"You have to find a successor for the forge," he tells her, while his fingers start to jingle a few coins. Christophe's widow immediately recognizes the unmistakable song of gold coins.
"Of course," she replies in a feverish voice. "Of course I want to sell. Have you ever seen a blacksmith's widow trying
to succeed her husband?" The stranger nods in agreement, while a shower of golden sparks bursts from his eyes, spurring on Catherine's cupidity.
"I have with me enough gold to take all your worries away; I'll make you a good deal," continues Roc. But before proceeding any further, he takes pleasure in fuelling the widow's greed with the pangs of an interminable silence. Finally, when he resumes the tickling sound of jingled coins, he starts questioning her. "You must have thought about selling this forge more than once," sneers Roc, "like tonight for instance, and maybe the night before... I'd bet you've been thinking about it for years."
"Well, I.. . I. . ." stutters Catherine, as her most secret wish has been so easily uncovered. She now realizes that in spite of the stranger's apparent generosity, she will have to abide by his will. "How much .. . how much do you think all this is worth?" asks the widow, while her arm spans the forge as if to enhance the value of "all this." With bountiful and waving gestures she unscrupulously cuts and divides Christophe's property. But as her hand reaches the half-open door of the bedroom, where the blacksmith's body is resting, she pauses before quickly closing the door. For a moment her face has taken on a look of terror, as if she feared that her husband would suddenly get up and shout his indignation with a terrifying and threatening scream, as only the dead are capable of when they are infuriated.
Roc smiles while the coins continue to tinkle under his tantalizing fingers.
"He must have a hundred of them," thinks Catherine, quickly brought back to reality by the sound of gold. "What's your price?" she asks, panting. "We can settle this fast. You'll get the house and the forge, and I'll go live with my sister at Aubigny. I'll let you have everything!"
Roc slowly takes his handout of his pocket, and the hand that has been toying with the widow's tormented avidity is now full of shining gold coins. To make sure she is not dreaming, Catherine immediately asks if she can touch them. Roc stretches out his hand, and she grabs a coin, feverishly inspecting it. She looks at the date and sees that it has been recently stamped out. The coin is so warm that it feels as if it could have been minted a few hours ago. The widow snatches the gold and starts counting with trembling fingers, each time begging for more with an imploring look in her eyes.
When his hand has been emptied for the fifth time, Roc leaves it open under the widow's stare, in order to make her understand that she has reached the number of coins he is willing to pay. Catherine clasps the gold in her apron, as if she had just captured an exotic bird. The grin that had been the only sign of life on the stranger's face has now vanished, and as he addresses the widow, his words come out like pieces of broken glass.
"As soon as your man is in the ground, I don't want to see you around here."
"He'll be buried today," she answers quickly, as if she had never even thought of burying him at all. "He'll be in his grave this afternoon, and I'll be gone tonight!"
"Fine," replies Roc. "Now I'll take a closer look at this forge you sold me for twice its price." And as the widow obsequiously hastens to show him around, he snarls, "I don't need anyone, leave this house, now!"
Alone in the room Roc slowly inhales the scents of metal and rust, and for a long time he remains there, sensually breathing in the fragrance of the forge. In the comer the anvil seems to float over the scrap iron and the dust that cover the floor. On the workbench the tools are standing up, their wooden handles smoothed out and softened by the harsh chafing of Christophe's calloused hands. They look like old yellowed candles, left in disarray on an abandoned altar.
The stranger’s feet find what his eyes cannot see. At the noise they make when he steps on them, he quickly makes an inventory of the other tools. There are the tongs, and over there the pliers, the clamps, and the pincers. Continuing his inspection. Roc does not even look at the piece of rope that remains hanging from a beam, the one Christophe chose as his passageway between life and death. Removing his cape, the stranger takes hold of one of the sledgehammers. His hands lighten around the cold handle as he feels the weight of the tool. He strikes the anvil twice, and a clear sound rings oul in the forge. With this fist of metal he could flatten an iron bar in less than forty blows. With even more power he strikes a third time, just to show the steel who is its new master. He pounds the anvil with so much force that it gives out a clang, which almost sounds like a cry of pain.
"Please!"
Suddenly, behind him, a frightened and tiny voice has just materialized in the dark. The stranger had thought he was alone, of that he was certain, for no one has ever managed to startle him like this. He has been followed without his knowing it, but how could anyone have succeeded in deceiving him?... He who knows everything! He turns around but he sees nothing. He can only hear a soft and rapid breathing in the obscurity. Gradually, near the black hood that covers the cold hearth, he discerns a lightsome figure slowly coming toward him.
It's a girl.
Her awkwardness and her fragile adolescent body covered with a straw-coloured sweater make her look like a doll. The pale and intermittent light that reaches into the forge cannot tarnish the radiating fairness of her long hair. Even though she appears to be about sixteen years old, her face is still that of a child. Now that she is close to him, Roc unleashes from his eyes the piercing gaze that subjugates anyone who dares approach him. But what he reads in her mind is not tear; it is instead the peacefulness of a quiet lake. For the first time Roc is disconcerted. He sees in her eyes an endless bluish path. Intrigued, he follows it and lets himself be lured further. He keeps going and soon reaches into an aquamarine labyrinth, when suddenly he realizes that the implacable power of his mind will shatter itself if he takes another step forward. Closing his eyes, he struggles to avert her glance, for he now fears that she might see what is within him and beyond . .. that she might find out who he really is!
Roc shifts his attention to the girl's features. They are gracefully unaffected and regular, giving her a look of undefiled seductiveness. The charm of this face slowly draws him back to her eyes, into boundless pupils, which continue to beguile and unsettle him. The stranger tries a different approach.
"What are you doing here?" he bawls out, spitting out each syllable as if he wanted to shatter the mirror of her eyes, the wall against which his own piercing gaze is being edged out.
The girl's lips do not move, but suddenly her eyes widen, trying to say something by changing their colour, as if she could modulate the tone of each word that her mouth cannot speak. She then turns around and walks back to kneel down near the dormant hearth. Resting her chin on the ledge, she remains motionless before the cold ashes of the abandoned coals.
Roc understands that she has resumed a long and patient wait to which she seems to be accustomed. He comes to her and puts his hand on her naked shoulder. Her bones are fragile but her skin is soft and warm. As he touches her, Roc feels a brief shiver under his palm, the shiver of a wild animal startled by a man's first stroke. She does not turn around to look at him, for her eyes are fixed upon the black coldness of the forge. Roc reads in her mind and discovers the nature of her yearning. He goes to the grate, and throwing a fistful of dry twigs upon it, he lights them with disconcerting ease. The thought of fire and smoke has barely materialized in his mind before the hearth is engulfed with flames, while the coals instantly redden and begin to crackle. With its first breaths, the fire assails the darkness and routs it out of the forge. The girl lifts up her head, and pressing her long and delicate fingers upon her mouth, she moans with delight. Roc hears her and starts pulling on the chain that forces the air out of the bellows. A flight of sparkles passes over the girl's eyes. They are now as stirred up as the coals, and as Roc ch
annels a whirlwind into the ravenous fire, he subdues them both at the same time.
Still troubled by his inability to unsettle her, the stranger decides to make the flames roar even louder. Leaving the bellows, he comes to the fire and starts blowing his own breath on the coals. The flames surge and soar higher and higher, while the bricks of the hearth start cracking, as if they were retreating from this unearthly blaze. But the girl is not frightened; she simply turns around and whispers, "Thank you, Christophe," as calmly as if she were addressing the dead blacksmith.
Roc's laughter bursts forth and almost drowns the roaring flames. To think he was afraid of this child! She cannot even recognize anyone!
"I am not Christophe," he tells her gently. "My name is Roc."
"Roc," she repeats, not the least bit surprised as the stranger sits down beside her. "But. . . Christophe... make fire?" asks the girl.
"Roc makes fire too, even better!" answers the stranger, who smiles openly for the first time. And then, still transfixed by the flames, she asks, "Where .. . Christophe?"
But before he can answer, the door of the forge opens, revealing Catherine cautiously peering into the room while she remains on the threshold. She fears the stranger, but when she heard the sound of the bellows, she had to come and take a look. As if to exorcise the memory of Christophe from her mind, she needs to see the forge run by someone else, so that it becomes the last remembrance of her life in this village.
But as soon as she sees the girl, Catherine hurries across the room and grabs her by the arm. Roc stands up as she unleashes her spitefulness against the young maid. He recognizes the same malevolence that he subdued an hour ago with a handful of gold. He walks to the widow, and the look in his eyes makes her retreat so hastily that she almost falls back on the steps.
"But don't. . . don't you know who she is?" whines Catherine, scared and stupefied at his reaction. "I just wanted to be of service by ridding you of this little vermin!"
"I don't suppose she is your daughter?" asks the stranger.
"Good Lord, no!" protests Catherine, who looks up to the sky. "May God shield me from such a catastrophe!" Roc flinches, as if a sudden twinge had just shot through his body.
"Shut up, woman," he thunders. "Go pray somewhere else than here!"
"But you don't understand," retorts the widow vehemently, as if to warn him. "Its Isabelle... she's the village idiot! Can't you see that she's retarded? She's crazy as a loon. I'm telling you, you've got to be careful with those people... run her out of here!" Catherine turns to the young girl. "You're going to leave right now!" she yells. "I told you a hundred times to go back wherever you came from - we don't want you around here!"
Isabelle remains cloaked in her gentle indifference. Now that the fire no longer brightens up her eyes, she has retreated into her own world.
"You see, you see," continues the widow, "there's nothing but a void in her eyes... One day she's going to hurt somebody... I used to warn my husband about her, but he would never listen to me! Who knows if she doesn't have something to do with..."
While the widow is chattering, Roc feels a tiny arm softly brushing against his side. Gently, he takes the young girl's hand and puts it in his. A shower of sparks instantly returns to her eyes and revives them.
"Isabelle . .. that’s a pretty name," says the stranger.
"Christophe?" asks the girl suddenly, scratching his hand.
"Christophe is... gone," replies Roc, as the widow points her finger to the piece of rope that hangs from the beams.
"He's gone thataway," she tells her, and neither her hand nor her voice betrays the slightest hint of regret.
Isabelle looks at the rope and does not understand. "Come back. .. same way?" she asks the widow.
"No, you don't come back after you're dead," says Catherine, laughing. "That'd be too easy!"
Isabelle's eyes turn dark blue, as if she is struggling to comprehend something far beyond her understanding, but she gives up. Her eyes close and tears start running down her cheeks. Imperturbed, the widow casually looks at the piece of rope, and without another word she turns around and leaves the forge.
Two months have passed since Christophe's burial, when one muggy Sunday morning a rattling tilbury rushes past the first houses of the village. Drawn by a mettlesome horse, it finally screeches to a halt over the coarse cobblestones of the marketplace. Dressed in an astrakhan coat, a middle-aged man steps off. He removes his delicate leather gloves and demands in a condescending tone to be shown the way to the forge. Satisfied, he jumps back into the tilbury and whips his horse so harshly that the fiery animal bucks and nearly breaks off the shafts. Driving around the church, the carriage cuts straight through the linden trees before stopping in front of the blacksmith's house. The man quickly throws his whip onto the seat and hastens to open the side door of the coach. He cautiously takes a bundle of white linen, which a fur-clad woman hands him. Then, oblivious of the mud puddles that soil their clothes, the couple crosses the courtyard and knocks on Roc's door.
The villagers follow them at a distance. They all know that for centuries every blacksmith of the village of Brandes has been endowed with mysterious healing powers. No one really knows when it all began or where those secrets originated, not even the local priests, who had vainly sought to put an end to them. It was only understood by all that these gifts emanated from the ground on which the forge stood and that they seemed to be automatically bestowed upon each new blacksmith, whether he wanted them or not. No one could recall that Christophe had ever used them. He would not even talk about them, for he was convinced that these powers were unholy.
Such was not the case with Roc. The ancestral tradition had been well perpetuated in him. It did not take a month before his reputation spread beyond the village, especially his power to heal the diseases that would usually cut down many young children during the harsh winter months. But if Roc had already welcomed dozens of desperate parents who were now praising his talents to the incredulous ears and mocking glances of their physicians, he had also attracted against himself the concerted hostility of the entire village. For a reason known only to him, the blacksmith had steadfastly refused to cure any of his neighbours' ills. No one had managed to make him change his mind, not even Mrs. Graubois, who had spent hours vainly crying and banging on the blacksmith's door, while her husband remained chained to the village square fountain, panting and rolling on the ground, agonizing in the throes of rabies. Even though his savage shouts were loud enough to chum everybody's stomach, the door of the forge had remained resolutely shut.
Crazed with grief Mrs. Graubois had finally ran home, only to return to the village square and cut short her husband's torments with one blast of his shotgun. No one had ever notified the authorities. Even Sabeur had turned a blind eye to the discreet burial that followed. But if the cold earth had finally muzzled file innkeeper's bestial screams, a vengeful and silent hatred now inhabited all the villagers, as they cursed both their blacksmith and the cures he dispensed only to unknown children from other counties. And so today's tilbury was just bringing another sick baby from another sick town, where people dressed extravagantly and snubbed the countryside and i Is common folk, even on the day when the lives of their children might suddenly depend upon the talents of a rural blacksmith.
Yet somehow, for no apparent reason, today's arrival seems different. Something awakens the villagers from their vindictive passivity, as though the fear that the blacksmith has woven into their minds were unexpectedly stifled by a new and pressing curiosity. A few men get up from their benches and boldly cross the courtyard. Through the tiny cracks of the building, they can now see the inside of the forge. So they stand, their eyes riveted to the wall, peering for the first time into Roc's mysterious abode. They are unaware that the scene they are about to witness will reveal a great deal about the new blacksmith - indeed, far more than they had ever wanted to know.
Seeing the couple coming in, Roc shows no surprise at all, as if he had
been expecting them. He closes the door and goes to the bellows to stir up the flames of the hearth. For a while he moves about the forge as if he were alone. Disconcerted, the man in the astrakhan coat realizes he will have to speak condescendingly, in order to impress upon Roc the superior stature of his social rank. Strangely enough, his friends in the city had depicted the healer as a simple rural blacksmith, when in fact he is now facing a country squire.
"Sir," starts the man with a feigned politeness that exasperates Roc, "Sir, our son suffers from convulsions... We have tried everything... The physicians cannot help us... but we've been told that you... you could cure him. You are our last hope... I am a wealthy man ..His wife is standing behind him, nervously nibbling at her cambric handkerchief. She rushes to the blacksmith and puts her delicate hand on his powerful and sweaty arm.
"I beg of you... save him... We'll pay you whatever you want!"
Roc pushes her back toward her husband. He removes his huge leather apron and wipes the top of the anvil with it, dusting off the pieces of gray skin that form the bark of untamed iron. He then turns to the father.
"I don't want any money; the only payment I require is to become the godfather of this child," he says quietly. "That is, if I can cure him, of course," he adds after a moment of silence, as if trifling with the parents' despair. They do not understand what he could stand to gain by such an agreement, but the father silently makes up his mind. "First of all, my son's cure... later on, well have enough money to dissuade him from this eccentric demand. I must do nothing to upset this fellow..."
"Of course," he replies quickly, while handing the child over to the blacksmith, "and since we all agree, let us not waste any more time." But Roc has read his thoughts. He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and almost flings it into his face.
"You sign here," commands the blacksmith. Taken by surprise with this unexpected artifice, which prevents him from going back on his word, the man glances helplessly at his wife while he clutches an old and ornate fountain pen. He signs the document, and Roc finally takes the screaming baby in his arms, as if somehow the two men had just clinched a deal.
The Nightcharmer and Other Tales Page 6