When he sees it for the first time on the surface of the pond, Jérôme grips a willow branch with his left hand to steady himself as he climbs down to the narrow, muddy shoreline. Without pausing to take off his trousers, he steps into the water and Julie-Marie turns and flashes him a smile, about to say something, and then she notices that her brother is not looking at her. Following his gaze, she sees the snake and lets out a shrill scream that bores into Jérôme’s eardrums and echoes around the countryside. Julie-Marie runs back to the bank, sends up huge jets of water, slipping in the mud, collapsing onto the roots, which she grips and uses to haul herself ashore, still shrieking. Meanwhile, alerted by the vibrations, the snake disappears underwater and reappears in the middle of the pond, then swims towards the tall grasses of the far bank. Sheepish, Jérôme now turns and paddles back to the shore. Water trickles down Julie-Marie’s arm as she hugs her shoulders, hiding her breasts from him, not yet troubled that he can see her genitals. She sees that her brother cannot tear his eyes from the dark, downy hair of her groin. Letting go her shoulders, she lets her arms hang by her side, and defiantly, or playfully, her palms pressed against her thighs, stands there utterly naked before the boy, before bursting out laughing.
‘Jesus, you gave me such a fright! Come on. You’re not going to tell me you’ve never seen a naked woman, are you?’
Of course he has; he has seen their mother naked when she took baths with him, washed his hair, allowing him to stare at her vulva. Julie-Marie picks up her clothes, turns her back to reveal the curve of her pale buttocks and, glancing at Jérôme over her shoulder, slowly, unhurriedly, gets dressed.
The snake is now dozing on the tombstone in the midday sun, coiled and still, the head, with its yellow labial scales, emerging from the loops of its body.
You know that way you’ve got of looking at your sister, well, I don’t like it one fucking bit.
Jérôme moves a foot. The gravel of the cemetery crunches under his shoe. His palms are sweaty, his mouth dry. The buried dead, happy for a moment’s entertainment, holding their breath as he does, pressing their ears to the padded lids of their coffins so they can tell where he is from the crunch of his steps. He is just about to pounce when the snake rears up, darts out its forked tongue, opens its mouth wide, puffing up its body, hissing at the predator that has it cornered. It tries to escape, but Jérôme hurls himself towards it, grips it behind the head, but falls against the broken gravestone, which gashes his shin, and he rolls over, hugging the snake to his chest to protect it from the weight of his body.
His head hits the cemetery wall and he finds himself sprawled on his back, his face covered with a mask of dirt, powdered bone and dust, gasping for breath, dazzled by the sun glaring at him and numbed by the shock. He holds the snake up to his face and it coils around his forearm. He can smell the scent secreted by the cloacal gland, the black liquid trickling onto his neck. He sits on the cemetery path, his heart hammering in his chest.
The snake contorts, twisting its mouth to reveal the pink throat, the glottis and the sheath of the tongue. For a moment, it winds around the boy’s chest and the beating of the animal’s heart and the beating of the child’s heart meet in a single saraband. Then the snake finally concedes, admits defeat and relaxes its grip.
Jérôme gets to his feet. His shin aches and his sock is crimson, he is out of breath, his throat is sore. He holds the snake at eye level and stares into the fixed, round pupils, gazing at his own reflection. He opens his mouth, places the snake’s head on his tongue and closes his lips around its neck, then opens his mouth again and removes the snake, which tastes of the cemetery and of the lake, of the shadows of stones, of graves, of the corrugated-iron under which it hides, of fields of sunflowers where, when night comes, it hunts for rats and rabbits, of the fur of the animals it squeezes and the burrows into which it slithers.
It’s just like pigs, you get runts in the litter; the mother’s obviously passed on her madness to him, these things are in the blood.
Jérôme relaxes his grip and the grass snake slides between his fingers. He pushes up his T-shirt and feels the warm, dry scales as the snake slithers across his stomach, his chest, dips under the neckline and reappears at his throat. For a long time he lies there in the now inverted shadow cast by the pockmarked Virgin. The snake twines around his neck, his wrists, continually darting out its tongue, tickling his skin. The wound in his shin dries and grows dark in the afternoon heat perfumed by the cypresses, while in their coffins the village dead swelter, and are weary once more. Jérôme finally sets the snake down at his feet, where it lies, unmoving, suspicious, then stirs a little, a vague attempt at escape and, realizing that the boy does not try to catch it, weaves away though the graves.
Jérôme gets to his feet. Eyes closed, he stretches and shivers in the sun, the Mute, the Happy Fool, the Idiot, the Bastard. The Runt.
Arriving back at the farm, Jérôme pauses on the threshold. He strokes the multicoloured plastic strips of curtain pinned over the kitchen doorway, their ends chewed away by generations of puppies. Jérôme loves the rubbery smell it gives off when warmed by the sun and stirred by a gentle breeze. He sometimes feels that things can be much bigger than they seem, that they can contain life itself: the smell of the plastic curtain or of the abandoned tyres filled with pools of stagnant rainwater, the little curly hairs at the back of Julie-Marie’s neck, a muddy puddle fringed by serried ranks of tadpoles. He goes upstairs and opens the door to Catherine’s room, plunged into darkness by the closed shutters. She is awake and waves him in. He creeps through the half-open door into the sickly, stale perfume of his mother’s body and her breath as she lifts the sheet, and he slides in beside her, pressed against her listless flesh. Catherine roughly hugs him to her, presses her nose against the back of his head, breathing the smell of his hair, the nape of his neck.
‘Where on earth have your been? You’re filthy. And you smell funny.’
She feels his limbs, his dirty feet, as though checking that he is really here, alive and well. He whimpers when she touches the gash on his shin.
‘What have you been doing now? You’re covered in scabs and bruises. You need to cut your nails, you’re scratching me. Do you take a bath when your sister tells you? Does she wash you properly? Let me have a look, I’ll check to see if you’ve got lice.’
She draws him towards her and he feels her thighs press against his buttocks, feels her breath heavy with sleep brushing the back of his neck as she suddenly whispers feverishly:
‘Maman will get better, you’ll see. Honestly, I’m feeling much better… Don’t you think I look better? I’ll get up in a little while… I just need a bit more rest, just a bit. I’m sorry, Jesus, I’m so sorry, just have a little nap here with me, please, stay with me until I fall asleep again.’
He lies there motionless until Catherine drifts off. Usually, when he comes into the room, she disappears, like the lizards at the cemetery scurry away when he tries to catch them. She buries herself under the sheet, shudders and moans when he touches her shoulder. So he simply sits on the bed, staring at the empty medicine boxes, the fetid water in the vase on the bedside table, the brownish brittle film like the skin on raw milk, the bouquet of flowers that Julie-Marie or Gabrielle stubbornly put there, withered for want of daylight.
‘What do you expect me to do with these? I can’t bear that scent, it gives me a blinding headache… or I can’t smell anything expect this house, which smells like a pig shed. What are they? Roses? Did you pick them from the climbing rose? Is this lilac? The smell makes me want to heave, and they wither in two seconds flat, there’s something pathetic about them. It’s depressing, it looks like a deathbed. But maybe that’s what you all want, to be rid of me, to bury me? You’re all plotting against me, aren’t you? Whatever you do, don’t listen to your grandmother, don’t believe a word she says, she’s worse than… Throw them out, for God’s sake. Why are you always bringing me these disgusting flowers? Why can’t you unders
tand I hate them?’
She begs them to take the flowers away, toss them on the dungheap, throw them to the hens so they can peck at the buds, and then two days later she will decide to throw open the shutters overlooking the farmyard, take a deep lungful of air. She will come back to life, start to tidy and clean her bedroom, the children’s rooms, the whole house, airing every room whether it’s raining, snowing or blowing a gale. In the kitchen, she will decide that the cupboards are empty and take it into her head to go shopping, ecstatic about the bright, gleaming supermarket shelves, the infinite variety of products, the neatly arranged pyramids of tins she tosses into the shopping trolley. She will drag Jérôme along with her because, at such times, she cannot bear the thought of being parted from him for a second.
‘You and I are the same, we’re two peas in a pod, aren’t we? You’re my little boy. You’re your mother’s son, aren’t you? You came out of me, to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. Go on, admit it, you’re your mother’s son, a little devil, just like me! Do you think maybe we should go away? Just you and me, we won’t tell anyone. We don’t need anyone or anything, we’re fine, just the two of us.’
On the main street of the little town, she pauses in front of every window, goes into every shop, the grocer’s, the electrical goods shop, the tobacconist, the souvenir shop. A steam iron, a china owl, a lampshade, an ashtray, sundry pairs of shoes, a doll for Julie-Marie, she stares in wonderment at everything, to her eyes every object seems ingenious, necessary, anticipating her every need; cravings she did not know she had a moment earlier are now like tiny, throbbing wounds that she must soothe immediately. By the time she gets home, she has already lost interest in what she has bought: boxes and plastic bags litter the kitchen table, the draining board, the chairs, they are strewn all over the floor. When Serge comes home, there are heated arguments, insults fly, the father reproaches her for pouring money she has done nothing to earn down the drain, she accuses him of being a cheapskate, a skinflint, railing at the meanness, the selfishness he gets from Henri.
‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!’ she says.
She gestures around the room with theatrical horror and amazement, knowing it will needle him: the wallpaper eaten by mildew, the plasterwork flaking and crumbling from saltpetre.
‘It’s a pigsty! It’s disgusting! I’m ashamed to live here! And what about all the money you throw away on booze, you fucking drunk, why don’t we talk about that?’
She starts screaming until her voice begins to crack, throwing anything that comes to hand, tossing the bags of groceries, the gift-wrapped boxes out the window into the yard, setting the dogs yowling in their kennel and at the same time swearing that she will take it all back, that she will demand her money back, humiliate herself in front of everyone for the sake of a few hundred francs. Serge grabs her, she struggles, punches his shoulders, his face, while he effortlessly lifts her, carries her up to the bedroom, kicking the door open, throws her down and slams the door. Catherine lies there on the ground, curled into the foetal position, sobbing bitterly, whimpering like a wounded animal, and sometimes Jérôme will go upstairs to her, run his fingers through her hair, wipe the snot from her nose until she calms down.
The boy knows nothing about his mother’s illness except for what his grandmother has confided to him on one of those days when, without warning, she chose to break her silence and disregard that of the boy: that the breakdowns became much more serious after his birth, that she has been sent ‘to the madhouse’ on a number of occasions, coming back to the farm after weeks or months, always more broken, most devastated, stepping out of the car and slowly crossing the yard, supported by Serge.
‘People can say what they like about my lad, and I’m not saying they’d be wrong, but no-one can accuse him of not loving your mother… It’s not your fault, of course, but the things she’s put him through… Not that’s she’s entirely to blame, I suppose but… Well… He may have forgiven her, but I won’t… not ever. And yes, I know there’s the illness, but she could never be content with what she had. She should have done – sometimes in this life you have to just make up your mind and be content…’
Jérôme remembers the doctor sitting in the kitchen, looking at the father, sighing, running his tongue over his lower lip, shaking his head, then writing out another prescription.
‘Things can’t go on like this. I can’t just keep writing prescriptions for serious medications that she takes only when it suits her, Serge. She needs to be institutionalized, to be monitored by specialists.’
‘Out of the question. Anyway, she hardly leaves the house these days, that’s all behind us. You know what happened last time, the bullshit they put into her head, the state she was in when I saw her. I’m telling you, she’s much better off here. You just write the prescription – that’s what I’m paying you for, isn’t it?’
The doctor pushed back his chair, got to his feet, looked at Jérôme and then ruffled his hair.
‘What about you, what do you think? Still determined to say nothing?’
Then, to Serge:
‘Whatever you want, but if things get worse, it’ll be your fault. And don’t kid yourself, she’ll get worse.’
During the day, the pig units become like furnaces, and they barely cool down at night. Pigs are unable to sweat and have difficulty regulating their body temperature. Since they cannot wallow in mud, they sprawl listlessly in their own excrement, panting in distress. The men get up at daybreak, refill the drinking troughs, hose down the animals. They throw open the doors of the pig sheds in the hope that a through breeze might drive away the humidity and the stench, but this means they have deal with the blowflies and horseflies that swarm in and hover in clouds over the stalls, clustering around every orifice of the pigs. Long before the sun has fully risen, they are forced to close the doors.
The sons rake droppings from under the slatted floors and push the slurry into the drainage channels. The pig sheds are two thousand square metres, and the stalls are two meters by three, each containing between five to seven pigs shitting and wallowing in their excreta.
Sows about to give birth are housed on slats in cramped farrowing crates, firmly restrained to limit their movements and prevent them from crushing their litter. Some farrow standing up, dropping their young like turds onto the ground; others, convulsed by spasms, manage to kneel or to lie down, with only their hindquarters sticking out for the sake of hygiene.
This is where everything goes to shit, never forget that. This is where pig breeding gets fucked up, the urogenital system.
The sows evacuate piles of black, foul-smelling waste into the walkways and the drainage channels, which the men have to clear away as quickly as possible so the animals do no fall into them and catch an infection, and the piglets are not born in their mother’s faeces, since a painstaking selective breeding process means that they are born with no natural immunity, Specific Pathogen Free, modified in other words – Henri prefers optimized – so as not to carry the bacteria naturally found in pigs, but which in the concentration camps of the pig sheds would likely cause an epidemic.
Joël has already seen piglets drag themselves along the ground, their bellies or their skulls half-eaten by the larvae that hatch from the eggs the flies are constantly laying. And so he and Serge shovel shit into barrows as fast as they can and tip it into the ravenous maw of the slurry pit, and they wash down the sows with high-pressure hoses and disinfectant before they farrow their young, to kill off the germs continuously contaminating them, contaminating their teats and, in turn, their piglets.
Because everything in the closed, stinking world of pig-rearing is simply one vast infection, constantly contained and controlled by men, even the carcasses churned out by abattoirs to stock the supermarkets, even when they have been washed with bleach, cut into pink slices and packed in cellophane into pristine white polystyrene trays, they bear the invisible taint of the pig shed, minute traces of shit, germs and bacteria,
against which the men fight a losing battle with their puny weapons: high-pressure hoses, Cresyl, disinfectants for the sows, disinfectant for wounds, worming pellets, vaccines for swine flu, vaccines for parvovirus, vaccines for Porcine Reproductive & Respiratory Syndrome, vaccines against porcine circovirus, iron injections, antibiotic injections, vitamin injections, mineral injections, growth hormone injections, food supplements – all this in order to compensate for deficiencies deliberately created by man.
They have modified pigs according to their whim, manufactured unhealthy animals that maximize growth and produce monstrous carcasses that are all muscle with almost no fat. They have created hulking beasts that are also sickly, animals that have no life beyond the hundred and eighty-two days spent vegetating in the half-light of a pig unit, with hearts and lungs that beat and oxygenate the blood only to constantly produce more lean meat for consumption.
Animalia Page 25