She did not go to see Li, precisely because she was afraid that the latter, convinced of the intensity of this "love," might question her about the man who had just left.
In spite of everything, that night in Paris was a great comfort to her. Their meeting was just like the previous ones, so there was nothing about her that gave away to other people what she was living through in her house in Villiers-la-Forêt…
It was only on the day after her return that she dared to admit to herself the real reason for the secretly beneficial effect of that night in Paris: at no time had any gesture, any caress, any pleasure received or given reminded her of what it was that henceforth bound them to each other, herself and her son.
Four
But for her fear of appearing ridiculous in her own eyes she would have schooled herself before Christmas Eve to be more natural in the gestures, smiles, and words she would need during their meal together. But her lips trembled slightly when repeating the words she had just addressed to her son, asking him to go and find some branches in the wood behind the Caravanserai. She had spoken with such artificial casualness it seemed to her that he had acquiesced and gone out before she had even finished her sentence. And now, over and over, she was silently reshaping the words that, by their self-conscious tone, must have given away what was inadmissible… From time to time she got up, readjusted the tablecloth on the kitchen table, made slight changes to the place settings, the plates, the little basket with very thin slices of bread. Then, going out into the corridor, she looked at herself in the mirror between the front door and the chest of drawers. Her black dress, the one she used to wear to go to the theater, struck her as too tight-fitting, the neckline too plunging. She removed the belt, put it on again, removed it again. Then covered her shoulders with a shawl. Going back into the kitchen she felt the lid of the pan on the range. "Everything's going to be cold now. What on earth's keeping you?" She was relieved to hear herself addressing this question to her son. Her words seemed to be rediscovering their innocence…
The end of the year had arrived too suddenly. She had almost forgotten about the winter festive season. Generally, several families at the Caravanserai gathered in the refectory at the retirement home for a joint celebration, children and elderly residents together. But since last winter more families, like the red-haired boy's, had moved out; and two of the old people, including Xenia, had died. That evening all that could be heard along the bare corridors of the unlit building was the discreet clicking of locks, as one resident or another half opened the door and listened for a long time, hoping to recognize the sounds of people at dinner…
Several times she had to trim the wicks of the two candles that were beginning to flicker and throw out little strands of soot. The lid of the pan was scarcely warm. "What on earth's keeping you? I'll have to reheat everything now," she repeated, but her voice seemed tense again and already tinged with anxiety. The cold was rapidly invading the kitchen now that the fire had gone out. She gathered up some wood shavings, then a handful of black dust, from the coal that was long since used up, and threw it all into the depths of the range. She washed her hands and, unable to bear it any longer, went into the hall, opened the door. The clear, icy night took her breath away. She wanted to call out, changed her mind, closed the door. And, walking back along the corridor, stopped, undecided, in her bedroom. The reflection of her black dress in the mirror slyly awakened a tender and obscure memory…
The front door banged, footsteps rang out on the floor, and from the kitchen there came the hollow rattle of a bucket. A shout, quite unaccustomed in the boy's mouth, a shout that was simultaneously joyful and commanding, seemed to seek her out through the house: "Mom, can you help me? It's very urgent! Otherwise they're going to die…"
She ran along the corridor, took her coat off the hook, and, without asking for explanations, followed her son, who was already leaping down off the front steps.
He led her in the darkness to the bottom of a great snow-covered meadow at the edge of the wood. He ran in among the first of the trees, from time to time disappearing behind a trunk, turning to see if she was coming after him. She followed close on his heels, as if in a strange dream, blinded by the moon every now and then when it pierced through the network of branches.
They found themselves beside a broad sheet of water, the pool that sometimes formed a small loop in the river, sometimes, when it rained less, shrank into a tiny pond, filled with weed. The pool the red-haired boy was playing beside, she remembered, on the day of the first snow…
"Look!" Her son's voice was muted now, speaking like one afraid to cause an echo in some terrible or holy place. "Another night of frost and they would all be dead…"
The surface of the pond was covered in ice; a single breach, smaller than a footprint, gave a glimpse of the black, open water. And the dark, glazed surface was streaked with incessant movements, a brief, frenetic shuddering, followed by a slow, drowsy rotation. Sometimes, in the watery reflection of the moon, there was a glint of scales; one could make out the shape of fins, the silvery patches of gills…
They began the rescue with excessive haste, as if these few fish trapped by the cold had only minutes to live. She watched her son plunging his hand into the icy water up to the elbow, and lifting out the slippery bodies, numbed by the lack of air and hardly struggling anymore. He released them into the bucket she held out to him and, lying down on the snow again, resumed his fishing. To ease his task she cleared the water of slivers of ice, pulled out skeins of weed, and occasionally helped him roll up the soaking sleeves of his jacket. Their hurried efforts merged everything into a feverish whole, the gestures, the crunch of snow under their feet, the glittering of the moon broken up on the black surface of the open water, the creaking of the ice, the trickle of the dripping water, their terse exchanges, like orders given on board ship in the midst of a storm. In this flurry their eyes met from time to time for a fraction of a second-and they were surprised at how much the silence of these exchanged looks was detached from their haste… She noticed that her son's right hand had several grazes on the knuckles. But there was so much ice and so much cold water around that the blood had scarcely made the skin pink and had stopped flowing. Perhaps for the first time since the boy's birth, she could contemplate his bleeding without anxiety and said nothing to him…
He released the fish, one by one, coming as close as possible to the icy river bank. Their bodies shuddered for a moment in his hand, then their quivering lives blended with the dark current, the cold, dense weight of which was palpable. After that he emptied the bucket, pouring out the rest of the water with several tufts of weed and lumps of ice. The tinkling of the last drops had a rare resonance, a purity that etched the outlines of the trees and rekindled the reflection of the moon in a frozen puddle. They looked at one another mutely: two ghosts with their faces silvered by the moon, their clothes in disarray; two motionless figures in the night on the bank of a smooth, impenetrable stream… A scrap of wind suddenly brought with it an imperceptible whisper of life, a faint mixture of shouts and music. She turned her gaze in the direction of the upper town.
"They're having a party down there," he said, as if in a daydream and without taking his eyes off the water that glittered at his feet.
"Down there," she repeated to herself as she walked beside him. "Down there…" So he, too, was conscious of living somewhere else.
In the course of that night on the riverbank he must have cut his knee without being aware of it in the flurry of the rescue. Next day a blood-filled swelling formed and grew rapidly larger. In the evening his temperature went up abruptly. On several previous occasions the doctor who was based in the upper town had refused to come. There was no longer a proper road between Villiers-la-Forêt and the Caravanserai, now swathed in darkness. She herself took a good quarter of an hour simply to make her way around the building and reach the main gateway. The footpath that followed the wall had disappeared; in certain places the squalls had sculpted long snowdrifts that barred the way.