Trio (31 page)

Two mechanisms in slow motion.

I watched the idiot amusing himself in the courtyard, he was making mud pies and I suddenly saw him breaking an arm or a leg or losing an ear, quick, I called him so as to see him smile at me, a recourse I didn’t have with the broken plates but the day he stopped smiling at me, wouldn’t that be the end of him, not wanting to stay with me, not wanting his tub anymore, and there he is gone to find other suns, other adopters, other mud pies.

People are right when they say that it’ll all be the same in a hundred years.

As poor Raymond said when he died and landed me with the cretin, something to fill in the gaps in your existence, think about his future, make him take his tub, and those jams he didn’t have time to finish, I’m speaking about Raymond, I had to boil them up again after the funeral and we were still eating them years afterwards, just imagine the pleasure, I had to start all over again from scratch, the child kept asking, that they were the plums from our garden, that Edmond and I had picked them, that we’d bought a preserving pan and that he died like that in the middle of a glut of jam, so depressing that I sometimes couldn’t even finish it, while I was washing up I used to think about the pleasure we’d have had if we could have eaten it together, I’m talking about Rodolphe, to keep telling the child with such patience that it was the plums from our garden, are you listening, picked do you remember with Uncle Nanard, I’m talking about me, who went with you to buy that great big preserving pan in which Uncle Momolphe made the jam which if he weren’t dead he’d be eating with us today, then to sick it up in disgust because of brooding over the funeral, terrible heat, a smell of the cemetery in our perishing fruit, poor uncle on his bed looked as if he was winking, that sort of thing, all the time telling myself that it would all be the same in a hundred years, what is jam, what is death, it would all pass as the days went by.

Ah no, goodwill.

As for the housework, scrubbing washing up or tub, I admit that I came to terms with it, the head or whatever it is that we call by that name does its work of preservation, how many memories came back to me then thus restoring the balance of the situation which without them would have been dangerously inclined towards sleep, it was thus that a session of pea-shelling could sharpen my judgment to the point of making me take action in time when the idiot was in danger, this by the detour of the snippets which one thing leading to another had brought me up to that particular day, and to the exact hour and second after which my cretin fell off the ladder or swallowed the sponge, a thing that I ought to have deplored without my little bits of housework.

With neither calendar nor passion.

And anyway it wasn’t as if we didn’t have any more visitors, I’ve always liked that and some did still come at longish intervals, a red letter day for us both, my heightened sensitivity made me turn to look in the direction of the valley at the precise moment when at the far end, down there, miles away, the visitor in some sort of vehicle or on a velocipede or even on foot came out of the forest, it was someone for us no doubt about that, we took up our positions on the terrace and watched his progress, an ant at that distance, and I said another visitor you see how people spoil us, who can it be, the road keeps winding, here a copse, there an old wall, the visitor got bigger and bigger, the child asked what’s a visitor and I’d start all over again from scratch, it’s someone who comes in a car or on a bike or you might say a vehicle or a velocipede or even a person on foot who comes to see us, why to see us, because people’s eyes need to look back so that their hearts can be happy, what’s a heart, ah a heart, my boy, a heart is
 
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but who could it be, the visitor was getting bigger and bigger, it was a sports car.

An old-fashioned sports car, we’d taken up our positions on the terrace where we could start all over again from scratch, what’s a year, years, all the time keeping our eyes on the visitor, watching him from one bend to the next, I was preparing my words and phrases, a deck chair, the last bend any minute now, only a hundred yards, only fifty, the sports car was going to stop, it did stop, the visitor got out of the vehicle.

In the excitement that gripped us three times a year.

We who had been preparing soft drinks, a deck chair, words and phrases for a visitor, clean hands and adopted smiles.

Recalling various snippets, talking about Momolphe again, doing the honors of our old roofing tiles, of our jam and of our funerals.

The happiness of semi-cretins when they’re breaking the crockery or washing their Ps.

Now it sometimes happened that the idiot would get lost in the wood and I’d go looking for him ringing a handbell, he’d come running as if I were the lost nanny goat, associating with him will have been the source of a good many discoveries.

Now the visitor drank his soft drink and at the same time recalled Momolphe, he could still hear him, such a good man, how come he hadn’t heard he’d died, hardly believable, as proof I brought a pot which we ate of jam.

How much goodwill I needed, I repeat, not to say at every twist and turn, I must be playing the fool or snoozing, things just don’t happen like that, an unconscious misapprehension may well have led me astray all my life, my love of word-spinning which would have invented the child and the visitors if they hadn’t happened to be there, coming out of the forest, while I was absentmindedly passing by, pondering over Momolphe’s inheritance, that bundle of trouble he grudgingly bequeathed me
 
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or that they weren’t in the wood but at every twist and turn of my sleep, becoming embodied as the days went by so as to claim their share of the inheritance, as if poor Alfred with a simple wink had foreseen my snub and traced with three pots of jam the path I should have to follow.

Interspersed with silences and hiccups.

We used to go shopping in the village, going down by the shortcut between the blackthorn hedges, the child made bouquets of lucerne and I like an old nanny kept on saying what’s lucerne, imagining that one day he’d come to his senses and leave me standing with the shopping bag, I was wrong about that as I was about all the rest, my goodwill was that lousy stuff you have in the corner of your eye when you wake up, it’ll take me to the end of my life and even longer to get rid of it, that sort of sadness, and when we’d get to the grocer’s we’d buy some sweets and I’d let him suck them while I imagined the day when without him I’d be dragging my feet from one shop-window to the next and end up at the bistro by forgetting what had brought me there, so that love if that was what it really was yes I could have done without it but there you are, it isn’t every day that you make a hash of the jam.

So that when I’d finished my shopping I would meet the idiot on the pavement, he’d finished his sweets, we went on to the bistro
 
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So that when I’d finished my Pernod I would have another to reim- merse myself in a previous situation where without Momolphe or the child
 
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the waiter asked me what’s the matter Monsieur Nanard.

And that taking previous situations into account you might call that happiness, three potatoes in a shopping bag and a cretin sticking to you like a shadow but something tells me
 
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It’ll pass the waiter kept saying, it’ll pass Monsieur Nanard.

Now with neither calendar nor passion
 
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For Rodolphe too came to forget at the barcounter, that’s how his mornings passed, blind as I was, I find his inheritance no light burden, every day we’ll be tracking his obsessions in the dregs of my cup.

Now one evening when we weren’t expecting anyone a friend of Rodolphe’s came to see him not knowing he was dead, hardly believable such a good man, I never stopped repeating what’s a visitor but you must have something, we chatted and watched the idiot silhouetted a very long way off on the west side, a certain sweetness, and taking lost situations into account you might call it happiness, an insipid taste to things, a feeling of having done your duty with every fart you let, with in the background that landscape like a Japanese screen with no perspective, old empyrean, an old boat that carries us along like dejected schoolboys, they’ve failed the exam.

We can’t have been gay but the evening went all right even so, you must have something, he enquired after the idiot, you know he sleeps in a barn but which one, and you Monsieur Édouard will you spend the night in my modest abode, it was a good opportunity, no, someone was expecting him.

Or the pleasure the idiot and I had in prolonging the curtailed visits, if so and so stayed we’d spend the next morning cosseting him, tell us about your wife and daughter, he answers that his daughter is at a ball, a splendid creature and everything, as for his wife she hasn’t managed to cure him of the empyrean, that paradise of dejected Japanese, admitting this to us in all modesty.

So we were weeding the meadow shoulder to shoulder, a tedious occupation that gave me the opportunity to repeat what’s lucerne, what’s chicory, until it was time for the tub or the postman but there wasn’t a postman anymore, when I pondered over the time of stillborn aspirations as if the present, that cowardly solitude, already governed the past, for I haven’t always been alone, the team Edmond and I formed proves that, we created a situation, I sometimes remembered in the evening that there was a button to be sewn on or a doubt to dissipate, I’d go to the bottom of things, scrupulously, methodically, and often he sent me about my business, until the day when I no longer had the joy of pleasing him, into what hornets’ nest, while pulling out a root, conscience to make you giddy, that’s the result, but this made a lot of situations at the same time and very late into the night I was still going over all the details of the past, no one to call me to order, as if my love for the cretin increased the distances tenfold and that at the height of passion the other was no more than a shadow, an ant disappearing down the road, going into the forest
 
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a telescope, quick a telescope before my last attachment fades away.

Well yes then he used to get up in the morning and hang about in the courtyard, his hair all over his face, a certain elegance, I still have in my eyes the sight of his emotion when he was watching the clouds, in my nose his smell of the byre and in my ears his voice which opened my mind to the empyrean of the Japanese and of cretins, the sadness of situations without a future.

The hour when I ponder.

Mechanisms in slow motion.

The misery of this situation, the last one, to prolong it until death ensues, forget all vanity, all propriety, go back by easy stages to the Japanese paradise and inscribe myself there on top of a mountain, stay there forever, or under a little bridge watching the river water flow, three immutable wavelets.

He handed me the soap and my hand happened on his P, the innocent began to stiffen.

Here, I said to the visitor, if you’d like to watch, and I led him to the washhouse, it was time for his tub, the adopted child undresses and the session started, I’d whetted Monsieur Edmond’s appetite, just you wait and see, to relieve the tedium of that evening, make the cretin have an erection, waste of time, the presence of a third party put him off, we had to give up.

A sorry nature.

That we haven’t yet found the words, all this time, to do without nature, a phrase that would hold everything together, we’d say it from the morning on a full stomach until the evening when as the sun was setting we’d say it again with a stale mouth, no more need for either sleep or pleasure, a nourishing, soothing phrase, a panacea, while weeding the meadows, washing other people’s Ps, nutritious, absorbable, enlightening, until the day
 
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And that day the idiot would appear like a seraph in that landscape with no perspective, his limpid eyes finally both looking at the same object, his plastered-down hair, his impeccable jeans, the elegance of the sky, and he would keep repeating to us the phrase that would suddenly open the doors of further empyreans one after the other, we would pass from one to the next
 
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That phrase.

Still not found.

You understand, he said, still not found.

Working on marginal notes.

The scarecrow was lying on the ground and the master went up to it, touched it lightly on the shoulder, on the jeans, it would have to be put back in the bush, haven’t got the heart, it would have to wait on the dunghill, incalculable distress, would only appear in dreams now, which barn had he slept in, nailed to all the surrounding trees, no more sleep, from the bedroom to the kitchen he pondered over the phrase that would save him, waste of time, nothing left but to let yourself go under, night had come, the rain was pelting down on the cobbles in the courtyard.

Huddled up in an armchair he was already stiff.

You understand, he said, love, if that’s what it was really I could have done without it.

Death at the slightest deficiency in thought.

Here, without a calendar.

The idiot must have gone out in the morning, he hadn’t come in for his coffee, the neighbor apparently saw him by the river upstream from the pinewood, what was she doing there, a long way from her usual haunts, the master hadn’t reacted, the child must be fishing for bleak, he’d been seen the previous day tying a hook on his line, he used to go off writh the farmhand or on his own and stay out for hours, but rarely later than noon, his stomach would be gnawing at him.

Not to remember anymore, intermittently, the color of his eyes or a gesture, the child would be no more than a shadow, an ant disappearing into the distance.

He must have gone out in the morning, the goatherd apparently saw him over by the pinewood but the doctor poured himself out another glass and said
 
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From one year to the next these great changes in depth.

He must have gone out in the morning, he’d been seen the previous day tying a hook on his line, the farmhand said that the goatherd apparently saw him upstream from the pinewood, what was she doing there, the master hadn’t reacted busy drinking his aperitif on the terrace when suddenly the maid had appeared and said monsieur is served, an antiquated expression that amused the doctor, he asks her by the way who moved the scarecrow but she didn’t know, the kitchen window looks out on to the other side.