Why are you so sure he isn’t insured?
I know, she hissed, that’s why. I know.
Boris, his back to the fire, was bent over his haversack drinking from a bottle of water. Having drunk, he poured water onto his face and his black arms. Its freshness made him think of how he would strip in the kitchen this evening and wash before going to visit the blond.
When Boris turned back towards the fire he saw them. Immediately a gust of smoke hid them from view. Not for a moment, however, did he ask himself whether he had been mistaken. He would recognise her instantly whatever she was doing, anywhere. He would recognise her in any country in the world in any decade of her life.
The wind veered and he saw them again. She stood there, Gérard’s arm draped over her shoulders. It was impossible that they had not seen him and yet she made no sign. They were only fifty yards away. They were staring straight at him. And yet she made no sign.
If he walked into the fire would she cry out? Still holding the bottle, he walked upright, straight — like a soldier going to receive a medal — towards the fire. The wind changed again and they disappeared.
The next time the smoke cleared the couple were nowhere to be seen.
Contrary to what he had told himself earlier, Boris did not come down that night. He stayed by the fire. The flames had abated, his sheep were ashes, yet the rocks were still oven-hot and the embers, like his rage, changed colour in the wind.
Huddled under the rock, the Milky Way trailing its veil towards the south, he considered his position. Debts were warnings of the ultimate truth, they were signs, not yet insistent, of the final inhospitality of life on this earth. After midnight the wind dropped, and the rancid smell, clinging to the scree, was no longer wafted away; it filled the silence, as does the smell of cordite when the sound of the last shot has died away. On this inhospitable earth he had found, at the age of forty-one, a shelter. The blond was like a place: one where the law of inhospitality did not apply. He could take this place anywhere, and it was enough for him to think of her, for him to approach it. How then was it possible that she had come up the mountain on the day of his loss and not said a word? How was it possible that on this rock, far above the village, where even the church bells were inaudible, she should have come as close as fifty yards and not made a sign to him? He stirred the embers with his boot. He knew the answer to the question and it was elementary. He pissed into the fire and on the stones his urine turned into steam. It was elementary. She had come to watch him out of curiosity.
Before he saw her, he was telling himself that, after all, he had only lost half his sheep. As soon as he saw her with his own eyes, and she made no sign to him, his rage joined that of the fire: he and the fire, they would burn the whole world together, everything, sheep, livestock, houses, furniture, forests, cities. She had come out of curiosity to watch his humiliation.
All night he hated her. Just after sunrise, when it was coldest, his hatred reached its zenith. And so, four days later he was asking himself: could she have had another reason for coming up to the Rock of St. Antoine?
Boris decided to remain in the mountains. If he went down to the village, everyone would stare at him to see how he had taken his loss. They would ask him if he was insured, just in order to hear him say no. This would give them pleasure. If he went down he might start breaking things, the windows of the Mayor’s office, the glasses on the counter of the Republican Lyre, Gérard’s face, the nose of the first man to put an arm round the blond’s waist. The rest of his sheep were near Peniel, where there was a chalet he could sleep in. Until the snow came, he would stay there with his remaining sheep. Like that, he would be on the spot to bring them down for the winter. If she had really come to see him for another reason, she would come again.
A week passed. He had little to do. In the afternoons he lay on the grass, gazed up at the sky, occasionally gave an order to one of the dogs to turn some sheep, idly watched the valleys below. Each day the valleys appeared further away. At night he was obliged to light a fire in the chalet; there was no chimney but there was a hole in the roof. His physical energy was undiminished, but he stopped plotting and stopped desiring. On the mountainside opposite the chalet was a colony of marmots. He heard the marmot on guard whistle whenever one of his dogs approached the colony. In the early morning he saw them preparing for the winter and their long sleep. They lifted clumps of grass with roots attached, and carried them, as if they were flowers, to their underground hide-out. Like widows, he told himself, like widows.
One night, when the stars were as bright as in the spring, his anger returned to galvanize him. So they think Boris is finished, he muttered to the dogs, but they are fucking well wrong. Boris is only at the beginning. He slept with his fist in his mouth, and that night he dreamed.
The following afternoon he was lying on his back looking up at the sky, when suddenly he rolled over onto his stomach in order to look down the track which led through the forest to the tarred road. His hearing had become almost as acute as that of his dogs. He saw her walking towards him. She was wearing a white dress and blue sandals, around her neck a string of beads like pearls.
How are you, Humpback?
So you’ve come at last!
You disappeared! You disappeared! She opened her arms to embrace him. You disappeared and so I said to myself: I’ll go and find Humpback, and here I am.
She stepped back to look at him. He had a beard, his hair was tangled, his skin was dirty and his blue eyes, staring, were focused a little too far away.
How did you get here? he asked.
I left the car at the chalet below.
Where the old lady is?
There’s nobody there now, and the windows are boarded up.
They must have taken the cows down, he said. What date is it?
September 30th.
What did you come for, when I was burning the sheep?
How do you mean?
You came up to the Rock of St. Antoine with your husband.
No.
The day I was burning the sheep, I saw you.
It must have been somebody else.
I’d never mistake another woman for you.
I was very sorry to hear about what happened to your sheep, Boris.
Grandma used to say that dreams turned the truth upside down. Last night I dreamed we had a daughter, so in life it’ll be a son.
Humpback, I’m not pregnant.
Is that true?
I don’t want to lie to you.
Why did you come to spy on me? If you’re telling the truth, tell it.
I didn’t want to.
Why didn’t you come over and speak to me?
I was frightened.
Of me?
No, Humpback, of what you were doing.
I was doing what had to be done. Then I was going to come and visit you.
I was waiting for you, she said.
No, you weren’t. You had seen what you wanted to see.
I’ve come now.
If he’s conceived today, he’ll be born in June.
After these words, he roughly took her arm and led her towards the crooked chalet whose wood had been blackened by the sun. He pushed open the door with his foot. The room was large enough for four or five goats. On the earth floor were blankets. The window, no larger than a small transistor radio, was grey and opaque with dust. There was a cylinder of gas and a gas-ring, on which he placed a black saucepan with coffee in it.
I’ll give you whatever you want, he said.
He stood there in the half light, his immense hands open. Behind him on the floor was a heap of old clothes, among which she recognised his American army cap and a red shirt which she had once ironed for him. In the far corner something scuffled and a lame lamb hobbled towards the door where a dog lay. The floor of beaten earth smelled of dust, animals and coffee grounds. Taking the saucepan off the gas, he turned down the flame, and its hissing stopped. The silence which followed was unlike any in the valley below.