VIII

 

 

That Sunday morning around 11 am, little Emilie arrived in front of the Busset’s great pink house wearing her best dress. A terrace stretched forward from one side of the courtyard. On the ground floor was a room for the maid, then a storage shed and further off were the stables and the barn; to get to the first floor one had to cross the terrace to a stone stairway with an iron railing that stood in the shade of a great unpruned plane tree. Usually, before, Emilie went straight up, but that day she stayed in the courtyard. She looks toward the windows. She stays on the little square of pavement which had been well-swept the night before and where the broom prints were showing in the dirt around. She looks toward the windows, toward the barn, toward the shed; toward the high round door of the barn which is closed, toward the shed with its square door, toward the stable with its braided straw over the door. No one could be seen anywhere. Usually, before, she went straight up to the first floor and surely she would find someone because it was soon time for the noon meal, but she didn’t dare. She held her black hymnal in her left hand, and, from beneath her blue-ribboned hat, she only raises her eyes, just in case someone would come along by chance, just in case maybe someone had seen her and was coming down.

But we weren’t coming, no one was coming.

After a moment she left. She walked back up the street which changed slowly as it went along, crossing paths with people who said hello to her and she said hello to them without looking at them, her head down, her eyes hidden (luckily) by the brim of her hat. She walked up the street to the end of the village; once there, she turned and walked back the way she came.

She was wearing a pretty white scarf dress dotted with bouquets of blue flowers, a cloth collar. She held her hymnal in her left hand, she had white cotton gloves. She had made herself pretty for him. She was only seventeen years old; he was eighteen. A girl washes her hair in a basin filled with chamomile shampoo, just before going to sleep; a girl rolls the tendrils carefully in leather strips; and in the morning, once the sun is up, she can see the lovely honey color they have—and all this is useless, and all these things are for nothing.

And your pretty dress shoes the color of hazelnuts, the same, and your white silk stockings, and everything, and even if a girl is rosy and fresh, and the lovely cheeks she has or that she had—that a girl could have again if only he wanted.

But he didn’t want, she was sure, and so she walked back the way she came. And just as she was about to arrive before the house again she saw three of her friends coming up the street, the street that led down to the lake and at the other end of which was the Café Milliquet. The girls were walking and holding hands; from afar they waved to Emilie.

“Oh, luckily we found you… What are you doing this afternoon?”

“I don’t know.”

“So we can count on you. Mathilde has invited us. She told us to stop by and get you, but we thought perhaps you already had plans… besides, you know, you can just bring Maurice…”

She said, “Thank you. I’ll see.”

They didn’t say anything else. Maurice…

And already they were walking away, talking again, “Well, see you later then…” As for Emilie, she walked on only always more slowly, because maybe he would come; she passes again in front of the courtyard, crossing it, and again she slightly raises her head, but she didn’t stop, she didn’t have the strength to do it, she would have liked to, but she couldn’t.

However, around two o’clock she made up her mind. Weren’t they nearly officially engaged, after all? They had known each other forever and who knows when they went from knowing to that other thing. A border line is only marked on a map and in books; it isn’t visible in a person’s heart. It happens without a person noticing, and all we know after is that it’s been crossed; and so now of course she could go over, she even told herself she had to, otherwise Maurice’s mother would be surprised.

She found Mrs. Busset on the terrace, “Oh, Emilie!” Mrs. Busset was reading her newspaper, seated on a rushed chair beneath the great plane tree; she took off her glasses. Then she said, “My poor Emilie, you’re getting here too late… Maurice has already gone out… Oh, you didn’t know… he told me there was a Youth Club meeting this afternoon; it’s for the party… You didn’t have plans together? Okay, well, sit down… I’m all alone, you can keep me company. Maybe he’ll come back earlier than he thought.”

But Emilie did not sit down.

Mrs. Busset put her glasses back on and she picked up her newspaper because she already considered Emilie part of the family. Only when she saw that Emilie was still standing she raised her eyes again, looking through her shiny glasses. “You don’t want to sit down? You’re worried you’ll be bored with me? Well, that’s normal, you’re young. Listen, come back for tea-time, maybe he’ll be back…”

Emilie did not answer her. She goes back down the stairs. And she goes… but where to go? A girl exists only where he is; nothing exists where he isn’t.

She tries again to walk as far as Café Milliquet, where she tells herself, without believing it, that she’ll find him on the terrace.

Only a few people are seated on the terrace; at the ninepins game there are only two or three older men with their pipes and that’s all.

Two or three men with their pipes and a piece of chalk, and the blackboard nailed to a tree trunk, and nothing, and emptiness all around;—while we hear the ninepins, crashing one against another, making such a sound like a person bursting into laughter and this gives you a pain in your heart.

 

All that time Maurice was sitting at the top of the cliff, having slid to that spot, far from any path.

Just below him on the shoreline was Rouge’s house; for the moment the house had three colors. The new part of the roof was a light red; the old part of the roof was showing tiles already browned by storms and the sun; and there was also the shed with its tar-papered cardboard roof.

The roof of Rouge’s house was tricolored, but the walls, or at least what we could see of them, were everywhere the same lovely deep butter color (like when the cows are fed on grass, which gives the butter a darker color).

This was just about the time when one day Rouge had brought out an iron box from the cupboard and placed it before Juliette and said, “Me, I’ve never put my money in the bank… It felt like going to steal my own money from them… me, my money, I keep it at home… I’m telling you this, Miss, so you’ll know where to get it. You can see it’s convenient; no need to write anything down or sell any shares…”

This was after the house had been repainted and, having finished all the exterior work, it was time to work on the inside. He had brought out his box and was saying to Juliette, “Luckily we’ve got all this money on hand… You see, you’ve only got to say the word… this money has done enough sleeping in this box… You’ll have to tell me what kind of wallpaper you’d like for your room, Miss Juliette. And then of course, we’ll have to see about the furniture…”

And he was saying, “What timing! I was making it bigger, I was making it bigger, why was I making it bigger? Old people need less space… I was freshening things up; I was freshening things up, and then at the time… Oh, what timing! Seems like you just had to come… it was meant to be…”

And then, “But for now… this wallpaper…”

“Listen, I’m not sure if I can say…”

“Oh, yes, tell me!”

“Well, where I come from, we don’t use wallpaper, we paint our walls white…”

“Understood! Nothing easier than that… It’s even cleaner and done more quickly. So, all white?”

“Everything white.”

And so Décosterd and Rouge simply whitewashed her room, and she’d helped them, laughing and enjoying the pots all filled with creamy paint and the big brushes. Instead of floorboards, there was a red tile floor; and, when everything was finished, she’d started to dance on it, saying, “It’s just like at home.”

“Like at home? This is your home now.”

“Like home, like home,” she sang, turning toward Rouge amidst the strong smell of plaster and glue, but the sun coming in full at the window would have it all dry soon.

And Rouge seemed completely happy, then we could see him looking at a brochure and, since Décosterd was ready to head home at that moment, he said, “Décosterd, I’m counting on you for tomorrow. Be sure to come early. And don’t leave at all. You can always put the curtains on the windows, you and Miss Juliette.”

He had, in fact, already ordered curtains from the seamstress in the village, but now he had to deal with the furniture, and once Décosterd had left, he said, “So, for the furniture… I would take you with me, but… there’s nothing to fear with Décosterd. I prefer you stay here, only you’ll have to tell me…”

“Oh, get whatever you like… Back home…”

“What are they like?”

“Well, there’s nothing or hardly any…”

“Would you like white furniture?”

“If you want.”

“A table,” Rouge was saying. “A chair or two… I know just where to go…”

He wrote down the sizes of what they needed. “And then,” he said. “I’ll buy you a lovely big mirror. It’s more important than anything else for women… I’ll leave early tomorrow morning, I’ll be back in the early afternoon. You’ll wait for me here. I prefer,” he said, “that you don’t go anywhere. I’m a little worried… But as long as Décosterd is here.”

He continued, “And now there’s just one more question. Which is… Yes, while we’re talking about it. All that sleeping money, we could…”

He said, “…have clothes made.”

He said, “What I mean to say, if you don’t have enough clothing, not enough dresses…”

But she started to laugh, “Dresses! You haven’t seen them yet, they’re all still in my suitcase. My father always asked me to dress up when he came to town on Sundays and he always brought me a gift… they’re dresses from my country.”

She was still wearing her little black satinet dress, and he glances at her quickly, then quiets; and then he continued, “Well, so… all right, if by chance I see something that might suit you, since I’ll be there…”

And the next morning, he took the train; then, the day after that the entire village was surprised to see a delivery truck, light green with gold letters, turn shakily onto the shoreline and so we followed it.

We could see from afar what came out of it:

“Well, he’s certainly rich,” we were saying. “There’s your proof.”

“Goodness! How long has he been working? Forty years. And he’s done well, no doubt about it. And he spends nothing…”

While two cap-wearing employees continued to unload huge packages wrapped in gray paper:

“That’s got to be a chair, that…”

“And that, that must be a headboard…”

“Yup, there’s the other end.”

“My God, he’s bought her a bed…”

And down below the two employees brought out three or four wrapped boxes from the car, after which, snorting and blowing a thick blue smoke, the car turned around clumsily on the shoreline, the rear wheels slipping halfway down into the water.

That was on Friday, a Friday afternoon. She had been living at Rouge’s for a little more than three weeks. On Saturday morning then, she left with them to go fishing. Rouge made her sit on the rear bench. “Would you know how to direct the rudder, because it would help us if you did…” She knew how. They go out onto the water, in the early morning, all three of them, they head toward the lights of two lanterns sitting in their half-barrels, and that the sunshine had put out, or nearly, making the flames all pale behind the beveled glass. They fish. They had a good catch. They had begun a life, three people together, and it seemed she had her place. Then Décosterd headed to the train station with the crates of fish. And then Rouge went into the shed, inside which there is a scale, several pairs of oars, both new and old, keep nets piled in a corner; and then, anchored to the wall and hanging like garlands, nets that are green, or blue, or green-blue, because they were dipped in sulfate.

He had gone into the shed; he had tied a hemp apron around his body, the kind with a big pocket in the front.

He went out; he goes behind the shed.

He goes to where the poles are and where we hang the nets out to dry, and the ones from that morning were there and still drying, because they have to be dried, otherwise they get moldy. She came too. She saw that he took a shuttle from the apron’s big pocket, then went over to those walls of mesh, holding his belly turned toward them, while she watched him work. All these nets started at the side of the shed and went on for about ten meters along the wall, and because they were transparent they seemed to rise up off the ground like a light mist, the kind we see in the morning on the fields when the dawn light is strong. Rouge leaned over beneath his navy blue cap with the visor that sparkled, and, taking up a fistful of mesh links, he let them slip through his fingers. If there are holes, they must be patched right away to keep them from growing any bigger. Holes made in the net by fish that are too big or by waves, or even when the net is raised and gets caught in the cleats; and so each morning the nets must be checked and Rouge was checking, and we saw him, holding the shuttle between his fat fingers, running it along with the tip pointing up, sliding it quickly between the interweaving threads. The fat man lowered his head beneath his cap. He brought the shuttle to him, makes a knot. He made a knot. He took his knife out of the apron pocket, he cut the line with his knife.

It’s detail work, delicate; it was one half of the profession, and one which hardly resembled the other half; —he let the links run again through his fingers and the weight at the bottom pulled them down; then he pushed further, the belly of his blue apron always turned toward the transparent wall. Just then he raises his eyes. She was there, watching him work. She had sat down against the hillside; she was holding her hands on her knees. And from his side, he watches her, then he said, “You see, that’s how we do it.”

He continued, “You want to try?”

She stood up, “Is it hard?”

“Not at all!”

“Would you show me?”

She came over and he said, “Of course. But would you really do it?”

He looks at her, “It’s just that it really is a woman’s work. The rest of us have to do everything that has to be done, but it’s a double-sided profession. We do the man’s part, we do the woman’s part, because there are no women here or at least there never was a woman here. But now…”

He went to get her another shuttle.

She’s taken her place among us, her place was just here waiting for her. We couldn’t have found someone who suited him better.

He came with the second shuttle, then it was the both of them leaning over the net, her black hair and his cap.

The next day they would rest. Rouge had said to Décosterd, “Tomorrow you can come at eight o’clock…”

He’d arranged the whole day with Décosterd, “Tomorrow, rest. We’re not going to fish on Sundays anymore. We have to let her sleep, because now, on the other days, she is going to come with us. Eight o’clock at the earliest. Eight o’clock, eight-thirty…”

Décosterd had done what was asked of him. It was close to eight o’clock when Rouge woke up. She was still sleeping. He walked silently in his slippers. He goes to the door and opens it; he sees that the weather is fine. Then he sees Décosterd arriving and we see that Décosterd is holding something in his hand, walking with care, a loaf of bread under his other arm.

“What have you got there?”

Décosterd says, “It’s a surprise.”

It was a large leaf of Swiss chard, and another leaf covering that one; whatever was between the two leaves couldn’t be seen, which is why Décosterd’s face scrunched with pleasure, watching Rouge with an eye that shined, something that made his other eye look darker, more dead than ever.

And Rouge hid his curiosity, “Who’s it for?”

“Ah!”

Rouge quiets, then he continues suddenly, “Listen, we have to get the table set quickly… And then,” he said. “Since it’s a surprise, you can put it on her plate.”

Décosterd bobbed his head; and, just as they’d said, when she came in, the two chard leaves were at her table setting—when she arrived in her little black dress.

“It’s for me? What is it?”

Rouge said, “Goodness, I don’t know.”

Décosterd said, “Me neither.”

“I can look?”

And, lifting the leaf from underneath, settled into the cup of the other shiny leaf, with its white part and ridges, she found the first strawberries of the season, the first wild strawberries.

“From you?” she asked Rouge.

Rouge made a sign that it wasn’t him.

“From you?” she said to Décosterd.

He also shook his head no; she shrugged her shoulders.

The door was wide open; the entire beautiful Sunday came in, with its rowboats, with its steamboats. On Sundays people love to come down off the mountain and from the villages up the hill or behind the hill; young people, boys and girls; and it’s when this beautiful water starts to shine between your field stakes and it calls to you from the lake over your little walls. People come happily to rent a boat from Perrin for an hour or two. And there are the big steamboats, all white with their red, green and white, or tri-color flags, and their big wheel beating the water, each flat thud can be heard before we even see the boat; or we can even hear singing. Boys’ voices or girls’ voices singing songs in duple or triple time, and in chorus, and it’s hard to tell where the songs come from, because water carries sound and sends it all around. In through the wide open door came the voices along with the reflection of the little waves which came to hit the freshly whitewashed ceiling. We were lit up twice, we were lit from below and from above, while the coffeemaker was shining where it sat on the table. A new steamboat with its name on the side, which they could read (it was the Rhône), had no front nor a back, for just a moment, as it sat between the two sides of the door, while the coffeemaker was shining where it sat on the table. The coffeemaker shone, the cups had several reflections instead of just one. They had just finished eating; with her fingers she picked up her strawberries from the beautiful green leaf. Suddenly, Rouge gets up. The steamboat had passed. Décosterd pushed himself back and the bench scraped on the cement floor. It’s a beautiful Sunday. We see Rouge going out, his hands in his pockets, heading to the water like usual. Décosterd had started clearing the table. She had tried to help him, but he’d forbidden her, “No, Miss, that’s my job.”

So she’d gone back to her room and there too it was shining bright: the bed, the walls, the ceiling, the tiles. There were white curtains on the window. There weren’t only two lights in the room, but an entire crisscrossing of light because of the big mirror hanging on the wall. The daylight danced on her hair, moved atop her shoulders. She went in front of the mirror, she had to close her eyes. She goes all the way up to the mirror, rolling a piece of hair between her fingers beneath her ear; and the weather is extremely fine;—so why did, all of a sudden?...

It was while she was there and while Rouge was at the shoreline; she heard him coming and going.

She looks through the curtains; she sees that he also doesn’t look like he knows what to do, walking along the lake, his hands in his pockets.

What is wrong? She doesn’t know. And people were even singing in a boat on the water; bathers at the foot of the cliff were calling to one another with loud voices, with laughter muffled by the water; she goes out, she went to join Rouge; at that moment the church bells had all started to ring.

We could see, over the forest of pines, the square tower and its roof with the rusted white iron ridges, topped with a red-painted rooster. She came to stand beside Rouge; then he showed her the belltower. Then he showed her other things all around, while the fish jumped at the angle of his shoulder and before his face, along the slope of the water. It’s Sunday, everywhere a holiday. The bells are rung, people sing in the water on their boats;—he watched her from the side. We heard the sound of the dishes from the kitchen where Décosterd was putting the house in order; and the two bells rang out in the air again, one with short, fast notes and the other with long deep notes, spread apart.

Suddenly, “Isn’t that a pretty sound? It’s just that it’s Sunday today. Everything makes itself beautiful.”

He continued, “Except for you.”

He stops speaking, they listened to Sunday. They heard again the singing in the rowboats, the bathers yelling and laughing, calling to each other at the cliff, the last blackbirds; he watches her. And the girl, she looks at herself. She looks at her little black dress, she sees her bare feet in her old leather slippers.

“Oh,” she says, “I don’t dare. You remember, the other time, I was yelled at so much…”

“Now, I think,” he says, “no one would yell at you.”

“It’s just that it isn’t the custom here, and we don’t have the same fashions at home…”

“Home?”

“Yes, you know, far away.”

And then he said, “Exactly.”

“Well, if you like.”

She laughed and said, “Well, wait a minute…”

And this was why, looking down from up above, he hadn’t recognized her (Maurice up there beneath his shrub),—much later, when she had come out. A great bright yellow color surrounded her now in the sunshine where she came out, then she’d walked forward in the sun.

He hadn’t recognized her right away: she had to get all the way to the water. Once there, she turned around like she was speaking with someone.

The front of Rouge’s house was at an angle for Maurice and was hidden from his perspective, so much so that he couldn’t see to whom she was speaking. But at least he could see her directly, he could see that it was really her and that a floral shawl hung around her body all the way to below her knees.

He sees everything now like seeing through glass lenses; he sees that she is there, that she stands up, then she turns herself around laughing over her shoulder, that she walks backward slowly. Then, the angle of the wall removed her little by little from our eyes, the angle of the wall took her from us.

From beneath his shrub, Maurice watches all this happening: a moment later a little raft appeared. There were two children in the raft; they couldn’t sit down, they had to stay standing, their feet in the water up to their ankles, maneuvering a kind of rudder they’d made themselves, and the raft, too, they had made it themselves with two or three planks nailed to a crossbeam over two barrel halves. They were completely naked, and completely tanned, since it had been warm enough for swimming for awhile now, they had nothing but a little blue and white striped swimming suit around their middle.

The raft had just appeared before the pine tree forest; they could be heard yelling and fighting; they were saying, “Ernest, watch yourself, you’re tipping the boat…”

“No, you are.”

“You are, I tell you!”

And they were still behind the great ray of light that cut the lake in a crossways direction, going from beneath the sun up to the shoreline; just like one of our highways, with the same bumps, the same dips, the same knots (the kind of knots you find in a worn-out board); then they slipped behind this road, which turned them black and their boat, too.

This was all still happening on that Sunday afternoon. Everywhere the people are talking, songs everywhere, and voices and laughter. Maurice sees people walking along the shore, he sees from beneath his shrub that there are still rowboats coming and going, and then further out;—he hears the shouts of the children, he looks for their raft, he burns his eyes trying to find it. For the longest moment, he sees nothing before him but garnet and red and pink circles, circles that grow in size until they fill both holes of his eyes. And, even Juliette, when she reappeared, she was only a smaller yellow spot within a great yellow circle, as if his vision was tricking him, and creating her falsely for him ;—but then the yellow spot moved, she came to life, moved to a different spot; she too, became black, in front of the sparkle on the water…

“Hey, over there,” Rouge yelled, “what a bunch of beginners! Why don’t you try rowing together?”

Rouge had come forward, Rouge had joined Juliette, then Décosterd, too. At the same time, the raft had moved into the beautiful blue water which made the tan little bodies of the children regain their color.

“Ernest, you row on the right… Louis, put yourself on the left. Further left, Louis, like that…”

This was when she drew up to Rouge. We saw her talking to Rouge; she must have been asking him something. We see her talking to him, then she quieted, tipping her head to the side, then she nodded several times like a person insisting. Finally, Rouge must have said yes. She started clapping her hands together.

Maurice sees Décosterd coming toward him with a long stride, as if Décosterd had discovered his hiding place; but Décosterd didn’t raise his head, held it down in fact, his neck stretched forward. He stepped into the reeds.

Maurice followed Décosterd with his eyes for a minute; he draws them back to the shoreline; he sees that she was again gone.

Now Décosterd is unhitching the boat that used to be called the Coquette but was no longer called the Coquette. The boat had been completely refurbished; it was painted green on the outside and dark yellow on the inside. Décosterd grabbed ahold of the oars. First he rows between the reeds, in the cloudy water: he turns to the right, the clear water welcomes him. He turns toward Rouge’s house; he went aground just in front of Rouge, giving a last push of the oar to set the bow, scratching against the sand. Décosterd jumps onto the shore; he waits, Rouge waits. And the Juliette seems to be waiting, too, balanced gently on her stomach, her large hips bobbing irregularly beneath the oars stretching flat; waiting, many little fish could be seen shining, jumping out of the water like from a frying pan.

This is when she reappeared; and there was great joy on the mountains. She walked forward, she walked beneath her silk scarf; as she walked forward, we could see the long fringe slide up the length of her legs, then split to fall along each rounded side of them. She placed her lovely bare feet on the stones. And then, suddenly, the yellow shawl was gone,—at the same time Décosterd pushed the Juliette into the water, at the same time the mountains shone bright, the fish were jumping out of the water.—but she was shining now too, her bare arms shone, her broad shoulders shone. We could hear the cries of the children on the raft; because she was coming straight to them, in a game. She had taken up the oars, she had directed the tip of the Juliette toward them: at first they tried to escape her by rowing, then, seeing that they wouldn’t make it, they threw themselves into the water, one after the other.

Up on the mountain, he was still watching. He had seen that at this moment the mountains were touched on their side by the sun dipping down, at the same time the light turned less white; there was a color like honey between the walls of rock. Lower down, on the slope of the fields, it was like powdered gold; above the woods, like warm cinders. Everything was making itself beautiful, everything was making itself more than beautiful, like a rivalry. All these things making themselves more beautiful, always more beautiful, the water, the mountain, the sky, all that is liquid, all that is solid, all that is neither solid nor liquid, but it all holds together; it was like an agreement, a continual exchange from one thing to another thing, and between everything that exists. And around her and because of her—what he is thinking and telling himself up there. There is a place for beauty…

The children were pulling themselves up to their boards with great difficulty, laughing. They yelled something to Juliette, spitting water from their mouths and running their hands through their hair and along their faces;—now we understand what they are saying, “Miss, wait, we’ll come and tow you behind us.”

What happened next is that she let them do it; they come to her, they pass the rope from the front of the rowboat through the planks on the back of the raft, they leaned on their oars.

She let them do it; she approached slowly, being pulled and led by the children: she came, she came farther forward;—then suddenly we saw that Chauvy was there with his same dented bowler hat, his big beard, his jacket; we see him walk to the spot on the shore where she was going to land; once there, with a big sweep of his arm, he doffs his cap.

He showed his bald head. 

But Rouge runs over to him.

Then Rouge, turning to the other people: “And you, what are you doing here?” And then angrily, “Is this your home? Get out of here, understand?”

 

All of that same afternoon, while we were playing ninepins at Milliquet’s, and between two rolls of the ball, this funny little music was playing.

The entire afternoon, from behind the sheds.

No one paid attention to it because those who were playing ninepins were too busy writing their points on the blackboard.

First there was just the same note, held long, then a silence, then this same little note coming back. Then a silence.

Then another note came.

Little by little, the notes ran up the scale, slowly first, then more quickly, and then even faster, and always more quickly; the notes went up the scale, they went down the scale; they went up the scale and then down the scale like a spray of water that rises and falls at the same time.

The night came: now he was trying the low notes. Then trying them as chords. The bellows stretch wide and the burst of air snores through the reeds. A first chord, a second.

It all required great carefulness. We could hear how lovingly cautious were the movement of the hands.