Year of the Drought

by Roland Buti

  “No. She works at the post office in Possens.”

  “Is that where you see her? When you go to the post office?”

  “Yes. That’s where I met her.”

  “But what do you do together? I got the feeling that she…”

  I stopped, because Mum suddenly came and sat down at the table opposite me, which she never did. I glanced anxiously at the potatoes frying in the cast-iron pan on the stove. Mum had two tiny wrinkles on each side of her mouth, barely even shadows, that descended towards her chin and were visible even when she smiled. These delicate folds of skin formed two unique little crescents, and they pointed up at her eyes as she said: “Cécile is an amazing girl. She’s different. She has an interesting view on everything. We talk… and sometimes we spend a whole afternoon together.”

  “Why can’t she come round to our place for once?”

  “But…”

  Mum hesitated. I felt a pang of guilt at employing a stratagem that might force her to lie to me. I did my best to let her off the hook. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important. As long as you get along with her!”

  “She does me good. You know…”

  She stretched out her hand. I reached out with the tips of my fingers. Between the dishes and the coffee-pot, our fingers brushed.

  “You’re a big boy now.”

  It was a statement of fact, and I could understand why she saw me that way. At that time, I was devoting a lot of my energy – albeit in a somewhat erratic fashion – to trying to look like an adult. Still, I couldn’t entirely stifle the little voice inside me that wanted to shout out in denial.

  “You can understand certain things. Life isn’t always easy. Day after day after day…”

  “I understand.”

  “Cécile does me good. It’s been going on since…”

  She stopped to listen to the floorboards as they bent under the weight of Dad’s steps in the hallway. It was already half past seven. She got up and returned to the position she’d occupied in front of her pans before our little tête-à-tête. Against our will, we had been drawn back within our familiar environment.

  Opposite me, his napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt, Dad held his bowl of milky coffee between his thick, slightly hooked thumbs. Years of milking had formed a calloused ridge that doubled the size of his knuckles. The muscles of his forearms, hypertrophied from countless repetitions of the same movement, made him look like Popeye after a can of spinach. Rudy stolidly went about consuming his rösti, as usual misjudging the relationship between the capacity of his mouth and the matter at the end of his fork. He scattered pieces of potato far and wide, which he then carefully gathered together, so that in the end he consumed almost as much from the table as from his plate.

  Mum, who was again wearing her neutral, unsmiling face, served us, carefully avoiding my gaze. Having been briefly catapulted outside of time, we had now resumed our normal life, which only ever flows in one direction.

  Before going out, I went upstairs to snoop around the guest room, so called even though no guest to my knowledge had ever slept there. It was mostly used for storage. Unheated, and full of decrepit furniture, old lamps and piled-up crates that gave off a strange smell, it didn’t seem part of the house. I was intrigued by these objects that had never had a place in the inhabited rooms. I preferred them. They hadn’t been worn out by familiarity. They had another life. The guest room also contained a small bookcase with the only books we owned: a few, lavishly illustrated albums of the countries of the world, that we had sent off for after saving up tokens on jars of jam or chocolate boxes. I would leaf through them, lingering over the carefully arranged, clichéd tableaux, and wonder if there was anywhere on earth as untidy and uninteresting as our village.

  The bed had been stripped. Someone had slept there. The creased yellow quilt had been put back in place, but it was folded over in a new way. I flared my nostrils as I pressed my nose against the blanket. There was no intoxicating scent of patchouli above the lifeless smell of the dust imprisoned in its fibres. Cécile had not spent the night in this room.

  * * *

  Outside, the sky was hard as cardboard, as though any bird that flew through it might tear it in half. My dove was sitting numbly on my shoulder, and I stayed as still as possible so as not to make it fall over. If that happened, it would crash painfully onto its side, then frantically beat its wings to regain a standing position. Clumsy and trembling, it would remain for a while in a state of shock, its heart on the verge of exploding, its eyes bulging even further out of its head.

  The distant hum of the village tractors on the roads merged in a uniform mass, like a vast drop suspended over the fields. I knew all the farmers, and could say with absolute certainty who was driving the red spot in the east or the blue spot in the west, both followed by a long line of dust. No vehicle strayed from the fixed route that led to its parcel of land. They never crossed paths.

  Rudy entered the yard at a run, dangling the empty watering can, with Sheriff barking angrily at his heels. When they spotted me, they instantly changed course to head in my direction.

  “Rudy! You shouldn’t water Sheriff if he’s just sleeping! Only if he’s fainted!” Rudy didn’t seem to fully understand this distinction, but the drenched Sheriff, grateful for my intervention, came over with his head lowered to claim some stroking.

  It was still early, but the day was already showing clear signs that it was going to be different. Bagatelle’s stable was empty. Her rope, almost disintegrated with age, hung loosely on the hook. She would have had to employ only a minimum amount of force to free herself. I kicked the bulges in the hay to locate my grandfather, scattering the dry wisps and stems until a loud “Ow! That’s not nice!” told me I had found the right spot.

  “Wake up! Bagatelle has run away!”

  He got up slowly, as if it took a conscious effort to assemble his jumbled bones into a working skeleton. Once on his feet, he looked around him and carefully wiped off all the straw clinging to his clothes. It annoyed me that he took so long to verify my news with his own eyes.

  “It’s not possible,” he muttered.

  “Uh – yes! Can’t you see? She isn’t here!”

  “I can see, Gus, but…”

  “Where is she? I can’t believe it. Every morning I practically have to kick her before she even moves one ear.”

  “She’s gone out.”

  “Yes! That’s what I’m saying!’

  “Let’s go and have a look. She might not have gone far.”

  I followed my grandfather onto the grassy strip that overlooked the rocky slope leading to the main road. We scanned the horizon, without success. My grandfather got out the crumpled pack of fags he’d been lying on all night. He took out a twisted cigarette and straightened it with trembling fingers before lighting up. He smoked over fifteen packs a week, recording in a little blue spiral notebook his tobacco consumption, which he calculated by length. One cigarette measured fourteen centimetres, and he would announce proudly at the end of each year that he had surpassed the one kilometre mark.

  We stood there sheepishly, trying to understand how old horses could simply disappear without a trace, when our tractor suddenly came into view. It zoomed at top speed past the farm belonging to the Grins. I had noticed how Dad stepped on the accelerator whenever he came within sight of the property of these fat land-grabbers, who, instead of sticking like other people to their own patch, bought up everything they could, even fields that had always belonged to the commune, in order to exploit a few acres more. The Grins were proof that the era was over when small landowners could raise themselves up to the rank of gentry by dint of hard work alone.

  Dad stopped. The tractor’s throbbing engine, cramped beneath the long bonnet, sent staccato shivers running through the entire machine. On his tiny seat between the two huge, motionless wheels, holding the steering wheel, Dad vibrated with the rest of the tractor.

  “What… are… you… you… doing… the
re… there?” he shouted.

  “Bagatelle has disappeared. She left last night!”

  “Well? You… have to… find her!” he replied, addressing me.

  “Okay!”

  “Go… on! She might… cause an… accident…”

  “Okay, okay! I’m going.”

  “I’m… counting… on… you!” he shouted again, before moving off, re-balancing the forces at work within the machine and putting an end to its hectic shuddering.

  As I walked away, I turned back to glance at my grandfather. He was looking in my direction through the smoke of his filterless Jobs, but he didn’t see me. I imagined that he spent his time thinking about time – time past and the time that was left to him – though probably neither was substantial enough to really hold his interest. When I reached the bend in the road, he was still there on the knoll in front of the stable, in exactly the same position, and he seemed to blend into the posts that edged the meadows behind him.

  It was easy to track Bagatelle from the elegant piles of manure she had left behind her. Their regular spacing suggested she had been walking at an unhurried, constant pace. I followed them through the village, peering into yards and gardens, but without finding her. Neither was she grazing in the shade of the linden in front of the old high school, the outermost limit of our usual daily walks. The pyramids of smoking balls, each with its own little tornado of flies, continued in a straight line towards the forest. I was on the path leading to the reservoir when Madeleine called out to me. She was running behind me to catch up.

  “Gus! Gus! Wait for me! Where are you going? What’s that bird on your shoulder?”

  Maddie, a girl my age, was special and I didn’t try to understand why. I only knew she must like me, because she often sought my company. Dad told me much later that she was the illegitimate child of a village boy who had slept with a girl engaged to someone else. The girl had married her fiancé because the families had long agreed on it. Madeleine knew she had two fathers, one under the same roof, the second under another not far away. Always alone, she seemed to have made no firm connections on this earth, like those nomad cats that go from farm to farm, looking for something they can never find. She often hung around the village doing nothing, which gave her numerous opportunities to meet me.

  We walked along the high ridge that jutted out over the plain, gazing down at the panorama of burnt fields, before we arrived at the promontory known ironically by locals as the “Susten”, after the famous mountain pass.

  “It’s a dove.”

  “A dove? Show me! Show me! I’ve never seen one.”

  Madeleine pressed up against me, her leg touching mine, the tips of her breasts like two little leather buttons against my arm. I didn’t object. It was just her way.

  “Your dove is weird. It looks like something disgusting happened to its bottom.”

  She began to stroke the bird’s head and wings, then its bare rump, performing a careful examination as it perched on my shoulder. She was standing very close. I was a little nervous of her handling my dove. I had seen her shift in an instant from the most sugary tenderness to the worst kind of cruelty towards animals.

  “That’s its tail, Maddie. Its tail has lost its feathers.”

  “Really?” she asked, surprised.

  “That’s why it can’t fly anymore.”

  “Poor thing!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it sick?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She slid her fingers around my bird’s appendage.

  “It’s red. And full of prickles!”

  “That’s the feathers growing back.”

  “Then will it be able to fly again?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her mouth hanging slightly open, Madeleine seemed to be transfixed by something mysterious over my shoulder. A shadow passed over the curved, white protuberance of her forehead. I turned around to look for the cause of her stupefied expression, before realising that she was just staring into empty space, thinking what to say next.

  “When?” she finally asked.

  “Some day. I dunno.”

  “Then it will leave.”

  “What?”

  I had not yet come so brutally face to face with this prospect.

  “I don’t think so. It wouldn’t know where to go. It’s a pet. It’s grown attached to me.”

  Maddie pressed a little more against my legs, and looked straight in my eyes. On the surface of her irises were multiple, changing forms, all of them tinted by her loneliness.

  “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “I’m looking for Bagatelle. She…”

  “Bagatelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your horse?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I saw her… just down there. Near the river.”

  She pointed. I saw a tiny, dark spot in front of the majestic line of tall maples that separated the ravine leading down to the river from a field that had once belonged to us. It was where my grandfather had planted wooden stakes to create an enclosure, but the stakes hadn’t been properly treated and had still contained enough tree-life to send out roots in conquest of the underground. In the spring, they were covered with branches and leaves. Anni had dug up half of them to give the others room to realise their full tree nature. I liked that patch of land a lot.

  Bagatelle didn’t want to move. Maddie and I tried to lure her away with a bouquet of dandelions, then we shoved her from behind with all our weight. We whispered sweet nothings into her ears, then harsh words, all to no avail. With her eyelids closed, Bagatelle obstinately kept her head down. She was breathing calmly, and occasionally her tail twitched.

  We sat down in the field to ponder the situation. From time to time we heard a noise like a sheet of paper being crumpled, and turned to look behind us, but it was just the grass. It was crackling in the sun, its brittle blades bending and snapping under the weight of insects looking for a place to rest.

  “It seems like she’s thinking,” said Maddie.

  “Yeah. I wonder what’s going on in her head.”

  “Do you think she’s unhappy?”

  “No! Look – she’s calm. Like she’s asleep.”

  “It’s just that when I think, it upsets me.”

  “What do you mean, it upsets you?”

  Maddie fixed her large, blue eyes on mine. There was something out of place in her head that gave a special power to her gaze. She always looked as if she were coming out of a deep sleep.

  “When I think, it’s as if someone’s talking to me. Someone else. Do you know what I mean? Telling me things I don’t agree with.”

  Maddie pressed her whole body against me, resting her forehead on my shoulder. I looked at her thighs, so white and smooth they seemed not to be part of the rest of her brown, bony body. I slipped my arm around her waist, and for a long time we stayed motionless, like Bagatelle, who was slowly baking in the sun, indifferent to the flies that flew in and out of her nostrils in search of moisture. No girls could compare with my beautiful sister, who seemed to belong to a different race. But I liked Maddie.

  “She’s drying out. The liquid inside her body is evaporating. Soon she’ll be completely hollow…”

  I shrugged.

  “… or one morning you’ll find her all shrivelled up, like an old piece of fruit.”

  Out of principle – because it was very hot, because it was Maddie – I agreed that it was possible.

  * * *

  “It’s magnificent. She has chosen her place to die. We should leave her alone. We shouldn’t move her. Animals have something in their head that’s like a clock. It keeps time their whole life. It’s never wrong. They know perfectly well when they’re going to pass away. They understand it and it doesn’t make them panic. They remain calm. They withdraw. They accept that their body is slowing down, growing tired, stopping…”

  It was Cécile who had just spoken. Dad stared at her. His face tensed, as if h
e were on the point of a vigorous objection, but no sound came out of his mouth. He leaned over his soup, hoping to find peace among the leeks and potatoes. For once, Mum had joined us at the table. She was bewitched. Her eyes said, “What luck to be alive! So there are moments of grace, and with every season more happiness can be stored up!” Yet her hunched shoulders, her elbows pressed against her body, her controlled gestures – as if she were trying not to wake a monster lying at our feet – seemed to answer: “What’s inside my head will never be compatible with the reality of this kitchen!” In her usual role of distant observer, Léa only smiled – but it was a smile of complicity.

  Rudy was chewing enthusiastically, as if captivated by the implacable machinery of his jaws, which continued their mastications even when nothing remained in his mouth. He was gazing amorously at Cécile, captivated by the tiniest of her movements. He couldn’t get over this miraculous presence. I knew what was going on inside his skull. He could not help but think of this stranger as his future wife, sent by a Providence whose ways would forever remain mysterious. From time to time he smiled, nodding his head with a knowing, blissful air.

  “It’s in the shade. The grass there is definitely less burnt. She’s like those very old elephants who’ve lost their teeth. They leave the group. They look for a place with food that’s more tender, so that they can end their lives without disturbing anyone,” continued Cécile.

  Dad, struck by a worrying thought, looked up from his bowl. “She’ll be outdoors all night… What if she gets the idea to move somewhere else?”

  “I tied her to the nearest tree. With a long rope.”

  He gave a nod of approval. “Hmm! I’ll go and see her tomorrow morning.”

  “Our planet influences the lives of those it bears. Animals are very sensitive to manifestations of this sort. Before an earthquake, bees leave their hives. Ants run as far away as possible, carrying their eggs with them. They feel the telluric forces. Your horse has found a positive vibratory environment for its final moments.”

  Dad put his napkin down on the table and pushed his chair back to give himself a little room. He waved his hand in front of him to shoo away an imaginary swarm of insects. “I’ll go and see her. Tomorrow morning before I go to the hen-house,” he said to me.