The Rose Café by John Hanson Mitchell Page A

times, once standing under one of the plane trees with another foreign-looking blond man in a gray suit and a pressed white shirt, and another time with a large group of obvious continental types at one of the cafés. He would usually come out to the Rose Café later in the night, sometimes quite late, as if perhaps he had been unable to sleep and decided to entertain himself by slumming. He was always well attired, but in contrast to his appearance, he would assume a jocular, play-along-with-the-boys style once he was settled into a game and had had a few drinks. I would always go to bed long before the game was over, so I never saw him leave, although late one night, I saw him standing alone up on the promontory above my cottage. It was one of those nights when the scirocco was up—the moist, hot wind that blows in off the Sahara—and people were restless. Le Baron was standing, leaning slightly forward into the wind, his hands in his jacket pockets, his white coattails and dark tie flapping behind him in the high wind.
    The promontory was a favorite watch post for locals and visitors; the site offered a fine view to the western horizon, and people often came out to watch the sun go down. Before I started working at the Rose Café I used to go up there myself. Sometimes after the sun had set, a lilac curtain of dusk would draw across the eastern sky, and the whole Mediterranean would shade from green to violet and then take on a deep purple cast. Watching the changing colors, I could understand the origin of Homer’s enigmatic phrase “the wine-dark sea.”
    The little outcropping was also a night watch. Periodically I would see an old woman, hooded in a kerchief and wearing the traditional long black skirts, standing there. She was a widow, I was told, who had lost her husband at sea many years before. Later in the season I would sometimes see, very late at night, the Polish-born guest called Maggs up there on one of her sleepless nights, wrapped in her terry-cloth robe, and during the early evenings Herr Komandante would often post himself there to watch the red sun sink below the green horizon.
    Lounging at the bar, le Baron watched the terrace for a while and then in due time he turned to me.
    â€œYou’re the new man here, aren’t you?” he said in English.
    I acknowledged that I was, and he turned and went back to watching the terrace.
    â€œHave you seen Max?” he asked over his shoulder.
    â€œNo,” I said. “He hasn’t come out yet. No one has. I don’t know where they are. It’s a little early, maybe.”
    â€œMaybe,” he said.
    Then he turned and faced me.
    â€œGive me a Cap Corse if you please.” This was the brand name of a local aperitif called averna , made from chestnuts, a drink favored along this coast.
    I served him, he thanked me, and then he turned again to watch the terrace. He spoke with a slight French accent and refined English inflections.
    After a few minutes he turned around again and sipped his drink, swirling it first in the glass, watching the lemon slice circle.
    â€œYou’re in the little cottage in the back, aren’t you?” he asked indifferently. “Did you happen to see a white ketch with an odd rig come into the cove late the other night?”
    I said I had seen such a ketch a few weeks earlier but not recently.
    He nodded and contemplated his drink.
    â€œAnd where are you from?” he asked.
    â€œUnited States,” I said.
    â€œYes, but where?”
    I told him I was from Englewood, a suburb of New York City.
    â€œReally?” he said, taking a sudden interest. “But that’s surprising, I actually think I know some people from there. Are there cliffs there, above a river?” he asked.
    There were, in fact. The Palisades, which ran along the west bank of the Hudson for miles.
    He said that he thought he had known a couple from the town during the war. They had worked with