He believed that time would bring him nothing, and that his cunning must bring him everything. When he was selling he never named his price. You can’t insult me, he said, just tell me what you want to offer. Then he waited, his blue, deep-set eyes already on the brink of the derision with which he was going to greet the price named.
He is looking at me now, with the same expression. I told you once, he says, that I had enough poems in my head to fill a book, do you remember? Now you are writing the story of my life. You can do that because it’s finished. When I was still alive, what did you do? Once you brought me a packet of cigarettes whilst I was grazing the sheep above the factory.
I say nothing. I go on writing.
The uncle of all cattle dealers once told me: A ram like Boris is best eaten as meat.
Boris’s plan was simple: to buy thin and sell fat. What he sometimes underestimated was the work and time necessary between the two. He willed the thin cattle to become fat, but their flesh, unlike his own, was not always obedient to his will. And their bodies, at the moment of conception, had not received the same instructions.
He grazed his sheep on every scrap of common land and often on land which wasn’t common. In the winter he was obliged to buy extra hay, and he promised to pay for it with lambs in the spring. He never paid. Yet he survived. And his herd grew bigger: in his heyday he owned a hundred and fifty sheep. He drove a Land Rover which he had recuperated from a ravine. He had a shepherd whom he had recuperated from an alcoholics’ clinic. Nobody trusted Boris, nobody resisted him.
The story of his advancement spread. So too did the stories of his negligence — his unpaid debts, his sheep eating off land which belonged to other people. They were considered a scourge, Boris’s sheep, as if they were a troop of wild boar. And often, like the Devil’s own, his flock left and arrived by night.
In the Republican Lyre, the café opposite the church, there was sometimes something of the Devil about Boris too. He stood at the bar — he never sat down — surrounded by the young from several villages: the young who foresaw initiatives beyond the comprehension of their cautious yet wily parents, the young who dreamed of leisure and foreign women.
You should go to Canada, Boris was saying, that’s where the future belongs. Here, as soon as you do something of your own, you’re mistrusted. Canada is big, and when you have something big, you have something generous!
He paid for his round of drinks with a fifty-thousand note, which he placed on the counter with his wooden-handled knife on top of it, so that it wouldn’t blow away.
Here, he continued, nothing is ever forgiven! Not this side of death. And, as for the other side, they leave it to the curé. Have you ever seen anyone laughing for pleasure here?
And at that moment, as though he, the Devil, had ordered it, the door of the café opened and a couple came in, the woman roaring with laughter. They were strangers, both of them. The man wore a weekend suit and pointed shoes, and the woman, who, like her companion, was about thirty, had blond hair and wore a fur coat. One of the young men looked out through the window and saw their car parked opposite. It had Lyons license plates. Boris stared at them. The man said something and the woman laughed again. Her laughter was like a promise. Of what? you may ask. Of something big, of the unknown, of a kind of Canada.
Do you know them?
Boris shook his head.
Shortly afterwards he pocketed his knife, proffered the fifty-thousand note, insisted upon paying for the two coffees the couple from Lyons were drinking, and left, without so much as another glance in their or anybody else’s direction.
When the strangers got up to pay, the Patronne simply said: It’s already been settled.
Who by?
By the man who left five minutes ago.
The one in khaki? asked the blond. The Patronne nodded.
We are looking for a house to rent, furnished if possible, said the man. Do you happen to know of any in the village?
For a week or a month?
No, for the whole year round.
You want to settle here? asked one of the youths, incredulous.
My husband has a job in A_____, the blond explained. He’s a driving instructor.
The couple found a house. And one Tuesday morning, just before Easter, Boris drew up in his Land Rover and hammered on the door. It was opened by the blond, still wearing her dressing gown.
I’ve a present for you both, he said.
My husband, unfortunately, has just gone to work.
I know. I watched him leave. Wait!
He opened the back of the Land Rover and returned with a lamb in his arms.
This is the present.
Is it asleep?
No, slaughtered.
The blond threw her head back and laughed. What should we do with a slaughtered lamb? she sighed, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
Roast it!
It still has its wool on. We don’t know how to do such things and Gérard hates the sight of blood.
I’ll prepare it for you.
It was you who bought us the coffee, wasn’t it?
Boris shrugged his shoulders. He was holding the lamb by its hind legs, its muzzle a few inches from the ground. The blond was wearing mules of artificial leopard skin.
Come in then, she said.
All this was observed by the neighbours.
The hind legs of the lamb were tied together and he hung it like a jacket on the back of the kitchen door. When he arrived, the blond had been drinking a bowl of coffee which was still on the table. In the kitchen there was the smell of coffee, of soap powder and of her. She had the smell of a buxom, plump body without a trace of the smell of work. Work has the smell of vinegar. He put out a hand to touch her hips as she passed between the table and the stove. Once again she laughed, this time quietly. Later he was to recall this first morning that he found himself in her kitchen, as if it were something he had swallowed, as if his tongue had never forgotten the taste of her mouth when she first bent down to kiss him.
Every time he visited her, he brought her a present; the lamb was only the first. Once he came with his tractor and trailer and on the trailer was a sideboard. He never disguised his visits. He made them in full daylight before the eyes of his neighbours, who noticed that each time, after about half an hour, the blond closed the shutters of the bedroom window.
And if one day her husband should come back unexpectedly? asked one of the neighbours.
God forbid! Boris would be capable of picking him up and throwing him over the roof.
Yet he must have his suspicions?
Who?
The husband.
It’s clear you’ve never lived in a big town.
Why do you say that?
The husband knows. If you’d lived in a big town, you’d know that the husband knows.
Then why doesn’t he put his foot down? He can’t be that cowardly.
One day the husband will come back, at a time agreed upon with his wife, and Boris will still be there, and the husband will say: What will you have as an aperitif, a pastis?
And he’ll put poison in it?
No, black pepper! To excite him further.
Boris had been married at the age of twenty-five. His wife left him after one month. They were later divorced. His wife, who was not from the valley, never accused him of anything. She simply said, quietly, that she couldn’t live with him. And once she added: perhaps another woman could.
The blond gave Boris the nickname of Little Humpback.
My back is as straight as yours.
I didn’t say it wasn’t.
Then why—
It’s what I like to call you.
Little Humpback, she said one day, do you ski?