Félix arranged the wire across the opening to the field, switched on the current, and, plucking a stalk of hemlock, held it against the live wire. After a second his hand shot up like a startled bird. He returned slowly to the house, stopping twice to look back at the happiness of the cows.
He phoned the Inseminator to ask him to pass by for Princesse and gave him the code number of her previous insemination.
In making hay there’s always a wager. The quicker the hay is in, the better it is. Yet the hay must be dry, otherwise it ferments. At the worst, tradition had it, damp hay could eventually set a house on fire. If you don’t take any risks you’ll never get your hay in early. At the best, you’ll be left with hay like straw. So, impatient, you bet on the sun lasting and the storm holding off. It’s not us making hay, repeated Albertine every year, it’s sun that makes the hay.
This lottery made haymaking something of a fête. Each time they won they had cheated the sky. Sometimes they won by minutes, the first drops of rain falling as the horse pulled into the barn the last cart of the hay cut two days before. The hurry, the women and children in the fields, the sweat washed away with spring water, the thirst quenched with coffee and cider, being able to jump from a height of fifteen feet in the barn to land deliciously unharmed in the hay, the hay which he knew how to untangle and comb, the barn as tall as a church slowly filling up until, on top of the hay, his head was touching the roof, the supper in the crowded kitchen afterwards, this had all made haymaking a fête during the first half of his life.
Today he was alone, alone to decide the risks, to cut the hay, to ted it, to turn it, to windrow it, to load it, to transport it, to unload it, to pack it, to level it, to quench his thirst, to prepare his own supper. With the new machines he did not have to work harder than in the first half of his life; the difference now was that he was finally alone.
He had cut half the grass in what his father always called Grandma’s Field. It was on the slope above the linden tree. The hay had been turned but still needed a good hour’s sunshine. It was hot and heavy, the weather for horseflies. He studied the sky as if it were a clock to tell him how many hours away the storm might be. Then he bent down to pick up another handful of hay, assessing its dryness with his fingers. There were four trailer-loads to bring in. He decided to give it half an hour before windrowing. He switched off the tractor engine and walked over to the edge of the field where there was a strip of shade from a little ash grove. There he lay down and pulled the cap over his eyes. He tried to remember the cold of winter but couldn’t. He thought he heard thunder in the distance and jumped to his feet.
Get it in now, Felo.
He walked back towards the tractor along the edge of the un-mown half of the field where the grass was green and the flowers still coloured. The compagnon rouge, pink like lipstick. The tiny vetch scattered like stars of creamy milk. The bellflower, mauve, head bowed. The deep blue mountain cornflower, which cures conjunctivitis, its calyx crisscrossed with black lace like the stockings of dancers. As he noticed them he picked them. Herb bennett, yellow like a scarf. Crepide fausse blathaire, vigorous cropped blond. Fragrant orchid, red like a pig’s penis. He began to pick quickly and indiscriminately in order to make a bouquet, the first since he left school.
Get it in now, Felo.
He drove the tractor back to the house, unhooked the tedder and attached the windrower. The flowers he stuck into a jam jar which he filled with water from the kitchen tap.
The storm broke as he was bringing the last load in.
Saved by the skin of our teeth, Mick!
In the barn he was stripped to the waist. His stomach and back, so rarely exposed to the air, were as pale as a baby’s. When you looked at him you thought of a father as seen by his child. Perhaps this was because his own flesh looked both manly and childish.
When he had unloaded the trailer it was time to begin the milking. He walked out into the rain. He could feel it cooling his blood. It ran down his back into the inside of his trousers. Then he put on his vest and his tartan shirt, threw the blue cap onto his wet hair, switched on the motor for the milking machine and went into the stable. He left the door open, for there was little light inside and his eyes still smarted from the hay dust.
The milking finished, he entered the kitchen. He had closed the shutters as Albertine had always insisted upon doing in the summer to keep the room cool. Light from the sunset filtered between their slats. On the window sill was the bunch of flowers he had picked. On seeing them he stopped in midstride. He stared at them as if they were a ghost. In the stable a cow pissed; in the kitchen the stillness and silence were total.
He pulled a chair from under the table, he sat down and he wept. As he wept his head slowly fell forward until his forehead touched the oilcloth. Odd how sounds of distress are recognised by animals. The dog approached the man’s back and, getting up on its hind legs, rested its front paws on his shoulder blades.
He wept for all that would no longer happen. He wept for his mother making potato fritters. He wept for her pruning the roses in the garden. He wept for his father shouting. He wept for the bobsled he had as a boy. He wept for the triangle of hair between the legs of Suzanne the schoolmistress. He wept for the smell of a woman ironing sheets. He wept for jam bubbling in a saucepan on the stove. He wept for never being able to leave the farm for a single day. He wept for the farm where there were no children. He wept for the sound of rain on the rhubarb leaves and his father roaring: Listen to that! That’s what you miss when you go away to work for months, and when you come back in the spring and hear that sound you say, Thank God in Heaven I’m home! He wept for the hay, still to be brought in. He wept for the forty-two years that had gone by, and he wept for himself.
In July the evenings seem endless. When Félix, his boots full of hayseed and his face tear-stained, took his two churns of milk to the dairy, he could see for miles across the valley towards the mountains. Most of the fields were mown. Because he was alone, he would always be the last to finish his hay. The heat gone, the shaved ground lay there in a kind of trance waiting for hares or lovers. He drove faster than usual, cutting the corners. His tyres screeched as he braked. There were already five other cars there. He kicked open the door as if he wanted to break it down. The cheesemaker and the other peasants who had delivered their milk looked at him quizzically. He poured his churn into the tub on the scales without glancing at the reading. And when he emptied the tub into the vat he did so with a ferocity that wiped the smile off the others’ faces. The milk splashed the wooden ceiling. His second churn he emptied the same way.
Everything all right at home, Félix?
Nothing, nobody to complain about.
Have a glass of rouge? Albert, the old man, lifted a bottle off a shelf above the sink. Félix declined and left.
For God’s sake! muttered one of them shaking his head.
In a year or two, said Albert, he’ll start drinking. Men aren’t made to live alone. Women are stronger, they merge with the weather, I don’t know how.
Find him a wife!
He’ll never marry.
Why do you say that?
Too late.
It’s never too late.
To set up house with a woman, yes, it’s too late.
He’d make a good husband.
It’s a question of trust, insisted Albert.
Whose trust?
After forty a man doesn’t trust a woman enough.