Malicroix

by Henri Bosco

  Fortunately, from time to time, the sound of a branch breaking with a crash, the terrifying fall of a tree, or a rough gust raking the roof could be heard through the elemental sensation of wind, and I clung to them. Here, amid the sounds of delirium, were a few intelligible words. Words pregnant with concrete images, flung like bodies into these bodiless winds. For a lightning second they anchored me, before the blowing river of destruction carried me far from them. But during my soul’s brief swirl, I had been able once more to see the island, the forest, the house, and my terrified self clinging to nothing but itself—inexplicably, I no longer knew where, outside of time, within the ravaged void.

  The wind blew until dawn. Yielding to the growing pressure, space slowly expanded. Inhaling and exhaling great gusts like a colossal lung, an enormous breath rose and fell at the heart of the storm. For the storm had a heart, a fiery center from which rushed, in wild pulsations, the life of the massive beast that plunged into the dark’s hollows and panted through its thousand strong black nostrils. From time to time, the savage shape of Maître Dromiols appeared and disappeared in the wind. With square shoulders and loins, his face impassive, he rose in a howling blast, then sank into the flank of a cloud that rumbled angrily as it swallowed him. White bulls swam on rushing rivers of dark, heavy winds; muzzles raised, they bellowed in the stream as they slid toward the sea. The strangest hallucinations moved through my electrified wind-self. As the windswept expanse acquired more unreal dimensions in its height and depth and width, an entire aerial universe took shape around my soul. There the wind became the celestial matter of interstellar flows, and constellations of wind flowed down from the Seven Oxen of the northern sky. With their shooting stars, like a rain of blue winds flung by a vast Boreas across the infinite reaches of the world, these huge stellar shapes sparkled beneath the cosmic storm and were slowly absorbed into it, even as they rent the sky with long, dazzling, electric beams of light . . .

  Weightless body, shorn of all nerves and matter, I was overcome toward dawn by sleep, a sleep that let me rest within earshot of the storm’s countless sounds. The storm continued to blow through my soul, sweeping away all sights. A world of sounds succeeded the now-vanishing visual hallucinations engendered by the wind when I was awake. The sounds were superimposed as fragile auditory dreams, freed from all images; soon they intermingled to form a dull, muffled tremor. I heard this unendingly through the course of an anxious sleep that held me suspended in the waves of wind and a mysterious void, where my whole soul throbbed until dawn.

  The house was fighting valiantly. At first it groaned; the worst blasts battered it on all sides at once, with a palpable hatred and such howls of rage that at times I shuddered in fear. But it held. From the start of the storm, fierce winds had taken the roof to task. They had tried to tear it off, break its back, rip it to shreds, swallow it whole. But it braced itself and clung to its old rafters. And so, other winds arrived and, rushing along the ground, charged the walls. Everything flinched beneath the headlong shock, but the pliant house, having bent, resisted the beast. It gripped the island’s soil with steadfast roots, from which its thin walls of plastered reeds and planks drew uncanny strength. In vain did the storm challenge shutters and doors, shouting loud threats, trumpeting down the chimney; the already human creature that sheltered my body yielded nothing to it. Like a she-wolf, the house hugged me close; at times I felt its motherly scent reach down into my heart. It was, that night, truly my mother.

  I had nothing but her to hold and sustain me. We were alone. I did not think Balandran could have returned to the island during the night. In any case, I had not seen him. He did not appear until morning. By then the wind had let up a bit. Balandran made use of the lull to enter the house. He came in through the storeroom, followed by Bréquillet. Both of them shaggy, ravaged by wind, bodies tense. Balandran and I exchanged a few words, of which I have lost all memory. No doubt we spoke of the storm. He tried to light the fire. The wind was beating down the smoke and stirring up the ashes. Balandran grew stubborn. Crouching on the hearth, he blew. Beside him, Bréquillet, bristling with anger, bared his fangs to the unseen wind and growled like a little wolf.

  The fire finally caught, and I drank a cup of hot coffee. It restored me. But not long after, the storm returned with such violence that once again I lost my bearings. For five days it unreeled over earth and water in howling waves. Harrowed, harrowing, both night and day, all the winds rushed over us. One after another, the clouds yielded, and, swirling through their disemboweled forms, great beams of light lit up the water as far as the eye could see. Light swept through the island—long shafts of sunshine that sank into the woods, broke through the house, then disappeared. The rapidly fleeing shadows alternated briskly with daylight; at any given moment, the air would darken, then grow bright. Balandran came and went but never spoke. As for me, I did not dare go out. I was awaiting the end of the wind. When I questioned Balandran, he answered, looking at the sky where the distraught, powerful rearguards of clouds were fleeing.

  “Ahh! The wind has more to swallow. The clouds are big and strong, but the wind is a devourer. You’ll see.”

  And I saw. The vaporous monsters, their throats cut and gasping for air, dissolved into tufts of fleece; on the fifth day, the chase was so successful that only three clouds remained on the western horizon. They fell that night into a sun whose shining dispersed them. And so the sky grew clear from one end to the other, and the wind whipped over the waters like a blade, making the gorse sing.

  This time, the wind flowed, swift and brisk, in one sheet smooth as steel, from north to south, without meeting a single obstacle. This was the wind as conqueror, wind of jubilation, healthful and lithe, rushing seaward in solar splendor, spreading over the river delta great crystal limbs made iridescent by the sun.

  I fell asleep listening to it. All of a sudden, at midnight, it no longer blew. I sensed it in my sleep. Something was missing. I woke. I felt a strange sensation—the presence of the void. For this void existed. It had a body, a hollow form, and silence was its fragile shell, ready to shatter. From afar, I could hear the sea’s endless waves rolling in heavy swells, their dull roar gently rocking the unseen horizon of wide, solitary beaches.

  I listened for a long time. It was the only real sound. In the south, it circumscribed the world; it was the sole sign of life. Elsewhere, the complete absence of sound revealed the vastness. I came to long for the passage of a brief breath. But the last gust was fleeing in the distance. And the sky’s calm was so complete that the mysterious flow of the universal ether could be sensed at the heart of the pure, motionless air.

  • • •

  The storm’s departure left me dazed at first. For several hours, I could not leave the house. At last, I dared to take a few steps outside.

  Trees lay on the ground, felled. Huge, uprooted birches had dragged up chunks of gray mud. Collapsed onto other trees, their branches were inextricably entwined. Not one leaf. Dry timber. The air brisk, biting. A few brief gusts still stirred it lightly, but they soon fled.

  Meanwhile, I was coming back to life. My heart was unclenching, regaining a more natural rhythm—the slow, gentle pulse of my peaceful, easily dilated blood. My lungs swelled, and air entered in steady breaths without disturbing the thousands of sensitive veins through which my blood was patiently flowing. A slow but progressive animation spread through my body, and, penetrating even further, reawakened my sleeping soul. I had the strange feeling that, one by one, my faculties were seeking and exploring their usual places in the still hollow, loudly echoing conch shell of my soul. My senses reconnected at the very core of my being, and already, below or beyond sounds, the bittersweet taste of familiar objects was returning, while, deep within, pure colors dyed the first budding images that reflected the real world. Ideas were beginning to take shape—luminous visions that enthralled me, for these first mental constructs were simple and clear.

  And so my self was recomposed; and this movement of r
eturn was so subtle that, for the first time in my life, it was as if I thought with my body. I touched and savored this thought, and the balance between spirit and sense was so fine I imagined myself to be both embodied and disembodied. Fragile feeling that made me marvel. It brought me a soft delight. Then this delight faded. My body slipped from thought to feeling and from feeling to the sweetness of being. Nothing remained in my thought but the somewhat physical enjoyment of common sense, a feeling we ordinarily enjoy. Human, I began to deliberate again. With the best faith in the world, I was trying to see clearly.

  • • •

  Within myself, first of all.

  I calculated. I had told the notaire two weeks, fifteen days perhaps. That would be the extent of my stay on the island. Five days had already passed, taken by wind. Ten more remained before I would leave. But when I had set this cutoff with Maître Dromiols, had I been sincere? Had I not wanted to appease—and thus deceive—him about my decision? Most likely. So, had I now decided to stay on the island for the full term assigned by Malicroix? I did not dare affirm it. I was still wavering, wandering on the verge of clear commitment, in the clouded world of intentions. I could see nothing but confused shapes of desire, vague wishes from which I could determine nothing. Still, I needed to make this decision. I thought I should get out of myself, to try to place myself among real things and live beings. It was only with great difficulty that I succeeded, so free-floating and confused were the boundaries between the real world of external objects and those internal figures that, since my arrival on the island, had invaded my soul and created another world within it. My common sense insisted that everything—both within me and without—was, or was becoming, irrational; and I had such faith in my common sense that it too suddenly seemed irrational. Its voice had lost its affectionate, prosaic tone of truthfulness. It jingled like a tiny silver bell, and it touched only my ears. Common sense was itself under a spell. Only a faint opposition between the reasonable and the absurd remained; yet my lucidity was undiminished. Indeed, my thinking had never been so clear, although this unearthly clarity, almost hallucinatory, effaced the small signs of a sound mind. From time to time, reason penetrated my half delirium, and I was reassured. It so effectively justified my unjustifiable ideas that I did not doubt its soundness, and so I deliberated, almost without anxiety, reasoning with dreams that sprang from the depths of my most mysterious emotional life. An as yet unknown desire—or perhaps already even an obscure will—dwelt within me, far away, beneath these dreams. Desire indistinct from me, formed deep within my spirit and my flesh, in the intimacy of my being; and yet a new power, a presence foreign to my ordinary existence, the intrusion of another self within me—an other who, while not me, came from me, and upon whom it seemed at times the fluid edifice of my secret life rested. This other, I suspected, gave my mind the delirious lucidity that made the absurd world where I had begun to live accessible to my common sense and admissible to my will. Absurd world no longer willing to release its prey . . .

  • • •

  By good fortune, Balandran appeared amid these thoughts. Through the window, I saw him passing in front of the house. He was carrying a thick bundle of branches on his head. Bréquillet, with a competent air, was following him. Balandran went toward the hut, disappeared, reappeared, went back into the forest, came out, left again. All morning he carried wood. I did not move from the house.

  At noon, he served me a scant meal and spoke little. I questioned him about the storm.

  “Fallen trees, Balandran?”

  “Yes.”

  “Many?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Big ones?”

  “Big ones.”

  He answered so sparingly I grew silent.

  Bréquillet, seated in his corner, was also keeping his distance. He was gazing elsewhere; but his nose, surrounded by all those reddish hairs, retained, despite his grumpy look, a good will so touching it brought me back to earth. I regained contact with an everyday, animal life, one of those warm lives you can stroke with your fingers—affectionate contact that restores the body to the soul. The soul rests against its body, finding it warm and soothing; the body, sensing the soul’s return, makes an even warmer place for it; and the two, joined one to the other, grow tender and sigh.

  Which is why I smiled at Bréquillet. Shyly and secretly, he accepted this inexplicable smile with his submissive eyes, and, very gently, he whimpered. Then he lowered his eyes. Balandran, astonished, looked at him. Bréquillet, his eyes still closed, hypocritical and happy, feigned the most perfect indifference. Balandran furrowed his brows and turned his surly head toward me. I too then lowered my eyes, but the sun, coming in brightly through the window, shone on me. Its light through my closed lids was so gentle that, despite myself, I smiled at Balandran.

  Wordlessly, he withdrew on tiptoe. When I reopened my eyes, Bréquillet had also vanished.

  Everything now seemed real, well-arranged, easily approachable, and commonplace—in short, at my fingertips. I was almost struck with wonder. But I contained my wonder, afraid it might send me back into my dreams. I began to deliberate with such reassuring directness I was indeed reassured—and perhaps, deep down, just a little disappointed. But I immediately suppressed that feeling without indulging it. Bolstered by my body, I was strong; and I enjoyed my calm at leisure, like a man sure of himself.

  The situation appeared to me more clearly. I thought I could take stock.

  • • •

  In the first place, isolation. Except for Balandran, I was cut off from people, separated from my family, alone.

  And perhaps separated even from Balandran. For he was sulking. Until recently harsh, abrupt, and reserved, but not hostile; now he had retreated into himself with a hint of scorn—that was how Balandran appeared to me. He must be taking orders from Dromiols. But he was my sole companion. I had to accept, to pretend not to notice, to wait. I am patient. He was as well, and patience against patience, time would tell. I plumbed the depths, measured my distance, and calmly took a stance of keen but discreet watchfulness. “We won’t speak much,” I told myself, “but every word will be weighed. I will try to understand.” And I thought about the dog. He united us.

  Behind Balandran, Dromiols. Absent and present, imposed and inescapable. Even his absence was enormous and somehow corporeal. I repeated his name, Dromiols—a stony, resonant name. What—and who—was Dromiols? The second question—this who—deeply disturbed me. Intelligent and vain, eloquent and calculating, that much was obvious. But what a face! That bony, blank block; it was more. Not one quality could be assigned to it. It had the weight of things, the value of brute fact, the redoubtable power of matter. At times (with unspeakable terror) I saw in it a great, beastly, carnivorous look. For nine days, I would be left in peace by Dromiols. And then? If I remained, after my false words, what would happen? As far as he was concerned, I had made an implicit promise. Cut to the quick, what would his pride inspire in him? I had everything to fear . . .

  Most likely he had Balandran on his side. And Rat, equivocal Rat, whose thoughts, feelings, and actions troubled me. Uncle Rat: queer, devoted, absurd. Rat, in short, an entirely mysterious creature in whom desire, rancor, secret (perhaps monstrous) oddities drifted—and also, it seemed, a need for love. Redoubtable, yes. Still, I could not think of him without some affection. Here perhaps was the subtle danger. Out of the three, he alone spoke with a voice open to feeling; he alone made an affectionate half gesture, showing a slight tendency toward disloyalty through a sort of ingratiating friendliness; he alone revealed a human weakness, good to feel after all in the closed, hard, haughty world of Dromiols and Balandran.

  In the end, though, he counted among my enemies.

  But did I have a friend? No, not a single one.

  I thought back to the island—uninhabited. In the distance, the ferryman. Hardly a man, a Shadow. But a Shadow bound to the water, the island, and the memory of Malicroix. Bound to the water through the remembrance of
that old drama, this strange boatman who seemed not to ferry anyone, useless ghost, distant, haunting the place. Bound to the island through the water, where, in the north, he remained the enigmatic witness. And, finally, bound to Malicroix through the strange death of my aged relative. Apart from him, I had seen nothing on the river but the silhouette glimpsed from afar (a woman, perhaps), gliding in a black boat behind the gorse and willows on the other shore.

  Such were the people.

  The place: a riparian prison. Moving waters all around. Across, an uncertain shore.

  The time: eighty more days, empty, slow, unfathomable.

  And nothing to do—except roam or reflect. But one can only reflect with rigor for a short time; the mind soon wearies and begins to wander; then the imagination in turn weakens and one circles morbidly around a single, irreducible thought. A dull obsession saps the soul and fosters a fatal despair.

  “I must,” I told myself, “draw up a plan. To begin with, actions, as many as possible. To make inquiries, to learn, to discover—in people and things—a fixed point, and through it to consolidate myself. Outside, to keep an eye on everyone. For Dromiols will inevitably act, though perhaps at first without violence. To watch for the least breath. Aside from Dromiols, the Mégremuts—dangerously good, tender, with an energetic love. To hold them off, to keep them from the island. To write, to write . . .”

  I had no desire to write, nor to watch for signs, nor to learn, nor to act in any concrete way. I simply had the desire to stay. And this was a tenacious, heavy, elemental desire. A desire that required no justification, for it was a vital desire, as if it were a great need of the soul—to be this desire and nothing else, but to be it with all its weight. To stay was becoming my function. It was useless to try to explain my behavior; my arguments seemed laughable. You do not debate your hunger. Moreover, it had been decided without me. I say, “it had been decided” advisedly, not knowing who had made the decision. But it was a compelling decision. Taken in me, nevertheless, and so much in me that I suddenly had a revelation of myself. I saw that beneath my surface calm—so straightforward and easygoing when it came to little everyday matters—I harbored a stubborn heart, a new heart, closed to reason, hungry for challenges, curious to learn, and (this quite frightened me) eager perhaps to take its own measure, to surpass itself, to fall into excess. “In remaining here until the end,” I thought to myself, “without any reason that reason can accept, I will truly know whether or not I can be other than I am, and more than myself. But what? Or who?—Malicroix, perhaps.” The name suddenly rose within me, ambiguous, but with such a clear sound. Double name, whose syllables evoked opposed meanings (which I disentangled poorly) and conjured two images: the one, at the outset, of sin—mal, evil, ill—and the other, at the end, expiatory and redemptive—croix, cross, faith, belief. I recalled the motto: