Yes, my love.
They danced until the white dress with red polka dots was stained with both their sweats, until there was no music left, until her blond hair smelled of his cows.
Years later, people asked: how was it possible that Boris, who never gave anything away in his life, Boris, who would cheat his own grandmother, Boris, who never kept his word, how was it that he gave the house to the blond? And the answer, which was an admission of the mystery, was always the same: a passion is a passion.
Women did not ask the same question. It was obvious to them that, given the right moment and circumstances, any man can be led. There was no mystery. And perhaps it was for this reason that the women felt a little more pity than the men for Boris.
As for Boris, he never asked himself: Why did I give her the house? He never regretted this decision, although — and here all the commentators are right — it was unlike any other he had ever taken. He regretted nothing. Regrets force one to relive the past, and, until the end, he was waiting.
The flowers which grew in the mountains had brighter, more intense colours than the same flowers growing on the plain; a similar principle applied to thunderstorms. Lightning in the mountains did not just fork, it danced in circles; the thunder did not just clap, it echoed. And sometimes the echoes were still echoing when the next clap came, so that the bellowing became continuous. All this was due to the metal deposits in the rocks. During a storm, the hardiest shepherd asked himself: What in God’s name am I doing here? And next morning, when it was light, he might find signs of the visitations of which, fortunately, he had been largely ignorant the night before: holes in the earth, burned grass, smoking trees, dead cattle. At the end of the month of August there was such a thunderstorm.
Some of Boris’s sheep were grazing just below the Rock of St. Antoine on the far slopes facing east. When sheep are frightened they climb, looking to heaven to save them; and so Boris’s sheep moved up to the scree by the rock, and there they huddled together under the rain. Sixty sheep, each one resting his drenched head on the oily drenched rump or shoulders of his neighbour. When the lightning lit up the mountain — and everything appeared so clear and so close that the moment seemed endless — the sixty animals looked like a single giant sheepskin coat. There were even two sleeves, each consisting of half a dozen sheep, who were hemmed in along two narrow corridors of grass between the rising rocks. From this giant coat, during each lightning flash, a hundred or more eyes, glistening like brown coal, peered out in fear. They were right to be frightened. The storm centre was approaching. The next forked lightning struck the heart of the coat and the entire flock was killed. Most of them had their jaws and forelegs broken by the shock of the electrical discharge, received in the head and earthed through their thin bony legs.
In the space of one night Boris lost three million.
It was I, thirty-six hours later, who first noticed the crows circling in the sky. Something was dead there, but I didn’t know what. Somebody told Boris, and the next day he went up to the Rock of St. Antoine. There he found the giant sheepskin coat, discarded, cold, covered with flies. The carcasses were too far from any road. The only thing he could do was burn them where they lay.
He fetched petrol and diesel oil and started to make a pyre, dragging the carcasses down the two sleeves and throwing them one on top of another. He started the fire with an old tyre. Thick smoke rose above the peak, and with it the smell of burned animal flesh. It takes very little to turn a mountain into a corner of hell. From time to time Boris consoled himself by thinking of the blond. Later he would laugh with her. Later, his face pressed against her, he would forget the shame of this scene. But more than these promises which he made to himself, it was the simple fact of her existence which encouraged him.
By now everybody in the village knew what had happened to Boris’s sheep. No one blamed Boris outright — how could they? Yet there were those who hinted that a man couldn’t lose so many animals at one go unless, in some way, he deserved it. Boris neglected his animals. Boris did not pay his debts. Boris was having it off with a married woman. Providence was delivering him a warning.
They say Boris is burning his sheep, said the blond, you can see the smoke over the mountain.
Why don’t we go and watch? suggested Gérard.
She made the excuse of a headache.
Come on, he said, it’s a Saturday afternoon and the mountain air will clear your head. I’ve never seen a man burning sixty sheep.
I don’t want to go.
What’s the matter?
I’m worried.
You think he could change his mind about the house now? He’ll certainly be short of money.
A flock of sheep’s not going to make him change his mind about the house.
We shouldn’t count our chickens—
Only one thing could make him go back on his word about the house.
If you stopped seeing him?
Not exactly.
What then?
Nothing.
Has he mentioned the house recently?
Do you know what he calls it? He calls it the Mother’s house.
Why?
She shrugged her shoulders.
Come on, said Gérard.
Gérard and his wife drove up the mountain to where the road stopped. From there, having locked the car, they continued on foot. Suddenly she screamed as a grouse flew up from under her feet.
I thought it was a baby! she cried.
You must have drunk too much. How can a baby fly?
That’s what I thought, I’m telling you.
Can you see the smoke? Gérard asked.
What is it that’s hissing?
His sheep cooking! said Gérard.
Don’t be funny.
Grasshoppers.
Can you smell anything?
No.
Imagine being up here in a storm! she said.
I’ve better things to do.
It’s all very well for you to talk, you’ve never lifted a shovel in your life, she said.
That’s because I’m not stupid.
No. Nobody could call you that. And he’s stupid, Boris is stupid, stupid, stupid!
He was encouraging the fire with fuel, whose blue flames chased the slower yellow ones. He picked up a sheep by its legs, and swung it back and forth, before flinging it high into the air so that it landed on top of the pyre, where, for a few minutes longer, it was still recognizable as an animal. The tearstains on his cheek were from tears provoked by the heat and, when the wind turned, by the acrid smoke. Every few minutes he picked up another carcass, swung it to gain momentum, and hurled it into the air. The boy who had never been able to tap the ash-bark gently enough had become the man who could burn his own herd single-handed.
Gérard and the blond stopped within fifty yards of the blaze. The heat, the stench and something unknown prevented them approaching further. This unknown united the two of them: wordlessly they were agreed about it. They raised their hands to protect their eyes. Fires and gigantic waterfalls have one thing in common. There is spray torn off the cascade by the wind, there are the flames: there is the rockface dripping and visibly eroding, there is the breaking up of what is being burned: there is the roar of the water, there is the terrible chatter of the fire. Yet at the centre of both fire and waterfall there is a persistent calm. And it is this calm which is catastrophic.
Look at him, whispered Gérard.
Three million he’s lost, poor sod! murmured the blond.