Corsican Honor

by William Heffernan

  That night at dinner, Alex told his father and Meme about the old man in the cathedral. They laughed, and his father said he wished he had been there to see it. Meme said he wished the old man had caught them and had slit their throats—and the throat of their stupid dog.

  Alex smiled sheepishly, certain his uncle had not meant what he said. But not completely certain.

  He thought about the men in the cafe, and he remembered his father telling a friend in Paris about one of his boar hunting trips in Corsica. He had described the men who had hunted with him as a group who looked as though they had just been released from prison by mistake. He had not understood what his father had meant then, but now he thought he did.

  The men in the café had looked rough and strong, and he thought of Michel showing his scars, and of the look in his eye that said he was pleased to be going out again. He wondered if he would ever be that strong, that brave, and he was suddenly afraid he might show fear on the hunt tomorrow. He hoped that he would not.

  Alex wanted to tell his father about Michel and the great scars he carried, and how he must be the bravest man in the village. But he was afraid he might change his mind and not let him go.

  He decided that was silly. His father had been on many hunts with his uncles, and so he would have to know about it. Maybe he even knew Michel. And so he told him.

  “Yes, I’ve met Michel,” his father said. He glanced at Antoine, a slight look of reproach, mixed with knowing humor, in his eyes. “I think Antoine had him show me his scars before my first hunt.” He looked back at his son. “And he is very brave. All the men you will hunt with tomorrow are very brave.” Piers rested his elbows on the table and folded his hands before his face. He leaned forward and inclined his head toward his son. “They call the hunt the battu, and in the Corsican language that means ‘to beat.’ And that is what they do. The men go through the maquis behind the dogs, and they beat the thick brush with sticks, and they call out to the boar and sing to it, challenging it to attack them. The idea is to drive the boar toward the shooters, who have been placed on the outer edges of the hunt. But sometimes the boar listens to the singing, and it turns and attacks the beaters and the dogs.”

  Alex’s eyes had grown wide, and his father offered him a comforting smile. “But you will be with Antoine, and he will be one of the shooters,” he said. “And although the boar may still charge, you will be with him and you will be safe.”

  “Of course you will,” Antoine roared. “There is not a pig in all of Corsica that would have the courage to charge Antoine Pisani.”

  Meme snorted. “Just make sure you bring some extra pants for my brother,” he said. “Just in case he pisses them when he sees the first pig.”

  Antoine roared again, this time in mock outrage.

  “And pay no attention to the scars,” Meme continued. “Sometimes I think these men cut themselves with knives when no one is looking just so they will have great stories to tell in the cafes.” He made a slicing gesture with his fork for emphasis. “In Corsica,” he added, “it is very important to be looked on as a man who has been brave enough to face danger.”

  “And has survived?” Piers asked.

  Meme shrugged. “Survival is less important. It is the facing of it with courage that matters.”

  “My Alex will have courage tomorrow,” Antoine insisted. “If a boar comes after us, he will bite it on the balls.” He glanced at Piers, suddenly concerned he had been too crude in front of the boy. But Piers seemed unconcerned, and Alex was giggling. “And after we kill this pig and eat him, we will have the head stuffed to hang on Alex’s bedroom wall. And maybe the balls too.” He raised his thumb and index finger, holding them only an inch apart. “Just so his friends can see the little teeth marks,” he said.

  They were all laughing now, and Antoine began telling about the boar he had shot the previous summer, and how it had killed three dogs before he could see it well enough to shoot. He described its tusks, hooking his fingers along the sides of his mouth, and he grunted and snorted and shook his head from side to side.

  “That is why the pigs do not charge him,” Meme said. “He is uglier than they are, so they fear him.”

  The door to the kitchen swung open, and a woman entered, carrying a tray of desserts with one hand. The other hand hung helplessly at the end of a dead arm, and Alex noticed that the left side of the woman’s face was also deformed. There was a small hollow place where her cheekbone should have been, and her left eye and the left corner of her mouth drooped. But the right side of her face was beautiful, Alex thought, and when she saw him, she gave him a crooked smile that was full of warmth.

  The woman served each of them, placing the tray on the table, then removing a plate, then picking up the tray and moving on again, all with one hand. She did it so gracefully, Alex thought, you hardly noticed her handicap at all.

  When she reached his father, Alex saw that he kept his eyes fixed on the table in front of him, and simply nodded his thanks when the woman placed the plate before him. But the woman didn’t seem to notice, and she was smiling when she reached his place at the table.

  “This is flan,” she said as she placed the caramel-colored dessert in front of him. “It is a custard, and it is very good, very sweet. But I have a piece of gâteau au chocolat in the kitchen if you prefer it.” She glanced across the table at Antoine, her face stern. “I have only one piece,” she said. “Antoine ate the rest of it at breakfast. He will eat anything,” she added. “It is like living in a house with a goat.”

  Antoine waved a dismissive hand at her. “Go away, woman,” he said. “You are interrupting the talk of men. And bring me that piece of chocolate cake.”

  “Never,” the woman said, and she picked up her tray and returned to the kitchen.

  Antoine shook his head, then winked at Alex. “Ah, she is a difficult woman. But, then, all women are difficult, eh, my nephew?”

  Alex began to laugh again.

  “We will remain bachelors, eh, Alex?” Antoine continued. “It is safer that way.”

  Out in the kitchen, Colette placed the tray on the counter, then sat heavily in a wooden chair. She used her good hand to place the other in her lap, and felt her fingers tremble against the dead flesh. The child was beautiful, she thought. And well mannered. He had seen her ugliness and he had ignored it. He had not stared at her and made a face, as some children did. She understood when that happened. It happened mostly in France. Here in Corsica, children were used to seeing people who had injuries that had never been properly treated. But in France such people were freaks.

  But the boy lived in Paris, and he lived among the filou, the sharp operators who had the money and the power. And still he had not shrunk from her. He had smiled, and he had listened to what she said. And his smile had been sweet.

  Not like his father, who had been unable to look at her, to speak her name. But she understood that too. She was a poule. And she was no longer desirable. And he was a mec who had paid for her—just in a different way. She wished now that she had robbed him when she had had the chance. Just like the other mecs she had robbed. She had done it to get back at them, she now knew. It had meant just as much as the money.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. No, she thought. You would never have robbed him. Not even if you knew what would happen between you. You had loved him too much for that.

  Colette opened her eyes and saw the piece of chocolate cake sitting on the counter. She would take it to the boy, and she would see his sweet smile again. And she would see his father.

  Alex lay in the large, soft bed, unable to sleep. He was thinking about the wild boars that even now were crashing through the maquis, grunting and snorting and shaking their heads from side to side, as Uncle Antoine had done. He wondered if they knew the hunters were coming, if something inside told them it was going to happen. He had studied about animal instincts in school. About how some animals—birds and fish and even large animals—could travel great distances, alway
s going to the same place every year, because something inside them told them it was where they had to be. And the teacher had said that animals knew when danger was coming. A big storm, or a flood, or an earthquake. He wondered if they knew when hunters were coming too. No, he told himself. Then they wouldn’t be there when the hunters came. They would have run away and hid.

  But maybe the wild boar wouldn’t do that. Antoine had said they loved to fight. That they only ran away from sounds they didn’t understand. But when they saw something—another animal, or a man—they wanted to fight; they wanted to kill it.

  He turned on his side and drew his knees up to his stomach. It would be scary tomorrow, he decided. But it would also be exciting, and he wanted very much to do it. And he would be with Antoine and Meme and his father. And with Michel, who wasn’t afraid of anything.

  CHAPTER

  28

  Antoine came into Alex’s bedroom at five o’clock and gently shook him. “Get up, my little donkey,” he said. “There are pigs in the maquis who need killing.”

  Alex sat up and looked around, momentarily uncertain where he was. Then he saw his uncle towering over him, dressed in rough clothes and smiling at him. He looked at the window. It was still dark outside, and he wondered how they would see the boar, how they would know where it was.

  Antoine seemed to read his thoughts. “It will be light soon, and the pigs will be waking up, and they will be hungry. It is the best time to hunt them. So get out of bed, you donkey, and get dressed.”

  He stood and watched Alex pull on his clothes, and he could see the excitement building in his face.

  “And brush your teeth,” he said. “If you stink too much, the pig might fall in love with you and want to marry you.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “Then come down to the kitchen so you can eat. You need a full belly to kill pigs,” he said.

  When Alex came into the kitchen, Meme and Antoine were already there, and the woman who had served the dessert the night before was preparing a basket of food. There were long loaves of bread, and pâtés and large chunks of cheese and sausages.

  Antoine saw him eyeing the food. “It is for our lunch,” he said. “You will be hungry again by noon. But you can’t eat all of it. Uncle Antoine will have to eat too.” He patted his stomach. “I get very hungry when I hunt pigs.”

  “You can eat a tin can, like any goat,” Colette said over her shoulder. She turned to Alex and smiled, then pointed at the kitchen table. “Come and sit,” she said. “I have croissants and jam and butter. And I have made you some hot chocolate.”

  “Do I get chocolate?” Antoine asked. He winked at Alex.

  “Drink your coffee,” Colette said. “And then get out of here, so I can do my work.” She glanced at Meme. “Both of you.” She banged a dish on the counter. “You both tell everyone you never married because you didn’t want to force the life you lead on wives and children. But I know the real reason.” She glared at each of them. “It is because no woman would have either one of you.”

  Alex saw that Meme was smiling, then the smile faded, and Alex turned and saw that his father had come into the kitchen.

  He stopped just inside the doorway, and he seemed uncertain about something, Alex thought. Then he walked to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  Piers looked at Meme, wondering if they would leave the kitchen and take their coffee in the dining room. But Meme didn’t move, and neither did Antoine, and Alex was already seated at the table, eating his breakfast.

  Piers went to the table and sat next to his son. “Are you ready for the hunt?” he asked.

  Alex nodded, unable to speak around the mouthful of croissant. Colette came to the table and put another basket of croissants next to his father’s arm. Piers seemed to stiffen, then he looked up at her and nodded.

  “Thank you,” Piers said, then turned back to his son. “So it will be a big day for you,” he said, and Alex could tell he was speaking by rote, not really paying attention to what he was saying. He did that sometimes when things were on his mind and he was distracted. He was probably thinking about the hunt, Alex told himself.

  They left the house and loaded the shotguns into the trunk of a car and climbed inside, Meme taking the wheel. There was another car behind them, filled with men who worked at the house. But their shotguns were inside the car with them, and they followed closely behind as the cars headed down the long, winding drive.

  On the road, other cars waited, headlights on, engines running. There were now eight cars in all, and they drove south along the narrow dirt road at speeds that defied the road itself.

  “Corsicans like to drive fast,” Meme told Alex over his shoulder. “And the narrower the road, the faster they must drive. It is like hunting the pigs,” he said. “They must show everyone they are brave enough to do it.”

  The road twisted along the side of the mountain, and in the distance, as the road curved out again, Alex could see another line of headlights, and he knew it was another group of hunters headed for a place where they believed they would find wild boar.

  They drove for three or four miles, no more, then pulled off onto a wide shoulder and stopped. The sun was just rising over the distant sea, and below them the maquis seemed to stretch endlessly north and south, a jumble of brambles and bushes and small trees, faint in the morning light, appearing so dense as to be impenetrable.

  The men climbed from the cars and took up their weapons, and joked and laughed among themselves. They spoke Corsican, which was similar to Italian, and Alex could not understand what they were saying. But he knew they were teasing one another about the hunt. It was the same thing the boys he knew did. And these men were boys again now, at least for today.

  Alex liked the sound of their language. It was rough and harsh and musical at the same time. He had seen it written as they had driven from the airport, on the road signs indicating which towns they were passing. The names were in French, but they had been crossed out with paint and the Corsican spelling substituted. His father had said it was the way the Corsicans told the French not to assume too much, not to try to take their language from them.

  One of the men opened the back of a truck, and more than a dozen dogs jumped out, barking and running around the legs of the men, taking time only to urinate on nearby rocks before starting again. Alex had thought the dogs would be large and fierce-looking, and a few were, but most were small and were of mixed breeds that seemed to be at least part terrier. They all had large bells hanging from their necks.

  “Why are the dogs wearing bells?” he asked.

  Michel was standing nearby and he grinned at him. “It is so we can hear them and know where they are. We don’t want to shoot a dog by mistake. We lose enough of them to the pigs.” He made a cutting gesture along his stomach, dragging his thumb up toward his chest. His grin widened as he did so.

  Alex drew a deep breath, the fragrance of the maquis filling his nostrils. The smell distracted him from Michel’s answer. It was like going into a store that sold perfumes, he thought, or that part of a grocery that had barrels of herbs and spices. He liked the way it smelled. He had never before been to a place that smelled like this.

  Alex felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Antoine grinning down at him.

  “It is time to go,” Antoine said. “It is a long climb down, and it is difficult in parts. If you find a place that is too steep for you, tell me and I will carry you.”

  Alex knew he didn’t want to be carried, and he was glad Antoine left the decision up to him. He would do it by himself. He knew it was important that he did. He wanted his father and his uncles to be proud of him, and not think of him as a baby, as his mother sometimes did.

  His father came over and squatted in front of him. “Stay close to Antoine,” he said. “And do as he tells you. If you want to come up early, don’t be afraid to say so. It will be all right if you do.”

  Alex nodded. He would never say he wanted to leave the hunt early. He wo
uld never do that. Never. Not in a million years.

  His father squeezed his shoulder, then rose and joined Meme, and they started down a steep path into the maquis.

  “Come,” Antoine said. “We go on a different path. It is a secret place that only I know about, and there is certain to be a great, ferocious pig there.”

  Alex went with Antoine, walking beside him where the path was wide enough, falling in behind when it narrowed.

  “These are old pig trails,” Antoine explained. “Only the pigs and the hunters use them. In the old days the bandits of the maquis used them too. But there are no more bandits now.” He turned and winked at the boy. “At least that is what we tell the police.”

  “Why would bandits come here?” Alex asked. “So they could hide and jump out on to the road and rob people?”

  “No,” Antoine said. “They came here to hide from the police. They were not really bandits. Just men who had some disagreement with the police. Sometimes they would kidnap people and bring them here until a ransom was paid. But they only kidnapped the foreigners who tried to take our country from us. So they were really patriots, not bandits.”

  They climbed steadily down, traversing large outcroppings of gray rock, and moving around thick tangles of foliage that Alex was sure no man could pass through. In the distance they could hear the beaters and the occasional bell of one of the dogs. The beaters were calling out and singing, just as Meme had said they would, and Alex wondered if another boar would charge Michel, and if he would have another scar to show off in the café.

  The sound of the bells also made him wonder if a boar might be close, and he noticed that the double-barreled shotgun Antoine carried was broken open, and that there were no shells in the chambers. He hoped the gun would be loaded before they saw a boar. But he did want to see one, he told himself. He really did.

  They climbed down for more than twenty minutes, and Alex’s legs felt the strain, and he was breathing hard. But the climb didn’t seem to affect Antoine at all, and he moved slowly and steadily, looking back occasionally to make sure Alex was still behind him. Never once, even when they climbed down steep sections of rock, did he suggest Alex might need to be carried. Alex was pleased that he did not.