Trio (25 page)

If I’d known, he said, that all that effort was going to have such a miserable result, writing my memoirs for a monthly magazine, but the doctor comforted him, it was just as good an activity as any other and it even had an extra something, the literary aura, there was nothing to mope about, a good many existences he knew of finished in a less satisfactory fashion, he definitely had everything he needed and the leisure, that was important, leisure, what would he do without the delightful fireside chats, without the care his maid took of him, in short hundredth repetition on the terrace one fine autumn day, they’d got to the coffee, the doctor was just about to fall asleep and his companion was calculating the cost of building a greenhouse at the bottom of the French garden.

Or else alone, sprawling over the table in that cold room one winter’s day, the fire out, door open on to the grassy courtyard in the center of the dilapidated buildings, the wind was whistling in the elms, the neighbors’ child was home from school, night was failing.

Then she said monsieur could at least mend the clock, I never know the time, my alarm’s always slow, to which he replied get your alarm mended, I know, ask the doctor after all, an old joke, the maid went back to her kitchen, she would be dishing up at any moment, he went back to his reading.

Those years spent waiting for no one knew what and then not waiting for anything anymore, in the end people started making fun of him and mothers used to tell their brats that they’d get the old man to eat them up if they weren’t good, his hat on his head and his leather boots, were they yellow or red, you couldn’t quite tell, he was going towards the marsh again and disappeared round the corner of the quarry.

He had long pondered over this story of the corpse and had given it his assent, though still hesitating about the time and about the child but they weren’t of any great importance, a dunghill, what could be more suitable.

He had arrived one gray day, had come in through the kitchen, hadn’t opened the shutter because night was about to fall, he had crossed the big room and seen the faded bunch of flowers and the book on the table, must have decided to postpone his reading and gone out again into the courtyard, then walked round the garden and saw on the dunghill
 
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everything perfectly logical, no discrepancies.

Was writing his memoirs between two inebrieties, source of information deficient, the period in town and meetings on the promenade, springtimes are so short, those endless removals in pursuit of no one knew what and now nocturnal terrors, murmured appeals, phantasms that loom up in spite of the lamplight, infinite distress.

From one year to the next these great changes in depth.

The marsh with its birds’ carcasses.

The goatherd had gone out round about ten o’clock with her flock, six pepper-and-salt-colored animals, she’d gone limping down the lane leading to the marsh, her camp stool under her arm, her black shawl on her head, the dog was frisking about by her side, a ratter that snaps at the animals’ hocks but doesn’t know its job, they’ve disappeared round the corner of the quarry, it was bluish, glacial December weather, hoarfrost, frozen mud, the mechanic coming from the opposite direction with his breakdown van apparently met them a good deal farther away than the marsh, which was hard to explain given the pace the old girl was going but these things happen in the country, a few moments’ inattention are enough to confuse your sense of time, even perhaps to change the pace people walk at, you’ve just seen them dragging their feet or dawdling along the road, a few moments later you can’t see them anymore.

She stopped for a second to get her breath, looking in the direction of the village which you can’t see from there, a gently-sloping field meets the horizon, crows or magpies flew up and perched on an elm, lapwings were foraging in a ploughed field, others going over towards the marsh, the little dog started barking when it saw the breakdown van appearing about half a mile away, movements are as rare as noise in this part of the world, it ran something like twenty yards, the old woman called it back and started walking again, the breakdown van then disappeared round the other end of the quarry where the road slopes down again, the goats which were beginning to graze all along the lane started off again too with sudden little jumps, strings of droppings and bleats.

In the garden the doctor after he’d walked round the flower beds settled down in his deckchair and started to read the old-fashioned book with a pastis in his hand, the duck man arrived by way of the lower garden which gives on to a little gate, he’d come from the direction of the marsh because he said to the doctor I saw the mechanic coming up with his breakdown van, the neighbor’s tractor again I’ll bet, why does he always buy such junk, he’ll never change, a wasp fell into the glass of pastis, oh, go and get another glass you know the way, it was probably then that the man went into the kitchen and he comes back with his glass saying how is it that the maid isn’t there, it isn’t Thursday so far as I am aware, it’s explained to him that she’s at the postman’s funeral, he’d been found dead on the dunghill three days earlier, the duck man said I thought as much I mean that he’d finish like that, he was drunk from morning to night, because this was the first he’d heard of the demise on account of his recent rounds on the borders of our region, he’s a breeder and calls with his van every Wednesday to take or deliver orders, corn-fed, very good poultry, he was sipping his aperitif and saying it’s strange, just think with all this scouring the countryside there are times when how can I put it I get the feeling that I’m not there, I sometimes think I’m somewhere else or it’s another time of year, just like that all of a sudden, only the other day I was driving along a road in the middle of winter, it doesn’t last but should I do something about it, what do you think doctor, the doctor replied watch your liver and come and see me, I’ll take your blood pressure.

The feeling of not being there, yes, something broken as if what he’d just said had happened at some other time or that he wasn’t himself at the moment of speaking, God how complicated it is, or that because it’s such a long journey, because he does it so often or because he doesn’t pay enough attention or that anyone could do the same journey blindfolded anywhere else with anyone’s van, come and see me the doctor repeated, and they sipped their pastis the one tormenting himself on account of this strange illness, the other blinking in the admirable light, the blueness of the landscape in the distance, the forest on the horizon, the fields of rapeseed and the green walnut trees.

The master must have got home at about one o’clock, he walked up the different tiers of the garden and saw the two of them on the terrace, after greeting them he too sat down, poured himself out a pastis and was amazed to find the doctor there at this hour on this day, he hadn’t done anything about providing lunch but never mind, they’d have yesterday’s leftovers with a good salad, the poulterer must have left at about a quarter past one and the others went on drinking for a good half-hour, the master said he’d been down to the marsh and had seen the breakdown van, the doctor smiled, no doubt about it you really are a happy lot, the only thing that happens in a whole morning, a tractor stuck in the mud or I don’t know what and everyone’s talking about it as if it were a great event, because he’d met another neighbor on his way there.

Then fed up with waiting for the two drunks the servant came out on to the terrace and said monsieur is served, an antiquated expression that amused the doctor, the duck will be burnt and it won’t be my fault.

In the glacial room was leafing through the book, December evening, the clock was showing the maid’s time, the rain was beating down on the cobbles in the courtyard.

An April shower, the garden swamped, the plan for the greenhouse on the lower level, two notes from a blackbird resuscitated his childhood, everything would start again in the spring.

That murmur interrupted by silences and hiccups.

Then the other man left and towards the end of the day someone apparently saw him over by the marsh, they heard about it at the café where conversations intersect and intermingle, anyone who isn’t really listening doesn’t follow what’s being said and with the help of the booze everything merges into a sort of monotonous drone which is always the same, come winter, come summer, so that you could
 
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Or the goatherd on that pink and blue morning may have branched off a good way before the quarry and gone down the road to the village, probably sat herself down in the sheltered corner between the orchard wall and the neighbor’s barn, out of the wind, and started knitting while the ratter was frisking about in the stubble, he can amuse himself with a mouse, an insect, a shadow, with his own tail, sometimes he suddenly starts rushing round in a circle as fast as he can go, another circle, another half one, he stops abruptly, sniffs at something and then goes running up to his mistress who gives him a little slap on the nose, he’ll never learn anything, the goats are grazing the hedge, the old woman stands up and shouts, she waves her stick threateningly, she limps off and drops some stitches in her knitting.

And on her way home she met the master coming back from the marsh, he apparently said isn’t it cold, have you got proper heating, she answered yes or no, you couldn’t hear very well, you could see her make a vague gesture, you could imagine her lady-apple face and her toothless smile, too far away to catch the details, they said something else to each other for maybe another minute, he pointed over in the direction of the marsh, you could see them part, it must have been one o’clock, time for lunch, the sky was already becoming overcast, rain soon, how can we count on a normal season these days.

Leave nothing of memory’s suggestions intact.

Night again, close the shutters again, that lament again, it’ll never come to an end now, in the inner ear, which is why you can’t properly hear the eddies on the surface.

Even so it was something, that tragic end on a dunghill, they’d told the doctor who contrary to the deceased’s expectations had shown sincere grief, he’s quite distraught, he stands there in the middle of the room, he can’t take his eyes off the corpse huddled up in the armchair, the neighbor’s wife pushes a chair over to him, forces him to sit down and goes into the kitchen to heat up some coffee.

But the neighbor’s child had so much imagination, a highly-strung child, impressionable, that it seems he took the scarecrow for a corpse, either it had been blown onto the dunghill by a gust of wind or the master had put it there, and he didn’t apparently go anywhere near it but went and told his parents who, once on the scene
 
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Phantasms of the night and of yesterday and tomorrow, death at the slightest deficiency in thought, like the scene of an interior with a window opening on to the desert, the void from which you protect yourself by inescapable domestic pursuits.

The sentry posted behind the wood apparently saw someone coming up and walking round the house at daybreak in this humid cold that goes right through you, he’d moved so as to be able to watch the door into the kitchen, then nothing, went up to the building, walked round it, no sign except for a pair of secateurs left on the bench on the south side since the autumn, already rusty, which he put in his pocket.

The sentry, a wily peasant who claims he suffers from nervous disorders which are difficult to control.

And the other person, this had been going on for years, who was watching the master from a window
 
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So calm. So gray. An old pigeon was tottering along the roof of the barn. There’s a puddle in the middle of the grassy courtyard. On the south side a little cluster of leafless plum trees.

The doctor like an old pigeon was shuffling round the courtyard of an old people’s home or else pushed by a nurse was catching cold under his blanket, the master used to go and see him and between two nose-drips the old man mumbled his apologies or memories, you couldn’t hear very well.

When suddenly the maid appeared and said don’t try and make out you were working, I saw you at the window on the lookout.

The time is out of joint.

The mother in the carriage leading to exile. Then in the little suburban garden they’d chosen. Until the day when the page had been turned and you could no longer imagine her other than covered with daisies in her young girl’s dress.

The sentry posted at the corner of the wood rubbed his eyes at daybreak and saw the carcass of an animal on the dunghill with its feet in the air and its belly slit open.

On the bit of bloody lawn where the neighbor’s child was playing, unspeakable anguish, when all the ghosts from elsewhere have emigrated for the last time into the innermost recesses of memory.

In the margin beside an empty phrase.

Tainted with mildew they either dragged themselves along in great masses or hoisted themselves up the girders or dived down into the cellars through the trapdoors.

Source of information deficient.

Through trying to catch that murmur between two hiccups he had at first managed to make his hearing more acute so long as youth had lasted but once he was over the bend it had gradually started to diminish and resulted not long before the aforementioned period in solid deafness, internal crackling, dizzy spells and headaches but by exercising all his willpower, like a streetcorner musician, he had reconstituted a kind of passacaglia.

So calm. So gray.

On his way down from the master’s house where he had delivered his duck the man had landed up in the ditch with his van and he had been trapped underneath it for a good hour until the children on their way home from school discovered him and went and told the gendarme who told the mechanic and the two of them with some others were struggling to get the thing out, heave ho, finally they managed to release the driver, all he had was a broken leg and the neighbor offered to drive him to hospital, the man was groaning like a woman, you’d never have believed it, him being so tough, the doctor who doesn’t practice anymore except when the occasion arises said that it wasn’t all that marvelous the way they dealt with you at the hospital, that in this sort of case a thorough examination was indicated, his head might be injured too, next, that’s to say that evening in the café, the mechanic was explaining the sort of maneuvers he goes in for each time, this wasn’t the first, with his breakdown van, but you didn’t know whether he was talking about the van or the tractor, too far away, deafening noise of all those voices and of the pin-table, makes you wonder what the regulars got out of it but calm and reflection are not very highly prized round our parts, noise intrudes into even the most remote domicile in the form of wireless cacophonies, sweet songs, and other parasites.