The cattle whose eyes roll wildly between the wooden slats of the trailer are unloaded at Agen railyard and, urged on by shouts, by whips, by ropes, are herded into the wagons leased for the purpose, packed onto rickety, threadbare floors strewn crudely with straw next to other heaving flanks, other parched, foaming muzzles. The doors slide shut to shouts from the men, their voices hoarse, and the orders of the officer from the Supply Corps. The animals find themselves alone in a gloom polluted by their sour breath and the excreta which fear causes them to void beneath them; a half-light where little of the cool spring seeps through, only a woody daylight that falls on the steaming, shifting curves of their hides. The locomotive roars into life, fouling the loading dock with sooty clouds of steam that reek of sulphur and engine oil, then judders as it pulls out of the station; the cattle are already snuffling through the slats for air, pressing their muzzles and their nostrils against the unplaned timbers. At the next station, bellowing men move up and down the platform, sliding open doors, releasing clouds of pungent steam. They hose the beasts to cool them before loading more livestock into the wagons, more horses here, more pigs there, prompting a tumult of animal cries and hoof-kicks against wooden slats. Tongues lick at the water trickling down the planks and the necks. A young heifer kicked in the belly suffers a spontaneous miscarriage, delivering a half-formed calf, its bones still soft, which the cattle next to her trample to a pulp on the floorboards, through whose yawning gaps the railway sleepers flash past. Then darkness falls, leaving the beasts with only the whisper of the rails, the clack of piston rods and the whale-like breath of the engine. Some animals raise their heads to suck in a lungful of warm air, others briefly doze only to wake with a start, jolted by the train or gnawed at by hunger. In their singular temporality, the journey through the night and new day seems endless, until the animals are unloaded once more, reloaded once more, shipped through the cold, misty morning of northern France towards the cattle pens of an army corps stationed near a village on a desolate plain, where they are goaded one last time into the glare of daylight as the sun finally pierces the clouds. Under the orders of a quartermaster and several auxiliary officers, dozens of cowherds descend upon the cattle and drive them towards vast enclosures built a few kilometres from the front lines in open country that is eerily peaceful but for the infernal rumbling of that Gehenna, a cacophony of rumbling engines and the indistinguishable cries of men and beasts. The smell is bitter and metallic. The mingled stenches of an abattoir, a fetid byre and a charnel house. The number of beasts is unparalleled. The soil sodden with excrement and urine is trampled into mud by countless hooves. The slurry flows from the cattle pens in waves of faecal lava. The injuries suffered by the animals during transportation become infected and purulent. The air is dark with gnats and horseflies, which feverishly swarm over the livestock like the fourth plague of Egypt, clustering around eyes, around open wounds, gorging on sweat, on blood, on dung, as soon as the unloaded animals rush to the water troughs. The weakest animals struggle in vain to get a place at the troughs, and their eyes roll more wildly still. White flashes of sclera are visible everywhere. Long trails of saliva hang from their mouths and foam on flanks and hindquarters. Nostrils bleed. The horses’ legs are ravaged by mud fever. Louse flies colonize their groins and even the men pick them from the folds of their flesh, from armpits, from buttocks, decapitating them with the swift flick of a fingernail. Crows in their hundreds wheel above the paddock. A veterinary surgeon fuddled by the constant din tours the barbed-wire fences, pointing out the beasts to be slaughtered; first and foremost those which can no longer stand. They survive for only a day or two here. The sole object of the cattle pens is to keep them alive as long as necessary. This herd is not intended to be fattened or bred. This farm is merely a stopping place, an assemblage of rickety fences driven into muddy fields and various tents to house the fifteen teams of butchers working long days to fulfil the orders of the supply officers. Often, more meat than is required is sent out. If it is returned in time, it is be sent again with the proceeds of the next day’s butchering. If not, it rots in the blazing midday sun. Stray dogs with blood-smeared muzzles fight over a pile of entrails until it is doused with petrol and torched, giving off the charred smell of a funeral pyre. Automobiles belch smoke as they become bogged down in the muddy ruts ploughed up by their constant comings and goings. Loaded according to a fixed schedule, every day they transport the two thousand kilos of meat that feed an infantry regiment. The pace of the slaughter is such that none of the men has seen its like before, not even those who have worked for abattoirs in the cities. The two cows, the calf and the sows are led to the butchery tents, hog-tied or restrained by wooden planks, stunned, stuck, and sometimes trepanned before being bled, dismembered and butchered. An animal that struggles in a last desperate attempt at survival must be hobbled and hit repeatedly with a lump hammer until the bones of the cranium sunder and the brain is reduced to a pulp that spurts from the ears as the animal falls on its flank and dies, shuddering, on a bed of still-warm entrails. The blades of the axes are dull from cutting through bone and tendon. Knives no longer cut throats, so the butchers resort to saws. The lambs mewl day and night as their mothers are strung up by their hind legs and eviscerated while still alive. Within the gaping wound, the pluck quivers, then slides and falls heavily from the chest cavity while they still bleat. The butchers and all the others are covered with excrement, with bile and blood. Their eyes, too, bulge beneath a mask of grime. They come to hate these animals, who show so little goodwill in their dying. They beat them when they baulk. They hack at their hindquarters with blades to urge them on. They lose their knives inside deep wounds. They plunge their arms up to the elbows into bellies, pincers buried beneath a steaming heap of entrails. They slip and sprawl on spilled guts. Their queasy faces are sprayed with blood and shit, the butchers aprons, even the canvas, become stiff with blood. A boy of twenty breaks down and weeps. He is cradling the remains of a newborn kid goat he cut from its mother, which laid its head against his neck and suckled his earlobe as he carried it to the slaughtering tents. When darkness falls and they try to sleep, the night within them is red. Their ears ring with the phantom cries of beasts. Their mouths are filled with the taste of death. When reduced by half, the herd is relocated according to the troop movements. At such times, men and beasts leave behind a landscape of mud and desolation roamed by rawboned dogs and carrion crows.
She has been sitting by the fire for an indeterminate period. Face impassive, she is staring at the glistering coals beneath the ash when the sound of clogs rouses her from her daydream. Éléonore sees the widow get up and go to the window. ‘Stay there,’ she says, then wraps her shawl around her turkey neck and leaves the room.
Éléonore goes back to contemplating the fire. She does not blink and the heat dries out her eyes. She blinks, runs her hand over her face. She hears voices in the yard. She gets up to shake herself from her torpor; her legs are stiff and her hands cold. It must be late afternoon, but she is not sure. The evenings are still cool and the light has waned. The empty byre is a cold, black chasm. She walks to the window and pushes back the crocheted curtain with the back of her hand. She sees a cart drawn by a small grey donkey led by a boy a little younger than she is. She has never seen him before, yet his features, though unclear, are not unfamiliar. The widow, her back turned, blocks the view of Éléonore. She supposes the widow is talking to a woman, though her voice and words are inaudible. The widow listens, nods occasionally. Éléonore can feel the hostility in her stiff back, the haughty tilt of her head. At length, she turns away and walks back to the farm, and in doing so reveals Marcel’s mother, who stands motionless for a moment, wipes her eyes with a kerchief taken from the sleeve of her blouse, then takes the hand offered by the youngest of her sons, the only one who has remained at home with her, and climbs back into the cart. The crocheted curtain slips between her fingers as the widow comes through the door, taking off her shawl. She undoes the woollen
knot, plasters her brittle hair against her head, wipes the bead of snot from her nose with the back of her hand, then simply goes back to her seat next to the fire, where she left a sheet she has been darning. Éléonore grabs the doorknob, pulls it towards her and goes out into the yard. The cart has already pulled away. She wants to run, but her legs give way and she grips the edge of the well to steady herself. When she goes back inside, the widow is busy darning. The flames yellow her cheeks; her profile is carved with a billhook. Éléonore says:
‘That was his mother.’
The widow does not reply. She pushes the needle through the fabric and it clicks against the thimble.
‘It was his mother,’ Éléonore says again, and she sees the widow shrug imperceptibly.
Éléonore crosses the space that separates them, rips the needlework from her hands and tosses it onto the fire, where it blazes for a moment before shrivelling on the burning logs.
‘Have you lost your wits?’ the widow stammers, looking up, her face pale. ‘He’s dead, your precious Marcel. There. Happy now? And here I was, trying to spare you.’
Éléonore’s hip knocks against the table as she slumps onto a bench.
‘Got himself killed just like all the rest. I warned you. And he never wrote, not once!’ the widow shrieks at the top of her lungs. ‘Maybe now you’ll stop pining for him. Don’t you understand, there’s no-one now but us. He’s dead!’
Hands clasped over her stomach, reeling from the pain, Éléonore’s mouth hangs open, unable to breathe or utter a sound. The widow gets up and stands next to her. She is short of breath. She looks at her daughter. She seems to hesitate, then reaches out a hand and lays it on the back of Éléonore’s head. A cold, rough palm she slides down to her neck like a caress. For a moment, a silence falls over the room, then, in a low voice, she begins to recite from Ecclesiastes:
‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.’
For a long time, Éléonore walks the paths she has walked a thousand times in a daze. The water is black at the edges of the fields, in the ditches and the drinking troughs. She tramps paths filled with smoke from chimneys that split in the heat of raging winter fires. She walks in the dank shadow of a windmill that has lost its sails. Every breath is a wrench. She gasps like a drowning woman, like an animal pulled from primordial ooze and thrown onto the land. She gulps the air and beats her breast with her hand. She loses her shoes in the puddles. She collapses, her foot entangled in a root. She does not feel the stones stabbing into her shins, her palms, her skinned knees. She simply gets up and carries on. In the twilight, the clouds form great marble sheets. As night falls, she stops in the village square. She stands, motionless, arms hanging by her sides. Around her, women pass. Children kick at clumps of grass. None of them seem to see her. Dogs sniff at her bare, blackened feet. The village continues to hum with its constant refrain. Before long the chestnut trees will come into bud again, and their branches cast shadowy veins on the ground. Three cows pad into a black, damp byre. The church tolls six o’clock. Éléonore looks up at the steeple piercing a sky empty of clouds, empty of stars, a deep cerulean blue, and peers at it for a moment. She walks to the steps of the church and slowly climbs them, leaving the imprint of her feet on the stone. She steps into the cold half-light and closes the door behind her, silencing the hum of Puy-Larroque. The feeble flames of the few remaining candles are reflected in the grey stained glass. The baptismal font is filled with a still pool of ink. Éléonore bends over it. From between her lips she allows a thread of saliva to trickle, extend and disappear, rippling the surface of the water. She lays a hand on the back of one of the front pews. She leans with all her weight and topples it. She lifts the next pew and overturns it, sending one end slamming into the wall. With her heel, she splits the straw seats of the prie-dieu. She opens the missals and rips out pages. She hurls the ciboria, the patens and the candle spikes against the wall. A grimy tapestry depicting some obscure liturgical scene catches fire, and the rising sparks eat away at the shadows in the hollows of the vaulted arch. Éléonore unhooks the great crucifix from the wall and it crashes to the floor, the face of Christ scattering in a thousand plaster fragments. She has not heard the great door open and the village women, drawn by the commotion, rush towards her. The burning tapestry is pulled to the ground and trampled. The women grab the heretic by the arms, the shoulders, the wrists, struggling to restrain her. Even their voices and their cries do not reach her. She hawks and spits on the floor, onto the back of the fallen crucifix, while the women drag her out of the church, throw her to the bottom of the church steps and douse her with cold water drawn from the washhouse trough. Éléonore wraps her arms around her legs, presses her face against her knees and falls onto her side in a puddle of mud. The women gather in a circle around her. One lashes out with a vicious kick to the back. She lies there for a long time, drenched, numb with cold, until the widow, whom someone has gone to fetch, parts the silent throng of farmwomen. She sees her daughter huddled, filthy. A stone, a tree stump, a log. She looks at the flushed, forbidding faces of the women one by one. She hears the hateful words, the veiled threats, the accusations directed at her, her and her accursed daughter. She says nothing, kneels down next to Éléonore, slides a hand under her arm, sits her up, then hauls her to her feet. She walks away, bearing the weight of the body leaning against hers. The two women stagger down the road towards the farm with measured steps. Éléonore’s wounds are raw now, her aching feet are black and blue from walking barefoot over the stones. Her every muscle is sapped. Soon, they are swallowed by the darkness. In front of the fire she has rekindled, the widow undresses Éléonore and lets her soiled clothes fall to the floor. She dips a cloth in a bucket of water and washes her, scouring the scratches and the bruises. She says:
‘What on earth were you thinking getting yourself into such a state?’
Éléonore surrenders herself to the widow as she lifts an arm, stretches a limb. She watches the widow’s brusque, assiduous movements.
‘What you did, it was desecration. It was sacrilege.’
Her voice is low, but devoid of anger. From time to time, she looks up at Éléonore, a look filled with terror and some form of respect. She patiently dries Éléonore’s skin. She roughly combs her hair, pulling at the tangled knots until they give way, holding her head steady with the flat of her hand. Beneath the dry, caked mud the widow has brushed away, she sees that a lock of white hair has appeared over her forehead. Faced with the naked body of her daughter, she takes a step back, her eyes wide, and says:
‘You must be possessed…’
She gathers up a nightshirt, slips Éléonore’s head through the neck, her arms through the sleeves. She presses a rosary into her hands and winds the beads around her wrists.
‘You’ll do penance. Pray. Pray, now.’
She sits her in a chair by the fire, then kneels at her feet and, pressing Éléonore’s hands in hers in her lap, recites an Our Father, nodding her head each time Éléonore vainly, atavistically tries to force the prayer from her bloodless lips.
‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil. Amen.’
Éléonore continues to allow herself to drift in a hazy languor. She no longer defies the widow, who gradually becomes accustomed to her asthenia. Since the livestock was commandeered, work on the farm is restricted to menial tasks. They watch the wheat crop grow and fear the blackthorn winter. The black earth has been fertilized by the snows and is covered with a soft velvet, and primroses are flowering along the edges of the fields. The widow and her daughter dig over and weed the kitchen garden. They plant, they sow, they transplant. Roused from its slumber, nature stirs anew. Tender leaves bud and the branches rustle as birds shake their feathers. The villagers sweep the steps leading to the cemetery and clear the gra
ves of the ravages of winter. Since the beginning of the war, brambles, nettles and rye grass have overgrown the edges of the woods, the fields and the ditches. Having collapsed onto itself, the father’s body is something unspeakable, dressed in a muddy suit through which the bones have begun to protrude. Frozen solid for a time by the winter frost, the body of the altar boy Jean Roujas now returns to its slow deliquescence. Thin from their winter fast, the game emerge from their lairs at dawn and at dusk. Badgers and foxes come from sets and earths. Young stags rub their antlers against tree trunks and shed them. Put out in the pasture, the old mare is found dead, lying on her back, her forelegs stiff as posts. Since there is no longer a working knacker’s yard, and neither Éléonore nor the widow has the strength to dig a grave, they have no choice but to leave the carcass to rot in the open air, stinking out the surrounding fields, until, eventually, an old man from a neighbouring village brings a harness and hauls away the bloated corpse, which leaves behind a trail of black, putrid slime crawling with vermin. When one of the legs, tethered by a rope to the harness, dislocates at the shoulder, the old man suggests they burn the decaying carcass there. The two women pile armfuls of twigs and straw against the horse’s flanks and into the curious angle of the rigid neck. They bury their faces in their scarves, inhaling the miasma through their mouths. The widow douses the body with petrol and lights the bonfire, which burns slowly for two days and two nights, sending up a column of oily smoke into the crisp air.
Animalia Page 14