IX

 

 

This was around the same time that people started coming to Milliquet with underhanded smiles; we were saying, “And your niece?” He was standing before you, leaning with both hands on the edge of the table.

People were saying to each other, “You’ll see, we’re going to make him let go of the edge of the table…”

“And your niece… So, it seems she’s doing well?”

And so, in fact, he would take one or two steps backward, he would shrug his shoulders, he would cross his hands behind his back; but, for the moment, we were holding onto him, we weren’t letting him escape so quickly.

“Yes,” we were saying, “and is it true what they say? You should know. It seems Rouge has put her up with furniture… it seems he’s bought her the best furnishings to be had.”

So Milliquet would take a few more steps backward, then, just as he stepped through the door: “Oh, not to worry, it won’t last long.”

“What will you do?”

But he was already outside, and we had to wait for another day to ask him about it again.

This particular Monday, the story of the raft provided the occasion. The story had made some noise around the village. The mothers of the two boys had started it all by stuffing them into bed without supper, one after the other; then the mothers had gone around telling the story to their neighbors.

We were saying, “Well now! We’re having a lot of fun at Rouge’s, aren’t we! It seems now everyone goes swimming all together!”

Milliquet was just pouring them something to drink; he was obliged to finish filling the glasses: but then he crashes the mug down on the table:

“Leave me be, will you? As if I didn’t know what I’ve got to do…”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well…you think it bothers me, but I’ve got plenty of time.”

“What about it? You’re in no hurry.”

Everyone starts to laugh, we were saying to him, “And after that? Once you’ve decided?”

“It’s simple. I’m lodging a complaint.”

“Since you’re the one who kicked her out.”

“I kicked her out?”

“Your wife, if you prefer… You and your wife, legally, it’s all…”

“Have to see about that first…”

“It’s all clear, you’re responsible…but then what? Lodge a complaint and then what? Then you take her back with you?”

And laughter again, because this was exactly the point, and we were saying to Milliquet, “All in all, you see that you’ve made a bad deal…” which was true.

The little serving girl knitted for hours on end alone in a corner. The sparrows felt completely at home in the plane trees on the veranda, which they filled with their chattering, spotting the tables with white that burned off the color. And all this time Milliquet, in his dirty shirt and his old slippers, went around dragging his feet up to the doorstep, waiting on the few customers who remained, and at the same time dreading to see them as if they were enemies he might have had; while he still had to avoid his wife, who, unfortunately for him, hadn’t been bedridden for very long.

Rouge had not come back.

 

As for the girl, she’d gone on fishing with us. She’d gone on having a place among us, when she got into the boat, leaving each morning with us to go raise the nets. She held onto the rudder; Rouge telling her, “Right…left…straight on…” she pulled one of the ropes, or the other, seated on the rear bench. In the beautiful weather that lasted all of the rest of that month and for much of the next, they set out together, the three of them, and this space where she found herself, it belongs to us. It seemed she was right where she should have been: look carefully, beneath the mountain, look carefully, among the stones and the sand, or first on this water that is gray, then lemon yellow, then orange yellow; then it looks as though we are navigating through a field of clover, upsetting the stems with the oars. She was completely at home here, maybe, for awhile, because there was no one else here; which means that there was no one but her and us; her and us, and these things and us. A few seagulls and sometimes a few swans that came to see us as well, puffing their feathers in anger when we came too close; other than that nothing and not a single living being (now that in the forest the birds had begun to quiet themselves);—so much so that there was nothing but the water and the lovely colors of the water, there was nothing but the sand, the stones. A ripple beside another ripple moving apart. We were with the boat, moving through the tip of an angle made from two folds, the sides of which grew softly wider like a piece of silk. She was still pulling a little on the left rope, we were heading straight for the buoy. Rouge and Décosterd let their oars drop and Décosterd ran forward just as we were going to hit the half-barrel painted in red and white (colors which can be seen the best and from afar) upon which the lantern was still lit but shed no light. She let go of the rudder. We saw Décosterd grab onto the lantern; he raised it up before him with its rounded glass and its pale little flame which gave only a little color in the pink air; then both men were pink across the entire front side of their person, from head to knees, on their mustaches, on their aprons. They handed the lantern to Juliette, she set it down beside her on the rear box. And then she was pink too, but on her side and on her shoulder, on her arm, on her left leg, while she sat there with her legs lifted off the floor to keep from bothering the work and she held her arm around her knees. For her, it was one of her cheeks, one of her legs, one of her bare feet. And all this time the men were pulling on the net; pink on their faces, they were tipped downward with both arms; they lean over, then straighten. They were bringing the net toward them. They pulled from the bottom to the top, it came up from the bottom to the top. They pulled on this trellis and up came this meshed espalier with the fruits it had gathered. First leaning over, then half-standing beside each other, all rosy in the light, they were working with their pink hands, going for the fruits of their labor that would then fall between their feet. Then, again, the color changed: it was when the sun finally came out from behind the mountain and they were repainted, relit, remade. So a flame twists upon their hands and between their fingers, then falls and extinguishes itself, but another is already coming, while all around you there are as many as you want, they are everywhere: at the crease of the smallest fold, upon the crest of the smallest wave.

Oh, she is exactly where she should be! When it came, the sun didn’t make the least distinction between her and the men. The sun loves her as much as us, some of its oldest friends, its daily companions. The sun hits against her cheek, upon her temple; the sun hits upon a part of her hair where she has flat tendrils that shine like steel blades. The texture of her skin is revealed on her neck, on the side of her neck and then forward, where her throat begins. She was in harmony with the light where everything round is smoothed. She held her arms around her legs. She turned herself backward toward the round rising sun above the mountain; it slipped off the mountain in little jumps as if the mountain was holding it back and the sun was saying, “Let me go!” Already the air was warming and already, because of this warmth, a strong odor of fish could be smelled all around you, at the same time these speckles of light shone on the side of her leg and there were splashes of light on her shoulder and along her body.

And so now Rouge, without dropping his net, said, “Well now, Miss Juliette, you’re okay? You’re not too bored?”

Already the net, fistful by fistful, had come to lean against the planking where it made a garland with its corks and weights; she laughs, she shakes her head.

She was with us, she was a kind of gilding put upon our life. Now our feet were covered up to our ankles with these tangled masses, like entrails freshly removed; a strong and sugary smell rose up. “We’re almost finished,” said Rouge, and then he looked at her again; so why did she lower her head just then? Just as they were reaching the second of the two buoys, then they hit the second half-barrel.

“Well, that’s it,” Rouge said. “Let’s go, Miss Juliette, to work. We need you again…”

She shook herself, looking to the right and to the left. They turned back toward the shoreline. It was an ordinary fishing morning from five to seven or eight o’clock. Now the two men were rowing and had their backs to the earth; they were facing the sun. They were coming from the east and from the direction of Jerusalem, heading toward the west, and she watched the reeds at the mouth of the Bourdonnette grow larger and become a wall, and in front of this wall and out quite far into the lake was a yellow spot on the water. They were moving toward the high cliff, then they were turning a little, and from there they could see the house on the shore with its three-colored roof. No one was anywhere; it’s not yet time for swimming; only vague noises could be heard from the village, beneath the silent vineyards. The girl was directing, the men were rowing.

They land.

It was just one of those fishing mornings; again Rouge looks at her. Décosterd had just left with the wheelbarrow; Rouge had gone to hang up the net. Contentedly, he watches her. He had filled his pipe, he was pulling on it, by sucking his cheeks in on the short wooden pipe. The smoke came off him through all sorts of little holes in his bushy mustache.

“Well,” he said suddenly.

Everything was in order; we could see the well-stretched net was hanging with its transparent wall like a little fog rising straight up from the ground.

“Well! Things aren’t so bad with this work, with your new profession, or what?” He pulls again on his pipe; another white puff rises up from his mustache. “It’s just that it’s a lovely line of work.”

He indicates the net, the water, the sky, the house. “A lovely line of work for everyone, a good profession for you and for me, it’s a man’s work and it’s a woman’s work, a profession made up of two halves… Isn’t that a coincidence!”

Because he was going back to the same old idea that had surprised him: “It seems like we’d been waiting for you,” is what he said, and then, “we were missing you, it’s funny, and then you…”

He hesitated.

Then, “You…you were missing us, too, maybe, because here everything is calm and that’s what we need, us, and that’s what you needed… doesn’t it just work out!”

He was saying these things, she was listening in silence; he raises his hand, “Calmness and freedom… just look at everyone else, land people I mean, because we’re water people and it makes a big difference… everyone else… You saw what it was like, you had the chance to realize… These people at the café, Milliquet and everyone, eh? Attached to the soles of their shoes; yes, all these winemakers or the people who cut the hay and rake the hay, these owners of a corner of a pasture, of a part of a field, of a tiny piece of the land. You see all of them forced to follow a path and always the same one, between two walls, between two hedges, and here this is my home and next door it’s not. It’s full of rules over there, full of No Trespassing…they can’t go left nor right… As for me… for us,” he says, “we go where we want. We’ve got everything because we have nothing.”

He’d begun a speech that had jumped from his lips despite himself, but now he couldn’t stop and was making gestures to accompany the speech.

“Nothing stops us, we go where we want, we do what we want… See if you can find anyone, even at this hour, or anywhere, who could stop us from doing what we like and isn’t that great? While they all live in smallness, with their 50 square meters, just enough to turn yourself around in…”

He says, “Miss Juliette?”

He interrupted himself suddenly, cutting off his lofty sayings.

“I think we’re going to be able to make arrange-ments…we’ll be able to arrange all this.” Then he continued, “Here, you see, we go forward if we want and where we want; no neighbors, no walls, no edges, no barriers, no rules… So, tell me, would this suit you? If we made arrangements all the same…”

He doesn’t finish the thought that particular day; and as for the girl, she listened, then nods her head two or three times as if saying yes. It was one of those fishing mornings.

That same afternoon, it came about that Rouge and Décosterd were busy working the nets; the girl, she was in her room. The men were outside and in the heat, next to the shed, between the net poles; she had gone to go sleep for a bit, at least we guessed she’d needed to sleep as people do in the middle of the day in those far away countries from which she came. Both men had their heads bent beneath their caps. There was a little noise like stones rolling. Rouge raises his head. It was Marguerite, little Marguerite from Milliquet’s. She was standing up on top of the hill that edged the shoreline; she was up there among the bushes in a place you couldn’t arrive from coming from the village without striking through the fields. And yet, it was really her, in her high-necked black dress with little white flowers; reddened cheeks, for the first time, from having run and hair more curly and wild than usual, and she was looking all about her with the abrupt movements of a bird.

“It’s about Miss Juliette…”

She looks quickly all around her to make sure no one can see her, but the trees, the shrubs, even her position on the hillside all hide her from any view; so now she continues, speaking quietly.

“There was a terrible fight between Mr. Milliquet and his wife…and so, I…I had something to buy in the village and so came quickly to tell you… Because,” she says, “he’s going to come… Yes, Mr. Milliquet,” she says. “He said he was going to come get her himself. He said it was his right… He’s going to come get Miss Juliette, and he said that if you don’t let her go he would lodge a complaint… His wife is asking him for 20,000 francs… 20,000 francs, can you imagine that? I think some papers came, because he owes some money on the house. And his wife was yelling that he’s ruined her. I think it was her money that he’d put on the house. She said to him, ‘And my 20,000 francs, you scoundrel, where are my 20,000 francs?’ He said, ‘Your 20,000 francs, you want your 20,000 francs? Ok, you’ll get them, I promise you, only you’re going to let me… Now shut up! So well, you’re ruined? Just wait…you know why you’re ruined…’ He said, ‘No later than this afternoon…and we’ll see about all this… Rouge will hear me out…there’s the law; if necessary, I’ll bring the police…’ He’s going to come, he’s going to come, Mr. Rouge.”

“He won’t come,” said Rouge.

“He will, because he even said to his wife, ‘You’re going to go up to your room and then you’ll stay there, don’t come down again…’ Oh, he’s coming, he’ll surely come…”

“We’ll see about that.”

“And the girl, how is she?”

“She’s just fine.”

“That’s good, but now I’ve got to get back. So, tell her, won’t you? Be sure to tell her…”

“Not necessary. I’m the one going somewhere, to Milliquet’s,” said Rouge.

He wanted to say more, but little Marguerite had already run off, sliding from one tree to the next in the high grass of the orchard. Rouge stayed where he was a moment; he shook his head two or three times; then he raises an arm, calling to Décosterd.

He said to Décosterd, “All in all, it’s better this way. This whole mess needs to be cleared up… I’m going over there right away. At least he’ll know what he’ll have coming to him if he ever comes bothering me… wait for me; I’ll be back in a half hour…”

Then he seemed to hesitate, having turned halfway toward the house, and at first it was as if he were going to give in to this movement; but then, abruptly, he gave in to the opposite movement.

He brought his cap forward and strode off just as he was, wearing only his trousers and his shirt.

“And you…” he’d also said to Décosterd, “you stay put, keep an eye on what’s happening.”

Had she heard? Had she guessed at what had just happened? Or maybe it’s just that a person gets bored?

She must have at least guessed that Rouge had just left, as he sometimes did in the afternoons; she must have also thought that Décosterd hardly mattered and then, because of where he was on the other side of the shed, it was possible for you to slip outside without being seen;—she’d gone to a corner and picked up her old dust-colored coat, the same she was wearing the day she’d arrived. She slips along the wall of the house; she is nothing but a gray spot on the gray rocks, she is nothing but a sand-colored spot on the sand. Now the house was between her and Décosterd, she hadn’t been seen; next she reaches the reeds and the path through the reeds. Arrived at the bank of the Bourdonnette, she went to the left toward the fish warden’s path; taking it up to the big road, you could make it to the village, and she must have known it, but not known the path very well. She went along the base of the bank, which climbed ever higher; which is why she had to raise her head: she couldn’t see anything on the village side, to her left, because of the bank and the trees, and even more so on her right where the steep cliff towered suddenly with its coat of pine trees. She couldn’t see anything and so she picked up her pace even further, like she was worried and impatient to be able to know where she was; then maybe she realized that the path was going to be longer than she’d thought. In this way, she entered the slimmest part of the narrow pass where all around you is the forest and beneath you the Bourdonnette is making a great sound of voices, like being at Milliquet’s when the café is full, with discussions everywhere and fists slamming on the tables. She didn’t hear right away that someone was walking a little above her in the bushes. He came out of the middle of all the noise, like once before already, like on the terrace at Milliquet’s; he was suddenly right in front of her. She didn’t make the slightest noise; the Savoyard said nothing also, but beneath his mustache he was laughing silently, baring his teeth. He came toward her with his arms outstretched, she jumps backwards. She saw right away that if she went back on the path the way she had come, there was a big chance she’d be cut off and her instinct brought her to put as much distance as possible between herself and the man, because he was coming from above down toward her; then it’s also maybe the youthful confidence one has in one’s blood, the strength of one’s breath; so she races into the forest, straight down the hill—hindered, but also defended by the dense branches she has to first push through but which also whip strongly backwards, and the man, the man gets them full in his face. He was stopped for a second; this short time was enough for her to then let herself fall to the base of the hill; once down, she gets rid of her coat, she can hear a burst of laughter. A hedge of alders making a thick wall along the shore appeared, at the same time there was a last slope; she throws herself into it, misses her mark, but she had enough time to raise her hands into the branches and took a fistful, enough that she holds herself steady and hangs a moment, suspended, but her weight brought her downward, while the Savoyard is stopped again. She hears him swear, she goes forward, she falls into the water, she goes forward into the water, hiking up her skirt; she hears, amidst the sound she is making on the stones and which is added to the sound of the current, that he’s called out to her, that he yelled something to her, but, looking backward at him over her shoulder, and now she is laughing, because she’s seen that he just lost his cap and his hair has unrolled and is hanging over his eyes. She brings her shoulders up to her throat, then a deep breath, all full of laughter and air; she is like someone playing a game; all the while holding her arms out not to lose her balance. She laughs, she moves forward, and he, at the same time, throws himself toward her with an angry movement, but now already the entire width of the Bourdonnette separates them and he slides and goes to the side, his arms in the water up to his shoulders. She has already made it to the other bank; once on the shore, she immediately starts to climb. The terrain on this side is of a completely different nature. Beneath the pine trees were shelves of soft stones, nothing but steep terraces covered in a thick moss, separating everything; all of this rising up very high and at the top, facing south under a shadow where, above you, are openings, like wells of sunlight, pointed downward. These patches of sunlight made circles on the moss. She was in one of these sun circles for a moment; she climbed the hill using her hands and her feet. She climbed through the black earth, soil like coffee grounds with particles that enter your skin. Thick clods of moss came up between her fingers; she bit into this moss with her fingers like they were teeth. Oh, we can see again what kind of person she is while she climbs like this in her youth and her strength, going around one of these stone benches or even climbing it straightaway by gripping the roots that hang down from the crevices like beards or hair. Every once in a while, she turned around. We could see him, unable to follow her. He was outstripped. His hat was off, his hair a mess, out of breath; his red belt was undone, had started to drag behind him; which made him stop. She gets further ahead, she puts more and more ground between them. And now she makes it to the top of the ravine. Now before her was the forest floor, stretching forward with its tall tree trunks, each with enough space between them to run around freely. She could go left as clearly as right or straight, going back easily to the shore if she went right, getting quickly to the road and the houses if she went left. She would have had all the time she needed. But, suddenly, we see her stop, then she retraces her steps, she leans over the edge of the ravine, “Are you coming?” she says. “We’re waiting for you…” She leans over the Savoyard. “What a coward! A coward! He doesn’t dare!” because he hadn’t yet started moving again, but the word reached him, so he throws himself forward.

“Oh, there you are!” she said.

She hadn’t yet moved, and yet he was pulling himself up again: she hadn’t moved, having leaned further forward to watch him more closely, but the top of the ravine is an overhang; there was an outcropping of soft earth that suddenly gives way beneath her; the nearly vertical incline receives her immediately and holds her straight by the two shoulders; she slides from the top to the bottom, she slides directly into the Savoyard in the moss and the black earth into which her heels make two lines; she sees him just beneath her and rising quickly toward her (or seeming to rise toward her), without having to make any movement; she sees his teeth showing beneath his mustache, all he had to do was open his arms; only the shock was so strong that he falls as well, at the same time he grabs her and threads his arms around her body and holds on with all his might; he turns halfway around; her momentum makes him turn around and he is brought to the side of the hill where she is now hanging over the edge, leaning, then she’s carried over, and he’s carried over with her; they roll one over the other; this whole time he hasn’t let her go, the whole time she feels his entire body against hers, feels his breath against her neck and the heat of his face against her own because he’s brought his mouth forward; they roll, they roll several times; sometimes they’re looking at the ground, sometimes the air, as the world turns upside down; there is a strong smell; it smells bitter, it smells damp, it smells like mold and rotting leaves; then she smells him, a more dangerous smell and coming closer because suddenly they’ve stopped rolling, they’ve just hit a tree trunk that holds them steady; he is on his knees, she is lying on her back, she sees his eyes coming closer, closer, getting larger, taking up all the space in front of her and coming to her; he still hasn’t let her go, he still has his arms around her body; but we still haven’t gotten to know her, or not completely; with a sudden movement, she makes his eyes leave her face, they ravish her face as she turns it, twisting her face and offering her neck which is raised up and her bodice opens from the top to the bottom; we can hear the sigh he lets out, but before the sigh can finish a kind of muffled yell takes its place, he brings his left hand to him; she is standing and he is standing, but he less quickly than her; he shakes his wrist twice because of the blood that is flowing along it; he ran, she is running in front, he grabs her by the sleeve and the sleeve gives way; so this is how we are treated! What does one expect, amidst these men? Where is one to go? What is one to do? But her lovely shoulders shine in the sun now falling again on her, and she’s again at the river; he has fallen behind: we see on his left hand the slim little crosshatches where he’s bleeding, and this time his anger is the strongest, which makes him lose control of his movements; again she has time to turn right from where she is standing in the river bed, doubtless fearing she’ll be stopped on the other side; she heads upstream, she is in the water up to her knees, but the slippery rocks on the river help her because he’s wearing shoes with nailed soles and she has espadrilles, which is why she continues; again, she can turn her head, she sees him sliding with each step and blinded by splashes, falling sometimes onto his knees and onto his hands, her high clear laugh bursts out, which spurs him on, exciting him; the Bourdonnette widens further, opening up away from the ravine and into the beginning of the valley.

She is beautiful in the sunshine. He sees this beauty again.

But at the same time he’s seen that this beauty will escape him, because Bolomey’s little house has appeared with its low roof that touches the grassy hill behind into which the house is half-buried; and, out from Bolomey’s little house, Bolomey has appeared.

He stands for an instant at the door, not understanding, then he goes back into his house.

She has left the riverbed; the Savoyard has also gotten out, trying to cross the hillside at an angle to cut her off.

Bolomey comes back out, his gun in his hands.

The other man sees the beauty of her shoulders shine one last time, and then, for an instant, the beauty shimmers in his own eyes; then there was nothing, even this he may no longer possess. It is escaping him. This beauty is escaping, it is extinguished.

There is nothing now but this little yellow-skinned man with his droopy mustache, a man walking forward slowly, continuing slowly two or three steps; then, because the Savoyard had still not stopped, we see him tilt the barrel of his rifle and slip the cartridges inside…

She is breathing deeply. She takes the air in so deep it reaches below her ribs; it rises back up, lifting her shoulders and making a great wrinkle in the skin of one shoulder and on the other side of her neck.

She let herself fall backward against the rise of the door. All is well. She breathes deeply. All is well and beautiful in the world. The sky is again above you in one piece, it is again immobile. She takes another deep breath, she breathes in the good air like something well-earned. She is going to be free,—she had forgotten that someone was there…

It’s Bolomey, holding his shotgun under his arm. He said, “You’d better go in, Miss.” He drops his eyes while speaking, and so she lowers her own. “We’ll try to get you some clothing, although we’re a bit short on women’s clothing...”

He went in first.

And he’s just gone into the second room, from there he called to Juliette, “Listen, I’ve found you a jacket, Miss. It’s one of my hunting jackets. If you’d like to come in, there are some thread and needles on the dresser…”

The lovely countryside beneath the sky remained outside the door. It was an airless little room, in which, despite the fine weather, it is dark. He went out, he left her alone. Docilely, she did what he told her to do. She put on the gray-green cloth jacket with its large back pocket and its metal boars’ head buttons. She looks at herself in the small black-spotted mirror. She sews up her skirt with its large rips hanging against her feet, revealing her knees…

 

Rouge had been back already for some time; his meeting with Milliquet had not lasted very long. He’d only been gone for a half-hour when Décosterd saw him coming back; he was walking with his head forward as if his head was too heavy, his cap pushed backward as if his head had swollen up. His face was even more flushed than usual and his mustache seemed lighter and whiter than before, while a thick vein beat in his temple and another fat vein stuck out from the side of his neck.

He came back, he said nothing.

He stops before Décosterd who is still working on the nets, still going along with the shuttle between the links; Décosterd looked at him with his one eye, an eye that saw as well as two eyes; he looked at him quickly, but said nothing. And Rouge said nothing. Décosterd asked him nothing, because he didn’t need to ask him; we watch Décosterd take up his knife, cut the thread, close the blade of his knife.

Rouge makes a movement with his shoulders. A button on his cotton sweater comes undone.

At the opening of the Bourdonnette, just where the water has a yellow color, a colony of seagulls were lit up from this side and turned into a series of white dots (and they become black dots when they’re lit from the other side).

Rouge suddenly said, “You haven’t seen Juliette?”

We see that the house is extraordinarily still, nothing is moving on the shoreline, nor around the house, nor on the roof, nor at the windows: no smoke, no reflection in the glass, and Rouge says, “Juliette? You haven’t seen her?”

“No.”

“She didn’t go out?”

“I don’t know; I haven’t moved.”

Worry pushes Rouge forward. He walks over to the front of the house; he listens, standing on the front step. He listens, nothing can be heard.

He walked into the kitchen, he makes the bench scratch on purpose because maybe she’s sleeping. Nothing.

He yells, “Juliette!” He raises his voice, “Juliette! Juliette!”

He sees the new door with its fresh paint and he stands in front of it for a moment, like it is going to open; it doesn’t open, he pushes through…

Oh, how is it that one’s heart is resigned so soon? He knew that no one would answer.

He goes out, he yells to Décosterd, “You didn’t see if she took the boat?”

And Décosterd answers something, but Rouge is already inside the shed because it’s easy to go and look himself: yet he knew already that the oars would be there.

The oars are there; he knew it. There was shade on the flat stones. The stones looked wet; the entire shoreline around him looks like it’s been rained on; the reeds in the distance have gone gray, having lost their lovely white and green color. They are white at the base, green on top, but not for him once he’s gone into them, having wanted to check the boat anyway, because one never knows with this girl: she might have left without the oars, which is what he tells himself on the path between the two walls of reeds; but at the same time he doesn’t believe it, and, in fact, both boats are there. The Juliette is there, freshly painted, with its green exterior and its yellow interior; the boat is waiting calmly for someone to come, at the end of its chain, and no one has come, and no one is coming. Oh, there is no one and everything looks wet, dark, in the air; it’s dark on the cliff where Rouge looks for a moment, and where there is no one between the thorny bushes, the little oak trees, the tufts of soapwort with their purple flowers and high stalks; no one higher up either on the moss-fringed border, in this trimming of moss we see hanging between two leaning tree trunks whose branches reach into the sky…

And it’s much later, as he was heading back, but he didn’t guess at first that it was her.

He saw Bolomey, he saw only that someone was with Bolomey.

Bolomey goes forward to meet Rouge; the girl, she waits further away in the jacket that is too big for her with its metal buttons with those visible boars’ heads.

She was waiting, Rouge hadn’t recognized her; then we see Bolomey approach him; so suddenly Rouge raises his head.

We hear him say to Bolomey, “How many of these shotguns do you have?”

He had looked at the ground for a long time, then quickly raised his head; he asks the question.

He starts again, “You’ll have to lend me one. We might need it.”