Divisadero (21 page)

The thief would disappear
early in the mornings, before anyone was awake, returning at noon with berries,
fresh herbs, sometimes a hare, all rescued, as he called the act, from the
surrounding
fi
elds. Coming over a rise, they would
fi
rst smell the smoke of a
fi
re and then see him beside it, cooking by
the edge of the road. He had a rough grey stubble that made him appear
ponderous, as if used to lazy movement, but he could disappear in an instant or
arrive just as quickly, providing the alfresco lunch. Lucien therefore felt he
himself should be responsible for other meals—
fi
rst of all, beverage and
fi
g jam at four in the afternoon, and then
dinner, to be purchased at an inn in one of the villages they passed through.

The cart would halt
whenever Lucien smelled the possibility of an available house. He spoke with
mailmen and carpenters as to where there might be an abandoned farmhouse for
sale. Meanwhile the thief’s young wife would go off on the spare horse, the boy
riding behind her, to search along the side roads for a possible settlement for
her family. The three of them were travellers, Gypsies,
gitans,
who had
left their caravan in the south and were coming north to
fi
nd a new home. They might, he knew, at
any moment curl off and decide to remain in some anonymous
fi
eld. Already Lucien felt he would miss
them. He was enjoying the man
’
s
company, as well as the woman
’
s
singing in the mornings. Which had come
fi
rst, he asked her, her name, which was Aria, or her pleasure in
singing?
‘
Who knows,’ the husband said, ‘She’s Romani,
they have so many names. The secret name, which is never used but is her truest
name, which only her mother knows, that’s hidden to confuse supernatural
spirits—it keeps the true identity of the child from them. And the second name,
which is a Roma name, is usually used only by them. And that one is Aria.’

And
your
name, then?
Lucien
asked.

I am not Roma, the husband
said. I have simply attached myself to her, I live in
her
world. I am
not important.
The whole family felt half dreamt, especially in the way each of them wandered
off whimsically, the man in the morning, the woman and the boy in the
afternoon. Sometimes Lucien would be in front, guiding the horse, talking about
something, and would realize all at once that there was no one else with him.
They had slipped off, as if from a boat, and were swimming towards those
poplars.
No, I don’t have a name, a permanent name, the husband said, when asked again.
I know the Roma language, enough to survive, but... His sentences were
halfhearted, unpersuasive. He appeared uncertain of all things, and was content
to reside in a state as humble as a sparrow. The boy, whose name was Rafael,
longed for information and practical lessons and constantly asked the opinions
of the old
writer
. Because of this, Lucien assumed
there might be a jealousy from the father, but the man turned out to be
happiest listening to their discussions, while pretending to take none of them
in.
From the beginning each man regarded the other almost as a mirror. Two or three
times a day one would catch the gaze of the other. Even Aria recognized the
echo between them. They had a similar build, and the writer, in spite of his
supposed fame, had a hesitancy that made him as guarded as this shyest of thieves.
If
the man was a thief.
Lucien would never
witness any illegal act by him. And while the writer was considerably older, it
was Aria’s husband who was not quite of this world, his remarks porous, his
talents invisible,
the
paths he took almost erased.
Once Lucien picked up a book that the thief had been reading, and
saw a sprig of absinthe leaves used as a bookmark.
That felt like the
only certain thing about the man, and from then on, every few days, the writer
carefully noted the progress of the absinthe, making its own journey through
the plot.
‘I went to the war and I never came back,’ the thief said, crossing a
fi
eld with the writer one day, and it was
the most personal thing that would ever be revealed by this new friend. It had
come in response to the writer’s speaking of what he had witnessed in an
earlier war.
What is his name? Lucien had asked the wife that
fi
rst day as the family climbed into the
cart.
You will need to ask him that, she said.
That had been the start of the evasiveness.
I cannot call you a thief all the time. I shall certainly acknowledge the title
when it is apt, but I need a name.
Aùguste?
Peloque?
Liébard?
Any of those...
All right, Liébard it is.
He kept the man’s joke to
himself,
he was fond of
Un
Coeur Simple.
So the name Liébard was used for a while, the
fi
rst of many aliases, though Lucien
eventually forgot most of them. What he did remember was that in all their time
together he rarely saw Li
é
bard eat, even if he had just
cooked their meal. Aria would shrug if Lucien brought it up, as if that was an
explanation, as if she was saying,
Men.

Each evening during the
journey, they arrived at an inn where the writer would buy them a meal; he
himself would then sleep there while the family camped in the
fi
elds. The country air and the journeying
brought an appetite for sleep. But one night, Lucien Segura woke, not knowing
where he was. He was suffocating and threw off his blankets. Then he unbuttoned
his nightshirt and went to the window. There in the darkness he saw Liébard walking
along a narrow wall that ran along one side of the inn’s garden. There was
enough moonlight for Lucien to recognize his travelling companion and this
strange act in the middle of the night. He clapped his hands, and Liébard
paused and looked up and gave a slow wave. Lucien put a coat on and went
outside. They began talking quietly. He told the thief he’d been unable to
sleep. Then you should not sleep, he was told. Darkness has many potent hours.
It is often a waste of time dreaming through it.

I need your help, my
friend.
Liébard was instantly silent. Lucien paused also, waiting for a reply to his
dramatic statement, but there was just the invitation of the man’s silence.
After a moment Lucien continued. I need you to kill someone for me.
A further silence.
I feel my wife has become a nightmare.
She will damage our children. I feel that for the rest of my life she will
haunt me.

I have a wife too, in
another life. (Liébard was talking cautiously, as if aware this might be
remembered against him.) There are other ways to stop a haunting. I agree that
men and women haunt each other, but your children will take care of themselves.
The problem, the dif
fi
culty, is not the killing. It is harder to steal a healthy chicken
and cook a good meal. There
’
s
no skill in killing, it
’
s not equal combat. And as
well, it will destroy you. You have lost or misplaced your wits. Perhaps your
breathing, your sense of suffocation, is related to this, may have brought this
on. I can tell you of an herb
—la bourrache—
the flower is like a little
blue star and is good for your heart. It will calm you. We can locate some....

Lucien had not thought
about his dif
fi
cult, abandoned wife for weeks. So it was peculiar that she had all
at once risen to the surface of his thoughts on this night as an enemy. Now he
was embarrassed he had said such a thing to a stranger he had known for mere
days. He thought perhaps he might still be in a dream or in half-sleep.

Forgive me, he muttered.
No, I am honoured that you trusted me with the possibility, said the calm voice
back to him. Lucien did not quite laugh, but smiled in the darkness.

It was the morning after
the last of the
fi
g jam, that is how the boy Rafael would remember it, shortly after
they had passed through the village of D
é
mu, that they
found the home for the writer. They were resting in the back of the cart—the
writer, the boy, and his mother—when they felt it halt, breaking the sleepy
rhythm, as if they had stopped casually at the edge of a precipice. The boy’s
father sat up front with the horse, looking silently to his left. What was
tempting him was a lack of care along that pathway of trees. The grass had not
been scythed for months, and the branches of the plane trees tangled into the
opposing limbs. The writer sat up and followed the gaze. ‘Yes, perhaps,’ he
said.
‘Perhaps.
Will you wait here?’ All
fi
rst investigations of possible houses
were to be made alone. The family in the cart could not select a home for the
man any more than he would know how to choose the correct
fi
eld for the family—he would not know, for
instance, that it should contain a number of exits for them to feel secure.
Finding the
fi
nal home for one
’
s
remaining days was like a decision to be made in a fairy tale, with the prince
or princess needing to select a marriage partner before twilight. It had to be
a wise but also private desire, knowing what was honestly needed, although at
fi
rst it might seem appalling
—
a blind girl instead of a chatelaine, a hedgehog instead of a
blue-blooded suitor. The outside world would not know best. And so the family
remained in the cart and watched the writer kick his legs to remove the
stiffness of sleep and begin his cautious and suddenly youthful walk towards
the possible home.

Two days after the writer
bought the house along with the nine hectares of land that surrounded it, the
two men, Lucien and Liébard, entered the chest-high grass with scythes. Within
minutes they had disappeared from each other. Only if one of them paused could
he hear the other’s movement, the ceaseless sweep of a blade or, during longer
silences, the sharpening of its metal with a stone. They began before dawn,
while it was still cool and half dark, and even then insects rose into the air
and surrounded them. Their scythes swept above the ground to avoid stones and
roots. It would truly have been easier to burn the grass. But Liébard, who was
helping Lucien in his campaign to reclaim the overgrown
fi
eld, had insisted that the meadow needed
the ant and the cricket whose lives would be destroyed by such a
fi
re. The unseen traf
fi
c was necessary. And the writer might
long for that cricket in the grass, or a cicada within the trees in the future.

They pulled the tough
blueberry roots out of the ground and burned vines along with the cut grass on
the perimeters of the field. They raked open the soil and began crop-seeding it
so that bacteria in the mustard and clover would eventually draw in nitrogen.
At dusk they walked onto other properties, gathered seeds, and returned with
légumineuses,
scattering this family of beans and peas onto the writer’s land. Why not?
demanded
Liébard, who was as much of a traveller in some
ways as a blown seed or a bee.

Liébard knew what
comforted winged creatures in terms of domicile. He proposed not just
birdhouses, but holes drilled into blocks of wood for
fl
ying insects. He collected sun
fl
owers and split their stalks and tied
them against branches to create a home for bugs. He crammed hay into jars for
centipedes to use, for they would eventually eat the larvae of bugs that attacked
fruit trees. He was aware of the awkward moral balance in nature. You gave and
you took away. Wasps lay eggs that ate the larvae of butter
fl
ies, but then wasps were better for plant
life than the beautiful
fl
utterers, just as Li
é
bard knew that it was
lazy wealth in the
fl
uttering class that made them mean-spirited. In his
mépris
he
knew a thing or two about them—the result of sightings and witnessings over the
years,
fi
rst in
towns and now in fields. Although Li
é
bard would never
claim to be a moral man. He himself could be diverted by a feather.

On the second day some
distance from the writer
’
s house, the boy discovered a
fi
eld full of exits.
Hearing of this, Lucien suggested the family camp there if they wished. Before
actually making the offer, he told them he was giving them a
fi
eld, not suggesting that he needed
companionship. Perhaps they would not even talk much again, but he had a limit
of hectares and it was unlikely he would ever journey beyond the small lake.
And the
fi
eld in
question was a distance beyond that.