Fire in the Blood (3 page)

I went into the marquee and watched them; I listened to their laughter. I wondered how they could get such enjoyment from prancing around in time to the music. For some time now, when I'm with young people, I feel a kind of astonishment, as if I'm looking at a species utterly different from mine, the way an old dog watches the comings and goings of little mice. I asked Helene and Francois if they ever felt anything similar. They laughed and said I was nothing but an old egotist, that they weren't losing contact with their children, thank God. So that's what they believe! I think they're deluding themselves. If they could see their own youth resurrected before them, it would horrify them, or else they wouldn't recognise it; they would stare at it and say, "Tha
t l
ove, those dreams, that fire are strangers to us." Their own youth . . . So how can they possibly expect to understand anyone else's?

While the orchestra was having a break, I heard the carriage set off, taking the newlyweds to the Moulin-Neuf. I looked for Brigitte Declos in the crowd. She was dancing with a tall dark young man. I thought of her husband-such a fool. Then again, maybe he was wise, in his own way. He kept his old body snug under a red eiderdown and his old soul warm at the thought of all the land he owned, while his wife enjoyed her youth.

I
ALWAYS HAVE LUNCH With the Erards on New Year's Day. The tradition is that you stay a long time. You arriv
e a
round noon, spend all afternoon with them, dine off the leftovers from lunch, then go home late in the evening. Francois had to visit one of his properties. Winter is harsh; the roads are covered in snow. He left around five o'clock. At eight o'clock we were still waiting for him to have supper, but he was nowhere in sight.

"He must have been delayed," I said. "He'll spend the night at the farm."

"No, he knows I'm waiting for him," Helene replied. "Not once in all the time we've been married has he stayed away overnight without telling me. Let's eat; he'll be home soon."

The three boys were at the Moulin-Neuf where their sister had invited them to spend the night. It had been a long time since Helene and I had been alone together like this. We talked about the weather, the harvest, the only real topics o
f c
onversation in these parts; we had a relaxing meal. This region has something restrained yet wild about it, something affluent and yet distrustful that is reminiscent of another time, long past.

The dining-room table seemed too big for just the two of us. Everything sparkled; everything gave off the feeling of respectability and calm: the oak furniture, the gleaming parquet floors, the plates decorated with flowers, the enormous sideboard with its curved silhouette, the kind that, nowadays, you can only find around here, the clock, the bronze ornaments on the hearth, the lamp hanging down from the ceiling and the little hatch cut into the oak wall that opens into the kitchen so the dishes can be passed through. What a magnificent household my cousin Helene runs. How expert she is at jam-making, preserves, pastry. How well she tends her hens and her garden. I asked if she had managed to save the twelve little rabbits whose mother had died and whom she'd nursed with a baby's bottle.

"They're doing wonderfully," she replied.

But I could sense she was preoccupied. She kept glancing at the clock and straining to hear the sound of the car.

"You're worried about Francois, aren't you? I can tell. What could possibly have happened to him?"

"Nothing. But, you see, Francois and I are rarely ever apart; we're so close that I suffer when he isn't here beside me, I worry. I know it's silly . .."

"You were apart during the war .. ."

"Oh," she said and shuddered at the memory. "Those fiv
e y
ears were so hard, so terrible . . . I sometimes think they overshadow all the rest."

We both fell silent; the little hatch creaked open and the maid passed us a fruit tart, made from the last apples of winter. The clock struck nine.

"Monsieur has never been this late," said the maid from inside the kitchen.

It was snowing. Neither of us said anything. Colette phoned from the Moulin-Neuf; everything was fine there. "When are you going to go and visit Colette?" Helene reproached me for my laziness.

"It's far," I replied.

"You old owl ... No one can lure you out of your nest. To think there was a time when ... When I think about how you used to live among natives, Lord knows where . . . and now, to go to Mont-Tharaud or the Moulin-Neuf, it's far," she repeated, mocking me. "You must see them, Sylvestre. Those dear children are so happy. Colette looks after the farm; they have a model dairy. When she lived here she was a bit listless, she pampered herself. Now that she has her own house she's the first one up, pitching in, taking care of everything. Dorin's father completely renovated the Moulin-Neuf before he died. Naturally, it's out of the question to sell it: the mill has been in his family for a hundred and fifty years. They can take things slowly; they have everything they need to be happy: work and youth."

She continued talking about them, imagining the future and already picturing Colette's children. Outside, the grea
t c
edar tree heavy with snow creaked and groaned. At nine thirty, she suddenly stopped talking.

Then she said, "This is very strange. He should have been home by seven o'clock."

She wasn't hungry any more; she pushed her plate away and we waited in silence. But the evening passed and still he wasn't home.

Helene looked up at me. "When a woman loves her husband as I love Francois, she shouldn't outlive him. He's older than me and not as strong . . . Sometimes, I'm afraid."

She threw a log on to the fire.

"Ah, dear friend, when something happens in life, do you ever think about the moment that caused it, the seed from which it grew? How can I explain it . . . Imagine a field being sowed and all the promise that's contained in a grain of wheat, all the future harvests ... Well, it's exactly the same in life. When I saw Francois for the very first time, the instant we looked into each other's eyes, so much happened in that moment ... it makes me feel faint to think of it. Our love, our separation, those three years he spent in Dakar, when I was someone else's wife, and . . . everything else . . . Then the war, the children ... Happy things, but sad things as well, the idea that he could die, or /might, and the desperate unhappiness of the one left behind."

"Yes," I said, "but who would bother sowing his fields if he knew in advance what the harvest would bring?"

"But everyone would, Silvio," she replied, calling me b
y t
he name she hardly ever used now. "That's what life is all about, joy and tears. Everyone wants to live life, everyone except you."

I looked at her and smiled. "You love Francois so much." "I love him very much," she said simply.

Someone knocked on the kitchen door. It was a young lad who'd borrowed a crate for some chickens the day before and was returning it to the maid. Through the half-open window I heard his loud voice: "Been an accident near the lake at Buire."

"What kind of accident?" the cook asked.

"Car got itself smashed to bits on the road and someone got hurt. They took him to Buire."

"Do you know his name?"

"No, dunno," said the boy.

"It's Francois," said Helene, who'd gone white.

"Come on, that's mad!"

"I just know it's Francois."

"He would have phoned if he'd had an accident."

"But you know what he's like, don't you? To spare me getting upset and going over to Buire in the dark, he's going to try and get himself brought back here, even if he's injured or dying."

"But he'll never find a car at this time of night, in the snow."

She walked out of the dining room and got her coat and shawl from the entrance hall.

"That's mad," was all I could say again. "You don't eve
n k
now for sure it was Francois in that accident. And, anyway, how are you going to get to Buire?"

"Well ... I'll walk, if I have no other choice."

"Eleven kilometres!"

She didn't even reply. I tried to borrow a car from the neighbours. No luck: one had broken down, the other belonged to the doctor, who needed it to drive a patient to the next town for an operation. Bicycles were useless in the thick snow. We had no choice but to walk. It was extremely cold. Helene walked quickly, in silence: she was certain that Francois was at Buire. I didn't try to talk her out of it. I thought she was definitely capable of hearing her injured husband calling out to her. There is a kind of superhuman power in conjugal love. As the Church says, its a great mystery. Many other things are mysteries in love as well. Occasionally we came across a car crawling along the road in the snow. Helene looked anxiously inside and shouted "Francois!" but no one answered. She didn't seem tired. She walked on, undaunted, striding along the icy road, in the dead of night, between two banks of snow, without stumbling or losing her footing a single time. I wondered what her face would look like if we got to Buire and Francois wasn't there.

But she wasn't wrong. It was indeed his car that had crashed near the lake. In the farmhouse, stretched out on a large bed near the fire, we found Francois, with a broken leg and burning with fever. When we came in he let out a weak cry of joy. "Oh, Helene . . . Why? You shouldn't have come . . . We were going to wait for a horse and cart to tak
e m
e back home. It was very silly of you to come," he said again.

But as she uncovered his leg and began to dress it with her skilful, gentle touch (she'd been a nurse during the war), I saw him take her hand. "I knew you'd come," he whispered. "I was in pain and I was calling out your name."

FRAN
C
OIS HAD TO STAY IN BED all winter; his leg was broken in two places. There were complications, I'm not sure of the details . . . He's only been up and about for a week now.

WE'VE HAD A VERY COLD SUMMER and not much fruit. Nothing new has happened locally. My cousin

Colette Dorin gave birth on 20 September. A boy. I'd only been to the Moulin-Neuf once since their wedding. I went again when the child was born. Helene was with her daughter. Now it's winter again-a monotonous time of year. The Oriental proverb that says "the days drag on while the years fly by" is truer here than anywhere else. Once again, darkness falls at three o'clock, the crows circle the skies, there's snow on the roads and, in each isolated house, life closes in on itself even more, or so it seems-the space it offers to the outside world grows even smaller: long hours spent sitting by the fire doing nothing, not reading, not drinking, not even dreaming.

Y
ESTERDAY, ON
1
MARCH, a day of sun and high wind, I left my house early to go to Coudray. Old Declos has purchased one of my fields and owes me eight thousand francs. I got held up in the village, where someone bought me a bottle of wine. When I got to Coudray it was dusk. I crossed a small wood. You could see its young, delicate trees from the road; they separate Coudray from the MoulinNeuf. The sun was setting. As I walked through the wood, the trees were casting shadows on the ground, and it already felt like night. I love our silent woods. You never meet a soul ordinarily. So I was surprised to hear, all of a sudden, a woman's voice calling out, quite close to me. A high-pitched call, on two notes. Someone whistled in reply. The voice fell silent. I was near the small lake by then. The woods in these parts have many little lakes; you can't see them because they're surrounded by trees and hidden by rows of rushes. But I know them all. During the hunting season I spend all day on their banks.

I moved softly. The water shimmered, giving off a pale light, like a mirror in a dark room. I saw a man and a woman walk towards each other along a path between the rushes. I couldn't see their faces, only the shapes of their bodies (they were both tall and well built); the woman was wearing a red jacket. I continued on my way; they didn't see me; they were kissing.

When I arrived at Declos's house he was alone, dozing in a large armchair beside the open window. He opened his eyes, let out a deep, furious sigh and stared at me for a long time without recognising me.

I asked him if he was ill. But he's a true farmer: illness is shameful and must be concealed until the last possible moment, until death is seeping from your pores. He replied he was in excellent health, but the yellowish colour of his skin, the purple circles around his eyes, the folds in his clothing that hung loose from his body, his shortness of breath, his weakness, all betrayed him. I've heard people say he's got "a bad tumour." It must be true. Brigitte will soon find herself a rich widow.

"Where's your wife?" I asked.

"My wife, you say?"

He has the old habit of a horse trader (which he was when he was younger) of pretending to be deaf. He ended up mumbling something about his wife being at the MoulinNeuf, at Colette Dorin's place. "She's got nothing to do, that one, except stroll about and go to see people all day long," he concluded bitterly.

That was how I learned that the two women were friends
,
something that Helene certainly didn't know, for she had assured me a few days before that Colette lived only for her husband, her child, her home and refused any invitations to go out.