Letters from My Windmill

by Alphonse Daudet

THE TWO INNS

I was on my way back from Nîmes, one crushingly hot afternoon in July. As far as the eye could see, the white, blistering road, was turning to clouds of dust between olive groves and small oaks, under a great, silver, hazy sun which filled the whole sky. Not a trace of shade, not a whisper of wind. Nothing except the shimmering of the hot air and the strident cry of the cicadas' incessant din, deafening, hurried, and seeming to harmonise with the immense luminous shimmering…. I had walked for two hours in this desert in the middle of nowhere, when suddenly a group of white houses emerged from the dust cloud in the road in front of me. They were known as the Saint-Vincent coaching inns: five or six farms with long red roofed barns; and a dried up watering hole in a would-be oasis of spindly fig trees. At the end of the village, two large inns faced each other across the road.

There was something striking about these inns and their strange setting. On one side, there was a large, new building, full of life and buzzing with activity. All the doors were ajar; a coach was in front, from which the steaming horses were being unhitched. The disembarked passengers were hurriedly drinking in the partial shade by the walls. There was a courtyard strewn with mules and wagons, and the wagoners were lying down under the outhouses waiting to feel cool. Inside there was the jumbled sound of shouting, swearing, fists banging on the tables, glasses clinking, billiard balls rattling, lemonade corks popping, and above all that racket, a joyful voice, bursting with song loud enough to shake the windows:

The lovely Margoton,
Just as soon as night was day,
Took her little silver can,
To the river made her away….

… The inn on the other side was silent and looked completely abandoned. There was grass under the gate, broken blinds, and a branch of dead holly on the door; all that was left of an old decoration. The entrance steps were supported by stones from the road…. It was so poor and pitiful, that it was a real act of charity to stop there at all, even for a drink.

* * * * *

As I went in, I saw a long gloomy, deserted room, with daylight, bursting in through three large, curtainless, windows, which just made it look even more deserted and gloomy. There were some unsteady tables, with dust-covered glasses long abandoned on them. There was also a broken billiard table which held out its six pockets like begging bowls, a yellow couch, and an old bar, all slumbering on in the heavy, unhealthy heat.

And the flies! Oh, God, the flies! I have never seen so many. They were on the ceiling, stuck to the windows, in the glasses, in clusters everywhere…. When I opened the door, there was a buzzing as if I had just entered a bee hive. At the back of the room, in a window, there was a woman standing, her face pressed against the glass and totally absorbed in looking through it. I called to her twice:

—Hello, landlady!

She turned round slowly and revealed a pitiful peasant's face, wrinkled, cracked, earth coloured, and framed in long strands of brownish lace, like old women wear hereabouts. And yet, she wasn't an old woman, perhaps the tears had wilted her.

—What can I do for you? She asked me, drying her eyes.

—Just a sit down and a drink….

She looked at me, utterly astonished, and didn't move as if she hadn't understood.

—This is an inn, isn't it?

The woman sighed:

—Yes … it's an inn, in a manner of speaking…. But why aren't you over the road like everybody else? It's a much livelier place….

—It's a bit too lively for my liking…. I'd rather stay here.

And without waiting for her reply, I sat down at a table. Once she had satisfied herself that I was genuine, she began to flit to and fro busily, opening drawers, moving bottles, wiping glasses, and flicking the flies away…. You could see that a customer was quite an event for her. Now and then the unfortunate woman would hold her head as if she was despairing of getting to the end of it.

Then she disappeared into a back room; I heard her take up some keys, fiddle with the locks, rummage in the bread bin, huff and puff, do some dusting, wash some plates. And from time to time … a muffled sob…. After a quarter of an hour of this performance, a plate of dried raisins, an old Beaucaire loaf as hard as the dish it came on, and a bottle of cheap wine, were placed before me.

—There you are, said the strange creature, and rushed back to her place at the window.

* * * * *

I tried to engage her in conversation as I was drinking up.

—You don't often get people here do you, madam?

— Oh, no, monsieur, never, no one…. It was very different at the time when we were the only the coaching inn around here. We did the lunches for the hunt during the soter bird season, as well as coaches all the year round…. But since the other place has opened up, we've lost everything…. The world and his wife prefer to go across the way. They find it just too miserable here…. The simple fact is that this place doesn't interest them. I'm not beautiful, I have prickly heat, and my two little girls are dead…. Over there it's very different, there is laughter all the time. A woman from Arles, a beautiful woman with lots of lace and three gold chains round her neck, keeps the place. The driver, her lover, brings in customers for her in the coach. She also has a number of attractive girls for chamber maids…. This also brings lots of business in! She gets all the young people from Bezouces, from Redessan and from Jonquières. The coachmen go out of their way to call in at her place…. As for me, I'm stuck in here all day, all alone, eating my heart out.

She said all that with a distracted, vacant way, forehead still pressed against the window pane. Obviously, there was something in the inn opposite that really interested her…. Suddenly, over the road, a lot started to happen. The coach edged forward in the dust. The sounds of cracking whips and a horn was heard. The young girls squeezed together in the doorway and shouted:

—Goodbye!… Goodbye!… And above all that, the wonderful voice, singing, as before, most beautifully,

Took her little silver can,
To the river made her way,
She didn't notice by the water,
Three young cavaliers, quite near.

The woman's whole body shook on hearing that voice; and she turned towards me and whispered:

—Do you hear that? That's my husband…. Don't you think he has a beautiful voice?

I looked at her, stupefied.

—What? Your husband?… So even he goes over there?

Then, with an apologetic air, but movingly, she said:

—What can you do, monsieur? Men are like that, they don't like tears, and I'm always breaking down, since our little girls died…. Then, this dump of a place, where nobody comes, is so miserable…. Well then, when he gets really fed up, my poor dear José goes over the road for a drink, and, the woman from Arles gets him to sing with that gorgeous voice of his. Hush!… There he goes again. And, trembling, and with huge tears that made her look even more ugly, she stood there in front of the window, hands held out in ecstasy, listening to her José singing to the woman from Arles:

The first was bold and whispered to her,
You're so beautiful my dear!