Once in Europa (2 page)

He could make you more handsome.

He could also make us poorer!

Let me see you in your cap.

He put it on.

You're even more handsome than your father was, she said.

When Félix returned to the farm that night, he was surprised to see a car, its lights on, parked outside the house. He entered hurriedly. The doctor from the next village was in the kitchen washing his hands in the sink. The door to the Middle Room was shut.

If there's no improvement by the morning, your mother will have to go to the hospital, the doctor said.

Félix looked through the kitchen window at the mountain opposite, which, in the moonlight, was the colour of a grey mole, but he could not see around what had happened.

What happened? he asked.

She telephoned your neighbours.

She won't want to go to the hospital.

I have no choice, said the doctor.

You're right, said Félix, suddenly furious, it is her choice which counts!

You can't look after her properly here.

She has lived here for fifty years.

If you're not careful, she may die here.

The doctor wore glasses and this was the first thing you noticed about him. He looked at everything as if it were a page to read. He had come straight to the village from medical school full of idealism. Now, after ten years, he was disillusioned. Mountain people did not listen to reason, he complained, mountain people drank too much, mountain people went on repeating what they thought they had once heard as children, mountain people never recognised a rational process, mountain people behaved as if they thought life itself was mad.

Have a drink before you go, Doctor.

Does your mother have a supplementary insurance?

Which do you prefer, pears or plums?

Neither, thank you.

A little gentian? Gentian cures all, Doctor.

No alcohol, thank you.

How much do I owe you?

Twenty thousand, said the doctor, adjusting his glasses.

Félix took out his purse. She has worked every day of the year for fifty years, he thought, and tonight this shortsighted quack asks for twenty thousand. He extracted two folded bank notes and placed them on the table.

The doctor left and Félix went into the Middle Room. She was so thin that, under the eiderdown, her body was invisible. It was as if her head, decapitated, had been placed on the pillow.

An expression of irritation, like that on a dog's muzzle when it sniffs alcohol, ruffled her face whilst her eyes remained closed. When the spasm was over, her face resumed its calm, but was older. She was ageing hour by hour.

Noticing the dog lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, Félix hesitated. She would have insisted on the dog being put out.

Not a sound, Mick!

He climbed onto the bed beside his mother so that he would be reassured by her breathing throughout the night. She stirred and, turning on the pillow, asked for some water. When he gave
her the glass, she could not raise her head. He had to hold her head up with his hand, and her head seemed to weigh nothing, to be no heavier than a lettuce.

They both lay there, awake and without saying a word.

You'll get the rest of the potatoes in tomorrow? she eventually asked.

Yes.

Next spring there'll be fewer moles, she said. There won't be enough for them all to eat to survive the winter.

They breed quickly, Maman.

In the long run such troubles correct themselves, she insisted, if not by next year, by the year after. Yet you, you, my son, you will always remember the Year of the Thousand Moles.

No, Maman, you're going to get better.

The next day whilst he was cutting wood on the circular saw, Félix stopped every hour to go into the house and reassure himself. Each time, lying on the large bed, her arms straight by her side, she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

Everything was ready and prepared, she knew, in the second drawer of the wardrobe. Her black dress with the mother-of-pearl buttons, the black kerchief with blue gentian flowers printed on it, the dark grey stockings, and the shoes with laces which would be easier to put on than boots. How many times had Marie-Louise promised to come and dress her if it was she, Albertine, who was the first to go?

That night after Félix had come to lie down beside her, she said: It's years, my boy, since you played your accordion.

I don't even know where it is.

It's in the grenier, she said, you used to play so well, I don't know why you stopped.

It was when I came out of the army.

You let it drop.

Father was dead, there was too much to do.

He glanced at the portrait hanging above the bed. His father had a thick moustache, tiny comic eyes and a strong neck. He
used to tap his neck, as if it were a barrel, when he was thirsty.

Would you play me something? Albertine asked.

On the accordion?

Yes.

After all this time I won't get a breath out of it.

Try.

He shrugged his shoulders, took the electric torch off its hook on the wall, and went out. When he came back he extracted the accordion from its case, arranged one strap round his shoulder and, slipping his wrist under the other, started to pump. It worked.

What tune do you want?

“Dans tes Montagnes.”

The two voices of the accordion, tender and full-blown, filled the room. All her attention was fixed on him. His body was rolling slowly to the music. He has never been able to make up his mind, she reflected, it's as if he doesn't realise this is his only life. I ought to know since it was I who gave birth to him. And then, carried away by the music, she saw their cows in the alpage and Félix learning to walk.

When Félix stopped playing, Albertine was asleep.

Neighbours came to visit the house, bringing with them pears, walnut wine, an apple tart. Albertine repeatedly declared she had no need of anything except water. She stopped eating. She would take whatever messages they wanted, she would pray with them for what they thought they needed, she would bless them, but she would accept no pity and no competition. She was the next to leave.

To the old man, Anselme, she whispered: Try to find him a wife.

It's not like our time, he said, shaking his head. Nobody wants to marry a peasant today.

I'm glad you say that, she said.

I'm not saying Félix couldn't get married, answered Anselme pedantically. I'm simply saying women of his generation married men from the towns.

It's the idea of his being left alone.

I've been alone for twenty years! It's twenty years now since Claire died and I can recommend it. He chuckled.

Abruptly Albertine lowered her head to indicate that it was his duty to kiss her whilst she prayed. Obediently Anselme kissed the crown of her head.

She was now so weak and thin that Félix was frightened of smothering her when he slept. One night he woke up from a dream. He listened for her breathing. Her breath was as weak as an intermittent breeze in grass waiting to be scythed. Through the lace curtains he could see the plum trees his father had grafted. The light of the moon going down in the west was reflected in the mirror behind the wash bowl.

In the dream he had again been a conscript in the army. He was walking along a road, playing an accordion. Behind him was a man carrying a sheep. It was he, Félix, who had stolen the sheep, or, rather, a young woman had given the sheep to him on condition that … and he had taken the sheep knowing full well …

The dream became vaguer and vaguer as, awake, he saw something else. He saw Death approaching the farm. Or, rather, he saw Death's lamp, bobbing up and down, as Death strode leisurely past the edge of the forest where the beech trees in October were the colour of flames, down the slope of the big pasture which drained badly at the bottom, under the linden tree full of wasps in August, over the ruts of the old road to St. Denis, between the cherry trees against which, every July, she asked him to lean the long ladder, past the water trough where the source never froze, beside the dungheap where he threw the afterbirths, through the stable into the kitchen. When Death entered the Middle Room—where the smoked sausages were hanging from the ceiling above the bed—he saw that what he had taken to be a lamp was in fact a white feather of hoarfrost. The feather floated down onto the bed.

Abruptly Albertine sat up and said: Fetch me my dress, it is time to go!

The day after the funeral, when Félix delivered his milk to the dairy, he surprised everyone there by his cheerfulness.

Have you ever worked as a butcher? he asked Philippe, the cheesemaker. No? Well, you'd better take a correspondence course—with diagrams! Next year there's going to be no hay, no cows, no milk, no bonus for cream, no penalty for dirt … We're all going to be in the mole-skin business! That's what we are going to be doing …

The absence of the mourned is as precise as their presence once was. Albertine's absence was thin with arthritic hands and long grey hair gathered up in a chignon. The eyes of her absence needed glasses for reading. During her lifetime many cows had stepped on her feet. Each of her toes had been stepped on by a cow on a different occasion, and the growth of its nail consequently deformed. The toenails of her absence were the yellow of horn and irregularly shaped. The legs of her absence were as soft to touch as a young woman's.

Every evening he ate the soup he had prepared, he sliced the bread, he read the Communist Party paper for peasants and agricultural workers, and he lit a cigarette. He performed these acts whilst hugging her absence. As the night drew on and the cows in the stable lay down on their bedding of straw and beech leaves, the warmth of his own body penetrated her absence so that it became his own pain.

On All Souls' Day he bought some chrysanthemums, white ones the colour of goose feathers, and placed the pot of flowers, not by the tombstone in the churchyard, but on the marble-top commode in the Middle Room beside the large empty bed.

A week later the snow came. The children ran screaming out of school, impatient to build snowmen and igloos. When Félix delivered his milk to the dairy, he repeated the remark that Albertine had made every year when the first snow fell:

Let it snow a lot tonight, let the snow get so high our hens can peck the stars!

Through the kitchen window he stared at the white mountain. Mick was licking a plate on the floor.

The winter's long, it would be better if we could sleep.

The dog looked up.

Who do you think is going to win the elections? The same gang as before, eh?

The dog started wagging his tail.

Do you know what you like and what they manufacture in Béthune? Do you know, Mick?

Félix strode across the kitchen towards the massive dresser. To take something off its top shelf it was necessary to stand on a chair. Its doors, with their square panes of glass and their bevelled window frames, were big enough for a cow to go through.

So you don't know, Mick, what they manufacture in Béthune? From the bottom shelf he picked up a packet of sugar.

Sugar, Mick, sugar is what they manufacture in Béthune!

Brusquely he threw two lumps towards the dog. Three more. Six. Then he emptied the whole packet. Fifty lumps of sugar fell onto the floorboards in a cloud of dust.

Sugar in Béthune! Milk here! He shouted the words so violently the dog hid under the table.

One day in January he noticed that the floorboards, instead of being bread-coloured, were now grey like slates. He put the dog out, he stoked up the stove with wood, he took off his boots and trousers and began scrubbing on his knees. He had left it too long, the dirt was engrained. He ground his teeth, he refilled and refilled the bucket with water from the giant saucepan on the stove. The planks slowly changed colour.

The more he scrubbed, the more he saw the countless washings the floor had undergone as but a single instant in an eternity of dust and neglect. He straightened his back and looked up at the dresser. On the top shelf was their best china, decorated with sprays and garlands of flowers: violets, forget-me-nots, honey-suckle.
The way the flowers were painted around the rims of the plates, in the hearts of the dishes, on the flanks of the bowls, made him think of ears, mouths, eyes, breasts.

He put on his trousers and boots, laid down sheets of newspaper and stepping from one sheet to another reached the door. Outside it was snowing grey snow. He teetered like a drunk into the stable and there, his forehead resting on one of his cows' haunches, he vomited till there was nothing left in his stomach.

A few days later he beat the cow Myrtille. Myrtille had the bad habit of butting the cow next to her. If he showed Myrtille a stick, this was usually enough to deter her. She glowered at him with her insolently tranquil eyes, and he brandished the stick in the air and said: The bow of the violin, eh! Is that enough or do you want some music!

On the evening in question he forgot the stick and Myrtille knocked him off his stool whilst he was preparing her neighbour's teats before plugging the milking machine onto her. Seizing a rake, he beat Myrtille across the haunches with the handle. She put her head down and he beat her harder. He was beating her now because she had reduced him to beating her. She lay down on the floor and he beat her out of the fury of his knowledge that he could not stop beating her.