Everything was ready and prepared, she knew, in the second drawer of the wardrobe. Her black dress with the mother-of-pearl buttons, the black kerchief with blue gentian flowers printed on it, the dark grey stockings, and the shoes with laces which would be easier to put on than boots. How many times had Marie-Louise promised to come and dress her if it was she, Albertine, who was the first to go?
That night after Félix had come to lie down beside her, she said: It’s years, my boy, since you played your accordion.
I don’t even know where it is.
It’s in the grenier, she said, you used to play so well, I don’t know why you stopped.
It was when I came out of the army.
You let it drop.
Father was dead, there was too much to do.
He glanced at the portrait hanging above the bed. His father had a thick moustache, tiny comic eyes and a strong neck. He used to tap his neck, as if it were a barrel, when he was thirsty.
Would you play me something? Albertine asked.
On the accordion?
Yes.
After all this time I won’t get a breath out of it.
Try.
He shrugged his shoulders, took the electric torch off its hook on the wall, and went out. When he came back he extracted the accordion from its case, arranged one strap round his shoulder and, slipping his wrist under the other, started to pump. It worked.
What tune do you want?
“Dans tes Montagnes.”
The two voices of the accordion, tender and full-blown, filled the room. All her attention was fixed on him. His body was rolling slowly to the music. He has never been able to make up his mind, she reflected, it’s as if he doesn’t realise this is his only life. I ought to know since it was I who gave birth to him. And then, carried away by the music, she saw their cows in the alpage and Félix learning to walk.
When Félix stopped playing, Albertine was asleep.
Neighbours came to visit the house, bringing with them pears, walnut wine, an apple tart. Albertine repeatedly declared she had no need of anything except water. She stopped eating. She would take whatever messages they wanted, she would pray with them for what they thought they needed, she would bless them, but she would accept no pity and no competition. She was the next to leave.
To the old man, Anselme, she whispered: Try to find him a wife.
It’s not like our time, he said, shaking his head. Nobody wants to marry a peasant today.
I’m glad you say that, she said.
I’m not saying Félix couldn’t get married, answered Anselme pedantically. I’m simply saying women of his generation married men from the towns.
It’s the idea of his being left alone.
I’ve been alone for twenty years! It’s twenty years now since Claire died and I can recommend it. He chuckled.
Abruptly Albertine lowered her head to indicate that it was his duty to kiss her whilst she prayed. Obediently Anselme kissed the crown of her head.
She was now so weak and thin that Félix was frightened of smothering her when he slept. One night he woke up from a dream. He listened for her breathing. Her breath was as weak as an intermittent breeze in grass waiting to be scythed. Through the lace curtains he could see the plum trees his father had grafted. The light of the moon going down in the west was reflected in the mirror behind the wash bowl.
In the dream he had again been a conscript in the army. He was walking along a road, playing an accordion. Behind him was a man carrying a sheep. It was he, Félix, who had stolen the sheep, or, rather, a young woman had given the sheep to him on condition that … and he had taken the sheep knowing full well …
The dream became vaguer and vaguer as, awake, he saw something else. He saw Death approaching the farm. Or, rather, he saw Death’s lamp, bobbing up and down, as Death strode leisurely past the edge of the forest where the beech trees in October were the colour of flames, down the slope of the big pasture which drained badly at the bottom, under the linden tree full of wasps in August, over the ruts of the old road to St. Denis, between the cherry trees against which, every July, she asked him to lean the long ladder, past the water trough where the source never froze, beside the dungheap where he threw the afterbirths, through the stable into the kitchen. When Death entered the Middle Room — where the smoked sausages were hanging from the ceiling above the bed — he saw that what he had taken to be a lamp was in fact a white feather of hoarfrost. The feather floated down onto the bed.
Abruptly Albertine sat up and said: Fetch me my dress, it is time to go!
The day after the funeral, when Félix delivered his milk to the dairy, he surprised everyone there by his cheerfulness.
Have you ever worked as a butcher? he asked Philippe, the cheesemaker. No? Well, you’d better take a correspondence course — with diagrams! Next year there’s going to be no hay, no cows, no milk, no bonus for cream, no penalty for dirt … We’re all going to be in the mole-skin business! That’s what we are going to be doing …
The absence of the mourned is as precise as their presence once was. Albertine’s absence was thin with arthritic hands and long grey hair gathered up in a chignon. The eyes of her absence needed glasses for reading. During her lifetime many cows had stepped on her feet. Each of her toes had been stepped on by a cow on a different occasion, and the growth of its nail consequently deformed. The toenails of her absence were the yellow of horn and irregularly shaped. The legs of her absence were as soft to touch as a young woman’s.
Every evening he ate the soup he had prepared, he sliced the bread, he read the Communist Party paper for peasants and agricultural workers, and he lit a cigarette. He performed these acts whilst hugging her absence. As the night drew on and the cows in the stable lay down on their bedding of straw and beech leaves, the warmth of his own body penetrated her absence so that it became his own pain.
On All Souls’ Day he bought some chrysanthemums, white ones the colour of goose feathers, and placed the pot of flowers, not by the tombstone in the churchyard, but on the marble-top commode in the Middle Room beside the large empty bed.
A week later the snow came. The children ran screaming out of school, impatient to build snowmen and igloos. When Félix delivered his milk to the dairy, he repeated the remark that Albertine had made every year when the first snow felclass="underline"
Let it snow a lot tonight, let the snow get so high our hens can peck the stars!
Through the kitchen window he stared at the white mountain. Mick was licking a plate on the floor.
The winter’s long, it would be better if we could sleep.
The dog looked up.
Who do you think is going to win the elections? The same gang as before, eh?
The dog started wagging his tail.
Do you know what you like and what they manufacture in Béthune? Do you know, Mick?
Félix strode across the kitchen towards the massive dresser. To take something off its top shelf it was necessary to stand on a chair. Its doors, with their square panes of glass and their bevelled window frames, were big enough for a cow to go through.
So you don’t know, Mick, what they manufacture in Béthune? From the bottom shelf he picked up a packet of sugar.
Sugar, Mick, sugar is what they manufacture in Béthune!
Brusquely he threw two lumps towards the dog. Three more. Six. Then he emptied the whole packet. Fifty lumps of sugar fell onto the floorboards in a cloud of dust.