Animalia

by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

  From the edge of the field where she stands, Éléonore looks at Marcel, his damp shirt clinging to the long, flat muscles of his back, his torso, the hay dust settling on his sunburned neck, the fringe of hair that falls over his forehead and which he sweeps away with the back of his hand, the assiduous gestures that are slower and less precise than those of the father. When he drinks from the flask she proffers, he lets the water trickle into his cupped hands and vigorously rubs his face, blowing tiny droplets that land on Éléonore’s forehead or at the corners of her mouth. The washerwomen place a sheet into one of the tubs of coopered wood, then, with the aid of small shovels, scoop the ashes into small cloth bags tied with fine string and place them into the tubs beneath the layers of laundry.

  Every evening during haymaking season, Marcel draws water from the well and pours it into the tub used to scald the slaughtered pig before winter. He undresses, leaving his clothes on the coping of the well, and reveals the white skin that contrasts with his suntanned neck and forearms. The hair on his legs forms a pale, dense froth that suddenly trails off as it reaches his marbled ankles, with only a thin line of hair red following the arch of his foot as far as the big toe. In the other direction, at the groin, the foam breaks into a darker wave. Éléonore imagines that if she laid her hand flat against the thighs, the coarse hair would resist the pressure of her palms, then she would push her slim fingers through the thick tangle until she felt the hard, pale, naked flesh of Marcel. When he climbs into the tub, a shiver runs through his skin, he goes deeper and sits for a long time, his arms hugging his knees; the murky water traces a line on his upper lip and ripples each time he exhales.

  On the edge of the fields, Éléonore gathers spring flowers, broom, daisies and cornflowers, which she lays on the mound beneath which lie the father’s mortal remains. She pulls up the green shoots of grasses sown by the wind in the crevices of the ochre mound surmounted by a metal cross that is already tottering. The washerwomen pour boiling water into the tubs. The laundry slowly becomes soaked with water and ash, a process the women repeat as many times as are necessary, until the water they expel is also boiling, at which point they plunge in sturdy wooden poles, with the tips of which they lift out the grey, steaming sheets before depositing them on an openwork cart. On the third day of spring laundry, the sheets are immersed in the huge wash trough, rinsed, soaped and vigorously beaten. Bare-armed, the women lay cloths on the edge of the trough, on which they kneel. Their heads are spinning when they sit back to wipe their brows with the backs of their arms, or tuck in locks of hair that have escaped from beneath their scarves. Their cheeks are red, and the thick white suds leave frothy trails clinging to their wrists, like the cuckoo spit left clinging to blades of grass by the froghopper larvae.

  Soon, the young corvids still haloed in downy feathers begin to venture beyond their nests of twigs. Marcel rescues a young crow that has fallen from the top of a chestnut tree and is hopping around between the roots, trailing a bent, broken leg. Marcel sits in the shadow of the tree, which quivers with points of light. He unbuttons his shirt and nestles the fledgling against his damp belly, talking in a low whisper to calm it. He scans the surrounding patch of ground, running his fingers over the leaves and old burrs, chooses a greenwood sapling, and strips away the bark with his knife. Cradling the chick in the hollow of his hand, he unfurls its delicate wings, turns it over and lays it on his thigh, then attaches a splint to the leg. When he brings the bird back to the farmhouse and sets it next to his bed, in a little cage he has cobbled together, the widow blenches and says nothing, though she seethes to herself: have they not sorrows enough without sheltering one of these nasty, filthy, thieving carrion feeders under their roof? The father would never have allowed the nephew to do such a thing. He would have shown him the door, him and his bird of ill omen. She is already reinventing her memory of the father, rambling on about her grief, rewriting history, fashioning for him a retrospective dignity. She speaks regretfully of the memory of the man she so loved, the respect the patriarch inspired, the natural authority to which she willingly submitted, because the man was loving, and dignified, to his last breath.

  The hay has dried in the sun and the farmers are now building tall hayricks, whose shadows, at twilight, are grave, gilded mounds.

  ‘I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints, and to You, my God, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed: through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech blessed Mary ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, and you, brethren, to pray for me to the Lord our God,’ Éléonore recites.

  The widow sits next to her, her mourning dress like the black soutane of the confessor, and says:

  ‘Speak, child. I am listening.’

  Left alone on the farm, Éléonore takes down the crucifix nailed at the foot of the box-bed, places it at the bottom of the chamber-pot and, hiking up her dress, hunkers down and sprays long jets of urine over the face of Christ. She stares at him for a moment, immersed in the act of urinating, then plunges two fingers into the bucket, fishes out the crucifix and hangs it back on the nail, from where it trickles two or three translucent drops onto the widow’s bed. Éléonore spends the following days in terror, fearing some retribution, some punishment, but nothing happens and the blued sheets dry on washing lines strung between the trees, and the menfolk bring the forage back to the farms and lay it in the sun to dry, while the baby crow hops onto the forefinger Marcel holds out, and, in little bounds, climbs onto his shoulder, where it perches and eats the balls of breadcrumbs the boy rolls between his fingertips. On the day of her First Communion, Éléonore secretly vows to expel from her heart all feeling, all religious tendencies, and this act of desertion leaves a small fracture in her, a hole, a painless but persistent wound. The sun dazzles the communicants, who stand, proud and solemn, on the steps of the church.

  In the early hours of the first day of summer, Father Antoine brusquely awakens from a dream in which the altar boys in their white albs cover him with kisses and caresses, pressing their warm, lithe bodies against him. When he half-opens his eyes and looks at the peeling wall of his bedroom, it is an altar boy he sees crucified on the plaster cross nailed to the wall, the crown of thorns lacerating his pale, smooth forehead, the modest loincloth hanging from his narrow hips, the tilted face staring fixedly at him. Then the priest is jolted back to himself by a chasm deeper and more unfathomable even than sleep, a vertiginous fall into an endless night where there is no light.

  The body of Father Antoine is carried on a cart to its final resting place, the family vault in which lie a father and a mother who died in childbirth, whose blind, comforting memory he invoked when he was mercilessly gripped by the terror of the Last Judgement and the deafening silence of God, and, as the assembled villages look on, the coffin draped with his alb is borne away and disappears behind the old castle walls.

  ‘Ite, missa est,’ an insolent voice pipes up, and a few laughs can be heard among the offended sighs of the sempiternal mourners who head back to the fields in a clatter of clogs.

  Summer definitively settles in. Not a drop of rain has fallen for several weeks. The tall wheat ripens and the ears rustle when the west wind blows. The earth cracks, the air quivers and shimmers above the ground, fragile, and tremulous mirages appear on roads and on bare farmland in the distance. Hens scratch at the dust in search of a little coolness and the pig lies in the evaporated puddles. At dawn, furtive game roam around the edges of the woods and the field crops, then spend all day hiding in burrows and in bramble thickets. In the muggy heat of the byre, one of the two cows is lying on the straw, about to calve. Éléonore sees the round, white amniotic sac appear. For a moment, it looks as though the cow is about to lay an egg, a giant pearl; then the thin membrane splits and s
pills translucent liquid over the udder, the hocks and the apron tied around the waist of the widow, who soaks cloths in hot water and applies them to the animal’s back. She runs a hand over the cow’s taut belly, over the damp spine. All the while, she talks to the animal in a low, soothing voice, and if Éléonore is standing off to one side in a corner of the byre, it is because the widow’s tone of voice is so unfamiliar that it seems indecent, obscene. Dumbfounded, she watches the widow’s gestures, the caresses merited by the heifer yet not by her, her daughter, and she listens to the soft, soothing words. The widow touches the folds of the vulva, slips in a hand greased with butter and feels the sticky hooves and the muzzle of the calf, then goes and sits in a corner of the barn, where she waits, shooing flies from her face, staring at the heifer, at the swollen udders, at its eyes that roll in the half-light as each spasm shudders through her. Finally, the white hooves and the slimy muzzle emerge, the cloudy eye appears from the uterine darkness, the calf is pushed from the womb by the contractions in the cow as the anus rhythmically discharges jets of green dung. The widow gets to her feet, grips the calf at the cannon bones and heaves with all her might, following the rhythm of the contractions, sweating like the cow every drop of water in her body. Once the calf is lying, motionless and steaming on the straw, the widow slips three fingers into its mouth and pulls out a fistful of mucus and wipes it on the apron smeared with blood, dung and amniotic fluid. Swarms of flies hover and the calf breathes and contemplates the closed, shadowy world of the byre, the face of the widow looming over it, then the head of the cow as she struggles to her feet and laps at its viscid coating. The placenta oozes out of the red, gaping vulva. The widow tosses it into a bucket and takes it away, hugging it to her belly. Alone, Éléonore picks up a handful of straw and rubs the calf, which suddenly gets up onto its unsteady legs and, taking the girl’s fingers for its mother’s udder, sucks at her hand. She feels the warm, undulating palate, the soft, greedy tongue against her palm.

  Some days after Father Antoine’s death, Jean Roujas, the last of the altar boys on whom the priest lavished his favours, leaves the family home on a balmy night; only a few dogs see him as he wanders through Puy-Larroque carrying a length of rope. The following morning, he is found wearing his nightshirt, damp with dew, hanging from the lowest branch of the old oak. His frail body spins in slow circles like a star, his face now bathed in the dawn light, now engulfed by the night that still clings to the tree. He is buried in a small coffin fashioned to his size, which his father, mad with rage and grief, insists on carrying alone, balanced on one shoulder. From the house where the child’s remains were waked – his jaw is held in place by a cotton strip crocheted by his grieving mother and tied over his straw-blond hair – the father walks to the cemetery, swathed in clouds of ochre pollen, passes in front of the church whose doors are closed and deaf to his grief, his arms gripping the casket digging into the flesh of neck.

  Marcel rarely speaks about his family, about his parents, his brothers. On the last Sunday of each month, since the father’s death, he harnesses the mare before daybreak and sets off to visit them, without ever proposing that Éléonore accompany him. By the time he comes back, she is already lying in the bed next to the widow’s, and sees his sullen shadow pass close to her. The widow probably entertained thoughts of dismissing him, but the boy continues to prove himself a hard worker; he ploughs, he reaps, he digs, he hoes, then he collapses from exhaustion until dawn the following day. In the privacy of his room, he sometimes feels a tension, a frustration, and slips a hand beneath the sheet, but he does so only to assuage his body, and only vague images rise to the surface of his consciousness, anatomical details glimpsed beneath the threadbare clothes of farmwomen, damp, heavy bosoms, hairy thighs in woollen stockings; sometimes a vulva, bushy and motionless. He has no penchant for fantasy. He does not even have the strength to clean himself up, and his semen dries on his hand as he quickly drifts off into a dreamless sleep. He never asks for the wages his uncle paid, and he spends most of his time outdoors, coming in only reluctantly when the animals are sleeping and the owls are hooting. He often eats alone in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed in the lamplight, the crow dozing on his shoulder. He is satisfied with his comforts: the room he has crudely furnished over time, the habits he has adopted, his relative solitude. He is neither servile nor does he complain, but retains a distant, taciturn aloofness. If, from time to time, he joins the men at the village café, he does not come back drunk, nor does he truly strike up a friendship with anyone. Several days can pass without him uttering a single word. In spite of his nineteen years, he is already solemn and silent, his tread is heavy and he seems to trail an invisible burden. Working the land has transformed him and, although he is still thin, he is more powerful and muscles bulge in ridged tectonic plates on his neck, his back, his arms. Even his jaws have broadened from gritting his teeth as he goes about his daily chores. Sinews strain like halyards beneath his skin. Often, he goes to the cemetery and sits pensively by the father’s grave. He weeds the surrounding area, then sits for a moment in the shade of a cypress, arms outstretched, elbows resting on his knees. He picks up a twig and teases a group of ants or draws shapes in the sand. Then he gets up and heads back to the farm. In the presence of Éléonore, however, he is kinder and more sensitive. He accepts her company, sometimes even her help whenever the widow gives her daughter a brief respite, because she is ever watchful, and gives Éléonore endless chores in an attempt to keep the girl away from him. The two children walk through the fields together, sleep at the foot of a tree in the afternoon heat, lead the cows and the mare out to the pasture to graze, talk about the animals, about the harvest, sometimes evoke memories of the father. The sun darkens their skin and brightens their eyes. They name the little crow Charbon, then set it free, but after clumsily taking wing, the bird follows them, cawing, flying close to the ground until one of them bends and stretches out a hand and it eagerly hops on. For the feast of Saint-Jean on Midsummer Day, Marcel joins a handful of villagers tasked with gathering branches in the woods and building a great bonfire on a peak overlooking a fallow valley, which they clear with scythes, cutting a path through the grasses and the poppies. A serene jubilation takes hold of Puy-Larroque and its inhabitants. Voices are raised, children run around, excited and boisterous. The smell of a sheep that has been spit-roasting since morning pervades the narrow streets and, in every house, cooks are busy at their ovens. At nightfall, a joyous procession leaves the village flanked by a pack of dogs, beneath swarms of mayflies that flutter around the torches they are holding. The menfolk carry the barrels of wine and the women the baskets of victuals. The glow of sunset turns the crops, the bramble thickets and the warm bark of the trees blood-red. The wilted petals of false acacia dance gently along the paths and get caught in the webs of wasp spiders. In a meadow, a foal being weaned kicks at the fences while his mother, her udder aching, whinnies from the stable. The fields still smell of hay, wild garlic, broom and warm stones. As a torch sets the bonfire ablaze, the men gather round and watch the crackling flames, the burning ashes that rise and whirl and gutter out and disappear against the purple backcloth of the sky. They roast potatoes in the embers, tear open the charred crust and eat the steaming flesh from their hands, blowing between bites on fingers glistening with saliva and mutton fat. The wine from the barrels brings a flush to the brows, burns the stomachs and trickles down bare necks. A fiddler starts up a ritornel, which is immediately picked up by an accordion, and the men and women get to their feet and gather around the fire for a rondo, their faces crimson, sweating, smiling. Marcel has grabbed Éléonore’s hand and is holding it tightly. She feels the vibrations of his dancing body and moves with them. She can smell his fitful breaths, heavy with alcohol. She can smell the odour of their bodies, united and frenzied, everyone here, all the farm folk, the smell of their lowly breed, of their aching, tired flesh, and suddenly they seem to her terribly old and fragile, on borrowed time at forty, their bodies
battered, congenital, sagging from childbirth, goitrous, mutilated by blades, charred by the sun. No-one here will get through life without losing a limb, an eye, a child or a spouse, a piece of flesh, and Éléonore feels the thick, calloused skin of her knees, her elbows, brushing against the fabric of her dress, of her blouse. Even the children seem only to remain children for the blink of an eye. They come into the world like livestock, scrabble in the dust in search of meagre sustenance, and die in miserable solitude. They dance to the sound of a squeaky fiddle to forget that they were dead before they were born, and the alcohol, the music and the saraband lulls them into a gentle trance, the impression of life. When all that remains is a ring of embers where the bonfire stood, adolescents begin to dare each other, taking a run-up and leaping over the hissing coals, stirred up by the air displaced by their bodies as they soar into the darkness. Marcel is among those to take the dare. Éléonore sees him laugh and respond to the cheers of the other boys. As he catches his breath, he looks at her, and his pale eyes with their black pupils glow with the reflection of the dying flames.