Year of the Drought

by Roland Buti

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe I can get her to move.”

  I knew that the possibility we would find Bagatelle dead in the meadow was making him anxious. Just digging a big hole and burying her on the spot was out of the question. We would have to drag her back up to the road with the tractor, then load her onto the slaughterhouse truck. The prospect of this inglorious end was preying on his mind.

  “She could become an attraction, couldn’t she? If she stays there for a few days?” asked Cécile.

  Dad gave her a long stare, but she didn’t back down. She went on smiling. She was wearing a low-necked, orangey tunic with shades of chestnut brown and a long necklace of metal and enamel plates that jiggled between her tanned breasts when she leaned forward to talk. Around her head was an Indian scarf, decorated with a few trinkets here and there. I watched as Dad’s eyes seemed to transform into two big, round drops of water about to lose their spherical shape. The painful thought that he might find her beautiful and feel desire for her skimmed through me.

  Mum sneezed violently. I had the impression that she had expectorated a parcel of brain into her handkerchief. She scrunched it up and quickly returned it to her apron, as if to dispose of unpleasant thoughts.

  “Cécile has been working at the post office, at the Possens branch, ever since she started living alone,” she said. “She left her husband a few years ago… he… well, it was a bad match.” She turned to Cécile, who gave her a discreet nod, as if to say, “Go on! Courage! It’ll be fine.” It appeared that they had come to a prior agreement about what to say.

  I felt my lips tense up involuntarily as I listened.

  “Cécile lodges above the post office, in a separate room, a sort of little studio with a bathroom. It belongs to the couple who live in the flat next door. They set it up for a little extra income because their boy went off to do some training in town, to become a…”

  Mum turned to Cécile.

  “… a salesman,” she said.

  “That’s it, a salesman… And… so now… their son… he couldn’t find a job… has come back to live with his parents. But, well… he’s settling in. I mean… he has a girlfriend. Cécile has to leave. And… I thought in the meantime she could come and live here. There’s the guest room. We’d just have to get rid of the mess, give it a good clean…”

  Léa, who until then had remained as indifferent to the conversation as she was to almost everything that didn’t involve either her or music, now exclaimed, “But that’s a great idea! Don’t you think, Rudy?”

  Rudy looked at my sister, not grasping what she wanted from him, a steady stream of soup connecting his mouth with the table.

  Léa took his hand. “Rudy, don’t you think it’s a good idea for Cécile to come and stay here? To come and live in our house…”

  Rudy screwed up his eyes in a knowing way, though probably he still hadn’t understood anything. He smiled at my sister, then beamed at Cécile, which had the effect of breaking the semi-liquid thread that had tied him to the surface of the table. He continued to stare at her while he devoured his dunked bread, displaying the relentless work of his molars as well as most of the rest of the inside of his mouth. Vivid matrimonial ideas began to march around in his head. Mum gave Léa a meaningful look.

  “It would be great for Mum to be able to spend some time with her friend, wouldn’t it?” added Léa.

  Dad shrugged as if say, “Why not?” while the rest of his motionless body seemed to ask, “What the hell is going on here?”

  “It would only be for the summer. There are masses of things she could help me with… So, Jean, do you agree?”

  I knew that this kind of request was a mere formality, having noticed long ago that he almost invariably said yes. I half-believed that he obeyed her because Mum’s spirit was in touch with the divinity that protected our buildings, guaranteed the fertility of our land, and watched over our destiny; that it was only thanks to her that the house was still standing.

  “I love animals,” continued Cécile, as if this would help to convince Dad. “I have an excellent rapport with them. You can teach me how to milk.”

  Dad sighed. He respected animals. To treat them badly would be to debase his own humanity. But there was nothing emotional in the relationship.

  “Well…”

  “Please, Jean!”

  “Fine. Yes, of course… She can stay as long as she likes. I’ll put the furniture in the attic. You can help me, Gus.”

  “Okay. No problem.”

  Had my father glimpsed the wrath of our household gods if he were to refuse?

  “Thank you!” said Mum, getting up to kiss his cheek. As she rose, she deliberately brushed against Cécile’s bare arm, slowing down to prolong the contact.

  Dad abandoned the kitchen, closing the door behind him. We heard his noisy passage along the narrow hallway, then his footsteps resounding in the yard. There was always something to do there. Rudy didn’t follow. Certain vague thoughts were beginning to crystallise within him. He got up and took a red apple from the bowl on the big sideboard. Rubbing it with tender passion against his dirty jacket, he then used his hands and some spit to polish it up, before placing it delicately on Cécile’s empty plate. She was as dumbfounded by the appearance of this shiny fruit as a botanist upon discovering a new species. Rudy remained standing right behind her, stiff and motionless as a major-domo.

  “Thank you! That’s very kind of you. I’ll eat it later,” she said.

  It was not an ordinary apple; it was a gift. I knew how much it meant to Rudy. Any object that came under his gaze – a pebble, a radish, a farm tool – acquired for him a unique personality. Often he would stare at things for what seemed an eternity, with abnormal attention; he had an extraordinary ability to project himself into any element of his surroundings. It was his way of never being alone. The apple on the table was a part of himself, and he wanted nothing more in the world than to see Cécile bite into it.

  “I feel as if you’ve adopted me!” said Cécile.

  She took a bite, giving a rather forced smile as she chewed. Rudy smiled at me knowingly. I felt bad as I contemplated the crazy dreams of this solitary man forever locked inside himself.

  I was ashamed of myself, my sister, my mother. We were all powerless to prevent his disappointment. The song of the crickets, hidden in the brambles and bushes that snaked around the house, entered the kitchen through the open window. The sound was oddly shrill and sad in the dusk, as these insects, their wings atrophied since the beginning of time, fated to live all the blessed day at the bottom of dusty holes, began their night-long, starlit lamentation.

  * * *

  “For God’s sake! Rudy! Stop messing around!”

  I stared at Dad. In his anger, he had forgotten my presence, and almost screamed the words. We were awkwardly clad in our down-covered jumpsuits and our oversized boots, wet with sweat in the midst of the strangely listless and silent hens, who now moved only in slow-motion. Above our heads, the metal ceiling of the hen-house looked like a melting, white sky. For days, the heat inside had been inexorably climbing. The fans, designed for normal summers, were humming vigorously, but without lowering the temperature. Dad never swore, but Rudy had just put into the bag a not-quite-dead bird, which, plunged among the corpses of its fellows, had begun flapping its wings with frenzied desperation. Rudy was holding the hessian sack at arm’s length, disconcerted by the convulsions within, yet determined not to let anything out.

  “Idiot! Open the bag and take the poor animal out!”

  Dad never called Rudy an idiot. He had always displayed a curious respect for this efficient work companion, who never needed to hear an order twice, who could perform the same gestures again and again with obsessive regularity and precision, who seemed, like the animals, the plants and the earth itself, connected to forces beyond human understanding. We had just witnessed a disturbing scene: a cluster of hens, driven to cannibalism, had been pecking away at a bloodless carcas
s, extracting shreds of flesh which they devoured quickly, heads back, as if swallowing a long worm. Dad had scattered them with a few kicks. Most of the dead birds were eyeless and mutilated, their de-feathered parts covered with deep holes.

  Dad tore the bag from Rudy. He opened it quickly and took hold of the still-living hen, twisting its neck with a single jerk of his wrist, before placing it gently back inside.

  “Here, take the bag back. From now on, only pick up the dead ones!”

  For some days, Rudy hadn’t been himself. He was no longer able to give his wholehearted attention to the things around him. Whenever he glimpsed Cécile – at a window, in the garden or talking with Mum in front of the house – he would cease all activity and remain standing as if turned to stone. His blissful smile told me all too clearly that he was imagining the intimate future moments that he and his promised one would share together. Among his possessions was a bottle of vetiver essential oil. He had started to make immoderate use of this – with the result that the animals in the barn had become unusually nervous in his presence – whilst also obsessively smoothing back with saliva the forelock that he had formerly allowed to fall forward onto his forehead. I was the only one who didn’t tease him. Dad had complained more than once about having to follow him around to finish jobs that hadn’t been done properly, which was very rare.

  When we left the hen-house, we were abnormally distant from each other. Scattered and motionless, we were confined within our own mental spaces, powerless to escape the haunting, white-hot curse of the sun. I knew that others before us had experienced this sensation: adventurers who had survived a thousand deadly dangers; explorers who had found a way out of the poisonous jungle after battling wild animals, traps and hostile natives; Texas rangers who, after a mad, stampeding flight from pursuers shooting at their backs, could finally catch their breath in the shelter of a large rock. Such people found it hard to regain their balance. They too were unable to dislodge the fear in the pit of their stomachs. Generally, after a long period of silence, a member of the group would say something commonplace, and normal existence would resume its course.

  We were busy tying a rope around the bags in the trailer, when we heard a horn sound out, then again, and again, like the raucous cries of a wounded animal. We climbed onto the hillock that overlooked the road. Cécile’s car had pulled up on the grassy border, the engine still running. She was with Mum. The two women were leaning against the doors, looking in our direction. When they saw us, they waved. We waved back.

  “We… ing… to…”

  “Louder! We can’t hear you!” shouted Dad.

  “We… ing… ee…”

  Cécile stepped forward to take over from my mother.

  “Ee… ing… ter…”

  Dad shrugged. Without taking his eyes off them, he asked me: “Did you understand anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mum was in a close-fitting white dress that reached mid-thigh. From where we were, she looked like someone else; someone who looked like her, and moved like her, but might have been a happy young holiday-maker. Dad gave a slow, exaggerated shrug to signify that their voices hadn’t reached us through the thin, dry air. Cécile whispered something in Mum’s ear. She laughed and shook her head. Then Cécile half-disappeared into the car to re-emerge with a large sheet of paper that she placed on the bonnet. She and Mum bent over it as if to study a road map. All became clear when they each grasped one end, displaying it like a banner. It read: “WE’RE GOING INTO TOWN. BACK TONIGHT. AROUND SEVEN O’CLOCK.”

  We drove home at high speed on the cement paths that divided the fields. The wheels of our old Toyota and its trailer, raising behind us a line of dust as clear as a pen-stroke, seemed to be grinding up the solid ground. His neck muscles tensed, Dad gripped the steering wheel as though the wind that rushed through the four open windows might push us off the road if he relaxed for a single instant.

  He must have been thinking of Cécile’s red Renault 5, heading in the opposite direction, into town. I gazed at the featureless sky above us, staring at a random point in the pale blue, near-white expanse, and for a few seconds I had the strange feeling that we were standing still.

  Mum and Dad didn’t talk much. Or maybe they did, in the bedroom? The only physical expressions of tenderness between them that I could remember were when Dad took Mum by her hand and pulled her to him quickly in a kind of ballet move. She would lower her eyes as he gave her a kiss behind the ear, a particularly touching spot, pale and rounded like a shell. She would then detach herself from him, pretending to fall backwards, and he would hold out his arm with a graceful gesture, as if to prevent her from falling.

  With our load of dead hens still in the trailer, we made a detour by the reservoir because Dad wanted to see Bagatelle. I showed him the place. Leaving the Toyota on the path above us, we descended slowly towards the hollow where our old horse stood, the dry grass stems snapping under our feet. She hadn’t moved a millimetre. Dad walked around the old mare, inspected her as if he were looking for a tear in her coat, rubbed her nose for a long time, patted her a few times to chase away the horseflies gorging themselves on this inexhaustible source of fresh blood. At a loss in the face of such indifference, he shook his head, then tugged on the rope to check my handiwork from the day before.

  “You did well to tie her up.”

  Rudy found a few dandelions, shrivelled but still with a trace of green, and held them in front of Bagatelle’s mouth. Her lips didn’t move. He looked at Dad as if he might be able to do something about it.

  A strange smell drifted over from the large maples.

  “Do you smell tobacco?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s coming from the forest.”

  I set off toward the trees. From behind some bushes, a faint, blue plume of smoke rose into the air.

  “There’s someone there!”

  Suddenly my grandfather rose up. He was covered in twigs and seeds, which he brushed off with the back of his hand. All the trees were already laden with their autumn fruit, as if the year were going by in fast-forward.

  “What are you doing there?”

  “It’s not so hot under my maples. It’s not a bad spot.”

  “Did you sleep here?

  “It’s not uncomfortable. It’s no harder than the stable floor.”

  “Were you lonely without Bagatelle?”

  “Now hold on a minute, don’t start thinking…”

  Dad waved us over.

  Anni lifted his feet over the undergrowth, making a wheeling motion with his arms as he walked. The joints of his bony body seemed reluctant to perform the actions he was asking of them, and he staggered a little, as if the ground beneath his feet were unstable. Finally, he managed to coax a more or less normal gait from his rusty limbs.

  “What’s going on, Anni? What about Rose? What if she doesn’t find you at home?”

  “It happens all the time. She knows I’m never far away. Don’t worry about it.”

  Dad stared at his father for a long time. He was unable to get angry with this person who had given him both life and the farm, especially when all that was left of him was skin and bone. Anni took a twisted cigarette from his pocket with his equally misshapen fingers, and lit it with some difficulty.

  “You’re going to start a fire with your fags,” said Dad. “She still hasn’t moved,” he added.

  “Doesn’t surprise me. She’s always been a stubborn mare. Lazy and stubborn. Always had to be the one to decide… Horses are like that. It’s part of their nature… Du bisch di Schönschti. Du bisch starch, du bhaltisch dy Platz unter üs!”1 murmured Anni, patting Bagatelle’s sides as if to get rid of the dust.

  “Her ears are drooping,” said Dad.

  “It’s because she’s not concerned about anything anymore. She’s resigned.”

  “All right, we’ll leave her there. It must be the arthritis. She’s in too much pain. Or maybe everything just seized up.”

 
“It’s possible. She wants to die standing up. Not on her knees, not lying down, but standing up – and outdoors,” concluded my grandfather, in a strange, hushed tone of voice, as though he were confiding something of a deeply personal nature.

  1 You’re a real beauty. You’re strong, you’ll keep your place among us!

  V

  How exhausting was that summer of 1976, always beating down on our heads!

  We’d arrived home late in the morning. After a little reading and drawing, I had sat down on the garden wall, with my bird on my shoulder. The light died with agonising slowness, until an immense, warm shadow finally enveloped the mass of our house. Everything drew closer together and became more intimate within the perimeter marked by the hulks of the buildings, the kitchen-garden wall and the barbed-wire fences. The sun had left behind it a lava-like deposit of heat that continued to weigh on the earth. My dove rested, its eyes half-closed, steeped in the ancestral dignity of birds, for whom everything is boring apart from whirling through the air.

  Sheriff crossed the yard gingerly, scrutinising the sky. The last few days, he had seemed anxious, as if he were expecting a cold rain to shower down on his head at any moment. He carefully avoided the watering can beside his kennel, even baring his fangs to warn off this cunning enemy.

  Sounds of anger drifted over from the barn. Above the hum of the machines and the crackle of the dusty old radio Dad used to create a calm, musical environment during milking, variations on the theme of “shit,” “fuck,” and “damn” rang out. These curses were answered by the metallic din made by the cows’ hooves, as they jostled and shoved, before at last coming to a standstill, stamping the ground angrily.

  Cécile and Mum were strolling through the vegetable garden, arms around each other’s waists. They were chatting, with Cécile doing most of the talking. My mother listened as she expertly handled the watering hose. From time to time, they exchanged little laughs that were quickly stifled, and when they bent down to inspect a row or pick a tomato or a cucumber, I had the impression they had a lot to say to the vegetables too. Rudy, who had finished his work in the barn, walked by, his lock of hair slicked to his forehead. Paying me no attention, he marched to join them with energetic strides that betrayed his excitement. All of a sudden, my dove emerged from its torpor. It hopped and jumped as if an electric current were shooting through its body, then turned around two or three times before finally calming down. Perhaps its former owner, the magician, had worn the same vetiver perfume as Rudy when he went onstage.