15

In point of fact, there was a whole campful of Portuguese loggers less than fifty meters from Gerfaut when he stopped and fell asleep. Had he taken but a few more steps he would perhaps have come upon them; he might equally well have passed them by in the night without ever seeing them.

The particular Portuguese logger who stumbled upon Gerfaut had not gone very far at all from the camp, having stepped away to piss or something of that order. The man was tall and robust, dark in complexion but clean shaven, with prominent yellow teeth. He wore dark gray herringbone trousers and a cheap Jacquard pullover that was too small for him and patched at the elbows; it had once been white with a red motif, but repeated washing had turned the whole thing a filthy pink color. A floppy black beret completed the picture. The Portuguese came over and contemplated Gerfaut, who at that moment opened his eyes and returned the man’s stare.

“Good morneen,” said the Portuguese in badly mangled French. He licked his lips and smiled.

Gerfaut responded as best he could to the salutation and tried to get up, but he fell back on the ground. He felt extremely weak, ill, and tired.

“Thirsty,” he mumbled.

“Oh, yes,” said the Portuguese. “Slip all night here, yes?” (The man pointed to the ground.) “Very cull.”

“What?”

“Cull! Very cull! No hot,” the man explained to Gerfaut, who seemed very rattled. “You want vino, yes?”

“Vino, sí,” replied Gerfaut, nodding vigorously. “Habla español?” The logger’s response was vague. “Yo perdido. Muy malo. Cold.”

“Yes, cull,” went the man.

“Achoo!” said Gerfaut, and to stress the point he made a gesture indicating that he was coming down with bronchitis (which is easier than might be supposed).

The Portuguese helped Gerfaut to his feet and led him to the campsite. Along the way, still convinced that his interlocutor understood Spanish, Gerfaut kept offering useless interjections such as “Qué mala suerte!” and “Qué barbaridad!” while pointing to his swollen foot or his blood-scabbed forehead.

There were eight loggers, encamped beneath a canvas sheet held up by stakes. Their blankets were filthy, and they slept on bundled branches and leaves. They had stale bread, a little Algerian wine, cheese, bad coffee, big sacks of dried peas and beans, and three magazines filled with obscene photographs. Their professional equipment consisted of axes and saws and two Homelite chain saws. Their presence in France was illegal, they had no kind of social security, and they earned only slightly more than half the minimum wage for some sixty to seventy hours of work per week. They gave Gerfaut bread and pea soup, and two doses of powdered aspirin dissolved in wine. They didn’t know what to do with him. As he was shivering and sweating terribly, they rolled him up in a couple of smelly blankets.

“Someone will be coming,” the logger with the best French told Gerfaut.

Then the men picked up their axes, their handsaws, and their Homelites and disappeared among the trees. The morning light was rather splendid, for those who like that sort of thing. Bronchitis or not, swollen foot or not, Gerfaut would likely have been physically able to resume his journey to the valley bottom, and he considered the possibility after the loggers had been gone for over two hours. But his moral fiber had weakened momentarily—ever since he had been found, ever since he had been taken care of.

He waited for the lunch hour, listening hard for the distant sound of the chain saws, but was unable to decide whether this was what he could hear or whether it was merely the wind in the branches. He dragged himself across the ground and picked up the girlie magazines. The text was in English and very poor, not just from the literary point of view but even in terms of sexual fantasy. As for the pictures, they were of corpulent women with vulgar, even brutal features. Gerfaut’s taste was more sophisticated, inclining him more toward scrawny women with high cheekbones. Inasmuch, that is, as his taste could be said to incline him toward anything at all. He turned to the readers’ letters. A single great debate informed the magazine’s columns: big breasts versus big asses. To Gerfaut this seemed like a false problem. He was bored silly.

About ten-thirty, he had tossed the magazines away and was feeling infinitely wretched and ill, indeed almost at death’s door, when one of the Portuguese loggers reappeared, bringing with him an old man in a hat. Long white hair fell to the old man’s shoulders and over his brown wide-wale corduroy jacket. He greeted Gerfaut with a grunt and knelt down beside him. Throwing back the blankets in which Gerfaut was bundled, he rolled up his left pants leg and examined and palpated his bad foot.

“Do you speak French? Who are you?” Gerfaut’s questions drew no response. The old man went on manipulating Gerfaut’s foot with the fixed concentration of a truffle pig.

“But tell me, at least,” cried Gerfaut feebly, overcome by anxiety and confusion, “I’m in France, aren’t I? These are the Alps, surely?”

The old man dug his fingers into Gerfaut’s inflamed flesh and exerted a vigorous twisting pressure. Gerfaut screamed. Tears burst through his tightly closed eyelids and streaked his grubby bearded jowl. He ground his bared teeth. He raised his elbows from the ground and tried to touch his ankle, but the old man thrust him away and Gerfaut fell flat on his back. From his jacket pocket the old man produced a Nescafé can, which he opened. It held a viscous yellow paste that looked to Gerfaut like axle grease. The man took a generous handful of the stuff and smeared it over Gerfaut’s instep, which he then massaged energetically.

“Yes, of course you’re in the Alps. Of course you’re in France. What’s the matter with you? You’re in La Vanoise, that’s where you are.”

“You’re a bonesetter?”

“I don’t care for that word. I’m a military nurse. So what happened to you? You’re a tourist, huh? Shouldn’t be running up hill and down dale with a foot in this condition.” He applied a square of gauze to Gerfaut’s instep and began winding a stretch bandage around his foot.

“I fell from a train.”

“I’ve set the bones straight,” said the old man. “I am Corporal Raguse. What train? What is your name?”

“Georges,” answered Gerfaut. “Georges Sorel,” he added hastily. “I fell from a freight train the other night. I’m a vagabond. Do you understand? I’m on the railroad. Not a railroad worker—I travel on the railroad. I’m a tramp.” Gerfaut was out of breath by the time he had said all this.

Corporal Raguse stood up wiping his hands on a purple-check handkerchief. He started putting everything he had taken out back in his pockets: the can of ointment and the containers for the gauze dressings and crepe bandages—flat, oblong tin boxes, not a little rusty, with hinged lids.

“You shouldn’t be moved at all before tomorrow. These Portuguese will take care of you. They are good people. Tomorrow morning I’ll come for you with a mule.”

“Another night here? But I am ill,” protested Gerfaut.

“Don’t argue. Drink some wine.”

“I have no money.”

“I don’t do this for money,” said Raguse. “I do this to help my fellow man.”