Шоколад / Chocolat

“The travellers. You have to tell them to move on. Warn them.”

Her face worked with the effort of speaking. Her hands opened and closed.

I looked at her.

“Please, Josephine. Sit down. Have a drink.”

“I can’t!” She shook her head emphatically. Her wind, tangled hair blurred wildly around her face. “I told you I don’t have time. Just do as I say. Please.” She sounded strained and exhausted, looking towards the church door as if afraid of being seen with me. “He’s been preaching against them,” she told me in a fast, low tone.

“And against you. Talking about you. Saying things.”

I shrugged indifferently.

“So? What do I care?”

Josephine put her fists to her temples in a gesture of frustration.

“You have to warn them,” she repeated. “Tell them to go. Warn Armande too. Tell her he read her name out this morning. And yours. He’ll read mine out as well if he sees me here, and Paul?”

“I don’t understand, Josephine. What can he do? And why should I care, anyway?”

“Just tell them, all right?” Her eyes flicked warily to the church again, from which a few people were drifting.

“I can’t stay,” she said. “I have to go.”

She turned towards the door.

“Wait, Josephine?”

Her face as she turned back was a blur of misery. I could see that she was close to tears.

“This always happens,” she said in a harsh, unhappy voice. “Whenever I find a friend he manages to ruin it for me. It’ll happen the way it always does. You’ll be well out of it by then, but me?”

I took a step forward, meaning to steady her.

Josephine pulled back with a clumsy gesture of warding.

“No! I can’t! I know you mean well, but I just – can’t!” She recovered with an effort. “You have to understand. I live here. I have to live here. You’re free, you can go where you like, you?”

“So can you,” I replied gently.

She looked at me then, touching my shoulder very briefly with the tips of her fingers.

“You don’t understand,” she said without resentment.

“You’re different. For a while I thought maybe I could learn to be different too.” She turned, her agitation leaving her, to be replaced by a look of distant, almost sweet, abstraction. She dug her hands into her pockets once more. “I’m sorry, Vianne,” she said. “I really tried. I know it isn’t your fault.” For a moment I saw a brief return of animation to her features. “Tell the river people,” she urged. “Tell them they have to go.