Once in Europa (11 page)

In the afternoon when the cows were chewing the cud, Marius would lie down on the grass, take a newspaper from his pocket, read it for ten minutes, and then fall asleep. I had noticed this several times when I was spying on him from the pass at St. Pair. One day I visited him whilst he was sleeping. As I approached I made a bet with myself that I would take the newspaper out of his hand without waking him. The difficulty was going to be the dog. I would have to deal with Johnny.

The two of them were side by side, sheltered from the sun by sweetbriar bushes. The dog was wagging his tail, and I beckoned him to come. The old man was still asleep. He was on his side, his knees slightly drawn up, his hat over his ear. His head rested on a stone covered with moss. In his throat Johnny was moaning a little with pleasure. I gave him my sleeve to bite on. One of his hands lay, palm uppermost, on the grass—he had unexpectedly long fingernails. The newspaper was against his stomach where his belt held up his gaping trousers.

All the cows were lying down. There was no chorus of bells for they were too still. Just one bell rang, as one cow slowly turned her head, followed, after a pause, by another. It was as if everything had slowed down like the old man's pulse whilst he slept. I bent down and took his newspaper. It was easy. I had won my bet. Now why should I wake him? So I left the paper on the grass and very lightly I touched his open hand because I did not want to leave furtively. I touched his palm with my fingers, as lightly as if with a feather.

Why don't you get a husband? Marius asked Danielle the next time she visited him.

I'm in no hurry.

You won't marry a boy from the village.

Why shouldn't I?

Because you are too independent.

Is that a fault?

Not if you have enough money!

I shan't get rich looking after Papa's goats.

That's not your job in life.

Are you saying I'm lazy?

No. I have a considerable admiration for you. The old man spoke formally as if making a speech. A considerable admiration for you, Danielle. You are clever and you are thoughtful—you let sleeping men lie!

It was then that she knew he had been feigning sleep. He must have felt it when she touched his hand. And he knew that she knew, but they did not speak of it.

So the weeks passed and so they learnt more about each other.

One night at the end of July a little before dawn when it was still dark, a car drove uphill, over the grass, towards the Tête de Duet and stopped a hundred metres away from Danielle's chalet. The car was a 1960 Mercedes Berlin-18, and it had been painted silver grey with a brush, not a spray gun. Six men got out of the car, each with a sack. They were careful not to slam the doors. The eldest, who wore a beret and a leather waistcoat, placed a huge hand around the neck of the youngest, who was yawning.

All the best things in life before you, boy!

Cut it out!

Do you see that peak? No, not that one. The one with snow on it, that's where we're felling today.

Christ! It's a good ten kilometres away.

The other five burst out laughing. Once again the boy had been taken in. Because it was early and the air was cold, laughing made some of them cough.

And it was this coughing which woke up Danielle. By the time she got out of bed and pulled on a skirt, all she could see from the door in the first light was an Indian file of men with sacks
over their shoulders climbing towards the forest at St. Pair, and, before the chalet where her goats grazed, the shadowy silhouette of a car.

Later she tried each of the car's four doors. They were locked. Through the windows, which looked bullet-proof, she admired the leather upholstery and the wooden dashboard of teak, with its dials like those on instruments made specially for doctors.

Afternoons she let the rabbits out of their cage. That day, after they had eaten, they hopped under the Mercedes, happy to find shade there. When she half-shut her eyes the rising heat waves along the ridges of the mountains opposite formed a blue halo. All day she heard the drone of the woodcutters' chain saws.

In the evening, through the little window of the chalet, she watched the same six men with sacks over their shoulders coming down from St. Pair. The light was already fading. They were walking slowly, as if they were blind and were forced with each step to feel their way forward with their feet. They had a dog with them whose antics they were too tired to notice. Slowly they approached the chalet, each walking at his own speed, exhausted and alone.

When they saw her in the doorway, they became a little jauntier. The first sight of a woman—with the prospect of nine hours' respite from their backbreaking work—was a reminder of the other sweet side of the world.

I heard your saws.

Forty heads, miss.

Father's the one who counts, said a thickset one with sawdust in his hair. They all laughed and then fell shy.

You think it'll rain? one of them asked.

No, the birds are flying high.

Not tomorrow.

Forty!

Forty of 'em, shining like fish!

We strip 'em as we fell 'em.

It's steep, your Pair.

Pair? That's how you call it? asked the thickset one with sawdust in his hair.

St. Pair, she said.

Everywhere, on their arms, faces, vests, shoulders, they were smeared with a grey dust stuck to sweat and resin. This covering was so thick that in the half-light it looked as if their faces were covered with fur.

Steep and hot, said the boy.

In the trough there's running water, she said.

The men turned to look where she was pointing. A little distance from the chalet was a massive, scooped-out tree trunk, placed horizontally on some stones. In front of it waddled four geese, phosphorescent in the half-light, and above the trough was a water pipe which came directly out of the grassy mountainside behind.

It's a spring … if you want to wash.

We'll be home in twenty minutes, said the one they called Father, who wore a beret and a leather waistcoat.

Home?

The geese came towards the house in single file, breasts stuck out.

We're sleeping in the Chalet Blanc, explained Father.

There's no spring there, she said, only rainwater.

We've got jerry-cans.

Wash there, it's a spring, she said, a spring that never stops. You got soap?

Sure—and pyjamas! said a tall one.

In that case, I'll get you some.

She went inside. When she came out she handed a large cube of soap to Father. The men left their sacks on the ground and went over to the trough, which was long enough for them to stand side by side.

In the early night breeze she could smell the smell of their washing: a mixture of soap, stale shirts, petrol, smoke, pine resin, sweat. She observed them, stripped to the waist. The backs of the younger ones were suntanned. The elder ones always wore vests and their backs, in contrast to their arms and shoulders, were white. The Father had taken off his beret. They were throwing the soap to one another and laughing. They found the two brushes she kept there for scrubbing the churn. A woman, she thought,
washes herself quite differently from a man; a man washes his body like he washes down a wheelbarrow; it's not by washing himself that a man learns to caress.

By the time they had put on their shirts it was dark. Under the eyes of Father each of them solemnly shook Danielle's hand, thanked her, and pronounced his name. The name she remembered was that of the thickset one with sawdust in his hair. When he arrived he was the dirtiest, and she sensed that this was because he worked the most ferociously. Pasquale was his name.

They dumped their sacks in the trunk of the Mercedes. Four got in behind. Father sat in the front, and Pasquale was the driver. He sat behind the wheel, hunched up, concentrated and impossible to distract.

Every night on their way home the woodcutters stopped to wash themselves in the trough by Danielle's chalet. She prepared coffee. They drank it outside sitting on their sacks. Virginio, who was tall and wore glasses, left a razor behind so that he could shave if he wanted. Danielle found a piece of broken mirror which she hung on a wire by the trough. She learnt that five of them came from the same village on the other side of the Alps, near Bergamo. Alberto came from Sicily. Every winter they returned home. She learnt that they were paid by the cubic metre of wood felled: the harder they worked, the quicker they earned. Father did the cooking. The Mercedes belonged to Pasquale.

Sometimes, when they passed in the very early morning they left a present for her: a tin of peaches, a bottle of vermouth. Once they left a scarf with a design of roses printed on it.

The first time I saw Pasquale out of his work clothes was when he knocked on the door whilst I was drinking coffee one morning.

I don't work on Sunday, he said.

You deserve a day of rest.

To do what?

There was a long silence.

Once we worked on a Sunday and I had an accident.

What happened? I asked.

The trees were falling badly, one after the other. We weren't working fast enough. That's why we decided to work on Sunday.

Would you like some cider?

He shook his head.

Some eau-de-vie?

I'm not thirsty.

I'll whip you some cream, I said.

His thick lips smiled and he opened his enormous hands in a gesture of submission.

Tell me what happened while I whip the cream.

A long silence.

About the Sunday you worked? I prompted him.

The very first tree I had to strip had fallen badly. Where we were working was very steep, like here. Rocks everywhere. Crevices. Gulleys. I told myself I'd work toward the head, so as not to have to walk back along where I'd already stripped. They're as slippery as fish when you strip them. Sometimes the resin splashes your face when you are axing the bark off.

The cream was thickening, leaving the side of the bowl. I watched Pasquale talking. There was a sadness in his face. He had stopped his story. Silence.

Do you have a brother or sister? I asked.

Not one. My mother died when I was born.

And your father?

He went to America and we never heard from him. He disappeared into America like a tear into a well, my aunt says.

Again silence—only the noise of my fork in the bowl.

Go on, I said, go on.

I started stripping her from the top and she began to roll from the head. Nothing stops a rolling tree except another tree or a rock. I hesitated because I was worried about the machine. It was a new one we had just bought. If you hesitate, you're lost. I jumped too late, holding the machine above my head. In the gulley I began to slide, it was as steep as the side of a pyramid. I slid over onto some dry rocks below and they broke a leg.

Could you get up?

The machine wasn't hurt!

No machine is worth a broken leg.

A machine like that costs half a million.

A long silence.

You couldn't get up?

They carried me home to the hut and laid me on the bed. Father said: Pasquale, can you wait till tomorrow? At first I didn't understand. Wait for what? Before we take you to hospital. That's twenty-four hours, I said. I'll sit with you, he replied, pain gets worse when you're alone. No, go back and work, I told him. Next day, Monday, they took me to hospital. I handed him the bowl and he began to eat the cream. His huge hands rested on the table. To eat he lowered his head to the spoon. When he had finished he screwed up his face and smiled.

I've never tasted cream as good as that, he said.

Why didn't they take you to hospital immediately?

Because it was Sunday.

Well?

On Sundays we are not insured. What we do on Sundays is at our own risk. He looked at me very seriously. Like what we do today, he said.

There was another long silence and we did nothing.

If you come next Sunday with your friends, I said, I'll make a tart to go with the cream.

A few days later Danielle had the idea of passing by the arolle tree to get to the ridge above Nîmes—blueberries abound there—and then climbing down the scree to surprise Marius, whom she had neglected to visit for a week or two. She filled her bucket with berries and her fingers were stained blue as they used to be when she wrote in ink at school.

She approached the edge to look down on Peniel. The sky was cloudless. There was a strongish north wind which would fall when the sun went down. The sun was low in the sky so that the cows had long shadows like camels. Marius was there with his
dog beside him. Yet there was something wrong. She sensed it without knowing why. The old man was shouting, his arms outstretched before him towards the crags. Why didn't the dog move? She couldn't hear what he was shouting because she was upwind. Then, abruptly, the wind dropped.

Sounds, like distances, are deceptive in the mountains. Sometimes you can recognise a voice, but not the words the voice is saying. Sometimes you hear a cow growl like a dog, and a whole flock of sheep singing like women. What Danielle thought she heard was:

Marius à Sauva! Marius à Sauva!

The sun was so low that it was lighting only one side of each mountain, one side of each forest, one side of each little hillock in the pastures; the other side of everything was in dark shadow, as if the sun had already set or not yet risen.

Perhaps he was telling the dog to go and save one of the cows, she argued to herself, that could sound like
à Sauva
. Yet why didn't the dog move?

Marius à Sauva!

She could no longer be sure, the wind had got up again. She picked her way carefully down the scree. Occasionally she dislodged a stone or a pebble which, clattering down, dislodged others, and they in their turn others. Yet despite the noise of her descent, Marius never once glanced up. It was as if at Nîmes, that evening, all sounds were playing tricks.

The dog ran to greet her. She waited for Marius to kiss her on her cheek as he always did. He kissed her and began talking as if they had been stopped in the middle of a conversation.