The Life of Elves

by Muriel Barbery

  “My brothers, I have lived with you in this land for thirty years. Thirty years of work and troubles, thirty years of harvests and rain, thirty years of seasons and mourning, but also thirty years of births and weddings, and of masses at all hours, because you lead a virtuous life. This is your region, and it was given to you so that you might know the bitter taste of effort, and the silent reward of labor. It belongs to you without any title deed, because you have sacrificed the sap of your life for it, and entrusted it with your hope. It belongs to you unquestionably because your loved ones rest here in peace, and they paid tribute before you through their work. It belongs to you without a cross because you lay no claim to it, but thank it for considering you its servants and its sons. I have lived with you in this country and now, after thirty years of prayers and preaching, thirty years of sermons and services, I am asking you to accept me among you, and call me one of your own. I have been blind and I beg your forgiveness. You are great, while I am small, you are humble, whereas I am poor, and you are courageous while I am cowardly. You have little, you are people of the earth, you till the soil at dawn, along many furrows, and in hailstorms. You are the soldiers of a noble mission, for you feed others and make them prosper, and you will die beneath the shoots of the vine that will give your children a good vintage—as we stand by the grave of the woman who would have me embrace dust and stone, as you would, too, I beg you one last time to take me with you, because this morning I have understood the true intoxication to be found in serving others. And so once we have mourned Eugénie and shared our sorrow, we will look around us at this land that is ours, and which gives us trees and sky, orchards and flowers, and paradise here on earth as surely as this time belongs to us and it is possible to find in it the only consolation to which my heart can aspire to from now on. The time of man is coming, and of this I am certain: neither death, nor life, nor the spirits, nor the present, nor the future, nor the stars, nor the abyss, nor any creature: nothing will keep from love those who live in our land, and by our land. The time of man is coming—men who will know the nobility of forests and the grace of trees, men who will know how to contemplate and heal and, lastly, how to love. May they know glory, for the centuries of centuries. Amen.”

  And the congregation replied amen.

  They looked at each other, trying to digest the eccentricity of the prayer. They tried to remember the words in the right order, but it was scraps of the usual refrain that came instead, and they had trouble making up their minds about what had actually gone on during that unexpected fantasy. And yet they knew. Like every word that draws on the beauty of the world for its syntax and its rhymes, the priest’s homily had caressed each of them with a powerful poetry. For all it was fearful cold amid the linden trees, they warmed themselves at an intangible fire that contained the blessings of their life there—the streams, the roses and the sky’s sorcery, and it was as if the lightest of feathers were gently stroking a wound in each of them, a wound they had grown used to living with but which they thought might some day be healed, when the skin closed over for good. Perhaps . . . At least now they knew a prayer that was anything but Latin, it was like the warm landscapes they each held tenderly locked away inside themselves. There was a fragrance of the vineyard and a few crushed violets, and there were skies washed with ink above the solitude of the hollows. This was their life, just as this time belonged to them, and as they began to disperse, and struck up conversations, and greeted one another, and hugged, and made ready to head back home, for the first time they felt they were standing more firmly on their feet—because there are not many men who understand right from the start that there is no other Lord than the benevolence of the land.

  Father François looked at Maria. The corolla finished spreading deep into the innermost recesses of his heart, and confirmed the news: it was thanks to this little girl that they had flourished and known their good fortune, thanks to her that any obstacle obstructing the flow of the stream could be avoided, and thanks to her, finally, that there were seasons that wound around her in a spiral of transfigured time. He looked up and saw black clouds moored to the wharf of the sky as surely as any ship’s cordage.

  When André placed his hand on the priest’s shoulder Father François felt a magnetic current go through him, and through it they agreed that events were occurring to which their reason could attribute no meaning, but their hearts could, without a doubt, and all their love as well. André withdrew his hand, while the stunned crowd of peasants looked at these two brothers who had just found one another, and they waited, trembling, to see what would happen next. They, too, took a good look at the clouds, and to all of them it seemed that the clouds were saying something unfriendly, but what was happening at the cemetery was worth any danger they might face. And yet it looked as if it were all over, because Father François was blessing them, and motioning to the gravediggers to begin shoveling in the earth. Maria, next to her father, was smiling; he had removed his hat and was looking skyward, his eyes half-closed, like a man whose face has been warmed by the sun when there is still a hard frost. Then the little girl stepped toward the grave, and from her pocket she took some pale hawthorn flowers: they fell slowly onto the coffin, and the wind did not carry them away.

  André Faure, however, did not seem ready to leave the cemetery. He motioned to the priest; Maria was also looking at the sky as it grew strangely darker—the clouds were not obscuring the light but making it dark and dazzling. The priest turned around and looked in the direction André was pointing. On the southern horizon, beyond the wall of flat stones, a black column of smoke or rain was forming. It was moving slowly but in unison with the clouds as they sank lower toward the earth, and it was as if the horizon and the firmament were drawing in, and they would all have been surrounded were it not for the village backing onto the little mountain: they could still escape that way if the sky continued to fall upon the fields. Maria stood closer to her father and they exchanged a look. What did he see there? No one could say. But it was clear that there was no more time for wondering—the hour had come to learn to prepare for combat. The men—at least those who, in these parts, had a certain authority—formed a circle around André, while the rest of the assembly waited in the wind. Father François stood to his right and this meant, or so everyone understood it, without surprise: I support him. André began to speak, and they knew these were grave times.

  A few minutes later each man went on his way, to carry out his prescribed task. Those who were headed north, east and west hurried down the road without a backward glance. The others split up among the farms, or congregated in the sanctuary of the church, where before long they were brought mulled wine and thick blankets. Finally, a dozen or so men escorted the little girl, the mother, and the three grannies to Marcelot’s farm; they thought it might be more defensible because there was a wall around it, and it was set high in the village and afforded the best view over all the surrounding countryside. They sat the women and the child around the same table to be found in every farm, and they busily began to cover it with everything that might ensure the business of their physical and spiritual recovery.

  The hour before battle is a short one, and Maria knew this, and smiled at Lorette Marcelot. She was an imposing woman who bore her stoutness proudly before her, with a majesty owing to the slowness of her gestures. From her splendid youth she had kept a face without a wrinkle, and copper hair arranged in a chignon that caught everyone’s eye like a beacon, and one never wearied of gazing at this fine countrywoman; her muted, endlessly rolling gait was restful to hearts that were cut to the flesh by the boundless hardship of the land. Maria loved to cling to her petticoats, where she breathed in the lemon verbena Lorette carried in little pouches sewn under her skirts; it wafted a romance of trees and pantries, enough to make you wonder what more could you possibly desire in the way of refinement round these parts, for all that they were filled with simple folk.

  “Well, lassie, that were
a fine funeral,” she said to Maria, giving her a smile.

  Those were the appropriate words and, for being embroidered on the smooth skin of that milk-white face, they brushed sorrow with an ease that erased its darkness. Lorette set before Clara a hunk of cheese from her cows, and a bowl of steaming milk. Maria smiled back. The room smelled of coffee, mingled with a predominant aroma of roasting fowl; the men had stayed outside while the three old women and the mother recovered in silence from the day’s emotions; they looked at Goodwoman Marcelot who spread her arms in an arc as she prepared to slice the bread, with a languor that made every movement more valiant and proud. It was a time for women. The time for women who know what men must find at home before the fight. So they inhabit every inch of space in the home, they embrace every joist, every deepest recess, and they multiply until the home is nothing more than a throbbing breast where one can feel the purest declensions of their sex. And the farm is filled to bursting with this womanly radiance as they stretch their bodies to the very ceiling beams, which seem rounder and more welcoming as a result; the farm at last assumes that incarnation wherein all who enter will know that woman is sovereign there, and offers all the pleasures and joys on earth.

  ALESSANDRO

  The Pioneers

  On the dawn that followed the night of the great healing, Alessandro, Paulus, and Marcus set off together for France. Clara had not slept. It was Eugénie’s last day on earth and it was raining in Rome when they all said farewell. On the steps outside the house Leonora embraced her sadly. Pietro, by her side, was silent and impassive. Petrus seemed more rumpled than ever.

  “I don’t know what you will find in the village,” said the Maestro, “but along the way you must be invisible.”

  “Invisible when all of Rome is under surveillance?” asked Leonora.

  “Pietro’s men are waiting for them outside,” he replied, “they will leave the city in secret.”

  Everyone embraced. But before leaving, Sandro knelt in front of Clara, and, his eyes level with hers, he whispered, “Some day I’ll tell you the story of a woman I knew called Teresa.” He looked up at the Maestro. “I wonder . . . ” he murmured.

  They went away in the rain. But before they disappeared around the corner of the lane, Alessandro looked back and waved. Was it the power of the ancestor? It seemed to Clara she was seeing him for the first time.

  Clara stayed at the villa with Petrus; ordinarily, he would doze off the moment they were on their own. But that morning he looked at her dreamily and she thought he was more sober than usual.

  “Who is Teresa?” she asked.

  “What do you know about ghosts?” he asked in reply.

  “They live with us,” she said.

  “No,” he answered, “we live with them and we don’t let them leave. For that reason, we have to get the story straight for them.”

  She didn’t reply. Something about him had changed.

  “I can’t tell you about Teresa today,” he said, “but I will tell you a story that will lead to hers.” He sighed. “But first of all I need a little drink.”

  “Maybe it will be better if you don’t,” she said.

  “I don’t think so. Human beings fall apart when they drink, but I become stronger.” He got up and poured himself a glass of a deep red wine. “I must be the only one whose gifts are revealed by amarone,” he said. “Why is that? Mystery and mists.”

  “But what are you all?” she asked.

  “What do you mean, what are we?”

  “The Maestro, Paulus, Marcus and you. You’re not men, are you?”

  “Men? Of course not,” he said, dismayed. “We are elves.”

  “Elves?” she echoed, stunned. “There are alcoholic elves?”

  He looked hurt.

  “I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just intolerant of alcohol. As are we all, anyway. Must I, for all that, deprive myself of something that is good?”

  “Does everyone drink in your world?”

  “Of course not,” he said, looking rather lost. “That is why I am here.”

  “You are here for the moscato?”

  “I am here for the moscato and for the conversation of human beings.”

  “Don’t elves have interesting conversations?”

  “Of course they do,” he said. He wiped his brow. “It’s more complicated than I thought,” he said.

  “What do you elves do during the day?” she asked, in a noble effort to help him.

  “A lot of things, of course, a lot of things . . . Poetry, calligraphy, walks in the woods, stone gardens, fine pottery, music. We celebrate twilight, and mists. We drink tea. Rivers of tea.” This final remark seemed to fill him with sadness. “I cannot tell you how much tea we drink,” he concluded, drowning in melancholy.

  “And conversation?”

  “Conversation?”

  “Is it like with the Maestro?”

  “No, no. Most of us do not have such lofty aspirations. We are ordinary elves. There are feast days, too. But it’s not the same.”

  “What isn’t the same?”

  “No one tells stories. We recite pages of poetry, we sing hymns in abundance. But there are never stories about ghosts or truffle hunting.”

  He seemed to find new vigor in the reference, made the previous evening, to an endless story, begun by a kitchen boy, that was set in the forests of Tuscany.

  “So you’re here for the wine and the stories about truffle hunting?”

  “The Maestro made me come because of the stories. But wine also helps things along.”

  “Were you bored up there?” she continued.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it up there,” he muttered. “And I was a little bored, but that was not the most important thing. For a long time I was a good-for-nothing. And then one day the Maestro asked me if I wanted to come and be among you. I came, I drank, and I stayed on. I am made for this world. That is why I can tell you Alessandro’s story. Because we are brothers in dissatisfaction.”

  “The Maestro asked you to tell me Alessandro’s story?”

  “Not exactly,” he replied. “In fact, I’m the one who suggested we tell you your own story, which implies a lot of other ones, too, and if you would just stop asking questions, I will start with Alessandro’s.”

  And elegantly sitting himself down in the armchair where normally he would be snoring, he poured a second glass and began his story, while an unusual steeliness was visible beneath the roundness of his features, and his voice took on a velvety-smooth tone she had never heard.

  “Alessandro’s story begins a little over forty years ago in a fine house in L’Aquila, where he lived with his mother, a singular woman who was born for travel and who was wasting away from the sadness of having no horizon beyond her own garden. Her only joy came from her youngest son. Because Alessandro was more handsome than heaven and earth. In all the province no one had ever seen a more perfect face, and it would seem that the boy’s character was the reflection of his complexion, because he learned to speak splendid Italian, with a phrasing no one had ever heard in that region, and from earliest childhood he displayed a natural talent for music and drawing that far exceeded what the teachers were in the habit of seeing. By the age of sixteen he could learn nothing more from them. When he was twenty, he left for Rome with his mother’s hopes and tears, and went to stay with Pietro: he had heard about him through his late father, who sold the Oriental carpets brought through the Abruzzi by the northern route to rich Romans.”

  He paused and poured a third glass.

  “You are good at telling stories.” said Clara.

  “Better than your old housekeeper?”

  “Yes, but your voice isn’t as nice.”

  “It’s because I’m thirsty,” he said, taking another sip of amarone. “Do you know the secret of a good story?”

  “Wine?�
� she ventured.

  “Lyricism and nonchalance with the truth. However, one must not trifle with the heart.”

  Then, looking affectionately at the ruby color of his glass, he continued: “So Alessandro headed for Rome, in the fire and chaos of his first youth.”

  “I can see an image,” she said.

  “Can you see into my mind?”

  “I can see what you are talking about.”

  “How extraordinary. And without drinking.”

  “It is my father’s power?”

  “It is your father’s power, but it is also your gift. This painting is the first one Alessandro showed to Pietro, who had never seen anything like it. He knew the art market and he knew that he was in the presence of a miracle. The canvas did not represent anything. Ink was tossed in elegant lines that rose toward the upper edge of the canvas like a fork with three uneven prongs, lower on the outside and connected at the base. The strangest thing was that when you looked carefully at the prongs it was possible to see that the lines could only be drawn in one direction. So Pietro saw that it was a particular form of writing, and he wondered how Alessandro had learned the language. But when he asked him, he saw that he didn’t understand. You wrote mountain just like that, without knowing what your calligraphy meant? he asked. I wrote mountain? replied Sandro. He was stunned. He came from L’Aquila and had only the vaguest idea of the outside world. But he had drawn the sign for mountain and Pietro knew how to read it, because he had been to the country of these signs and he knew how to decipher some of them. Just the way all our people can decipher it, because it’s a language we adopted a long time ago, and because the mountain stones are very important for us. Pietro asked Sandro if he had any other canvases. He did. And in the months that followed, he painted many more. They were magnificent.