Trio (23 page)

Death waiting for her at the corner of the pillow.

Years later, when we were remembering these details, I did my best to get them to admit that it was a question of something quite different from either facile repetitions or word play, they didn’t take any notice and called me an ignoramus, as if drama could only be the fruit of a logical argument.

And analyzed the whys and wherefores, and finally decreed that poetry had no existence outside a certain system or method.

Or as if to do away with the pillow would at the same time banish death.

Ah, if it was a question of poetry, then we understand your
 
…

Cut.

Let’s have a think, she said, and let’s proceed with a little method, one, leeks, two, potatoes, three, radishes, four, lettuce, five, washing powder, that makes five plus four, nine, plus three, twelve, plus two, fourteen, plus one, fifteen, you owe me fifteen francs, but she’d got the wrong columns and was taking the numbers for the prices, and started adding it all up again.

As for the rumors about the maid, you know these hayseeds, a lot of thickwitted beasts, bastards, backbiters, vultures, if they don’t like the look of you, right away they accuse you of being a damned soul, I imagine that Marie, being so compassionate, forced herself to listen to her neighbors’ tales of woe and gave them advice their husbands couldn’t stomach, hence their vengeance.

That room sealed off from every gaze.

Familiar images developed in it which were immediately replaced by others, and others again, incessant movement, those of the necropolis, hypotheses about the history of the place, those of childhoods, those of cataclysms, those of monsters, those of clouds, of roads, of skies, of circles, of heads, heads everywhere, that neurosis, hypothesis about the origin of evil, which gave tragic relief to the slightest appearance.

Carrying, dangling from a string, the parcel containing his bones, that’s where we’ve got to.

Find elsewhere the reasons for that fierce determination.

Apart from the vestiges of a ravaged conscience.

That letter addressed no one knows to whom.

My dear nephew, I’m recovering, I’m waking up, I renounce you, disinherit you, loathe you.

An end to tergiversations.

I went back into my tomb, where I’m awaiting the resurrection of the dead.

To pass the time, and to earn two or three sous, I’m guarding a herd of pigs near the cemetery.

In the evenings I go back into my hole where believe it or not I reflect on unheard-of things, I who thought myself dedicated to perpetual repetition.

The smell of my livestock never leaves me and it’s given me a new soul, the miracle has occurred.

I have found my slate again, I no longer note down regrets on it, but other
 
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And then immediately efface them.

In touch with putrefaction and decomposition, hence oriented toward the future.

A wonderful thing, now it is I who am expected, waited for elsewhere, remember the parable.

This ridiculous attempt at evasion will have been necessary in order to discover where the beyond resides.

The beyond resides.

Residence assigned to what cannot have one.

Which is to tell you, my dear nephew, that I am in possession of all my faculties, which were so frequently doubted by people like you.

Find another way of formulating the unformulatable.

Say ah, say oh.

Ah.

Oh.

This ridiculous attempt at anamnesis will have been necessary to discover where the immemorial resides.

The immemorial resides.

Which is to tell you that finally, deprived of all my faculties
 
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That business of the pigs, could it be an inspiration.

I get up before daybreak, awoken by the revolting stench and the grunts of the pigs around my tomb, they want me to open the cemetery gate for them.

For in fact they are parked there for the night.

Just imagine the state of our necropolis, hygienewise, that’ll discourage the All Saints’ Day fans.

I get up, then, and I go out, and I go and open the gate, jostled by the animals who squeal as they rush outside.

My task consists in not letting them stray and overrun the crops.

A missing link.

Can anyone imagine the picture, heavy with symbols.

Around ten o’clock I break my fast with a beetroot, and I meditate, with acid belches.

My God, how many belches and acidities will have been needed.

And beetroots.

Cut.

To give the impression of structure, that old trap for the unwary.

Let us cast our pearls.

Epicure and Saint Anthony.

Afflux of reminiscences, cave canem.

Apropos of dogs, he must have died in the tall grass, he’ll be eaten by my pigs, it’s not my business anymore.

So we’ve arrived at detachment.

The moment that word is out, back comes desire.

The hermit and temptation.

On the slate, the progression of desire, we’ll never make an end of it.

Toward midday I pick up my beetroot again, and when I’ve eaten it I doze in the heavy July sun, difficult digestion, while the pigs wander all over the crops, then I have to run and chase them out.

To touch on the question of the master and of the wages, there must be a master who will remunerate me, new complication, where does he live, what is our relationship, probable link with the parable, you see dear nephew I’m not leaving anything out.

The cemetery swineherd.

They’d call me Popo, being lacking in imagination, but I should have inner resources which it would be better to conceal, to make the pleasure last longer.

That of jabbering one last secret while one still holds the floor.

Unless it’s already too late to mention the pigs, maybe not knowing how to fit them in.

Unless we give them all a name to replace the dear departed, there’d be Théo Dodo Louis Alfred Alexandre et cetera, as well as Marie mother Magnin mother Chenu and Étiennette for the sows, would that be appropriate, maybe a bit too obvious.

The harvest, doesn’t time
 
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Blue chicory among the corn.

As for detachment, no progress in spite of the fable.

But the grave, I’m keeping that, from now on it is my inalienable property.

Return to the fold very gently, go through the gate, alley number three hundred and thirty three and so on, all things considered it’s no sadder than anywhere else and there at least no one will have the nerve to come and turn me out.

See about linking this episode to the rest.

A fine assembly of drifting words in honor of what is no longer imperative, but bah, all that savoir-faire is just vanity.

Time, that old fritter for incorrigible babes in arms.

Between two lines effaced, between two words that have become inaudible, that of resurrection.

The mountain, that blue one over there.

Children sliding down the hill on a sled.

A verbena in the garden.

The piano on the veranda was playing a waltz.

Arches covered with fairy-roses.

A needle in his heart.

Abracadabra.

When recovery is achieved, in spite of everything, start all over again with the seriousness of a child, with no other aim than pleasure, but what to do with the old man struggling on his pillow, speak to him, he can’t hear anymore, wholly occupied in gathering his strength for the fatal pass.

Or find a different voice, which would reach him as if it were an elixir and which would suddenly return him to what he called his destiny, nothing other than his original state but without the artifice of time, an ineffable plunge into the water of the dream in which he had always moved.

Conscience, absurd fatigue, obstacle to any culmination.

The new law.

And, without overstating anything, the certainty of having finally been restored to poetry.

A different voice which must take over.

The only object of my efforts, to make the present minute last, or let’s say to abolish it.

At distant intervals a reminder, a friendly sign, in order to test my regained strength.

The grocer’s wife was seen today at old mother Buvard’s funeral in the midst of all the sorrowing ladies, the deceased was a kindhearted woman in spite of her vulgar eloquence, we discovered that she had been wonderfully good to her neighbors when they were in trouble.

There was a heatwave, the dead woman was loaded onto a delivery van because she was poor, but the plastic wreaths around the bier were perfectly adequate.

Difficult to follow the new-style service at the church, the curé was the only one who was singing but on the other hand he said some sensible and consoling things.

Madame Thiéroux didn’t go so far as to greet mother Magnin but she did turn up, though, in memory of the deceased.

And at the cemetery the widower stood in the shade of a cypress tree so as not to get sunstroke, which showed he still had his wits about him, nothing is more distressing for a congregation than unrestrained grief.

The cemetery overlooks the cornfields, everything was suffocating in gold and blue, it was almost worth it for such a sight.

The new law.

A window open onto the night.

Crescent moon, July on the wane, the harvest will soon be at an end.

A different voice, but all of a sudden, like a dew, the love of what has been said.

Start all over again with the seriousness of a child, I listen to the singing of the Théo that I was, old Dodo is dead and I think back to his worries and his aversions.

Something else is being prepared beyond people’s consciousness, it had to be reshaped first, we have been at pains to do so.

Get back into harness again, with other aims.

The fear of what time immemorial conceals is far away, the old forgotten myths can be tamed with a little patience.

The house and its surroundings no longer have their former aspect, they have shaken off the obsessions of the occupant who deformed their appearance.

To bye-byes we go.

He wouldn’t have been loved enough, that old bird of ill omen, but he had had a presentiment of something without managing to find its formula, I shall reread his notes and put them to good use.

What a lot of tergiversations in order finally to set foot on the land of the dream, which he sought but never attained.

He’ll be dead before August without having paid either the interest or the principal, but another moral will take account of his passionate innocence and I shall be its author, with all due respect to the good fabulist.

Here was the field that was opening out to the survivor.

The route from the room to the well is now a path that crosses the garden diagonally, it’s bordered by box trees on the left, and farther on there are daisies in the summer and dahlias in the autumn, on the right is the kitchen garden where Marie methodically grows leeks, parsley and tomatoes.

Arches covered with fairy-roses.

A needle in the heart, which has caused us to pass from one age to the next.

The piano on the veranda.

It’s enough to have a phrase to transcribe.

And what is proved by the phrase, whose meanders and modifications avoid straight lines, if not that it doesn’t trust them.

The love of what has been said comes back to you without warning.

And come what may.

At distant intervals a reminder, a friendly wave, I’m not afraid of nightmares anymore.

A new law requires a new fable, let’s wait until it takes shape with the passing days.

Because saying and resaying are two different things, the material is expensive, a little patience ’fyou please.

The lilies of the big sleep.

Finally restored to poetry.

A verbena in the garden.

All regrets stifled, task accepted, to recompose as a defense against anguish, no matter where it may come from, that unforgotten dream, then finally leave it far behind, an old ceiling cluttered with birds and flowers in the taste of a bygone age, and progress toward the inaccessible, without landmarks, without erasures, without notes of any kind, unattainable but present, which must be believed in for fear of never dying.

So calm. So gray. Not a ripple in view. Something must be broken in the mechanism, but there’s nothing to be seen. The clock is on the mantelpiece, its hands tell the time.

Someone in the cold room must have just come in, the house was shut up, it was winter.

So gray. So calm. Must have sat down at the table. Numb with cold, until nightfall.

It was winter, the garden was dead, the courtyard grassy. No one would be there for months, everything is in order.

The road up to it skirts some fields lying fallow. Crows fly up, or are they magpies, you can’t see very well, night is about to fall.

The clock on the mantelpiece is made of black marble, it has a gold- rimmed face and Roman figures.

The man sitting at this table a few hours earlier, found dead on the dunghill, wouldn’t have been alone, a sentry was on guard, a trusty peasant who had seen no one but the deceased one cold, gray day, must have gone over to the slit in the shutter and apparently distinctly saw him put the clock out of action and then sit there prostrate in his chair, elbows on the table, head in his hands.

How to rely on that murmur, the ear is deficient.

A courtyard surrounded by old buildings, paved and clean, rectangular, with on the north side, at the entrance that’s to say, a pine- wood gate and two clumps of pink hydrangeas, with on the south side between the barn and the pigsty, set back a bit, an iris bed at its best in the spring, to the west the dwelling-house, to the east a young elm wood, in the center a fountain, circular basin the worse for wear, spout the shape of a chimera.

The story would seem to have begun a long time before this, but talk about prudence, talk about vigilance, it looks as if only two or three episodes have been revealed, and that with some difficulty, the source of information being permanently deficient, that almost inaudible murmur interrupted by silences and hiccups, so that you might well have attached no importance to it and considered that the whole thing started at the time when the clock was put out of action. Which side to take.