Malicroix

by Henri Bosco

  Marcelin nodded, and then the two brothers, who had come to an understanding, turned their backs to each other in front of me, and Mathieu, limping, returned to Murevallières, while Anselme told me, “Poor Mathieu, every spring his leg drags. . ."

  Abashed, I moved away and went for a solitary walk beneath Pomelore’s apricots to calm myself.

  •

  Marcelin would speak to me about the calendar. The calendar had always been his strong point. He had it at his fingertips, and whatever angle you chose, he would explain it to you. The sun and the moon; the winds and the stars; the planets; the rains; the feasts and the saints’ days; ploughing; germination; eclipses; meteors—everything that gives the calendar its vivid and powerful life—he knew the order, the influence, the precise dates. He was indifferent neither to the golden mean nor to the intercalary days. He spoke passionately about the annual revolutions of the earth, the state of the sky, the cardinal points. He cherished a great love for the zodiac and bemoaned the fact that time had displaced the signs through a retrograde motion, which, in two thousand years, had stolen all their stars.

  “The old ones are gone, my little Martial. The young have replaced them. Hence the disorder of our day. How to find ourselves there? But I cling to the old ones. Let anyone who wants to blame me. . ."

  A little before the equinoxes, he would grow anxious. “You never know what will happen,” he confided with a pensive look, his gaze fixed on the horizon. “The month of March is mad. All the weeks tremble.”

  In September, he found other reasons for alarm.

  He had artfully drawn a sowing calendar, carefully arraying the forces of the four seasons in fifteen columns across from the dates. Directly onto each seed of anemone or lily of the valley fell the influx of fourteen or fifteen natural powers, a whole constellation—which gave me much to contemplate.

  •

  As for Uncle Anselme, he wove. He wove for the poor. For all the poor—those of Anthebaume, those of Puyloubiers, those of Amelières. He wove heavy Neapolitan cloth for winter, linen for summer. In every season, he wove three hours a day without fail, except Sunday, when he confined himself to measuring his cloth. The rest of the time, he dreamt. He dreamt freely, in front of everyone, like a dreamer completely at ease. He dreamt by the fire, as is natural; he dreamt also while eating; he dreamt while walking; he dreamt while visiting, he dreamt at his loom; he even seemed to dream during mass. He dreamt the way other people stay awake; but no one ever knew about what. If, at night, he happened to talk in his sleep, his wife, Aunt Élisabeth, would say of him, “He must be dreaming that he dreams.”

  And he heard this. He confined himself to a confused smile, and, placing a finger on his lips, asked Élisabeth to be quiet.

  And Élisabeth would be quiet, but she confided in Aunt Philomène, “Hmm! What can I say? Let’s see . . . There’s no point listening to him when he dreams; I don’t understand a word he says. He speaks another language; but he must not be aware of it. . ."

  “If he were aware of it,” Aunt Philomène would reply, “he wouldn’t ask you to be silent. You should explain that to him, once and for all.”

  Aunt Élisabeth, having considered, would say to Aunt Philomène, “It’s best that he remain in the dark . . . You understand. . ." She did not explain any further. But Aunt Philomène must have understood, for she nodded knowingly.

  These things were quite charming, and for the first time I realized it. Whatever might seem childish and old-fashioned could not hide the shape of their souls, which had a gracious, clear line. Yet, fond of veils, the Mégremuts veiled it. It was for them like an old style you cling to through coquetry, and also because it is comfortable. In their own way, the Mégremuts were growing heroic for me whom they loved so much. And despite their natural expressiveness, they hid it. They were too perceptive not to properly value what they achieved in this manner, but it did not make them complacent. Their effort, their pain, their victory depended on the good nature that made their lives easy and pleasant. Needing to show that they were stronger than they had ever been, they thought it best to make this labor pleasant, and they pretended to be unaware of their courage so as not to be hurt by it. But to their sharp surprise, their courage grew, and the more it grew inwardly, the more—from self-respect—they outwardly compensated for its growth by parading their little weaknesses, their antiquated tastes. They did so, alas, with an unconscious grace that ruined the effect of their touching ostentation. And I was moved.

  So as not to hurt them, I had to hide that I saw through their game; but I would also have grieved them as if I had pretended to be deceived—in other words, if I had let them believe that all these little absurdities, presented with so much subtle innocence, were now perceptible to me, and that they annoyed me.

  Caught between these two fears, I sought a refuge; not finding one in myself, I retreated to the heart of my greenhouses in the welcoming hollow of Pomelore.

  •

  The greenhouses were warm. I was at ease there. I recognized the familiar scents that inclined me to study, with only enough intoxication necessary for good work. It was calm, slow, patient, and reflective work; a slightly sensuous work in which seed, flower, fruit, leaf, and sugary sap color and perfume the thoughts that are, for me, generated and nurtured by plants. Few dreams here; instead, precise knowledge of names, families, habits, properties. A great order, the spirit’s peace. With pleasure—and some surprise—I rediscovered these names, this knowledge, this order, this peace. As might not have happened five months earlier, I marveled that someone had named the large, solitary white flower Alkekengi. I was suddenly amazed to see how I had minutely noted the fever-reducing qualities of Menyanthes, described and drawn with precision. And also, to see how many plants I had cared for, as witnessed by the long rows of pots under the windows. Common or rare—all well-fertilized, carefully watered—they were living here, and their presence, which should have been familiar to me, seemed oddly strange. I had returned to my studies, but—despite the charm that emanates from the plant world—I kept enough distance to be aware of myself studying. And so, detached for a moment from the lovage or perennial basil, I looked all around and wondered if I were dreaming. Because, hovering within my greenhouses, like everywhere else in our homes, was that glow that made things more present and real while also relegating them to the misty realms of memory. Sometimes an odd detail, revealing someone’s secret passage through this retreat, made this strangeness more palpable. Someone was coming into my greenhouse every day when I was not there and removing a sheet from the tiny calendar. I hid. Anaïs appeared. She climbed onto the table, removed the sheet and placed it in a little boxwood case, which she hid behind a large pot of Scilla nutans.

  When she had gone, I opened the case. In a silver shell, it held the already torn sheets, a four-leaf clover set in a gold medallion, a lock of chestnut hair, and a wilted iris.

  I closed the case back up and went to take the air at Pomelore. I stayed there until night. In the pool, a solemn frog croaked for a long time.

  Easter was late this year. Yet it was drawing near. At supper, Aunt Philomène announced that Inès and Marceline would spend their vacations with the family. (They had been sent, in early November, to the Ursulines at Pérideaux.)

  Uncle Mathieu provided some details. “Anselme saw them Sunday. It seems they’ve grown, especially Inès.”

  “She’s at the age for it,” calmly remarked Aunt Philomène.

  “Obviously, people must grow,” replied Mathieu, no less calmly. “Obviously. What’s more, people grow at every age.”

  Aunt Philomène looked up and gazed at me. “You’re right, Mathieu,” she said. “Martial has grown during these five months. He’s no longer the same man.”

  Uncle Mathieu sighed.

  A little annoyed, but trying to smile, I said, “Maybe so. But you, Mathieu, won’t you grow a little more?. . ."

  He thought for a moment. “At my age, Martial, it’s dangerous. The fles
h is weak.”

  Aunt Philomène cut in. “You’re making no sense, my dears. First of all, Mathieu still has strong arms, strong legs. Whenever he feels like it, he walks his ten miles with a lively step. And he has a strong heart. That’s what counts.”

  I remember that night, the sweetest in the month of April. Now April was giving us its last days. Easter would arrive on the 25th, and we were on the cusp of Palm Sunday. I love its name, its spring spirit, its liturgy beneath the trees just as they come into full bloom. Neither the donkey nor the colt is missing. Et adduxerunt asinam et pullum . . .

  All three of us were on the terrace the better to enjoy this calm night. We could see a lamp at Serizelle, probably lighting Marcelin and Aunt Clémence’s evening talk. From Le Castelet rose the sound of the loom, toward which, stubbornly working despite the air and the sky, Uncle Anselme, serious, directed his attention. He wove very late that evening. And we, with nothing to do, listened to him in silence as we watched the nighttime world of stars with a great sense of peace and well-being.

  • • •

  The day Marceline and Inès arrived, I was gathering plants in the pine forest above Pomelore. I did not return until late that morning.

  The three other Mégremut families who lived farther down the hill, closer to the village, were visiting that day. I could hear them laughing. It was Saint Cyril’s feast day. I do not know why we honor this saint with an exchange of visits. The custom is for Aunt Philomène to preside as Mathieu moves with ease from brother to cousin, from sister-in-law to niece. He is (obviously) the noblest of the Mégremuts, the lord of the clan. The children eat cakes, the women gossip among themselves, the men chat. Around noon, they all go their separate ways. While in the woods I had forgotten it was Saint Cyril’s day; moreover, I was somewhat melancholy that morning. I could hear laughter. I stopped. It was eleven o’clock. “Some thirty of them are at Murevallières,” I thought. “They will speak to me. I want to be alone. Let me go to Pomelore.”

  At Pomelore, of course, there was no one. This was what I was hoping for, but after a while the solitude began to weigh on me. Usually, my solitudes are full. This one seemed empty, sad. I was surprised; for Pomelore is always alive, if only through a flower, a dove, or the water’s murmur. Disappointed, I was about to give up and go down to the houses, when I heard footsteps on the gravel path leading to the greenhouses. They were almost at a run. I had a hunch and climbed up to the crest of Pomelore.

  This crest is a ledge topped by a thick boxwood that juts out a little over the greenhouse roofs. I hid behind the boxwood. I did not have long to wait. Inès appeared. She was running. Warily, she stopped in front of the door, listened, looked around. Nothing was moving. So she entered the greenhouse but stayed only an instant. She came out, the case under her arm. She hesitated again, listened. I could see her clearly from above. She was wearing a winged bonnet of blue and pink muslin. The dress that floated around her was also muslin. A wide yellow ribbon, held in place by two large bows, circled her waist. She was like a cloud, a mauve cloud, pausing as it glided over the earth. Although she was standing still, her excitement and the impulse of her errand made her hips gently sway, causing the gauzy muslin to shimmer in the sunlight over her unseen body. Her face was hidden by the trembling wings of her cloudlike head covering, and I could not see her expression. But I could guess her feelings—her curiosity, her disappointment perhaps, and perhaps even her remarkable courage . . .

  She took the staircase that goes directly down to Murevallières.

  I left my perch. As I moved, a pebble rolled. It fell onto the greenhouse roof and ricocheted but did not break the window. I heard Inès’s step halt. Quickly, I let myself drop down to Pomelore—a leap of two yards, onto the grass. I managed it well. Barely a muffled shock. I caught my breath and headed toward the pool of water where I had placed the plants I had gathered on the hillside.

  The pool, at the foot of the cliff, is hidden behind a thick hedge of old cypress. Between the cypress and the water is a clearing, with two rough stone benches and a granite table carved with a windrose. You reach this hidden nook through a narrow opening between two cypresses. The scent of those bleak trees would make the pool seem gloomy were it not for the fragrance of iris and rose mingled with the scent of resin, along with the water’s laughter as it bubbles up from the earth into the sunlit stone basin.

  As I have said, this refuge is almost always solitary. And I would have liked to have lingered there. But I was thinking about the time. It was late, and it would violate custom and decency to arrive at Murevallières after the guests had left. I went through the hedge. Instinctively, I was walking with caution. Inès was sitting at the water’s edge. She had placed her case beside her and, bent over a plant, was absentmindedly touching its already-faded flowers. At the same time, she was holding between her fingers a still-pliant stem of pink bastard balm. But her gaze, without seeing the flower—one of the most beautiful in the woods—was contemplating the water and, most likely, the dreams taking shape there. In her clouds of muslin, she looked quite graceful; she had wound her chestnut hair this morning into thick coils. Two rosebuds were fastened in those coils, above which her bonnet flapped its wings.

  When she saw me, she rose, without showing the least surprise.

  “Oh, Martial!” she said. “Everyone’s looking for you.”

  We kissed and went down to Murevallières. She carried my plants, and I, finding her indeed grown, admired how gracious she had become. She hardly spoke; but when she did, her face took on a more serious look. A while ago I would have found this look touching; now I found it troubling.

  • • •

  That year, we fully felt the essence of Palm Sunday, Easter, Pentecost. A lighter, livelier, youthful current flowed through the air, over the water, within the earth; the bodies’ sap made the blood bloom in the subtlest recesses of life, where flesh meets soul. Unresisting, I tasted the rapture of being. Existence was sanctified by a sort of cosmic innocence. Charged with vital energy, this world—the world of gardens—rose in the zodiac toward the sun, like an offering from the earth, a call to the fires of the Spirit. Our pleasures were pure: at dawn, the sound of palm leaves rustled through our latest dreams; at dusk, a flight of migrating doves sometimes lit on the steeple in Anthebaume. The ancient liturgical feasts were arriving for us, amid a great movement of warm winds, cascading waters, sparkling nighttime skies. Never were the springs livelier, the breezes slower to touch our oaks, the starry vaults more charged with signs and soft celestial lights. We drank the water, inhaled the breeze, admired the planets. Uncle Anselme sang as he wove; Uncle Marcelin tenderly noted the virtues of April, the most beautiful month of the calendar year. Uncle Mathieu spent his evenings breathing in, from his window, the fragrances that came down from Pomelore. Aunt Philomène, calmer, confined herself to sighing. Inès remained silent, and her sister, Marceline, with nothing to do, went onto the hillside, all alone. A few times, at nightfall, she got lost. I would go to look for her, and I always found her—always seated on a bit of rock, looking at birds and trees. I brought her back through the pines, all the way to Pomelore, where suddenly, in one leap, she would disappear. She was at that time a girl of fourteen, big for her age. She was not pale like Inès, and some wild impulses, poorly checked, betrayed a lively heart and a demanding sensibility. In this way she was like me, and perhaps she knew it. Among the Mégremuts, the two of us created a little shadow, an anxiety. Instinctively, I did not like to be alone with Marceline. We never spoke to each other—not for lack of thoughts —but this silence made me uneasy. The Mégremuts do not like uneasiness, and this one created in their pure world a sensitive point no one seemed to see. Yet sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, Aunt Philomène would furtively watch Marceline as she sulkily dreamt.

  “Hmm!” Uncle Mathieu would say softly from his corner. He was also watching.

  It was the only cloud in this beautiful month, and after all it was nothing more than a sprin
gtime cloud . . .

  • • •

  I will always remember those Easter days. All the Mégremuts from Anthebaume, Le Castelet, Serizelle, and Murevallières held their great gatherings. From the city, as always, they sent us the six most distinguished Mégremuts as representatives. It is like this every year; it is how we renew the bond between the city dwellers and our country families still rooted in our ancestral land.

  The Palm Sunday mass was all flowers, beeswax candles, plumes of incense, palms from Pomelore, hymns, great bells. On the church square, several doves were released just as the procession appeared. It is the custom in Anthebaume. That year, Easter emerged from Holy Week with clear weather and a light breeze, and it was a pleasure to hear the ancient liturgy of the Resurrection in its beautiful country Latin. Viderunt juvenem sedentem in dextris . . . We are an Easter people, we Mégremuts, with our innocence and love of life, and I was overcome with tenderness as I sat in the family pew with Anselme, Mathieu, and Marcelin, while Inès, in her white muslin, prayed in front of us. It would take more than a month for this charm to wear thin, this charm the open-hearted Mégremuts had built up over the course of centuries as they mingled springtime joys that quicken blood, sap, and earth with the joys of the breath of God Himself, who reanimates His body with a great outpouring of love from the cosmic being.

  Ever since my return to my family, all the forces of grace, visible and invisible tenderness, along with growing love, had enveloped my soul, naturally imbued with grace, tenderness, and love. These make up our family’s sustenance, and our life draws its easygoing spirit, friend of pure pleasures and peaceful thoughts, from the fountainhead of these forces. It is hard to resist these seductions whose insinuating innocence seeps into the roots of your deepest life. Now this infiltration, in just a few days, had reached the most secret places of tenderness within me. It had reawakened that sensitive, thoughtful, studious Mégremut, the most characteristic Mégremut, the one shaped by our ancestors, which we lovingly preserve, and which we think offers men the most perfect image of our clan.