If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories. As things are here, life outstrips our vocabulary. A word is missing and so the story has to be told. What, for instance, was the relation between the old shepherd Marius and the baby in Danielle’s womb when she left the village? Was he the child’s godfather? Hardly.
The story began and ended in the summer of 1982, high up in the alpage which we call Peniel. Some say that they know the name Peniel comes from the bible. Genesis. Chapter 32. But if you read that, it won’t really tell you what happened between Marius and Danielle.
Peniel is a plateau at an altitude of 1,600 metres. One edge of the plateau dominates, from a colossal rockface, the village below. From there, when there’s a rainstorm and it’s sunny, you can look down onto the top of a rainbow — as if it were the arch of a bridge at your feet. The rockface is mostly limestone, occasionally mixed with flysch. The other edges of the plateau are lost in the mountains beyond.
Once there was a forest on this plateau and some gigantic tree trunks are still preserved beneath a layer of clay, under the topsoil on which the pastures grow. Where this clay and the ancient forest are nearest to the surface, the earth is oily and damp, and on the rocks a dark green moss grows, which, if you touch it or lie down on it, feels like fur. This is how the rocks become like animals.
A number of years ago when the Russian, Gagarin, the first man in space, was circling the earth, every one of the twenty scattered chalets at Peniel housed, each summer, cattle and women and men. So many cattle that there was only just enough grass to go round. By common accord grazing time was limited. You got up at three to milk and you took the cows out to pasture as soon as it was light. At ten, when the sun was beginning to climb high in the sky, you brought them home and made your cheese. In the stable you gave them grass which you’d scythed at midday. After lunch you took a siesta. At four you milked again, and only then did you take the cows out a second time to pasture, and there you stayed with them until you could no longer see the trees but only the forest. You brought the cows back in and when they were bedded down on their straw, you could go outside and peer up into the night, where the Milky Way looked like gauze, and try to spot Gagarin in his circling Sputnik. All this was twenty-five years ago. During the summer in question — the summer of 1982—only two of the twenty chalets were inhabited, one by Marius and the other by Danielle, and there was so much grass they could let their animals graze night and day.
The two chalets are separated by a pass flanked by two peaks, the St. Pair and the Tête de Duet. It took Danielle half an hour to walk across the pass to Marius’s chalet.
Why do he-goats smell so strongly? Marius asked her when she arrived the first time. After a winter of ice and snow you go into the stable and you know that last year there was a he-goat here! Rams don’t smell like that, bulls don’t smell like that, stallions don’t smell like that, why do he-goats? The only other smell as strong as the smell of the he-goat, Marius continued, is the smell of a tannery. When I came back to the village, it took me six months to get that stench out of my skin. When I came back to the village, you could pluck a hair out of any part of my body — he fixed Danielle with his shrewd unflinching eyes so that what he meant should not escape her — any part of my body, sniff it, and say: this man has worked in a tannery.
What do you want a he-goat to be? replied Danielle, all he-goats have a strong smell, don’t they?
Another thing — apart from the stench of the tannery — which Marius brought back with him to the village was his way of wearing a hat. He wore his hat pulled rakishly down over one eye. Like a boss. Not the boss of a factory but of a gang. And he was never without a hat. He slept with a hat on. When he brought in his cows after a storm — if the downpour is violent they refuse to budge, they put down their heads, they arrange their backs like roofs so the rain runs off either side, and they wait — when Marius brought in his herd after a storm and his hat was so drenched that even indoors it went on raining, he took it off and straightaway put on another.
Putting on a hat was for him a gesture of authority, and from the age of thirty to the age of seventy, the authority of the gesture had not changed. He wore his hat now as if he were expecting total obedience from thirty cows and one dog.
That’s Violette there, he muttered to Danielle, pointing with his stick to a large brown cow with black eyes and horns. Always the last to come when called, always wandering off by herself, she has her own system, Violette, and I shall get rid of her in the autumn!
He had lost his father at the age of fourteen. His father, who married twice, had a passion for cards. Every evening in the winter he would say: Sauva la graisse! Wipe the grease off the table, we are going to play cards. And so he became known as Emilien à Sauva, and his son as Marius à Sauva.
Emilien, the father, left little behind except debts. The family house was sold, and Marius, who was the eldest son, had to leave to look for work in Paris. As he climbed for the first time in his life into a train, he swore that he would come back with enough money to pay off the family debts and that eventually he would have the largest herd of cows in the village.
So you’re going to sweep their chimneys? asked the ticket collector.
I’ll eat their shit, said Marius the boy, if they pay me more for it.
He achieved what he swore he would. He worked in a tannery in Aubervilliers, a little to the north of the Arc de Triomphe. By the time he was thirty he had paid off the family debts. By the time he was fifty he had the largest herd in the village.
They are calm today, Danielle, he went on, calm and agreeable, and they stay together. Not like yesterday — yesterday they could feel the storm, and there were flying ants. They ran with their tails straight out. They were as disagreeable as you can imagine yesterday. And today they are honey-sweet. As sweet as honey, Danielle.
It was the beginning of the summer and the grass was full of flowers, vanilla orchids, arnica, red campion, globeflowers, and blue centaurea that people say are the souls of poets.
Danielle was twenty-three. Her mother was dead and she lived with her elderly father, who had five cows and some goats. She had a job in the warehouse of a furniture factory. But in the spring of ’82 the factory went bankrupt, and so she proposed to take her father’s animals to the mountains — to the chalet where she had spent several summers as a child with her mother.
How does she have the courage to stay up there alone? people in the village asked. Yet the truth was she didn’t need courage. It suited her — the silence, the sun, the slow daily routine. Like many people who are sure of themselves, Danielle was a little intimidating. At village dances the boys didn’t fall over themselves to partner her — though she danced well and had wide hips and tiny feet. They weren’t sure she would laugh at their jokes. So they called her slow. In reality, this so-called slowness of hers was a kind of imperturbability. She had a wide face — a little like that of a Red Indian squaw — with dark eyes, large shoulders, small wrists and plump capable hands. It was easy to imagine Danielle as the mother of several children — except that she seemed to be in no hurry to find a man to be their father.
Grandad! she teased Marius, when she paid him a second visit a few days later. You dye it, don’t you?
Dye what?
Seventy and not a single white hair!
It’s in the breeding.
Danielle looked away as if she had suddenly forgotten her joke. The few white clouds above the peaks were the only sign that the world was still going on.
My father had the same head of hair, Marius continued, thick and black as a lamb when they nailed him in his coffin. Go fetch Lorraine, Johnny! he called to the dog, Find Lorraine!
The dog bounded away to fetch a cow who was straying along the slope to the west. Over the seasons the cows at Peniel have made, with their own feet, narrow paths like terraces along the slopes. You can wander along one of those paths without really noticing that on one side the drop below is getting steeper and steeper.
Go fetch Lorraine!
Marius had his own way of calling. His calls sounded like an order and an appeal at the same time. Everyone discovers how to make their voice carry in the mountains, and everyone knows that animals respond to sounds which are like songs. Yet his shouts were not musical, they were a kind of convulsive cry and each phrase ended with the sound OVER! Johnny bring over! Take over! Over there Johnny over! Somebody suddenly awaking from sleep might cry out like Marius calling to his dog.
Fetch Lorraine over!
Dangerous, he said. Lilac fell there two years ago and broke a leg. To save the meat I had to hack the carcass with an axe and take the quarters back to the chalet on a sledge. Alone. No one to help and no one to see.
The next time Danielle paid him a visit was in the evening. It had been very hot all day, the goats were as languid as she was. When she had finished milking, she climbed up to the pass. There she could hear the bells of Marius’s herd, and at the same time, behind her and much louder, the bells of her own five. She had an electric torch with her in case she needed it for the walk back.
Marius was sitting on a stool in his stable, empty except for one cow. He looked up from under his hat, his black eyes fixed intently upon Danielle.
I was doing my best to make you come, he growled, may need your help when it comes to pulling. I know my Comtesse.
Comtesse, the cow before them, had her tail in the air and glistening loops of mucus trailed from her distended vulva. Danielle approached her head and felt the temperature of her horns.
What she needs, she said, is some dew on her nose.
She wanted to joke because she saw that Marius’s hands were trembling. How many calves had he delivered during his lifetime? And now he owned not one but thirty cows. Why should he be nervous? The last sunlight was shining between the slats of the west wall. When Comtesse moved her head the bell around her neck tolled like an animal in pain. It was stifling as though all the wood of the floor and walls and roof, all the wood of the stable, were feverish; Danielle knew why he was nervous. To be nervous like that he had to be a man and he had to be old: it wasn’t the danger of losing the calf or the cow which worried him, it was a question of pride. As if he were being put to a test, as if he were on trial. No woman, young or old, would suffer like that.
The head’s twisted, muttered Marius, pushing his hat further back on his head, that’s why the bugger doesn’t come.
For the third or fourth time he rolled back his sleeve to the shoulder and plunged his right arm into the cow. The Comtesse was now so weak she was swaying like a drunk.
For Christ’s sake hold her up, he shouted, do you want to break my arm? Hold her up! God almighty, it’s not possible! Hold her up, do you hear me? Your father may be my worst enemy but you keep her on her feet, do you hear me?
Whilst he was shouting at Danielle he was quietly, systematically, searching with his open hand, fingers separated like probes, to find the calf’s shoulders and then its haunches and then with a single hand to turn them so that the calf could engage the passage. He was sweating profusely, so were Danielle and the Comtesse. Mucus, wood impregnated with a century’s smell of cows, sweat, and somewhere the iodine tang of birth.
It’s done, he grunted. He withdrew his arm and almost immediately two front hooves appeared, forlorn-looking as drowned kittens. Danielle was fingering the rope, impatient to slip it round the hooves and pull, and so finish with a labour that had already gone on too long, yet she hesitated because Marius was standing there, his face a few inches from the cow’s cunt, his eyes screwed up as if he were praying.
He’s coming to us! He’s coming. The calf slipped out limply, wearily, into Marius’s arms. He poured eau-de-vie over his fingers and forced them into the calf’s mouth so that it could suck. It looked more dead than alive. He carried it to the Comtesse, who licked its face and lowed. The sound she made was high and penetrating — a mad sound, thought Danielle. The calf stirred. She went to fetch some straw.
When all was arranged, Marius sat there on his stool, his right hand, with which he had turned the calf, still held open and extended, still making in the air of the stable the same gestures it had made in the womb. The difference was that it was no longer trembling.
You certainly know what you’re doing, Grandad!
Not always, not always.
A sweet breeze was blowing through the open door. The light was fading in the stable.
I couldn’t have done it without you, he said.
I did nothing.
He laughed and began to turn down the sleeves of his shirt. You were there! he cried, you were there! You kept her on her feet.
On her way home she was glad to have the torch, because the pass crosses from north to south, and with the moon still low in the east, the way between the crags was in dark shadow. She stopped to look up at the stars, which from there, where it was dark, seemed ten times brighter.
I often watched him. Toward midday I left my goats and climbed up the pass where there was a breeze, and there I ate my lunch. To be honest, I spied on him, for I was careful to remain hidden.
According to his children, who had left home, he was a tyrant. And what tyrannized them, apart from his orders, was his indefatigability.
Go fetch them over! Go take them over!
Every afternoon he had a different plan for where and how his herd should eat. He never left them in peace.
There were always jackdaws around the pass. When the sun was out and they were flying close to the rockface of St. Pair, their flying shadows were cast on the rock, and this seemed to double the number of birds in flight. Then, at a given moment, the leader of the flock would veer toward the sun, the others turning to follow, and their shadows would immediately vanish, so that it looked as if half the birds in flight had suddenly disappeared into thin air. Sometimes I lay there watching the birds appear and disappear until I lost all count of time. I would look down and notice Marius and his herd by the stream below where the cows drank at midday, and the next moment they were five kilometres away.
A week later Danielle visited Marius again. He was with his herd near the forest where two generations before some shepherds had mined for gold and found none.
Marius greeted her by saying: One day you’ll be an old woman! Even you, Danielle! I had a fall last night.
So?
Everyone ages.
How did you fall?
By way of an answer, he started to undo his belt. His trousers, caked in mud and cowshit, drenched and dried in the sun a thousand times, were, as usual, unbuttoned in front. Now they fell to the ground around his ankles. He turned so that she could see the back of his thigh, where just under the buttock something sharp had jaggedly torn the flesh. His legs were as white as they must have been in the cradle.
Is it deep? he asked.
It needs cleaning.
It bled like a pig.
What did you put on it?
Some brandy and some arnica.
It needs washing and bandaging, she said.
What is it like?
It’s about ten centimetres long and it’s red like a wound.
Is it ugly? It’s just where I can’t see it.
It’ll heal so long as you keep it clean.
Everything heals unless you die from it!
There were flies all round the brim of his hat.
Let’s go to the chalet, she said.
The bowl from which he had drunk his coffee and eaten his bread was still on the kitchen table.
Living by myself, I don’t have to change the plates, he said.
Where did you fall?
Out there where the woodpile is. Every night I cut the kindling wood to start the fire next morning. I must have tripped, I don’t know how.
You do too much, Grandad.
Who else is going to do it? Do you know how many cheeses I make a week?
She shook her head.
Thirty.
You’ve got a son down below.
He’s only interested in becoming Mayor.
He’ll never get elected.
I’ll make you some coffee. He plugged in an electric coffee grinder. I couldn’t manage without electricity, he said, electricity can replace a wife! He winked. A grotesque, undisguised wink.
She sipped the coffee. A few drops of rain began to fall. Within a minute the rain was beating on the roof like a drunk, and there were claps of thunder.
You’re not frightened, Danielle?
She repeated what she’d often heard said: there are three sorts of lightning — the lightning of rain, the lightning of stone, and the lightning of fire — and there’s nothing you can do about any of them.
The cows won’t move in rain like this, he said.
When the thunder was further away, she said: If you lie down, I’ll clean your leg.
The chalet, apart from the hayloft and stable, consisted of two rooms, one without a window for storing the cheeses, and one with a window for everything else. The bed, in the opposite corner from the stove, was made of wood and was screwed to the wall. He climbed up onto it, handed her a bottle of eau-de-vie, turned his back and lowered his trousers. Pinned to the planks of the wall beside the bed was a colour photo, torn from a magazine, of a large political demonstration by the Arc de Triomphe. She poured some eau-de-vie onto a cloth and began cleaning around the wound.
Crowds there that day, she said, looking at the photo.
I cut it out because I knew the Arc de Triomphe, he replied, I knew it well.
As a young man, she thought as she took hold of his leg, which was as pale as a baby’s, he must have been unusually handsome, with his dark eyes, his thick eyebrows, and his jet-black moustache. In Paris he couldn’t have lacked offers from women. Yet if he was to remain faithful to his oath, he could not afford to marry — whatever else he may have done — a seamstress or a florist. He had to find a wife who could milk the cows he was going to buy.
He clenched one fist.
Am I hurting you?
Hurting me? Do you know what happened to Jesus? Jesus was nailed to the cross, with nails through his hands and through his feet, right into the wood. That is how he was hurt. And he wasn’t a sinner like me!
He didn’t marry until he came back to the village. Elaine, his wife, died young and the day after her funeral he bought a milking machine.
Danielle poured a little eau-de-vie into the wound, and then she took the new cheesecloth that he had given her and began to bandage the thigh. In order to do so she had to bend over him and pass her hand several times between his legs near his scrotum, and each time she did this she shut her eyes out of respect.
I would like to go to Paris, she said whilst bandaging him. Up to now I’ve never had the chance.
Just wait a little longer, Danielle, you’re still a young woman and one day you’ll go to Paris and Rome and New York, I daresay. People fly everywhere now. You’ll see everything.
He swung his legs off the bed and winced a little.
Is it too tight?
Perfect.
He pulled up his trousers from his ankles and fastened his belt. He had kept his hat and boots on throughout the operation.
The storm was over and everything was washed and dust-free. Even the air. The valleys below, leading to the snow-capped mountains in the east, looked as if they had been painted by a miniaturist thousands of years before. By contrast, the rocks with moss, the grass and pine trees at Peniel looked new, as if just created. Marius’s mood had changed with the atmospheric pressure and his eyes were full of laughter.
Come and help me bring the herd in! he said. No, don’t protest, you can leave us at Nîmes and cut across by the arolle tree to the pass.
They walked with the dog along the edge of the pine forest. At one moment Danielle left the old man to make a detour to a hollow where you can find mushrooms called the Wolf’s Balls. They are only good to eat when young. When old they turn to dust.
As she rejoined him, Marius said: You are as fearless as a ghost, Danielle.
A pity, she replied, ghosts aren’t happy.
Happiness! He spoke the word as if it were the name of another of his disagreeable cows, like Violette. Happiness!
Fetch them over! Bring Marquise over!
Nobody is happy, he announced. There are only happy moments. Like this one now with you.
The herd was easy to assemble that evening and the two of them had no more to do than follow the cows, who were going home fast, their necks moving up and down like pump handles and their bells ringing wildly. It must have been the massed bells which put the idea of glory into Marius’s head. Glory doesn’t last! he shouted. But he shouted it laughing, waving his stick to the music. Glory never lasts!
On her way home, Danielle turned around. Marius had put his hat on his stick and was waving it above his head in wide circles. She waved back and continued waving until she disappeared behind the last boulder.
In the afternoon when the cows were chewing the cud, Marius would lie down on the grass, take a newspaper from his pocket, read it for ten minutes, and then fall asleep. I had noticed this several times when I was spying on him from the pass at St. Pair. One day I visited him whilst he was sleeping. As I approached I made a bet with myself that I would take the newspaper out of his hand without waking him. The difficulty was going to be the dog. I would have to deal with Johnny.
The two of them were side by side, sheltered from the sun by sweetbriar bushes. The dog was wagging his tail, and I beckoned him to come. The old man was still asleep. He was on his side, his knees slightly drawn up, his hat over his ear. His head rested on a stone covered with moss. In his throat Johnny was moaning a little with pleasure. I gave him my sleeve to bite on. One of his hands lay, palm uppermost, on the grass — he had unexpectedly long fingernails. The newspaper was against his stomach where his belt held up his gaping trousers.
All the cows were lying down. There was no chorus of bells for they were too still. Just one bell rang, as one cow slowly turned her head, followed, after a pause, by another. It was as if everything had slowed down like the old man’s pulse whilst he slept. I bent down and took his newspaper. It was easy. I had won my bet. Now why should I wake him? So I left the paper on the grass and very lightly I touched his open hand because I did not want to leave furtively. I touched his palm with my fingers, as lightly as if with a feather.
Why don’t you get a husband? Marius asked Danielle the next time she visited him.
I’m in no hurry.
You won’t marry a boy from the village.
Why shouldn’t I?
Because you are too independent.
Is that a fault?
Not if you have enough money!
I shan’t get rich looking after Papa’s goats.
That’s not your job in life.
Are you saying I’m lazy?
No. I have a considerable admiration for you. The old man spoke formally as if making a speech. A considerable admiration for you, Danielle. You are clever and you are thoughtful — you let sleeping men lie!
It was then that she knew he had been feigning sleep. He must have felt it when she touched his hand. And he knew that she knew, but they did not speak of it.
So the weeks passed and so they learnt more about each other.
One night at the end of July a little before dawn when it was still dark, a car drove uphill, over the grass, towards the Tête de Duet and stopped a hundred metres away from Danielle’s chalet. The car was a 1960 Mercedes Berlin-18, and it had been painted silver grey with a brush, not a spray gun. Six men got out of the car, each with a sack. They were careful not to slam the doors. The eldest, who wore a beret and a leather waistcoat, placed a huge hand around the neck of the youngest, who was yawning.
All the best things in life before you, boy!
Cut it out!
Do you see that peak? No, not that one. The one with snow on it, that’s where we’re felling today.
Christ! It’s a good ten kilometres away.
The other five burst out laughing. Once again the boy had been taken in. Because it was early and the air was cold, laughing made some of them cough.
And it was this coughing which woke up Danielle. By the time she got out of bed and pulled on a skirt, all she could see from the door in the first light was an Indian file of men with sacks over their shoulders climbing towards the forest at St. Pair, and, before the chalet where her goats grazed, the shadowy silhouette of a car.
Later she tried each of the car’s four doors. They were locked. Through the windows, which looked bullet-proof, she admired the leather upholstery and the wooden dashboard of teak, with its dials like those on instruments made specially for doctors.
Afternoons she let the rabbits out of their cage. That day, after they had eaten, they hopped under the Mercedes, happy to find shade there. When she half-shut her eyes the rising heat waves along the ridges of the mountains opposite formed a blue halo. All day she heard the drone of the woodcutters’ chain saws.
In the evening, through the little window of the chalet, she watched the same six men with sacks over their shoulders coming down from St. Pair. The light was already fading. They were walking slowly, as if they were blind and were forced with each step to feel their way forward with their feet. They had a dog with them whose antics they were too tired to notice. Slowly they approached the chalet, each walking at his own speed, exhausted and alone.
When they saw her in the doorway, they became a little jauntier. The first sight of a woman — with the prospect of nine hours’ respite from their backbreaking work — was a reminder of the other sweet side of the world.
I heard your saws.
Forty heads, miss.
Father’s the one who counts, said a thickset one with sawdust in his hair. They all laughed and then fell shy.
You think it’ll rain? one of them asked.
No, the birds are flying high.
Not tomorrow.
Forty!
Forty of ’em, shining like fish!
We strip ’em as we fell ’em.
It’s steep, your Pair.
Pair? That’s how you call it? asked the thickset one with sawdust in his hair.
St. Pair, she said.
Everywhere, on their arms, faces, vests, shoulders, they were smeared with a grey dust stuck to sweat and resin. This covering was so thick that in the half-light it looked as if their faces were covered with fur.
Steep and hot, said the boy.
In the trough there’s running water, she said.
The men turned to look where she was pointing. A little distance from the chalet was a massive, scooped-out tree trunk, placed horizontally on some stones. In front of it waddled four geese, phosphorescent in the half-light, and above the trough was a water pipe which came directly out of the grassy mountainside behind.
It’s a spring … if you want to wash.
We’ll be home in twenty minutes, said the one they called Father, who wore a beret and a leather waistcoat.
Home?
The geese came towards the house in single file, breasts stuck out.
We’re sleeping in the Chalet Blanc, explained Father.
There’s no spring there, she said, only rainwater.
We’ve got jerry-cans.
Wash there, it’s a spring, she said, a spring that never stops. You got soap?
Sure — and pyjamas! said a tall one.
In that case, I’ll get you some.
She went inside. When she came out she handed a large cube of soap to Father. The men left their sacks on the ground and went over to the trough, which was long enough for them to stand side by side.
In the early night breeze she could smell the smell of their washing: a mixture of soap, stale shirts, petrol, smoke, pine resin, sweat. She observed them, stripped to the waist. The backs of the younger ones were suntanned. The elder ones always wore vests and their backs, in contrast to their arms and shoulders, were white. The Father had taken off his beret. They were throwing the soap to one another and laughing. They found the two brushes she kept there for scrubbing the churn. A woman, she thought, washes herself quite differently from a man; a man washes his body like he washes down a wheelbarrow; it’s not by washing himself that a man learns to caress.
By the time they had put on their shirts it was dark. Under the eyes of Father each of them solemnly shook Danielle’s hand, thanked her, and pronounced his name. The name she remembered was that of the thickset one with sawdust in his hair. When he arrived he was the dirtiest, and she sensed that this was because he worked the most ferociously. Pasquale was his name.
They dumped their sacks in the trunk of the Mercedes. Four got in behind. Father sat in the front, and Pasquale was the driver. He sat behind the wheel, hunched up, concentrated and impossible to distract.
Every night on their way home the woodcutters stopped to wash themselves in the trough by Danielle’s chalet. She prepared coffee. They drank it outside sitting on their sacks. Virginio, who was tall and wore glasses, left a razor behind so that he could shave if he wanted. Danielle found a piece of broken mirror which she hung on a wire by the trough. She learnt that five of them came from the same village on the other side of the Alps, near Bergamo. Alberto came from Sicily. Every winter they returned home. She learnt that they were paid by the cubic metre of wood felled: the harder they worked, the quicker they earned. Father did the cooking. The Mercedes belonged to Pasquale.
Sometimes, when they passed in the very early morning they left a present for her: a tin of peaches, a bottle of vermouth. Once they left a scarf with a design of roses printed on it.
The first time I saw Pasquale out of his work clothes was when he knocked on the door whilst I was drinking coffee one morning.
I don’t work on Sunday, he said.
You deserve a day of rest.
To do what?
There was a long silence.
Once we worked on a Sunday and I had an accident.
What happened? I asked.
The trees were falling badly, one after the other. We weren’t working fast enough. That’s why we decided to work on Sunday.
Would you like some cider?
He shook his head.
Some eau-de-vie?
I’m not thirsty.
I’ll whip you some cream, I said.
His thick lips smiled and he opened his enormous hands in a gesture of submission.
Tell me what happened while I whip the cream.
A long silence.
About the Sunday you worked? I prompted him.
The very first tree I had to strip had fallen badly. Where we were working was very steep, like here. Rocks everywhere. Crevices. Gulleys. I told myself I’d work toward the head, so as not to have to walk back along where I’d already stripped. They’re as slippery as fish when you strip them. Sometimes the resin splashes your face when you are axing the bark off.
The cream was thickening, leaving the side of the bowl. I watched Pasquale talking. There was a sadness in his face. He had stopped his story. Silence.
Do you have a brother or sister? I asked.
Not one. My mother died when I was born.
And your father?
He went to America and we never heard from him. He disappeared into America like a tear into a well, my aunt says.
Again silence — only the noise of my fork in the bowl.
Go on, I said, go on.
I started stripping her from the top and she began to roll from the head. Nothing stops a rolling tree except another tree or a rock. I hesitated because I was worried about the machine. It was a new one we had just bought. If you hesitate, you’re lost. I jumped too late, holding the machine above my head. In the gulley I began to slide, it was as steep as the side of a pyramid. I slid over onto some dry rocks below and they broke a leg.
Could you get up?
The machine wasn’t hurt!
No machine is worth a broken leg.
A machine like that costs half a million.
A long silence.
You couldn’t get up?
They carried me home to the hut and laid me on the bed. Father said: Pasquale, can you wait till tomorrow? At first I didn’t understand. Wait for what? Before we take you to hospital. That’s twenty-four hours, I said. I’ll sit with you, he replied, pain gets worse when you’re alone. No, go back and work, I told him. Next day, Monday, they took me to hospital. I handed him the bowl and he began to eat the cream. His huge hands rested on the table. To eat he lowered his head to the spoon. When he had finished he screwed up his face and smiled.
I’ve never tasted cream as good as that, he said.
Why didn’t they take you to hospital immediately?
Because it was Sunday.
Well?
On Sundays we are not insured. What we do on Sundays is at our own risk. He looked at me very seriously. Like what we do today, he said.
There was another long silence and we did nothing.
If you come next Sunday with your friends, I said, I’ll make a tart to go with the cream.
A few days later Danielle had the idea of passing by the arolle tree to get to the ridge above Nîmes — blueberries abound there — and then climbing down the scree to surprise Marius, whom she had neglected to visit for a week or two. She filled her bucket with berries and her fingers were stained blue as they used to be when she wrote in ink at school.
She approached the edge to look down on Peniel. The sky was cloudless. There was a strongish north wind which would fall when the sun went down. The sun was low in the sky so that the cows had long shadows like camels. Marius was there with his dog beside him. Yet there was something wrong. She sensed it without knowing why. The old man was shouting, his arms outstretched before him towards the crags. Why didn’t the dog move? She couldn’t hear what he was shouting because she was upwind. Then, abruptly, the wind dropped.
Sounds, like distances, are deceptive in the mountains. Sometimes you can recognise a voice, but not the words the voice is saying. Sometimes you hear a cow growl like a dog, and a whole flock of sheep singing like women. What Danielle thought she heard was:
Marius à Sauva! Marius à Sauva!
The sun was so low that it was lighting only one side of each mountain, one side of each forest, one side of each little hillock in the pastures; the other side of everything was in dark shadow, as if the sun had already set or not yet risen.
Perhaps he was telling the dog to go and save one of the cows, she argued to herself, that could sound like à Sauva. Yet why didn’t the dog move?
Marius à Sauva!
She could no longer be sure, the wind had got up again. She picked her way carefully down the scree. Occasionally she dislodged a stone or a pebble which, clattering down, dislodged others, and they in their turn others. Yet despite the noise of her descent, Marius never once glanced up. It was as if at Nîmes, that evening, all sounds were playing tricks.
The dog ran to greet her. She waited for Marius to kiss her on her cheek as he always did. He kissed her and began talking as if they had been stopped in the middle of a conversation.
You see Guste over there — he pointed at a thickset Charolais with curly hair like wool — he’s charming, Guste, the gentlest bull I’ve had, and already he’s too old. I shall sell him for meat this autumn. He’s two and a half. Next year his calves will be too small.
You must have thought I’d disappeared, Danielle said.
He lifted his hat and put it lower on his brow.
No, no, he said, gently. I hear their chain saws all day. And there are six of them, aren’t there? Bring the Comtesse over! Gently, in God’s name! Over!
He stopped in his tracks and leant against the side of a large boulder covered with moss. He was rubbing the back of his hand against the moss. And our summer at Peniel, he said, you’ll remember it, won’t you, Danielle?
The following Sunday the woodcutters came after supper to eat the blueberry tart Danielle had made. With them they brought two bottles of Italian sparkling wine. They were dressed as if they were going to town. Thin pointed shoes instead of boots, white shirts, natty belts. It was only their scarred hands they could do nothing about. Virginio was the most transformed by his change of clothes: tall and with glasses, he almost had the air of a schoolmaster. Father looked older, and Pasquale younger.
The days were drawing in and the end of the summer approaching. The pastures now were not green but lion-coloured, there were no flowers left, every day the buzzards circled lower, and by eight o’clock in the evening it was almost dark.
The men lay on the grass and looked up at the sky, where the first stars were appearing. They could feel the warmth of the earth through their shirts.
Would you like some more tart?
It was so good.
I made two, replied Danielle proudly and went indoors to fetch the second.
Next week the helicopter, said Virginio.
I’ve never seen a helicopter getting out the wood, said the boy.
Lifts pines like matches.
You look up and you feel as small as a frog, said Alberto the Sicilian.
Do you know how much it costs them to hire a helicopter for an hour?
No idea.
Two hundred thousand. In an hour it uses two hundred litres of petrol.
Here, Pasquale, take your tart, said Danielle. The other men were scarcely visible but she recognised their voices.
Helicopter pilot killed himself near Boege last year.
They were passing round a wine bottle.
Forgot his cables, didn’t look down.
They’re forbidden by law to do more than four hours’ flying a day, said Father. In four hours they can get eighty trees off a mountain.
If one of his cables gets entangled, said Alberto, miming with his hands, it pulls him out of the sky. Plouff!
Next century we’ll do everything in the sky, said the boy.
Nobody’ll work like us, next century.
Pasquale’s packing it in next year, isn’t that right?
I haven’t decided yet, said Pasquale.
You won’t make it. You can’t take on the supermarkets single-handed, said Virginio.
With fruit and vegetables you can, insisted Pasquale.
No, said Father, you can’t compete with their prices or their publicity.
I’m going to make my own publicity!
The other men laughed. A jet airliner crossed the sky, they could see its lights.
I’m going to get a bird, a Blue Rock Thrush.
He’s out of his mind, our Pasquale!
You can teach a Blue Rock Thrush to talk.
So?
Every time a customer comes into the shop the bird’ll talk. Pasquale recited a saleman’s patter which, under the stars, sounded more like a prayer:
Guarda quanto è bella ’sta mela
quanto è bellissima e cotta!
Turning to Danielle, he translated the words for her: Look at the lovely apples, ripe and lovely apples!
The boy giggled. A good idea, said Father, but you need to give it a twist, make it unforgettable. Teach your bird to insult your customers. Stronzo! for the husband! Fica for the wife. They’ll adore it, they’ll adore it in Bergamo.
Are you sure?
I’ll train the bird for you, said the Sicilian.
The moon was rising to the right of St. Pair. They watched a pink halo slowly changing into a white mist and then, suddenly, the bone-white incandescence of the first segment of the moon. Danielle sat down on the grass beside Pasquale.
When are you going to pack it in, Father?
Next year, sometime, never, sometime … I’ve no choice, I don’t want to drop dead.
The head of the moon was now free in the sky, enormous and close-up like everything newborn.
Do you know who dropped dead last Tuesday? asked Virginio. Our friend Bergamelli — had his throat cut in prison.
Who did it?
The Brigade Rouge.
Bastards!
Bergamelli? Danielle whispered.
A gangster from Marseille … Virginio knew him when he was in prison, said Pasquale.
In the moonlight which became brighter as the moon grew smaller, Danielle could see Virginio’s face, pillowed on his arms, gazing into the firmament.
He reminded me of my father, Virginio went on, Bergamelli had the same truculence, the same dark look when he was crossed, the same smile when something pleased him … He was killed when I was twelve, fell off a roof, my father.
Virginio took off his glasses and stared at the moon.
He was a mason, your father?
He built chimneys … The day they carried him home, I opened the veins on my wrists … they found me too soon. They carted me off to hospital, him down to the cemetery.
Shit! muttered Alberto.
From that day on I knew something, said Virginio; in this god-forsaken life everyone is abandoned sooner or later. Father did everything with me. He taught me to cook, he showed me how to catch frogs, hundreds a night, he saw to it I knew how to pick locks, he was my music teacher, he told me about women, when he got drunk in the café by the big fountain he stood me on the table and I danced whilst he sang — and then one Wednesday morning, dry weather, sober week, clean shirt, good boots, one godforsaken Wednesday morning — pfft! like that, he fell off a roof. I used to go and look at the mark on the pavement where he landed.
From the stable came the muffled sound of goat bells. Sometimes at night their bells sound oleaginous, like the light on the surface of water in a deep well.
I can see him up there. He can’t see us. If we all shouted together he wouldn’t hear us. The dead are deaf to all the dynamite of the world.
A long silence followed, as if each one of them were thinking about the deafness of the dead.
It’s hard to lose a father, said the Sicilian.
Harder than losing a mother?
When you lose your father you know there’ll be no more miracles.
I never knew any miracles, said Pasquale beside Danielle on the grass. My father disappeared like a stone into a well before I knew him … so I never knew that loss.
The galaxies were visible at Peniel, as they never are on the plain. More than alcohol their silence makes people talk.
Is your father alive, Danielle? asked the boy.
He’s alive … I don’t know him like Virginio knew his father. He doesn’t talk to me much. All he says to me is: You’ll never make a wife, Danielle, like your mother was, you’re not modest enough to make a man happy, my girl.
Perhaps your Papa doesn’t see you as you are, said Pasquale, as if each of his words were a button he was pushing through a buttonhole.
Pasquale should know, declared Virginio, suddenly jubilant, for our Pasquale has eyes only for you!
The men, except Pasquale, laughed and the boy chanted:
Guarda quanto è bella ’sta mela
quanto è bellissima e cotta!
A few days later I climbed up to the pass with the idea of paying Marius a visit. I looked down and saw his herd grazing by the stream. Then I heard his voice.
Marius à Sauva!
This time there was no doubt. Each syllable was distinct and each syllable could be heard twice as it echoed off the Tête de Duet. I crouched down on the ground and protected my head with my arms as you do when lightning is near. Let no more words be said, I prayed. Let him be quiet.
Marius à Sauva!
I crept forward on my stomach. He was standing by the first boulder below. His arms were outstretched.
For your slope I have legs! he shouted.
The words still sounded like an order. What did he expect to happen? What did he hope to see change among the crags?
For your slope I have my old legs!
The first time he had said nothing about his age. Now he was shouting about being old.
For your peak I have eyes!
He covered his eyes with his hands as if weeping.
The echo of each word made the silence which followed more terrible.
For your trees I have arms!
It would have been like a reply if something had moved. Everything remained motionless. Even I was holding my breath.
For your trees, my faithful arms!
Johnny was standing a little distance away from Marius, his tail between his legs.
For your load I have a back!
Not even the shape of a cloud changed. The old man was on his knees, looking up at the rockface.
For braking your sledge I have heels!
He was banging his feet on the earth and leaning his weight backwards as if bringing a charged sledge down a slope.
For braking your sledge I have heels and buttocks!
The cows were grazing peacefully behind him.
He climbed up on a boulder and stood on top of it, a good two metres above the ground. The sight of his tiny figure on the boulder dwarfed by the vast slopes of Peniel made me understand something. Marius was speaking of his achievement. Marius set no great store on the opinion of others. What Marius had done all his life he had done for its own sake. His achievement wasn’t only his herd of thirty cows. It was also his will. Every day now, old and alone, he found an answer to the question Why go on? Nobody ever replied for him. Every day of the summer he had found the answer himself. And now, alone, he was boasting of it. That is what I told myself.
He thrust his hands into his trousers.
For your grot I have balls! For your grot my balls!
In the grass were autumn crocuses, their yellow and violet petals open like the beaks of baby birds. I smashed them with my fist. I smashed every one I could see.
When the woodcutters came to wash that evening, Danielle took Pasquale aside and said: I must talk to you.
Next Sunday, he said.
No! she insisted. Now! I can’t stay another day if I don’t talk to someone.
Pasquale went over to the trough and conferred with Father. She heard them speaking in Italian. Within five minutes Father was chivying the others to get a move on. The ritual of combing their hair one by one before the broken bit of mirror was renounced. They picked up their sacks, said good-bye, and with the slow list of their habitual fatigue, made their way to the car. Alberto the Sicilian got into the driver’s seat.
Pasquale stayed behind and started shaving in front of the broken mirror.
You can’t see a thing, Danielle said. Why do you have to shave now?
It’s the first time you’ve asked me to supper.
Supper, it’s only soup!
She began to sob silently. At first, peering into the mirror in which he could see nothing, Pasquale did not notice. It was her immobility which finally made him look up in her direction. He saw her shoulders trembling.
Shhh, he said, ssshhh. He walked her towards the chalet. A goose followed them. The door was open. Inside he stopped because it was pitch-dark and he could see nothing. She led him by the hand to a chair pulled up by the table, then she sat down herself on the chair opposite. She thought neither of lighting the lamp nor of heating the soup.
Something happened this afternoon, she said.
What?
In the pitch darkness, her hands placed on the table, she told him, quietly and slowly. She even told him about the crocuses. When she had finished there was silence. They heard a cow pissing in the stable, separated from the kitchen by a wall of pine boards.
Why should an old man talk to the mountains like that? she whispered.
Danielle, said Pasquale, speaking very slowly and weighing each word, it was not to the mountains the old man was shouting, it was not to the mountains he was offering himself part by part, it was to you and you know that, you know that, don’t you?
She began to sob again and the sobs became howls. She stood up to take in breath and to howl louder. Pasquale felt his way round the table and took her in his arms. She pressed her face as hard as she could against his chest. She bit his shirt which tasted of resin and sweat. She bit a hole in it.
On his wrist Pasquale had a watch with an alarm. It woke him at four-thirty. He did not want the others to pass by the chalet to fetch him, for he knew she would not yet understand their laughter. He kissed her repeatedly, he felt for his boots and clothes on the floor, and he slipped out to dress on the grass where they always left the Mercedes.
If today you pass through Bergamo and take the road north towards Zogno, you will find at the edge of the town where the sidewalk is no longer paved and the telegraph poles border the road, opposite an AGIP garage, next to a yard where men repair tyres, a shop with a sign that says VERDURA E ALIMENTARI. If it’s winter you will find Pasquale inside serving. He weighs the vegetables on the scales with the scrupulousness and precision of Saint Peter. He looks preoccupied and proud.
Danielle’s baby was a girl whom they christened Barbara. In the waste-land behind the shop, Pasquale has fixed a swing on a plane tree and Barbara sometimes plays there with her friends. The men in the tyre yard call Barbara their Uccellina, their tiny bird.
If it’s summer you will not see Pasquale, for having spent all his savings on the shop, he’s obliged once again to work as a woodcutter in the mountains on the other side of the frontier. When he’s away he writes to Danielle most Sundays, telling her how many trees they’ve felled and what the weather is like. Danielle speaks Italian to her customers in the shop but with a noticeable French accent. She is more smartly dressed than many of them and wears large gold-coloured rings in her ears. She is expecting another baby.
Hanging on a wall near the door is a cage. The bird in it is blackish, a Blue Rock Thrush with a yellow beak and eyes like sequins. Whenever a customer comes into the shop the Blue Rock Thrush croaks out one of the insults Pasquale taught him. He is able to distinguish between men and women so that the insult fits. The customers would miss him by now if he weren’t there. Sometimes a customer speaks back to the bird as if to a fellow sufferer, cursing men or women or the government or priests or lawyers or the tax office or the weather or the world. And sometimes when no one is paying him any attention or feeding him any nuts, he blinks his sequin eyes and slowly repeats a phrase which has the accent and cadence of another language, of the voice of another teacher.
Marius à Sauva! Marius à Sauva …
In the little grocery shop there’s no question of sounds deceiving.