A King Alone

by Jean Giono

  Delphine was sitting just where there’s a bird’s-eye view of the road that climbs up here. We knew her attention was turned that way. If she was watching for the peddler’s red umbrella, we could see it just as well as she could. He was downhill, near Monétier. He’d cross the meadows, toward Moulin de Recourt. It would take him at least seven or eight days to get here.

  Sausage was perfectly aware of everything that was going on. You don’t teach a grandmother how to suck eggs. As you can imagine, Sausage knew all the ins and outs of sending love notes on the sly. She could easily have stopped it had she wanted to. All she would have needed to do on the appointed day (and it was easy to predict the appointed day by the red umbrella that we could see below us, climbing its league a day) would be to go to meet that umbrella with five sous in her hand. For five sous, that picture peddler would have killed mother and father.

  But Sausage didn’t give a tinker’s damn about a love note. Delphine had the right to forget everything: that was her business. But Sausage had the right to assess Delphine’s capital. A cat has the right to look at a king!

  The sessions between those two seated women that we arbitrated from above were fights to the death. Each time Delphine was armed to the teeth. Her lovely décolletage was like a basket full of fruit and she must have bathed it in milk before going out, unbelievable! (That décolletage always interests men; we wanted to soak it all in.) From her alluring flounces and all that, nothing was lacking: wasp waist and bustle, blush and powder. Perfume whose scent we could catch through the smell of our pipes (that tells you something).

  As for Sausage, I’ll tell you how she was armed. She’d sit on a rock and watch. The younger woman, seated in three-quarter profile on her bench, her back to Sausage, leaned over the misty depths where the red umbrella was moving (slowly). Sausage, imperturbable, would stare at the nape of Delphine’s neck and the bow in her hair. You could see Delphine, who, without ceasing to be on the lookout, would run her hand once, twice, three times (and nervously) over her nape. In the end, she’d turn toward Sausage and ask, “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Sausage would say.

  That went on for hours: once, twice, three times. Delphine would dig around in the pocket under her skirts and pull out a mirror in which she would pout prettily, stretching her throat, turning her head, sticking a few locks of hair back under some combs, chewing on ribbons, touching her lips, eyes, and chin with her fingertips, smoothing the underside of the chin with her palm; finally she would bring the mirror close to her face to check around her eyes, in their corners, her forehead, which she also tried to smooth. Then she’d lean over once again to look for the red umbrella way down below that, in the meantime, had advanced. Now it was behind Recourt.

  Sausage hadn’t budged an inch, remaining in position and glaring at that nape.

  “What is it?” Delphine would ask, swiveling in place.

  “Nothing,” Sausage would reply.

  “What are you looking at?” Delphine would ask.

  “You,” Sausage would say. (Lest there would be any misunderstanding.)

  We’d watch them go at it for an hour or two. The fruit basket and the civilities got knocked about a bit. And after having examined every inch of herself, Delphine would stuff her breasts back in her blouse at least twenty times. It was as if she were playing with puppies in a small basket: And I’ll pat you, and pet you, and puff up the lace around you.

  This was no way to vanquish Sausage.

  But Delphine knew how to vanquish her. And in the end, every time, she did. If it took Delphine a while, it wasn’t out of the kindness of her heart. What she needed was a double-edged sword.

  Suddenly she’d stand up (but only when she’d lost all her self-confidence and all her confidence in ointments, powders, and perfumes) and shout, “Oh, your Langlois! . . .”

  And before Delphine could disappear through the trees, Sausage would have just the time to answer, “He wasn’t my Langlois!”

  And next you could hear Sausage, all alone, repeating this sentence under her breath.

  So we would leave our perch, because it was time. Don’t think we’d play these little games above the maze in order to ogle Delphine’s basket. There’s no question we’d make the most of it as we went by, but it’s not like us to fiddle in these matters. What was important, you see, was what all that was really about.

  We saw them all extricate themselves: Langlois, the Tims, the others; we had seen Langlois die (well, if we hadn’t exactly seen him, we’d heard him; if we hadn’t seen what is called seeing, even though the glow was strong enough to light up the summit of Le Jocond, we had all heard) but what were they all extricating themselves from, with their faces glowing with that false joy we knew they’d put on for us?

  This is when people began to take advantage of Sausage’s despair or, more precisely, of her old age that had robbed her of the ability to hide her despair.

  At first, she was suspicious. Then (she must have been tallying up her balance sheet as often as she did Delphine’s) she must have said to herself, “What’s the point, with the little time I have left to live?”

  So we would leave our perch, glide behind the hedge, and call to her. At first, she answered without moving from her spot. Then, she came up to the barrier. Finally, she crossed the hedge so that in the end we brought along an extra cane, which we would give to her when she met up with us.

  And so five or six of us would accompany her; we would climb very slowly just above the coaching inn, to a meadow under the apple trees. One or the other of us was always responsible for keeping an eye on the cows. But that didn’t interfere with anything; on the contrary, it gave us time to think about what she was saying; for we didn’t have to do much to get her started, but from time to time we needed time to understand what she was saying. Only after careful consideration would we speak of our feelings about Langlois.

  •

  “Be quiet already,” shouted Sausage (I say “shouted” because, when strained, her gravelly voice turned shrill and harsh), “he was a man like all the others!”

  Well, there was no lack of men like all the others. Weren’t we all men like all the others, in the end? If that’s all she wanted to say, go on and say it! Hadn’t we already heard Langlois say that Monsieur V. was a man like all the others?

  But what we could never get her to understand was that we also loved Langlois. We didn’t hold it against her; on the contrary. If we were there to make her talk, it’s because we were still fond of the man. We didn’t hold him responsible for anything, not even death. He’d always seemed to have such knowledge of things.

  You have to admit, there were mysteries!

  Let’s agree that he didn’t have to explain anything to anyone about the way in which he rid us (rid the world) of Monsieur V.

  Still! Aren’t there courts and an executioner in Paris?

  But they might have said that it was none of our business; if it was anyone’s business, it was the legendary royal prosecutor’s! And hadn’t we seen that the royal prosecutor and Langlois were as thick as thieves? Did it ever cross our minds that the legendary royal prosecutor had reason to reproach Langlois? On the contrary, one could even say he treated him like his little pet. And the evening of the famous wolf hunt, when Langlois fired his two pistols (as usual, we have to say devilishly fast; well aimed, but devilishly fast), didn’t that royal prosecutor, notwithstanding his belly, rush to where Langlois was with aeronautic buoyancy?

  As if he were trying to protect him (from what?). And more than protect him: to be with him.

  And because we are talking about that royal prosecutor, wasn’t he—yes or no—wasn’t he renowned for his “deep knowledge of human things” and for being a “lover of souls”?

  And that evening, when the wolf fell, wasn’t there an exchange of glances between the prosecutor and Langlois?

  And I, who was in a good position to see the gaze of that man with his deep knowledge of human things, didn�
��t I clearly see an immeasurable sadness in that gaze (as it responded to Langlois’s)?

  Easy to say. “Shut up!” We would have wanted to shut up then, really. That’s all we were asking.

  It’s just like with Madame Tim; the friendship between her and Langlois was friendship and nothing more. We knew it perfectly well, even if that friendship, you have to admit, was awfully demanding! The friendship that had begun between those two beings, one of whom was made of convent, volcano, and ice, all in bluish marble, while who knew what the other was made of; the friendship that had begun between those two beings the day after the wolf hunt: explain that! In all its brutality! Because you could say that it exploded.

  Not a day went by when Madame Tim didn’t come to the village. And then, she and Langlois would stroll tirelessly up and down the square with its linden trees, speaking very little, hardly looking at each other, strolling silently side by side for long stretches of time. Or else it was Langlois who would go to Saint-Baudille.

  “And what about you? After that, how many times did you wear your beautiful dress, either to go to Saint-Baudille to meet him (to meet them) or to play the third, silent wheel in the stroll beneath the lindens?”

  “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill,” Sausage said. “What was so extraordinary if Langlois liked to discuss the ways of the world? We did it long before those strolls beneath the lindens. This was merely a continuation. We started to talk about those ways the first night he arrived. He hadn’t even taken his pipe out of his haversack. I’ve lived. I’ve taken some hard knocks. I know that everything would be smooth sailing if there were such a thing as smooth sailing. But where things should be smooth they are rough. He liked to talk to people who weren’t wet behind the ears. And Madame Tim wasn’t wet behind the ears. And what’s so extraordinary about my cleaning myself up to be with those people? Wasn’t he clean? And Madame Tim too? Would you have wanted me to look like a barmaid?

  “The morning of the wolf hunt I can still see the lot of you. Your eyes wide as saucers. What a laugh! Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.

  “He said to me, ‘If you can gussy yourself up a bit, I’ll invite you to come along.’

  “I gussied myself up. The sleigh? Madame Tim would have sent it to Tom, Dick, or Harry if Langlois had said, ‘Send it to Tom, Dick, or Harry.’

  “Yes, it’s true, I often went to Saint-Baudille to meet them. And they probably didn’t even walk twice on the square under the lindens without me; that’s true too. You know that when you start talking about the ways of the world, it never stops.”

  “But why all of a sudden after the wolf hunt?”

  “Ah, well, you must have realized that it was something extraordinary. Madame Tim and I were both shaken by it. Friendships are often born out of something like that. Maybe you were surprised that, when you saw me in Chalamont, I was wearing a quilted coat that Madame Tim had lent me. Is that it? That’s not much. You’ve seen me serve you drinks, raise a glass from time to time, and make up a fourth when necessary. But that wasn’t how I was useful to Madame Tim. When it comes to the ways of the world, lots of things don’t happen automatically: everything, you could say. It would be nice to know why. I was completely incapable of saying why but I was very capable of saying what I’d notice when certain things don’t work for me. You don’t learn everything in a convent, even if there are volcanoes at the door. I never saw a volcano at my door but I know perfectly well what a Sunday afternoon in a barracks town is like. Madame Tim thought that my viewpoint shed some light on things. And exchanging viewpoints can take you quite far. I’m speaking about women. It can even lead to the loaning of a quilted coat. And why were we in Chalamont, you want to ask? And not in Saint-Baudille, all warm and cozy in the sitting room sipping cherry brandy? Simply because we wanted to know the ways of the world down at the bottom of the Chalamont valley. You’re not going to say that Chalamont isn’t part of the world, are you? So we’ve got every right. If we take an interest.”

  “What about the prosecutor?”

  “Him, too,” she said. “He was also curious about the ways of the world at the bottom of the Chalamont valley. The souls you meet, even in convents, sitting rooms, barracks towns, and families, don’t teach you much if you haven’t met the souls at the bottom of the Chalamont valley.”

  We said, “Okay. We get it. But now you have to explain something to us. How is it that Langlois lost his good humor?” Sausage recalled perfectly the day we’d seen him for the first time. True, the circumstances that night were exceptional and we greeted him like the Messiah. Had we been mistaken, or had he really been the bon vivant we took him for at first? And when he came back to the village wearing his opera hat, the least we can say is that he caused sadness around him.

  “He was a good fellow,” she said. “He didn’t cause sadness at all. The first time he came here, you’d have had to have been in a real muddle to think he could be summed up by a clay pipe and boots. Besides, you saw it for yourselves. With a service record like his, you don’t spend much time laughing. He’d been in Algeria. He was in Oran with Desmichels and at the Battle of Macta with Trézel and he said it was no picnic getting smacked around by Algerian artillerymen disguised as women. The guys who were there and got out alive had to have real guts. First off. Then they realized that it was good enough simply to be alive without having to pretend to be bons vivants. And later, they realized not everything could be made right with a bowl of soup. (And I can tell you, I didn’t need General Bugeaud to teach me that. True, I worked without all the fanfare. And got the job done.) So: he weighed the pros and cons. The pipe and boots were mere ornamentation. What wasn’t ornamentation was when he set up his sentries, locked you in your houses, organized the patrols, and came back to my place saying, ‘Sit down. We’re going to talk about the ways of the world.

  “ ‘For,’ he said, ‘nothing happens because of the Holy Spirit. If people disappear, it’s because someone is making them disappear. And if someone is making them disappear, it’s for a reason. For us, there seems to be no reason, but for him there’s a reason. And if there’s a reason for him, we have to be able to understand it. Personally I don’t think one man can be different from other men to the point of having totally incomprehensible reasons. There are no strangers. There are no strangers. Do you get that, old girl?’

  “Of course I got it! I earned my living lying on my back, faceup. If there had been strangers, and if anyone had had the chance to meet them, it would’ve been me.

  “ ‘That’s why I’m asking you, old girl,’ Langlois would say.

  “There were times when he was as sentimental as Job.

  “I didn’t really like being reminded of my own service record; when I was face-to-face with him, I wanted to swear with all my might. That’s why I once answered, ‘You say that nothing happens through the work of the Holy Spirit, but I say maybe everything happens precisely through the work of the Holy Spirit.’

  “I said that off the top of my head, to get rid of a thousand other images in my mind, but he was amazed. I wonder why!

  “ ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘And that would not be so jolly.’

  “And after a moment, he added: ‘And if everything or nothing comes down to the same thing, as you say, well, that’s even less jolly.’

  “I wasn’t a bit surprised to see him come back with that opera hat of his that scared everyone off.

  “There are so many things you lot don’t know. The wolf hunt, fine. It was lovely to see but great battles are not fought in the theaters of war.

  “He’d already found himself at the bottom of the Chalamont valley with his gendarmes and Frédéric II. He’d been forced to improvise his little tune. And, if you ask me, it wasn’t so bad for someone who had only the experience of his service record to rely on. It wasn’t with a few words off the top of my head that I could help him very much.

  “To live the life I’ve lived, you have to come to terms with certain things. To liv
e any life at all, you have to come to terms with certain things. Madame Tim and the prosecutor and I talked a lot about service records, and Madame Tim and the prosecutor came to terms with certain things in their respective ways. But on the evening of the wolf hunt I saw that Langlois was not coming to terms with certain things when he was reduced to improvising again, firing his two pistols—bang!—at the same time.

  “That was no solution, and he was aware of that.

  “Five months later, one evening he said to me, ‘Be ready tomorrow.’ That’s the day you saw us leave in the buggy, Madame Tim, him, and me, like I said. He’d warned me the evening before.

  “It was spring. It was raining. He was driving with Madame Tim next to him and me next to Madame Tim. All three of us on the same seat, facing the road. We’d pulled up the top and buckled the leather apron across our legs. I didn’t know where he was taking us. I thought Madame Tim knew. But after we passed Clelles, when we went down the first side road to the left toward the woods, she shot me a questioning glance. I signaled in a way to make her understand that I didn’t know what was going on either.

  “We traveled two leagues through trees that scraped the top of the buggy, through ruts that tossed us against one another. We came out on a forest road. We turned toward Menet. I understood we’d taken the side road in order to avoid Chichiliane.

  “And we kept climbing. At a walk. I have to say that, beneath the gentle rain, all of us huddled together, with the wafting of crisp scents and especially not a single word, it was exquisite.