Later, when you had grown old, these children would have brought joy into your home, whereas now, because of me, you will live in sadness. Poor young couple! Be brave.
“Fernand, you wouldn’t do that,” said Monsieur Laloz, with a sad, sad smile.
I like my brother-in-law’s sad smiles. They bring to his face an expression of pain mixed with bitterness. Poor sister, poor brother-in-law, I won’t see you anymore. I pity you with all my heart.
“Speak to us, Fernand,” said my sister, holding her husband by the arm.
“Yes, I’ll speak to you. I came to see you one last time, to say farewell.”
Monsieur Laloz leaned toward my sister and whispered:
“Leave him be. At that age, a person knows what he is doing.”
Poor Monsieur Laloz! He did not realize how final my decision was. He thought I would come back tomorrow. He did not want to believe I was leaving the two of them forever, that it was the last time we would see each other.
And I walked out. My sister called to me in the stairwell. I did not go back.
* * *
I went to a shaded park. I don’t know anything more delightful than the walk I took there. The sun was pouring its gentle rays on the plants, directly into the dust raised by the children’s hoops. It was barely distorted behind its own heat. It held itself up in the sky without any system. Everything was calm. The guard made a comment to a child who was throwing white stones. He was wearing a uniform. Men in uniform are so charming in parks! They have all that space around them. And the statues. Why are they on pedestals? Why aren’t their bare feet resting on the grass?
I sat down on a chair. I was happy. I had finally arrived at what I wanted, though I might have weakened.
You can see I am not as weak as they say. I do have willpower. There are people who let themselves go, who are spineless, whom events can influence. They are at everyone else’s mercy. Not I. I have a lot of willpower when I want to. All I need is to will something, whereas others, even by willing, have no willpower. To do what I do takes courage. It is not just anyone who can plunge people dear to him into pain and find the strength to go on living without friends, as I decided to do.
And the funniest thing about it is that I am right. I am definitely right. What I did makes sense, otherwise I would not have done it. They are all suffering now. I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. Until now, I did not dare.
And you, reader, perhaps you are thinking that all this is not very logical. Right? Is that what you think? No, you find it all very clear. You understand what I meant. I left my parents, the woman I love, my friends. It’s understandable.
If something does not seem clear to you, I can do better. No, it’s not worth it. Everyone has understood.
Oh, yes! I just realized something. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that what I did is not extraordinary, that it was not difficult. Yes, I am sure that’s what you are thinking. But you do not know me. I am intelligent enough to grasp that lots of people could have done what I did. I sense that you do not admire me, am I right? Am I mistaken?
I have an idea. Tomorrow morning I will carry it out. And then you will be forced to understand. Above all, do not say a word.
It has to remain a secret so that no one will bother me. I will walk along the Seine, and then, well, never mind, I would rather not tell you anything now. I have my idea. No doubt everything will happen as I imagine it. And tomorrow I’ll tell you what I did.
THE CHILD’S RETURN
On the train taking me back to the village I had left five years earlier, all was silent. The heat was stifling on this July afternoon. The sun’s rays must have been keeping pace with us, for otherwise—based on my memories of the long minutes I had spent motionless, magnifying glass in hand, browning sheets of paper—I would have been surprised that the sun was as strong shining through the windows as it would have been had the train come to a standstill.
I drew the curtains, which were the same color blue as the flagpoles. It was only three o’clock. I was unsettled by the idea that time was not passing more quickly even though we were traveling through the countryside faster than a man on foot.
Occasionally, in those spots where the rails were smoother, it seemed as if we weren’t moving anymore. Only the metal ring of the alarm trembled, as if the jolt that had set it in motion had been strong enough to make it sway for several hours.
My natural apprehension prevented me from placing my feet on the foot warmers: perhaps they had become boiling hot since a few moments earlier when I had leaned over to feel them with the outer edge of my fingers, the most sensitive part. I imagined it would not have taken more than the flick of a switch by some conductor, in the head or rear car, for the heat to have been turned on again in the interval. This flick, I feared, could have occurred while the conductor was distracted, smoking a cigarette or reading the paper.
Through a window, held half open by a strip of cloth (cloth because of an administrative decree from 1917, when the soldiers had been cutting off the leather straps to use as uniform belts), the artificial wind of speed penetrated the compartment, coating our hair with coal dust. Field insects sometimes fell on the seats, slipping between the cushions as if into a chasm, which made me feel sorry for them like I did for the little worms in lettuce carried off by water from the faucet toward some dark sewer.
The tunnels came in series, like everything in life, like good luck and bad. Not knowing how long they were, I would hesitate to close the window. The smoke would surround us and, long afterwards, the taste of it remained on my tongue.
My neighbor was sleeping. At times he moved like a man awake, even though he kept his eyes closed. He would take a handkerchief out of his pocket, nodding his head, blowing his nose, all while he slept. Some remote force was commanding his limbs to move in order to find a comfortable position, but faltered when it came to tidiness and propriety. In a small railway station, the train stopped for three long minutes, which, even though they were scheduled, seemed to delay my arrival by three minutes.
When the passengers who disembarked had reached the road, we pulled out again. Bags in hand, they watched us go by.
From high up on a railway bridge, closer to the only cloud, the front tip of which was pointed so it could cleave through the air and follow us, we glimpsed small valleys, hillsides. In the distance steeples rose, their weathervanes crooked. The cars on the road seemed to be following a longer path.
We were traveling through an inhabited countryside where fields followed villages, a countryside furrowed by small streams crossed by wooden footbridges from which men were fishing.
This was the countryside of my youth, of illustrations to help you learn German, in which every object the small farmer uses is in its place, and nothing is lacking.
There were grindstones, wheelbarrows, thatched cottages, pitchforks, two horses pulling a plow, herds of cattle.
Cows grazed, chasing flies with their tails. Foals stopped in front of hedges, rearing up without danger to anyone in the vast pastures. An old woman carried a bundle of firewood so that the word “bundle” would stick in the children’s memories more easily.
The landscapes we passed through—each of us thinking of arriving or departing, each of us filled with expectation or farewell—this countryside where we would never go except on train tracks unless by some impossible chance, but which cheerfully went on with its life nonetheless, filled me with melancholy.
A newspaper, which no one had bothered to fold back up and which had been tossed a number of times because it would not land properly, lay on the floor.