Brodeck

XI

—

he old man ushered me into his house, which smelled of cool stones and hay. He pointed to a handsome, polished sideboard and told me to drop my bundle there. To tell the truth, it didn’t contain very much: two or three tattered rags I’d extracted one morning from the ashes of a barn, and a piece of blanket that still smelled like fire.

In the front room, which was very low-ceilinged and completely covered with fir paneling, a round table stood ready, as if I’d been expected. Two places had been laid, facing each other over a cotton tablecloth, and in a terra-cotta vase there was a bouquet of fragile, touching wildflowers, which moved at the least breath of air, spreading fragrances that were like memories of perfumes.

At that moment, with a mixture of sadness and joy, I remembered the student Kelmar, but the old man put a hand on my shoulder and, with a little movement of his chin, signed to me that I should sit. “You need a good meal and a good night’s sleep,” he said. “Before my servant left, she cooked a rabbit with herbs and a quince pie. They’ve been waiting just for you.”

He went to the kitchen and came back with the rabbit, arranged on a green earthenware platter and garnished with carrots, red onions, and branches of thyme. I couldn’t manage to move or say a word. The old man stepped to my side and served me copiously, then cut a thick slice of white bread for me and poured some limpid water into my glass. I wasn’t completely sure whether I was sitting in that house or lost in one of the numerous pleasant dreams that used to visit me at night in the camp.

My host sat down across from me. “If you don’t mind, I’m not going to join you — at my age, one eats very little. But do please start.”

He was the first man in a long time who addressed me as if I were a man, too. Tears began to flow from my eyes. My first tears in a long time, as well. I clutched the seat of my chair with both hands, as if trying to keep from falling into the void. I opened my mouth and tried to say something, but I couldn’t.

“Don’t speak,” he said. “I’m not asking any questions. I don’t know exactly where you’ve come from, but I think I can guess.”

I felt like a child. I made awkward, rash, incoherent gestures. He looked at me kindly. Forgetting my broken teeth, I fell upon the food the way I did in the camp when the guards threw me a cabbage stalk, a potato, or a bread crust. I consumed the whole rabbit, gobbled up the bread, licked my plate, devoured the pie. I still carried inside of me the fear that someone might steal my food if I ate it too slowly. My stomach felt full, as it had not done for months and months, and it hurt. I had the feeling that I was going to explode and die in that lovely house, under my host’s benevolent gaze; die from having eaten too much after being nearly dead from hunger.

When I’d finished cleaning plate and platter with my tongue and picking up the scattered crumbs from the table with my fingertips, the old man showed me to my room. There a wooden tub filled with hot soapy water was waiting for me. My host undressed me, helped me step into the tub, sat me down, and bathed me. The water ran over my skin, which no longer had any color, my skin, which stank of filth and suffering, and the old fellow washed my body without repugnance and with a father’s tenderness.

The next day, I woke up in a high, mahogany bed between fresh, starched, embroidered sheets that smelled like wind. On all the walls of the room, there were engraved portraits of men wearing mustaches and jabots; a few of them were in military attire. They all looked at me without seeing me. The softness of the bed had made my whole body ache. Getting up was difficult. Looking through the window, I could see the well-kept fields bordering the village; some of them were already sown, and in others, which were still being plowed, teams of oxen pulled harrows that gouged and aerated the soil. The earth in those fields was black and light, quite the opposite of ours, which is red and as sticky as glue. The sun was close to the horizon, its jagged line broken by poplars and birches. But what I took for dawn turned out to be dusk. I had slept all night and all day, sunk in a deep sleep without dreams or interruptions. I felt heavy, but at the same time relieved of a burden whose contents I couldn’t have described with any precision.

Clean clothes had been laid out on a chair for me, along with some walking shoes of supple, strong leather, shoes meant to last forever. (I still wear them; they’re on my feet as I write.) When I finished dressing, I saw a man in the mirror looking at me, a man whom I seemed to have known in another life.

My host was sitting outside on the bench in front of his house, as he’d been doing on the previous day. He was smoking a pipe, sending a pleasant smell of honey and ferns into the evening air. He invited me to sit at his side. I realized then that I hadn’t yet spoken a single word to him. “I’m Brodeck,” I said.

He took a stronger pull on his pipe. For an instant, his face disappeared in the fragrant smoke, and then he repeated, very softly, “Brodeck … Brodeck … I’m very glad you accepted my invitation. I suspect you still have a long journey ahead of you before you reach home.”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I’d lost the habit of words and the habit of thoughts.

The old man spoke again. “Don’t be offended,” he said, “but sometimes it’s best not to go back where you came from. You remember what you left, but you never know what you’re going to find there, especially when madness has raged in men for a long time. You’re still young … Think about that.”

He scratched a match on the stone bench and relit his pipe. By that time, the sun had definitively fallen to the other side of the world. All that remained of its light were reddish traces, spreading like scribbles of fire and licking along the borders of the fields. Above our heads, floods of ink were drowning the pale sky. A few bright stars already shone through the blackness, between the streaks of the last swifts and the first bats.

“Someone’s waiting for me.” It was all I could manage to say.

The old man slowly shook his head. I successfully repeated myself, but I didn’t say who was waiting for me; I didn’t say Amelia’s name. I had kept it closed inside me for so long that I was afraid to let it go, afraid it might get lost out in the open.

I stayed in his house for four days, sleeping like a dormouse and eating like a lord. The old man looked upon me kindly as I ate and served me second helpings, though he himself never swallowed a thing. Sometimes he remained silent; sometimes he made conversation. It was a one-sided conversation, with him doing all the talking, but he seemed to enjoy his monologues, and as for me, I took a curious pleasure in letting myself be surrounded by his words. Thanks to them, I felt I was returning to the language, the language behind which there lay, prostrate, weak, and still sick, a humanity that needed only to heal.

Having regained some of my strength, I decided to leave one morning, very early, while the sun was rising and the smells of young grass and dew rose with it and invited themselves into the house. My hair, which was growing back in patches, gave me the look of a convalescent who’d survived a disease no physician could have identified with any precision. I still had a lemony complexion, and my eyes were sunk very deep in their sockets.

The previous evening, I’d told the old man that I was thinking about continuing on my way, and he was waiting for me on his threshold. He handed me a gray canvas sack with leather shoulder straps. It contained two large round loaves of bread, a slab of bacon, a sausage, and some clothes. “Take them,” he said. “They’re just your size. They belonged to my son, but he won’t be coming back. It’s probably better so.”

The sack I’d just taken hold of suddenly seemed very heavy. The old man extended his hand to me. “Have a good journey, Brodeck.”

For the first time, his voice shook. So did his hand, which I clasped: a dry, cold, spotted hand that crumpled in my palm. “Please,” he said. “Forgive him … forgive them …” And his voice died, dwindling into a murmur.