Lovers on All Saints' Day (7 page)

“I was going to leave you,” said Charlotte.

She seemed convinced that the world would not be transformed after those words, or that she’d be able to fight against the transformation. Like a puzzle, everything fit together in Georges’s mind. But it was too late (a thousand little signs proved to him) for reproach or jealousy, for confrontation or a scene.

“He gave you that book?”

“Yes. With the train tickets.”

“To where?”

“France.”

Georges looked out the window. Xavier and Jean were playing with the boar’s head. The most obvious strategy for the adulterer was to show up at social gatherings where his lover would be. That way he gave the impression of not having anything to hide and, therefore, that nothing was actually going on.

“I thought I was pregnant,” said Charlotte. “We were going to live in Nancy until the baby was born.”

Georges looked at her chestnut hair and the vertex on which the button of her blouse joined the line of her breasts. Having a child with Xavier in another country was a way of beginning a new life. Later Charlotte and Xavier would have married. Everything would have gone back to normal, and they might even have returned to Belgium. But Charlotte wasn’t pregnant. She’d chosen not to run away; she didn’t need a new life.

“I’m staying,” she said. “I’m staying with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“You don’t know how much I’ve suffered. I don’t want any more of this. I want us to go back to being ourselves.”

“But we haven’t stopped being ourselves, Charlotte. You’ve lied very well. You have an admirable talent.”

“No sarcasm, please.”

“Also, you’re not young. This is no time to be having babies.”

“Let me stay.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “Three, four months.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know, dear.”

“Of course you know. That book is an anniversary gift, I’ll bet you anything.
Madame Bovary
. He’s not what you might call subtle, our friend Xavier.”

They did not embrace. They did not kiss, not even like friends. But their marriage was safe, even if just for this moment. The next step would be to work at it, work tenaciously. Georges loved her, and that certainty should be enough for him to go back with Charlotte, for that complicated return to the body of a woman he’d never left. That Charlotte was not young, at forty-five, was false, but that didn’t prevent them from feeling the excitement of the surprise of realizing they’d stay together, that they had their whole lives ahead of them.

—

T
O FRIGHTEN THE PREY,
to force them to leave the woods and expose themselves to the hunters’ sight, each beater had developed a particular and private voice that Georges, over time, had begun to be able to distinguish. He made an effort, a sort of personal challenge, to discern them in the air. That
oooooooo
with hands clapping was from Guillaume Respin; Frédéric Fontaine shook the bushes with a polished stick and shouted
ah-ah-ah-eeeee
. Catherine had decided, quite a while ago, to do without onomatopoeia.

“Get a move on, brutes!” she shouted.
“Foutez le camp!”

But no animal escaped down this side. With a bit of luck, the hunters on the other side would trap at least one boar. Georges looked up, but the pigeons were flying too high: it would be arrogance for a man whose aim was not as sure as it used to be to attempt such a shot. Nevertheless, he pointed his rifle at the gray sky and looked through the telescopic lens, dusty and smudged with fingerprints: years ago he would have tried, he thought calmly, his finger caressing the trigger. He lowered the gun and listened to the beaters; the commotion of branches breaking under their feet didn’t drown out that other commotion of their threats. It was possible to follow those movements among the trees, because the boundary of the woods was clearly established and the way the wind played with the sounds intensified the voices as soon as the beaters came around the western corner.

Then three shots rang out.

“Tiens,”
Georges said to no one. “Someone’s had some luck.”

He tried to relive the sound of the shots, and smiled as he guessed someone had fired a shotgun and was going to be admonished by Jean. He imagined the prey, made bets with himself: a young boar, an out-of-season deer, a banal rabbit that had made someone react too quickly? He was attentive to the rest of the noises. The beaters were covering the second flank of the woods and the dogs barked as if to cut through the cold.

A fourth shot rang out.

Georges inhaled deeply, because ever since he was a little boy the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils, in case by chance the wind was blowing in his direction strongly enough after a nearby shot, had fascinated him. He couldn’t smell anything this time. Instead, he was surprised to hear the three horn blasts signaling the end of the hunt.

Why were they stopping already? Didn’t they still have a good stretch to cover? He didn’t react yet, waiting for confirmation. A hunter shouted from somewhere:

“Pap, pap, pap.”

Georges didn’t hide a grimace of disappointment. That was the sign: the hunt had been called off early. What had gone wrong?

“Pap, pap, pap,” he shouted in turn.

Swearing, the hunters began to show themselves throughout the forest. They no longer walked calmly as they had earlier in the morning, but hurried like boys; they wanted to get back to the cars as fast as possible and find out which beater had sounded the trumpet three times before having gone all the way through the woods and settle that innocuous blame, and then, finally, carry on to the next place. Georges did the same. He didn’t stop to sniff the air. He wasn’t paying attention to mushrooms or chestnuts fallen among the grass. He didn’t even allow himself the basic curiosity of who had shot what. His gaze was fixed on the line of cars of which his, being the last to arrive, was now the first. He was pleased about that: he’d leave before the rest, avoid hearing the disputes and reproaches. When he was getting to the end (now the beginning) of the convoy, he saw Jean arriving almost at a run, his face disfigured with rage.

His wife was following him. Five meters or so behind them the group’s novice was walking. His lank reddish hair had fallen across his face and he had recent acne scars on his chin. Georges knew Jean’s words referred to him, not to the others: Respin and Cambronne hadn’t even appeared yet, and the rest of the beaters were too far behind to even hear him.

“Idiot! He’s an incompetent idiot! We’ve completely wasted the woods, shit. How incompetent can someone be. But by God he won’t be coming out with us again. If it’s up to me, he won’t ever be with us again.”

“It wasn’t him, dear,” said Catherine. “I was with him, I swear it was someone else.”

“I had to learn the hard way. But one thing’s for sure, this is the last time a beginner gets his first chance on my hunt.”

“But it was someone else,” said Catherine.

“Everyone back to their vehicles,” shouted Jean. Dark looks from one or more of the hunters reminded him that he was speaking to older men who deserved respect. His tone calmed down then; but in his throat remained the suppressed fury of a spoiled little boy.

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Someone brought this station to an end ahead of time, and we’ve missed out on some good opportunities.”

“Where’s your father?” said Georges.

“I propose we simply forget this matter and proceed to the next stop.”

“Jean,” said Georges.

“Yes sir.” Jean turned impatiently.

“Where is your father?”

Jean looked around at all those present. He looked toward the field, looked at the grazing cattle, looked over the barbed wire.

“Has anyone seen my father?”

The heads moved from one side to another, like at a tennis match.

“Where’s he got to?” said Jean, lowering his voice.

He leaned on one of the posts holding up the barbed wire. A notice stapled onto the wood said:
PROCEED WITH CAUTION. HUNTING SEASON. NOVEMBER 1986
.

“
Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said at last. “He’ll catch up. To your cars, gentlemen.”

“But we can’t leave,” said Georges.

“Why’s that?”

“Your father has my car keys. He kept them for some reason.”

The line of cars was stuck. There was no way to move a single one of the four-by-fours, not even a meter, without Georges moving his first. And his was locked and the hunter who wasn’t there had the keys.

Jean’s hands flew to his head. He looked at the beaters. He was about to order them to go and look for his father and bring him there as quickly as possible, when Respin and Cambronne emerged beside the wire fence.

“Monsieur Moré,” said Respin, “can you come with us?”

“You blew the horn? Which one of you was it?”

There was no answer.

“Really, my friends, men with your years of experience . . .”

But the beaters didn’t say anything.

Jean felt for a cigar, felt for his lighter. Georges, although from a distance, managed to see that his thumb was clumsy as it sparked the lighter, and that the tall flame trembled in the hand that trembled. Jean’s hand had trembled. Georges gathered up the sympathy he was unable to feel at that moment and offered:

“Go with them. I’ll come with you, I’m right behind you.”

Jean’s eyes shone. His feet had turned to stone and did not want to move.

“Please, Monsieur Moré,” said Cambronne, “come with us.”

Jean and Georges followed them in the direction of the forest, trying to keep up. Georges felt in his chest and thighs the effort that pace was costing him. From behind he could see the two beaters, the line of their shoulders that rose and fell in a terrible cadence, the color rising in their cheeks. Still from behind he saw them stop and look at each other (not with a look of someone questioning or conversing, but with a vacant expression that only wants to avoid the present urgency), and then look at Jean, who arrived alongside them. In the center of that incomplete picture, framed by three pairs of rubber boots—one gray, another tobacco-brown and filthy, the third pair green and tied up with fine laces over long woolen socks—was Stalky, shot several times. A wide gash in his side stained his coat; some fur stuck to the viscous flesh. His still-palpitating guts steamed in the cold air, and the blood was an intense red against the green of the grass. Two steps from the animal, fallen in the undergrowth, Xavier’s lifeless body came into view.

Georges saw Jean lose his self-control. He saw him throw himself on his father’s body and open his shirt without really knowing what he was doing, as if the impulse to do something, anything, was moving his hands with memories of imagery picked up from films. The chest was pale, and the hairs that outlined a snowy forest formed, as they reached the neck, a tangle of stiff, dry clots. Jean spat on his hands and tried to clean his father’s shoulders off with the saliva on his palms. Then he began to pummel the body. “Get up, Papa,” he said. “The hunt’s not over, it’s just that the novice blew the horn too early.” When Georges put a hand under his arm to lift, Jean had a tuft of wool between his fingers. Just like when he was a child, thought Georges, just like when the three of them went fishing and Georges would be shocked at how much patience Xavier had with that spoiled little boy who was always wanting piggyback rides and digging things out of his father’s belly button with his baby finger.

—

“E
VERYONE LEFT SO SOON,
” said Catherine quietly. “I never thought I’d feel so lonely in my own house.”

Georges looked around: indeed, the hunters had slipped away without a word, little by little, like the tide going out. At our age, he thought, nobody likes to think of someone else’s death. He was wearing his leather shoes, and the feeling on his feet was agreeable, fresh and firmer, because in old age his ankles had started to ache after wearing rubber boots. In the reading chair that no one in this house used for reading, Charlotte was sitting in an oblivious position, as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. She crossed her legs, and her drill pants rode up above her ankle, revealing porous white skin and a sock whose elastic no longer worked very well. There was some wisdom in her dark drill pants and man’s shirt and her face with no makeup. She’d always refused to have children, and now that he was old, Georges had convinced himself that this characteristic formed part of the same description in which he would have included the masculine cut of her shirt. And now Georges was looking at her.
You’re thinking about him.
He realized his forehead was heating up and took off his overcoat. Under his arms were dark sweat stains. But earlier, when he’d had to embrace Jean to distract him, he’d behaved with an unfamiliar calm. When he’d held Jean’s head between his hands, to draw his attention away from the fissure in his father’s skin and the vision of the destroyed muscles and the appearance of a thick, white tendon like a worm in the burned flesh, at that moment, Georges was another person. The people from the Modave commune took forty minutes to get there. The ambulance, with its siren and flashing lights turned off, five minutes more. In all that time Georges did not move. His feet were planted on the ground like a bullfighter. Jean wanted to be cradled in his arms. The woman from the commune began to ask questions, and Catherine answered them as if she were taking an oral exam. Only when the body was ready to be transported did Georges begin to feel a headache from the deferred tension. Catherine approached Jean. “They’re asking if you want anything, or if they can take him.” Jean turned on her.

“How stupid you can be sometimes,” he said.

And he climbed into the ambulance.

Now, Catherine walked between the swinging kitchen door and the table where the spout of the coffeepot had stopped steaming. She poured herself a glass of port and went to sit under the floor lamp, closer to Charlotte than to Georges. She looked pale, and her voice was laden with sadness.

“What did they do with Stalky?” she asked.

“Respin,” said Georges, “and some others. They buried him right there, in the forest. They’d already seen some vultures circling.”