The Last Life Read Online Free PDF

My father seized on any strand that might divert his own father's discourse.
    "It was nothing," my mother insisted.
    Etienne squirmed. My grandmother tilted his juice cup to his slippery lips.
    "That's not true, Maman. You were terribly upset."
    "Carol, what happened?" My father leaned forward in his chair. My grandfather's gaze, from beneath his wild brows, burned my mother's cheeks.
    "Oh, Sagesse makes a mountain out of a molehill. It was just one of the pedlars, in the market, who didn't like the look of me for some reason."
    "She spat at us," I explained.
    "Whatever for?" my grandmother asked.
    My mother shrugged. "Just rude, I suppose. She was a nasty, tough old thing."
    "She accused Maman of being in the National Front, in town for the funerals."
    "Probably a communist," my grandmother said with a sniff. "You didn't take it to heart?"
    "Of course not. But she was very unpleasant." My mother adjusted her skirt.
    "As if—" my grandfather took a breath and spouted "—as if our country's troubles stemmed from the National Front! As if that were an insult! How absurd!"
    "How do you mean, Grand-père?"
    "I don't vote for Le Pen," my grandfather said, "but I'd defend any man's right to. For a start, because we—you too, my little girl, although you know about as much history as a spotted dog—we, all of us in this room, owe that man a debt. To the last, he fought for our country, he believed in our people, he understood what it was, what it meant."
    "Algeria." I whispered it.
    "That's right, my girl. Algeria. And anyone who votes for him, maybe they're merely repaying that debt. I don't happen to agree with a lot of his policies, and I think it's political suicide for representatives of the FN to come down here and associate themselves with a posse of undisciplined children, children who exemplify the very anarchical destruction—in this case, self-destruction—that I've just been talking about. Left, right—the politics don't matter. It's chaos, it's entropy, and anyone with any wit should keep away. But the FN's not the problem. People who think it is are misguided. It's just a symptom of the problem. Of the problems. Plural. The problems that this nation faces, overrun with immigrants—Arabs, Africans, the English-speakers, all of them—our culture assailed on all sides. Our children, for God's sake, building bombs for no reason! And our government—this decrepit, farcical liar who fancies himself emperor—our government has nothing to say about it, nothing at all!"
    My father coughed and looked into his drink.
    "Le Pen, at least—he says the wrong thing, I think, for our time and our moment, but at least he has something to say. At least he knows his own mind. That's what you should've said to the pinko fishwife—"
    "She was selling olives, actually," my mother murmured.
    "Olives, fish, garlic, whatever. That's what you should've said to that peasant—at least he doesn't wait for advice from Moscow on how to respond to a local crisis. At least he has an honest response—a French response." My grandfather grunted, sipped his scotch, rattling the ice cubes.
    I sat deep in the back of the sofa, swinging my feet slightly, watching, as my brother, strapped in his chair opposite me, twitched and rolled his bright grey eyes. I was quite impressed by the firecracker I had so nonchalantly launched in our midst: I hadn't known I would provoke so fulsome a response, so ready a distraction from the pettiness of late swims in the Bellevue pool.
    At supper, my grandfather said almost nothing, as if he were spent. He looked small, slumped over his
jrìssaladière,
then over his slices of lamb shoulder. He sipped indifferently at his rosé and stared out to the now-dark sea, and when my father asked him about the notion of a security guard at the front gate, he seemed not to hear. My father looked at my mother as if to say "I told you so," and she raised a finely arched