“It’s the lash of a whip.”
“It’s a snake.”
“It’s the lash of a whip.”
Outside, the weight of the wind is crushing the oak. Dead branches crash into the watering trough. The chimney begins to roar, and ashes swirl around the fireplace like the dust stirred up by a flock of sheep.
•
In two bounds Gondran is at the door. It takes all his strength to wrench it open — the bolt is jammed so hard into the wall — and he bawls out toward the goat barn, where Marguerite is sorting some olive boughs:
“Gritte? Gritte? Aren’t you done down there yet, goddamit?”
•
The wind’s blown for two days and two nights, loaded with clouds. Now it’s raining. The storm that the gorge had blocked has reared up like a bull lashed by grass blades. It’s ripped itself out of the mud of the plains. First, its muscular back expanded, then it leapt over the hills and charged off across the sky.
It’s raining. A little raging rain, stirred up and then appeased for no reason, pierced by arrows of sunlight, battered by the rough blows of the wind, but undaunted. And its eager feet have flattened the oats. The entire population of swallows and blackbirds is sounding off in the trees.
The sky is like a swamp where patches of open water gleam between pools of slime.
•
At first Jaume had set himself down under the oak to sharpen his scythe. The leaves were shading him. He laughed at the women racing to bring the laundry in from the line. But the rain chased him off, just like the others. And now the folded sack he’s been sitting on is soaked like a sponge.
Arbaud, standing in the doorway of his barn, watches the rain. He’s been meaning to head off to the hill. Now he’s unhitched his mule. Maurras and Jaume have come to meet up with him.
The rain.
The fountain murmurs in unison, under the tree.
Gondran has turned up too, with his back arched against the downpour.
“Shitty weather!”
“Every time I’m set to go and make hay, it’s the same thing.”
•
Gondran’s talking. He’s been mulling his words over and over, he’s cursed the weather, he’s said what there is to say about the rain and the shape the soil is in, but now he’s striking at the root.
“I tell you, in my whole lifetime I’ve never seen anything remotely like this. I have to wonder where on earth he gets his crazy ideas. His brain is different from other people’s. You have no idea. It runs out of him in a stream and it’s not always so funny. Gritte can’t stay alone with him anymore. She’s afraid of him. Come on in, we’ll drink some absinthe, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“This business,” says Jaume, “it’s a bit like…”
He doesn’t finish his thought. Maybe he has an explanation to give, maybe he wants to see for himself before he makes up his mind.
•
There’s only the little square to cross, and the rain has let up a bit. It takes them no time to get to Gondran’s.
Janet is still lying there, stiff and shadowy. Paralysis has turned his scrawny neck into a rigid stake. Under his tawny skin his Adam’s apple rises and falls as he swallows tobacco juice. His eyes have fixed, once and for all, on the wall across from the bed, at the spot where they’ve hung the post office calendar.
Gondran brings out glasses and absinthe. They speak in hushed voices, as though they’re staked out for hares.
“He looks bad.”
“The tip of his nose is already drooping.”
“He won’t last much longer.”
It almost seems like a form of politeness, when they tell Gondran his father-in-law’s going to die soon.
And then, all of a sudden, without warning, that one starts up again. At first, he gives a bit of a sigh, like somebody who takes a deep breath before lifting a sledgehammer — nothing to really put the rest of them on guard — but then wham! it’s on top of them, before they’ve had any chance to prepare:
•
“There were little curls of smoke out in the meadow. They were women.
“They were bounding over the bristly grass, with their hair standing straight up like hoopoes’ crests.
“They were all different colors — there were bottle-green ones with moon-shaped piercings all sewn up with little red and blue stitches.
“They were fumeales, you know — little smoke-ladies. One had an ass like a bale of straw and a chest like a corkscrew, and she was wriggling around so much that her tits were flapping like streamers, going flip, flop, and fuck you too….
“And she was killing fleas by running her tongue under her arms, and scraping herself with lavender till her nails cracked.
“ ‘Strange piece of tail,’ I said to myself. I moved ahead, calm and composed as can be. She was so light on her feet it was like they were making music.
“There was another one of them, drinking at the stream, very ladylike. She was scooping up water with an oat casing, stretching her lips back as wide as her hand, baring her lovely teeth, and wiggling her rump in the breeze, like a ripe apple.
“I threw my arms around her. And she pissed on me, the dirty slut…”
•
“The toad that lived in the willow has come out.
“It has the hands and eyes of a man.
“A man who’s been punished.
“It made its home in the willow, out of leaves and mud.
“Its belly is full of caterpillars. But it’s still a man.
“It eats caterpillars, but it’s a man, you only have to look at its hands.
“It runs its little hands over its belly to check itself out: ‘Is it really me,’ it’s asking itself, ‘is it really me?’ It has good reason to ask, and then it cries when it’s certain it really is him.
“I’ve seen it crying. Its eyes are like kernels of corn, and the more it cries the more music it croaks through its mouth.
“One day I asked myself: ‘Janet, who has any idea what he did to be punished like that, to be left with only his hands and his eyes?’
“These are things that the willow would have told me if I knew how to talk its language. I tried. But there was nothing doing. It was as deaf as a fence post.
“The two of us, the toad and me, once we went all the way to Saint-Michel. It hopped along the bank to watch me.
“I used to say: ‘Hey, brother. So, what’s new?’ When I was watering the meadow it’d follow me around.
“Once, at night, I heard it coming. It was crawling through the mud going glug, glug with its mouth to get the worms to come out.
“And so they came along, dancing on their bellies and their backs. One of them was as thick as a blood sausage, all covered in hairs. Another one looked like a diseased finger.
“The toad put its paws on my feet.
“Its little clammy hands on my feet — I hate that. Then it made a habit out of it, the little prancer. Every time it came along I had to be on the lookout, it’d always put its clammy little paws onto my bare feet.
“The time came when I’d had it up to here. The thought hit me just as I was leaving the house.
“The toad was croaking, kind of a low croaking sound. It had a black worm and it was eating it. It had blood on its teeth, and its mouth was full of blood, and it was crying out of its corn-kernel eyes.
“I said to myself: ‘Janet, that food’s not fit for Christians, you’ll be doing a good deed…’
“And I swung my spade at it and lopped it in two.
“It clawed at the ground with its hands. It was chewing at the ground with its bloody teeth. It lay there with its mouth full of dirt, and tears in its corn-kernel eyes…”