The head’s twisted, muttered Marius, pushing his hat further back on his head, that’s why the bugger doesn’t come.
For the third or fourth time he rolled back his sleeve to the shoulder and plunged his right arm into the cow. The Comtesse was now so weak she was swaying like a drunk.
For Christ’s sake hold her up, he shouted, do you want to break my arm? Hold her up! God almighty, it’s not possible! Hold her up, do you hear me? Your father may be my worst enemy but you keep her on her feet, do you hear me?
Whilst he was shouting at Danielle he was quietly, systematically, searching with his open hand, fingers separated like probes, to find the calf’s shoulders and then its haunches and then with a single hand to turn them so that the calf could engage the passage. He was sweating profusely, so were Danielle and the Comtesse. Mucus, wood impregnated with a century’s smell of cows, sweat, and somewhere the iodine tang of birth.
It’s done, he grunted. He withdrew his arm and almost immediately two front hooves appeared, forlorn-looking as drowned kittens. Danielle was fingering the rope, impatient to slip it round the hooves and pull, and so finish with a labour that had already gone on too long, yet she hesitated because Marius was standing there, his face a few inches from the cow’s cunt, his eyes screwed up as if he were praying.
He’s coming to us! He’s coming. The calf slipped out limply, wearily, into Marius’s arms. He poured eau-de-vie over his fingers and forced them into the calf’s mouth so that it could suck. It looked more dead than alive. He carried it to the Comtesse, who licked its face and lowed. The sound she made was high and penetrating — a mad sound, thought Danielle. The calf stirred. She went to fetch some straw.
When all was arranged, Marius sat there on his stool, his right hand, with which he had turned the calf, still held open and extended, still making in the air of the stable the same gestures it had made in the womb. The difference was that it was no longer trembling.
You certainly know what you’re doing, Grandad!
Not always, not always.
A sweet breeze was blowing through the open door. The light was fading in the stable.
I couldn’t have done it without you, he said.
I did nothing.
He laughed and began to turn down the sleeves of his shirt. You were there! he cried, you were there! You kept her on her feet.
On her way home she was glad to have the torch, because the pass crosses from north to south, and with the moon still low in the east, the way between the crags was in dark shadow. She stopped to look up at the stars, which from there, where it was dark, seemed ten times brighter.
I often watched him. Toward midday I left my goats and climbed up the pass where there was a breeze, and there I ate my lunch. To be honest, I spied on him, for I was careful to remain hidden.
According to his children, who had left home, he was a tyrant. And what tyrannized them, apart from his orders, was his indefatigability.
Go fetch them over! Go take them over!
Every afternoon he had a different plan for where and how his herd should eat. He never left them in peace.
There were always jackdaws around the pass. When the sun was out and they were flying close to the rockface of St. Pair, their flying shadows were cast on the rock, and this seemed to double the number of birds in flight. Then, at a given moment, the leader of the flock would veer toward the sun, the others turning to follow, and their shadows would immediately vanish, so that it looked as if half the birds in flight had suddenly disappeared into thin air. Sometimes I lay there watching the birds appear and disappear until I lost all count of time. I would look down and notice Marius and his herd by the stream below where the cows drank at midday, and the next moment they were five kilometres away.
A week later Danielle visited Marius again. He was with his herd near the forest where two generations before some shepherds had mined for gold and found none.
Marius greeted her by saying: One day you’ll be an old woman! Even you, Danielle! I had a fall last night.
So?
Everyone ages.
How did you fall?
By way of an answer, he started to undo his belt. His trousers, caked in mud and cowshit, drenched and dried in the sun a thousand times, were, as usual, unbuttoned in front. Now they fell to the ground around his ankles. He turned so that she could see the back of his thigh, where just under the buttock something sharp had jaggedly torn the flesh. His legs were as white as they must have been in the cradle.
Is it deep? he asked.
It needs cleaning.
It bled like a pig.
What did you put on it?
Some brandy and some arnica.
It needs washing and bandaging, she said.
What is it like?
It’s about ten centimetres long and it’s red like a wound.
Is it ugly? It’s just where I can’t see it.
It’ll heal so long as you keep it clean.
Everything heals unless you die from it!
There were flies all round the brim of his hat.
Let’s go to the chalet, she said.
The bowl from which he had drunk his coffee and eaten his bread was still on the kitchen table.
Living by myself, I don’t have to change the plates, he said.
Where did you fall?
Out there where the woodpile is. Every night I cut the kindling wood to start the fire next morning. I must have tripped, I don’t know how.
You do too much, Grandad.
Who else is going to do it? Do you know how many cheeses I make a week?
She shook her head.
Thirty.
You’ve got a son down below.
He’s only interested in becoming Mayor.
He’ll never get elected.
I’ll make you some coffee. He plugged in an electric coffee grinder. I couldn’t manage without electricity, he said, electricity can replace a wife! He winked. A grotesque, undisguised wink.
She sipped the coffee. A few drops of rain began to fall. Within a minute the rain was beating on the roof like a drunk, and there were claps of thunder.
You’re not frightened, Danielle?
She repeated what she’d often heard said: there are three sorts of lightning — the lightning of rain, the lightning of stone, and the lightning of fire — and there’s nothing you can do about any of them.
The cows won’t move in rain like this, he said.
When the thunder was further away, she said: If you lie down, I’ll clean your leg.
The chalet, apart from the hayloft and stable, consisted of two rooms, one without a window for storing the cheeses, and one with a window for everything else. The bed, in the opposite corner from the stove, was made of wood and was screwed to the wall. He climbed up onto it, handed her a bottle of eau-de-vie, turned his back and lowered his trousers. Pinned to the planks of the wall beside the bed was a colour photo, torn from a magazine, of a large political demonstration by the Arc de Triomphe. She poured some eau-de-vie onto a cloth and began cleaning around the wound.
Crowds there that day, she said, looking at the photo.
I cut it out because I knew the Arc de Triomphe, he replied, I knew it well.
As a young man, she thought as she took hold of his leg, which was as pale as a baby’s, he must have been unusually handsome, with his dark eyes, his thick eyebrows, and his jet-black moustache. In Paris he couldn’t have lacked offers from women. Yet if he was to remain faithful to his oath, he could not afford to marry — whatever else he may have done — a seamstress or a florist. He had to find a wife who could milk the cows he was going to buy.