A Packhorse Called Rachel

by Marcelle Kellermann

  The loaf passes from hand to hand, carved up by pocket knives, leaving behind a dusting of fine white flour on the chests of the carvers. Raboullet cuts a bigger piece than the others and puts it in front of me: “Better put some flesh back on you, lass!” I find the protective tone touching, and not in the least irritating as it could have been. The men pour the milky coffee into the bowls, adding molasses to it instead of sugar.

  When the goat cream cheese comes round to me I discover with horror that it is crawling with tiny maggots. Raboullet bursts out laughing at the sight of my grimace.

  “Don’t turn thy nose up like that! It’s the maggots that make it tasty, isn’t that so, lads?”

  The ‘Aye’ that they feel obliged to say in response makes my blood run cold. I glance at the “lads” and see maggots crawling along moustaches, down beards, across unshaven cheeks; I feel sick. Was this a conspiracy? I refuse point blank to put that crawling cheese into my mouth. Raboullet’s coarse snigger finds no echo. The family does not laugh, nor even smile. No one finds it funny. The lads make a sort of grimace as they watch their boss, as if they agree with him for once. That couldn’t happen often.

  My agony doesn’t end there; Nourse was busily wolfing down that awful cheese. How was I going to get rid of his maggots? Where could I get worm tablets for him? And when? And was it proper for me to worry, when more important matters…

  At that very moment nothing, absolutely nothing seemed more urgent to me than finding a way of getting some worm tablets for my dog. The war, the bothy, the Maquis at Savignole, my mission (sorry if this word creeps up again), Visachel, Baumgartner and the others…each and every one had vanished at a stroke. A relief you might say, but no, not a bit, I felt instead shame. The protagonists of the Last Judgment on the 2nd of February were marching in front of me in single file, expressionless, already dead.

  Suddenly old Raboullet bangs on the table:

  “What about the fandangos?” (This was a word he used to taunt the

  Spaniards.)’ “Where are they hiding?” A young labourer says

  “Dunno”, another “Think they’re chopping wood.” At which Raboullet declares: “I’ll warm ‘em, and they won’t need no wood!” He gets

  up, takes down his whip from the nail on the wall, puts it on the table,

  sits down again and says “Get on lads, get going! It’s late!”

  The men get up, slowly, chewing their last mouthful.

  It was now half past seven. It was still dark, and I still didn’t know whether Raboullet was going to let me have his bothy. I gave myself a time limit: in half an hour, no longer, I must know. At eight o’clock. At day break. Yes.

  How naive can you get!…

  A peasant from the Auvergne won’t be hurried, that’s a fact, folks! If you try, he shies, you can’t get anything out of him; the tempo of his life, so different from ours, conforms only to the movement of the sun and never runs ahead of it. When the sun sets beyond the great ridge of the mountains, although it still colours the sky and the summits with it’s aureate glow, men and beasts go back to the fold. It’s time to rest. Only the woman folk go on with their labour commensurable with that of the oxen.

  When the “lads” had gone Raboullet got up, took his whip and put it under his arm, indicating that I should follow him but without uttering a word. When we got to the door he said “Your tyke stops here. Don’t want dogs in my bothys, they sniff at owt … it’s not clean. Got it?”

  His bothys? Was he going to lead me to his hidden treasures? Or had he something else in mind? I wanted so desperately to trust him while I was certain he didn’t trust me yet. A fox doesn’t trust anyone, an Auvergnat fox even less. I hesitated to follow him, unable to invent a pretext to stay, remembering what the colonel had said about his good side, yet how imperative it was for me to “negotiate” with him in the morning. The morning it was now, cold and sunny, the sunrays filtering through the large kitchen window.

  Madame Raboullet got hold of Nourse’s collar, he was pulling so hard to follow me that he dragged her forward some inches. I decided to follow my “master” outside. Indeed I had no choice in the matter.

  We walked along in silence. Raboullet had only one idea in his head, to find the “fandangos” and give them a good hiding. He found them. There they were, chopping wood, apparently unaware of the presence of their boss… two handsome fellows, sunburnt and with rich hair the colour of jet. What happened next horrified me. Raboullet rushed at them and hit them both impartially, without bothering to enquire which was the guilty one if guilt is the right word. I turned my back on this mediaeval scene, sickened to the depths of my soul.

  When Raboullet re-joined me I couldn’t help expressing my indignation. I holler: “They are not beasts you know!” came out before I could get control of myself. “They are human beings, like you and me…”.

  I turned away with rage in my heart. He ran after me, seized my arm whilst I was running, forced me to stop and said: “Now you listen to me, and listen well. A townie like you hath no idea of what its like up here…These fandangos are like beasts. When they’re drunk they’re dangerous…wild…got my women to think of…they’d rape them if they could. One of them tried to. Adèle had the presence of mind to kick him where it hurts”. Raboullet shows me the place where-it-hurts in case a “virgin” like me wouldn’t know where it is!

  Heated by the wine he had already downed before breakfast and which is working its way up, he says much more. I try not to listen. All I remember at this hour is his concluding line which is still resonating in my head after so many years: “Don’t you ever compare my people with that lot. Sub-human, they are, and Spaniards in the bargain, see?”

  Heard that one before? I mean, the Nazi (Untermenschen) concept? Raboullet’s tirade was too much to bear, but I kept stumm. The half hour I had given myself in which to mention the bothy had passed. I gave myself a reprieve. But I refused to walk with him any further.

  I made my way back to the farmhouse to fetch my dog. Madame did not ask any question. She looked at me and knew.

  I head for Murol to find some sort of accommodation for the night. Time and space are needed now to forget about political philosophy, to reconcile myself with the idea that after all, Raboullet is a human being, that he’s got a brain and a heart. A matter of negotiating in the morning… again…to-morrow…another day…

  8.

  Bacchus’ Temple.

  I stayed at an inn near Murol, situated further down in the valley. Early in the morning I left with my dog, my skis and my miserable empty rucksack in the direction of Raboullet’s farmhouse, asking the landlady to look after my belongings until my return. I had paid her the night before; she was still asleep when I left. It was freezing outside. And dark. Not quite, though; a wan light shed by the moon cast sprawling shadows on the snowy surfaces. Every which way I looked there was a kind of desolation which gripped the soul and made me wonder whether I ought to go home…Home? Where was it? Did I have one? As usual, Nature was silent, silent and stealthy as a thief.

  I skied with ungreased skis all the way to Raboullet’s farmhouse, an exercise I wished then I’d never have to repeat and which I repeated many times after that. Nourse had been my guide all along, running ahead of me towards the farm. No hesitation! True to his kin-of-the snows he reached the house long before me, returning to me, saying in doggy body-language: “It’s over there…follow me…hurry up, I’m hungry!” Daylight was just piercing through the moving clouds.

  On entering the kitchen I was told by Madame Raboullet that her husband (‘le patron’ as she often referred to him) had gone to the Mont-Dore spa for the day to sell at auctions part of his fallow fields. When would he be back? was my question. “Dunno, Mamzelle” was the answer.

  I decided to spend some time with Adèle, the Raboullets’ eldest daughter, intending to give her a hand milking the cows. After what seemed to me to be a very long time I succeeded in extracting a few drops of milk. “Drink it” s
aid Adèle with a smile. I really liked her.

  On re-entering the farmhouse I saw my empty rucksack on a hook in the kitchen. No-one had touched it, it was hanging flat as an old woman’s breasts, wrinkled, telling a rich story of past fullness during its younger days.

  Everywhere I looked there was denial that I’d ever make it. I looked at my watch (4 pm), saw myself as the victim of the worst kind of non-physical torture, the one which erodes hope by playing the waiting game with me… not for the first time since my steps led me to this accursed place.!

  I made for the door with the intention of returning to my little inn in Murol when Raboullet made his entrance, greeted me with a mocking “Tiens! toujours là? “ which I felt didn’t deserve an answer. He was totally sober, spruced up and clean shaven. “Would you care for a cognac” he asked. “Yes, thank you” I replied.

  The atmosphere was unusually relaxed. The business deal in Mont Dore must have been successful. I was invited to dine with the family but declined saying I needed to change clothes and to wash. I made my long way back to Murol, reluctantly, but I had to. Why? The wait had been too agonizing, I was letting down the starving people at Savignole. Not even the sight of Madame’s clafoutis (made with plenty of eggs) would make me change my mind. Yet, I was so hungry…But at least Nourse got his portion of soup before we set off.

  The following morning I called at Raboullet’s farmhouse, this time lubricating my skis with lard my landlady sold to me for a few francs. Raboullet was waiting for me. I hadn’t told him I’d be back that early, but he knew I would, and what for. Pigheaded as he was and I had become, it was now clear to both of us that the Bothy was going to be mine, and the food would fill my rucksack as well. “You come with me, lass,” he said, “I’ll show you something you’ve certainly never seen before.” He took my arm and literally pushed me out of the house into the fresh winterscape. Why fresh you might ask? Well, because the wind was light - a breeze more like - and the sun was out and I felt good.

  Raboullet made me walk the bounds of his estate, inviting me to visit his sacred bothys where the big blue veined cheeses weighing several kilos each were made, also the famous St Nectaires “The best ones round here…before the war I used to sell them to the Paris lot…Androuët, heard of it?” he asked. Had I! My Mamoshka regularly used to visit this legendary cheese merchant rue Amsterdam, a steep busy street branching off the Gare St Lazare. Next I witnessed the centrifugal process of butter making. Impressive! Strictly for the family, mind - a butter which in Auvergne will not turn yellow no matter how much you try. Unctuous and light it is a treat to eat spread on Madame’s freshly made rye pain de campagne. The cheese and other dairy products were all made in dairy bothys where centrifuges stood. Pushing one of them aside with his powerful arms, Raboullet invited me to his secret cellar by stepping in first -the one he had blocked up at one end so that the Boche wouldn’t find it. By means of a ladder he lifted me down into Orpheus’ hell holding me round the waist as if we were going to dance among the devils. He held me tightly against himself before putting me down in this place without sun, without light, without life, dank, smelling of earth which had long ago ceased to breathe, and of wood soaked in alcohol; a cold, dead place. Then he invited me to join him in his daily prayer to the god Bacchus to put the seal on our friendship. But before the solemn ceremony he lit a candle to illuminate Bacchus’temple. I followed him respectfully all along a central alley, brushing against enormous casks which, in the shadows where they stood lined up, resembled huge bears, stuffed and mythical. The scent emanating from them was that of St Pourçain, a wine which, when young, as in these casks (vintage ‘42 and ‘43) can rot your guts unless you’ve been weaned on it. (In this part of the world you probably have).

  At the end of the alley I saw Raboullet’s shadow sweep along deformed till it touched the vaulted ceiling, then overtake him to disappear behind us. We sat down on three-legged stools. Raboullet filled two glasses with his elixir, ‘cuvée 37’ engraved on one of the casks. He offered me a glass as if giving me a jewel and said: “Just taste this”. I tasted it. It tasted fruity and strong. Putting his glass on the ground after we had toasted one another, he came closer to me, touched my knees with his own, pressed them hard, then seizing my head in his hands, searched for my mouth and found it. This was neither the place nor the time to be prudish, was it? But this was certainly the ultimate moment to plead for the last time:

  “Let me have your bothy, please, Monsieur Raboullet”. “It’s madness. Your colonel wants your death, ma parole!” He shook his head with a reprobate expression, thereby throwing

  me into a flutter of doubt. Should I go on stooping so low until I dropped? Or should I just leave hostile Auvergne to the Auvergnats, regain Clermont and my anonymity? Should I boldly declare to those who put me here in the first place (Maître Sarlange in particular) that this clandestine rural life was not for me? Should I tell them that I was being abused by creatures of the mountains, sucking the very marrow of my bones?

  In answer, the colonel’s ghost appeared, in flashes, within the four walls of this airless hell where I was sitting rather uncomfortably, trying not to lose my balance from a three-legged stool resting on an uneven ground…

  Can you see, as I do right now, Gérard, tall, bi-spectacled, beret firmly pushed over his forehead, speaking to me in a hollow voice, reminding me of my commitments?

  I took Raboullet’s hands in mine, on impulse, yes, letting the language of touch flow between us, language which is not expressed in words but in waves for which the whole body reaches out. The seal of mutual trust was laid. The Colonel’s ghost suddenly approved and disappeared.

  9.

  Jean-de-la-Montagne.

  On the evening of the 22nd, (another date I shall never forget) I was installed in my bothy with food a-plenty -enough to feed a regiment in the company of Jean, a young shepherd of twenty whom Raboullet had lent me as porter for the long march to the bothy.

  “Do what you will with him…I shan’t need him right now. Not ‘till we bring the sheep up for summer.”

  Was this true? Not quite, surely, but he wanted Jean to assist me during our frequent journeys between the farm and the bothy, especially when the load exceeded 30 kilos (which it did more often than not). It still remained for me to march across from the bothy to Savignole, but with half the load, making another journey there, at night, when there was less risk of meeting the Vichy militia.

  But first let me tell you something about Jean. He is one of those chosen creatures who in brutal times restores our faith; noble beings unsullied by the depravity of war. He has remained a primitive, having slipped through the net of state education. There is a village school at Murol, but he served his life’s apprenticeship with the sheep he had been told to watch as soon as he could walk. He can neither read nor write, his mind is untouched by formal education. He is as gentle as a lamb, as sturdy as an ox, as free as Romany, caring little if at all for men and their affairs. But he can foretell the weather unerringly, sniffing the air. He can tell the time of day without a watch. He knows what date it is without a calendar. He likes to talk, and he talks well. Words keep him company. He told me one day that he talked to himself, held conversations with his dog Fiston, his sheep, and sometimes with the trees whose varieties he knows as well as any botanist. “I tell them things”, he said. I would give a lot to know what he tells them and what they say to him in return, but my bookish education prevents me from understanding the unspoken language of the hills I climb every day, the streams I trace and cross, the Neolithic rocks of shale and chalk which strew my path, the wild flowers and fruit which used to fill my herbarium when I was a student… the fragrant trees… the lizards, snakes, toads, frogs, the field mice… the eagles and kites suddenly darkening the skies with their fully stretched wings. My formal learning of nature’s wonders will never compare with Jean’s Savoir.

  Jean has also the gift of listening, without seeming to concentrate when you speak to him, a
nd of remembering what you said. There is never any hurry, he can and will take his time. No one is there to exercise pressure on him, his memory is perfect, it has its own perfect rhythm of recall. During the fortnight when I used him as a porter to carry food to Savignole because of the boils erupting wherever my sack would rub and in spite of Gérard’s strict order: “You must work alone. Trust no-one”. I trusted Jean; he would never neglect an errand or forget a message. He knew he was running risks should he be stopped by the militia or a German patrol; he thought nothing of it, shrugged his broad shoulders when warned by us. “I know them militia boys, they are neighbours he replied, cockily.

  Fortunately, Gérard ended up admitting that I wasn’t using Jean’s help because I was a weakling but because of my abscesses and the risk of general septicaemia. After all, a dead packhorse is no use to anyone! (As you may have guessed, my relationship with Gérard was not easy; he became more and more intolerant of measures taken by others without his say-so).

  After a regal dinner with the Raboullet family where I avoided as much as possible letting my glance fall on my inebriated friend- not through disgust, but because he was breaking my heart by going to pieces once more- I set off with Jean for the bothy which was his during the summer. On that memorable day of February 22nd Raboullet had supervised the filling of my rucksack with ham, cheese, bacon, lard, cabbages, carrots, and swedes instead of potatoes, for the potato yield had been very poor that year because of an invasion of Colorado beetles.