Vernhes’ voice reached them. He had a strange accent in German; his tone was defiant rather than pleading. The two men went round to the far side of the car. The major climbed in and slowly the Hispano-Suiza moved off down the track. When it had gone there was no sign of Vernhes.
They emerged cautiously from their cover.
‘Where’s she gone?’ Sabine said irritably.
‘He didn’t come to meet her,’ Suzie replied. Then she added, ‘He speaks very funny German, Mr Vernhes, with French all mixed up in it. Do you think the major captured him and he managed to talk his way out of it?’
Sabine was uninterested. All she wanted now was to go home. They resumed their path through the chestnut woods. They had reached a point where the route divided when abruptly someone moved to block their way: Vernhes.
‘Sabine,’ he said, ‘and her little friend …’
‘Suzie,’ said Sabine. She took Suzie’s arm in self protection as if to form a single defensive unit.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘We’re walking.’
‘Of course, we’re quite close to Bonnemort here.’ Vernhes was looking round him as if establishing his position for the first time. He turned onto the small path away from the house, signalling them to follow him. ‘Come.’
Sabine seemed about to run; then as the impulse left her she dropped Suzie’s arm and followed. They walked until they reached a ruined farm. It was situated off the path and the track up to it had almost disappeared. Its roof was intact, but on one side the window openings were empty, on the other boarded up and covered with creeper, giving the place the same crooked, lopsided look as the lieutenant with his eyepatch. Looking abandoned from the outside, inside it showed signs of occupation: wine bottles and saucepans littered a table; the fireplace was full of dead ash. Vernhes led them into a smaller room where a door laid over some trestles made a table around which were gathered a few chairs.
He seated himself, while Sabine and Suzie remained standing.
‘So, Sabine,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since I saw you. Sit down.’ The invitation appeared more like an order. With exaggerated slowness, Sabine pulled out a chair and obeyed.
‘What are you two doing wandering around the woods?’
‘We were out for a walk, just walking.’
Sabine was uneasy, glancing at Suzie for support. Vernhes concentrated the fire of his questioning on her, taking no notice of Suzie. How had he escaped with his life from his encounter with the major, she wondered. He must be very cunning. She could not understand why he wanted to question Sabine whose replies, at first minimal, became longer and more circumstantial. There was something odd about the tone of Sabine’s voice, Suzie thought. It must have something to do with Vernhes’ being a teacher, for she sounded anxious, as if she was unsure whether her answer was correct and feared she might be punished. He wanted to know about Bonnemort, as much about Henri and Madame Ariane as about the major and the German occupiers. He knew Sabine well, for he was aware of her hatred of her stepmother and played upon it, encouraging her to tell him about her.
Suzie felt her fear grow, rippling out from her stomach into her limbs, in case Sabine should blurt out her suspicions of Madame Ariane and the major. She could do as much harm to Madame Ariane by betraying her to the Resistance, as she could do to Suzie by betraying her to the Germans, and to harm her stepmother was what Sabine wanted. Would she realise that this was her opportunity to kill her, far more effective than fantasies of poisoning? Suzie stilled her own movements, drawing in her breath and releasing it slowly to make the time pass.
However, Sabine said nothing of the subject that dominated their waking hours, the relationship between Madame Ariane and the major. As they left the ruined farm, Suzie wondered why Sabine had kept silent. Had she not understood the opportunity, or was she still secretly uncertain of the facts? Or did she see that it was all really a game, beyond the boundaries of real life?
Chapter Twenty-four
Sabine led the way back to Bonnemort at a run. When Suzie called to her to wait and Sabine shouted her refusal over her shoulder, Suzie saw that she was crying. The path, steep and stony, still covered with the fallen leaves of last autumn, was dangerous taken at Sabine’s pace. Suzie kept her eyes fixed on the track, a narrow channel between tumbledown walls, afraid of falling, afraid of falling behind. She had no wristwatch, yet she could tell, by the texture of the depleted light, lying almost horizontal, shining through the trunks of the trees into their eyes, that it was late. When Bonnemort came into view on the other side of the valley, Suzie noticed at once that Madame Ariane’s horse was grazing in the field with Madame de Cazalle’s donkeys. They must have been away for a long time. Ahead of her, as they approached the clutter of farm buildings, Sabine had swerved off the track and was making for the thicket that concealed the secret entrance to the winepress.
‘Sabine,’ she wailed. ‘Let’s go home now.’ Sabine halted, but did not turn back.
‘I’ve got to think.’ She ducked under the branches and Suzie followed her to the rim of the funnel, which was a bowl of darkness in the weakening light under the trees. Sabine squatted down and lowered herself over the edge. They knew their way down by now, clambering from foothold to foothold with the ease of custom. Sabine had almost reached the bottom, with Suzie above her, wedged in the narrowest part, when the first sounds from inside the winepress reached them.
Suzie immediately thought that an animal was trapped there. Its heaving, angry breath rose up to them, amplified by the funnel, the air grating its way out of its body. Her heart began to beat faster in sympathetic anguish. The creature was suffering; it moaned in pain. She lifted her lower foot to climb out, but Sabine reached up to grasp her ankle, pulling her back again. She herself was moving down, as slowly and quietly as she could. The animal was trying to escape, for it was knocking, knocking, rhythmically, repetitively.
Suzie lowered herself alongside Sabine. They were now crouching side by side on the narrow ledge where the funnel emptied into the loft. Sabine had twisted round so that she no longer faced the rock wall. As Suzie dropped into place beside her, Sabine’s hand gripped her arm, not letting go, tightening and loosening in time to the ramming below them.
Now Suzie could hear not one animal, but two. Below the gasping breath of the furious beast was a counterpoint, the sobbing murmur of another. She could feel their frantic distress and growing fury. The beating went on through it all, at a faster tempo now and with gasps of agony. It was like listening to torture that nothing could relieve. The nail of Sabine’s index finger, driving into the muscle of her upper arm, pierced the skin, leaving a rim of blood. Suzie covered her ears, but it was impossible to blot out the cries of agony which echoed from the rocky walls, swelling to fill the space where Lou Moussou had died.
* * *
Suzie still felt sick with horror when she thought about it. From the time of her arrival she had found the animal side of country life terrifying. Even the poultry disturbed her; she recoiled from their chattering rush and beating feathers. She never became accustomed to the dogs and, since she lacked authority, they were all the more boisterous in her company. Whilst Sabine would unleash the big ones and throw sticks for them, Suzie flinched even from the terriers’ emphatic rage, barking at anything they considered unusual.
Only Lou Moussou, visited every day, talked to, fed, eventually became familiar enough not to horrify her. He moved slowly, predictably, within the confines of his sty. His pink skin with its sparse stiff bristles gave him a human appearance, which was only increased by the knowingness of his tiny eyes. She and Sabine would carry his swill from the boiler by the bread oven, sharing the weight of the bucket between them, to tip it into his trough and watch him eat it. She could interpret his approving grunts and was sure she could tell which ingredients he most appreciated.
Her feelings for him were complex, for although he was admired and revered by Sabine and the Menesplier family, and w
as more domesticated, more of a personality, than any other of the farm animals, she was well aware of the taboos associated with him by her own people. Maman and Papa were secular. They had rarely attended synagogue and did not keep kosher at home, even in the days when it was possible to regulate food in such a way. Yet they never voluntarily ate charcuterie, did not touch choucroute with sausages, avoided porc aux pruneaux on the menu. She had never been told not to eat pork; they just didn’t do it. And in the ancient rejection of this human-like, intelligent, amiable beast she saw, oddly, a parallel to her own hidden, rejected Jewishness. Maman and Papa regarded the pig as unclean because they had never had a chance to know and understand her beloved Lou Moussou.
One January day, as Micheline poured out their hot milk at breakfast, she had said, ‘You won’t have any schoolwork today because the Mr Jouanels are coming.’
‘Oh, wonderful.’ Sabine was pounding some stale bread into her milk, into which mixture they were allowed a teaspoonful of honey. It was as if it had unexpectedly been announced that it was Christmas or the Americans had arrived.
‘Who are the Jouanels?’
‘It’s the end of Lou Moussou. Crrk.’ Sabine swept her spoon across her throat.
‘Everyone has to help,’ Micheline explained. ‘That’s why you’re not studying today, so don’t run away.’
‘We don’t want to run away. We want to be here. There’ll be a special lunch, Micheline?’
‘There’ll be boudin, as usual, and you’ll have to help with it. I’ll be busy. Suzie, what’s the matter, child? Why’s she crying?’
The idea of the death of Lou Moussou was bad enough. She thought of his sharp, trusting eyes, his delighted grunts of anticipation when he heard the clanking of the bucket. The betrayal was so terrible, she could not imagine how they could bring themselves to do it. Sabine’s excitement was of a piece with her nature. She knew her well enough now to expect her to delight in the suffering of her pet. But how could Micheline so carefully nourish someone only to lead him to his death?
Everyone prepared for the event; even the aunts came down from their room. Madame de Cazalle became nostalgic as Florence helped her on with her apron.
‘I remember when Odette and I did the pig-killing. There were no men left at Bonnemort by 1917.’
Micheline made a doubtful face. Twenty-five or thirty years ago the old ladies might have had more strength than today, when sitting at the table to cut up the meat was all that could be expected of them. The killing was to take place in the winepress, chosen because there was a pump there with fresh water from the spring. Lou Moussou was an illicit pig, his presence hidden from the Requisition, so the butchery had to take place out of sight, for fear of a visit by the authorities, or even a casual caller who might make a denunciation. In the farmyard Sabine and Suzie were set to stoke the fire under the boiler that had been filled with water early in the morning. Florence set out large numbers of metal receptacles for different purposes: bowls and basins, cauldrons and pans were piled up inside the winepress. Micheline unrolled her clothful of special knives, testing each one, and sharpening them all with her steel. Finally, Henri and Micheline placed a low wooden trough upside down in the middle of the winepress.
In the valley the sun was just beginning to melt the frosting of ice on the grass of the orchard, as they made their preparations.
‘It couldn’t be better,’ Florence said. ‘A fine day in the waning moon. It’s perfect. I remember the first winter of the war, we had four pigs to kill and it rained for a week, by which time the cycle of the moon was wrong. It was hard to know what to do.’ Perhaps because her mother was so rigorous a pessimist, Florence was always cheerful.
‘We’ll say it was perfect when we’ve got through today without the requisitioning folk turning up unexpectedly,’ Micheline warned.
The official pig-killing was set for next week and for that occasion Florence did not care about the phase of the moon. The bureaucrats would carry off the pigs for slaughter and nothing would be left for the household.
‘Too cold for me to wait out here,’ said Madame Veyrines, turning on her cane towards Micheline’s door. As they all followed her, Madame Ariane observed Suzie’s dejection and was suddenly smitten with the significance of the occasion.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh Suzie, I’m sorry.’
No one paid any attention to her exclamation, for at that moment the Jouanels came into view on their bicycles, rounding the corner of the drive. Madame Ariane drew Suzie to one side.
‘Perhaps you don’t feel well,’ she suggested. ‘If you had a headache, you could spend the day resting in your room.’
Suzie could not take the escape route offered to her. She had too much fear of what Sabine would do if she disappeared from the ceremony. And she could not leave Lou Moussou to suffer on his own.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay and help like everyone else.’
The Jouanels, the pig-killers, were twins, in their sixties, from Lepech Perdrissou. They were both tiny men of immense strength, with leathery skins criss-crossed by hundreds of lines and smiling dark brown eyes. They laughed and joked all the time, sometimes adding comments in the patois to Micheline and Henri on the performance of the gentry. The whole household made its way down to the winepress, where the Mr Jouanels took off their coats and wrapped themselves in their white aprons.
Suzie did not witness the moment of betrayal when Henri, Micheline, Florence and Little Mr Jouanel went into the sty to bind the victim, but she heard the roar of outrage, the squeals of fury, the breathless commands of Mr Jouanel and Henri as they struggled with Lou Moussou. She suffered with him, his terror and bewilderment, and felt the rough stones of the path scoring his skin as he was hauled down to the winepress. She only saw him at last when he was dragged in on his back, his trotters tied together across his belly.
The next stage was the most difficult moment of the day, for he had to be lifted onto the killing block and it took everyone, both Mr Jouanels, Henri, Micheline, Florence and Madame Ariane, to achieve it. Even Sabine, dancing round the group, pulled on one bound leg to bring him into position. Suzie shivered by the door, unable to bring herself to assist, unable to stop herself from looking.
The screaming of the prey and the shouts of his torturers died away. The extra assistants backed away, leaving the four guards on the four quarters. To Suzie the victim looked hideously human, a grotesquely fat baby, lying on his back, his trotters joined like beseeching hands, his ears flapped back and his snout in the air.
Big Mr Jouanel picked up one of the knives, testing its sharpness by laying the side of the blade against the ball of his thumb. Sabine picked up a large enamel basin and stood behind him. In their white aprons, moving in unison, the two of them looked like the priest and the altar boy who officiated at the services in the village church.
With a single, swift gesture, Mr Jouanel slit the side of Lou Moussou’s upturned throat. He stepped aside and Sabine moved forward with the basin, holding it so that it caught the fountain of blood that pulsed out of the wound. She was spattered by drops that showered upwards as the force of the blood hit the pool that had already run into the pan. Lou Moussou shrieked, his harsh scream ululating in time to the spurting of the blood. Everyone watched in silence for the long minutes until the flow reduced to a trickle and the cry to a sob, then to silence.
Suzie, who watched throughout the drawn-out agony and death of Lou Moussou, ran out of the winepress, up the path, into his sty. Here she crouched in the straw, still warm and redolent of his presence, putting her head on her bent knees.
‘Suzie, Suzie,’ Micheline was calling her. ‘We need you and Sabine to carry the water.’
By the time she returned, Lou Moussou had been lowered to the ground, the trough righted, hollow-side up, and he had been placed within it, like a baby in its bath. The water was simmering in the boiler and Sabine and Suzie were employed carrying the buckets to douse him. When he was submerged, the Jouanels,
Henri and Florence scrubbed furiously to lift off the bristles, which were gathered up by Micheline and put aside for use as brushes. While this was going on, Madame Ariane slowly, cautiously, carried the great basin of blood up to Micheline’s kitchen. The girls pumped up more water.
The aunts were seated in the kitchen in front of the fire ready to prepare the lunch. Suzie gratefully undertook the task of setting the table, and stirring the soup, while Madame de Cazalle fried the boudin and the apples. Then the men, and Sabine who had remained outside with them, were called in to eat. They did not linger over the meal, although the Jouanels ate and praised heartily. Micheline smiled a little. The worst was over and she liked knowledgeable appreciation of her cooking better than anything.
Lunch finished, the working party returned to the winepress. Madame Ariane climbed the ladder into the loft and released the rope of the pulley from its anchorage. Lou Moussou, white, naked and hairless, more human than ever, was tipped out of his bath by Henri and Little Mr Jouanel and dragged by his back legs to the pulley. The metal hook on the end of the rope was inserted under the ligatures around his hind legs, and Big Mr Jouanel and Florence hauled him to the vertical until his snout just touched the ground.
Sabine and Madame Ariane spread out a cloth in front of him and Big Mr Jouanel took up another knife from the battery, a long one this time. They all stood back, respectfully, while he made a cut, not swift and slashing as before but with deliberation, down the whole length of Lou Moussou’s belly, so that his entrails tumbled out, steaming, writhing, onto the cloth, which Micheline gathered up by its corners. With Florence’s help, she carried it to a trestle table set up in one corner, where she distributed yards of viscera to the children. She instructed Suzie how to take her pail of intestines and rinse them carefully, turning them inside out without piercing them, so that the chitterlings would form perfectly clean, unbroken containers for the sausages she would make.
A Good Death Page 19