The Snake Flag Conspiracy

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There was no moon. There was only starlight. The shadows cast by the boulders at the foot of the limestone cliffs that rimmed the beach were either ominous or romantic, depending on whom you were with. Up to now, they had been as romantic as only the Riviera can be when you’re with a beautiful, uninhibited girl.

Clarisse pressed her nude body closer to mine, whispering into my ear in a voice as soft and as dark as the Mediterranean night that shrouded us as we lay on a soft wool picnic blanket.

She whispered again, but this time my attention leaped away from her voice to a fainter sound, the scrabbling grate of a loose pebble on sand-covered rock.

I put my hand over her mouth, feeling her moist lips on the palm of my hand, and rolled away from the softness of her body to the edge of the blanket.

I heard it again. The sliding rasp of sand on rock.

All along the Côte d’Azur, from Marseilles to Toulon, the coastline is indented by a continuous series of deep water inlets. The waters of the Mediterranean cover ancient river beds, so that in these small bays the limestone cliffs drop precipitously into the sea. Here and there, along the edges of some of the inlets — the calanques — there are small, rough sand beaches.

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