Animalia

by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

  By late afternoon, the men are lingering on the steps, exchanging a few words in listless tones about the state of the harvest or the livestock, plans for the future, fears of blackthorn winter adversely affecting the sowing, or of summer heat and drought. The clatter of cartwheels echoes around the yard and the women who have been forewarned get to their feet, rousing the children who are sleeping in their laps and drooling on their skirts. Accompanied by the local gendarme and by Father Antoine, still hungover from the brandy the night before and cradling his aching head in his hands, Jocelyn Lagarde steps down. Three boys go over to the haycart, talk among themselves for a moment, then pull the coffin towards them, lift it and carry it into the house. The rest of the men stand aside to let them pass, then greet the gendarme with a hearty handshake. The coffin is set on two trestles next to the bed, and the carpenter and the gendarme offer their condolences to the widow and then to Marcel. The open coffin exhales a smell of sanded softwood. For want of padding and silks, the widow lines the bottom with sheets, which she rumples and pleats to give them volume, so that the formal suit will not be worn and the bony elbows and heels of the mortal remains will not knock and rub against the timber, or pick up splinters. The mourners pay their last respects to the deceased, bid farewell to the kinfolk and head home along the byway in the twilight, filling their lungs with the fresh spring air. Only Marcel, the gendarme, the carpenter, the widow, the priest and the child now remain. With the greatest care the shroud covering the mortal remains is removed, then Marcel and Jocelyn Lagarde take the body by the shoulders and the heels and lower it into the coffin. A brown liquid drips from the corpse onto the edge of the box-bed, the beaten-earth floor and the wrist of Jocelyn Lagarde, who stifles a dry heave and wipes himself on the trousers of the dead man, while the widow hastily pulls the sheet over the obscene stain on the mattress. She carefully places the embroidered shroud in the coffin as she might tuck a child into her cradle, and replaces the cushion under the head of the deceased to raise it up. They all step forward together, surrounding the coffin, and for the last time they look at the grey, waxy simulacrum of the farmer, whom the widow now wants gone as soon as possible.

  ‘After the suffering and the tears that have veiled his eyes,’ the priest intones, ‘grant, O Lord, that he might see Thy face.’

  They make the sign of the cross. The carpenter puts the lid on the coffin, waits for a nod from the gendarme, then seals the coffin with flat-headed nails he carefully grips between the thick pads of his fingers, using a sidelong blow to drive home those that buckle against the edge, splitting the timber and sending up splinters of wood. They watch in silence, flinching at each impact, until the final nail has sealed the coffin and the mortal remains repose in complete darkness. All through the night, a candle burns in a small dish on top of the coffin and the wax spills over, trickles away and congeals around the little effigy of Christ screwed to the wood before the wick gutters out in a clear pool at first light. A wisp of smoke, translucent as semen, shielded by sleep from the eyes of the living, then rises in the cold room.

  The following day, they set out early. The widow and the child follow the cart pulled by the drowsy mare, stumbling now and then, led by Marcel, next to whom they have hoisted and settled an old woman wrapped in a grey woollen shawl. On the road, the wheels of the cart screech and throw up jets of mud. The dawn glistens in the beads of dew caught in the curves of the blades of grass. The bell tolls and the wave ripples out in concentric circles through the quivering air, faintly echoing from the still waters of the ponds and the drinking troughs. The crows fall silent and study the funeral cortège. On the village square, Father Antoine opens wide the church doors, before which the villagers have gathered. Éléonore walks next to the widow, her face haggard beneath a mourning veil like a mantilla, her narrow, piteous shoulders draped in the black shawl, her firm calf muscles beneath the black woollen stockings moving like stones along the scrawny legs. Éléonore is careful that her swinging arm does not brush against the widow’s. As a sharp pain suddenly claws at her belly, she silently resolves to reduce the widow to nothing, vows that soon she will walk behind the widow’s coffin just as today she is walking behind the father’s. As the cortège advances and passes the neighbouring farms, a few silent, sullen farmers join them, stepping over tracks and ditches to fall into step behind, their eyes following the coffin as it clatters on the cart, whose rattling planks sporadically send up showers of twigs and manure dust.

  In the very centre of a plot of land grows a centennial oak whose morning shadow darkens the outer walls of the cemetery. At the foot of the tree, thick roots plunge down and, in negative, map out a maze that mirrors the branches above. The roots reach down towards the mineral strata, towards the water table from which the tree drinks, towards telluric landscapes unknown to man, retracing ages long since past. The trunk of the oak tree is so thick that children from every generation in Puy-Larroque have circled it, hands clasped in strange ring dances, never passed on and yet ever repeated, pressing their pale, veined cheeks against the bark; in doing so, their arms embrace a whole universe, that of the world buried beneath their bare feet and under the armour of the tree at whose heart wells and rises the majestic sap, the world of microscopic fauna unceasingly coursing between the stones lodged in the roots, the silvery lichens and the patches of bark, but also the world of the branches into which the children heave themselves by the strength of their arms to rest in the cool of the leaves, the shimmering daylight dappled by the topmost branches swaying in the breeze. The oak reigns, indifferent to the destiny of men, to their pitiful lives and deaths. Lovers have spilled their seeds at its base, proud drunken lads have pissed on its trunk, lips have whispered secrets and promises into the hollows in its bark. Tree houses have been built in its branches and crumbled to dust, abandoned by playing children. Nails have been planted that have rusted and disappeared. Old men still walk from the village to this little meadow, following the track made by endless passing feet, to shelter in the shadow of the oak. If they have always known this tree, the tree has always known them, and their forebears who laid their hands on the very same spot, stroking the trunk with the same caress their gnarled hands now trace, the hand of a child becoming that of an old man, then the hand of a child once more.

  Father Antoine swings the aspergillum over the coffin, leaving drops of holy water on the wood. When the widow steps forward to bid farewell to the mortal remains before they are carried from the church to Puy-Larroque cemetery she bows low, in a surge of grief, and kisses the foot of the coffin. When she goes back to the pew, Éléonore quickly turns her face away so she does not have to see, glistening on her lips, the drop of holy water picked up by her kiss, the only kiss she will ever see her give, the sight of which seems so obscene that her stomach churns with shame. Next to the grave, the downpour has melted away the mound of earth like sugar. The men have hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders, crossed the village square and passed through the gates of the cemetery built on the south-facing slope of the hill, now bathed in light from a sky wrung dry. The funeral procession has descended the steps, as Father Antoine walked on ahead, leaning on the puny shoulder of the altar boy. Anxious not to be too quick to join their kinfolk already at rest beneath their faltering steps, the villagers take care not to slip on the wet stone and the mounds of soil washed down by the torrent. They gather around and stand gloomily next to the pit dug by the gravedigger, some in the blazing sun, other in the perfumed shade of cypresses heavy with rain. The pallbearers set down the coffin, so light it looks as though it is empty, in a pool of warm sunlight, and soon wisps of steam begin to rise from the unseasoned wood and from the mosses gorged with water that edge the tombstones. Father Antoine stands stiffly next to the grave, his hands joined over his soutane and white surplice, draped with a black stole and a cope. He stares at the villagers who have not yet joined the cortège and are standing gossiping outside the gates. Marcel stands next to Éléonore dressed in a suit leant by
the mother of a village lad who is in Auch for his military service. The legs are too short, revealing an ankle sprinkled with red hair like a haze beneath the shapeless woollen sock, but the jacket fits him perfectly, hugging his broad shoulders and narrow waist. He is freshly shaved, has combed and oiled his hair, tracing a pale parting on the oval of his skull, and it is he who now takes Éléonore’s hand and holds it tightly in his dry palm, though he does not turn to look at her. He pays no attention to this clammy hand and is unaware that the pressure of his hand on the delicate fingers sends pangs of longing all the way to the breasts that are beginning to bud beneath her mourning dress. Carried on the stormy winds, a few seagulls have flown inland and glide over the cemetery and the surrounding landscape. Their forlorn cries ring out sporadically. They wheel in hesitant circles, vanish for an instant into the sun, then reappear, their shadows sweeping across the faces the men turn towards the sky. Little children, grey as rats in their formal suits, race between the tombstones playing tag. Their mothers flash them reproachful stares, grab them as they pass and hug them against their skirts, one hand on their narrow, panting chests.

  When, finally, all the villagers are gathered around the grave, Father Antoine coughs to clear his throat and to silence the congregation. He spits phlegm into a white cotton handkerchief, which he tucks into the sleeve of his alb. And says:

  ‘Ego sum resurrectio et vita. Qui credit in me etiam si mortuus fuerit, vivet. Et omnis qui vivit et credit in me, non morietur in aeternum.’

  At the bottom of the pit bristling with rootlets and sharp stones, a pool of mud has formed during the night, collecting the water from the natural streams whose narrow stony beds zigzag between the tombstones. There, a toad floats on the surface among the leaves and branches blown by the wind. Drawn by the downpour and racked with hunger, he has ventured from the winter hide created for him by a lifted gravestone and the abandoned burrow of a mole. Coppery eyes staring up at the mouth of the grave and the shadows of the men, the amphibian floats, hind legs extended, occasionally scratching at the dirt wall with its useless fingers. While the priest recites the Canticle of Zechariah, the toad swims a few strokes to the other side of the grave, tracing ripples on the surface of the water, and, in the silent interlude, lets out a loud croak.

  ‘Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison,’ Father Antoine continues, immediately followed by another croak, which brings a murmur from the congregation and sends a shudder through the crowd as though it were a voice from beyond the grave.

  The mourners crowd closer to the pit so they can see the anura.

  ‘Come now, come now!’ Father Antoine protests, calling to order his flock as they jostle and trample the hem of his soutane.

  He embarks on an Our Father and sprinkles the coffin with holy water:

  ‘… And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, from the gates of hell. Deliver his soul, O Lord. May he rest in peace. Amen. Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you. The Lord be with you. Let us pray.’

  Roused from the prayerful contemplation imposed by the circumstances, the widow has opened her eyes under her mourning veil and, tight-lipped, she too steps towards the grave. From all around come comments, a few sniggers.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘A toad?’

  ‘Where, where?’

  Children slip between the legs of the adults the better to peer into the hole, their hands buried in the mound of earth.

  ‘Don’t get yourself dirty, you little wretch!’

  ‘Get out of there, Thérèse, for God’s sake, you’ll ruin your dress!’

  ‘Let us pray!’ the priest bellows and a few villagers half-heartedly respond:

  ‘Grant to Thy servant departed, O Lord, we beseech Thee, Thy mercy, that he, who prayed that Thy will might be done, may not receive punishments for his misdeeds, but that even as here below the true Faith united him to the ranks of the faithful, so in heaven by Thy mercy he may have fellowship with the choirs of angels. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.’

  ‘Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ the villagers murmur, and the priest motions to the pallbearers, who slip the ropes under the coffin, lift it, then, keeping close together, walk to the graveside, where shingles are laid around the pit, and suspend the battered coffin above the abyss. Father Antoine makes sweeping gestures to the indifferent parishioners, who huddle together. Inadvertently, he knees a girl crawling in the mud on all fours, sending her scurrying back to her mother.

  ‘Come on, step back! Step back!’

  The ropes blanche the bronzed hands of the men and wind around their wrists as they slowly lower the coffin into the grave. The assembled company are now holding their breath because the toad has disappeared in the shadow cast by the coffin, which soon fills the hole as the pallbearers slide it down.

  ‘Will he get squashed?’ a little one asks shrilly and is quickly silenced by a clip around his blonde head.

  The assembled mourners step a little closer, if that were possible, craning their necks the better to see, and without a word they watch as the coffin makes contact with the muddy water, floats for an instant while the ropes, relieved of their burden, slacken and are hauled back to the surface. Then water begins to seep between the loose boards and the coffin sinks, foot first, the head rising, giving everyone the opportunity to imagine the dead man’s shoes and the bottoms of his trousers being plunged up to the knee in cold mud. A silence descends and the blackbirds perched on the crosses of the graves sing. A few lazy bubbles break the surface of the water under the disconcerted eyes of the villagers, and the widow stifles a cry of dread with her veil. The toad everyone thought buried alive has resurfaced and calmly climbs the lid as far as the effigy of Christ. With its front leg it brushes away a twig stuck to its head, raising a snort of indignation from the crowd.

  ‘We can’t bury him like that,’ someone cries.

  ‘’Tis an ill omen.’

  ‘Proof that the beast had its eye on him, poor man.’

  ‘Time was, they were crucified upside down, by all accounts.’

  ‘It’s the devil.’

  ‘Poppycock, t’ain’t but a dumb animal.’

  Small groups form, there are whispered discussions, everyone has his say, his superstition, while the widow, whose head is spinning, is made to sit on a little gravestone. It is first agreed to lift the toad out with a branch, which needs to be forked at the end to support the weight. The children are sent off to search for the tool at the foot of the cypresses, outside the cemetery walls, under the oak and walnut trees. But none of the branches they bring back is long enough to reach the bottom of the grave. Someone suggests a pitchfork, a shovel. It might injure the animal, protests Jeanne Cadours, who owns the grocer’s shop on the village square – surely they have to be careful not to spill blood into the grave? Father Antoine shrugs his shoulders, he does not know, and warns that if the villagers do not step back from the edge of the pit, whose walls are threatening to collapse, they will all be down there and will be spoiled for choice as to which of them fishes out the accursed animal. Everyone prudently takes a few steps back.

  ‘I’ll climb down and get it,’ Marcel proposes.

  ‘And get that good suit mucky?’

  ‘Where the hell is Jocelyn? This coffin of his don’t seem too solid to me, it’s already soaked through…’

  ‘Who said that? It’s perfectly solid, my coffin. I suppose you’ll be buried in a walnut casket, will you? You pinch pennies then you go complaining, well, you can sort out your own bloody mess.’

  ‘For the love of God, stop arguing,’ roars Father Antoine. ‘This is a funeral and here you are blaspheming.’

  ‘A cof
fin isn’t made to take the weight of a man, that’s all I’m saying,’ adds Jocelyn Lagarde.

  The villagers fall silent for a moment as the steeple in Puy-Larroque tolls ten o’clock, raising a flock of pigeons from the tower of the old town walls. Then the widow, who has been forgotten and abandoned on the gravestone rubbing her thin legs, painfully gets to her feet and breaks the impasse.

  ‘You’ll need a child to climb down – it’ll support the weight of a child,’ she says.

  Someone gives the gravedigger a quizzical look; he spits on the ground, bring a girlish shriek from Father Antoine, then turns and furiously marches up the cemetery steps and through the gates. The mother of a frail little boy who is playing among the roots of the cypresses sees all eyes turn to her and warns that she will let no-one touch her child, who has a delicate constitution as it is, in order to lower him into a grave, then she drags him from the muddy puddle he is splashing in and carries him off. The widow then points a finger at Éléonore, and the gesture transfixes the trembling girl.