“And you left them there? The two of them? Dumestre and the kid? In the forest? Even though you knew?”
“Yeah.”
“You did it on purpose?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Farnèse lets go of the branch. He goes back to swimming as quickly as possible toward the objective whose nature still eludes him.
“Why?” repeats Peretti, splashing along after him.
Farnèse doesn’t reply. The explanation would take up too much time, too much space. It would likely take over everything: his head, the air, the sky. He knows how to turn into an urn. He’s already done it. An urn of grief, filled with liquor, wine, eau de vie.
He can’t explain it, but a connection exists between Vladimir’s death and this story. “Vladimir’s death”—he never thinks about it in those words. Normally, he just thinks “Vladimir,” and the name takes up all the space, swollen with tenderness, anger, regret. Someone has to take revenge, he thinks, a thought at once hazy and clairvoyant, the sort of thought produced by alcohol. Someone has to pay. There is an urgent need for justice to be rendered. In the past, people killed each other, killed themselves, for less. In books—the books he used to read—it meant gloves thrown to the ground, meetings at dawn, bring your witnesses: tales of duels with pistols, with swords. Suicide was also a type of duel, between self and self. He should have thought about it, should have followed through. He hasn’t done it. He told himself he should live on as a witness to the child’s past presence, a child for whom he might be the only one to grieve. But that’s not true. He hasn’t done it and there’s no good reason for that, even the hope of redemption.
The kid’s wife. Shit. A woman like that. When they showed up in the village, he recognized her right away. That type of woman. There was a lot of talk about them at first. They didn’t have jobs. In any case, they never went out at normal times. Sometimes people saw them at the supermarket, the gas station. They lived in a shabby house, but they still had some means with which to do the shopping. What could it be? At least if they had a child, people would’ve known, from the school, on the record, under “Parents’ Occupations.” Farnèse was friends with the youngest teacher there, Nino’s mom. She would’ve told him. Just friends? he wonders. But it’s a rhetorical question. He knows the teacher’s in love with him, has been for quite a while, not just since her husband left her. Women like her fall for him. Women like that. The kid’s wife. Her too. She should have fallen for him. It would have been better for everyone. Because he never tries anything with women, he hardly looks at them or listens to them, doesn’t touch them. He would’ve become her confidant. But she chose Dumestre. He doesn’t understand. Would’ve loved not to know. But he saw them. Would’ve rather surprised them in a fit of bestiality. He spied them, without wanting to, in a tender moment—he shouldn’t have been there—in midconversation after making love. Naked bodies, her sitting, him lying down, both smiling. Speaking in low voices, with secrecy. Laughing. Stroking each other’s cheeks. Farnèse gazed at her body. It had been a long time since he had really seen a woman’s skin. This one is special, he thought, trying to understand what distinguished her from the others, the others he couldn’t see. This one doesn’t have any marks or traces. As if she has never worn clothing. She was sitting in the clearing like a cow, a goose. The placidity of her body fascinated him. He was sure Dumestre didn’t notice it. What a waste. Then Dumestre lifted his hand toward her breast—not white, not brown, a breast as innocent as a forehead—and kneaded it distractedly. She smiled, a hint of contempt on the corners of her lips. Death, thought Farnèse. They must be put to death. The kid must kill them. Kill the fat one, kill the pretty one, kill them both. Farnèse doesn’t know why this gave him relief, as if the reparation of this injustice had the power to compensate for all the others. Rigor. Bravery. Honor. And if there are casualties, if he kills him, if he kills her, I’ll stop drinking. I’ll start over.
Peretti starts shouting.
“Dammit, wait for me! I’m gonna drown.”
“No,” says Farnèse, whose voice is covered by the rain, the wind, the roaring water.
“Help, I’m drowning!”
Farnèse turns around, amused by the involuntary theatricality of these words. He watches as Peretti starts to drown. He hesitates. A slowness, weighed down by the full extent of his sadness suddenly being deployed, as if the urn that has been sealed for years were finally being poured out, holding his body back. He sees Peretti’s head disappear, then reappear, watches his arms beat at the waves around him as though observing the whirling flight of a moth. Then he makes a decision, abruptly and quickly, like a stone launched by a slingshot, propelled by his former agility. He grabs Peretti under the arms, hoists his companion up onto his back, half drowning himself, but without fearing it. He swims, his eyes looking for some kind of support, some refuge, glimpses part of a wall, some rocks emerging from the water. It’s the Gallo-Roman tower. If it’s held up until now, it’ll hold on one more night. He swims up to it, puts down his burden, makes sure he’s breathing, he’s stable, pats him on the back, explains that he has to go, there’s no more danger, the water won’t rise much more, he must wait there without moving, you better not move, but I’ve gotta go back, I have to go. Like a stone launched by a slingshot, he rushes into the current, which he catches up with and conquers. He’s forgotten the fatigue. He doesn’t need to try anymore.
30
With her knees against her chest, her big eyes open and incredulous, Emma sits huddled up at the top of her roof. She had climbed the attic stairs, hoisted herself up onto the beams, removed the shingles in the weakest place, balanced a stool on a table, and, for a brief moment, thought: I could hang myself.
The apparatus was perfect, easily identifiable, as readable as a pictogram: beam, stool, table. The only thing missing was the rope, but a rope was nothing.
Hang myself, yes, quite easily, to end that which I have no other way of ending. Hang myself to punish myself (with these words, blood rushes to her stomach, her head, the trance of relief, the waltz of vanquished guilt), mmm, how good it would feel to be a good girl. But it wouldn’t last. The punishment wouldn’t know how to wash away insults or make stains disappear. Emma would like to be less grandiose, more honest, surrender more openly to remorse; she can’t manage it. In spite of everything, in spite of her shame and her disgust with herself, she holds on to a certain resilience, a vivacity that frightens her.
After all, wouldn’t it be just as easy to not climb up, to let the water rise, trap her, engulf her? She pictures her self-portrait: Lady Macbeth tinted with Ophelia. It’s right. It’s perfect. The joy her brain brings her is limitless. Lady Macbeth and Ophelia in the same body, the wife and the virgin, the criminal and the suicidal, the Machiavellian and the wide-eyed girl.
She’s going to save herself. Save her skin to save her head. She knows it’s not necessary to take refuge on the roof. The water has risen only a few feet inside the house. But how can she resist the image: woman crouching on the rooftop, vigilant crow, heroine. Her desire to live is such that she prefers to take all precautions, at the risk of adopting the most grotesque poses, of making a show of it.
And Tristan?
Tristan has to start by changing his name to something less triste. He should be called Glad.
Why am I so cheerful? Emma wonders. Why am I so stupid?
It’s because of the storm. Storms are entertaining, with the lightning, the thunder, all this water falling, the river going crazy, the power lines crashing down, the mud getting everywhere, the cars floating like toys, the black night like the heart of a forest, the explosions, the water adopting the sky’s usual texture—it will never stop.
I’ve always suffered from delusions of grandeur, Emma says to herself. In Noah’s time, God triggered the catastrophe to punish all of humanity; today, he’s taking the trouble to chastise me, no one but me, a small, unique specimen. Granted, the storm is only local, but st
ill. There will be flooding, injuries, maybe even drownings.
The elation suddenly ends. Pain replaces it. Sorrow.
Emma starts to cry. For a second, the rain ceases, the wind calms down. The tears burn her face. She shudders. From afar—but how can she hear anything coming from that far away, and in spite of the roaring waters?—she perceives the screams of a tiny child.
31
Farnèse, the Tightrope Walker, splits the water, as light as a Gerris, that skating insect who skims across the surface of rivers. He recovers his lost agility, revived by weightlessness. He likes being alone on the rooftops, as before, closer to the sky than the earth, invigorated by the atmosphere, alone to look at the world from on high. But tonight, high and low merge, and for him, losing the ground below means compensation, reconciliation. He has never wanted to tread on the earth, to leave the slightest footprint; he’s always been up high, until the fall. Stop thinking about it. He glides ahead, getting closer, using his feet to push away alder branches as if they were tall grass. Alder trees from the banks of the river, their trunks bathed in mud, their branches tickling and scratching his ankles. He keeps along the riverbed, having found the route once more. The church is on the right, dark and severe, deprived of the smile that appears each night from the incandescent spotlights arranged at the foot of the steeple. They’ve all blown out. Not one light is left. The church has gone back to the dismal outfit it wore the evening it was built. Then city hall goes by, a stucco cube with pretty letters, bloodred on a meringue pediment. Then come the school and the houses, then nothing more, the alders again, poplars, ash trees, and, beyond that—yes, it’s definitely coming from here. Bursting from this black hole, blacker than the metallic night, is the cry he’s been hearing.
A house with a skylight at the point of its gable, far away from everything, isolated; the house at the water’s edge, the old windmill.
Is it possible to be swept along even faster when the wind picks up and agitates the waves, mixed with leaves and debris? Farnèse leaps from one crest to another, his face whipped by twigs, leaves, thorns. He is joyful, without memory. Sometimes, a shape appears out of the dark, narrow frame he has chosen to reach: a white oval, a mauve wing like a turtledove’s. It’s a face, it’s a hand, a hand reaching out. Farnèse seizes it, projected toward the face whose eyes, black pebbles emptied with fear, stare at him.
“Take him. Take the baby. I brought him up here, but if I keep him, I’m going to die. I’m going to drown. Help me. Drown the baby. I won’t say it was you. I can’t do it. I tried. But I’ve been taking care of him for three months. I know him. He depends on me. For you, it’s nothing. I’ll give him to you and you can leave him in the water. I don’t want to die. Drown him. For you, it’s nothing. He won’t realize it. He’ll think he’s going to sleep.”
The mauve hand, the turtledove wing, holds a package out to Farnèse. Farnèse recognizes the cry. This is the cry he swam for.
“Don’t tell anyone what I told you. It’s our secret. I won’t say anything either. It’ll be the river’s fault. Can you? Is that okay?”
Farnèse takes the package, holds it above the water.
“Get out of here,” he orders. “Go in the direction of the current, let it carry you, don’t fight it, float if you can; don’t hold on to any branches, just use your arms to avoid obstacles, don’t try to stop yourself. The faster you go, the faster you’ll be rescued. You’re going to make it. I won’t say anything. We never saw each other. Do what I told you.”
She disappears.
Farnèse doesn’t take the time to watch her float away; he looks over to his right. The child is crying very softly; he is light in Farnèse’s palms, which lift up the child like a baptism.
The sycamore tree with round stumps, the one where the walking path starts at the side of the hill—is it still standing? Farnèse squints, raindrops pecking at his eyeballs, crows’ beaks at a gallows feast. He grasps the package with one hand while paddling with the other; he recognizes the flaky gray and whitish spots of the tree’s bark shining there, just a little farther.
Sometimes the child slips under the water. Farrnèse doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive—he’s not making any more noise—but dead or alive, Farnèse has to save him, so he keeps going. He clutches a fistful of leaves that rips off immediately, is plunged downward, comes back up, catches hold of a branch, climbs up, pulls himself out of the water, the mud, jumps from branch to branch, sees that the waters are still rising, continues his ascent. Now he’s rising into the jumble of leaves that the rain can hardly penetrate.
A strange heat sheltered in the treetops, a refuge.
He sits on a branch, contemplates the water below, a few yards under him, examines his parcel: calm pearl face. Farnèse thinks he sees a nostril quiver. He doesn’t have the courage to know any more. Quickly, he unties the scarf around his neck and uses it to fasten the swaddled body to the largest branch he can find. He makes sure it will hold up, withstand the storm, won’t fall, fly away, get carried off, and he dives. Leaves, leaves, branches, leaves, branches and branches and branches, leaves, branches, mud.
32
Is the earth collapsing? Did he not reinforce the walls enough? Have his instincts deceived him?
A weight comes crashing down on Tristan’s back. In the darkness of the cave, a warm, compact mass cuts off his breath, crushes his ribs. He struggles, tries to breathe, turns over, throws a punch, his fist sinking into a sticky, flexible material. His legs come to his rescue. His heels stomp, strike the ground, helping to brace his torso. He frees himself, punches at the air, feels around, crawls away, escapes.
Immediately, the mass crashes down on him once more. It flattens him. It’s an animal, a bear, a monster. It’s trying to kill him. That’s what he tells himself. Something’s trying to kill me. He rolls over, gets hit in the jaw, hears a joint crack. How can he defend himself without being able to see anything? What good is it to throw blind punches? He receives a few of them, in the head, the stomach, the groin. He’s being attacked; he’s being stoned. He goes down to the ground. He’s being crushed. He loses his breath, no longer knows when to breathe in, when to breathe out. He gasps for air. The mass moves away. Tristan stretches out his arms, draws them back in, grips his own body, as if fighting against himself. His face is squashed against the ground. A weight on his neck. He can’t breathe anymore. Starts to fade. His arms shake; his legs move around, gain their footing, send the beast flying. His lungs welcome the damp air with a cry.
“Stop!” Tristan shouts. “Stop, Dumestre!”
But how does he know it’s Dumestre? It’s too dark for him to understand where the attack came from.
“Dumestre,” he cries. “Help me! Shit, what the hell is this?”
The mass withdraws, moves back, retreats. A laugh bursts out a few inches away.
When Tristan reaches in that direction, in search of some meaning, he’s dealt a fresh punch in the shoulder.
Tristan squats down, huddles in a corner, waits, suppresses the whimper of pain rising unwillingly from his rib cage. And suddenly, he throws himself forward, to defend himself, to kill. He jumps and hits, slaps, punches, head down like a ram; he finds a throat, seizes it, feels the blood pumping under his thumbs, the knee jabbing his stomach, the animal resisting. He loves pressing the carotid artery, squeezing the esophagus, crushing the trachea. Hilarity rises in him, intoxicates him. Never has he felt so strong. Never has he had so much fun.
But abruptly, he lets go.
He thought about the rabbit at an inopportune moment, as though the animal’s life were more important than his. Where is the gamebag?
Silence, panting, hiccups, coughing, wheezing.
“That’s nice, huh?” a sharp, hoarse voice says very close to his face, as though lying on the same pillow.
“Fuck you, Dumestre,” says Tristan while groping around, searching for his bag.
This time, I’m sure I killed the rabbit, he thinks. I didn’t protec
t him. He trusted me. He was counting on me to save him. I made him a promise. If he has survived, everything that went wrong will have been made right.
“I’m not the one who’s fucked,” Dumestre articulates calmly.
His voice is firm, more present, disturbingly gentle.
“The one who’s fucked,” he continues didactically, “is your wife.”
Tristan keeps quiet. He regains his breath, touches his face, wipes the blood from his jaw with the back of his hand.
“All women are,” adds Dumestre. “You don’t know about it. You don’t know anything. You’re nothing but a rookie. You haven’t pushed the shopping cart.”
I want to sleep, Tristan thinks, resting his cheek on the gamebag, finally recovered. It’s nothing. It’s over. My rabbit is dead. Dumestre is delirious. I can’t make head or tail of his story. A delirious bull. I’m going to fall asleep listening to his words, it’ll be like a lullaby. And if he kills me in my sleep, I don’t give a damn. I don’t have the strength. I want to sleep.
“The shopping cart,” Dumestre starts again. “The one you push around while your brats wait at home. You don’t know they’re too little to stay home alone. Did someone tell you? No, no one told you. How were you supposed to know? So there you are, like an idiot, with your cart in the grocery store and the female customers looking at you with pity. They know your wife left you. They can see it right away, thanks to your three-day-old beard, your unironed dress shirt, and then because you don’t know which box to choose from the wall of cereal. They have pity on you, and they’re right, because you’re the cuckold, you’re the ass. Meanwhile, your boys get bored at home all alone—the bitch took the TV. At first, they play with toy trains, Legos, but they’re tired of that, so they decide to try something else, big-boy stuff: bathroom cleaners, kitchen gadgets, scissors, chemicals, knives, solvents, dishwasher fluid, casserole dishes, laundry detergent. They make themselves a snack, set things on fire, swallow their mixture. And you, you’re still at the grocery store, pushing your cart around like an idiot. But you don’t know what it’s like, kid. You don’t have little punks who set things on fire, blind themselves, burn themselves, and destroy your pad. Listen, I’m not complaining! My kids aren’t dead. The ambulance, the firefighters, the insurance company, the police—all that was long ago. Now, they’re strapping young men who are smarter than me. No one’s dead. Now when I go to the grocery store, I bring my wife, the new one, but I stay in the car, in the parking lot. Never again will I touch a shopping cart.
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