Animalia

by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

  The sky is pale, translucent. The leaves and the ears of wheat rustle beneath her hand and are powdery as snake slough. The scythes are sharpened once more and the men go back to work, making the most of the cool dawn. Marcel spends the whole day reaping, stopping only during the hottest hours, when the sun blazes so fiercely that his head is spinning and his vision blurred. He declines the help offered by stable-boys and the lads from neighbouring farms. At dusk, as the farmers return home, they stop on the edge of his fields and watch him as he continues to work, stripped to the waist, his skin covered with wheat dust. His shoulders are scarlet, his hands covered in blisters crudely bandaged with gauze stained brown with blood and soil. His arms are scratched by tough stalks and sharp leaves. Again and again and again he lifts the scythe, as though he has got it into his head to do battle with this patch of land, to force it to submit to his will, to make it absolutely his. Each time the blade falls, his stinging, bloodshot eyes stare at the next swath to be cut down, never looking at the whole field, yet devouring it step by step, leaving behind him the strip of bare, brown earth as Éléonore and the widow arrange the swaths into stooks. Late into the night, Marcel continues to reap by the light of the moon and the lanterns hung from the cart pulled by the mare, which takes a few steps forward each time he taps her croup, then dozes again while the lanterns gleam in the darkness like stars fallen from some distant constellation. In the quiet of Puy-Larroque cemetery, a will-o’-the-wisp flares, whirls and disappears, casting a blue glow over the little patch of earth covering the coffin of the altar boy Jean Roujas.

  They leave the swaths of wheat to dry in the sun, then thresh them with a flail, and the frantic rhythm of the blows echoes through the countryside. The widow then sorts the grain from the chaff with a winnowing fan and the sound of the wheel replaces that of the flail. Éléonore pours the grain into the hopper. Soon the barn is filled with dust, leaving on their tongues a taste of earth and bran. Despite the rumblings – the assassination of the Archduke in June, the mobilizing of the 9th, 88th and 288th regiments now camped in Agen and in Auch – every now and then Marcel and Éléonore find moments of calm freedom before they are brought back to earth by the reality of the farm, and the great world beyond, about which they know almost nothing, and whose upheavals reach them as hushed quiverings, the last faint ripple of a stone dropped into the middle of a vast lake on whose shores they are standing. Since the father’s death, the widow no longer reads the newspapers, not even to clip out sacred images or to revel in the depravity of mankind. The harvest affords little time for rest and summer quickly sweeps away the ominous feelings that troubled Éléonore’s heart. Nothing can touch them, nothing can possibly end at the height of summer and, like those mirages that tremble on the horizon, there hovers a feeling of imaginable eternity – a serene happiness.

  They are in the field on that first day of August beneath a perfect sky, an expanse of light, a crushing heat that seems about to set the earth ablaze, when they hear shouting in the distance. They straighten up, suspend their swinging scythes. An adolescent hurtles down the road on a bicycle. It is Octave, the son of the baker; he lets go of the handlebars and, cupping his hands into a loudhailer, yells something at them. From field to field, the farmers glance at each other.

  ‘What did he say?’ someone shouts.

  Marcel shrugs. And yet he thinks he might have heard, and feels a prickling in his forearms that runs from his elbow, through his hands, his fingers, to the roots of his nails. He walks towards the edge of the field, his tread slow and heavy. He can feel the wooden handle of the scythe rub against his palm, the sweat that is trickling down his back and soaking the waistband of his trousers, he can smell the hot stones, the ripe wheat, the reek of the stables. He perceives with a new acuity the existence of each thing in itself, each detail that makes up the reality of this moment, and yet also their clandestine connection, their meshing into an indissoluble great whole: the white disc of the sun and the pulse of blood in his eardrums, the caw of a crow, the sound of his clogs on the dry ground, and Éléonore standing a few metres from him. Farther off, Octave has let his bicycle freewheel on and bury itself in a bramble thicket. The back wheel is spinning in the air as the boy carries on at a run, leaping the ditch that separates the road from the fields belonging to Georges Frejefond, to whom he is now talking, waving his arms and pointing towards the village. As Marcel approaches, he sees Frejefond nod his head, his expression grave, and lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Marcel asks.

  Octave turns to him, his eyes wild, and says breathlessly:

  ‘It’s war! Papa sent me to fetch you all. He says you have to come to the town hall! It’s war!’

  Then the church bells ring out, freezing them all to the spot. Drowning out the rustle of the fields, reducing it to a form of silence, because during the long minutes while the alarm is sounded, everything dissolves into the metallic undulations that spread in waves across a sky bereft of birds, piercing everything, echoing off everything: the valleys, the rocks, the dry-stone walls, the woods, the animals and the hearts of men.

  The village is thronged. The farmers stream in from their fields, leave their houses, desert the café, the shopkeepers close up and hurry to the town hall to read, or have read to them, the general mobilization order. With Éléonore following behind, Marcel elbows his way closer to the steps of the town hall. An incredulous murmur ripples through the village square, where a few cows continue to graze. The villagers speak in hushed tones, as on the day of a funeral mass:

  ‘… every man, from eighteen to forty…’

  ‘But when?… and where will they go?…’

  ‘… the harvest, who’ll bring it in if our Paul isn’t here?’

  ‘Bloody nationalists, it’s them as…’

  ‘… you with your flat feet and your twisted spine, come off it…’

  ‘They can’t just leave like that, now…’

  ‘How will they get there, the poor lads?’

  ‘It’s the Boches, didn’t I say it?’

  ‘… a good thrashing, that’s what they need, sort their ideas out…’

  ‘… they’ve already occupied Alsace-Lorraine…’

  ‘And I suppose you know where that is, Alsace-Lorraine?’

  ‘Well, I’ll not go. Let them in Paris deal with it – what has it got to do with the rest of us?…’

  ‘You’ll see what it’s got to do with you when they come for your livestock and your wife…’

  ‘He’d be only too happy for some Boche to do his farm work for him, and take Louise off his hands!’

  ‘… if it’s like it was back in eighteen seventy, it’ll be over before we know it…’

  ‘… bring in the harvest, then there’s the ploughing to think of. How am I supposed to cope, me and my three sons, if they’re called up?’

  ‘He’s only a bit of a lad, he’s never even held a rifle…’

  The talk flourishes until Julien Beyries, the mayor, appears on the steps of the town hall, at which point mayhem ensues. The villagers clamour, pressing him for answers to their questions. He tries to calm them with a wave, then finally roars for them to shut up.

  ‘It’ll be over and done with in a few months, from what I’ve heard,’ he says. ‘Poincaré said there might not even be a war. But if there is, it’ll be a short war.’

  ‘So is there a war or isn’t there?’

  ‘And what the devil do you know, anyway, Beyries? There’s no way of knowing how long a war will last.’

  ‘We’ll give them a good hiding and we’ll be back by winter, it’s obvious.’

  ‘Calm down! The town hall will be open all night tonight. From eight o’clock, every man between eighteen and forty has to enlist. And I mean every man, no exceptions. You’ll be given your papers, your posting orders, the name of the regiment or the corps you’ve been assigned to, and the departure time and number of the train you’ll be taking in the next few days.’
/>
  ‘When exactly?’

  ‘Me, I’m happy to leave right now if that’s what it takes.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re going to come and harvest the rest of my wheat?’

  ‘The first of you will leave the day after tomorrow. I’ve a son too, and he’s the same age as your boy, Cazaux, so don’t go thinking I’m happy about this.’

  ‘So what happens if we don’t go to war – what if we refuse the call-up?’

  ‘Coward!’

  ‘In that case you’re refusing to serve, to defend your country. You’ll be considered a deserter. You’ll be court-martialled as a deserter and probably shot, that’s what.’

  A brief stunned silence falls over the village square as wild birds fly over, casting their shadows over the faces. The mayor is pale, his jaws clenched, his eyes glittering more than usual, and the telegrams he is clutching quivering in his hands.

  ‘We have to hide our children,’ says a woman in a strangled cry.

  No-one responds at first, then Beyries says:

  ‘It’s impossible. They’ll come for them. They’ll find them.’

  Then, squaring his shoulders:

  ‘We will serve France with honour – Puy-Larroque will serve France with honour. For any of you who want to pray, the church will also be open all night. That’s all.’

  They applaud and for a moment they stand there, united in their bewilderment. To all but the few who remember 1870, war is an abstraction, an empty word, dizzying and exhilarating, the Germans are a barbarous, alien race, and the front a mysterious place somewhere in limbo, far beyond their horizon. The rash and patriotic among them say: ‘We are going to war!’, their eyes flickering from face to face like those of a young colt being broken, searching for the meaning of their own words. They will have to kill; they know this: it is an established fact, a certainty, a truth, the very purpose. In war, you kill – otherwise what would be the point? They have plunged knives into the throats of pigs and the eyes of rabbits. They have hunted deer and wild boar. They have drowned puppies and slit the throats of sheep. They have trapped foxes, poisoned rats, decapitated geese, ducks and chickens. Since birth, they have watched killings. They have watched their father and their mothers take the lives of animals. They learned the gestures and copied them. They in turn have killed hares, cocks, cattle, piglets, pigeons. They have shed blood, and sometimes drunk it. They know the smell, the taste. But a Boche? How do you kill a Boche? Surely that would make them murderers, even if this is a war? A few brawlers and braggarts are already boasting about the men they’re going to kill, hurling themselves into the fray with bayonets drawn, but most of the men say nothing, reduced to silence. They quickly leave, head back to their houses and their farms to put together a makeshift kitbag, a few shirts, a few small tokens, to see the familiar faces, the familiar places that will soon be taken from them, or simply head back, dazed by the light, to work in the fields.

  On the village square, Éléonore searches for Marcel among the berets, the hats, the identical faces, but he did not wait for the villagers to disperse and headed back without a word, picked up the scythe he abandoned in the middle of the field, the hot blade burning his fingers, and set to work again, urged on by rage and zeal. Éléonore leaves the square, races along the baked dirt road, one hand gripping the dusty fabric of her dress, and comes to the edge of the field, panting for breath. She catches sight of Marcel, who turns his back, busy swinging the scythe, and the wheat falls in large swaths, buzzing like a cicada. She walks over, catching her breath, her throat raw, then stands for a moment behind Marcel. He has not heard her, but when he sees Éléonore’s skewed shadow bristling with wheat stubble, he pauses and brusquely turns.

  ‘Can’t you see I’m working?’

  ‘You can’t leave. You have to stay,’ Éléonore says.

  ‘And how, exactly? If you’re not here to help, then don’t just stand there. I can get this finished. By tomorrow. Maybe before midnight. I can… Go on, go, for God’s sake! You think I need you getting under my feet? Go! Go! Go!’

  He roars the words, brutally waving towards some distant horizon and putting to flight the flock of sparrows that has been pecking at the ground. Éléonore starts back, as though he has just slapped her, then she turns and runs off, tripping over the stones. Lips trembling, eyes blinking, Marcel watches the shadowy figure fade, pale, disappear. For a long moment, he does not move. The scythe shimmers, the sparrows grow bolder and once more land in the wheat stubble at his feet. Finally, he raises the handle.

  The open doors of the church radiate the flickering glow of the votive candles that the sanctimonious snuff out every hour, since everyone feels some vestige of faith, some metaphysical need, and the stock of candles is beginning to run low. They stream past the crucifix, jostle each other on the pews and the prie-dieux, relight the candle, where nocturnal insects come to immolate themselves in the flames, slip a coin into the collection box and then leave, their souls troubled, their elbows and their knees caked in dust. The men emerge from the recruiting office clutching the promised military record and orders in hand, and gather in the Puy-Larroque café to drown their sorrows, the older men gloomy as herd culls, the conscripts worried and restless. One climbs up on a stool and reads aloud an article from La République des travailleurs:

  ‘In this solemn hour that has buried internecine strife for some time to come, there is but one party, the party of France, and but one rallying cry: “To the front!”’

  A chorus of voices immediately takes up the cry, fists are raised, and they sing the Marseillaise to bolster their courage. Then they drink a last glass by the light of the paper lanterns beneath a low, frenzied flight of bats. They head home. They tuck in a sleeping child, lay a hand on his clammy forehead. They embrace their wife in the conjugal bed, or their lovers in a hayloft. They go into the byre, into the sheep pen, and stare at the sleeping animals. They savour the warm, acrid smell. They stroke the muzzles of the horses, the nourishing udders of the cows. They cradle a kid goat as it suckles on their fingers. They lie down in the straw against a filly’s flank. They contemplate the calm, clear night, the cloudless sky of blazing constellations. They listen to the song of an owl, the shrill fight in the woods between two pine martens. They are overcome by a feeling, unfamiliar to them yet inevitable, of nostalgia. Some, with a heavy heart, remember the lines of Du Bellay they recited in school, whose meaning now pierces them to the quick:

  When shall I see from my small hamlet-side

  Once more the blue and curling smoke unrolled?

  When the poor boundaries of my house behold –

  Poor, but to me as any province wide?

  Early returned to the farm after roaming the byways, Éléonore is sitting at the table staring at the woman sitting facing her, to the right of the widow, and whose curious face is lit by the glow of the lamp. She is an ugly farmwoman of indeterminate age, though not as old as she appears. She has a low forehead, lids that rest on eyes that are bulging and swollen with tears. Her nose has clearly been broken a long time ago and now points towards one of her purple cheeks lined with angiomas, small subcutaneous rivulets that rise and merge and separate. Under her eyes, the skin hangs in pouches like miniature game bags, as though she has not slept a wink in her long, gruelling existence. The hair, which she wears braided like a little girl’s, was once white but has yellowed with dirt and kitchen grease. The plait holds together without need of a clip or a knot. Her body is scrawny and wrung out, she wears a blouse speckled with yellowish stains, a grimy black collar, and her skirt looks as though it has been sewn together from old rags. She would splinter underfoot as easily as a poultry crate and catch fire as quickly as a pile of brambles. Her hands are short, broad and traced with veins as thick as slow worms. On her lap, pressed against her belly, she is holding a wicker basket; her fingers, with their black tips like fat cockchafer larvae that have just wriggled from the soil, are entwined around the handle. She stares at the table. She says nothing
, and the widow says nothing. From time to time, a thought seems to flicker through her, a word that is an aside to herself, and at such times she sadly shrugs her shoulders, murmurs something inaudible or rolls her eyeballs beneath the fringe of short, damp lashes. Sometimes she reaches out a hand and, with a lost, confused air, runs her fingertips over the wooden tabletop, following a vein or the groove of a knife. The widow eyes her with obvious scorn, almost a nauseated pout, because the woman is even more wretched than she, poorer, uglier, dragged from some hell crawling with tripe merchants, sharecroppers, whores, lunatics and beggars. And yet, In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king is what the widow invariably says when she encounters someone from town, or someone of a vaguely superior status to her own, and feels that they are being arrogant or disdainful towards her. As to Christian charity, the widow’s interpretation is highly personal, and her own penury exempts her from doing much.

  ‘Well, now, I wouldn’t mind a drink after such a long journey,’ the woman says finally in a plaintive, rasping voice, but the widow does not move, as though she has not heard.

  The visitor shrugs again and quickly resumes her contemplation of the table. She collects small breadcrumbs on the tip of her finger and abstractedly brings them to her lips. The soup on the fire gurgles, perfuming the room and bringing a constant rumbling from her belly that rises into her throat. On the far side of the hatch connected to the byre, the cows chew the cud and stare at these three motionless women, as ominous as the Fates. There comes a sound of cartwheels and a whinny from the mare, and the widow gets to her feet, the other woman likewise, still clutching the wicker basket covered with a cloth. The wick of the lamp goes black and the flame flickers. She leaves the kitchen and crosses the farmyard, walking towards her son, who is busy unharnessing the mare. Éléonore sees him break off and look at the little woman coming towards him, doubtless saying something, holding out the basket in which, by way of goodbye, she has brought a shirt, a hunk of saucisson and a few banknotes. Marcel takes the basket by the handle and accepts the hand his mother presses against his cheek for a moment.