“Pierre is, in every way, a normal man—”

“Well, when you except that he likes to eat his ice cream with a fork—”

“Not to mention that fastidious eyebrow-grooming! It is a shame that

someone so young should take so much time concerning their appearance—but I
suppose that is common. Yes, he is normal, except—”

“For that black beret!”

The black beret, the dread black beret. It hung over the dinner party like a
cloud of ash, choking all further discussion; there was no more to be said about
Pierre Jean-Luc Fournier, and that was that.

They were right in much of what they said—he did like to eat his ice cream
with a fork (for reasons unknown, except perhaps the economic benefit of keeping
no spoons in the house), and he did carry a small wallet of fine instruments with
which to tune up eyebrows, but those were not the only things which marked him
out as strange. For one thing, he was absolutely fine with a garret studio and
apartment, when all the other (more fashionable) artists were moving to lofts, and
for another, he was not married—or in any romantic attachment, for that matter—
at the age of 38, long past respectable parameters. But then, we all have our small
quirks. Madame Defly, being the one who had brought up eyebrow-grooming, had
an odd attachment to her fur stoles (often petting them, as though to revive the
animal), and a massive collection of former husbands to rival any of her
neighbors’.

It was, however, the black beret which marked Pierre out as especially,
terrifically, strange. Always, if the discussion turned to Pierre, the discussion
would turn to that black beret. Always, if Pierre was there, his black beret came
with him. He did not always wear it. Sometimes it was in his hand, on his lap, or
placed on the table, where it sat like a solemn frog overseeing a baptism—an event
which admittedly none of the diners had ever seen, but which nonetheless came to
mind. No one dared mention it in Pierre’s—and the black beret’s—forbidding
presence, but they speculated about it plenty in their homes and with their other
friends.
 Madame Defly was one of Pierre’s most generous patrons, and took a rather
personal interest. She fancied herself a psychologist after a short-lived attachment
to one, but was (despite her overabundance of theories) rather stymied. She began
discussing Pierre and the black beret with her latest paramour, Jacques, saying with
a puzzled expression (oblivious to Jacques’ obvious attempts to kiss her)—

“I still can’t place my finger on why Pierre won’t go anywhere without that
beret. Is it some childhood attachment? The poor thing. No, perhaps it is a gift
from a dead friend. But we are Pierre’s friends, and we are all alive. What do you
think, Jacques?” And Jacques, much offended, muttered something incoherent and
slunk off.

In the literary circles, where Pierre’s friend Paul-Henri chatted with authors
and professors of literature, they all elevated the black beret to the status of
metaphor or symbol. It had to mean something in the greater story of his life, it had
to be his Scarlet Letter of sorts, his minister’s Black Veil, if you took a Hawthorne-
ish approach.

To the painters whom Pierre worked with, the black beret was some kind of
muse, some higher artistic inspiration. They considered it very romantic, artistic,
and perhaps just a little bit frightening for the awesome power which it held—to
shut up Madame Defly, the chattiest woman in all of Marseille?

No matter what position you took on the black beret, everyone agreed that it
was very strange how he took it everywhere. He went to dinner with the friends,
the beret was there; he was painting in his studio, the beret was there. Childhood
affliction, mark of sin, or artistic muse, the black beret did not have to come with
him everywhere he went. The friends decided it was time for an intervention.

The intervention would not be walking into a room and confronting him, as
though he were a drug addict; no, there was no way they could say a word about
the black beret with the beret right there, in front of them. No, their intervention
would be far easier, far more straightforward. They would steal the black beret and
see what Pierre’s reaction was to it. If he showed signs of frenzied searching and
depression, then they would know that it was something unhealthy, and ask him
straight out what the problem was. If he didn’t make a big deal about it, then that
was that. The black beret would be locked away safe in someone’s closet.
 The hard thing, though, was stealing the beret. He kept it so close to him—
most often it was on his lap, or on his head—that it would be impossible to grab it.
Finally, the friends had their chance. He had invited Paul-Henri, Madame Defly,
and a couple painter friends over for dinner, and they would all arrive early. His
door was never locked when he expected company, so they could sneak in as easily
as they pleased. No doubt Pierre would be showering before the dinner—he always
seemed to—and they would simply walk in, unheard, and grab the beret from
wherever it lay. It was a plan that gleamed with its simplicity.

They entered Pierre’s garret apartment and studio, heralded by a non-

descript door, soon enough. It was dimly lit with some of the light streaming in
through the window, close to the room’s ceiling and the sidewalk’s ground (it was
a garret, after all). The rooms had, it seemed, been hastily cleaned—you could see
the vacuum cleaner marks on the carpet—but the furniture was tasteful and sparse
as usual. The black beret was nowhere to be seen in the living room, but they could
tell that he was taking a shower. Perhaps he had left it with his pile of clothes?

Paul-Henri was elected to scout out where the beret might be hiding. He
began first in the studio, where he expected it to be lying somewhere among
Pierre’s coveted collection of canvases, then moved onto Pierre’s bedroom. There
were some clothes strewn carelessly on the floor and some in the hamper—and
there, lounging on the ground next to Pierre’s dirty socks, was the black beret. It
stared up at Paul-Henri balefully, and he looked at it with as strong a face he could
muster before he grabbed it and stuffed it in his waistband, racing back to the
couch. The friends looked at him expectantly.

“So?” Madame Defly asked, impatiently.

“I got it,” Paul-Henri said with an expression of utter glee. “We have it!”

At that moment, they heard the shower turn off, so they all turned silent,
sitting on the couch in silent repression of emotion, though they shook and fidgeted
in their excitement. What would happen when Pierre saw the black beret gone?

They heard him towel himself off and presumably put on clothes.

“We should pretend like we’ve just arrived!” Madame Defly hissed.
“Otherwise he’ll suspect us!”
 They rose up immediately, and, with soft footsteps, backtracked to the door,
opening it.

“Hello!” Paul-Henri yelled, voice quivering. “Pierre?”

Pierre poked his head outside the bedroom, fastening a tie, and said,

“Paul-Henri! You’re early! Madame Defly, a pleasure as usual—you’re all

here at the same time, how wonderful! Did you take metro?”

“No, no, we came in our cars,” Paul-Henri said, shaking his head. “So, shall
we go get dinner?”

“Yes, one moment—I’ve just got to grab something—” and with that, he
disappeared back into the bedroom.

The friends exchanged conspiratorial glances.

When Pierre returned, he had a furrowed brow and a rather worried

expression.

“That’s odd,” he said musingly, “I can’t seem to find my black beret. You
know, the one that has my cash in it—”

Paul-Henri choked for a moment.

“What?” he managed to say. “We never realized that was what you used it
for, Pierre—”

“Oh yes, I started using it when I was on a trip to Florence—I’d heard so

much about the pickpockets, and figured they wouldn’t target a beret. I never put
much back into my wallet, after that. I’m a little worried about the beret, though, it
must have had fifty euros in it.”

He looked at their perplexed expressions with amusement.

“Haven’t you seen me pull cash out of the thing?” he asked.

“Er…” They all tried to remember incidents during which Pierre had paid
for the dinner, but Madame Defly being very generous and very rich, it seemed
like she always did. But oh, yes, surely there had been times when he’d pulled cash
out of the beret to pay for ice cream—they’d all just been too thick, too caught up
in their scarlet letter-black veil-artistic muse-childhood trauma theories to notice.

Paul-Henri scratched his head for a good way to get the beret back to Pierre
without looking like an utter fool or worse, a thief.

“Er—I have to use the bathroom quickly. It’s over there, isn’t it?” he asked,
pointing, and dashed off.

Once inside the bathroom, Paul-Henri quickly removed the beret from his
waistband—looking significantly less magnificent and frightening—then placed it
casually on the edge of the sink, flushed the toilet, and ran the tap (though no using
of either application had been done). Then, walking out with a relieved expression,
he shouted to Pierre,

“Pierre! Your beret’s in the bathroom!”

The beret having been summarily retrieved, and their questions answered,
the friends set off with Pierre for dinner. They all felt a little miffed that it had not
been anything more significant—it was, basically, an unconventional wallet,
nothing more—but at the same time, they were not so scared of the hat. When it sat
on the table, the thing no longer looked like a toad at a baptism, a massive,
frightening object; it looked like a black beret.

Certainly, they whispered afterwards, Paul-Henri and the painters, and, of

course, the indomitably chatty Madame Defly—

“How odd we never noticed! That’s strange, though, that he never

mentioned—”

“Why would he—he probably assumed that we knew well—”

“All of our theories. To think that it is perfectly normal! My goodness. It

certainly puts things into perspective. Think of all our speculation! Yes, he is
normal, because think of Freud—”

“Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, except—”

“Sometimes,” they chorused, “a beret is just a beret.”