Now he’s spotted it.
“Gritte, he’s here!” he shouts toward the kitchen.
It’s a cabriolet that’s climbing. Swaying in the ruts like a stout little cargo boat. The nag is ringing its bell.
Maurras passes by, dragging some bundles of olive branches.
“César, come over and have a glass.”
“Pour me one. I’m going to feed the goats. I’ll be right back.”
•
By now the horse’s bell is ringing just behind the embankment. At last the carriage appears. It slides into the little square, like a snail. The horse knows how to take care of itself — it goes on its own to the watering trough. The man makes his way up to Gondran’s.
As he steps on to the terrace, he says in astonishment, “Hey, what’s that you’re drinking?” Then, right away, “Come on, let me have a little.”
There is an empty glass sitting there waiting for him, after all. Before he arrived, Gondran had winked to César, “Wait and see how he knocks it back.”
It’s the doctor. Reddish hair and blue eyes. His left eyebrow, exaggeratedly long and pointed, sticks out of his forehead like a little horn. His broad, hairy hands are covered with freckles.
“Here’s to your health.”
He drinks, wipes his wickerwork moustache, and says, “Well, then, what seems to be the matter?”
Gondran pushes away his glass and coughs. Once. He coughs again. He draws his glass back, leans on his elbows, and says, at long last, “It’s my father-in-law. He came down with it the other night when we were watering the meadow. I’d sent him to the far end to shout out when the water got there. I was keeping an eye on the sluice. I knew he’d gone back to the house for a few nips — I could see him going back and forth in the moonlight. But then, for a long time he didn’t move.
“I shouted: ‘Janet! Hey, Janet!’ Nothing. No answer. At first I didn’t think much about it. I know him. He’ll lie down in the grass, and right until the water tickles his nose he won’t wake up. It’s his way. I’ve told him a hundred times: ‘One of these days you’ll drown.’ Which, now you can see, did him about as much good as…
“So, no answer. I was thinking: ‘Whatever, it’s incredible the water isn’t there yet.’ But with all those bloody mole-holes you never know. So I busted open the main channel with my spade.
“The water rushed out. It was making the grass on the banks hiss like the wind. A minute later I called out again. Nothing. Now this was beginning to get rather peculiar. So I go down and look around. I didn’t have a lantern. To tell you the truth — I was scared. What if I found him dead? At his age.
“He was stretched out on the ground, stiff. The water was up to an inch from his mouth. To get him out of there wasn’t easy, believe me. I was buried up to my knees in mud.
“We put him into his bed. And afterward he ate, he drank, he chewed his wad of tobacco, he talked, he could move his fingers and the lower parts of his arms. But the rest of him is as dead as a tree trunk.
“So, go take a peek at him.”
“That’s why I’ve come.”
The doctor savors the rest of his drink in little sips, smoothes out the horn of his eyebrow, then goes into the kitchen, where Marguerite’s tuneless voice immediately kicks up a fuss.
•
“Another shot, César?”
“Another shot.”
The doctor comes out.
“So?”
“He’s old. What age exactly?”
“In his eighties.”
“When you’re that far along, there isn’t really any more medicine you can take. Purge him. Give him whatever he wants. I don’t think he has much time left. He’d had a bit to drink, eh?”
Gondran smiles. He glances at César, then at the doctor.
“A bit? Papa Janet? Maybe he wasn’t a champion drinker, but he did knock back his six litres every day. I’m only talking about the wine, eh, I’m not counting the eau de vie — that’s something else, or the bubbly, or the rosé, or the cherries in brandy — the night he got sick he’d sucked back half a jarful.”
“All this comes out in the wash, in the end. I don’t believe he has much time left. But with a carcass like his, anything’s possible. Do what I told you. However, in my opinion, it’s like putting a bandage on a wooden leg. If he gets any worse, come and get me if you want, but it is a long way. It took me three hours to get up here.”
•
Night is already pouring into the valley. It washes over the haunch of the hill. The olive groves raise their song, under the shadow.
Gondran accompanies the doctor to his cabriolet and holds the horse by its bit.
“See you, Doctor.”
“See you. Don’t forget to purge him. He may have a bit of delirium. With alcoholics you always have to be ready for it. Don’t let it scare you.”
With the first squeak of the wheels he changes his mind:
“You know what — there’s no point getting me to come back. It’s going to run its natural course. There’s nothing to be done about it.
“You don’t know if you can take a carriage through the Garidelles shortcut, do you?”
•
“Sometimes they hang on longer than you could possibly believe,” says César. “Look at Papa Burle. It got the better of him last summer, but he lasted all winter and another summer, and oh my goodness, did he ever stink in the heat. We had to change him three times a day. He had worms right up his crack.”
•
To begin with, they laid him down in his own bedroom, but he called out a hundred times a day for his daughter, Marguerite, with a pleading voice like a little girl hailing her goats.
First to uncover his feet, then to lift up his head, then he’s hungry, then he’s thirsty. Then he wants his plug, and Marguerite slices the tobacco with her sewing scissors.
There are three steps leading up to his bedroom, and Marguerite’s feet are swollen from all the to-ing and fro-ing.
“What if we set his bed up in the kitchen? It would be a lot better, and I wouldn’t get so worn out.”
Finally they set it up next to the fireplace. If he leans over the edge, he can catch a glimpse of his daughter getting supper ready over the fire pit, where a spiteful-looking eye glows from the embers.
And he talks.
Nonstop, like a fountain, like an underground stream springing out from the very core of a mountain.
“… the Mane fair was the best by far for the whores from the whole district. There was a guy named Lance who got us all betting on numbered balls. If you didn’t choose the right one, you’d end up having to do it in the hayloft.
“… at the first inn on the right I always used to eat onion soup. You know, like clockwork. I’d arrive at Volx at dawn. I’d hammer on the door with my brake rod. The lady of the house would open the window. ‘Is it you, Janet?’ She knew my knock. She’d come down in her chemise to let me in, I’d give her a little squeeze on the ass, and the rest would take care of itself….
“… he was in there, huddled up in the straw against the grain bin, with his back arched like a cat. I knew he had his crook with him. ‘Is it you, you old bugger?’ I asked him. ‘It’s me,’ he said, ‘and what the hell, is it against the law now to take a nap in your own house?’ So I grabbed the pitchfork. ‘I’ll show you, you’ll see…’ ”
He laughs, softly, and then his steely eye turns toward the cauldrons: “Gritte, my bean soup, is it for tomorrow, or for today?”
•
This evening Marguerite hasn’t had time to cook. Gondran is eating a raw onion for supper. He’s sliced it down the middle. One by one he peels the concentric layers, dips them in the salt cellar, and downs them.
It’s a sickly kind of evening. The wind has picked up from the Rhône. A storm must be blocking the Mondragon gorge.