Malicroix

by Henri Bosco

  • • •

  I must have lost touch with myself around three in the morning; I slept for a long time without stirring from the depths. Nothing that happened in the room before I woke reached my soul, fixed under the immovable weight of sleep. I remained unconscious, exposed to everyone’s gaze as they went about the room where the morning household was coming to life. They walked lightly, more out of mock politeness than out of respect for my sleep. I must have offered their ill-will a satisfying spectacle of abandonment and defeat. But perhaps they were shocked. A man stretched out asleep among others standing wide awake always inspires a slightly scornful pity. They must have felt it, for they had made me a shelter. When I awoke, I saw it, a few feet from my bed—a rose-colored screen, and on this screen, the painted figures of men, women, and strange animals who seemed to know each other and to be playing a game. One of the women, bent over a spring, was washing clothes and laughing.

  Farther off I could see a town topped by temples and tapering cypress trees; a tall, solemn woman was slowly leaving a palace. Her face sad, she was moving forward ceremoniously. At the center of the panel, a man with his eyes half-shut leant on his elbows on the ground, pursuing a dream. Behind him, a winged horse grazed by the sea, ready to fly into the sky . . . They had brought before my bed the mythological screen that had protected Maître Dromiols’s sleep until his waking. Little by little, I recognized it, and when I finally identified Odysseus, my entire memory returned, and I saw myself.

  I was stretched out on the bed, fully dressed. Under the weight of my damp, rumpled clothes, my limbs felt flaccid. At the foot of the bed, my walking shoes, heavy and sad, were spread out on the wool blanket. Around my wrists, a narrow band of sweat clamped my skin. My eyes were burning and dry, gritty with those tiny particles that haunt bad sleep. When I breathed, the air tore my throat. Its sourness hurt me.

  It was broad day, but the light did not reach me. Between it and me stood the screen with its mocking wall of fables. Their dreamlike enchantments mingled with the unease of my awakening.

  I was drifting in an uncertain world, hesitating between the mists of sleep and a disturbing interior dawn, where the scenes of daily life were sadly coming into focus. The more I recognized concrete objects, the more I felt weak, abandoned . . .

  I was drawn from my self-pity by a surge of pride. I understood that they had wanted to humiliate me. Deep within, I did not doubt that Maître Dromiols, with his manifold powers, would succeed. Yet on the surface, facing him, I had one defense—my irritation. I am a Mégremut, peaceful and studious; everyone has always praised me for being so easygoing. It could be that no one ever saw a concealed passion—my soul’s. I get along so well with others because I yield so little of myself. Until just now, I had not realized that so much goodness had my defense as its goal. For, until now, no one—the Mégremuts all being angels—had ever tried to seize my very soul. And that soul at rest, sunk, far away, at the core of my being, remained more or less unknowable to me. The man who had just touched it had awakened some virtues.

  Facing this rush of secret anger, entirely new to me, I was anxious—and surprised. A sort of mute stubbornness, with no precise goal, arose from within and spread in all directions. Because I am gentle, I began to see that, too weak to directly attack a man like Dromiols, my power lay in patience. And so my irritation subsided, and I felt the value of my innate gentleness.

  I sat on the edge of the bed.

  The house was resting in silence. My head still echoed from the evening’s talk, making this peace seem even more mysterious. Behind the screen, not a sound. In the outbuildings, no movement. Outdoors, neither wind nor rain. Everywhere, this impersonal light whose secret the house possessed: a single clarity, without a source, spread equally over everything (and perhaps even within). Not one shadow disturbed its pure immobility. It was light seen before its origin—beyond, before the day. I could not distinguish it from silence.

  And yet, something was there, and I sensed it. But nothing came to me. Silent, I gazed. The room was empty. Nothing in it lived, save a handful of embers on the hearth’s ashes.

  I washed and ate my breakfast. Then, continuing to see no one, I went out and took a few steps around the house. It was still raining. Clouds were coming up from the south. I could hear the immense, menacing sound of the waters as they glided around the island. Not a soul. From the mire rose the sweetish scent of clay. The air smelled of loam and wet bark. No animal in sight. I grew cold and went back in. Not quite knowing what to do, I sat down in front of the hearth and waited.

  I know how to wait, even with a pure waiting that awaits nothing, whose only goal is waiting. Time no longer passes; it has duration, but with no perceptible breaks. From then on, nothing is slow; there is no boredom, only rest. Because everything has become possible, we neither fear nor hope. We envision the future solely as an eventuality stripped of all particulars. Miraculously, we enjoy what is, because what is to come is slower than usual in arriving. Something within us is revealed, attuned to the world of silence, a world that quivers beyond the sonorous waves whose stirring messages are surrounded and arranged by the silence that weakens and confuses them.

  In this true silence, I thought I heard something scurrying. Affectionately, it brushed the ground behind me, but, furtive, it hesitated. The paws of an otter; the felted step of a timid, discreet ghost perhaps. A wait is never vain. “Uncle Rat must be prowling,” I thought.

  I turned and saw him.

  •

  Surprised, his body lightly stretched forward, immobile . . . An as yet uncompleted step seemed to suspend him in midair. His knees half bent, he did not dare to bring his body back over his frail legs. With a delicate chin and an unquiet eye, he seemed to be feeling out some ghostly form, suspended, like him, in midair with fear and surprise. Most likely Uncle Rat’s double—less real, more elusive. Thrilled to the quick, it was the extraordinary encounter between the visible and the invisible of this creature, all velvet, all mystery. He was smiling.

  He was smiling. With a vague smile, he was trying to link me to his interrupted mission. Where was he coming from? Where was he going? His smile explained. It held out the evidence, perhaps some complicity. Stranger than this smile, something ironic and satisfied shone under the fine wrinkles of his watchful, wary face.

  I said to him, “Mr. Rat . . .” And, despite myself, I smiled at him.

  He jumped, said, “Oh!”—an “oh” filled with feeling. He seemed pleased, yet still wary. He sighed.

  I continued to smile.

  He was moved. “Uncle Rat, Uncle Rat,” he stammered. “That’s what they call me. The custom must be followed . . .”

  I softened. As did he, although he did not dare drop his wariness. He was awaiting another word, the one that would confirm my gentleness, my friendship perhaps. Still untaken, his step kept him suspended in midair; he hesitated to emerge from his own surprise, to reclaim his outstretched body, to live again, truly, as a man—no longer a disembodied being, a sylph, struck with astonishment, afraid.

  I said to him, “And Maître Dromiols?”

  A glimmer strayed across his face. He was gazing intently out the window. Enigmatic glimmer; enigmatic gaze. Fear, perhaps, and a flash of bewilderment. “He is out walking,” he replied. Then, with a vaguely sly look, he added, “With Balandran, since morning . . .”

  This detail suggested he was confiding in me, sharing a secret. But everything about Uncle Rat suggested secrets. He knew—he alone knew. Most likely he knew the ulterior motive behind his master’s eloquence. It must be in his blood, this passion for secret knowledge that had earned him the notaire’s scornful trust. Beneath so much soft and spiteful servility, you could sense him ready to betray (in his own reticent, allusive way), but to betray less out of vengeance than out of the desire to still serve, to offer some love, from which he suffered.

  “The shells,” he whispered. He stopped, panic-stricken.

  I asked, “What? What shells
?”

  He pointed to the shotgun hanging above the bed. “It is with this that they killed—”

  “The beast?”

  “Yes.”

  He came quickly toward me, took me by the hand, led me to the desk, opened it, released a hidden drawer. “Here they are,” he said. “You have about a hundred. Don’t forget—”

  “But since the beast has already been killed?” I remarked, pretending to laugh.

  He brought his index finger to his lips and whispered, “Perhaps—”

  So much mystery somewhat irritated me. He realized it, shook his head, sighed, grew silent. I banished my irritation and resumed a straightforward, trusting look. He examined me for a moment with unexpected candor that seemed to cost him some effort. Apparently he was reassured, for he concluded by saying, “Mr. de Mégremut, I don’t know—May I?” (He too spoke well.)

  He was hesitating. I encouraged him gently. “A word of advice, Mr. Rat?”

  “Not quite. A suggestion, solely a small suggestion—”

  He was still hesitating. I encouraged him again. “A most valuable suggestion, I am sure—”

  Some strong feeling troubled his face, narrow, fleeting. He whispered, “There are two things, sir, you must not do: to let the candelabra be removed—”

  He drew back. I waited. Still lower, he whispered, “That is the first. The other—”

  The step of a giant, the step of the Maître, interrupted him.

  I turned. The door was solemnly opening, and, no less solemnly, Maître Dromiols was displayed at the center of the frame, in all his height, in all his width. His hat pulled down over his eyes; a black scarf around his neck up to his chin; armored in the heavy green carrick; booted in leather; bespectacled in gold—bony, powerful, present; stolid, strong.

  He. He himself.

  He greeted me. First with his hat, solemnly. Then with his head, solemnly.

  Uncle Rat, like smoke, had disappeared.

  I was thinking; there was nothing left for me to do but smile again. Which I did. Maître Dromiols did not respond, but I maintained my friendly look. I approached, and, bowing in turn, I said, “Maître Dromiols, am I correct that today is the twentieth of November?”

  He nodded. “Precisely, Sir.”

  “And so,” I continued, “it will be on the twentieth of February that the three months of my retreat will conclude?”

  He furrowed his brows but nodded again. “Exactly.”

  “Unless I have left before—”

  I stopped and waited. He remained watchful. “At your discretion, sir.”

  I proposed, “Shall we take a few steps together outside?”

  He grudgingly accepted. We took the first path that came.

  Forcing myself toward some eloquence, like him, I began. “Sir, I will most likely grow weary on this wild island whose drawbacks you have described so well. My tastes are not insular, and everything calls me elsewhere. The Mégremuts—to whom, as you know, I somewhat belong—will begin to miss me immediately, and they will write to me. They write well. It is a family gift. And their letters, I admit, always touch my heart. I am attached to my clan. It is a very gentle clan. We live as a family, with common feelings, little joint tasks, thoughts we share, kind hopes for one another. I relish such a life. It is innocent, happy, calm—”

  I let myself catch my breath so I could observe Maître Dromiols. But I saw nothing. “Hence I cannot,” I continued, “assure myself—or you—that I will remain for long on this island so little compatible with the tastes I have just evoked. Clearly, I will need to leave these shores before long. Still, out of respect for my old and noble relative, who has summoned me here in such an unusual manner, it seems only fitting that, out of courtesy, I complete a brief stay—”

  (Never, I thought to myself, have you spoken so well, Mégremut, and I was delighted.) My effort was rewarded. Maître Dromiols unsealed his lips.

  “Courtesy,” he declared, “is a Malicroix virtue.”

  This brief and unexpected remark encouraged me wonderfully. I had been anointed with the sacred name. The speech had pleased. I went on.

  “I see we understand each other perfectly. I will, thus, remain on the island until time weighs upon me, which—if I am to believe your reckoning—will be no more than two weeks, one of rain, one of wind.”

  The word “reckoning” must have alarmed him, for he folded his lips quite unpleasantly. But right away I declared, “I am afraid of rivers. Rain depresses me. As for wind, it drives me mad . . .”

  The fold in his lips disappeared.

  I concluded, “In this way, sir, it is most likely that your predictions will be borne out. In two weeks I will have left La Redousse forever.”

  He was no longer hiding his satisfaction. To needle him a bit, I decided to add a small caveat. “Excluding any help from heaven, of course.”

  He deigned to smile, and said, “We must never exclude that.”

  It was a concession that cost him little, to be sure. As far as he was concerned, the matter was settled: I was renouncing, but I was saving face.

  He became once more what he had been the previous evening—courteous, talkative. “If the weather had permitted, Sir,” he began, “I should have liked to have stayed with you these two weeks on the island, to show it to you properly. It is vast, wooded, filled with game, resounding.”

  He paused to judge the effect he had produced on me with that last word.

  “Yes, I said it well: resounding. Waters, winds, and, in springtime, countless birds make the air reverberate with murmurs, strong gusts, chirps. A natural concert that breathes from this wild island in thousands of vibrations, which can be heard from afar, on the banks of the river, especially at dawn and during the night.”

  His arm raised, he recited, “Qualis populea moerens Philomela sub umbra . . . et illa flet noctem . . . What enchanting harmony!” Then, more solemnly, he added, “But it is beginning to mist. I am bound by my sciatica. It threatens. Too much damp! You see . . . Oh! What a pity, what a pity! Clearly, the rain will return.”

  He held out his hand. “Already, a few drops are falling.”

  We took the path back to the house.

  As we walked, he asked about me, my family, my life, my work. Ordinary politeness, perhaps. For he seemed well-informed.

  “Your work, Sir, your work . . . for you have, I believe—who told me?—interesting work in hand. Flowers? Plants? Am I correct?”

  He was.

  “Your great-uncle, the late Cornélius, knew nothing about you, Sir, other than the fact—of course quite significant—of your existence. But I, concerned about the future of an illustrious family, to whom I am attached by so much, made inquiries some time ago. It was necessary. You will forgive me for having shown some interest, without your knowledge, in the unknown person who was the legal heir. My responsibility made it an absolute duty. And that is how I came to learn about you and your work.”

  He paused and opened his left hand wide; then he counted on his fingers: “Botanist, agronomist, horticulturalist, herbalist, what else?”

  “Gardener,” I said quietly.

  He deigned to smile. “Perfect! You create flowers and fruits. Exquisite profession, Sir, exquisite!” He sniffed the air greedily. Then, in a low, confiding tone: “I like flowers, Sir. I have a very sensitive nose. Whenever I have some leisure, I enjoy working with plants. Oh! Only in my garden, as a simple amateur, you understand. I have set aside a little corner for weeds, those that give the most beautiful flowers—daisies and dogweed, nothing humbler, no?”

  Perhaps he was seeking the most tender part of my heart. He had found it—I could no longer keep my guard up—his voice seemed to be growing sweeter to hear. Flattery breathed through it, and the falseness in that too silvery voice was palpable. But, simply by virtue of what he evoked, I let myself go, seduced by the taste for flowers and fruits he was parading—my own.

  He was saying, “To invent a flower, to create a fruit—a rose, a peach!
—what study, what thought, what careful research, what triumphs, what hopes, what setbacks, what joys! A seedling, a fine loam, a few drops of warm water—and the warmth of the greenhouse, that charming place where pots are arrayed on shelves, where you smell the young plants as they breathe, where the stove simmers in winter, and the bittersweet scent of tender vegetables perfumes the air!”

  He seemed to have forgotten the hour, the weather, the heir, the inheritance.

  “And the fruit, Sir, the fruit, the beautiful fruit, envisioned, elaborated, emended, made to glow, to melt, nourished with sweetness, with intelligence. A whole world contained in a miniature. A few grains of pollen, a tiny drop of nectar, the pit, the pulp, the juice, this small living sphere, all succulence, beneath this downy skin! The skin, Sir, the skin, a promise! . . .”