Malevil, Page 21

  I indicated the bow in my right hand and asked him in French (since I already knew he couldn’t speak our patois), “How come your father could use this so well?”

  He was so delighted that I’d spoken to him and so anxious to give me the information I wanted that he stammered slightly when he answered. He spoke a rather flat kind of French in which I could detect none of the underlying rhythm and color of our patois. And his accent was neither quite the local one nor quite that of the north. It was presumably the conflicting influences of his father and his primary school that had produced this odd mixture. In short, as they used to say around here, a “foreigner.”

  “He learned how up north,” he said, running all his words together. “In an archery club. He was the champion.” Then he added, “And the arrows, he made the heads himself—for hunting with.”

  I looked at him in astonishment. “For hunting with! He hunted with this? Why not with a gun?”

  “Oh, a gun makes a noise, doesn’t it?” Jacquet answered with a smile that was on the verge of being conspiratorial. He obviously knew that I was no hunter myself, and that my woods had always been open to all comers.

  I said nothing. I thought I was beginning to get some idea of what the troglodyte family’s existence had been like: the blows and the wounds, fireside rape, poaching, and in general, let’s say a certain indifference to the law. As for the bow and arrow itself, that certainly struck me as a shrewd idea. Much safer than a snare, because a snare you have to leave around to do its job, and a gamekeeper can find it; whereas an arrow does the job in a second, and above all, it kills almost silently, without scaring the game and without warning the neighbors. Those poor neighbors, they can’t have found much left in their woods to hunt themselves, the day the season opened.

  Jacquet had obviously assumed that my silence was one of disapproval, because now, with a humility clearly intended to disarm the gentleman from Malevil, the rich landowner who had never known hunger, he added, “If it hadn’t been for that, we wouldn’t have had meat to eat every day.”

  And Jacquet had had meat to eat every day, that was for sure. One glance told you that. He hadn’t done so badly out of his father’s hunting forays. But all the same, I found it pretty hard to swallow: a rabbit on the run nailed to the ground by an arrow?

  Jacquet was indignant at my doubts. “My father could shoot down a pheasant in full flight!” he exclaimed proudly.

  Ah, I thought, so that’s where Uncle Samuel’s pheasants used to disappear to. Every year he used to free two or three brace in his woods, and he never found them again, or any of their offspring.

  Carried away by his enthusiasm, Jacquet then added, “Normally, you see, the first arrow he let go at you ought to have killed you on the spot.”

  I frowned. And Thomas said curtly, “That’s not something to boast about.”

  I felt that it was time our conversation took a less relaxed turn anyway. I said sternly, “Jacquet, was it you who knocked out our friend and stole Amarante?”

  He blushed, hung his great head, and lurched unhappily from side to side as he walked. “It was my father who told me to.” Then he went on very quickly, “But he told me to kill your friend and I didn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a sin.”

  An unexpected answer, but I kept it in mind. I went on questioning Jacquet. He confirmed what I had already suspected. The father’s plan had been to trick us into following him by ones and twos, then kill us in order to make himself master of Malevil. It was terrifying to think of. After Zero Day he could have had the whole of France, but what he wanted was Malevil—even at the price of five murders. Because he wouldn’t have killed the “servants,” his son informed me. Nor my German woman.

  “What German woman?”

  “The one who used to ride around in the woods.”

  I looked at him. Defective information service, but a secondary motive not to be underestimated. The castle and the lady. Savage peasant uprising followed by putting to death of my lord and subsequent rape of my lady. The lord or lords. Because it appeared that Thomas, Colin, Peyssou, Meyssonnier, and myself were known collectively by the father as “the gentlemen of Malevil,” and that he often spoke of us, none of whom had ever set eyes on him, with rage and hatred. And he had set his son to spy on us.

  I stopped, turned to face Jacquet, and looked him in the eyes. “Didn’t you ever think to yourself that you could warn us and stop all those murders happening?”

  He stood there in front of me, eyes lowered, hands behind his back, overcome with repentance. I wondered if he might not actually go and hang himself if I suggested the idea. “Oh, yes,” he said, “but my father would have known, and he’d have killed me.”

  Naturally, because of course the father had been not only invincible but omniscient as well. I looked at the son: complicity in premeditated murder, a violent assault on one of our friends, theft of a horse.

  “Well, Jacquet, what are we to do with you?”

  His lips trembled, he swallowed his saliva, looked at me with those innocent, fearful eyes, and said, already resigned, “I don’t know. Kill me perhaps.”

  “That’s all you deserve,” Thomas said, jaw clenched in anger. I looked at him. He must have been very afraid for me as I clambered up that hill. And now he felt I was being too indulgent.

  “No,” I said, “we shan’t kill you. First, because killing people is a sin, as you said. But what we are going to do is take you back with us to Malevil and deprive you of your liberty for a certain time.”

  I avoided looking at Thomas. It went through my mind, not without a slight accompanying tremor of amusement, how disgusted he must be to hear me employing so “clerical” a notion as that of sin. Though in fact I had no choice really. How was I to talk to Jacquet at all if it wasn’t in the language he understood?

  “Alone?” Jacquet said.

  “What do you mean, ‘alone’?”

  “Are you taking only me back to Malevil?” Then, when I just raised my eyebrows and kept looking at him, he added, “Because there is also Granny.” I had the impression that he was about to add another name, or names, but he stopped.

  “If your grandmother wants to come, then we’ll take her too.”

  But there was something else worrying him. I could see that. And I didn’t think it was the idea of being shut up, because his face, which was incapable of hiding anything, had become gloomy, much gloomier in fact than during the moments when he was afraid we were going to kill him. I started walking again and was about to start pressing him with questions when the silence of the desolate and devastated gorge through which we were passing was abruptly rent by the loud sound of a horse neighing only a little way ahead.

  And it wasn’t just any neigh. It hadn’t come from Amarante. It was the triumphant neigh, at once imperious and tender, of a stallion preparing to mount a mare, curvetting around her to excite her, to get the fire going, as Uncle Samuel used to say.

  “You have a horse then?”

  “Yes,” Jacquet said.

  “And he hasn’t been cut!”

  “No. My father would never have that.”

  I looked at Thomas. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was ready to burst with joy! Three cheers, this once at least for the troglodyte father. I broke into a run like an eager child. Finding that the bow hampered my movements, I held it out to Jacquet, who took it without any show of surprise as he ran along beside me, his wide mouth hanging open. Thomas, needless to say, left us behind after only a few strides and continued to increase his lead all the time, especially since I was soon out of breath and had to slow down.

  But the goal was in sight. A row of great chestnut posts, blackened but still standing, about ten feet high with two strands of barbed wire running along them, enclosed a paddock of about a quarter of an acre in front of the troglodyte dwelling that was three quarters cave and one quarter house. In the middle of the paddock, tied to the skeleton of a tree, q
uivering but not restive, stood my Amarante, sudden shivers running along her chestnut flanks, tossing back her blond mane with a series of impatient and coquettish jerks. Who would ever have believed that such a sacrilege—admittedly not yet accomplished—would fill me with such joy! A great thick-bodied carthorse mounting an Anglo-Arab mare!

  Not that he was ugly, her proletarian mate. Dark gray, almost black, enormous hindquarters, thickset legs, powerful shoulders, and a neck that I couldn’t have encircled with both arms. In build, in fact, he was not unlike his human masters. He continued to circle around Amarante, curvetting and flourishing with monumental agility, all the time giving raucous neighs, eyes sparkling with fire. I hoped he was aware of the incredible honor that had befallen him, and that he could tell the difference between a great lump of a carthorse mare and the graceful Amarante, whom the necessities of equine survival were now obliging to suffer his assault in the very flower of her youth, her third year scarcely over, and behind her a long lineage of distinguished ancestors.

  Certainly his courtship, though ardent, was without brutality, as he nibbled at her lips, head glued to hers, then turned so that they were head to rump, licking beneath her tail, appearing suddenly on her other side, then laying his vast head on her neck, withdrawing it, returning to her hindquarters, gradually enmeshing the mare in his ponderous dance of seduction, infecting her with his own maddened excitement, imposing upon her, without rushing or treating her roughly, his authority, his strength, and his smell.

  How did he know the exact moment when Amarante was ready to accept him, without kicking or shying away? He rose up, a gigantic figure on his back legs, kicking at the air with his front hoofs to maintain his balance, his long black mane waving. And moving toward her in that posture, reared in the air, clumsy and yet terrible, he let himself fall upon Amarante’s back.

  She gave a moan, and her legs gave slightly at the impact of that ton of muscle. But she took the shock nevertheless, tail lifted compliantly, and he was able to grip her flanks with his great thick legs. Seeing that the stallion was in difficulty, Jacquet slipped quickly forward, took the enormous member firmly in one hand with the greatest simplicity, and slid it home. Amarante arched herself on her tensed and quivering front legs in order to keep her feet against the violent thrusts of her partner’s great body.

  At that moment the stallion was in profile from where I stood, and I have never seen the idea of physical power better expressed than by that superb head stretched forward over the mare’s back, the black mane shaken by his efforts, the nostrils dilated, the proud eyes sparkling and darting fire as they gazed blindly before them. I noticed that he did not bite Amarante’s neck in order to maintain his position, and that he remained gentle with her at the moment of his triumph.

  When the coupling was finished, he remained motionless, his hind legs trembling slightly. His head sagged until his lips were touching Amarante’s mane. He remained in that position for a full minute with an expression of exhaustion on his face, his mouth sunken as it were, the fire draining from his eyes, leaving a sadness there. At last he withdrew clumsily from the mare, and as his forelegs fell back onto the earth a little of the semen of which he had just relieved himself fell to the ground. Then he shook himself, and raising his head suddenly, himself again, he set off around the paddock at a powerful gallop that brought him back toward us at top speed, as though he was about to crush us into the ground. Scarcely a yard away, he wheeled suddenly to avoid us, glancing at us sideways with a joyful braggadocio eye, almost as though to tease us, as he sped off to the far end of the paddock without slowing his pace.

  Long after leaving that place I was to hear the rhythm of those four heavy hoofs in my head as they shook the earth. In that dead mute landscape, that muffled and thunderous beat seemed to me as exalting as the renewal of life itself.

  There wasn’t just one troglodyte building, in fact, but two, side by side, the first for living in and the second, I supposed, for housing animals and storing hay and fodder. They were skillfully constructed, with a brick wall built out about a yard or so in front of the cave entrance, topped by a sloping roof with a chimney in it. In the case of the second cave, the bricks had been left bare, but the wall of the house had been rendered with some care. On the ground floor a glazed door and a window had been let into the wall, and another two windows on the floor above. The windows still had all their panes intact and were flanked by full shutters still bearing traces of claret paint. The whole thing, though obviously done cheaply, was by no means squalid.

  Above the sloping jut of roof the cliff went up for another fifty feet. And its upper part, swelling out in a boss, overhung the house, protecting it from the rain and even giving it a kind of cozy air. But at the same time the overhang was rather frightening. You expected little cracks to appear in it at any moment, then to see it split right off and crash down in front of the dwelling. Though it had probably maintained that perilous-looking state of equilibrium for thousands of years. And Wahrwoorde, when he first came to live there, must have decided that it was going to last at least for another brief human lifespan.

  The general situation and arrangement was identical to that of our Maternity Ward (except that I had never built out around the edge of our cave), and it was to this that the troglodytes clearly owed their lives on the day it happened.

  I could see no other buildings, except something that looked like a bakehouse inside the paddock.

  I became aware of a presence and of eyes upon me. Standing in the doorway of the dwelling, a voluminous old woman, dressed in a rather dirty black smock, was inspecting us with a look of superstitious amazement. I wondered if this was my adversary’s mother, so I walked forward and said with embarrassment, “You must have guessed what has happened, and that I haven’t just come to pass the time of day.”

  She bowed her head without answering immediately and also, I noticed, without any appearance of grief. She was rather short, with a puffy face, cheeks sagging into jowls, a neck so large and so flabby that it was just a continuation of her chin, leading down to the curve of her enormous breasts, which swung about at her slightest movement like two sacks of oats on the back of a donkey. In the midst of all the fat there sparkled two rather beautiful dark eyes, and above her somewhat low forehead an irrepressible mane of thick hair sprang up in all directions, crinkly, dense, and the whitest white you ever saw.

  “It must have all happened the way I’m thinking, since here you are, aren’t you?” she said serenely.

  Not the slightest trace of emotion, and also, oddly it seemed, a local accent, even down to the turn of phrase.

  “Believe me I regret what has happened,” I said, “but I had no choice. It was your son or me.”

  Her reply to this was unexpected to say the least. “Come on in, come on in,” she said, standing aside.

  “You must at least come in and have something with us.” And she added in patois, with a sigh and a shrug, “Thanks be to heaven, he was no son of mine.”

  I looked at her. “So you can speak patois?”

  “I should hope so. I was born here,” she said, again in patois. She drew herself up, throwing out her chest in a haughty gesture that caused the oat sacks to sway with ponderous emphasis, seeming to say, I’m not one of your savages, you know. “I was born in La Roque,” she went on. “Do you know Falvine in La Roque?”

  “The cobbler who tamed the crow?”

  “He’s my brother,” La Falvine said with an air of tremendous respectability. “Come in, come in, son,” she went on. “Make yourself at home.”

  But I wasn’t going to give my trust absolutely even to a Falvine, the sister of a respectable cobbler of La Roque. I unslung my rifle, slipped a magazine into it, then closed the breech and worked the first cartridge up into the barrel. That done, instead of walking straight in, I pushed La Falvine ahead of me into the house with a gesture of feigned politeness. I had the feeling, as my hand touched her back, that it was sinking into warm lard.
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  Nothing suspicious. Cement floor, mended in patches, back and side walls formed by the whitish gray rock of the cave. They had been left as they were, with no attempt to soften or remove their roughnesses or irregularities. No trace of damp. Overhead, the joists and floorboards of the upper story, and that little door in the corner of the brick projection probably led to the stairs up to it. In the front wall, one window, the glazed door, and the fireplace. Inside, the bricks hadn’t been rendered, and the drips of mortar binding were still visible. Slow fire in the hearth. Under the window, shelves for the family’s boots. A big Louis XV rustic style armoire, which I opened with a murmured “Do you mind?” for form’s sake. Linen on the right, crockery on the left. In the center of the room a big “farmhouse table,” as Parisians used to call it, though they insisted on picturesque benches beside it, whereas we humble country folk preferred the comfort of chairs. I counted seven straw-bottomed chairs, but only four around the table. The others stood against the walls. I didn’t know whether it was significant, but I noted it all the same.

  I walked over to the far end of the table. It was there, I imagined, that the father had always sat, so I took his chair, gun between my legs, back to the wall of the cave. From that position I could command a view of both doors. I signaled to Thomas to take the chair on my right, so that his body wouldn’t come between me and either of the two doors. Jacquet, without being told, sat down humbly at the bottom end of the table, his back to the light.