The Mother, The Son and The Fresh Apple Pie
1.
The bacon fat on the chopping block was the same color as Jeanne’s upper arm. Sandra watched her mistress cut thin strips, they sizzled in the frying pan. The smoke mingled with the heat in the kitchenette.
“But San, how many years has Batu been in?”
Sandra drew on her cigarette, her gnawed fingernails yellow.
‘Half. Good behavior, it’s all in that letter.’
Sandra stared at a patch of mold on the ceiling.
“If I don’t want my son to come back to live with me, a lawyer has to object…”
‘A lawyer?’
Jeanne grunted, her arm flesh trembled.
‘As a single mother you have to swallow what the high lords decide. Clean the apples for the pie. Did you put the menu board on the terrace?’
Sandra nodded and picked up the bucket of apples from the alley. The murmur of the Route du Soleil sounded in the background.
“I’m still his mother.” She sounded hoarse.
“To get it out of your throat after what he did with that girl—” Jeanne’s double chin shivered.
The bell above the restaurant door rang. A German family wanted to have lunch on the terrace.
2.
The worst of the heat had passed, Sandra had folded the umbrellas and wiped the patio tables, drops of water splashed on her t-shirt. The regular boys sat in a circle of plastic chairs, pints resting on their bellies.
“Hey baby!”
Pépé was the village’s auto mechanic, a man with coal shovels for hands. Those hands were often under Sandra’s top on drunken evenings. Sandra let him go, she thought loneliness was worse than engine oil on her nipples.
“Are you going to have a wet t-shirt contest?” Pépé raised his index fingers in front of his chest.
“Coucou: Sandra’s tits!”
The men chuckled, Sandra felt their eyes on her skin.
‘Or rather…’ Pépé lowered his fingers to his knees, ‘is this more nearby.’
The church wall echoed their greasy laughter. Jeanne rocked onto the terrace with a platform.
‘P’tit Pépé, such a big mouth! Fortunately, all the girls are still swooning at you… from your body odor.’
The men shouted, Sandra also laughed.
Pépé planted her on his lap.
“Be careful, mother, because who else will you have to protect against that beast of a son of yours?”
Sandra pushed her buttocks against his crotch, Pépé was hers tonight.
3.
Sandra lived a little outside the village. Her garden had gone wild, a rose was growing over the roof. Since her Dimi passed away, she let nature take its course. Dimi had liked tight. A lawn was nature enough for him. Dimi maintained the grass militarily. Every week he mowed in a sweat, stripped off the edges, re-seeded the bare spots. Their grass was greener than the neighbors’. The blood of Batu’s girlfriend had contrasted darkly. The day after the trial, Sandra poured bleach on the lawn. The villagers were ashamed of it. Jeanne shrugged when Sandra complained.
Sandra knew Jeanne had other concerns. Her restaurant was getting worse and worse. During the trial it was packed every day. Reporters and camera crews from all over the country descended on the village and rang the cash register. Unbelievable what that journal could drink.
After the verdict it became quieter than ever. Only tourists, people who couldn’t know, stopped. Only after a year did the regular guys reappear. Reluctantly, yes, but where else could they go? Sandra was happy to see them again.
4.
The season was coming to an end, the murmur of the Route du Soleil was almost inaudible. During the day there was only Loïc, in his usual place on the terrace.
‘Retired gendarme, that’s how I prefer them. No one left to command, but with a fat state pension and a dry throat.’
Sandra had heard Jeanne say it to the regular boys so many times. Then Jeanne pointed her thumb at Loïc, who showed up at the bar every day at ten o’clock. Loïc was more reliable than the church bell.
“Sandra, one more.”
Loïc’s voice was soft but authoritarian. She put the glass on his table and started cleaning apples for the tarte tatin.
“Batu will be released this week, nun?”
Sandra stuck the razor-sharp apple corer in a golden reinet.
“Sandra?”
Sandra scratched the scabs on her arms, psoriasis, the doctor called her a typical stress patient.
“Yes, Loic. This Friday.’
“I’ll be glad to finally see the boy again.”
Sandra silently inserted the apple corer into a new reinet, juice dripped onto her shoe.
5.
Dimi was what the villagers called human flotsam. He washed up for work in the factory and got hooked on a woman. Dimi could be found in Jeanne’s bar every day. As a taker with a golden finger, he was soon adored by the regular guys. They watched with pleasure how the then slender Jeanne exchanged amorous glances with the generous newcomer. The shock was therefore great when Sandra announced her engagement to Dimi. What was their friend supposed to do with that scumbag? All the boys knew where to find Sandra when the need was high, who wouldn’t have been standing in the alley on a lonely Saturday night? But if you could get Jeanne? The boys shrugged and drank to the budding happiness. They raised their glasses again when Sandra came to show their son Batu just nine months later. As a new father, Dimi gave even more rounds, which is why all the boys turned a blind eye when Jeanne disappeared into the alley with their friend.
In those years, Loïc often stood on Sandra’s doorstep, receiving calls from worried neighbours. Sandra screaming and throwing Dimi’s clothes out the window, Batu hungrily in his crib, Dimi at Jeanne’s counter. Loïc walked around the house with Batu on his arm for hours, made sure the child had something to eat. When the boy grew up, Loïc sometimes took him on his rounds.
Batu told Loic everything. That he wanted to join the gendarmes later, slept with a butterfly knife under his pillow, was madly in love with the girl next door.
6.
It had been Loïc who had arrested Batu. Dimi had called and begged for the gendarme to come alone. Loïc would never forget what he had seen that day. The blood was all over the kitchen, a large puddle was in front of the oven. The girl next door found Loïc in the garden, on the lawn. Her throat was slit, her eyes gouged out. Batu cradled her in his arms, his boyish body red with blood.
Without handcuffs, Loïc put Batu in the police van. Inside he grabbed some clothes, the smell in the house confused Loïc. A mix of coagulated blood and freshly baked apple pie, he tasted it on his tongue.
7.
The media turned Batu into a beast. The more they ranted, the quieter Batu became. The villagers saw his silence as an admission of guilt, long before the judge had passed their judgment. As a gendarme, Loïc had always trusted his gut feeling, and that exonerated Batu. But after his first black eye, Loïc was also silent. The following year he took early retirement.
The murder weapon was never found. Batu was suspected to have slit her throat with the butterfly knife found in his room. The pathologist testified at the trial that the girl had succumbed to injuries to her brain inflicted through her eye sockets with an extremely sharp object. Cylindrical, according to the pathologist.
Batu got ten years. After the trial, the village emptied and Dimi drank himself to death. Sandra continued to work for Jeanne, mainly in the back of the kitchen, washing dishes and cleaning apples. There was not much more to do.
During the hours that Loïc was not in the bar, he went through the murder file. The police interviews of Sandra and Dimi had been rushed, after all, they already had their perpetrator. Only one sentence in Dimi’s file did not let go of Loïc: ‘Our Batu wanted to go to Paris with that girl, Sandra just couldn’t stomach that.’
It kept Loïc awake at night.
8.
It was Pépé who recognized Batu first, but only Loïc walked up to the young man and embraced him tightly. Batu had become thinner, Loïc saw deep grooves around his mouth.
‘Hey filthy faggots!’ Pépé’s voice filled the café.
‘Go fuck yourself, Batu must know how, after all these years at the Anal Academy!’
The men roared, beer glasses broke, Jeanne soothed things with a round of the house. Loïc watched as Sandra quietly emerged from the kitchen and walked over to her son. Gently she hugged Batu, her apple corer still in her hand. Batu looked over his mother’s shoulder at his old friend.
“The blood smelled like apple pie.”
Loic nodded. He knew exactly what Batu meant.