Rivers

by Martin Michael Driessen

Now everything was as it had been.

  Pierre dragged himself back across the river and up the bank to where he’d left his shoes. He moved slowly but deliberately and knew that despite the pain he would be able to reach his house. On one foot, and with the help of his makeshift crutch, he hobbled through the woods.

  The rain let up, and a white mist rose skyward, like incense from an abandoned altar. It was still oppressively hot.

  Corentin Berthou approached along the far side. Now and then he stopped to inspect a spot in the grass. The other fox traps, Pierre thought, he’s laid out a whole row of them, just along the riverbank. Then he bent over and picked up what were surely lapwing eggs and carefully placed them in the pocket of his wide-cut coat. Never before had Pierre hated anyone as much as he did Corentin Berthou at that moment.

  At home, he swathed his leg and lay down on his bed. He did not want to call a doctor. On the fourth day, his jaw, and then the rest of his body, started to stiffen. His face froze in a grimace of agony, and his back muscles were so completely cramped that his body was bent into a backward arch. It was tetanus.

  He suffered more than he ever imagined being able to endure, but still he refused to call for a doctor. It was his pain. It was retribution for his sins, and that was nobody’s business but his own.

  Besides, he did not trust the village doctor, who, after all, would offhandedly give him unasked-for updates on Adèle’s childlessness. Never, never must Berthou find out that he had caught him out.

  He survived, but his leg had to be amputated below the knee. Pierre never again participated in the Quatorze-Juillet parade. His peg leg was not worthy of admiration, like those of his war comrades.

  The highlight of the liturgical calendar was the grand procession in Rennes during the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the third Friday after Pentecost.

  Corentin and Adèle Berthou took part every year. He was one of the men who carried the Holy Madonna, and she joined other prominent women at the head of the procession, a palm frond in her hands.

  It was the custom that effigies of the Virgin Mary would be brought to the city from the churches in the surrounding parishes and assembled at around noon on the Place Saint Etienne, where they were placed in a circle, on tables covered in richly embroidered velvet fabric; these were also carried from the individual villages, which was a laborious and thankless job for the men and boys lower down the social ladder. They gave the procession something clownish in the way they shuffled, the draperies obscuring much of their view, behind the Mother of God, like the back halves of devout donkeys.

  The men fortified themselves with an aperitif at the cafés on the periphery of Place Saint Etienne, and the women sought the coolness of the benches and the edge of the fountain in the shadow of the sycamores.

  Adèle accepted a glass of lemonade a girl brought her, and closed her eyes. She did not feel well, and the cathedral was still half an hour’s walk through the crowded streets of Rennes; the band of her large lace cap dug into her forehead, and her stiff corset was so tight that she was unable to sweat out the heat. Just a few more hours and it would be over. She mustn’t show any weakness; it was an honor to lead the procession.

  She half opened her eyes, so as not to lose the world entirely, and the girl’s dark skirt made way for a view of her husband, who stood outside Café Thiers, holding a glass of pastis.

  Although his family came from Brest, he wore the traditional attire of her native region, with a wide-brimmed hat and a sash tied low on the hips. Anyone who saw his reddish-blond hair and perpetual smile would think him a man of the world, someone who knew how to get along with people. Only she knew his true colors, because she was married to him.

  It vexed her that he did not seem to age. He was still slim. Life had left no traces on his face.

  She desperately longed to finally become old and unattractive, and thus be spared his lust. But nature was slow to heed her wishes. She had put on some weight recently, her face was a bit rounder, but she was still very much the woman she no longer wished to be.

  He still had her, if he wasn’t too drunk, and took pleasure in telling her he did so only because it was his marital duty, that there were so many young girls he could have, but that this was part of the bargain, even if you only married for money.

  Perhaps he couldn’t do anything about it. That was the best thing she could say about him. And if you can’t say anything good about your husband, you better not say anything at all. Ever.

  Adèle absently swept the cobblestones between her feet with the palm frond, and looked back up.

  The five Madonnas were gathered around her. They only saw one another once a year, at this spot across from Café Thiers. They gazed serenely, each in harmony with her own proportion, their holy heads standing out against the blue sky.

  The Madonna of Rennes was immense and required eight bearers. She rose up from an artfully constructed decor of blue pleats spangled with countless stars, as stately and rigid as a long-reigning monarch.

  It suddenly seemed to Adèle that the Madonnas were in conversation, as if on this day, once a year, they discussed the fortunes of the world, while the men who had borne them here, and would soon carry them to the cathedral, drank pastis.

  What might they say to one another, that rustic wooden Madonna there and that absurdly tenderhearted one next to her, who had the misfortune to have been created by a lesser artist, and the white, neoclassical one from the basilica in Pacé, who always gave the impression of considering herself too good for this company, and her own dearest Mother of God, the pregnant one from the parish chapel of Noyal, who resembled a Breton peasant girl?

  She heard a shout and saw men point up; Berthou came running from the café and now stood in the middle of the square with outstretched arms, pastis in hand, and cried out: “Vive la France.”

  Above the Madonnas, a large formation of bombers flew eastward, toward Germany, a spectacle they’d seen practically every day since Liberation. The airplanes passed at such a height that they were inaudible, making her husband’s hollering all the more strident.

  “Allez, les Américains! To Berlin! To Berlin!”

  There was no telling if her husband, like old Louis Renault, would be accused of treason and arrested, for it was common knowledge that as a shareholder he had collaborated. It was a disgrace her family would never live down.

  Never had she despised anything or anyone as much as this charlatan, who couldn’t plow a straight furrow but posed as a gentleman farmer, who pretended to be a man but was nothing but a depraved little boy.

  He had been of use to her in her struggle against the Corbés, but no woman should have to pay such a price, even for her worst transgressions.

  “Let him die before me,” she prayed to the stoic heads of the five Virgin Marys. She had missed her period for the first time ever, a few months in a row now, and perhaps she could look forward to a spell of peace. “Grant me old age without him,” she prayed, “and I promise . . .”

  All of a sudden it seemed—possibly because of the wispy white clouds passing behind her halo—as though the pregnant Madonna of Noyal leaned forward over her. Against the bright background, she was a black silhouette and looked like a leaning tree trunk that might fall over and crush her. Adèle closed her eyes to shut out the optical illusion, and felt herself become queasy.

  She was forty-eight years old, and it could hardly be possible, but she knew that it was so.

  She lay her hands on her belly, and her chin sank to her chest. “Help me,” she whispered.

  The girl who had brought the lemonade came back and bent over her, one hand on the plaster foot of the Madonna, who was dressed in the same costume as she.

  “Can I do anything for you, madame?” she asked, concerned.

  “No,” Adèle replied curtly.

  Berthou ambled back to the café, his index finger raised to lend credence to some loose prophecy. She saw how dismissive the other men reacted, but this was no comfort to he
r, not any longer.

  The girl was named Marie-France, and before Berthou disappeared behind bars for high treason, he predicted that a woman who bore a child at such an abnormally advanced age would not glean much pleasure from it.

  And all signs pointed to him being right. Marie-France had inherited his red hair and pale complexion, and was an unlovable child: weak, sickly, ungrateful.

  Perhaps it was out of desperation that Adèle accepted Solomon’s invitation, perhaps it was the need to defend her own interests, now that her husband was behind bars and deemed legally unfit. It could also be that, so much having gone wrong in her life, she was inclined to try something new in the hope that something good might come of it.

  But curiosity also played a role: she had not seen Eduard Solomon since he’d fled to America at the outset of the war.

  Why Pierre accepted the invitation, he didn’t really know himself. He was hardly feeling conciliatory, now even less than ever. Nor was there anything noble about it—that his enemy now faced him herself, without her husband at her side, did not mollify him a bit. Maybe he hoped to finally stand face-to-face with this proud woman without her taking cover behind Berthou’s clout. He felt stronger now that his adversary was named Chrétien, the way it had always been.

  And there was another reason to accept the invitation: Eduard Solomon was a war hero who had landed on Utah Beach with the Second Division of the Free French Forces and had taken part in the liberation of Paris.

  Pierre and Adèle sat across from each other at either end of the massive desk in the solicitor’s office—the first time in half of a century that a Corbé and a Chrétien occupied the same space that was not a courtroom.

  They avoided each other’s glance until Eduard, seated between them at his desk, read out the various complaints and accusations from both sides, which they had drawn up at his request. He did this in a calm tone of voice, unemotionally, like a family doctor reading through an old dossier. The previous September there had been an incident whereby Corbé’s goats were said to have gnawed the bark off some fruit trees the Chrétiens had planted in their meadow; earlier that summer, a Chrétien cow had died of colic, because Pierre Corbé had refused to let the veterinarian onto his land, etcetera.

  Adèle and Pierre listened dispassionately to the reading and only shot a glance across the desk when they thought the other one wasn’t looking.

  He’s a bitter old man, she thought to herself, who has to fend for himself entirely. A solitary bachelor, half-invalid, and poor. Scarred by that joyless religion of his. At least I have a child, even if it’s only a daughter. And we’re rich. Just imagine allowing an animal to die simply because you think you have the power to do so.

  She’s desperately unhappy, he thought to himself, despite that feigned dignity. Is she not ashamed, the wife of a traitor, to sit here and listen to Maître Solomon, a decorated war hero with the tricolor behind him and the Croix de Lorraine on his lapel, sum up her misdeeds? Plant fruit trees where you know they’re bound to be gnawed on, only to claim damages after the fact. Devious papist ways.

  Even without eye contact, each was so involved with the other that they only really started listening when Solomon got to the crux of the matter: his assessment that the bad blood between the two families boiled down to the fact that each felt disadvantaged by the varying course of the river, which first took land away from one party and then from the other. Was this correct?

  Yes, Pierre said, since day one, the creek that marked the boundary ate into his land, and expanded that of the Chrétiens. This had specifically been the case in the years 1851, 1894, and 1919, and, to a lesser degree, more or less yearly.

  Indeed, Adèle confirmed, the river, which formed the boundary, appeared to be biased. In 1816, 1862, 1921, and 1931, it gave nearly three quarters of the valley to the Corbés. And the aerial photographs she had had taken this year proved that the river once again meandered to the east, taking land from her.

  “Madame Chrétien, Monsieur Corbé,” Solomon said. “The river has flowed through this valley since the Pleistocene, and over the centuries—nay, millennia!—its course has, on average, barely changed. It was there before Luther and Calvin, yes, even before Jesus Christ. It was there even before the patriarch Abraham. And yet you insist—”

  “The photographs prove it,” said Adèle. “And they were taken from above, from an airplane.”

  “Say what you like, maître,” was Pierre’s reply. “The Chrétiens have profited more than we have. For centuries.”

  “If that’s how you both feel,” Eduard said, “then I’m prepared to offer you a solution. Do you want to hear it?”

  Pierre and Adèle looked at each other for the first time. Neither showed their hand; what each saw, they already knew. It reminded Pierre of the looks that, as a prisoner of war, he’d exchanged with the guards. It was, in effect, nothing personal.

  “I do,” said Adèle, at once painfully aware of her inopportune choice of words.

  “I’m listening,” said Pierre.

  Eduard opened a drawer and took out a thin, old-fashioned portfolio fastened with slender ribbons. “May I begin with a personal remark?” he asked, and then continued without waiting for an answer. “I drew this up thirty years ago. Shortly after the Great War, when we all hoped we would be spared anything like it again forever. That, as we know, was not to be. Now we are recovering from a new world war, one that has wounded France profoundly. No one knows this better than you do, madame. Even back then, as a young man, I thought, Surely it must be possible to resolve a private conflict—all things considered, an irrational and unnecessary one—such as yours. Without bloodshed, without animosity, without loss of face, without anyone feeling shortchanged. And I can still present this solution to you, if you wish.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I do,” Pierre declared at last, with a wry smile.

  “I’m listening,” said Adèle.

  “You exchange your land,” Solomon said.

  Everything would stay as it was, except that the western half of the valley would from then on belong to Chrétien, and the eastern half to Corbé. That way no one would henceforth ever have cause to protest the vicissitudes of nature.

  Solomon had spoken, and now he waited.

  Perhaps coveting the land across the river weighed heavier than relinquishing what they had possessed all their lives, and both Pierre and Adèle were tired of the struggle, the lawsuits, the feuding.

  But something else might also have played a role: their common memory of a childhood dream in which they jumped back and forth over the creek, and for a brief moment there was no boundary at all.

  They looked at each other. It was not a smile—Adèle never smiled—but something seemed to change, ever so slightly, around the corners of her mouth. Perhaps it was the way the light fell.

  Pierre shrugged. “But I’m not paying any solicitor fees.”

  “That won’t be necessary. Madame Chrétien, Monsieur Corbé, I want to bring this protracted case, with which my father and my grandfather wrestled in vain, to a satisfactory close once and for all before I retire. It is, if you will, a personal mission. I shall not levy any fees.”

  They signed the contract.

  His tractor was stuck, sunk to above its axles in the mire in the bend of the river. I’ll never learn, Pierre thought, I shouldn’t have brought this thing so far down. He stubbornly attempted to extricate himself, but now the tractor would not even start. He had driven off, fully confident that the new machine would be able to stand up to anything. Apparently it could not. Modernity manifested itself in the gasping, ever-weakening gurgle of the exhausted starter motor. It couldn’t be an empty fuel tank—he had topped it up from the rusty jerrycan he’d brought along as a reserve. The machine had been given everything it needed, and still it refused to budge. He would have to fetch his horses from the stable to pull the tractor out of the mud.

  He did not look forward to going home on foot. Tha
t prosthetic leg made it difficult to walk. This was why he brought his hunting rifle with him each workday, as well as the canvas pouch he had used ever since the Great War to carry his bread, sausage, and wine, and ascended the stony hillock in the meadow, where the chapel of Saint Godeberta had once stood, to take his midday break.

  It was still strange to survey, from this side of the river, the land that used to be his. He knew every square meter of it, every bush and every branch, just as by now he knew every bush and branch on this side. At times it looked something like the Promised Land, even though he had willingly given it up for what he now possessed. That land swap hadn’t made much difference after all; the meadows and woods on this side were just the same. In that respect, he couldn’t fault Maître Solomon. And now he understood that the river, seen from this perspective, did not disadvantage either party. This was no longer an issue, ever since Solomon had emigrated to the United States to enjoy his golden years in Florida. He could certainly afford it. Rumor had it that the sale of the villa in Lorient alone had brought in more than half a million francs.

  But no, it hadn’t gotten any better. He snapped open his pocketknife and cut thin slices of sausage on his thigh. His sheep, which had gathered around him as they grazed, looked on stupidly.

  Three Mirages in formation screamed over the valley, and Pierre waited indifferently for the dull boom that would follow when they broke the sound barrier. As long as his tractor did not work, he had little respect for modern technology.

  That Corentin Berthou, recently released from jail, had last week denied him the hunting spoils that were rightfully his—the doe he had shot on his land had died on the opposite bank, just one step from the water—was a new declaration of war.

  Even though the other side was now another, nothing had changed.

  He ruefully observed the hunting parties on the far bank, the way an exiled monarch is forced to watch his former subjects slaughtered. Berthou organized drive hunts. He and his guests were delivered by limousine to the end of the paved road that Corbé himself had built. Their salvo brought down a hundred partridges in a single morning. Wild boars, hares, and lapwings—even the livestock, it seemed—now took cover on his side of the valley.