing the message received through her nose. All the while her plump lips sat puckered together like a turkey's bottom.

McPhilemy had one of those innocent, pale, egg-shaped fifteenth century Flemish faces, almost exactly like the Madonna by Van Eyck. Though if one were to ask me for any specific features, I would not be able to tell you, at that point the world revolved around me at a slightly disorienting speed. What I did notice, however, was the abominable way with which she walked along the promenade, as if to say: “here I am, look and enjoy”. There seemed to be a slight prance of triumph in her walk. She was obviously conscious of her beauty and reflected on that perfect little face I saw  everything I lacked. What more, the longer I stared, the uglier I felt, and the more the air around me started smelling foul.

“I know exactly what you mean,” I told my mother.

My mother nodded gravely, “I knew you would.”

We sat there for a while, in silence, as my mother slowly lifted the wine to her face. Her old, grey countenance portrayed a determined look as the point of her nose moved over the surface of the glass, delicately inhaling. Whenever she discussed wine she had the rather pesky habit of referring to it as if it were alive: “This is a rather ill-humored wine, it comes at you snapping, perhaps jokingly, but nonetheless ill-humored”, or, “this one is naughty, very naughty. It pretends to be one thing while it is quite obviously precisely the other” and so forth.

For several long seconds the smelling process continued before she released her beaked nose from the glass and tilted it into her mouth. She took one large gulp, retained it within the confines of her mouth as she let in a thin sliver of air. Then she exhaled through her nose and rolled the wine around under her tongue, chewed on it like a hard piece of chocolate, before letting it all slide down her throat.

“This is a very prudent wine, shy and elegant in the first taste, emerging somewhat pompously but  graciously in the second,” there was a pool of saliva in her mouth and as she spoke a large, bright dollop landed on the table, “definitely a French wine from the Burgundy region. Almost certainly a Pinot Noir.”

Incredible, she had managed to guess the precise wine she had picked herself off the menu.

“Remarkable…” I said.

At that point I needed desperately to use the restroom. As I got up I was surprised to find that my feet came along with me, especially because I could barely feel them touching the ground. Finding the toilet was an adventure in itself, and when I finally made it back to our small round table on the terrace, my mother had already ordered another round of wine and was besides herself with impatience.

“Look, look,” she said, placing one warm hand on my shoulder before shaking me violently, “that’s Monsieur Moulin, you almost missed him.”

I could just make out the back of his head ever so slightly at the very end of the promenade. A huge cranium, and the sight of him walking like that out in the distance, so incredibly short and squat,  gave me the ludicrous impression that he had no legs at all above the knees. I felt a strange fury manifest in the pit of my stomach and I already declared myself in agreement with whatever my mother had to say about him.

“If only you had seen his face. It’s an interesting face if you are into reptiles. He looks almost exactly like a rhinoceros iguana.”

We nodded in sync, like two bobblehead toys, grumbling under our breathe, our arms crossed before us, resting limply on our bloated, alcohol-filled stomachs.

At that point I had gone through the three drunken stages of transition: denial, acceptance, and now, anger. I felt a strange surge of aggression warp within me and since it was already four-thirty, and we had promised to meet my husband at the car at five, I wanted immediately to get up and pay before I did something I’d regret.

“Stay where you are,” she instructed in her usual frigid manner I knew so well from my childhood, “and finish your glass.”

I obliged, and in one gulp I swigged back the wine as she glanced at me with those large brown eyes of hers, her eyebrows raised, and the nostrils flared.

“One more drink,” she said once I swallowed.

“No, really, we must go.”

“Don’t be so stuffy. I’m having another, so the least you can do is keep me company.”

“But mother, Edward is waiting at the car.”

“Who cares, he can wait an extra five minutes,” she said, waving her hand out in front of me.

A mischievous, brooding air exuded from her, but I did as I was told and stayed seated. I watched as she swayed slightly, holding her glass with both hands as though it was an offering.

“The wine isn’t very good here, is it?” She asked, finally.

“I thought it was fine,” I said impatiently, willing her to drink faster so as to not make my husband wait any longer.

“There’s a hostile tinge in the after taste.”

“Is there?” I muttered. I wanted to shout hurry up woman, you are making him wait, but contained myself.

My mother said something else about the wine, then stopped suddenly, her eyes and mouth both opening wide in a kind of shocked surprise. I followed her gaze to the promenade where I noticed a small, middle-aged man sauntering leisurely with a cane. He was immaculately dressed in a white shirt and beige pants, and walked with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up with each step, as is customary with short men. Already I could see the anger and contempt in my mother’s gaze, the brown of her eyes turning black.

“I can’t believe it,” she said through her open mouth, “it’s Michael Penrose. He stole thirty-thousand francs from me back in the day.”

“Thirty-thousand?” I asked in shock.

“Yes, thirty-thousand. I can’t believe I am seeing him again, after all these years.”

Just then he stopped right in front of us and smiled, showing two uneven rows of very small, slightly tarnished teeth.

“How dare he smile at us like that, the nerve!” She said under her breathe, “I wish you would say something. You never stick up for me. I wish you would go right up to him and put him in his place. Just imagine all the other innocent people he has swindled.”

As that daft man stood there, smiling at us, something small but violent exploded inside my head and in a surge of fury and outrage I stood up, with some difficulty I should add — the alcohol had made me even heavier than I already was — and maneuvered my way to the promenade. I would make that man regret ever stepping foot in this small town. My body shook with rage.

“Good day,” he said, that gloating grin still lingering on his face. Where had I heard that voice before? It had that familiar quality of reassurance, a slight rasp, like two single low notes strung together.

“You wipe that smile right off your face, I know all about your kind,” the alcohol had made me surprisingly articulate.

“All about my kind? What could you possible mean?”

I waited until he was well within my reach, and then, with a fast left hand, so fast he did not see it coming, I slapped him painfully across the cheek.

He stared at me with a look of pained shock on his face. I stepped back a pace, waiting. I would have smacked him again right there and then if he dared say something about my mother. But he didn’t. Instead he said: “Aren’t you Bethany, from Crazy Cleansers? Crazy is right! The name must have been inspired by you! Go tell your husband the deal is off!”

Could it be? Was this our client, the renowned Roger Garland?

“I… uh…,” I heard my mother’s snickering laugh behind me, “my mother told me you stole from her! She told me!” I shouted, pointing at her.

“Oh, dear, what are you blabbering on about?” She shouted from the terrace, “we are on holiday, how could I possibly know the man if it’s my first time here? We were just having a bit of fun, you always take things too far.”