Year of the Drought

by Roland Buti

  Dad didn’t react. He just walked between the prone bodies, without looking down.

  “We’re sorry. It was stupid, Jean. It was stupid. We’re sorry.”

  “That’s right, that’s right, Jean. We’re sorry.”

  “We’re sorry.”

  Dad headed towards us, and with a wave gave the order to depart. We climbed slowly back up the gentle slope, paying no attention to what was happening behind us. We were like three cowboys sauntering off to the smell of gunpowder, having meted out justice to the rabble who’d been terrorising the little frontier town for months. I was proud. I only wondered why Dad seemed to be unaware of my existence. Yet I knew that it was no time for words. Words would have forever spoiled that shared moment of virile grace.

  An ominous silence greeted us at the hen-house, and we sensed straight away that something was wrong. As we drew near, the metal walls sent out waves of heat, as if trying to drive us away. We realised that the fans had broken down; only one was still working. Through the windows, we saw that the toll of corpses, crumpled like empty bladders, was far higher than on previous days. The living hens were mute. Their beaks open, they looked as if they were panting.

  “They sweat through their mouths because they can’t sweat under their feathers,” muttered Dad. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Go inside and pick up the dead ones.”

  It was an order, and we carried it out. For the sake of efficiency, Rudy held the sack while I used the tongs to collect the strangely light corpses. The survivors, watching us with their little tongues poking out, seemed to be beseeching us to put them in the bag too, as though any fate would be better than to remain trapped in this hellish furnace.

  When we were done, we piled up our harvest outside, but Dad and the car were no longer there. Rudy began to sway from one foot to the other, looking around in all directions.

  “Calm down, Rudy!” I said. “Calm down. Everything will be fine.”

  But I too was close to panic, with a hollow in the pit of my stomach and the corpse-filled sacks at my feet.

  A metallic noise on the other side of the hen-house drew our attention. We walked around the building, following the tracks of the Toyota, just visible in the dead grass. It was parked against the wall, and Dad, standing on the bonnet, was busy loosening wide panels of the roof.

  “What are you doing?”

  Since Dad no longer paid attention to anyone, I wasn’t really expecting a reply, and I didn’t get one. He went on with his task. A metre-square panel fell to the ground, then another. He drove the Toyota forward, and using the open door as a step, hoisted himself onto the hen-house roof. There, he set about removing the other panels that covered the overheated building. Unable to make an immediate repair, he had to deal first with the basic necessities, and get some air to the surviving hens as quickly as possible.

  By the time we climbed back into the car, our expressions were concealed beneath masks of sweat and dust.

  * * *

  As soon as we arrived home, we knew that Cécile was gone. Her Renault 5 was no longer in the yard, and her laundry, which had been drying with ours on the big clothes-line near the vegetable garden, had also disappeared. Mum was busy in the kitchen. Everything was ready for us on the table: bottles of beer and lemonade, bread and cheese. Her face, pinker now that her breathing was better, was smooth and relaxed.

  She didn’t answer my greeting right away, but before she left the room, when we were all sitting down, she brushed by my chair and stroked my head, running her hands through my hair. I turned around to catch her eye, but she was gone already, and I only had time to see her narrow back disappearing into the doorway. Dad, who had ignored her, began to eat. Head sunk into his shoulders, he leaned over his plate as if he had to defend it against a pack of ravenous hyenas. Rudy’s face was lit up by a wide smile. The knowing looks he gave to empty space, or perhaps to an audience that he alone saw, expressed his joy at being rid of this undesirable woman. Probably he imagined that, with Cécile gone, everything would go back to how it was before.

  Over the next few days, perhaps it really did seem that way. He resumed his usual sequence of chores with Dad, coming and going within the narrow, immutable boundaries of his existence, with the beatific look of a Buddha on the brink of nirvana, after weeks of meditation. The pair would spend their days on the farm, returning home only when night began to darken the sky, drawing over our heads its immense, warm, grey hood.

  The army was crawling over the countryside as if war had broken out. Sometimes they would come through our village in a whirlwind, raising clouds of dust. Anxious about the corn, which was dying underfoot, Dad kept watch for the arrival of the water truck. He would need the harvest to feed the next batch of chicks: buying in grain, even cheap foreign stuff, was not profitable. We were on the list for the truck to visit, but, owing to some obscure hierarchy, we had been waiting for days.

  Each morning, Mum would leave very early. After depositing the day’s meals in a jumbled pile on the kitchen table, she would hurry off to catch the first bus that would take her away. From my window, I would watch her exit the yard and walk down the main road with small, swift steps, each foot hurrying the other along. She seemed barely to touch the ground, as if her eagerness to be somewhere else made her levitate.

  * * *

  I was sitting on the low garden wall with my dove, who was conscientiously practising its walking, perhaps having dimly understood that it would never fly again. It would walk along the top of the wall up to the corner, jumping over the gaps where the stones didn’t meet, before returning to its starting point. I would then stroke its head, which it must have taken as encouragement, since it would immediately start off again. In the distance, I could hear the familiar, reassuring sounds of Rudy at work in the barn. Then Dad came into view, and straight away I knew something wasn’t right. He was dragging his leg. His hair was stuck together; his shirt and pants were stained with blood. One blue eyelid was closed over an eye as swollen as a pigeon’s egg.

  “Dad! What happened to you?” I shouted. He started, not having seen me in the shadow, then continued in a more or less straight line towards the front door. I followed close behind.

  “Shit! You had an accident!”

  A suspicion crept into my mind, soon growing to a certainty: Grin’s band had ambushed Dad, armed with the weapons of their choice. I learned much later that they had waited outside the café, on the narrow path leading up to the church. They had used the handles of their tools to inflict their revenge.

  Dad sat down in the kitchen. Motionless, he looked at the void in front of him. I didn’t dare do anything. He didn’t seem to be completely Dad.

  “Léa! Léa! Come quickly! Come downstairs!” I shouted.

  My sister came in. With air of detachment that I found somewhat theatrical, she approached Dad. “Good Lord!” she said. “He’s been drinking!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying he’s completely drunk! He stinks of white wine.”

  “What should we do?”

  “We can’t leave him there like that. He’s covered in blood. Help me undress him! We’ll have to wash him.”

  Léa got out a basin and filled it from the sink behind us. She didn’t seem to have considered the possibility that Dad might be seriously wounded, and need to see a doctor. In her eyes, it was all very clear: he had strayed from the beaten track, come to his senses, and returned home. Now it was a matter of cleaning him up, just as you would clean up after a spillage or any other domestic accident. I was impressed.

  “Hello! Gus? Is anybody there? What are you waiting for?”

  “Um…”

  “Dad isn’t in his normal state…”

  My sister was trying to tell me that we needed to undress him, that it was no big deal, that it was just a matter of helping a man who needed help. When I didn’t move, she set down the tub in exasperation. “At least give me a hand!”

  I pushed him a littl
e forward on his chair, while she tugged the sleeves of his shirt to extract his arms before rolling it over his head and taking it off. The whiteness of Dad’s torso, covered with tiny, frizzy hairs like the hair on his head but much sparser, contrasted with a face, neck and forearms cooked by the sun. This was the father I knew, the one who did nothing but work out in the open. But now I was discovering the other one: the Dad who, naked and with his muscles at rest, looked like a sad, defeated being. Léa began rubbing him with a washcloth that she wetted from time to time in the little metal bucket, whose water turned browner and browner.

  “We’ll have to take his trousers off too.”

  “You think?”

  Léa nodded impatiently. I experienced it almost as a physical sensation, this power she had over me because she was four years older. I acted half out of filial duty and half out of submission to my sister who, without waiting, took hold of one leg.

  “Come on, help me loosen the other one!”

  Dad didn’t own many clothes. We weren’t rich. Most of the time he wore blue overalls whose cloth was like that of jeans, but not as thick. In the winter, depending on the harshness of the weather, he would put on one or two sweaters under his jacket, which he then left open to allow him to move. He changed his clothes once a week, on Mondays, and despite the fields, the barn and the pigsty, he almost never got himself dirty. Rudy, on the other hand, though he benefitted from the same clothing arrangements and performed the same jobs, looked after a single day as if he had been rolling around like an exultant pig in a vast lake of mud. Dad’s neatness reflected his idea of the nobility of his profession; and the dusty, manure-filled environment in which he worked seemed to treat him with the same respectful courtesy he himself extended to all things. A farmer had to be spotless. He also insisted on the house being perfectly run, on everything being carefully put away, the laundry folded in the drawers, the dishes stacked and lined up in the cupboards, as if the order inside our home helped to maintain a more general order that influenced the quality of the harvest.

  “Oh no! Please no,” said Lea, giving voice to the thoughts I too was thinking. We looked at Dad’s underwear. It was stained with dried blood and urine. Léa seemed to go limp. Her shoulders sagged slightly, as if from a sudden, overpowering weariness. There was nothing to be done. She dropped the wet cloth she was holding.

  “Dad! Dad!” she implored.

  Dad grunted and shook himself. He looked slowly around him, before getting up laboriously, leaning on the edge of the chair and lifting himself up as if his own body were a dead weight. He staggered about, like a boxer looking for the comfort of the ropes. My sister came forward, but Dad, suddenly sure of himself, stood with his legs spread wide, waving the back of his arm as if chasing away an over-insistent insect. He refused all help, defending his own private perimeter. After converting his dirty shirt and jacket into a sort of toga – one that conferred precious little dignity – he climbed the stairs slowly, puffing at each step. We followed him at a safe distance, staying to listen by his closed bedroom door. The springs of his mattress squeaked, then his laboured breathing became regular.

  “He’ll sleep it off,” concluded my sister.

  It was all too much. I felt like someone ordered to walk, but who has no idea where to put his feet. Seeing my bewildered expression, Léa smiled at me. I almost wanted her to give me a hug. Physically, my sister was like a larger, more fully realised version of Mum. It was as if, when Nature was drafting her body’s secret plans, it had mixed in a few of Dad’s genes to perfect its earlier creation. As for me, I was a lower-specification model of my father. I had inherited his silhouette, his hair, and a general resemblance noticed by everyone, but I lacked his defining strength, remaining small and slender for my age, as if my portion of Mum’s genes were keeping me from attaining the stature of a man.

  My biggest problem was that I couldn’t believe that the world formed a meaningful whole. Things weren’t like that. They were unique, separate from each other, like notes on a musical score. They might sometimes clash, move apart, join together to create something new, but the particles that made up reality were in their essence autonomous and unconnected. Perhaps this sense of incoherence explains why I used to dream of a hero’s life.

  Léa gave a slight wink, whose significance eluded me. She came close, and I breathed in the odour of her body.

  “Doesn’t Mum love us anymore?” I asked.

  “No. She’s in love. Love is a thing you can’t do anything about. You become someone else.”

  “Is she going away to live with Cécile?”

  “She isn’t allergic to hay, or chicken droppings, or cat hair, as we always thought. It’s just that she can’t breathe the air here any longer.”

  “So…?”

  “So when she’s free to be herself, it will be different.”

  My sister sighed deeply several times, then informed me that these sighs were the true expression of her innermost being. “You know, Gus,” she said, “I’d like to stay being me, only a much better version!”

  Then she locked herself in her bedroom, which was full of objects she’d brought back in the saddlebags of her moped from distant shops that were stocked with the goods of even more distant countries: little wooden or brass boxes, colourful chiffon dolls, copper bells and sculpted elephants on plinths, trays with dried flowers scattered in their corners, and flasks of precious perfumes.

  The next day, an unfamiliar smell floated through the hallway; a clinging, hospital odour. My dove was as disturbed by it as I was. Its muscles tensed up and its waist shrank to half its usual size. Its anguished cooing suddenly became very shrill. I cupped my hands around it, to try to calm it down. Mum wasn’t in the kitchen, and Rudy was eating alone at the table. He seemed surprised to see me. His eyes, stretched wide open, and his open mouth, displaying a mass of rösti, made me think he was having difficulty remembering who I was. Finally, he smiled, breaking up the clump of potato paste between his teeth. His dilated pupils gave him the look of a dog recognising its master again, many months after being abandoned.

  I took a plate and a bowl from the cupboard, and served myself from the pan on the stove. Everything had been carefully put away, except what we needed for breakfast. Nothing was out of place. The room had been swept clean, and was pervaded by the same, persistent odour of disinfectant I had detected in the hallway. It seemed more spacious than usual. The tiles shone, the table had been rubbed with polish, and the window glass had been washed with soap. The sallow morning light seemed to separate things from each other, making them unfamiliar and almost unrecognisable.

  “It looks like Mum has done some housework,” I said.

  I could see that Rudy was lost. In his belly was the panicked fear of an animal suddenly torn from its natural habitat. He didn’t say anything. I sat down, and, since we were alone, released my dove. It calmly walked towards Rudy’s plate, attracted by the morsels of rösti lying all around it. Rudy had got up, as he did every morning, to change the straw and do the milking, but Dad hadn’t come to join him. The work wasn’t done, but he had come in to take his first meal at the usual time.

  “Dad’s still resting,” I said.

  Rudy shook his head. That Dad should still be in bed when it had been light for so long was beyond the sphere of his understanding.

  “He’s in his room,” I said.

  Rudy shook his head. Why stay in your bedroom if not to sleep? He looked around him, then at his empty plate, then out of the window at Sheriff, who as usual was rambling along the shadow of the house in pursuit of olfactory trails.

  “Has he left?”

  “No! No. Rudy, he hasn’t left. He’s upstairs. He’s resting.”

  “… resting?”

  What could he be resting from? Dad was never tired. He was animated by a constant energy all day long: from dawn, when he emerged, already dressed, from his bedroom, until the evening, when he went back upstairs at around ten o’clock.

  �
��Yes. He’s resting quietly, Rudy. He’s upstairs.”

  “Is he ill?”

  Rudy’s face darkened. The idea had only just crossed his mind, but it had struck him with oracular force.

  “No, Rudy, he’s not ill.”

  He shook his head. Illness was the only explanation. Rudy hadn’t been ill often, but the rare times it had happened – fever, sweats, trouble breathing – he had seemed to suffer more than anyone else.

  “He… he’s not ill,” I said, but falteringly, since in the end I wasn’t sure he wasn’t.

  My confusion served to confirm Rudy’s worst fears. Just then we heard steps on the stairway. Perceiving the sudden cessation of movement around it, my dove froze, with its little beak in the air. The steps came closer, click-click, click-click, hard soles striking rhythmically against the stone, again and again, each one louder and clearer, until they stopped in front of the closed door of the kitchen. A few seconds went by. The door didn’t open. The steps moved away, at a quicker pace.

  “Mum. It’s Mum!” I shouted at Rudy, before rushing into the hallway to try and catch up with her.

  She was already in the middle of the yard when I called out to her with all my might. She was frightened. She was holding a suitcase that made her lean to one side, almost topple, overbalanced by a weight too great for her small arm. She didn’t turn around right away. She just slowed to a halt, as though reluctantly. She was wearing the straight, blue dress she always wore. It was then that I noticed Cécile, next to her car on the other side of the road, waving to me. Or was she waving to Mum? Was it a warning? A summons? An angry gesture? Mum put down her suitcase before slowly turning around. Her face was blurred. It looked almost as if she had been beaten.

  “Gus!”

  “…”

  She came towards me. I noticed that she was made up, her eyelids shaded slightly with blue, her eyebrows darkened for emphasis, her lips pink and shiny, as if for a big occasion.