THE GRANDE BRIÈRE

To Paul Hervieu

After the steep-edged roads furrowed with muddy ruts, where the cart bounced along, where the horse rudely lifted its hind, where the coachman smoking his short pipe swore and pounded, his big hat taking off in the wind, fallow lands spread out before us, scattered with grey rock. Gorse blossomed there in bouquets, all among the scanty broom. Further along, the land sloped down and grew silty; great pools filled up along the sides of the path, and hideous frogs dove in with all their might. The barn, capped with wet thatching, lay between two short hovels on a bed of chopped straw, sopping with manure.

A woman appeared in the doorway, her apron turned up. She eyed us with suspicion, and, as we walked in, she murmured nasty words. The floor was of beaten earth; the black beams which ran along the ceiling held round loaves of golden bread. Andouille sausages hung in links, and cuts of salt pork lay heaped in a bay. In the window, two women were casting the shuttle through a loom, whose threads crossed and uncrossed with every beat of the reed. One of them had a great wrinkle on her forehead, sunken black eyes under a tough brow; her breasts appeared small, but firm, in her laced bodice; her whole body was gracefully slender.

With a surly glance the peasant woman set out butter, pushed the hat off the table standing on a chest, cut some slivers of bread, broke eggs into a yellow clay dish. When we asked to “go out on the marsh,” she eyed us with fury and called to her husband. He was behind the door, in the cow stable; his frayed pants hung over his iron-rimmed clogs, and two wide suspenders held up his belt mid-waist. His face was thin and disquieted; his eyes wandered perpetually over every object; he stroked his white sideburns with concern.

“To the swamps you’d like to go?” he asked. “And what for? Look it all the water so low, just puddles to splash round in. Least there’d be two gaffs. Couldn’t do nothing alone, no kiddin’.”

“Take Marianne along,” said the woman. “Girl’s strong these days.” One of the weavers, the one with the wrinkle across her forehead, raised her nose.

“Still not the ducks you’re after,” the man started again. “Pardon, excuse me, some of the time. Because there still aren’t any—a siege or two out in the sedge, maybe.—Ah, you,” he said to the woman weaving, “didn’t you see the chasse-marées last night? So you’d like to come along and see the ‘demoiselles of Pornichet’?”

Marianne furrowed her brow and straightened her dress. The peasant turned toward us, and continued: “It’s a pity. She’s a good little girl, apparently’s got her head turned. Works in a house over there, for some females from Paris. Keep her till midnight; a weight she bears in her breast. She goes back and forth, in and out—ain’t good for nothing. She kisses her beat-up blanky on her bed, plays round with it, rolls it up in her chubby little hands, makes friends with it like it’s a person; goes to fetch some fruit from the reserves in the attic, ’cause she’s got a sweet tooth—and then, she pecks it again, she says words to it, it’s pitiful. She hears nothing and her eyes are closed, what could be worse …—and after, till midday, she’s off to sleep. Her betrothed she had last year don’t want to put up with it no more. Sometimes she cries; says she wants to marry, but that ain’t possible anymore. Worries us sick.”

She seemed not to hear him and waited for us, in the doorway, with the equipment for the skiff. It was an incredibly flat craft, freshly tarred. The man pushed us off toward the narrow, sinuous channel, which led to the heart of the marshland. The water was black, because of the silt—a dark bog raked with tormented furrows. As we drifted along among the water lilies, the grasslands stretched off to the right and left, blanketed with yellow gorse and green sedge in the distance; the great, supple stalks bowed in the wind. Like a wild, half-flooded meadow, the Grande Brière lay out to the horizon with its tall, quivering weeds. Farther and farther, the skiff scraped along the peat, knocking against the shaggy embankments where the sedge grew; we turned it around and glided again through the crimson stalks of the water lilies and red freshwater grasses. A pale, ashen sky cast a subdued light over the Brière; flocks of birds soared off over the reeds, shrieking harshly.

In places, the vaporous beams of sunlight formed vague, white mirrors at the foot of the grasses; the water wavered between the stalks; the reeds wove together over the clods of peat, and the white roots on the surface resembled a swarm of pale eels, dead with boredom.

“We won’t be seeing any demoiselles,” the peasant said. His daughter turned around straightaway and pointed out a flock of beasts, to our right. Our rifles were ready: the volley yielded but a single bird, which spiraled down through the air. When she hit the cold water, she began to jig, slapping the surface with her wings, crying toward the light. Barelegged, the man went to fish her up; he took her by the red webbed foot. The “demoiselle of Pornichet” had a soft, grey body, a black head, a long, pink beak with slender nares. To her cries a siege of her sisters came gliding over the boat—a cloud of sisters, screeching, spinning and swooping down, pulling up abruptly to wing off at full sail until they were black dots in the ruddy ashes of the sky, then enlarging again gradually until they rushed down on us, their wings spread, beaks open, menacing and frenzied.

Soon the “demoiselle” was swinging from the end of a gaff stuck in the peat; snared by her foot, she twisted dismally and shook her stump of a wing, heaving shrieks from her gaping beak. The entire siege, drawing near, answered her with moans; one dot broke off from above, and the outlying bird tried to free her. Meanwhile we had retreated, and the “demoiselles” were plunging in great arcs, diving into the water with their black heads and red beaks nodding in agony. The winged chain of the others, snaking above our heads, were weeping still.

“They sure stick together, those demoiselles,” the man said. “Makes ’em easier to kill.” As he spoke, a green skiff reared up from the opposite channel in the distance, like an animal born in the sedge who inhabits the Brière. We made out a man standing, in the front, and, behind, a little black and red mark which must have been a woman’s hat. “There’s your mistress,” the peasant man resumed, “come to the Brière before heading off to Paris to get married. Not a bad example for you to follow, taking a man.”

The wild scream that burst from Marianne’s lips stopped his words. She was pressed to her gaff; her black eyes were shooting fire—the wrinkle on her forehead was profoundly sunken. “Ah! She’s leaving!” she cried. “Ah! She brought her lover to the Brière! And what about me? Where am I supposed to go? You don’t do that. I had her word—not anymore—I’m weak these days, all bony—my head’s spinning—and she’s to blame. There’s no chasse-marée—it’s the Parisian girl; there’s no blanky—it’s the Parisian girl. She put a spell on me; I couldn’t go on without her, still I can’t. But she won’t be leaving, not from here, no way. I’ll make her stay, yes, I will!”

Slouched over the little bench, she heaved with sobs, her face buried in her skirt; and the peasant’s face had grown disquieted, and we looked at each other in silence, not knowing what to think. The man was pushing the boat along with strokes of the gaff—and suddenly a flock of ducks rose heavily from the sedge. By the time it took to get the punt gun, we could only see five faraway dots in the sky. Enticed by the departure, the “demoiselles of Pornichet” flew off in couples ahead and behind.

The green skiff was approaching now; it was right in front of us. The girl, sitting in the back, wore a bright grey dress with a fringed red collar, and a black cavalier hat; her blonde hair fell in locks. Marianne gradually stopped sobbing; she bit her lip for a moment, and suddenly said:

“Me too, I’m a try and kill a demoiselle of Pornichet!”

She extended her arm, took the punt gun, shouldered, and fired. The act was brusque and cruel. The young girl on the skiff let out a sharp cry, followed by a quaking moan; she fell down, her neck went slack, like a slaughtered bird—and her red collar was flipped up by her death rattle. We had taken—too late—the arm of Marianne, whose face was peaceful and cynical, her forehead pure and free of wrinkles. The sun, going down on the horizon, bloodied the sky’s cinder and cut through the sedge with pink flashes. The dome of clouds was turning golden at its peak; a circle of mist was enveloping the round meadow; the last flashes of daylight were dancing over the Grande Brière. The desolate expanse of grasses undulating over the flooded bog fled as far as the eye could see. The “demoiselles of Pornichet” circled tearfully, crying out, around the dead young girl, and tugged at her dress with their red beaks. Marianne started to laugh and said, “They sure stick together, those demoiselles. Makes ’em easier to kill. Let’s go, shoot already!”