“When the star appears, the star that foretells the night,
The shepherdess is alone, alone and weeping with grief.”
Nourse loses patience and barks. Shh! Shh! I shut his muzzle. Everyone stops speaking. They’ve heard us! Should I knock now? There is a knocker, but I prefer to use my knuckles, it sounds less peremptory. Knock. Knock. Nothing. Knock. Knock. Still nothing. I raise the knocker and it falls with a thud. Nourse barks furiously, he’s had enough of this door which obstinately refuses to open. I seize the big handle and turn it to the right, someone on the other side turns it in the opposite direction. It’s just like a Fritz Lang horror film. I let go of the handle and the door creaks open. I say hello to a little girl hardly bigger than three pippins, aged about four, who says “Bollioure” (the little girl’s Bonjour) and laughs. I enter an enormous farm kitchen, everyone looks at me sideways, guardedly, expressionless. Another little girl, absolutely identical to the first, rushes up to me shrieking, giving me another welcoming “Bollioure”.
I lift up this little scrap, give her a big kiss on both cheeks, red and sticky with sugar, and say with forced bonhomie, feeling like death: “Hello everybody! I’m Rachel Henner. This is Nourse. I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but they said you were expecting me.” I hear a raucous “expecting nobody” which comes (you guessed it!) from the throat of the head of the household. Good God! Here is the redoubtable Raboullet! The bear! Why hasn’t he gone to bed, I ask myself ? The answer lies on the table - the depleted remains of a birthday cake and other goodies not yet cleared off. My mouth begins to water. Four candles, still burning adorn the snow-white sugar icing, the sight of which is staggering - where did they get all that food?
Nourse wags his tail like mad, he takes up his stance by the hearth where the thick soup is still simmering, its ladle standing upright in the middle, vibrating to and fro as the bubbles rise to the surface. I can’t resist any longer. I say, angrily this time, to force a reaction:
“Nourse and I are very hungry. We haven’t had anything to eat since this morning”. All spirit leaves me. To be hungry, yet to have displayed in front of me the inaccessible remains of a banquet…is pure Chinese torture. A stomach cramp seizes me. I stiffen. At Savignole, the children are crying; I can hear their moan. Can You? Time is standing horribly still. No one moves. They continue to stare at me. I can’t bear this dumb questioning. Madame Raboullet, for I guess it is she, shows the ghost of a smile which disappears immediately, as if she were afraid of showing kindness. I smile back at her and fix my eyes on her to keep my dignity well bruised by now. Madame is stout, dressed in black, with a linen apron covering her from the waist down and which she has tied over her stomach. It stands out as though she were pregnant. Might she be? Probably not, she just looks like so many women of the kind I have had time to observe since my arrival in the Auvergne. Twice a week they arrive at Clermont by horsecart to sell their ware on the market place. These days, because of the food restrictions, the edibles are only fruit; melons, plums, peaches, the early yield of summer grapes. Next to the fruit lay displayed rough looking spoons, knives, forks in steel made by their men folk in the garden shed; it is an ancient craft practiced in the mountainous part of the Auvergne. It allows the families to feed and clothe the children during the long winter months. Alas, it has never been a lucrative business because of the proximity of the famous steel works at St Etienne. It breaks my heart to see them packing up the unsold silverware at the end of the day. No one seems interested. I bought far too many of them.
I can read much kindness in Madame Raboullet’s eyes. Resigned as well as composed, she seems to have weathered many domestic storms. The deep wrinkles in her face tell a story of hard work, having accepted the alcoholism of her men as an inevitable curse she shares with her neighbouring womenfolk. Two of the older sons seem already to be going their father’s way… not difficult to guess, looking at them right now…I don’t give her more than forty-five. She might even be younger. For me she is beautiful.
After glancing furtively at Raboullet, she decides to offer me a chair, one that is a long way from the table. I sit down and thank her, explaining: “Colonel Gérard came with me as far as your house, he…”
“Don’t know him! “ shouts the brute.
“He knows you!” I retort.
“Colonel who, tha’ says?”
“GERARD!” I yell. I’m shaking with anger. Nourse gets on his feet, ready to attack on my command.
“Don’t know him. Get out, you and your tyke! Out I say!” Half slumped on the table, his elbows spread, roaring drunk, the bear makes a superhuman effort to raise his head. His face is puffy, fiery red, unshaven, his eyelids half closed over black eyes which strip me of my clothes. I see my naked body reflected in his eyes. (I had jumped up at once when he had ordered me out).Standing now in the middle of the room, terribly embarrassed, I appeal to the Raboullet family. The three sons and two daughters of squire Raboullet look at their father like travellers scrutinizing a stormy sky. Grandmother is asleep, or pretending to be, her mouth open, showing two front teeth, one pointing up, one down. Madame turns her back on me, and I think I know why. Raboullet coughs fit to rend his soul (if he has one) spits, coughs, spits again. The noises he makes are dreadful; they terrify Nourse who has left the hearth to lie at my feet, showing solidarity, having given up pleading with Madame.
The horrible man is thick-set, heavily built, I can only see the top half of his body, but I guess he is rather short, his arms are very muscular and he has the hands of a Goliath. Hairy into the bargain! I am beginning to suffocate in my winter sports gear but I daren’t take off my fur in case the gesture is misinterpreted. I am still on my feet, losing all sense of knowing what to do next…
“Perhaps we could get the lass summat to eat?” ventures poor Madame.
He doesn’t seem to have heard. He calls his twins who jump on to his knees. He becomes almost human, the atmosphere softens a little, the innocence of these two little girls wins over the company; after all, it’s their party, I’m a spoil-sport…But this is war, didn’t you know? War? No sign of it here. Don’t know what you’re talking about. A tragic mute dialogue I hear inside my head for the first time, and it hurts. I am thinking: if I were in this room, at this hour, with the little Jewish children now starving at Savignole, would Raboullet shout at them “Get out” and perhaps threaten them with the whip hanging in the wall just next to me? Would he? How deep should one dig to find some human vitals in this man?
After planting several sonorous kisses on the twins’ cheeks covered in icing sugar, he orders: “Right! Off to bed, my Pitchounettes” and accompanies the words with a friendly slap on their backsides. Although very excited, the twins know better than to argue with their father. They disappear immediately with their older sister.
“Gorgeous, eh?” he says. Is he talking to me? Just in case I reply: “Yes, adorable”. Raboullet smiles, or rather grimaces, seizes the long neck bottle of marc, drinks a glassful of this rot-gut and slumps back.
Perhaps he’s dead. Good. At least I’ll get something for my dog and myself. Wrong! He’s breathing!
“We’re off to bed” says one of the sons. His brothers follow him as if they’d been waiting a long time for this moment. They say “bonne nuit” almost imperceptibly without quite looking at me. I say: “Bonne nuit. Dormez bien! ”
Silence falls again. It lasts for ages. I have decided to sit down, I don’t quite know why. The ladle in the pot continues its belly dance to the bubbling of the soup which rises and falls like the sea in a heavy swell. This is too much for Nourse who looks at me with pitiful questioning eyes. He asks “why are these creatures doing this to me?”
Madame begins to clear the table, giving me a look of helplessness as she shrugs her shoulders. The eldest daughter, a handsome girl with red hair, comes back into the kitchen, gets grandmother out of her chair and helps her upstairs, then reappears a few minutes later to give her mother and her younger sis
ter a hand with the washing up. These rituals remind me of the famous ballet Joos with their dancers moving staccato fashion, in their black tuxedos, round and on top of “The Green Table”, wearing death masks, declaring war in unison…gesticulating convincingly with their white gloved hands…with no words spoken.
In Raboullet’s kitchen the dancers are mimicking secular domestic life round an oak table wearing masks too; masks with drooping eyes, tight lips, rough looking red cheeks, oblivious of a war conducted on their behalf by soulless politicians prancing behind closed doors round a green table, shaking hands in white gloves, after signing …
The man who is dead drunk but alas not dead, tries to raise his head, heavy as lead, his puffed eyelids open enough to express surprise at seeing me still occupying the stage. Look out! He’s about to speak:
“That’s a German, right?”
I wasn’t expecting this. I reply, stupidly: “Who? Me?”
“Aye. Thee.”
“No. Why do you say that?”
“Alsatian then, like yon tyke.”
“I am a Parisian, Monsieur Raboullet, if you must know!” “Ha! Thy dog an’ all?”
“No. He’s an Alsatian.”
Raboullet starts to giggle like an idiot. I hate him.
“Ha! Ha! German, tha’s what I said!”
“No. Alsatian,” I insist.
“Makes no odds!”
“Alsatian is not German, Monsieur Raboullet!”
“Tis now” he throws at me, looking straight into my eyes for the first time. It is an analytical look. A shrewd one too.
I say: “Not for long, Monsieur Raboullet.”
“Not for long says you, says you!” and after another coughing fit barks out: “Papers!”
I take my identity card from the pocket of my trousers and throw it on the table; it ends up under his nose. He tries to read it without success because he’s too drunk. He makes a sign to his daughter who glances at it and says:
“It’s all right.”
“What’s all right, damn it?”
“It’s Mamzelle Henner, Paris, it’s stamped on the card”. As a reply he growls like an animal. I take back my card and say: “Now that you know, can you put me up for the night?” No reply. I am losing my temper:
“I can’t very well sleep outside in the snow, can I ? I’ll pay you for it.” This remark does not please him. He answers angrily: “Don’t need your brass. Bugger off, right? Go and sleep in t’mistle. Tomorrow, off !”
“Raboullet!” cries Madame.
“Shut thi gob, woman!”
He turns towards me with some difficulty, and in his croaking voice orders: “Out, or I’ll bray thee! “ He accompanies these words with a fly-swatting gesture. It’s all the old soak can manage.
I leave the room to go outside into the freezing darkness. I feel as deprived as the milkmaid in Lafontaine’s famous fable with her overturned milk can. I can’t help shouting, with tears now flowing: “Farewell soup! Bread, Cake! Cheese! Wine!” and then I start laughing like an idiot. Madame, who has followed me out after putting on an immense woolen shawl over her shoulders looks at me perplexed. I re-assure her: “Don’t worry, Madame Raboullet, it’s the reaction!”
“Oy, oy (an Auvergnat way of saying Oh!), don’t blame him too hard, it’s the war, you see. He’s not himself since the war…Oy, oy, what a wretched business!”
Like two little girls who have just been spanked, we walk, resigned, towards the cowshed. Fortunately for both of us it isn’t far and we arrive at an impressively huge double door. Madame pushes one side which hasn’t been oiled for hundred of years, or so it seems to me, and we are welcomed by the lowing of the cows, one or two even get up and greet us with a cataract of steaming urine. It is a warm reception all the same, ‘though Nourse doesn’t appreciate it; he growls and becomes agitated. Madame lights a candle which she puts upon a stool and replaces the box of matches in her pocket (matches being hard to come by).
“I put new straw this morning, there, look, it’s nice and warm here…there…you’ll sleep well, Mamzelle.’
She has taken down a rug hanging on a nail, which makes me think that other lost souls must have slept here before me.
Madame is weary, poor thing, she is dropping with fatigue. I feel guilty. I can’t find the words. Instead of leaving me to my fate she stands there; I can see she wants to talk. I take her hands in mine, her hands rough and warm. Mother’s hands.
“Raboullet wasn’t always like that,” she tells me.
“I know” I say with all my heart. I understand her, I understand this heavy sadness which does not leave her.
“Oy, oy,” (with a sigh), “ he has worries…The Boche, you see, they come and taunt him.”
“How do you mean?” I ask, suddenly worried about my future contacts with Raboullet.
“They want to commandeer his ham and cheese, think of it!”
“You mean the Boche come to your house?”
“Aye, sometimes of a sudden, no warning! They are everywhere. They want ham. He sells them only cheese, says he has no meat to sell. So they’ll look no further, but at every visit it’s the same; they say they’ll come back. Good job he’s summat hidden our reserves! I didn’t ought to tell you…He’s blocked up one of his cellars… I trust you, Mamzelle. Don’t tell him I told you! He’d kill me!”
I hug my new friend (mother) and ask her to tell me more about her man. She describes a well-educated Raboullet. “He used to read piles of books before, the bed-room’s full of them”. A Raboullet who freely gave advice and still does, when sober, to “the folks round about”; a Raboullet who knows a bit about medicine. - “He helps women to have babies when the doctor’s not there”; a Raboullet who knows the law; who reconciles peasants with lawsuits against each other; a Raboullet who writes letters for “folks ‘as don’t know how to read and write. He’s very clever, you see, Mamzelle, nobody like him for miles about.” She tells me all this nostalgically, with tears she has learnt long ago to swallow. She is proud, you see, like my Moska was.
I kiss her, warming to her by the minute, trying to think of a way to help her and can’t think of one right now. She is leaving, promising to bring us something to eat, Nourse and me, now that her old man has gone to bed. “Shan’t be long,” she says, as she closes the doors.
The flickering light of my candle hasn’t the strength to resist the draught the doors make as they close, and my joy at finding friendship is extinguished, too. I’m overcome once more by the thought of my unhappy situation and obsessed by the complex Raboullet conundrum. I try to banish his drunken image. Other images take its place. The cowshed, in its total darkness, becomes a concentration camp. Tomorrow I’ll be shot, together with Visachel, our comrades at the university and all those who were waiting to know their fate in the snow. The snow! It is outside, it belongs for ever to the vast landscape of my memories, it will stay unsullied, untrammelled by men and women whose ephemeral destiny has passed over it with a song. Sitting on the fresh straw I wait patiently for the return of my benefactress. Suddenly Nourse gets to his feet and barks. I presume he is angry with the cows for making the noises that cows do make and to which he is not accustomed. I grab him by the collar. At the same moment the feeble light of a torch approaches, trembling, hesitating, nearer and nearer. I see a human form, I say “Who’s there?” Nothing. I shout “Answer nom de Dieu!” Still nothing. I am seized by an uncontrollable fear, I scream loud enough to frighten myself: “Stay where you are or I’ll set my dog on you!” The man, for it is a man, stops, I make an immense effort to see through the darkness. A gorilla-like creature is staring at me intently, his eyes are like fire, his chest is covered with hair matted with something sticky and shiny, like tar (or is it blood, I can’t see anything very well except his eyes), I say something like “Bon sang, what do you want”. I don’t wait for the reply. I pull open one of the big doors with all my remaining strength and run out into the freezing darkness, seizing my dog by his collar an
d running to the farmhouse, hoping Raboullet is in bed as his wife said he would be. Hoping!
I give a big thump against the door. Madame opens it, surprised to see me shaking with anger whilst she is so calm holding the ladle in her hand in the act of preparing my meal as she had promised. No Raboullet in sight, thank God for that!
“What’s the matter?” she asks simply, ladle in one hand. Apologizing for my bull-like entry into her kitchen, I tell her as well as I can about the gorilla in the cowshed. She listens, impassive, faintly smiling. She dips the ladle into the steaming soup and fills a large bowl.
And she starts explaining to me the presence of the gorilla-man in the cowshed as she fills a bowl for my salivating dog. She interrupts her story to talk to my dog.
She says he has to wait a little longer for his soup to cool. Nourse is not in a talking mood; he jumps on her, rips her apron, “Ca va! Ca va!” she says to calm him down, lifting the bowl just high enough to avoid a catastrophe she decides to give in and puts the bowl down on the kitchen floor.
While Nourse devours his dinner, burning his mouth, spitting some blood, Madame Raboullet resumes her gorilla story: Raboullet employs Spanish farm labourers because they cost less than French ones. He pays them nothing, instead he gives them a roof over their head (a dilapidated bothy) and their food. “They are content with their lot, she says. Only… they fight each other with knives when they are drunk.”
Still not quite satisfied with the explanation, I feel obliged to ask: “But why do they sleep in the cowshed when they’ve got their own shelter?”
“They shouldn’t” she replies, “but in winter the mistle is warm, that’s where they drink and fight…they sleep it off, then at dawn they scamper so’s the boss won’t find out, or else…there’d be more bloodshed. Poor Mamzelle, I didn’t know them Spaniards were in the mistle.”
A Packhorse Called Rachel Page 5