Trio
Page 20
And on her way home she met the master coming back from the marsh, he apparently said isn’t it cold, have you got proper heating, she answered yes or no, you couldn’t hear very well, you could see her make a vague gesture, you could imagine her lady-apple face and her toothless smile, too far away to catch the details, they said something else to each other for maybe another minute, he pointed over in the direction of the marsh, you could see them part, it must have been one o’clock, time for lunch, the sky was already becoming overcast, rain soon, how can we count on a normal season these days.
Leave nothing of memory’s suggestions intact.
Night again, close the shutters again, that lament again, it’ll never come to an end now, in the inner ear, which is why you can’t properly hear the eddies on the surface.
Even so it was something, that tragic end on a dunghill, they’d told the doctor who contrary to the deceased’s expectations had shown sincere grief, he’s quite distraught, he stands there in the middle of the room, he can’t take his eyes off the corpse huddled up in the armchair, the neighbor’s wife pushes a chair over to him, forces him to sit down and goes into the kitchen to heat up some coffee.
But the neighbor’s child had so much imagination, a highly-strung child, impressionable, that it seems he took the scarecrow for a corpse, either it had been blown onto the dunghill by a gust of wind or the master had put it there, and he didn’t apparently go anywhere near it but went and told his parents who, once on the scene …
Phantasms of the night and of yesterday and tomorrow, death at the slightest deficiency in thought, like the scene of an interior with a window opening on to the desert, the void from which you protect yourself by inescapable domestic pursuits.
The sentry posted behind the wood apparently saw someone coming up and walking round the house at daybreak in this humid cold that goes right through you, he’d moved so as to be able to watch the door into the kitchen, then nothing, went up to the building, walked round it, no sign except for a pair of secateurs left on the bench on the south side since the autumn, already rusty, which he put in his pocket.
The sentry, a wily peasant who claims he suffers from nervous disorders which are difficult to control.
And the other person, this had been going on for years, who was watching the master from a window …
So calm. So gray. An old pigeon was tottering along the roof of the barn. There’s a puddle in the middle of the grassy courtyard. On the south side a little cluster of leafless plum trees.
The doctor like an old pigeon was shuffling round the courtyard of an old people’s home or else pushed by a nurse was catching cold under his blanket, the master used to go and see him and between two nose-drips the old man mumbled his apologies or memories, you couldn’t hear very well.
When suddenly the maid appeared and said don’t try and make out you were working, I saw you at the window on the lookout.
The time is out of joint.
The mother in the carriage leading to exile. Then in the little suburban garden they’d chosen. Until the day when the page had been turned and you could no longer imagine her other than covered with daisies in her young girl’s dress.
The sentry posted at the corner of the wood rubbed his eyes at daybreak and saw the carcass of an animal on the dunghill with its feet in the air and its belly slit open.
On the bit of bloody lawn where the neighbor’s child was playing, unspeakable anguish, when all the ghosts from elsewhere have emigrated for the last time into the innermost recesses of memory.
In the margin beside an empty phrase.
Tainted with mildew they either dragged themselves along in great masses or hoisted themselves up the girders or dived down into the cellars through the trapdoors.
Source of information deficient.
Through trying to catch that murmur between two hiccups he had at first managed to make his hearing more acute so long as youth had lasted but once he was over the bend it had gradually started to diminish and resulted not long before the aforementioned period in solid deafness, internal crackling, dizzy spells and headaches but by exercising all his willpower, like a streetcorner musician, he had reconstituted a kind of passacaglia.
So calm. So gray.
On his way down from the master’s house where he had delivered his duck the man had landed up in the ditch with his van and he had been trapped underneath it for a good hour until the children on their way home from school discovered him and went and told the gendarme who told the mechanic and the two of them with some others were struggling to get the thing out, heave ho, finally they managed to release the driver, all he had was a broken leg and the neighbor offered to drive him to hospital, the man was groaning like a woman, you’d never have believed it, him being so tough, the doctor who doesn’t practice anymore except when the occasion arises said that it wasn’t all that marvelous the way they dealt with you at the hospital, that in this sort of case a thorough examination was indicated, his head might be injured too, next, that’s to say that evening in the café, the mechanic was explaining the sort of maneuvers he goes in for each time, this wasn’t the first, with his breakdown van, but you didn’t know whether he was talking about the van or the tractor, too far away, deafening noise of all those voices and of the pin-table, makes you wonder what the regulars got out of it but calm and reflection are not very highly prized round our parts, noise intrudes into even the most remote domicile in the form of wireless cacophonies, sweet songs, and other parasites.
In the meantime the garden under its white mantle, sudden snow- showers and squalls, was secretly preparing its silly little surprises, its stereotypes, its childish joys …
In the cold room the book fallen on to the floor.
Or the secateurs left on the bench.
Or the memory of the maid like an astringent for traditional purposes.
Crows fly up cawing, bad sign, you wondered what sins of commission or omission you had perpetrated, conscience never clear, the doctor on the terrace raising his eyes from his newspaper said remember that flight of crows was it January or February, this or that calamity apparently hit the village, adieu to all the optimistic projects …
Crows or magpies.
Hundredth repetition.
Those pictures to extricate from their dross.
As for the goatherd she fell asleep counting her stitches, her flock wandered over to the marsh and impelled either by greed or curiosity ventured into it and got stuck, the lame woman only caught up with them much later, night was falling, when the mechanic went into the café.
While the master who thought he was alone got up out of his chair, went over to the fireplace, hesitated for a second and then broke the hands of the clock, the act of a maniac, it was only the next day apparently when he was himself again that he did what he could to stick the hands back on the clockface so that the maid shouldn’t know.
And the other man, leaving the slit in the shutter walked round the wood again, passed the dunghill again where the scarecrow was lying with outstretched arms, took his little boy’s hand again and they both went off towards the pasture-land, pale, pure sky, hoarfrost on the blades of grass, ice in the potholes in the road, real winter weather that shrivels you up under your jacket and grips your skull in a vice.
Goats getting stuck.
What to do with all these snippets.
Bit by bit the traces of the olden days faded from his memory, names, words, as if the immense wave of exile … or the fact that … nothing and no one anymore, gray shadows heralding the night, he’d end up taking refuge behind the stove with the dishcloths, a nice quiet corner, dreaming of bacon soup and scratching his groin.
And the other man, leaving the slit in the shutter walked round the wood again, he saw someone running over towards the marsh, how could he follow him, night was falling, he takes his little boy’s hand again and passes in front of the dunghill on which the dead cow stands out as a sort of light patch, they’ll be suspicious,
so and so must have killed it but they can’t find any excuse to question him, why have it in for the cow, it died of cold, no trace of any injury, and the farmer’s wife who kept saying such a good milker.
An old jealousy, the father explained, he’d kept company with the farmer’s wife when she was a girl and amongst neighbors … or something like the suspicion people had had that he used to water his milk, shame and hate are involved and he poisons the cow instead of the farmer.
Goes up to the corpse, cuts off the udder with his penknife and throws it into the neighbor’s barn as he goes by, it was dark, you could see a ray of light through the kitchen shutter, not a sound.
That mutilated corpse, with its bloodstained trouser fly.
That they must have been illuminated in those transitional days by something other than the light of judgment, a way of foreseeing with serenity what was to follow because it’s long, it’s deflected for ever, now, what’s the use of trying.
The town promenade. False perspectives between the trees. Floating whitish loves through the narrow openings of imaginary doors invited you on Sundays to the accent of Te Deums. That fermentation up to the grave, no reason to be surprised at the cleanliness of corpses so soon, so soon.
The servant takes the soup out and comes back with an udder on a dish. They start chewing. Milk runs down their chins and thin trickles of blood.
To come back to the goatherd she said as she brought in the coffee, I saw her waiting for the van to arrive, she stopped a long time on her way pretending to be getting her breath but you know her, she’s a wily one, and the fact that she hadn’t taken her dog would you say that was just by chance, not at all, while the master was remembering having seen the hound frisking about in the stubble, the doctor concluded that nothing we see has failed to be imagined previously.
The story will never come to light, no visible flaw.
And thinking later in the cold room about what he had casually asserted that he could now only envisage by snippets he sat there prostrate in his chair, a puppet, hands hanging, nose reddened, with as if on the reverse side of tears that ridiculous and painful laugh that turned into a hiccup, no possible explanation unless … and once again the servant came back, lit the lamp and said you aren’t going to tell me.
Working on marginal notes.
He pulled himself together after the coffee and produced his page of memoirs, trying to find an anecdote, all the afternoon, the light was going, when the maid came back with the soup, monsieur is served, according to a fixed rhythm, expressions that hark back to the flood, same arrangements for piano solo, but what’s happening, nothing, nothing’s happening, the carriage was leaving for exile with its contingent of down-and-outs, they’ll get there one day, they’ll draw the curtains at daybreak and find …
In the heated room the two friends glass in hand are evoking memories. Fine china hanging on the walls, old furniture shining as a result of the maid’s assiduous polishing duster, a well-to-do house, no urgent needs. Outside the light is going, the clouds are gathering, it’ll rain before nightfall. The last hen in the yard goes into the henhouse to roost. The guinea fowls can be heard crying. Crows or magpies fly up from the neighboring field and go and perch on an elm tree. A tractor comes out on to the road from the ploughed fields and disappears round the corner of the quarry. On the neighbor’s side, the sound of the axe on the chopping block.
As if the account of these multifarious instants …
And the other, abandoning the slit in the shutter, went limping back to her herd, whistled to her dog who was running round in circles in the stubble and tells how as she was on her way back from the pasture-land she saw the breakdown van covered in blood, she took the long way round by the lane but later she had time to notice on the dunghill a flight of crows like in the year of the death of her poor mother, and after that behind the wood a shadow, always the same one, you couldn’t quite tell, that went running away towards the village, all this boded no good.
Because you had to make hay while the sun shone, quick quick before it goes, make use of the slightest lull as if the little bit of time granted …
On his way down from the master’s house where he had delivered his duck the vanman took the road leading to our county town, the characteristic troubles he suffers from and which will soon force him to give up driving, advised by his doctor, in the first place they distress him and then they make him stop a couple of times en route, he explains a few days later that he had had the impression that he’d been going along the road in the opposite direction with no recollection of when he’d been that way before.
The master is on the terrace taking the clock to pieces.
The ornamental lakes reflect clouds that don’t seem to be in the sky.
In the margin beside an empty phrase about happiness made a note, pleasure of false discoveries.
But the dream remodeled everything, upset the order, and it would take the testator till tomorrow and even longer to restore the verisimilitude to his document.
What to make of these snippets.
Go back on to the terrace, you can see the dunghill from there.
That mutilated corpse, with its bloodstained trouser fly.
And the other man leaving the slit in the shutter retraces his steps, walks round the wood and sees the scarecrow, the dummy, stuck on a bush, he takes it down and throws it on to the dunghill, the mechanic who was passing with his breakdown van called out something to him, you couldn’t hear very well, the man continued on his way down to the marsh, at the bend by the quarry he sees the doctor, he goes towards him, about fifty yards separated them, and when he arrives he realises that there isn’t anyone there, he goes back up in his van to make his usual journey with the usual mirages.
The town promenade. Floating, whitish loves through the narrow openings of imaginary doors.
The sentry apparently saw him come out of the room and go running down the road, he was looking for the doctor who was there in front of his eyes dropping off to sleep, he went looking for him as far as the marsh, he made his way through the mud, up to the pinewood where amongst the carcasses the white, white skeleton was swinging, he sat down underneath it, he opened the book at the appropriate page and found in the margin a note he didn’t understand, so much effort put into this exegesis, and disappeared just before night fell into that rising mist, then the sky clears, he had to go back, back to the snores and take up the thread again, the sentry will never put a foot right.
But he said straightaway that it was impossible, he was parked with his breakdown van right under the scarecrow, no one had touched it at that moment, it must have been later, at nightfall, well it was that particular moment that the neighbor’s wife had been talking about, he had apparently gone behind a hedge to urinate while the other was cutting down the scarecrow, but on the dunghill, no he hadn’t put it there, he’d taken it with him, even though from a distance you couldn’t quite tell, he seemed to be holding his little boy by the arm.
Holding his little boy by the arm to get him across the marsh like a doll, the kid wasn’t touching the ground, you could divine the two of them in that mist at nightfall, they landed on the other side, the pine- wood, amongst the birds’ carcasses, an image that remained graven there, in the book, then the whitened skeleton hanging on the bush with for tutelary divinities those beaks, those shrivelled up wings, those breastbones, those skinny feet, it made you tremble, you came back to it, the page was never turned.
Hundredth repetition.
The sky was becoming overcast with little clouds that didn’t seem to be reflected in the ornamental lakes.
Or the watchful echo in the recess of the barn repeating word for word the phrase murmured at half-word intervals caused the syllables to overlap and the indiscreet ear to retain …
To go back the way you came, turn, return, revert. Murmurs, divinatory formulae, tedious repetition.
In the cold room, an old rug over his shoulders, the master alchemist of the no
things that enabled him to survive was leafing through the book, making marginal notes, picking up the magnifying glass and daydreaming over the shape of an outline, of a piece of calligraphy, of a white patch he discovered over the water in the lake, dissipation of a haze, semblance of a line, survival of a word, his existence as you might say cut off, cut down, one level lower, fashioning spaces in its own image, so as to be able to move without collision, like an old-fashioned and obstinate skater in the sempiternal morning of his mania.
On the road that goes there a black mass is advancing, at first either crawling or rolling, you can’t see very well, and then upright like a wall, silent, the fledglings fly away, the field mice disappear, a velvet edifice that all of a sudden fractures and frays, it’s a flight of crows, the fields are grayish, the sky has faded.
On the road that goes there a black mass is advancing, it’s a very tall man, you can’t see very well, coming this way, you think you see two men one on top of the other, coming this way, you see it’s a peasant and a scarecrow, he stops, the fledglings have relapsed into silence, the man goes into a vineyard and sticks the dummy in a bush, he ties it to the stem with a rope, it stretches out its arms, its head is hanging, it looks like a corpse that’s already stiff.
In the quarry a shape is moving, it’s crawling up to the ridge, a gentle slope, it’s stopping, or watching, it digs itself in, it reappears farther on, rolls down to the path below, then drags itself along for fifty yards, there’s time to see the night fall completely, later the man will be found lying on the dunghill, his arms outstretched.