Joël lifts the barrow and tips the slurry into the pit. Thousands of litres of slurry flow through the drainage system into the tank to be mixed. Joël wipes his sweaty forehead and steps back so as not to inhale the toxic fumes from the black sludge, the gases produced as the slurry decomposes: hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane.
‘You’re never to come here unless I’m with you,’ Henri told them when mechanical diggers first began excavating the pit behind the brand-new pig shed.
Then, a few weeks later, as slurry began to pour in and fill the tank:
‘All it takes is for you to breathe in the fumes, and you could pass out. It attacks the nervous system. Screws you up inside. So you pass out, you fall in, you drown. You sink to the bottom. And I’m not going to fucking empty it to fish you out, so get that through your thick skulls.’
Serge and Joël used to dream – still dream – of drowning, of this pit ready to engulf them, of sinking into the shadowy, all-consuming depths of the slurry, as deadly as the quicksand in adventure stories or the currents around the Bermuda Triangle. They reach out towards the surface they cannot see, their eyes are open but see only thick darkness. They try to scream for help but their mouths and lungs fill with putrid mud and they wake up with a start, clutching the bedsheets, that eternal taste of shit on their tongue.
When he is near the pit, Joël always has a sense of vertigo, a vague feeling that he might jump in, that someone might suddenly appear (but who – Henri? Serge?) and push him in, even when he is alone in the pig units, as he is now, so he takes a step back before lighting a cigarette. Then he once more plunges into the miasma of the pig shed. He sees his black fingers as he brings the cigarette to his lips. He is accustomed to the filth, to the slurry that covers him, spattering his blue coveralls, the skin on his hands, his wrists. As far back as he can remember, he has never felt disgusted by it. He can bury his hands into pig shit, into sows’ vaginas, into the ripped bellies of carcasses. This is how Henri brought up the sons, weighing their character and their masculinity by their capacity to endure the suffering of animals, so that such things now provoke nothing in Joël, except perhaps indifference, a numbness that has gradually extended to everything else, an acid steadily eroding his nerve endings.
One of his first memories of Henri is seeing him hurl kittens against the wall of the pig shed and watching the shattered, broken remains fall at his feet on the bare concrete, seeing the halos left on the brickwork, veering from red to brown to black as the days pass. Dogs and cats are the animals they are most reluctant to kill, but in the world of the farm, females give birth until they are worn out, and it is for the men to decide which of their offspring should survive. Serge tears puppies from their mothers’ teats, rips them from kennels, grips their furry bodies in his left hand and, with his right, twists their heads until he hears the soft vertebrae crack and sometimes a brief whimper, then he tosses the remains in the soot-blackened steel barrel in a corner of the farmyard, which sometimes burns and smoulders for days, belching oily smoke, reeking of glowing scrap iron, melted plastic, burnt garbage. When the elder boy was no more than ten years old and Joël barely seven, Henri taught them to slit the throats of piglets. He would press into the childish hands the Laguiole knife he is never without and regularly sharpens on a gun barrel, leaning over the kitchen sink, and close his own hand over theirs. He would lean his chest against their backs, forcing them to arch their necks, rest his chin with its stiff, black beard against the backs of their skulls. He would guide the hand holding the blade, show them how to thrust it into the throat of the hog-tied animal, then slice through the carotid artery:
‘You stick the knife in here, cut cleanly, keeping your knee on the pig’s shoulder. There, just like that. You just need to find the vein and work with a fluid motion.’
The scarlet blood would spurt onto a hand that was no longer theirs but merely an extension of the knife fused to the father’s thick, hairy forearm, the bulging biceps, the dry, merciless palm to which they have no choice but to submit. One day Joël misses the artery and, fearing the father’s reaction, plunges the blade twice more into the neck of the pig as it continues to squeal and struggle. Henri grabs his shoulder, pulling him so roughly that the boy ends up on the ground. Lying on the flagstones, the pig twitches and convulses as it bleeds out.
‘Take a good look. It’s your fault that he’s in pain.’
Lying at their feet, the knife spins on its handle like a top. Henri picks it up and finishes off the animal, before bending down to pick up the son, lifting him much higher than is necessary, perhaps to demonstrate that he is weightless, worthless, leaving his bloody handprint on the boy’s wrist.
Joël’s eyes fill with tears and he cannot choke back a sob.
‘Stop that right now or I’ll belt you one! That’ll give you something to cry about.’
Years later, when Henri happens on Joël standing in front of the bathroom mirror, face covered in shaving cream, he takes the razor from his son’s hand and slides the blade over the beardless cheeks and downy shadow of his lower lip. The boy’s reflection shoots Henri an anxious look as he lifts the chin with one finger and runs the blade over the throat where the Adam’s apple is not yet visible. He rinses the razor in the half-filled washbasin on which float small islands of shaving foam, and says:
‘Hey, kid, you know I’d never hurt you, don’t you?’
This coldness, this hard-won indifference to the animals, has never quite managed to stifle in Joël a confused loathing that cannot be put into words, the impression – and, as he grew, the conviction – that there is a glitch: one in which pig rearing is at the heart of some much greater disturbance beyond his comprehension, like some machine that is unpredictable, out of kilter, by its nature uncontrollable, whose misaligned cogs are crushing them, spilling out into their lives, beyond their borders; the piggery as the cradle of their barbarism and that of the whole world.
Long before the new pig units were built, he had begun to feel a similar loathing for their relationship with the pigs (first Henri’s relationship, but quickly their own), and, inextricably, for their oddness as a family, the long-kept silence about Élise’s absence, the neglected family tomb with its pots of withered chrysanthemums that is from a bygone era, yet still threatens by the empty space waiting to be filled by the body of the father, who has already had his name engraved (1921–) next to that of his late wife, or the bodies of the sons Henri might have to fish from the slurry pit should they happen to drown in it.
Before the two boys were sent to school and became aware of other kinds of childhood, they were unable to judge the peculiarity, the strangeness of their family. For almost twenty years, until Catherine arrived, Henri refused to buy a television. The world reached them only through the crackling of the transistor radio he turned on from time to time, glimpsed in the headlines in the window of the newsagents, distant, unreal and hostile.
Please fill out the form. Father’s first name, surname, occupation. Mother’s first name, surname, occupation.
Their relationship to Éléonore has long been shrouded in mystery. She was a mother to them, but she was also Henri’s mother, working in the shadow of her son without managing to compensate for his power and authority by the brusque, awkward affection she felt for them. As children, the brothers never questioned the father’s solitude, nor the presence of the portrait with the hazel tree on his nightstand, until one day Henri surprised Serge sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at the photograph.
‘That’s her. That’s your mother.’
Serge jumped to his feet so quickly that the picture slipped from his hands and fell on the wooden floor. He looks up towards the father, whose bulk completely fills the doorframe. Henri moves towards the bed, bends down to pick up the frame, then sits on the mattress and pats the sheet next to him.
‘Come over here.’
Together, they gaze at the little photograph. Henri points to the boy in shorts runni
ng behind the bench.
‘See there, that’s you… And that’s her. Maybe you remember her. She died giving birth to your brother. I’m just telling you this so that you know, you shouldn’t blame him. Joël, I mean. These things happen, kid. That’s life; a huge tank of shit constantly being poured on your head. Might as well get used to it. If the day comes when you have to blame someone for something, blame me, no-one else. Got it?’
From his hoarse, strangled voice Serge can tell how painful it is for him to speak. He nods shyly.
‘Now get out of this room. And don’t let me catch you in here again.’
Later, the two brothers are walking through the countryside, collecting large branches to build a hut in the shape of a tepee, where they could shelter during a downpour. Serge spits on the ground, then stirs the foamy little gob of spittle with a twig.
‘You know, we used to have a mum, but you killed her. She’s the lady in the photograph. She died because of you, giving birth to you.’
‘You’re lying!’ Joël says uncertainly.
‘Am not! I’m not lying. You just ask him. He’s the one that told me. I think that’s why he doesn’t love you as much. Can’t blame him… I wish you were dead and she was still alive too.’
The brothers sit in silence until the cleansed sky clears again, illuminating the landscape with glistening light.
‘C’mon,’ Serge says, grabbing Joël by the hand. ‘I’ll show you!’
They wait until Henri leaves the farmhouse, then Serge leads his brother upstairs, pressing a finger to his lips. They tiptoe into the bedroom so as not to be heard by Éléonore, and go over to the wardrobe containing the relics of the mother. When they open the doors, a few chalky clothes moths flutter into the room, wafting the smell of the mildewed dresses suspended on their hangers. The boys are dumbstruck by the sight of these pitiful shrouds. To the right of the wardrobe, on the top shelf, Serge picks up a dead butterfly that instantly crumbles to dust between his fingers.
‘See?’ he says, turning to his brother.
On a different afternoon, some ten years after Joël’s birth, while rummaging in the attic, the two boys find a rectangular cherrywood box, simple, with no gilding, no carved arabesques, not even a tarnished silver latch to keep it shut. A commonplace box to hide a commonplace treasure.
They are sitting cross-legged in the dust and the sunbeams that slip between the roof tiles. Serge opens the box to reveal a garnet velvet pad, on which lie two gold rings, both slightly bent, one set with a small gemstone, a bracelet with a broken clasp and three pairs of earrings. Laid on top of them, carefully coiled, is a long tress of silken hair, which the brothers stare at for a long time, daring to pick it up and bring it to their faces. In the half-light of the attic, the lock of hair seems almost luminous, faded by time, by darkness and oblivion, even whiter than Éléonore’s hair has been for a long time now.
As soon as Élise died, Henri began to neglect the grave; he has never gone to lay flowers there, has never taken his sons. From this day, however, the boys, who have always been aware of the family grave and careful to keep their distance, begin to weed the grave, uproot the woody plants surrounding the headstone, scrape away the lichen that has had long years to conquer the memorial. They never speak of this with Henri, just as they have never spoken of the dresses in the wardrobe, or the simple jewellery box.
In the years they spent behind their desks at the local primary school, it was not uncommon for Henri, on the pretext of running into the village, to come and spy on them in the playground, standing motionless, his fingers hooked through the chain-link fence.
‘Friends will never be any use to you, family are the only people you can count on.’
Since their earliest childhood, he has always been open about his mistrust of the world. Being a misanthrope, he shuns all ideology, and has nothing but contempt for political causes, ideas, thoughts. He has always been as sceptical of state education as he has as of popular education, of the very notions of education and socialization. He believes in nothing except in himself and in the value of work. Yet he did not care about the sons’ academic successes, believing such things to be the prerogative of a woman, a mother, that to be able to read, write and count was more than sufficient. And so, when the sons turned sixteen, he took them out of school so they could devote themselves full-time to working on the farm.
‘At least here, as long as you pull your weight, you’re your own boss, you can take pride in a job well done, and you’re not greasing someone else’s palm. And besides, we’re a family. A clan.’
One morning in July, having left Joël in the pig shed, while Henri is off surveying the Plains, as they call the lands they farm, Serge goes back to the house, takes off his shoes and goes into the kitchen. He opens a cupboard, grabs the bottle of Johnnie Walker, opens it and takes a long swig before taking out his hipflask and filling it over the sink. A drop trickles over the edge; he laps it up and is putting the whisky bottle back in the cupboard just as Gabrielle comes into the room. He can immediately sense her hostile presence, fraught with fear and with reproach as he washes his hands in the sink.
‘Are you not going to ask me how she is?’
Serge turns his back and scrubs his nails with an old toothbrush. Grey soapy water swirls at the bottom of the sink and disappears down the drain. He does not respond to his sister-in-law’s question and, for a moment, she is silent. Serge turns off the tap, grabs a dishcloth and meticulously wipes his hands.
‘She’s going to need to be hospitalized again,’ Gabrielle says.
‘You know what I think about that. You know what she thinks.’
‘She’s in no fit state to think anything. I have to drag her out of bed, she’s completely stupefied by all the pills she takes.’
Serge sets down the dishtowel and turns to his sister-in-law. He can feel the alcohol warming his throat, his stomach. Gabrielle nervously grabs a packet of ground coffee and sets about preparing a cafetière.
‘I thought things were clear, Gaby. When the twins’ father pissed off and you came to live here, it was on condition that you take care of her and look after the children. That was the deal, and it suited everyone, you most of all. I’m not feeding and putting a roof over your head out of the goodness of my heart. I’ve got enough on my plate with the pig units. I thought we agreed.’
‘I don’t depend on you, and neither do my sons. I make money with my cleaning jobs.’
‘Just don’t take me for a fool, that’s all I ask. Cathy is not going back into hospital.’
‘She needs to see somebody…’
‘She already sees a doctor, for God’s sake! If you don’t want to take care of her, fine, we’ll manage without you, but in that case, you take your belongings, you take your sons, and you fuck off.’
Gabrielle is speechless, pale and trembling. The teaspoon clinks against the side of the cafetière and the ground coffee spills onto the countertop. She is afraid of him, he knows that. She sweeps the coffee into her palm and he looks at her pale profile. Sometimes she reminds him of Catherine before she fell ill, the young Catherine, sensual and wild. Serge steps forward and lays his hands on Gabrielle’s shoulders, presses his chest against her back. She quivers, suddenly short of breath. He says:
‘Look, don’t worry so much. You know what these breakdowns are like; she’ll come through this one like she came through all the others. All we can do is wait, and do our best. We all need to pull together.’
Serge closes his eyes, buries his face in the nape of his sister-in-law’s neck and inhales, hoping to smell Catherine, not as she is today, a sickly, medicinal smell, but the Catherine of old, fragrant and intoxicating. He slides his hands down her arms, cups her bosom, pressing his palms against her breasts.
With a quick twist of her shoulder, Gabrielle extricates herself, then steps around the table so that it is now between them.
‘You reek of booze… If she could see you…’
‘So what? You
think she was some sort of saint, do you?’
‘Shut up, please. Just shut up.’
He can see the disgust in her face; the same disgust he inspires in Catherine. He nods, feeling a wave of anger wash over him, and he leaves the house as quickly as he can.
Serge walks towards the gates, opens the padlock and pulls at the chain that keeps them closed, then, feeling the chain resist, lashes out with a violent kick. He walks along the dirt road, turns onto the main road, past rolling fields in the midst of which are clacking irrigation sprinklers that look like fantastical prehistoric beasts. From here, the only part of the piggery visible is the sudden flash of a grey concrete building that seems bogged down in the earth, pierced by narrow windows like arrow slits, which let in only a faint murky glow since they are partially obstructed by the overhang of the roof, and caked in dust and grease. The muscles in Serge’s jaw spasm convulsively. His heartbeat propels the rage secreted by some hidden, sovereign gland, constricting his throat, and courses, quivering, through his elbows and his fingers.
He stops for a moment, opens the hipflask and drinks eagerly. He slaps himself in the face, then hits himself again, this time with a closed fist. He mumbles aloud, fragments of sentences. Perched on high-voltage cables, silent magpies watch as he passes. A solitary buzzard glides over the crop fields, its shadow skimming them like a caress. Soon, the Plains appear in shimmering heat haze, vast expanses of ripe wheat, fragrant and copper-coloured, and maize, pale green with silken inflorescences. From the distance comes the rumble of a combine harvester. A cloud of yellow dust drifts across their fields. In a few days, they too will have to bring in the harvest, and ensilage the grain.
Serge thinks of Catherine. The children are now the only bond between them. Julie-Marie, the little girl who once adored him, now a diaphanous, elusive teenager; and Jérôme, whom it has taken him time to learn to love as a son, although, despite his best efforts, the boy still stirs in him the same feeling of shame as when he is suddenly conscious of the stench of the pigs, a feeling he has been battling with for more than ten years.
Animalia Page 26