Once in Europa (3 page)

In the name of God! he spat out the words as if they were his own broken teeth. Nothing! Nobody!

The shock of each blow was transmitted to his shoulders. Then the handle of the rake broke.

It seemed to him that the animal never forgave him.

Towards the end of March the giant bedspread of packed snow began to slide down the roof of the house a few centimetres each day. After a while, a border of packed snow overhanging the roof would crack and fall to the ground in a thousand pieces. In the cellar, despite the darkness and the thickness of the walls, the potatoes were putting out pink-violet shoots. The force of these
shoots is so strong that they can pierce canvas or denim as if they were thin air.

A week earlier the doctor had asked him: Are you still vomiting? Do you want some more pills?

Félix had replied: No, Doctor … what I need is an extra pair of hands. Can you give me a prescription for that? Preferably a woman's hands, but I'll accept a man's or even a boy's.

Thus he confirmed one of the doctor's favourite dinner-table dissertations: namely, that the dearth of women in the valley—the best men having left with the women following them—was pushing the idiots who remained towards homosexuality and even bestiality.

In twenty-four hours a well-fed cow shits a wheelbarrow of dung. The winter had lasted a hundred and fifty days and Félix had seventeen cows. He recalled the time, before they bought a tractor, when all the winter's dung had to be forked into a tip-cart, hauled by the horse and unloaded in heaps, to be spread out again with a fork over the fields. Now he had a mechanical shovel and a spreader. And now he was alone.

Albertine had been right: there were fewer mole hills. Many moles must have died, the strongest eating the weakest. In the morning when he started up the tractor it was freezing. By midday on the hillside with the spreader, he was sweating. This year he refused to take off his sheepskin jacket. If he caught cold and fell ill, there would be nobody else to milk the cows. His solitude had strange ramifications. His trousers caked with cowshit went on stinking until he himself put them in the washing machine. Sometimes the solitude of the house smelt acrid like cowshit.

Every evening, sitting at the table beneath the clock that was always half an hour fast so that he would not deliver the milk too late at the dairy, he decided what to do the following day. Shit till Sunday, Mick, or shall we do the wood?

During the winter it had been a question of killing time. Now time was resurrected. He forgot obvious things. He fed the chickens and forgot the eggs. He hadn't collected eggs from the hen house since he was seven when his father went away for the second time. The first time his father went away was for his military
service, the second time was when he went to Paris to earn the money to re-cover the roof of the house with tiles; it took him four winters to earn enough.

How often had he heard his father tell the story of his time in the army. Soldier Berthier! Why did you not obey the order given to you? Replied his father: One of you tells me to do this, another of you tells me to do that, another of you tells me to do something else, so what am I to do? Just tell me clearly what you want and I'll do it! Soldier Berthier! Clean out this room! One of you tells me to do this, another one tells me to do that … To every order, his father replied in the same way. Soldier Berthier, one month's detention! He was put in a cell. Prisoner Berthier, are you a good shot? You tell me clearly what you want, and I'll do it. The Company needs a good marksman, Berthier! He was taken out and given a rifle and five bullets. He scored five bull's-eyes. For the rest of his military service he had no duties and no fatigues. All he had to do was go occasionally and shoot in the regimental competitions on the rifle range. When his father finished the story, he always added: On this earth, Felo, you need to be clever.

In April he planted his potatoes. It was as hot that year in April as it usually is in June. Walking slowly along the drill, he dropped a potato between his legs every twenty centimetres. Sometimes the potato fell badly and he was forced to bend down to place it properly.

There are some who know where to go, Mick, and some that have to be put in their place!

Each time he chose with his eyes the exact place between the clods where he hoped the potato would fall. If he did not do this, it fell badly.

The last potato planted, he climbed towards the house. It was almost noon. Suddenly he stopped in his steps. High above the roof a swarm of bees was flying away from the sun towards the north.

Rushing into the kitchen, he came out with a large saucepan and a metal soup ladle. He ran through the orchard rattling the
ladle in the saucepan. Mick was barking at his heels. When he was ahead of the swarm, he drummed harder than ever, and held the saucepan so that it glinted in the sun and flashed like a mirror. The swarm, subject to a single will, made straight for the nearest plum tree and settled on one of its branches.

Now he could take his time. He found an empty hive and rubbed its inside with plum leaves. He strolled over to the outhouse to fetch a saw. He sawed off the branch on which the bees were settled and carried it over to the hive. There he tapped the branch smartly with a plank and the swarm fell off like a wig.

If the Queen is there, they'll stay. If not, they'll leave tomorrow.

It was then that he heard his mother's voice calling him by name. The sound the bees were making gave birth to her voice, and at the same time muffled it. The voice went on repeating his name as if the solitude of his days were now in the name itself.

Each season loads up men as if they were wheelbarrows and then wheels them forward to do its tasks. Félix ploughed the field for the alfalfa. One day, when he was twelve, in the field he was now ploughing, his father had said to him:

Do you want to come hunting with me?

They climbed, both of them, to the forest below Peniel.

We'll wait here, Felo, and do nothing. Shut your mouth and keep your eyes skinned.

His father cut some branches from a beech tree and arranged them like a light screen in front of them. The beech leaves, just unfurled, were as fresh-looking as lettuces. They waited behind the screen for what seemed to Félix an eternity. The bones in his body began to ache one by one because he didn't dare move a limb. His father sat there as patient as if he were listening to music, his gun between his knees. From behind a spruce twenty metres away, a wild boar appeared, hesitated, and then walked, like a confident habitué, across their vision. The father fired. The boar keeled over and lay down as if inexplicably overcome by sleep.

Do you know what's important in this life, Felo?

No, Papa.

Good health. And what does good health give you? It gives you a steady hand.

The father prodded the animal with his boot.

Guard him! he said and disappeared down the path to the village. Félix sat on his heels beside the dead boar, whose small eyes were open. When his father returned with a sledge across his back, he was panting hard but grinning. Together they tied the carcass—it weighed a good hundred and fifty kilos—onto the light sledge. Then they started the difficult journey down.

Father Berthier put himself between the two wooden arms in the position of a two-legged horse. Like this he could pull when the runners of the sledge met an obstacle or when the slope wasn't steep enough, and like this, if they were running too fast over the mud or the new slippery grass, he could brake by digging in his heels and lifting up the front of the sledge so that its weight leant backwards and the back of the sledge was forced into the ground. Félix followed, holding on to a rope to brake the speed, but in fact being pulled along ever faster. One false step on his father's part and the charging boar and sledge would knock him onto his face and ride over him.

His last run home, Felo!

Not so fast, Papa!

The boy had his father's gun across his back.

When they were down on the road which passes the café, they stopped to give their legs a rest.

It's the knees, isn't it, which feel it?

My legs aren't tired, lied the boy.

There's a man for you!

Along the grass bank by the side of the road the sledge slid gently and easily. The boy let go of the rope and put the gun under his arm, carrying it like a hunter.

They met Louis, who could argue a politician under the table.

The month of May, the season for hunting? asked Louis.

It's no gazelle! said his father.

I'd hide him quick if I were you, said Louis. How many shots?

One shot, only one shot. Felo here is going to be a hunter. His hand's as steady as a rock.

And Félix, although he knew why his father, cunning as ever, had invented this story, was filled with pride.

When they got home and the boar had been hidden in the cellar, his father said: It's time you learnt to use a gun, I'll find you one. What do you say to that?

I'd rather have an accordion, replied Félix.

An accordion! Ah! you want to seduce the girls, eh?

One night, a few months later, Félix was in bed and he heard his father come into the kitchen, shouting in the sing-song voice which meant he had been drinking. There were some other men with him who were laughing. Then there was a silence, and, suddenly, the strains of an accordion being clumsily played. I got it for Felo, he heard his father shout, got it off Valentine. She was glad to be rid of it, now Emile's dead, what could she do with an accordion? Poor Emile! said another voice. She never liked him playing, said a third man, she'd walk out of the room as soon as Emile picked the thing up. How's that? She was jealous was our Valentine and Emile encouraged her to be so. He liked to make her jealous! Do you know what he named his accordion? What did he call it? He called his accordion Caroline! Come and sit on my knees, Caroline, he'd say, come and have a cuddle! All you men are the same! Félix heard his mother protest. Come and sit on my knees, Albertine! his father roared, come here and I'll give you a squeeze! He pressed on the bass buttons and the instrument lowed like a bull. You'll wake up Félix, you will! his mother said.

It was a diatonic accordion with twelve bass keys for the left hand, made by F. Dedents in the 1920s. The keys had pearly heads, its sides were blue decorated with yellow flowers, and the reeds were made of metal and leather. He learnt to play it seated, resting the right-hand keyboard on his left thigh and opening the accordion like a cascade falling towards the floor to the left of the chair. A cascade of sound.

Late in the month of May, the grass grows before your eyes. One day it is like a carpet, the next it is halfway up your knees. Get it scythed, Albertine would say, or it'll be tickling the cunt.

The cows in Félix's stable could smell the new grass. They followed with their insolently patient eyes the two swallows who were building a nest on the cross beam above the horse's stall, empty since the purchase of the tractor. They stared at the squares of sunlight on the north wall which had been in shadow all winter long. They became restless. They lowed for Félix before it was milking time. They wouldn't eat their croquettes quietly whilst being milked. When they licked each other with their large tongues, they did so with a kind of frenzy, as if the salt they were tasting had to be a substitute for all the green grass outside.

They want to be out, don't they? They don't need a calendar to tell them, and they don't give a fuck what year it is. Tomorrow we'll put 'em out, tomorrow when the grass is dry.

Late the following morning Félix undid each cow's chain and opened the large door of the stable.

Myrtille turned towards the sudden light and felt her neck free. Then she tottered, like a convalescent, to the door. Once outside, she raised her head, bellowed and trotted in the direction of the green grass she could see in the meadow. With each step she found her strength again.

Hold her back, Mick!

The dog bounded after the cow and barked at her forelegs so that she stopped, her neck stretched out taut and straight, her ears up like a second pair of horns, and her imperturbable eyes staring through the sunshine at the meadow. Immobile, her muzzle, her neck, her haunches and her tail in one straight line, she was like the first statue ever made of a cow. The other cows were pushing through the stable door three at a time.

Calm, for Christ's sake! There's enough for you all. Get back, Princesse!

They trundled their way down the slope towards Myrtille. Mick saw the whole herd charging at him. His mouth open without a bark, without a whine, he slunk to the side of the road as they thundered past and triumphantly swept Myrtille into the field. As soon as they felt their feet in the grass, their stampede ended. Some threw their hind legs up into the air. One pair locked their horns and shoved against each other with all their weight. Some turned
slowly in circles, listening. The streams from the mountains above the village, white with froth because so much ice had melted, were babbling like madmen. The cuckoo was singing. Entire fields were suddenly changing their colour from green to butter-yellow, because the dandelions, shut at night, were opening their petals.

Princesse mounted Mireille—when a cow is in heat, she often plays the bull.

Get her off her!

Mireille, with Princesse on her back, stood gazing at the mountains. The sunshine penetrated to the very marrow of their bones. When the dog approached, Princesse slid gently off Mireille's back, and the wind from the northwest, from beyond the mountains, ruffled the hair between both their horns.

Félix arranged the wire across the opening to the field, switched on the current, and, plucking a stalk of hemlock, held it against the live wire. After a second his hand shot up like a startled bird. He returned slowly to the house, stopping twice to look back at the happiness of the cows.

He phoned the Inseminator to ask him to pass by for Princesse and gave him the code number of her previous insemination.