My German Lover, Part 27, chapter 1

----The conclusion---

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Many many thanks to all of you guys for your last reviews and for your support. As I said in my last chapter, I felt I had fulfilled my promise to Will and Paul, to write something about the story of their life. Of course, there was much more to tell… but I wasn’t sure you guys would be interested to read the rest of that story. I wondered that maybe, people were fed up with that story. From the reviews I’ve read and from the e-mails I’ve received, I now see that I was wrong about that. And I’m glad I was. Thank you for telling me how you feel about that story. You made the difference.

Now, in order for me to tell the rest of the story, we must make a big leap in time, from 1947 to 1997, the year I met Will and Paul… as well as the others that were still alive at the time. In all the privious parts of that story, I was writing about others, and not about me. Now things will be different, since I’ll be part of the story. It's not easy for me to write this new part because I don’t like to talk about my own life. But I’ll do it, cause I think I owe it to you. Oh… and in the present chapter… you won’t find sex. But you will find plenty in the next chapters. Don’t worry!

Thanks again pals!

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---Martinique, December 1997---

I was alone, sitting on the beach in front of the new vacation house my dad had recently bought in the Southern part of the island of Martinique. It was very early in the morning and my parents as well as my older brother were still sleeping.

We had flown from Montréal the day before, to spend the Christmas holiday there and since we didn’t have to go back to Montréal before January 10, that meant we would be spending four weeks in Martinique, away from winter! Thank God! I hate winter!

In November of that year I had turned fifteen and was rather happy with my life. I mean.. I had an easy life, nice parents, a nice brother (well… not all the time!). I had all the money I wanted, had good friends… and I had just made a new girlfriend.

She was a nice, good-looking girl… but from a very, very Catholic family.

From the very start, she had warned me she wanted to remain a virgin until marriage and that if it was sex I wanted from her, well… it would be better for me to look for someone else! Of course, I assured her that that was not what I had in mind… and that, as a good Catholic, I respected her decision to remain a virgin. Totally! She was most happy with my answer!

Of course I’m a Catholic… I mean, I was baptized after all! But… well… I must say I don’t give a damn about that. In my family, we all believe in God but we don’t go to Church. And we don’t give a damn about the Pope. Oh, we respect him of course… but we think we can make our own judgment, and that we don’t need him to tell us what to think or do! We also believe we don’t need to go to Church to talk to God. And I don’t care whether you call Him Jesus, Buddha, Allah … whatever you want! We’re all talking about the same God!

Of course I didn’t tell her that! Shit no! Why shoot myself in the foot, huh?

I just told her I respected her, and that if I wanted to go out with her, it’s because she’s a nice girl and because I like her very much. Nothing sexual! And indeed that was the truth.

Anyway, I was just fifteen… and to tell the truth, the fact she didn’t want to have sex with me suited me just fine. At the time, I didn’t spend much time asking myself why that suited me except that, anyway, I wasn’t ready to have sex. Period! I had a nice and very good-looking girlfriend to show around like a trophy. What more could I ask? I had all the fun and was under no obligation to “perform”. My pride and my ego were flying high and I knew many of my friends were looking at me with envy. To them, I was the “lucky dude”… Were they under the impression that we were having sex? I don’t know. Maybe. But I never said anything that could lead them to believe so. And I had an answer ready, should one of my friend ask me that question: “It’s none of your business pal!” 

So as I said, at the time… I was rather happy with my life and as I was sitting on the beach that morning, staring at the beautiful Caribbean Sea right at my feet, enjoying my coffee… I felt I was quite privileged.

A light, warm breeze was caressing my body, and since I was only wearing a pair of shorts, it felt real good…

I was lost into my thoughts when a nice dog came from nowhere, running towards me with a long stick clenched between his jaws, waving his tail...

I turned my head to look at the dog and, with a big smile on my face, I said to him:

“Salut toi… d’où tu viens, hein?” (Hi there… where do you come from huh?)

The dog sat right in front of me and let go of his stick at my feet. Then, he stared at me, probably hoping I was going to throw his stick away so he could run to fetch it…

Instead, I looked at him and began patting him… and before long… he sat on the beach and looked at me, offering me his paw as if he wanted to shake hands with me!

“Bon chien…” (good dog), I said to him, grinning…

And then I heard a voice from the distance, telling me:

“…Don’t be afraid… He’s good-tempered…”

I turned to see who was talking to me, and saw four old gentlemen walking on the beach towards me…

“Oh, I’m not afraid of him… I love dogs!”, I answered, with a big smile on my face.

As the four gentlemen got nearer to where I was sitting I stood up, looked at them and said:

“Nice dog you have here…”

“Yes… We love him very much!”, one of the gentlemen answered, with a nice smile on his face. “Would you happen to be one of our new neighbours?”

“I don’t know if we’re neighbours… but I live there…”, I answered, pointing to our house… “My dad recently bought that house…”

“Oh you’re one of our new neighbours all right… The four of us live over there…”, one of the gentlemen answered, laughing…

“You mean… the Bagatelle Plantation?”

“Yes… We’re the owners of Bagatelle”, one of them said… “I’m Paul de Brion. Nice to meet you young man…” he added, offering me his hand…

Of course we shook hand and I politely answered: “I’m Jack Poitras…”

“Welcome to Martinique Jack! And this is Will… Lutz and his brother Hans…”, the man said, introducing me to his friends as I was shaking hands with them…

“Nice to meet you gentlemen…”, I respectfully answered.

“Just call me Paul, will you?”, monsieur de Brion said…

“Oh Sir… I could never do that… I mean…”

“Why?”, he answered to me, smiling… “Just because we are old gentlemen? We like to think of ourselves as young at heart, so please… do me a favor and just call me Paul, will you?”

“Okay then… I guess…”

“Same for us, huh!”, Will added…

“And do you know what?”, Hans asked me… “I’m the one who sold your new vacation house to your dad… I used to live there…”

“Oh?”

“Yes…”, he replied, smiling at me… “My wife died a few years ago and since most of my children are now living in Fort-de-France, I felt a bit lonely living alone in that house… so I sold it to your dad, and I moved back into the mansion with my brother Lutz and my friends here…”

“… Sorry to hear your wife has died…”, I answered…

“Yes”, Hans answered with a sad smile on his face… “That’s life…”

Since Hans was wearing a pair of shorts, I couldn’t help but to look at his scarred legs… and when he saw I was looking at them he said:

“…Shrapnel wounds… from the war!”, he told me…

“Oh you were in Vietnam?”, I asked him…

At the time I was only fifteen… and I didn’t know much about wars of the past… But I had heard a lot on TV about the Vietnam war… which had ended long before I was even born. So to me, if someone was talking about “the war”, he was necessarily referring to the Vietnam war…

“God no!” Hans answered, laughing… “Look at me my friend… I’m eighty-two years old… I would have been too old to fight during the war in Vietnam… and anyway, I’m not American. No… I’m talking about the Second World War…

“Oh… yes, I’ve heard a bit about that war… I know it was in Europe huh?”, I answered, not knowing what else to say… and not wanting to show my ignorance… “You were in Europe during that war?”

“The four of us were all living there at that time… but that’s old history… Let’s not talk about the past, and let’s talk about you young man…”, Hans answered, laughing…

“… Not much to say about me you know…”

“…I understand you live in Montréal?”, Lutz asked, smiling at me…

“Yes. But I was born in Paris, as were my parents and my brother…. We moved to Canada when I was about ten…”

“…I suppose that’s why you still have the French accent… not the French-Canadian accent…”, Will said…

“Yeah!”, I answered, grinning…

“If I remember correctly, your father told me he’s a doctor in Montréal, isn’t he?”, Hans said…

“…Yes. A few years ago, my dad was working as a surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris… Then he received an offer from a large hospital in Montréal to work there… As he says, it was an offer he just couldn’t refuse… So he accepted it and we moved to Montréal. But except for the four of us, all the rest of our family is still living in France…”, I answered.

“Yes… I remember now… That’s what your father told me when he bought your house from me…”, Hans answered.

“Yes…”, I simply answered, smiling at him…

“Well… I guess we’ll see you again soon, since we’ve invited your family to spend Christmas Eve with us at the mansion… so we can introduce you to the other neighbours…”, Paul said, smiling at me…

“Cool… So I’ll see your Plantation…”, I answered, with a big smile on my face… “Do you make rum there?”

“Sure do! Would you like to visit the distillery?”, Paul asked me…

“Yesssssss… I would love that! I’m so curious to see how you make rum…”

“No problem”, Will answered, laughing… “Feel free to knock on our door, and we’ll take you on a tour of the Plantation…”

“…Are you serious?”

“Sure! Just don’t knock on our door between two and three in the afternoon… cause that's when we usually take our nap”, Lutz said… “And anyway, you’ll learn that here in Martinique, between two and three, no one is working cause it’s too hot. Everybody is napping…”

“I won’t forget…”, I answered, grinning…

The morning after, as I was about to leave our house for my tour of the Plantation I told my mum:

“…I’m going to visit Bagatelle… so don’t be worried if you don’t see me around for a while…”

“Don’t bother the owners, you hear?” she answered…

“Hey! I met them on the beach yesterday morning, and they are the ones who invited me…”

“Yes, well… that doesn’t mean you can invade their privacy…”

“Oh mum… come on. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not going to bother them…”

“…Just remember to be polite… and don’t abuse their hospitality…”, she finally said.

“I won’t mum… I swear!”

“…You’re going to visit the Plantation?”, my eighteen years old brother Robert asked me…

“Yup!”, I answered, beaming…

“I’m going with you…”

“Ah shit Robert! I don’t need you to keep an eye on me all the time… Stop patronizing me, will you?”, I said…

I was furious… and the thought that my big brother wanted to accompany me on my tour of the Plantation was making me mad.

“Stop fighting you two… I don’t want to hear you two fight while we’re on vacation, you hear me?”, our mum said from the kitchen … “When will you two grow up?”

“…Come on bro…”, my brother Robert said to me, ruffling my dirty blond hair playfully… “I don’t intend to patronize you… I swear… I just want to visit the distillery, that’s all!”

“Oh yeah?”, I answered, doubtful…

“I swear it’s true”, he answered, flashing me his perfect smile, his pearly whites dazzling…

“Sure… You want to come just cause as usual, you want to be in the limelight! I know you Robert… I’m not going! Go if you want, I’m staying here…”, I resolutely said.

And I was serious!

Sometimes, my big brother can be a pain in the ass.