Trio (26 page)

In the meantime the garden under its white mantle, sudden snow- showers and squalls, was secretly preparing its silly little surprises, its stereotypes, its childish joys
 
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In the cold room the book fallen on to the floor.

Or the secateurs left on the bench.

Or the memory of the maid like an astringent for traditional purposes.

Crows fly up cawing, bad sign, you wondered what sins of commission or omission you had perpetrated, conscience never clear, the doctor on the terrace raising his eyes from his newspaper said remember that flight of crows was it January or February, this or that calamity apparently hit the village, adieu to all the optimistic projects
 
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Crows or magpies.

Hundredth repetition.

Those pictures to extricate from their dross.

As for the goatherd she fell asleep counting her stitches, her flock wandered over to the marsh and impelled either by greed or curiosity ventured into it and got stuck, the lame woman only caught up with them much later, night was falling, when the mechanic went into the café.

While the master who thought he was alone got up out of his chair, went over to the fireplace, hesitated for a second and then broke the hands of the clock, the act of a maniac, it was only the next day apparently when he was himself again that he did what he could to stick the hands back on the clockface so that the maid shouldn’t know.

And the other man, leaving the slit in the shutter walked round the wood again, passed the dunghill again where the scarecrow was lying with outstretched arms, took his little boy’s hand again and they both went off towards the pasture-land, pale, pure sky, hoarfrost on the blades of grass, ice in the potholes in the road, real winter weather that shrivels you up under your jacket and grips your skull in a vice.

Goats getting stuck.

What to do with all these snippets.

Bit by bit the traces of the olden days faded from his memory, names, words, as if the immense wave of exile
 
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or the fact that
 
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nothing and no one anymore, gray shadows heralding the night, he’d end up taking refuge behind the stove with the dishcloths, a nice quiet corner, dreaming of bacon soup and scratching his groin.

And the other man, leaving the slit in the shutter walked round the wood again, he saw someone running over towards the marsh, how could he follow him, night was falling, he takes his little boy’s hand again and passes in front of the dunghill on which the dead cow stands out as a sort of light patch, they’ll be suspicious, so and so must have killed it but they can’t find any excuse to question him, why have it in for the cow, it died of cold, no trace of any injury, and the farmer’s wife who kept saying such a good milker.

An old jealousy, the father explained, he’d kept company with the farmer’s wife when she was a girl and amongst neighbors
 
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or something like the suspicion people had had that he used to water his milk, shame and hate are involved and he poisons the cow instead of the farmer.

Goes up to the corpse, cuts off the udder with his penknife and throws it into the neighbor’s barn as he goes by, it was dark, you could see a ray of light through the kitchen shutter, not a sound.

That mutilated corpse, with its bloodstained trouser fly.

That they must have been illuminated in those transitional days by something other than the light of judgment, a way of foreseeing with serenity what was to follow because it’s long, it’s deflected for ever, now, what’s the use of trying.

The town promenade. False perspectives between the trees. Floating whitish loves through the narrow openings of imaginary doors invited you on Sundays to the accent of Te Deums. That fermentation up to the grave, no reason to be surprised at the cleanliness of corpses so soon, so soon.

The servant takes the soup out and comes back with an udder on a dish. They start chewing. Milk runs down their chins and thin trickles of blood.

To come back to the goatherd she said as she brought in the coffee, I saw her waiting for the van to arrive, she stopped a long time on her way pretending to be getting her breath but you know her, she’s a wily one, and the fact that she hadn’t taken her dog would you say that was just by chance, not at all, while the master was remembering having seen the hound frisking about in the stubble, the doctor concluded that nothing we see has failed to be imagined previously.

The story will never come to light, no visible flaw.

And thinking later in the cold room about what he had casually asserted that he could now only envisage by snippets he sat there prostrate in his chair, a puppet, hands hanging, nose reddened, with as if on the reverse side of tears that ridiculous and painful laugh that turned into a hiccup, no possible explanation unless
 
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and once again the servant came back, lit the lamp and said you aren’t going to tell me.

Working on marginal notes.

He pulled himself together after the coffee and produced his page of memoirs, trying to find an anecdote, all the afternoon, the light was going, when the maid came back with the soup, monsieur is served, according to a fixed rhythm, expressions that hark back to the flood, same arrangements for piano solo, but what’s happening, nothing, nothing’s happening, the carriage was leaving for exile with its contingent of down-and-outs, they’ll get there one day, they’ll draw the curtains at daybreak and find
 
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In the heated room the two friends glass in hand are evoking memories. Fine china hanging on the walls, old furniture shining as a result of the maid’s assiduous polishing duster, a well-to-do house, no urgent needs. Outside the light is going, the clouds are gathering, it’ll rain before nightfall. The last hen in the yard goes into the henhouse to roost. The guinea fowls can be heard crying. Crows or magpies fly up from the neighboring field and go and perch on an elm tree. A tractor comes out on to the road from the ploughed fields and disappears round the corner of the quarry. On the neighbor’s side, the sound of the axe on the chopping block.

As if the account of these multifarious instants
 
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And the other, abandoning the slit in the shutter, went limping back to her herd, whistled to her dog who was running round in circles in the stubble and tells how as she was on her way back from the pasture-land she saw the breakdown van covered in blood, she took the long way round by the lane but later she had time to notice on the dunghill a flight of crows like in the year of the death of her poor mother, and after that behind the wood a shadow, always the same one, you couldn’t quite tell, that went running away towards the village, all this boded no good.

Because you had to make hay while the sun shone, quick quick before it goes, make use of the slightest lull as if the little bit of time granted
 
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On his way down from the master’s house where he had delivered his duck the vanman took the road leading to our county town, the characteristic troubles he suffers from and which will soon force him to give up driving, advised by his doctor, in the first place they distress him and then they make him stop a couple of times en route, he explains a few days later that he had had the impression that he’d been going along the road in the opposite direction with no recollection of when he’d been that way before.

The master is on the terrace taking the clock to pieces.

The ornamental lakes reflect clouds that don’t seem to be in the sky.

In the margin beside an empty phrase about happiness made a note, pleasure of false discoveries.

But the dream remodeled everything, upset the order, and it would take the testator till tomorrow and even longer to restore the verisimilitude to his document.

What to make of these snippets.

Go back on to the terrace, you can see the dunghill from there.

That mutilated corpse, with its bloodstained trouser fly.

And the other man leaving the slit in the shutter retraces his steps, walks round the wood and sees the scarecrow, the dummy, stuck on a bush, he takes it down and throws it on to the dunghill, the mechanic who was passing with his breakdown van called out something to him, you couldn’t hear very well, the man continued on his way down to the marsh, at the bend by the quarry he sees the doctor, he goes towards him, about fifty yards separated them, and when he arrives he realises that there isn’t anyone there, he goes back up in his van to make his usual journey with the usual mirages.

The town promenade. Floating, whitish loves through the narrow openings of imaginary doors.

The sentry apparently saw him come out of the room and go running down the road, he was looking for the doctor who was there in front of his eyes dropping off to sleep, he went looking for him as far as the marsh, he made his way through the mud, up to the pinewood where amongst the carcasses the white, white skeleton was swinging, he sat down underneath it, he opened the book at the appropriate page and found in the margin a note he didn’t understand, so much effort put into this exegesis, and disappeared just before night fell into that rising mist, then the sky clears, he had to go back, back to the snores and take up the thread again, the sentry will never put a foot right.

But he said straightaway that it was impossible, he was parked with his breakdown van right under the scarecrow, no one had touched it at that moment, it must have been later, at nightfall, well it was that particular moment that the neighbor’s wife had been talking about, he had apparently gone behind a hedge to urinate while the other was cutting down the scarecrow, but on the dunghill, no he hadn’t put it there, he’d taken it with him, even though from a distance you couldn’t quite tell, he seemed to be holding his little boy by the arm.

Holding his little boy by the arm to get him across the marsh like a doll, the kid wasn’t touching the ground, you could divine the two of them in that mist at nightfall, they landed on the other side, the pine- wood, amongst the birds’ carcasses, an image that remained graven there, in the book, then the whitened skeleton hanging on the bush with for tutelary divinities those beaks, those shrivelled up wings, those breastbones, those skinny feet, it made you tremble, you came back to it, the page was never turned.

Hundredth repetition.

The sky was becoming overcast with little clouds that didn’t seem to be reflected in the ornamental lakes.

Or the watchful echo in the recess of the barn repeating word for word the phrase murmured at half-word intervals caused the syllables to overlap and the indiscreet ear to retain
 
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To go back the way you came, turn, return, revert. Murmurs, divinatory formulae, tedious repetition.

In the cold room, an old rug over his shoulders, the master alchemist of the nothings that enabled him to survive was leafing through the book, making marginal notes, picking up the magnifying glass and daydreaming over the shape of an outline, of a piece of calligraphy, of a white patch he discovered over the water in the lake, dissipation of a haze, semblance of a line, survival of a word, his existence as you might say cut off, cut down, one level lower, fashioning spaces in its own image, so as to be able to move without collision, like an old-fashioned and obstinate skater in the sempiternal morning of his mania.

On the road that goes there a black mass is advancing, at first either crawling or rolling, you can’t see very well, and then upright like a wall, silent, the fledglings fly away, the field mice disappear, a velvet edifice that all of a sudden fractures and frays, it’s a flight of crows, the fields are grayish, the sky has faded.

On the road that goes there a black mass is advancing, it’s a very tall man, you can’t see very well, coming this way, you think you see two men one on top of the other, coming this way, you see it’s a peasant and a scarecrow, he stops, the fledglings have relapsed into silence, the man goes into a vineyard and sticks the dummy in a bush, he ties it to the stem with a rope, it stretches out its arms, its head is hanging, it looks like a corpse that’s already stiff.

In the quarry a shape is moving, it’s crawling up to the ridge, a gentle slope, it’s stopping, or watching, it digs itself in, it reappears farther on, rolls down to the path below, then drags itself along for fifty yards, there’s time to see the night fall completely, later the man will be found lying on the dunghill, his arms outstretched.

Turn, return, revert.

The sentry dozing behind the wood heard a branch crack, he opened an eye, the night was clear and glacial, he got up, cocked his gun, crept in amongst the trees, saw a ray of light through the slit in the shutter, went up, glued his eye to the slit, the master was putting the clock out of action, come back to inspect the premises, no one would be there for months, the house is shut up, everything is in order.

Afterwards he told the goatherd that the master had come back to inspect the premises, light through the slit in the shutter, he had gone over but must have fallen asleep again in the meantime because there wasn’t anybody there, the house is shut up, everything is in order, when suddenly the child came up shouting something, you couldn’t hear very well, it was before nightfall and while the neighbor’s tractor, which makes such a din, was going by, the child was on his way home from school and had apparently seen on the dunghill
 
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his mother had questioned him before she put him to bed but how could you rely on the brat, he has too much imagination.

He remembered the former layout of the premises, the courtyard surrounded by old buildings, not much more, but in the interior a table and a mantelpiece with a little black clock in the place of honor, gold-rimmed face and Roman figures, he’d never seen it going but perhaps heard, heard, on what occasion
 
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An old pigeon tottering along the roof of the barn.

You could also hear the glug-glug of the fountain in the middle of the courtyard as far as the road to the marsh but nothing from the north, the barn side that is, a louder noise was needed to awaken the echo, a curious fact when you think of the slightest sound reflected back in the other direction even a branch cracking, even a murmur, or if the doctor only spoke of it years later, not remembering the distances anymore, a sentimental old dyspeptic, his friendship with the other man null and void ages before.