The festivities commence with the lighting of the bonfire, and will conclude near midnight with fireworks.
The entire village is there, along with some invited families from nearby towns. It is the biggest event of the year.
All the gas lamps in the square have been turned up high and people radiate out from the focal point of the stage. Groups of families and friends have spread blankets on the grass, or sit on stools or upturned pails.
The stage is a low wooden platform, half a meter off the ground, with strong posts at each corner. It is erected each year on the river side of the square, in front of a large stone building, next to the stable that is the village market hall.
At the front and rear of the hall are large barn-style doors. The doors that face the square are open wide, and a heavy, dark curtain is draped across the entrance, so that the interior of the building becomes a kind of backstage area. Lamps hang from wooden posts at each corner of the stage, and from ropes strung between the posts. The wicks are turned up, and the stage is brightly lit.
Now fifteen, Willem is no longer required to sit with his family and instead sits with Jean and François in a group of other young men from the village, near to, but separate from, a group of girls of similar age that includes the Delvaux sisters, Angélique and Cosette, and François’s sister, Émilie.
On a low wooden bench nearby, the old blind woodcutter, Monsieur Antonescu, sits alone, guzzling happily from a bottle of plum brandy. He hums to himself, tunelessly, although Willem is sure that in the old man’s head the melodies are vibrant and joyful.
At seven, just after the setting of the sun, the mayor strikes a flint to light a tallow torch, then hands the flaming brand to the oldest resident of the village, Madame Gertruda. She has had this honor for five years, since the previous oldest resident, Madame Monami, passed over.
Madame Gertruda walks steadily toward the bonfire: a pile of wood and scrub in the center of the village square. After closing her eyes in prayer for a brief moment, perhaps thanking God for another year (or maybe cursing him for it, depending on her mood), she tosses the torch onto the pyre and steps back quickly as the dry brush, some of it dripped with pig fat, whispers, then howls into flame.
Within minutes there is a lively fire leaping in the square, putting out heat and light to counter the cooling air and slowly fading glow of the sky.
There is applause from the audience, and Madame Gertruda turns and curtsies happily.
Today, apparently, is a good day.
The feast is waiting on long tables around the edges of the square. Wooden plates are handed out by the children, who have to wait for the adults to fill theirs before helping themselves.
Willem, in his first year as an adult, is handed his plate by Cosette, and thinks as he takes it that she will be prettier than her sister when she is fully grown. She is nearly an adult already, at fourteen years. She has long, golden-brown hair just a little darker than her sister’s. A narrow face but wide, straight teeth. A lazy eye adds to a kind of asymmetrical lopsided beauty. Unlike some girls in the village whose aspirations mainly revolve around finding a suitable husband, Cosette talks of being a writer and of living in Paris or Salzburg, two cities that hold some special romantic appeal for her. He smiles at her, but she ignores him and saves the white perfection of her teeth for Jean, next in line.
For a moment there is a quickening of his pulse with anger, with jealousy. But it fades quickly. Willem shrugs as he moves on. He should not be offended. This is the way of things. But that brief pain? What was that? Was that like the feeling his father had for his mother? She often spoke of love, but that is something alien to Willem.
Father Ambroise—François’s father—raises his hands for silence when all have overflowing plates on their laps. One of those hands is half gone, shot away in the same war injury that had nearly claimed his life, over a decade ago. All that is left are the thumb and forefinger, all-important as without them he could not have been ordained. A one-handed priest cannot perform communion.
He offers a prayer for the coming season, blesses the food and the villagers, and wisely keeps it short, knowing that after a day of fasting, the people will be impatient for their plates.
After the prayer, Willem sees Cosette helping Monsieur Antonescu back to his seat. She holds his arm to guide him and carries his plate with her other hand. Once he is settled she hands him the plate and Monsieur Antonescu nods briefly in thanks. Only then does Cosette return to the tables to fill her own plate.
François eats just a small amount, then sets his plate aside. A moment later his pipe is in his hand and he tamps tobacco into it while he watches the others eat. He rises and finds a half-burned switch that has jumped from the bonfire. He blows on the end till it glows, then uses it to light his pipe.
As he returns to his seat beside Willem, a log collapses somewhere in the midst of the bonfire, sending up a shower of sparks, spitting at the stars.
The wine flows freely. Most of the other Flemings in the village prefer beer but Willem has never developed a taste for it, preferring the crisp tartness of the grape to the cloudy malt of the hop.
He is sparing with his wine, sipping slowly, not wanting to haze his mind before his act. Jean drinks freely, but it seems to have no effect on him. He has been drinking wine since he was four, and claims to be immune to its powers.
François also seems to have a mug constantly refilled and is happy, although already his words sound slow and blurred. In most ways he appears to have recovered fully from the accident. He smokes his pipe and drinks with them, wiping rivulets of red from his chin with the back of his sleeve.
The first sour note of the fête occurs during the feast.
“See the wild animal,” Jean says, nudging Willem with his knee.
Willem follows Jean’s eyes to where Héloïse sits on the ground, near a group of girls but not part of them. He has never seen her at the fête before, and he wonders how Madame Gertruda has convinced her to attend. Héloïse eats by bringing the plate to her mouth, and wolfing at the food like a dog from a bowl. The girls around her are staring, or laughing behind their hands.
Cosette laughs also, but her eyes do not share the humor.
Cosette and Héloïse were best friends before that day in the forest: the day of the firebird. Before Héloïse disappeared for six years, and returned as a wild animal.
There is a sudden clatter and Jean’s plate goes flying across the ground, scattering the remains of his dinner in the grass.
“You think you are better than her, cousin?” François says. “You can eat from the ground, then we will see who is the animal.”
Jean begins to rise, fists clenched, but Willem puts a hand on his arm and holds it there until Jean slowly subsides into his seat.
“He does not speak as himself,” Willem murmurs. “And she tended him for many days.”
Around them all eyes are on the two cousins. Jean nods his head and places a hand on his cousin’s shoulder.
“Forgive me, François,” he says. “I was not thinking.”
It is one of the few times that Willem has heard him call his cousin by his first name.
“Ffft.” François looks away.
Jean collects his plate and food from the grass and carries on eating as if the incident hadn’t occurred. Food is never wasted in Gaillemarde. Not even during the feast.
* * *
The entertainment begins during the meal. The mayor is master of ceremonies, introducing the acts and encouraging applause before and after.
The first act is musical. The Poulencs are a large farming family that owns three of the prized river cottages, and a huge barley plantation south of the village. Most of them are talented musicians and they play every year. For this festival they offer two sisters and a brother, playing fiddle, bass, and cello. They play a sedate piece by the Austrian composer Mozart. Dinner music.
They are followed by a choir from the church, led by François’s mother: Madame Agathe Lejeune. She is a thin, nervous woman with deep, anxious eyes. They sing a lively hymn.
After the choir comes a succession of other acts, mostly singing or dancing, although there is one short theatrical sketch from a small group that includes Angélique and Cosette Delvaux. It is a frenetic pantomime and they play it well, to many laughs. Cosette plays Pierrot, the sad French clown, and when she returns, flushed and giggling with the rush of applause, she sits even closer to the group of boys.
She has shown real talent, Willem thinks, and if she does not become a writer, she has a possible future in the theater. He congratulates her on her performance and she accepts with a brief nod but saves her attention for Jean.
Willem places his plate on the ground and stands as Jean begins regaling Cosette with stories about their hunt for the firebird, except the way he tells it, the cliff is surely a hundred meters high, and he and François actually flew like birds before diving into the rock pool.
Willem glances back as he leaves and thinks from the quiet smile on Cosette’s face that she is not as impressed as Jean clearly thinks she should be.
Willem finds Monsieur Lejeune seated with his wife and some other families.
“Now?” Monsieur Lejeune asks.
“Soon,” Willem replies. “I just wanted to check that you had brought … it.”
“I have the essentials,” Monsieur Lejeune replies, tapping the side of his coat.
Willem returns to his seat and waits, watching Cosette as she laughs and eats and sips delicately at her wine with pursed, moist lips.
He wills her to notice him, but when her eyes do fall on him it is only as they sweep past to Jean, François, or to look at someone else in the crowd. It is as if Willem exists on a different plane. There but not there. She sees him, but does not see him.
He is the boy who brings the bread, nothing more.
This is what decides him, in the end. Not the decree of his mother. Not the call of his destiny. Not the desire to follow in the footsteps of his father.
Just the eyes (one of them lazy) of a pretty, fourteen-year-old girl that look through him without seeing him.
It is nearly ten when the mayor nods at Willem.
Willem taps Jean on the shoulder, interrupting a long and intense conversation with Cosette and François’s sister, Émilie.
Jean excuses himself and follows Willem into the market hall.
On a small table is a large burlap sack full of dirt. Jean hoists the sack, Willem lifts the table, and they move to the rear of the stage. A writing desk covered with a black cloth holds an assortment of other equipment for his act.
They wait patiently behind the rear stage curtain for the penultimate act, a young girl who plays a beautiful melody on a set of pipes made from saur bones, then for Monsieur Claude to announce Willem.
The crowd is still applauding the girl when he takes the stage carrying the table. They hush, expectantly.
He sets the table at the side of the stage and Jean places the sack of dirt on it. They both take an end of the writing desk and place it at the front of the stage, then Jean retires through the stage curtain.
Moths and other small insects hurl themselves at the lanterns, and fireflies dart in short bursts above the audience as Willem steps to the center of the stage.
The fluttering of the moths is echoed in his stomach, but he swallows a couple of times and finds his voice.
He introduces himself with a few simple coin tricks, then produces some scarves from the palms of his hands. All to no more than a little polite applause. Such trickery is common among street performers in the cities.
He performs his best card trick on a volunteer from the audience. He hopes that Cosette might raise her hand, but she does not, and in the end he performs the trick on the village tailor. There are a few oohs and aahs when the card is produced, but this still is small magic. Safe magic, that his mother would approve of. What happens next is not.
“Monsieur Claude,” Willem calls out, “please come to the stage.”
With an expression of surprise that is almost convincing, the mayor rises, kisses his wife gallantly on the hand, and steps forward to the stage.
After just the briefest of pauses, to reconsider what he is doing, Willem motions Monsieur Lejeune to come forward also.
“And for my finale,” Willem announces, as Monsieur Lejeune makes his way through the crowd, “an illusion such as has never been seen before in Gaillemarde.” He lays it on thick, trying to build up the tension, sensing that the crowd is entertained, but not enthralled. “I will survive a ball fired from a pistol.”
Now he has their attention, although Monsieur Lejeune is frowning at him. Willem gives him a surreptitious nod to let him know everything will be all right.
Monsieur Lejeune reaches the stage and draws his pistol from a leather holster at his side.
“We will need a pistol ball,” Willem says, and a little reluctantly, Monsieur Lejeune produces a paper cartridge from his leather pouch. He tears open an end and removes the lead ball. Willem takes it using two fingers and hands it to Monsieur Claude.
“Monsieur le Maire, please scratch a symbol onto this ball,” Willem says. “Something that I would not know, nor could have predicted.”
He hands Monsieur Claude a horseshoe nail.
After a moment’s thought, Monsieur Claude scratches something into the side of the ball and hands it back.
“Monsieur Lejeune, now please load the pistol,” Willem says.
The audience shifts and ripples like a windswept lake as people strain for a better view.
Monsieur Lejeune expertly primes the pistol, then pours the rest of the powder into the barrel.
“The wadding please,” Willem says.
Monsieur Lejeune hands him the paper, and after showing the pistol ball to the audience one more time, making sure they can see the mayor’s symbol, Willem drops it into the small paper cartridge and twists the end shut before handing it back to Monsieur Lejeune, who inserts it into the barrel and rams it home.
“Monsieur, please step to the right of the stage,” Willem says, “and take aim at this sack of dirt.”
Monsieur Lejeune does as requested. The audience goes completely silent.
“I will place myself in between the pistol and the sack of dirt,” Willem announces, and proceeds to do so, standing just in front of the table. “When the pistol is fired, the pistol ball will pass right through my body, doing no harm. It will hit the sack, and when we dig out the ball, it will bear the very marking that our beloved mayor scratched into it not a moment or two ago.”
The mayor bows his head graciously at the small flattery, and waves to the crowd as though he, not Willem, is the center of attention.
Monsieur Lejeune has remained in position, aiming his pistol at the sack, even though Willem now stands in the way.
He seems uncertain, and as Willem spreads his arms wide and closes his eyes, a voice comes from the crowd.
“Do not do this.” It is Father Ambroise. “The boy does not know what he is doing.”
“I know exactly what I am doing,” Willem says, his eyes still tightly shut.
If Monsieur Lejeune does not pull the trigger, then there will be no final trick. No grand illusion to finish his act. The best he can hope for will be polite applause and quiet sympathy.
He opens his eyes and catches his mother’s face, near the front of the crowd. Unlike the others, which vary between wonder and apprehension, her face radiates anger.
“Pull the trigger, Monsieur,” Willem says, closing his eyes again.
Nothing happens, and he risks a quick look. The barrel of the pistol has lowered a little as Monsieur Lejeune wavers. It is now pointed between Willem’s legs.
“You aim at the wrong sack,” Willem calls out.
The audience roars with laughter.
Monsieur Lejeune laughs also and raises the pistol back to Willem’s chest.
“Do it!” a voice shouts out of the crowd.
“I command you not to do this,” Father Ambroise says. “In the name of—”
That, more than anything, seems to make up Monsieur Lejeune’s mind.
“No!” Father Ambroise shouts, but he is too late.
Willem imagines, rather than sees, the flash of the pistol and the spurt of white smoke, but he feels the impact on his chest and that is quickly followed by the rotten-egg smell of gunpowder wafting across the stage. From somewhere nearby, Pieter screams.
The crash of the pistol dies away into the still night air.
All eyes are on Willem, and his eyes hold shock and fear as he looks down at the spreading patch of red across the white of his smock.
He collapses to his knees, his hands clutched to his chest.
Around him the faces of the villagers echo the shock, creeping into horror. Only his mother’s face remains unchanged, etched with a look of quiet fury.
The pistol drops from Monsieur Lejeune’s hand, clattering onto the rough wooden floor of the stage. Willem coughs, once, twice, then spits something into his palm. He slowly raises his head and holds the object up to the crowd, who by now can see for themselves that it is a pistol ball.
Willem stands up and hands Monsieur Lejeune the ball. “Please show this to the mayor,” he says.
Monsieur Claude has remained at the edge of the stage, and Monsieur Lejeune crosses back to him and hands him the lead ball.
“Does it bear your mark?” Willem asks.
Monsieur Claude nods and begins to laugh, a tight, high-pitched sound. “It is my mark, exactly as I scratched into it not a moment or two ago.”
It is the simplest of tricks, as all great illusions are. The switch occurred as Willem dropped the ball into the wadding, palming the real pistol ball and replacing it with a ball of wax, filled with red dye. There is a box of the wax balls in one of his father’s chests.
Willem turns to the audience to acknowledge the applause, the adulation, but there is none, only quiet murmuring.
There is movement in the crowd, and it is Father Ambroise, wending his way through to the stage.
He climbs up and stands next to Willem, turning to face the audience and holding up his hands for silence.
“This is not magic,” Father Ambroise declares. “This is a conjuring trick that went wrong. Today you have borne witness to a miracle from God, who has saved this boy from his own foolish death.”
“No—” Willem begins, but Father Ambroise is joined on the stage by his son.
“I prayed for Willem, and God listened to my prayer,” François says.
Willem opens his mouth to protest, but closes it again, realizing the blunder he has made.
He cannot prove it is a trick without revealing how he did it. And he cannot argue with François and Father Ambroise without going against God.
He looks around at the audience, many of them now crossing themselves, or with their eyes closed in prayer.
He has pulled off a grand illusion, one that would have made his father proud.
But God is getting all the credit.