Once in Europa (15 page)

Jean-Paul stops and says: Look over there, Jean-Marc! I can't see anything, replies Jean-Marc. Jean-Paul, still pointing, says: You must be blind, over there by the spruce, the one that's been uprooted. I can see the root and the earth and the stones, Jean-Paul, I can't see more.

The rain falling on the bread was making steam and it was hissing like a cricket.

The two hunters go deeper into the forest. Can you see her now? shouts Jean-Paul. Where? By the snow under the roots, Jean-Marc. In God's name, yes! screams Jean-Marc. Both men stop in their tracks, then they start making their way towards the tree. The snow is up to their waists. After a while they stop to get their breath back.

The bread was getting darker and darker in colour and I could scarcely see it anymore because of the clouds of steam coming off it.

Alive? asks Jean-Marc. Jean-Paul pushes his way forward. I can feel it from here! he cries. Be careful, Jean-Paul! Careful, Jean-Paul! Jean-Paul disappears. After a moment Jean-Marc hears his friend laughing, then his laugh changes into a sigh. The happiest sigh in the world, my friend. Jean-Marc knows what is happening so he looks at the tree tops. Whilst he looks at the tree tops, he counts. When he's counted to five thousand, he looks down, towards the spruce. No sign of Jean-Paul. Now it's Jean-Marc's turn.

The rain on the bread had stopped.

Jean-Marc too can feel it. He can hear the dripping. Like Jean-Paul, he falls forward onto his face and starts to laugh. His laugh too becomes a sigh.

The bread was black now, with colours in it like oil.

Do you know what they were doing, Jean-Paul and Jean-Marc?

I shook my head.

You don't know, Odile, what the two hunters were doing?

No.

They were doing the lying-down waltz!

I looked at Régis and I thought: My kid brother—he was nine years older than I—you're drinking too much.

The sheet sail and everything hanging from it is turning south, towards the sun in a sky of the deepest winter blue, like the blue we had to wash clothes with.

On the day when Christ ascended to heaven, the Brass Band went from hamlet to hamlet in the village playing music. Their uniforms were newly pressed, their instruments were glittering in the sun, and the leaves of the beech trees were fresh as lettuces. They played so loud they made the windows rattle and tiles fall off the roof. And after each concert in each hamlet the public offered them gnôle and cakes, so that by the end of the afternoon on Ascension Day, after a number of little concerts, the first and second saxophones were drunk as well as several trombones and a drum or two. On Ascension night, Father came home with his trumpet a little bit the worse for wear. With Father, though, nobody could tell till the evening. He never let it influence his fingers when playing.

He died on February the ninth, 1953. The next Ascension Day the band came to play in our orchard in his honour. They played a march from Verdi's
Aïda
and a tune called “Amazing Grace.” Men from the factory lined the fence of the orchard listening to the music. Mother stood by the stable doors, arms folded across her bosom, looking up at the sky. And suddenly Papa's house with its three rooms, its hayloft, its little wooden balcony, its chopped wood, dwarfed the factory which was the size of six cathedrals.

“Amazing Grace” begins sad and gradually the sadness becomes a chorus and so is no longer sad but defiant. For a while I believed he was there. Later the music listens to itself and discovers that something has fallen silent. Irretrievably. He had left.

Whilst I was listening to “Amazing Grace” on that afternoon in May 1953, I touched something which I wouldn't be able to name until twenty years later. I touched the truth that the virility which women look for in men is often sly, slippery, impudent. It's not grand, what they're looking for. It's cautious and cunning, just like Father was.

The men on the other side of the fence started to clap and Michel waved at me. I turned away, saying to myself that only a communist would wave at a moment like that!

Michel's motorbike was red and was made in Czechoslovakia. The spare parts for it were cheaper than for any other bike, Michel said, because Czechoslovakia was communist and the communists didn't put profit before everything else. On several Sundays he asked me if I'd like to go for a spin with him and each time I refused. He was too sure of himself, he thought he knew better than anybody else in the valley. He had called my father a Chopping Block. Not to me. I heard about it from a friend. Achille Blanc has been a chopping block for others all his life! Those were his words. So I said no to him.

The sixth time he asked me was in August. We were both on holiday. The hay was in the barn. Régis had bought an old third-hand Peugeot and was painting it in the orchard. Emile was there in the house when Michel came. He drives well, Odile, said Emile, you've nothing to be frightened about. On Wednesday morning early, Michel announced, I'll pick you up at five. At five! I protested. Five's not too early if we're going to Italy! Italy! I screamed. Yet, however loud I screamed it, the word was having its effect. If we were really going to drive to Italy, everything was beyond my control. I said nothing more. And on Tuesday night I prepared my trousers, my boots, and a haversack with a picnic for us both.

We went over the Grand St. Bernard a little to the east of the Mont Blanc where the wind now is blowing the snow like my chiffon scarf against the blue sky. Neither of us knew what life had in store. Nothing happened. Michel had brought a thermos of coffee which we drank from for the first time near Chamonix. We passed a factory which, Michel said, was like a copy of ours. It took up less space. On the bike we climbed higher and higher. We ate our picnic above the tree line. I never breathed so much air in my life. Mouth, nose, ears and eyes all took in air. At the summit we threw snowballs at each other and saw the dogs. They were as big as ponies. There was a lake. A lake at that height was as surprising as tears at a victory. When the wind was too cold I put my head down against his leather jacket. I tucked my knees
under his legs and held on with one hand to his leather belt. Around the hairpins I lay down with the bike like grass blown by the wind.

She overheated a bit on the last stretch, he said. You probably smelt the burnt oil?

Motor oil, I said, I don't know what it smells like.

On the red 3 50CC two-stroke twin motorbike made in Czechoslovakia we came down into Italy, on the other side of the mountain. The cows looked poorer, the goats thinner, there was less wood and more rocks, yet the air was like a kiss. In such air women didn't have to be like we were on our side of the mountain. Where we have wild raspberries in ruined pine forests, I told myself, they have grapes on vines which grow between apple trees! For the first time in my life I was envious.

Did you notice the Saumua coming down to Aosta? he asked.

No.

It's the biggest truck since the war. Takes a load of thirty tons.

We arrived back before it was dark. I was in time to shut up the chickens and take the milk on my back to the dairy. My behind was sore, my hands were grimy, my hair was tangled. It took me hours to untangle it before I went to sleep. But I was proud of myself. I'd been to Italy.

We'll do another trip, Michel proposed.

School begins next week.

You're a funny one, Odile, there's no school on Sunday.

No, I said, thanks for this time.

You're a good passenger, I'll say that for you.

Are there bad ones?

Plenty. They don't trust the driver astride the machine. You can't ride a bike if you don't let go. I'm willing to bet you weren't frightened for a moment, Odile. You had confidence, didn't you? You weren't frightened for a moment, were you?

Maybe yes and maybe no. His sureness made me want to tease him.

A weekend, two months later, I was coming home from Cluses and the bus driver said:

Have you heard what happened to Michel?

Michel who?

Michel Labourier. You didn't hear about his accident?

On his motorbike?

No, in the factory.

What happened?

Lost both his legs.

Where is he?

Lyons. It's the best hospital in the country for burns. A military hospital. They used to fight wars with lead, now they fight them with flames. Both legs gone.

I stared through the bus window and I saw nothing, not even the factory when we passed it. The next day I went to see his mother.

Perhaps it would have been better, she said, if it had killed him outright.

No, I said, no, Madame Labourier.

He's not allowed visitors, she said, he's in a glass cage.

I'm sure you'll be able to visit him soon.

It's too far. Too far for anyone to go.

Is he still in danger?

For his life, no.

Don't cry, Madame Labourier, don't cry.

I cried when I thought about it every evening for a week in Cluses. For a man to lose both legs. I thought too about what the boys call their third leg. When you're young and both your legs are supple your third leg goes stiff … when you're old and your legs are stiff, your third leg goes limp. And this silly joke made me cry more.

New Year's Eve, 1953, I spent at home. Father's chair was empty. After supper Régis and Emile got up to go to the dance in the village. Come on, Odile, said Emile. I'll stay with Mother. You like dancing! insisted Emile. There's no boy in the village good enough for our Odile now, said Régis. They left. Mother sewed and went to bed early. I heard the bells pealing at midnight on the radio and the crowds cheering. I wasn't sleepy and so I let myself out and walked once round the orchard. The grass was as hard as iron. The bise had been blowing for several days and the sky was clear. Looking up at the stars, I thought of Father. Nobody
can look up at the stars when they are so hard and bright and not think that they don't have something to say. Then I thought of Michel without his legs and the Red Star he wore on his leather jacket. In their silence I missed his jokes and his cough. I went to check that the chicken house was well shut. When it was minus fifteen for a week on end, the foxes would cross the factory yard looking for food. A month earlier the night shift had killed a wild boar behind the turbine house. Suddenly the wind changed and to my amazement I heard dance music. A tune from a band wafting towards me. It seemed to come in waves, just as the stars seemed to twinkle. Distance and cold can do strange things. I made up my mind. I returned to the house, put my hair in a scarf, and found an old army coat. I would go and see what was happening at the Ram's Run.

Every New Year's Eve the Company imported a band to the factory and the men who were lodged in the Barracks had their own dance. The villagers didn't participate, the Company didn't encourage them to, and it was for this reason that it was called the Ram's Run. I crossed the railway line. The music was louder. The furnaces were throbbing as usual. The smoke from the chimney stacks was white in the starlight. Otherwise everything was still and frozen. Not a soul to be seen outside. The ground-floor rooms adjoining the office block were lit up. There were no curtains and the windows were misted over.

I crept up to one and scraped like a mouse with my fingernail. I couldn't believe my eyes, there was a man who was dancing sitting down on the floor! He had his hands on his hips and he threw out his feet in front of him and his feet came back as fast as they went out, like balls bouncing off a wall. I was so amazed I didn't notice the approach of the stranger who was now at my side looking down at me.

Good evening, he said. Why don't you come into the warm?

I shook my head.

You must be hot-blooded, not to mind the cold on a night like this!

It's only minus fifteen, I said.

Those were the first words I spoke to him. After them there
was a silence. The two of us stood there by the light of the window, our breaths steamy and entwining like puffs from the nostrils of the same horse.

What's your name?

Odile.

Your name in full?

Mademoiselle Odile Blanc.

He stood to attention like a soldier and bowed his head. He must have been two metres tall. His hair was cropped short and he had enormous thumbs, his hands pressed against his thighs, his thumbs were as big as sparrows.

My name is Stepan Pirogov.

Where were you born?

Far away.

In a valley?

Somewhere which is flat, flat, flat.

No rivers?

There's a river there called the Pripiat.

Ours is called the Giffre.

Blanc? Blanc means white like milk?

Not always—not when you order vin blanc!

White like snow, no?

Not the white of an egg! I shouted.

Give me one more joke, he said and opened the door.

I was standing in the vestibule of the Ram's ballroom. After the glacial air outside, it felt very warm. There was the noise of men talking—like the sound of the fermentation of fruit in a barrel. There was a strong smell of sour wine, scent, and the red dust that in the end powders every ledge and every flat surface facing upwards in the factory. Along one wall of the vestibule—which was really an anteroom to the offices, where the clerical staff took off their coats and put on their aprons—there was a long table where women whom I'd never seen before were serving drinks to a group of men who had obviously been drinking for a longer time than was good for them. My brother said that the women for the Ram's Run were hired by the company and brought from far away, somewhere near Lyons, in a bus.

I wanted to get out into the air and I wanted him not to forget me immediately. So I told him a story about my grandmother. It wasn't strictly my grandmother. It was the woman my grandfather lived with after his wife was dead. When he died, Céline—she was called—Céline continued to live in Grandfather's house alone. She was old by then. You can't explain all that to a stranger whom you've just met a few minutes before and who has taken you into a bar full of men with the windows steamed up and the floorboards muddy and wet with melted ice. So I told him it was my grandmother.