The Life of Elves (8 page)

The only exception she made to this diet of wild rabbit and twigs was for Eugénie's marvels, for Eugénie was mistress thereabouts where jams and decoctions of fine flowers were concerned. But who, indeed, could have resisted her masterworks? Her quince jam was brought to holy communion and even spousals; her very infusions seemed to be imbued with magic; how else could one explain the sighs of contentment that were uttered at the end of each meal? What's more, Eugénie was gifted with a knowledge of simples, and the priest often consulted her and respected her greatly, for she had a way with an impressive number of plants and therapeutic applications whose origins could be traced back to remote antiquity, an epoch about which Eugénie, in splendid indifference, knew nothing. She tended, however, to favor those plants that grew abundantly in the region, and that had proved their effectiveness over the years, and she had settled on a successful triad that seemed, at least on the farm, to have demonstrated its virtues: thyme, garlic, and hawthorn (which she referred to as the noble thorn or the thornapple, names which the priest had verified and which were, indeed, the most popular designations of the shrub among the common folk). Maria passionately loved hawthorns. She loved the shrub's silvery gray bark, which only turned brown and gnarly with age, and the light flowers of a white so delicately tinged with pink it could make you sob, and she loved to go picking them with Eugénie in the first days of May, taking care not to crush them, then putting them to dry in the shade of a cellar now bedecked like a bride. Last of all, she loved the infusions they made every evening by dropping a spoonful of flowers into a cup of boiling water. Eugénie swore that this fortified the soul and the heart (which has been proven by modern medicine) and that it also conferred a new flush of youth (something which has not been demonstrated in books).

In short, while Eugénie might not have been the same age or had the same eye of the Lord as Angèle, she was nevertheless a granny whom you could not try to hoodwink with impunity. And while Angèle may have presumed very early on that Maria was cut from a magical cloth, since the events in the cluster of trees, Eugénie had, with growing intensity, also perceived as much. Early one morning as she was going down to the kitchen after her first prayers, she stopped short next to the big wooden table where they had their meals. The room was silent. The other old women were feeding the hens and milking the cows; the father had gone to inspect his orchards and Maria was still sleeping beneath the big red duvet. Eugénie was alone next to the table; on it there were only an earthenware coffee pot, a glass of water for a thirsty soul in the night, and three cloves of garlic left over from dinner. Her efforts to concentrate only conjured the very vision she wished to put out of her mind, then she relaxed and endeavored to forget what she was looking at.

 

She can see the table now as it was the night before; she was the last to leave, after snuffing out the lamp; she enjoys the silent peace of the room, still warm, where a happy family had its dinner not long since; her gaze lingers in the dark corners which the dim lighting adorns with a few jewels of light, before it returns to the table where there is only a glass of water next to a coffee pot and three forgotten cloves of garlic. And then she understands that Maria, who sometimes walks past the hearth at the darkest hours of sleep, came this night and moved the cloves of garlic—by a few inches—and the glass, too—a few millimeters, rather—and that this infinitesimal transference among five trivial elements has entirely altered the space and created a living painting from a kitchen table. Eugénie knows that she lacks the words, for she was born a peasant; she has never seen a painting, other than those that decorate the church and tell the Sacred History, and she knows no other beauty than the flight of birds and the dawn in spring, or the paths through the clear woods and the laughter of beloved children. But she does know with iron-clad certainty that what Maria has accomplished with her three cloves of garlic and her glass is an arrangement for the eye that pays tribute to the divine, and she now notices that in addition to the changes in the disposition of objects, something has been added, as revealed to her that very moment by the shaft of sunlight, and that something is a fragment of ivy placed just next to the glass. It is perfect. Eugénie may not have the words, but she has the gift. In the same way as she
sees
the effect of medicinal plants on the body and the quiddity of gestures on healing she can see the equilibrium in which the little girl has placed the elements, the splendid tension that inhabits them now, and the succession of filled and empty spaces against a background of silky darkness through which a space has been sculpted, now enhanced by a frame. So, still without words but through the grace of innocence and gift, alone in her kitchen beneath the ribbons that crown eighty-six years of hawthorn tea, Eugénie, her heart full, receives the magnificence of art.

 

That morning, Maria went down early to cut her chunk of cheese in the storeroom. But instead of spending her time among the trees before study, she came back to the kitchen where, at her battle station, Eugénie was stirring a mixture of celery tops, periwinkle flowers, and mint leaves in a copper saucepan, to make a poultice for a young mother afflicted with breast engorgement. Maria sat down at the big table, where the cloves of garlic were still in their place.

“Did you add celery?” she asked.

“Celery, periwinkle, and mint,” Eugénie replied.

“The celery that grows in the garden?”

“The celery that grows in the garden,” echoed Eugénie.

“That you took from the garden?”

“That I took from the garden.”

“Which doesn't smell as bad as the wild celery?”

“Which smells better than the wild celery.”

“But isn't as effective?”

“That depends, my little angel, that depends on the wind.”

“And isn't periwinkle melancholic?”

“Yes indeed, it is melancholic.”

“Don't people give it to show when they are sad?”

“Yes, they also give it to say politely that they are sad.”

“And are the periwinkles from our woods?”

“They are periwinkles from the embankment behind the rabbit hutches.”

“And they're not as effective as the ones in the woods?”

“That depends, my sweet, that depends on the wind.”

“And what about the mint, Auntie?”

“This mint, my sweet?”

“Where does it come from at this time of day?”

“It comes from the wind, my little angel, like everything else, it comes from the wind, which leaves it wherever the Good Lord asks it to, and where we pick it, in honor of His good deeds.”

Maria loved these dialogues; they were infinitely more dear to her than the ones at church, and she provoked them for a reason that became clear in light of a new event which poured into the farm that day with its exotic effluvia. At around eleven o'clock Jeannot knocked on the door to the kitchen where all the grannies were assembled, busy with the same considerable chore—the end of Lent was approaching and they would soon be eating the feast that made up for all their willing sacrifices. The kitchen smelled of garlic and game and the table was crammed full of magnificent baskets, the biggest one overflowing with the first meadow mushrooms of the year: so many had been picked that they were spilling all around the mass of wicker, and they'd have enough for ten years of aromatic meals and fragrant jars. All this, and only the end of April.

They saw at once that Jeannot was flustered about something having to do with his position, because he was wearing his postman's cap, and he was holding his leather satchel with both hands. They hurried him into the warmth and, although they were dying of curiosity, they sat him down to a slice of
rillettes
and a little glass of local wine, because the event deserved the honors which are customarily paid with a little bit of pork fat and a glassful of red wine. He hardly touched them. He did take a polite sip but it was plain to see that he was concentrating on some serious event of great import that was now his responsibility. Silence fell over a room lulled only by the crackling of the flames under the stewpot, where a rabbit was cooking. The women dried their hands, folded their towels, adjusted their headpieces and, still in silence, pulled out their chairs and sat down in unison.

A moment went by, brimming like the milk.

Outside, it had begun to rain, a fine downpour, my word, coming from a black cloud that had burst all of a sudden and would provide the violets and of the animals with their water for the day. The room was full of the sound of water and the whispering of the fire, muffled in a silence that was too great for the five humans sitting around the table and feeling the pulse of fate. Because there could be no doubt: it was surely fate that had given Jeannot that solemn expression they'd only ever seen when he talked about the war, where he'd also served as a courier, and where, like the others, he had been forced to inhale gunpowder and endure the misery of combat. They watched as he took another sip of wine, but to give himself courage this time, and they knew he had to muster his strength before he began. So they waited.

“Well now,” said Jeannot at last, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, “I have a letter to deliver.”

And he opened his satchel to reach for an envelope, which he placed in the middle of the table so that everyone could see it with ease. The old women stood up and leaned closer. The silence returned, as vast and holy as in a primitive cave. The envelope, in the darkness from the storm, formed a little well of light, but for now all they were interested in were the letters in black ink that said, simply:

 

Maria

The Hollows Farm

 

There was also a stamp the likes of which they had never seen.

“It's an Italian stamp,” said Jeannot, breaking the silence, because he saw that the old ladies were straining their eyes staring at the mysterious little square.

They all plumped themselves down again on the straw matting of their chairs. Outside, it was raining twice as hard, and it was darker now than at six o'clock. The aroma of the rabbit stewing in its wine mingled with the sound of the rain, and the interior of the farm was a single fragrant psalm in which the little company cloaked themselves as they bent over the envelope from Italy. Another moment went by in this limbo of wariness, then Jeannot cleared his throat and spoke, because it seemed to him that they had allowed a decent lapse of time for observation.

“Well then, shall we open it?” he asked, his voice both neutral and encouraging.

The grannies looked at each other from under their beribboned headpieces, all thinking the same thing, that is, that such an event required the consultation of the entire family, and this could only happen once the father came home from working the fields and the mother from the town, where she had been with her sister these last three days, for the youngest daughter was consumptive. She had gone there with a satchel full of Eugénie's unguents, which the family was waiting for with impatience, having despaired of any official medication: these had had little effect, and the young woman's strength was draining away before their eyes. Which meant, according to the calculations of our four old ladies, with their minds all suffused with Italy, in two days and two nights. A kind of torture.

Jeannot, who had been following the ladies' interior prevarications as well as if he could hear them, cleared his throat again and, in a tone that sought this time to be firm and fatherly, suggested, “It might be urgent.”

The postal routes leading from Italy to the lowlands may be mysterious, but one can at least assume it unlikely they could be covered in less than three hours; consequently, they are not the chosen routes in times of peril. All the more so when there is no address or family name. And yet, over and above the rain and the rabbit stew, the room was suddenly shrouded in a worrying pall of urgency. Angèle looked at Eugénie who looked at Jeannette who looked at Marie, and looks were exchanged in this way until chins too entered the dance and began oscillating gently, as if each were joining in the round with a precision that would enchant the most experienced choir conductor. They nodded their heads for two or three minutes more, with such ever-increasing determination that they carried Jeannot with them, for he suddenly felt he was certainly up to a little serving of
rillettes
, but he didn't want to disturb the harmony of this admirable arrangement of chins. Then they decided.

“We could at least open it,” said Angèle. “It's not going to determine anything.”

“Precisely,” said Eugénie.

“We'll just open it,” said Marie.

And Jeannette did not speak, but she agreed with them.

Angèle got to her feet and went to fetch from the buffet drawer the slender knife that had once opened many a soldier's letter. She took the Italian envelope in her left hand, and with her right she inserted the pointed tip and began slicing along the edge.

And everything exploded: the door flew open and there was Maria's outline in the door against a background of storm-wild countryside; and the rain, which had been falling hard for a good half an hour, was transformed into such a powerful deluge that all anyone could hear was the pounding of the downpour in the farmyard. They had already witnessed torrential rains of the kind that can flood low-lying land in no time at all—but this! This was something else again, because the water did not sink into the ground, but hurled itself against it with a violence that caused an entire expanse of land to thrum as if it were a gigantic drum, before returning to the sky in the shape of gorged smoking waterspouts resounding with the thunder of their impact. Maria stood a moment longer in the door amid the general stupefaction and the terrifying clatter of the waters. Then she closed the door, walked over to the old women and held out her hand to Angèle who, without understanding what she was doing, placed the letter in Maria's palm. The world spun on itself and all of a sudden everything was right way up again, the rain stopped, and in the return of silence the rabbit stew bubbling in its juice made everyone jump. Angèle looked at Maria who looked at Angèle. No one spoke; everyone appreciated as never before the incomparable joy of being in the silence of a kitchen that smelled of rabbit casserole, and they looked at Maria, at the newfound gravity of her expression, and they felt that something inside her had metabolized into an unknown framework of the soul.