Trio

by Robert Pinget

  And again winter, the frozen mud, hoarfrost and ice in the holes in the road, the house is empty again, everything is in order, between the bare elms the sentry sees the blue line of the forest, the pinewood, the quarry, and the bend, nothing is left of the false mystery of the night, the master will come to inspect the premises and sit down at the table long enough to brood over his memories, outside night had fallen, the barn roof was shining in the cold moonlight.

  Leave nothing of memory’s suggestions intact.

  That they apparently saw, then, don’t interrupt me, in the early morning a corpse on the dunghill, it must have been five o’clock, and it seems they thought it was the master because he had taken to drink, no more difficult than that, now there was nothing to justify this deduction, there were neighbors and other drunkards but things take root in people’s minds and no way of getting them out again, anyway who’s people, something more explicit was necessary, and anyway why corpse, it could have been a body which would get up a few minutes or a few hours later, a fainting fit, drunkenness not indispensable either, quite simply a loss of consciousness.

  But the strangest of all was that obsession which always brought you back to the same images which because they had been evoked over the space of several months in the conversations of all sorts of people were no longer prepared to be forgotten, claimed their pound of flesh, in short would become living and not dummies anymore, but to the detriment …

  A new reality which we wouldn’t have wanted and which made a clean sweep of all the rest, victory, what slaughter, just about all we had left was a table to eat from, a writing desk to pass the time, and a servant who even though she wasn’t … but that’s not the point.

  So calm. So gray.

  That room where he worked, I can still see it with its whitewashed walls all cracks, its well-worn, innocent furniture, the big cupboard used as a sideboard where the servant put away the crockery that came down from grandmothers, blue patterns or birds on branches from which tulips and orchids were sprouting, six chairs round the table, a ramshackle wing-chair covered in leopardskin, a mantelpiece on which pride of place was taken by the clock that didn’t go, through the window a little garden with plum trees and moss roses, a rainy spring, vague yearnings.

  The garden too but at different periods, of changing aspect, multiple, really, so that the surroundings in which it evolved are hardly ever the same, which would explain …

  That that day in the room into which he’d just gone when he came back from the town, wintry weather, steely blue and glacial, frozen mud on the road, crows flying up cawing, without opening the shutters because night was about to fall he’d made a fire in the hearth and sat down at the table, had taken the old-fashioned book and started leafing through it then had become drowsy and fallen asleep with his head in the hollow of his arms.

  That the neighbor who calls himself a sentry, not knowing the meaning of words, and who plays the part of caretaker in the master’s absence, going on his usual rounds notices a light through the slit in the shutter but for some unknown reason doesn’t go and see what's going on and when he’s got home, a hundred yards at the most, tells his wife that the master has come back to inspect the premises.

  That that same day perhaps the caretaker’s child or the neighbor’s child on his way back from school sees on the dunghill by the orchard something like an outstretched body, he goes up to it and then runs all the way home.

  That they’d thought for a long time that it had been a question of a fainting fit, he’d got up or rather dragged himself from where he fell to his room where the maid when she came back from the town had given him first aid while they were waiting for the doctor whom she’d sent a child to fetch.

  When suddenly he jumps, he’d dozed off in the deck chair, looks round and sees in the mossrose walk the good doctor who’s given him palpitations, a few moments later he tells him the dream he’s just had, bad digestion, the other man was at his last gasp on the dunghill and the assembled neighbors explained his fall by the presence of the scarecrow in the bush, hardly logical, the poultry dealer appeared at the gate and maintained that it didn’t take more than that to give rise to mirages on the road, the detours of the unconscious are strange but to explain what or foresee what, you could imagine anything, great freedom, wasn’t that the domain of poetry, in the soft light of the setting sun, the garden is resting, the blue line of the forest marks the horizon and the servant on the porcelain tray decorated with birds and tulips brought in the aperitif, you won’t say no to a little glass the poultry dealer is asked.

  When suddenly the postman at the bend in the road comes upon the goatherd and her flock, he only just has time to brake, his moped skids and he’s in the ditch with all his mail dispersed, he told the neighbor a few moments later that it was a spell the old girl had put on him, impossible normally not to see her with her filthy quadrupeds, she’d come out of nowhere like a devil, I tell you this magic business isn’t all moonshine, she brews herbal teas at nightfall, it seems that someone saw her only yesterday putting her pot out on the windowsill and a white shape coming down from the roof, but how can you believe that poor stupid postman, he’d had one too many and that’s all there is to it.

  When suddenly …

  But he continued on his rounds inspecting every barn, every hayloft, every hut, you have to keep your eye on everything with these vagrants in the neighborhood now, where can they come from, it’s my opinion that some of those young hooligans from the town, we don’t need to look any farther, have got into the habit of going poaching and even highway robbing, an organised gang, that’s the youth of today for you, vindictiveness and violence, didn’t they attack the postman the other day not a couple of steps from the grocer’s, grabbed his wallet and his sheepskin jacket and then ran away down the street round the corner.

  Turn, return, revert.

  And when the maid brought in the aperitif the poultry dealer had got as far as the business of the tourist in the sports car, he’d been seen first in the village and then at the quarry and then on the road to the marsh a couple of steps away from here, I wonder what on earth he can be up to, that’s three days he’s been hanging around the district, hasn’t said a word to anyone except to the waiter when he ordered a pastis, don’t you think that in such cases we ought to tell the gendarmes, he could be a spy or something, they say there are some prowling around the neighborhood at this very moment still it’s none of my business, suddenly adding this remark with some agitation, the idea had just occurred to him that the master might see in his observations a connection with what people said about certain visits received here, different cars each time, the master was trafficking in God knows what.

  On the dunghill something bleeding, the apprentice went over and saw a red rag, he looked up and saw that the scarecrow was disintegrating, its cap had fallen off too, all the straw was coming out of its trousers, he cut it down and patched it up as best he could.

  Something red, it looked like horse-meat, here come the crows.

  Muttering incantations with every step, the old woman was making her way towards the quarry.

  And suddenly the whole countryside disintegrates, corpses are strewn all along the meadows and roads.

  Plunged in his pettifogging apocalypse.

  The old woman in her kitchen sitting by the fire was watching her soup. Iron pan, chimneyhook, blackened grate, gridiron, and tongs. The table was laid for three. The old man came in from the fields and sat down without a word. Their grandson came back from school and went out again to play with the dog, a short-legged terrier that he got to jump by holding up a bait, sugar or biscuit. The wind was blowing in the elm tree and on the grassy bank that runs along the courtyard, it started a runnel of water zigzagging above the wooden pail, the tap drips. Above the kitchen garden corseted by its trellis you could see irises and peonies, clusters of leaves and beanpoles.

  And suddenly the whole countryside disintegrates, corpses are strewn all along the me
adows and roads, the farmhand came back from the marshland carrying a carcass, with his burden in his arms he moves warily so as to be able to deliver the object intact to the master who is waiting for him on his doorstep.

  Then when the meal was finished cleared the table, sent the child and the old man to bed, night was falling, the wind had dropped, on the motionless elm tree that white shape that from a distance you’d have taken for a carcass, perforated and frail, the old woman put some freshly-picked stalks to brew in a pot, night was falling, a crow was still perching on the motionless elm tree, then cleared the table and sent the child and the old man to bed, the farmhand arrived at the master’s house with his burden, she put her receptacle out on the windowsill, that white shape that had come down from the roof …

  Put the brew out on her windowsill, night had come, the master was wool-gathering looking at the stars when suddenly a white shape that from a distance you’d have taken for a carcass, perforated and frail, came gliding down from the neighboring roof on to the shrub that a storm had stripped of its dummy, you could see it in the headlights of the sports car at the bend in the road, the apprentice was getting out when suddenly …

  Profoundly integrated night.

  The doctor seems to have gone out at dusk, making his way towards the master’s house but for some unknown reason branched off at the quarry and plunged into solitude, night had come, the crickets were scraping away in the grass, flashes of light appeared on the horizon, that’s what they call summer lightning, when suddenly he sees a hud- dled-up shape on the ground a few yards away, he goes up to it and recognises the goatherd, she says she’s looking for a knitting-needle, she is in fact shining a torch over the ground.

  After which the woman apparently said that it wasn’t the doctor she’d met at that hour but the farmhand, he was coming away from the neighbor’s house, the neighbor had a sick cow in the byre, the epidemic was gaining ground, they were going to have to kill some of the cattle.

  The old woman going home by night without attracting attention, she must have come out again on her own with the excuse of going to look for that knitting-needle, the evenings are long, what could she do without her handwork, but the farmhand had seen her down by the marsh, had posted himself behind a hedge, she was spying out the land all around her … after which she retraced her steps and came upon the apprentice who was putting the scarecrow back in the bush.

  Or that that story of the epidemic had been invented by the poultry dealer who wants to sell his wares and tells them anything that comes into his head, people are stupid enough to believe his rubbish.

  The maid lit the lamp, pushed the papers over to one side and laid the table.

  A perpetual crime, perpetrated for years in this cold house, not a sound, the master is away, eyes everywhere spying, and ears pricked.

  At his table bending over the old-fashioned book making a marginal note beside a hollow phrase, it’ll come in its own good time, when suddenly the maid comes bursting in, what a way to go on, staying in the dark like that, she lights the lamp, he hides under his jacket the torch he’d been shining over the book, he’d been seen through the slit in the shutter.

  Afterwards hours of pondering over all those snippets, there was nothing left on the page of memoirs but blots and graffiti, his life had emigrated elsewhere.

  In the elms or the pinewood, in those carcasses everywhere, scintillations, nocturnal silences, dispersed, in disorder, irreparable, the book open at the old-fashioned illustration, the clock that doesn’t go, infinite disarray, words adrift like so many disavowals, pursued even into his dreams, the only history he would have now would be written, his only breath would be literary.

  It was perhaps at this moment that the poultry dealer appeared at the gate, towards evening that is, the master became calmer, he asked the fellow to sit down and he let him go on about his obsessions, the doctor apparently said watch your liver, come and see me.

  Blots and graffiti.

  Other themes would emerge from disordered nerves. Working on marginal notes.

  When the farmhand had left the barn, it might have been half-past eight, night was falling, the last glimmer in the west, the line of the forest almost black, the terrace was deserted and the house had all its shutters closed, you could hear the frogs down by the marsh, it had been a hot day for the season.

  Of that dreary, monotonous year.

  Escaped notice who in some people’s minds seems to have played his part and triggered off the mechanism.

  When she got to the quarry the old woman put her folding stool down on the grass and got on with her knitting while her bleating beasts were bouncing about in the beetroot, the dog was amusing itself snapping at their hocks when the farmhand appears at the bend, he goes up to the woman and points at the wood with the carcasses in the distance, she nods, counts her stitches again, and then the sports car comes up from the opposite side.

  A never-ending story of exile that the master called the exodus, undertones of distress, that flight from generation to generation, bloody or burlesque episodes in stations with trains about to leave, a lament that comes to light in the least of his remarks, incurable injury, that primeval territory under the pile of perfunctorily packed luggage, a whole hotchpotch of failings and compromises, a quivering voice that had never managed to run dry, the sick man’s remorse, a ham-acting mea culpa enough to disgust you with people’s confessions.

  The mother in the train taking them into exile.

  That murmur interspersed with silences and hiccups.

  Source of information deficient.

  Another theme that has emerged from disordered nerves, that of the adopted child.

  The doctor was waiting.

  When suddenly the scarecrow made the master jump.

  You see he said we were partners Alfred and I, I mean Rodolphe, in some business goodness knows what, I wasn’t cut out for it and quite shamelessly left him to struggle and maneuver so that the partnership was dissolved in the same way as it had been formed, as the days went by, that’s years ago now.

  A new situation.

  You see he said I was stuck with the child, how old could he have been, about fifteen, I always thought of him as ‘the adopted child,’ feeble in both mind and body, his mother had entrusted him to us not knowing what to do with him, we didn’t either, we gave him little jobs to do which he always made a mess of.

  But that period was no better than the present one and insofar as I can be objective about it had no more of a future.

  As for knowing what sort of a father I was, better not to speak of it, let’s say a sort of prop or bean-stick only less fragile but the combination can’t have been very pretty, we’d made our home here and the days passed just as they’d dawned in a sort of … and the days passed without passing, without a calendar and without passion nothing happens, we were in this uneventful house with the wind in its old tiled roofs …

  That would be years ago now, when Alfred or Rodolphe not finding me to his liking anymore gave me the sack or years since he died having previously liquidated what he called our situation, so far as I can remember we were on our beam ends, it comes back to me by fits and starts, especially in my sleep, a whole series of irritations which seemed like great problems to us, people are quite right when they say that it’ll all be the same in a hundred years.

  Because I was well and truly alone, I only saw the adopted child at mealtimes if then, he continued as he had in the past trapping rats and hens, I neither heard him get up nor go to bed, he must have slept in a barn, not very tactful on my part to ask him but I can’t think where else he could have hung out unless he preferred a hedge or a ditch or a dunghill, sometimes he smelt, not very tactful to tell him so, there was only one thing I insisted on, that he should have a tub on Saturdays, and then I used to soap him, I nearly scrubbed his skin off, it couldn’t do him any harm.

  The farmhand had just gone by.

  There was only one thing I insisted on, that I should
soap him myself in his tub every Saturday or more or less, with neither calendar nor passion I sometimes made a mistake and I felt less alone at those moments, I have his skin under my hand, I soap him all over without exception from A to Z which naturally took us by way of P, and maybe even concentrating on P, to tell the truth it’s less a chore than a pleasure, or if in my haste to be less alone I soap him twice a week attributing my miscalculation to the absence of a calendar.

  I only insisted on one thing, to soap him myself in his tub every time he smelt and that was often though I told myself that you have to be careful, we never know what the P has in store for us in a situation like ours, isolated as we were in that house and its outbuildings including a barn where he might possibly have slept.

  With neither calendar nor passion.

  A situation that I could have wished for or preferred without having had a previous one, something like the plums that fall into our mouths or the gift-horse that you must never look in the tooth.

  A house and its outbuildings, isolated, which it would appear I had made my home and into which the idiot seems to have fallen like the proverbial plum, I didn’t really look, I let him bed down in a barn or a hayloft, no rights over him, sudden duties that I hadn’t exactly been looking for, there I was involved in a situation without a future that was the very image …