“It’s possible, now that you mention it. It is possible. We’d have to go and look at his stash in the willows, you know, where he hides his bottles.”
Marguerite opens the door wider and sticks her head out. There are white patches glowing on her cheeks — her peculiar way of going pale. She makes a sign toward her husband:
“Come, come quick.”
•
Maurras is left standing in the morning light, alone.
Now the sky is like a long, blue whetstone that’s sharpening the cicadas’ scythe. The violet mist begins to invade the lowlands, like a muddy river.
Over the shoulders of the houses you see Arbaud’s meadow on the hill, with the mown hay all in windrows, but nobody’s thinking of forking it over, or bringing it in; they have other concerns at the moment.
Maurras heads back home. His raffia sandals and the carpet of dust underfoot turn him into a shadow that slides around soundlessly. Even so, when he gets close to Jaume’s door, it opens. Alexandre is there in the darkness. All you can see are his mustache and his eyes.
“So?” he asks.
Maurras explains his idea about a remedy.
“That’s not where you have to look,” says Jaume. “I’m the one who knows, and I’m the one who’ll say so, when the time is right.”
And then, in an undertone, he adds:
“Above all, we have to keep our eyes on Janet, and there you have it.”
He shuts the door, and you can hear him sliding home the bolt.
At Arbaud’s house a shutter opens. They’re on the lookout there too.
•
The dreaded day has arrived, slowly but surely, one hour nudging the next along.
They’ve gone to check out Janet’s stash. There are two empty bottles, a bit of chocolate wrapper, and a bizarrely shaped dried root. Maurras has stuck the root in his pocket. Jaume has shrugged his shoulders:
“The remedy has to come from us. These roots, these cypress seeds, all this folderol, it’s worth nothing, I’m telling you. The remedy? It’s in our arms and in our heads. In our arms most of all. You have to treat these hills rough, like a horse. You know I know their ups and downs like the back of my hand. I haven’t hunted all over them for thirty years without getting to know their ways. It’s going to jump onto our backs from someplace we’re not expecting, and, right away, we’ll have to put our best front forward and get our arms moving. Who’ll win? We will. There’s not even a shadow of a doubt. There’ll be a dicey moment or two to get through, but I wager we’ll win. It’s always been like this. The only thing is, if we’re going to win, we can’t stand around gaping like a bunch of plaster saints.”
Even so, Maurras has put the root in his pocket. Arbaud said, “Let’s see it.” And he got a look: It resembled a little pitchfork scraped smooth with a knife. He whispered, “Hold on to it, you never know.”
At last it was time to fill the women in on what was happening. They were already shocked to see the men neglecting their chores, and all of these hushed conferences around Jaume. “So that’s what it is,” they said. Then each one of them had her own tale to tell. One had seen the cat. Another had heard voices in the trees. Babette mentioned her cupboard muttering away on its own like a fully-grown human being. Marguerite was already in the know. But with her, you’d have to cut your way through three layers of fat to touch any kind of a nerve.
•
At night, they’ve barricaded themselves in.
Jaume has carefully loaded all six of the barrels of his three shotguns. His grown-up daughter, as weathered and tanned as a grapevine, weighs the powder in a little scale—“Just a pinch more than we use for wild boar.” Then she passes it to her father in the hollow of her palm. It’s she who’s made sure of the door bolts, stuffed the kitchen drain with a rag, and checked the house out from top to bottom, until her father shouts, “Ulalie, to bed with you.”
Babette has prepared a night lamp for the bedroom. Then she’s bundled herself up under the sheets with her head against her knees, while her husband gets undressed. When he’s ready to get into bed she shows her face: “Aphrodis, did you shut the shed up good and tight? You should have leaned the plough against the door.”
And so on and so forth until, in the end, Arbaud has made up his mind to go out. But he hasn’t left the room yet before she leaps out of the bed in her nightshirt: “Aphrodis, wait for me, don’t leave me alone, I’m going with you!”
Maurras has set up his bed in his mother’s room. Their farmhand has come and scratched at the door, in tears. He didn’t want to go to bed by himself alone in the attic. They’ve let him come in and have laid a mattress down on the floor for him.
Gondran and Marguerite have sat down at Janet’s bedside, their eyes transfixed, a bitter taste in their mouths, feeling sick with anxiety, mystery, and fear.
•
And the dreaded day has arrived, slowly but surely, through the course of the night, one hour nudging the next along. And now, look: It’s peeking above the hills.
•
In a single leap the sun clears the crest of the horizon. It enters the sky like a wrestler, atop its undulating arms of fire.
Everybody has rushed outside: the men, the women, the two little girls, Labri the dog. They’re in a hurry. They want to get it over with. Since the middle of the night they’ve been waiting for dawn. Gagou, leaning against his pillar, watches on.
They’ve gathered under the oak, all of them. Without speaking, they’ve turned toward Jaume. He’s realized that he’s in charge. He’s conscious of it. It’s good this way. He has his two guns strapped across his back. Ulalie follows him, with her own firearm. And it’s not just a lady’s musket, but a good, stout, double-barreled shotgun loaded on both sides. On her hip, a haversack packed with cartridges.
Babette is there, a little girl on each arm, like a splendid tree ready to march forth bearing its fruits. She’s there with her well-scrubbed, lightly powdered girls, in their Sunday best. “You never know…”
•
Jaume has pulled the men aside.
“Let the women be,” he says. “Here’s the plan: I’m going up to Les Sablettes. From over there I’ll try to figure out what’s going on. Maurras, you’ll keep a watch over toward Bournes. Gondran, Les Ubacs. Arbaud, Les Adrets. What are we looking for? Everything, and nothing. How moist the air is, how warm, how cold, the wind, the cloud — you can get information out of all of them. So let’s go…”
He sets off right away, with his long strides. But before he disappears into the thickets of broom grass, he turns around and, cupping his hands, cries out: “It always comes from where you least expect it. Focus on everything, keep your eyes peeled. And, most important of all, if you see the cat, don’t shoot.”
Then he plunges back into the grass that’s up to his shoulders.
•
The men have left.
And Gagou has come out from between the pillars of his doorway.
He’s made his way into the square, over where the women are, with his arms dangling. He’s leading with his head, like a dancing marmot.
His lower lip droops, and he’s drooling. His chin is shiny with saliva. A grimace — actually a smile — wrinkles his nose and the outlines of his eyes.
Now, in the little square, he lurches heavily and swings his arms. One foot, then the other, one foot, then the other, and then the arms… His footsteps go thwack, thwack, and dust rises in a rusty, blue plume around him.
•
Right up till noon they’ve been keeping watch on all the paths leading to the Bastides.
Nothing has shown up; neither the cat, nor anything else. But who says bad fortune is obliged to travel by road? Isn’t there lots of room for it to pass right between the tops of people’s heads and the clouds?