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“Oh, Juliette, what were you thinking? You didn’t want to stay with us? Is there maybe something in our way of life that doesn’t suit you?”

He had sat her down in front of the house on the bench, it also freshly repainted with the same color they had used on the shed.

It was that same evening, after sunset, but it was still pink on the wet stones along the shoreline and on the dry stones, too: it was pink along the shore with two different pinks.

“You’re in no danger here, I promise you that here you’ll be well protected…”

He went into the kitchen, he came back with the rifle that Bolomey had lent him.

She looks at the rifle without saying a word; so he sets it on the ground, the butt to the ground against the wall.

“But if it’s you that wanted to leave…”

Then he continues, “It’s ready to be used, it’s loaded with shells; that isn’t too much for these savages…”

And then coming back to his first idea, “We would have really liked you to be happy; we would have really liked it… Tell me, Miss Juliette, Juliette….yes, Décosterd and me, both of us. Didn’t we do what we could? Tell me, are you in need of anything?”

She shook her head; very slowly and twice, she shook her head.

“So?”

He stopped in front of her. He went out for a moment into the pink light, then came back and stood before her; he leaned toward her a little: “So?”

He changes his tone: “When everything was falling into place so well, you know. Everything was getting settled so easily, despite Milliquet; but I’ll deal with him…”

She shakes her head again.

“You know they’re all spying on you, there are two or three of them spying on you.”

“Well!” he says, “That’s what men are about! Not worth much – meanness, jealousy, envy. And plenty of greed… this Savoyard…”

Now he was throwing his sentences out haphazardly, he wasn’t finishing them.

“You must know that he won’t let you go so easily… they’re watching in the woods…they can see everything from up there…”

He motioned through the pink light toward the overhang of the cliff; he had to raise his arm: “From up there… if they feel like it, huh! From up there… And still, this Savoyard, if we wanted to, it wouldn’t be difficult to get rid of him, we could lodge a complaint…”

She shakes her head for the third time.

“Oh, I know!” he says without understanding, “we won’t lodge a complaint. But for everything else…it’s just that you don’t know it yet: Milliquet wants to take you back… everyone is against us.”

He thought she would be surprised; she didn’t seem surprised, at least as much as we can see in the remaining light in which a gray cinder has come to place itself over the lovely pink coals that have now gone out, the cinder hides the coals and all is dark around us. We see Juliette simply raise her head, look at him, and say nothing.

“Yes,” Rouge said, “It’s like that… And, Milliquet, it’s only because he’s jealous, but his jealousy has got hold of him. And he won’t dare come here now that he knows what would be waiting for him…” He shows the rifle. “He knows very well that we have all that we need to welcome him, but this business isn’t yet resolved. And the Savoyard, that’s just one problem. And Milliquet, that makes another, that makes two… But that’s not all. Because there are still others…”

He makes a circle with his arm, including the entire shoreline in front of him: “All these boys, as far as I know… all those that want to, who would like to, big Alexis, little Busset, even that old drunk Chauvy…”

He was growing angry.

“Yes, the whole lot of them, as far as I know, and where does it come from? But they are everywhere and they’re spying on you. And so, if you say that you’re fine here…”

She makes a sign that means yes.

“So you say you’ve got nothing to complain about here… from us. Not from Décosterd and not from me…”

She makes a sign that means no.

“So why did you run off? Juliette, my little Juliette. And why did you want to leave me… leave us?”

But she shakes her head again; she interrupts him. She said something to him.

He listens to her speaking, speaking with her funny hoarse accent: he listens to her, he shouts out, “Oh, my God, you had to say! So, it’s because of the little hunchback? It was him you were going to look for?”

She is talking now, talking a lot. She gets mixed up in her sentences, she laughs; she confuses them, she straightens them out; she can’t find the words; she invents them; she laughs again, and then he says,

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

He laughs, too.

“But, listen, why didn’t you say something? I would have gone and gotten him for you. He’s alright with me; he doesn’t count, he isn’t dangerous… I understand…the little hunchback, my goodness! It’s the music, I understand…Oh, Juliette, you really frightened me… I’m old, I was thinking you’d had enough of me. So it’s the Italian… he’s Italian, right? It’s this Italian you want? Yes, the hunchback, the one who works for Rossi. I understand fine, it’s his music. So, nothing easier than that….”

She was speaking, he was speaking:

“I’ll go and get him for you tomorrow… I will get him as often as you’d like. We’ll invite him to come whenever he likes. It’s true he doesn’t know anyone either, the poor boy, and anyway he isn’t handsome, that doesn’t bring people to him… But you’re missing his music? Oh, I understand that! I’m like you, I miss it, too. You see, Juliette, we are so much alike…”

He stops suddenly.

“When will you turn twenty?”

“Next year, in March.”

He counts on his fingers, “That’s in eight months, a little more than eight months…”

He had started to walk again up and down. “The problem is that while we wait, he’ll have the law on his side… Milliquet. But then you just get to choose. And if you’re thinking the same way, we could… I need to get some more information. Juliette, I’m sixty-two years old, I could be your grandfather. But we could remove the first half of the word, if you like, because there’s also a law for situations like this…”

She didn’t speak.

He was walking with his hands in his pockets, up and down, in front of the water, where a star had appeared and was slowly rising, then coming down, like when we’ve thrown out the fishing line and the cork stays up to float.

And he changed his voice again to say, “While we’re waiting, I forbid you to go far from the house. You understand, Juliette, I forbid you to go out alone.”

Was he able to see how suddenly she lets herself fall forward with the top of her body and the weight of her head? How could he not see it?

She had placed her hands together: she slides them between her knees.

“As for the hunchback,” Rouge started again, “It’s agreed; tomorrow, I’ll go get him for you.”

 

They were spraying copper sulfate for the third or the fourth time because there are these new methods. We repeat the treatment nowadays up to six or seven times; as soon as a rain shower hits, they were running back up to their tanks. Up means behind the village, once you’ve passed the fields and the orchards, then the road, then more fields; up where the rise to the mountain begins with its walls. There had been several big summer rain storms; at once the men had started working the sprayer again;—all these men in their blue coveralls, moving up and down, up and down, between the vines; in their coveralls, their trousers, their shirts, their shoes, their blue straw hats, and with their blue faces, blue hands, ears, napes and neck, and blue mustaches;—the girl, she went up toward them with her basket. She was going up to bring the ten o’clock to her father and her two brothers. This is little Emilie. She was wearing a pretty cloth dress, striped, she was wearing a straw hat with a silk ribbon, she had such lovely blonde hair: oh, what does one look for in life? She asks the trees if they have seen him. She goes beneath the cherry trees along a grassy path that is marked only by two ruts; My God, how lonely she is! She raises her eyes, she sees there is nothing, there is no one anywhere. No one but her little shadow just to her left and just in front of her in the grass. So she looks behind her where we can see the village falling away, seen from above, with its roofs; but they don’t count, these roofs. Nor do the apple trees, nor the walnut trees, nor the pear trees, nor all these fence posts, nor the line of the railway, nor the train station; and, as we walk up higher, we see the water growing wider and wider, and behind her the mountains, hovering in the hot air like balloons ready to take off. It’s set down beside you for a short moment, and we are set down next to it, for a short moment, and then that’s all. She continues on alone, with her shadow. She sees the vineyards where the three men should be waiting for her. The vineyards are behind a wall; we go in through an opening drilled through the wall and closed with a red-painted iron door; she sees the large lacy leaves whose lovely green is spotted as if it has rained a blue rain. And it has rained blue onto the ground, it has rained blue onto the stones, onto the vine stakes, what does that matter to us? She sees her father coming and her two brothers beneath their copper sprayer tanks and their great rush hats; they have mustaches like pieces of a wall that haven’t yet dried, they have chests like masonry work, they have trousers like cement tubes. They said, “So there you are,” they went to wash their hands. There is nothing. She rests her basket against the wall, she pulls back the white linen cover, she pulls out two bottles and puts them in the shadow, prepares the knives, the glass, then she waits for them to come back, because they eat without plates, just a quick bite. And it’s my father. And they come back. They went to wash their hands, they come back: it’s my father and my brothers, but they say nothing, because they have nothing to say; they haven’t said anything to her, and this is also because they are hungry. They’ve sat down beside one another on the wall but a certain distance apart. The three of them are there, along the wall. We see the lake between their heads. There is a big space between their heads for all the things which come, and the air is bothered with a fly and a white or yellow butterfly, or maybe it’s even a sail. What are we looking for? Because the men are here, but they’re eating because they are hungry. They use their knives to cut the bread, then cut their cheese. They bring the piece of cheese to their mouths with the blade and then their hands go back down, while their jaws are moving. Their jaws go up and down; the men themselves do not move, do not speak. Their heads are hung forward, their arms are hanging and their legs hanging. It’s as if they don’t exist. Oh, what is wrong? What is wrong? And what happens then when you can’t find anything anywhere to hold onto? When she sees the water between their shoulders, and that’s all: we see the water around their heads, and that’s all. Such distance! They are there, I am here, they are eating their bread and their cheese. She sees the water: such distance; she sees the air, she sees the trees: such distance, such distance! And over there, suddenly, in the bit of the wide fold made by the Bourdonnette beneath the cliff and the pine trees, a piece of shoreline appears; and surely he is there and he is there and I’m not there; Maurice is over there and I’m here, oh such distance! And of another kind. She lowers her head, she can’t look anymore, she no longer has the strength; the men have seen nothing. They don’t understand, these men who are my father and my brothers, because we cannot understand each other, because we are just set down next to one another, because we cannot communicate, because we are one, then one, then one; because there are them, there is him, there is me. And we all thought that he and I… I had everything because I had him… Everything slips away and she managed to hold back a sob, but the men are still eating and still drinking; they’ve noticed nothing, they’ve neither seen nor heard a thing. They pass the glass to each other, they smack their lips. They take their mustaches into their lips to wipe them off, they get up. And me, where am I supposed to go?

They pick up their copper spraying tanks, then go down to the cistern where they dip with the dipping ladle; she puts the bottles, the knives and the glass into the basket, where to go? And what are we looking for, what are we looking for?

She passes beneath the cherry trees again. Now her shadow is behind her and to the right. That is the only difference, nothing has changed; your shadow turns around you until you’re dead and that’s it.

She went into the village. People greet her, she answers; that’s all. We know nothing about nothing, nor about anyone, nor about oneself. And then suddenly she stops. Suddenly, the thing she sees is Rouge walking in front of her, then he is taken away into the little street: and there was enough curiosity left in her heart to make her follow him.

She saw him enter behind the sheds, there where the workshop of the little Italian cobbler could be found.

This was while they were working in the vineyards, which meant that Rouge hadn’t run into anyone or nearly anyone. No one but a few children on the shoreline, and one or two women in front of Perrin’s at the water, but they had their backs to him and were doing the laundry. He hadn’t seen Emilie. He went behind the sheds until he arrived at the cement-framed door above which was a sign reading: Cobbler, in black letters on a white background. The cobbler was an old Italian man and Rouge knew him, because he could be met often walking through the village with his white mustache and his long Roman-style cape with one of the panels thrown over his shoulder, lying in folds around his neck. His name was Rossi, and Rouge knew him well; only he’d been taken to the hospital two months earlier for a double fracture of the leg. The hunchback was just his assistant. He’d only arrived, actually, a short time before Rossi’s accident and so Rouge didn’t know anything about him and no one knew anything about him. He’d appeared one fine day at Milliquet’s with his accordion; we’d said, “He plays wonderfully well”; he’d come back and we’d said, “There aren’t many like him.” And after that, there was the scene with the Savoyard, and we hadn’t seen him again. Where did he come from? We didn’t know. And today Rouge is knocking on his door, but all he knew was that the other man was there, having seen him when passing by the window. We could still hear the sound of the hammer on the leather, then the sound stopped while someone yelled, “Come in!”

The other man was seated on a low stool, he couldn’t have been seated on a chair with a back, and his head was leaning forward and he couldn’t have held it straight or bring it backward. We see him turn his head toward you, with his lovely eyes that shone, then are extinguished; he raises his rounded hammer again over the brass nails. And Rouge moves forward a little, Rouge gets comfortable; he put his hands in his pockets, he says, “I haven’t come for shoes; those of us in my profession, well, we don’t wear them out so much. We wear out the skin on our feet, our own leather…”

He begins with jokes about the work bench and the tools that cover it: pieces of leather, pins, little pots of pine-pitch glue, cobbler knives, awls; he says something about every item he looks at: and then, “And so it isn’t the cobbler that I’m looking for, Mr….”

He searches for the name, he realizes he doesn’t know it.

“Because everyone agrees about it, I’m the first one to say so, that there aren’t two like you…And maybe you don’t know…”

He looks at the hunchback, who looked at him as well, but it was hard for him since Rouge had stayed standing.

“It’s after this mess with the Savoyard. Oh! you know, we were all sorry about it. But we’re hoping… I wasn’t there that night, but she… You must remember Juliette, Miss Juliette…”

The hunchback said nothing, and then now he gets up. It’s hard for him to get up because of the weight of his back pushing him forward.

He got up, he said nothing; he goes to the second door that opens to the next room, he disappears a moment, he comes back.

And then Rouge says, “Ah!...Oh, good, I see that it didn’t get too banged up, your instrument, but it’s also that you’re so good with it… It was hard to find leather, was it? And glue, if it can be glued…Oh, it works wonderfully well after all…Oh, it’s just as good as it was before, con-gratulations… Yes, she’s going to be so happy…”

Then he stopped because he couldn’t make himself be heard anymore.

“I haven’t told you everything yet, Mr. …”

He is obliged to stop speaking…

“She’s the one who sent me…”

The other man makes his fingers run quickly up and down the mother-of-pearl keys, then he presses both hands on the bellows for a chord.

“She’s been missing… yes, that, your music. She asks if you’d like to come. She misses it. In her country…”

He starts again, “Really though, it isn’t her country, her real country is this country; her name is Milliquet like her uncle and there isn’t a name more from here than that name… but okay she was born over there and was raised over there, and so over there they’re always playing music and dancing… And over there, according to what she says, they play a lot of guitar, but she says that there are a lot of people from your country working on the railroads in the mountains and they play the same instrument as you… It’s easy to sympathize with her…she hasn’t settled in yet…”

He was interrupted again. The music started again.

All these high little notes, then the low notes; and it was like disturbing a bee hive to steal the honey. Rouge was taken up inside it. It flew at him from all around, against and into his face. He could no longer hear what he was saying. He has to wait a moment. Then he can hear himself saying:

“It’s just like the sails; did you know she makes fun of ours because they’re made from cloth? Over there, they have woven sails, they’re made like pleated mats; they have raffia mats and they’re square. She makes fun of ours because they’re pointed and they’re white… it’s called Santiago over there. But it’s all worked out wonderfully well in the end, because there’s water over there too; so she knows how to row, she knows how to fish, she knows how to swim; and so I told myself that she would find all that here too; except for the music…”

A single little note held long, and then two or three more trotting above it like a mouse stepping across a ceiling, and then:

“But if you’d like to come… Because she…because I’m inviting you and it’s me giving the invitation of course. We’ll have a drink together… it would make her happy…”

The little notes continue on.

“You, you’re not the same… the same as the others. All the other men, these ruffians… the Savoyard, these boys…you, no, it isn’t the same thing,” Rouge says, while the little unwinding notes seemed to unroll themselves in time with the words he was saying, “I trust you… and I even want you to be careful, in case someone sees you coming to my house. It would be better if Décosterd came to pick you up… Do you want to come this evening? We’ll surprise Juliette. I told her that I would come to get you, but she doesn’t know yet that I’ve come… you would play a little tune for her at the house, a surprise…”

He was happy, he began to laugh:

“You’d like to, so it’s agreed… tonight. I’ll send Décosterd to get you.”

The other man raises his eyes once again, with difficulty, toward Rouge, his eyes shone and then went out; he gave only a nod and again the air exploded between the ceiling and the floorboards, and then fell in a thousand little fragments around you, like glass, like standing in a greenhouse and all the squares of glass fall to the ground;—in front of the work bench; in front of the little pots, the awls, the rounded hammers, the cobbler knives, the pieces of leather.

A nod of the head, to say yes, after which Rouge backed up a little; and the lovely bellows presses together, stretches apart, twists, untwists, finally folds into itself with little creases along one side, and is smooth and rounded on the other.

“Thanks very much,” Rouge was saying. “Until tonight, then… no, don’t get up.”

He didn’t get up. Rouge opens the door. Now the music was coming from the other side of the wall and from behind the windows; but it kept coming. He leaves, the music was following him. It followed him into the small street; only there did it come apart, unravel and wear down bit by bit in the air, fall into pieces behind him. All this time he is walking quickly beneath the sunshine; and it’s lovely out, these twigs of straw shining like golden watch chains in the dust. It’s lovely out, these shadows thrown by the edges of the roofs and they are only along the edges of the path; all is carefully drawn with a ruler. Nevertheless, at the corner he stepped into the one thrown by Milliquet’s terrace with its plane trees that finally have all their leaves, but it’s the least well drawn of all of them and it takes up too much space. And also, we don’t want to show Milliquet that we’ve put ourselves out for him. We’ll show him that we’re not afraid. Rouge cuts across the corner of the terrace. He passes just next to the iron gate and we can see the green tables between the bars, then we see Milliquet; and we see that this is a café whose sole customer today is its owner; if he fancies, he can always serve himself!

“Hi there,” Rouge yells, “are you on holiday?”

And then we hear the other man call him back, but Rouge walks on, happy to raise his arm as if to say, “another time,” which really means, “Today, I’ve got better things to do.”

Today, we have better things to do.

“Rouge, listen, I’ve got something to tell…”

“Sure, mate …”

“Something important to tell…”

“Okay, another time, mate …”

“Do you hear that, ladies?” he said to the women with their washing as he passed by.

They are on their knees leaning into their washtubs, they turned their heads. “You heard that, ladies, he’s asking for me, but have a great day, ladies…”

“And then,” he also said, “it’s too beautiful today to waste any of it…”

“See you later, ladies.”

They rub against the washboard with a square piece of Marseille soap that is too big for their hands, but they end up wearing down the corners and it gets smaller; they froth up white suds; out on the blue water with the swans, we see these other white spots bobbing. Rouge walks on.

And now he’s at home but he didn’t find her because she was in her room, but so much the better. At noon when she finally came out to eat, she said nothing, but so much the better. She doesn’t speak, so much the better. It was like she was elsewhere again, so much the better; she seems sad, so much the better…

Now we know why, he is thinking, and we’ll surprise her.

And a little later, he said to Décosterd, “Listen, Décosterd, go to the Railway Café and ask them for two bottles of Aigle†… No, get six…go ahead and get a half dozen. There’s room in the bag. Get a half dozen bottles of Aigle 23, because it’s good stuff. You remember we drank a bottle with Perrin last year, when Perrin lost his bet… and then listen, Décosterd, once you’ve got the bottles, take the back roads… you know where Rossi’s workshop is? Good! Just go in there, the little hunchback will be there; he’s going to come play some music for us… I told him you would come get him, because it’s better he doesn’t come alone… bring him with the bottles and don’t be bothered about passing in front of Milliquet’s once it’s on your way… and try to arrange things to let one of the bottle necks show; that’ll make him even angrier. A person shouldn’t hold back if we’re of the mind to throw a party…”

“You understand,” he says. “She was getting bored; it’s natural, we were living like old men here…”

“Hey,” he says, “we’re not so old as all that, we’re not actually old men, finished old men, old and washed up… are we, Décosterd?”

This was while they were finishing to hang up the nets as the sun set, behind the shed; Décosterd went to wash his hands with soap.

He goes to the edge of the shore and leans over in the place where the stones give way to a narrow margin of sand, onto which the little waves always play, climbing up and falling back, like little girls on a hillside.

A wave comes. Décosterd takes it in his hands.

The soap doesn’t foam easily, and not right away because the water in the lake is very soft water: it doesn’t have a bite.

It takes a while to make suds, it takes time before we can cover our hands with white gloves.

So Décosterd was able to let a few waves come and go; then comes one he takes up again in his hands to rinse them.

He went to get the bag; Rouge gave him a bill to pay for the wine.

So then Rouge waits. He goes to and fro to the door. He went and then came back a minute. Suddenly, he must have thought of something. He goes back inside the house, like he was in a hurry; but he was in a hurry. What he had to do, actually, was go hunting for his suit at the back of his closet, it had been a long time since he’d worn it; a blue lambswool suit. Luckily, there was no need to light the gas lamp, and he could see well enough to knot his tie, his fat fingers rushing against the underside of the stiff fabric and amidst the confusion of these silk lacings, standing in front of the little aluminum framed mirror hung from a hook on the window, in the messiness of your belongings, in the dust, in the dirt, because his room had remained as it was and we hadn’t worked on it during the renovations.

All that mattered for the moment was that he was ready in time. He was ready in time. He was even early enough to go and meet those who were coming when they came. It was starting to get dark because the sky was covered with clouds; we could just see the height difference between the two men. We could also just see the instrument in its waxed cloth case making a hump, another hump on the hunchback’s hip. Rouge waves to tell the two men to wait. We were just starting to see a little pale white star in a strip of green sky, between two clouds, to the west. “Oh good,” Rouge says as he walks up, “I can see we can count on you…” And to the hunchback,“You’re just fine, you, you’re a real…  Thank you. Only, I wanted to tell you… hey, Décosterd, you’ve got the wine?”

And as Décosterd had the wine, all was fine. “Listen,” Rouge says to Décosterd, “Hold onto the bottles for a minute. We don’t want her to hear us walk. We’ll keep back, the two of us, by the nets… and you (he was no longer talking to Décosterd), you go quietly up to the house, you go and sit down on the bench. Don’t start playing until you’re ready, but then give it your all…”

We did as Rouge said. She must not have heard the hunchback as he went along so carefully; as for us, she couldn’t hear us. We see the hunchback who goes to sit near the bright square of light that the lamp made through the open door onto the stones. He was half-shadowed, half-lit. He is a little bit of night in the half-night. We see him, ever so carefully and already seated, bring the accordion up and set it crossways on his knees. He was like a mother undressing her child, so careful was he with his fingers along the buttons of the case. And he doesn’t start right away, because we see him first raise his head like he was thinking; and after a moment he raced his fingers across the keys into the empty air…

It goes without saying: he had a bit of genius. (Décosterd was something of a connoisseur.) These high notes, these low notes, the melody, the chord, all of this jumped at once like a shot from a cannon. And then he had rhythm, something you don’t see every day. And him, well, just look at him! Little nothing arms, skeletal hands, a body… a body, you well know, a body best not mentioned; none of this stopped him from having the power to make the world dance. He would bring the waves over to you from the other side of the lake, I tell you, and they wouldn’t come when they wanted or how they wanted, but only when and how he wanted. He began with a little bit of introduction in triple time and a little dance tune; but Rouge had told him to try to play something she might know, a tune from over there, from her country; so now he is playing a song. And then…

Neither Décosterd nor Rouge had moved. They saw everything from where they were standing. First we saw this shadow come inside the frame of the window, and it moved across the white curtains; it grew larger, became smaller. There, too, was some preparation, because two hands were now raised, moving to the face and into the hair; then everything deformed and the whole shadow lost its shape, lengthening and slimming, while both men remained where they were. The accordion was now playing with scales, runs of clear little notes slipping through one’s fingers like polishing a necklace and letting it hang in the air to highlight its beauty. Rouge and Décosterd had not moved from their spot; the girl had not yet appeared, but we were waiting for her. This is when Rouge said, “And the bottles?” They were still on Décosterd’s back. Décosterd hadn’t even thought to take off his bag. “My God!” Rouge said. “We’ve got to put them quickly to chill.” He takes the bag Décosterd holds out, he goes down to the water, he comes back: “And you, go get the glasses. Hurry!” And he leans down, laying the bottles into the sand. And there was nothing but the gentle little waves that come with a soft quiet night like tonight; Rouge leaned over and squatted then, laying the bottles one beside the other. Décosterd had just gone into the kitchen. The hunchback on the bench hadn’t even raised his head, quite the opposite, we see him put his head down and press his cheek against the flat of the instrument,—and the music swings again for a moment, then there is a break, then the swing starts again on a shorter, stronger rhythm; and Décosterd was just taking the glasses from the cupboard…

She was so light that we hadn’t heard her open her door, we hadn’t heard her come out. Her feet seemed to touch the ground without any weight. There was only the rustle of her skirt like when a lovely butterfly whispers against you with its wing, nothing but this rustle of fabric making Décosterd turn around; so he doesn’t move, his glass in his hand. At this same moment, Rouge stands up; his arms hang down along his body, while the light coming through the open door is upon him, on his lovely navy blue wool suit, his white collared shirt, his tie, his fat mustache.

It’s that she was more brilliant than ever before, it’s that we hardly recognized her anymore.

Someone had to… but how to say it? Someone had to go to her where she was standing up by the door; and, before that, there were several things: up where she is standing, there is only one. Before, things came one by one to you, they were separate from each other, we could only hold onto to one thing at a time,—now, all these things are together and it’s like they are one. But how to make oneself understood, and is this what needs to be said? Is this what they’re all thinking in their heads, behind the bill of their caps, beneath their skulls? Alas! Fused forever, beneath Décosterd’s close-cut hair and Rouge’s nearly white and sparse head? We saw they hadn’t made the slightest movement, not one nor the other. Décosterd still had his glass in his hand. We see Rouge standing with his hanging arms, and behind him, vaguely, the black spots of the bottles on the gray sand…

The lovely leather bellows suddenly stops pressing the folds together between the skinny little wrists which press it and hold it; she, her skirt turns once or twice more around her legs, then she throws off the weight of her hair, her head tipped all the way back.

Nothing moves anymore: we heard the silence come forth like the end of the world on its way. The end of our movement was like the end of all life. Nothing else happened, a great emptiness opened up and we fell inside it; we are still falling in it, we fall for a long time; then we had to come back to the other life, our former life.

Rouge was thinking he would clap, he didn’t clap.

He stepped forward a little, he walks forward clumsily, and then he says, “So, now you see,” he says, “Now, you see it’s all right.” The girl, she didn’t know what to do; the girl, she was already no longer herself; she was out of breath, breathing hard, with difficulty; Décosterd places the glass he was holding in his hand onto the table.

He makes a light noise as he sets it on the table, and so Rouge, as if waking up, says, “Décosterd, pull the table to the side, that’ll make some room… Give me a hand. We’ll push it against the door to my room…”

The two men pulled the table to the side.

Then Rouge, “And now, the bottles, quick!” and he comes back with a bottle under each arm.

It’s the other life that begins; we don’t have the same freedom here.

He uncorks the bottles. He doesn’t dare look at her. She was leaning up against the wall, she was waiting. She is still smiling with her shiny teeth. He doesn’t dare look at those teeth. He keeps himself busy, he makes signs, he uncorks the two bottles, he says to Décosterd, “You’ve got all four glasses? It’s just we don’t have a lot of glasses…” Then he yells, “Hey, Mr. Urbain, won’t you join in? We’re waiting for you… won’t you come drink with us?”

He filled the glasses with this gold, gold that is a little green, but lovely and limpid: at least we have this in our poor little life.

He raises his glass, full to the brim.

“To your health, Miss Juliette. Health and prosperity.”

She raised her arm as well; he turns his eyes away.

Nonetheless it’s a lovely little wine, it’s cool, it’s clear, it’s fresh with taste, it’s warm, they are speaking; but he doesn’t dare speak anymore, he doesn’t dare speak further, having now drunk to the health of the hunchback who came in.

Décosterd was watching between two swallows of wine that made his thin neck tip back, moldy with whiskers, on which his Adam’s apple was like a sharp stone;—between two swallows, he was watching this handsome wool vest, the white shirt, the silk tie…

 

Only, that same night, she was awakened by the sound of the front door opening; she hears someone walking with muffled steps across the stones.

As a precaution, she didn’t light the lamp in the beautiful new room where she is, but there was a little moonshine that came across to her bed. There was a very pale moon floating between two strips of clouds, like between the two sides of a strait where snow has fallen. Because of the moon it was light enough for her to see the front of the house clearly. All she had to do was push back the curtain. It was Rouge; he was barefoot, hatless. He’d only taken enough time to put a pair of trousers over his mostly open shirt. He was holding the rifle he’d borrowed from Bolomey. Surely, he’d heard some noise; the moon shone along the length of the polished steel gun barrels.

He went first toward the village, he comes back, he passes in front of the window; then he must have gone farther away toward the reeds and the cliff because she no longer hears anything.